Sunday 28 March 2010

Because We All Know One.

Dying For A Drink.

I left Shirleys Pub with a promise of a hot bath and company at the town hall dance - if I could get the booze.
The Cub was sitting in the afternoon heat in a patch of Veldt near the overgrown field that used to be the grass strip. A few cattle kept the grass down, but made the availability of the strip variable. Especially after dark.

The little plane rattled and creaked as I climbed aboard. Switches on, plenty of juice. I got out, checked the dipper - plenty of petrol. Okay. Start her up. Quick magneto check - there are old pilots, there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. Fine Buckle up and swing onto the strip.
A few yards and we clawed into the air.

I flew at about 500 feet, keeping an occasional eye on the engine and looking over the side.
At one point I saw a lion, a female, a small herd of Zebra. They didn't look startled. The cub wasn't a startling sort of plane.

Eventually I spotted the rail depot at Morrisville, where the holding warehouses for the region were. I circled until I saw a roadway between the tracks. Then I landed. Again, I pulled up in a few yards.
Switching off, the silence wasn't complete. There was a faint buzz in the air. I paid no attention.
Robbie Reiker had seen me; I got out as he came running up.
"Hiya Pratty!"
"Hello Robbie!"
"What can I do for you?"
"Need whisky and rum. Crate of each for the pub."
"Can do, Pratty. Old surplus stock do? Usual price?"
"Yes man."
The drone was getting louder. We both looked up. Coming in on the very same roadway was a contraption looking like a gnat, still about 50 feet up.
It was a Fiesler Storch.
What the hell?

Thanks To Borge on Facebook.

Win-Win Situation

The lights went out at the Houses Of Parliament for Earth Hour last night.
I turned extra lights on and watched Walk The Line till midnight.

If only this could be a permanent state of affairs.

Saturday 27 March 2010

The Man Comes Around.

Some Had A Good War.

Hello. Artemis Prattebourne here. I became the third Earl Of Prattebourne in 1943. My uncle was killed, leading his regiment onto Sicily as we were beginning to turn things around.

Me? Came through the whole shooting match without a scratch. Joined up with the Royal Air Force in '45, sent for pilot training in South Africa.
Then the war ended, and I chose to be paid off where I was.

I'd learned to fly by then, and rather than go back to Prattebourne Manor, I left it as it was, a military hospital for American airmen still recovering.
The yanks paid me good money to use the place, so there I was in 1946, in the bush near Bloemfontain, with a surplus Piper Cub I'd bought for five pounds and a crate of Webster's Cream Mild. I was running medics out into the country for subsistence and drinks, generally spending the morning delivering the doctors and their supplies, sometimes flying patients back to the town so that they could be properly looked after.
In the afternoons I''d go up to the best flyers bar there was, at least when the school had been open.

Shirley's Pub was in a corner by the railway station and opposite the post office. She left it to her native help to run and almost never showed her face. At least, I'd never seen her. Just Henry, the barman with the deepest black skin and the slowest, whitest smile.
He knew what I wanted without asking, and when I would pull up in the doctor's old Jeep, he'd have a frosty Castle lager, brought up specially, waiting for me.

One day, as I was sitting quietly, nursing my beer, and Henry was wiping the counter by way of swiping a fly away from the taps, there were footsteps from upstairs.
Henry looked up at the ceiling.
"Better look busy baas. That'll be Shirley, coming to do the books."
he smiled and put a few of the empties back on the bar.
Then he poured me another cold one, just as Shirley entered.
"That'll be half a Crown baas."
I reached into my pocket for the money. I sensed the footsteps stop. I looked around.

Shirley was a tall, blonde, blue-eyed woman, very, very beautiful, and she was looking at me with narrowed eyes.
She paused long enough to take in the scene. Just as our eyes met, she turned to Henry.
"Henry Gabon, you don't fool me for a minute. Get those empties off the bar."
He laughed. She smiled. Then she turned at the end of the bar and looked at me questioningly.
"You a flyer?"
"Am I a flyer?"I smiled.
"Well, are you?"
"Stayed on after the school shut."
"Still live at the camp?"
"No. It's shut. I stay with Doc Ellis. Sometimes."
"You don't look clean enough to live with the Ellises."
"Sometimes. Others, I'm under the wing, or else sleeping in the hangar by the runway."
She wasn't llistening. She was examining the ledger.
"Henry, when did we run out of Rum. And Whiskey. Gosh Henry, why didn't you say?"
"I did ma'am, but you were...busy."
"Busy."
"Busy looking for Rog.... for the baas."
She looked suddenly distant. Just for a fleeting instant, the shadow of grief crossed her face. She brushed it away like a strand of hair.
Like I said, some had a good war. And some hadn't. A lot of people, in fact.

I moved closer, and said, quietly, "I can get you a couple of crates of Whiskey and Rum. When do you want them?"
"There's the town committee dance tonight. Nobody could get them by eight."
"Shirley? Consider it done."
Why I cared, I don't know, but this was peacetime, and things would get better. But only if we made them better.

Home Of The Brave?

America has been dragged, kicking and screaming, back into the 20th century.

They finally have health care as applied by the governing classes. Quite where the governing classes will go for their suddenly essential care is a mystery. President Obama showed sleight of hand and not a little cold-blooded thuggery in destroying what was left of medicine, and making sure that nobody will ever experience any miracles again.

He was able to do this due to the fantasy that 'America' can do things.
America is a state.
A free state is one where things happen, because people do them. So when Fleming discovered Penicillin in 1929 in Paddington Hospital in London, it wasn't until the more properly industrialised health businesses in the US got their hands on it, that it was mass-produced into a wonder drug - in 1944, 15 years later.

Now Obama has made sure that there will be no more miracles.
Why?
Because he has killed both the means and the motive to improve.
Profit.

But rest assured, you will all be entitled to the diminishing standards of whatever old treatments are deemed sufficient.

America truly did this.
Americans won't be able to look after themselves or anybody else any more.

The Story So Far.....

Long long ago, in a city far, far away, lived a man who had a lot to say.
He was working for a businessman, name of Alban.

Alban often used to lose his temper with the man, because the man was honest and couldn't see why a real businessman like Alban would wish to keep all things quiet.

One day, another man called Nicholas had an idea an invention was born. The man immediately contributed technology he had been thinking about for four years, thinking that he would be looked after, rather than 'taken care of'.

Promises were made. The man was going to be 'rich and famous'; then he was going to receive 3% of the gross; then 1%.
Then 0.5 %.

Then he was told to sign a piece of paper for £10, or lose his job.

Then he was fired anyway.

He walked away.

Alban came after him, saying that he would take his name off the patents if he didn't sign away further rights.

The man put this on the old 'Society Matters' site. With some opinions about Alban.

Both he and Paul, the site owner, were threatened by Alban with legal action if they didn't stop.

Simon and Paul complied, and Society Matters started to die.

A few months later, Simon was driving a van to pay the rent, when he did a search for Alban's company on the web.

He discovered that the company was selling the ideas to two more partners.
Simon wrote to the partners, explaining that the IPR was disputed.
One of them withdrew.

Alban threatened Simon with legal action, again, and this time made demands with the threats, for legal costs then and there, attempting to twist Simon's arm by quoting remarks he'd made on Society Matters.
Simon wrote back, telling Alban and his solicitor that the suggestion he owed them money was 'utterly fantastic'.

Simon has documents to prove all of this.

Society Matters died.

Now it is reborn.

Simon O'Riordan is Out!

I'm back.
I feel as if I've been holding my breath for five years.
Put the word out - my instrument of social conflict is back and has a bone to pick with the bums running our world into the ground.

I hope to see my old friends - and enemies - back on top of the world.

Whether ma likes it or not!