I enjoy writing about my life, past and present, but this week it has been difficult still affected by the accident a week ago and preoccupied with the repercussions.
I have only once been involved with a roadway accident which involved another human being. It occurred in Italy on the Adriatic coast in 1965 when out to explore the local town centre after setting up camp, a woman cyclist without lights pulled in front of my vehicle and I hit the cycle before stopping. Fortunate she was not injured otherwise I would have been locked up while the case was processed. On return I had driven the car into a storm ditch at the site and had to wake my companion and a neighbouring group of English lads to get the car back on the path. However I had then driven to Rome and Sorrento and back through Switzerland and France to Oxford
It was seven or eight years before I drove on the continent, driving to Paris, taking the overnight rail car to the south of France and then motoring to our destination at St Tropez Bay. After that there were a number of trips including driving all the way to north of Barcelona
The only other roadway accident involved an unlit builder’s skip where the other party was prosecuted although I felt foolish about not seeing such an obstacle in the dark. I was bruised but my ego was battered more.
Before this while still single I did full circle along a country lane in the darkness on my way from Manchester to Oxford in the mid sixties when I accidentally switched my lights off instead of full beam. It could have been very serious and for a moment I feared for the worse but I did not hit anything but the suspension was affected. The heartbreak was it was a new car, a Triumph Herald with a soft top which was cold in Winter and blowey in summer. I loved that car though which had to go with a family/
Early on in my professional work I had stopped to turn right off the Oxford to Witney Road with adequate passing on both sides a vehicle clipped the edge of my car causing some damage but did not stop and disappeared before I could attempt identification. The only instance in the last decade occurred in a supermarket car park when a vehicle did not see my short wheel base vehicle I was attempting to move into the occupied space while I was starting to move out.
It has taken time this week to establish the position and was only settled earlier to-day after contacting the Legal help organisation for which I have paid premiums for at least two decades and the insurance broker who had recommended the change in company. I kick myself for not having realised this was the course I should have taken early on although teh fault leis with someone who said that the insurance cinema used their own legal services. I will not fully relax until the repairs are completed and I have been reimbursed the excess and other expenses, but I am feeling 100% better than earlier in the week and nearly ready to face the everyday as before.
The highlight of the week so far has been the new series of Spooks, the very believable working of the 006.75 home security team. There was a new episode on Wednesday on BBC1 and a second episode this evening on BBC.
I also enjoyed New Tricks about the mystery death of a young man two years before and the discovery that he had spent two months at a new age communion.
I have also watched the Barber of Seville in HD on the TV via the Metropolitan Opera Player and will write more another time. The ensemble singing is extraordinary and of course there is the famous Figaro tenor solo. I have watched two films.
I have seen William Wylder’s The Big Country several times as well as in the cinema theatre when first released. I always enjoy the Gregory Peck performance as the wealthy shipping member who has been a professional sea captain who is hooked by spoilt brat Carole Baker, the daughter of Texan wide open spaces cattle rancher when she had been to the city in the east. He quickly goes off her when he finds that she expects him to show he is a mans man western style and joins forces with her pappy against their rival, a family tribe of nomarks led by the equally dominating patriarch played by Burl Ives who comes close to stealing the film from Peck who shows that real men sort things out quietly and without showing off and falls love with Baker’s best friend, the school teacher Jean Simmons, who owns a small ranch comparatively speaking called the Big Muddy after the river which the feuding big boys want to own and deprive the water supply to the other. The real delight in the film is when Charlton Heston gets his comeuppance. The film is of epic proportions lasting close to 3 hours but never strays away from the interactions between the main characters. While it may be considered dodgy that a sea going shipping magnate would settle down in the West with a school teacher,. But are cultured individuals suggesting an education but equally at home with the practical things of life and the wide open spaces of the former Texas ranch lands are similar to the ocean, as point which Peck makes in the film as he goes off exploring with a map /chart and a compass. I cannot remember the other film at the moment/
All this is of no significance really as this week has seen two tragedies bound to affect the position of the UK and the USA in Afghanistan and the US fear about the enemy within although the latter has just happened and the details are yet to emerge. More young men have died, one only eighteen years of age.
Five British soldiers were killed and other severely wounded when an Afghan policeman they were training turned his gun on the men who was helping his country. It appears the man was a plant designed to undermine the core policy of training the Afghans to police themselves and provide internal security. As with Iraq it is necessary to look at the big picture. We, the US and UK need a strong military presence in teh country especially on the border with Pakistan to prevent Pakistan becoming an extreme Muslim country with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
In the USA a Muslim psychiatrist officer and a fort town with 46000 troops, support staff and their families has killed a dozen individuals and severely wounded a score of others. It is not clear if was also a planted extremist or their are other issues.
The European Treat has been signed and will now have a President, Embassies and a foreign Minister. It is likely they will go for a minor figure as President and therefore not Tony Blair with David Miliband the likely to be given the post. This would leave a by election in one of the safest Labour seats in the country for Peter Mandelson to leave the Lords and return to the House of Commons and then become the party Leader after the General Election if Labour loses which will be the outcome unless Cameron’s creditability is destroyed. He has damaged his position admitting that the commitment to hold a referendum over the treaty was hot air and that once ratified by all the Unites States of Europe, there was no return. Faced with the combined threat of the UK independence party and to less extent the National Front, the Tory party is at risk of major divisions about Europe. Their record in relation to the credit crunch is also questionable and the Cameron economic team is not regard in the city with confidence and threats of stopping the bonus culture has not gone down well in the city if it is meets with universal public approval. Labour’s prospects have changed although there are several jumps before Mandelson can take centre stage.
I have only once been involved with a roadway accident which involved another human being. It occurred in Italy on the Adriatic coast in 1965 when out to explore the local town centre after setting up camp, a woman cyclist without lights pulled in front of my vehicle and I hit the cycle before stopping. Fortunate she was not injured otherwise I would have been locked up while the case was processed. On return I had driven the car into a storm ditch at the site and had to wake my companion and a neighbouring group of English lads to get the car back on the path. However I had then driven to Rome and Sorrento and back through Switzerland and France to Oxford
It was seven or eight years before I drove on the continent, driving to Paris, taking the overnight rail car to the south of France and then motoring to our destination at St Tropez Bay. After that there were a number of trips including driving all the way to north of Barcelona
The only other roadway accident involved an unlit builder’s skip where the other party was prosecuted although I felt foolish about not seeing such an obstacle in the dark. I was bruised but my ego was battered more.
Before this while still single I did full circle along a country lane in the darkness on my way from Manchester to Oxford in the mid sixties when I accidentally switched my lights off instead of full beam. It could have been very serious and for a moment I feared for the worse but I did not hit anything but the suspension was affected. The heartbreak was it was a new car, a Triumph Herald with a soft top which was cold in Winter and blowey in summer. I loved that car though which had to go with a family/
Early on in my professional work I had stopped to turn right off the Oxford to Witney Road with adequate passing on both sides a vehicle clipped the edge of my car causing some damage but did not stop and disappeared before I could attempt identification. The only instance in the last decade occurred in a supermarket car park when a vehicle did not see my short wheel base vehicle I was attempting to move into the occupied space while I was starting to move out.
It has taken time this week to establish the position and was only settled earlier to-day after contacting the Legal help organisation for which I have paid premiums for at least two decades and the insurance broker who had recommended the change in company. I kick myself for not having realised this was the course I should have taken early on although teh fault leis with someone who said that the insurance cinema used their own legal services. I will not fully relax until the repairs are completed and I have been reimbursed the excess and other expenses, but I am feeling 100% better than earlier in the week and nearly ready to face the everyday as before.
The highlight of the week so far has been the new series of Spooks, the very believable working of the 006.75 home security team. There was a new episode on Wednesday on BBC1 and a second episode this evening on BBC.
I also enjoyed New Tricks about the mystery death of a young man two years before and the discovery that he had spent two months at a new age communion.
I have also watched the Barber of Seville in HD on the TV via the Metropolitan Opera Player and will write more another time. The ensemble singing is extraordinary and of course there is the famous Figaro tenor solo. I have watched two films.
I have seen William Wylder’s The Big Country several times as well as in the cinema theatre when first released. I always enjoy the Gregory Peck performance as the wealthy shipping member who has been a professional sea captain who is hooked by spoilt brat Carole Baker, the daughter of Texan wide open spaces cattle rancher when she had been to the city in the east. He quickly goes off her when he finds that she expects him to show he is a mans man western style and joins forces with her pappy against their rival, a family tribe of nomarks led by the equally dominating patriarch played by Burl Ives who comes close to stealing the film from Peck who shows that real men sort things out quietly and without showing off and falls love with Baker’s best friend, the school teacher Jean Simmons, who owns a small ranch comparatively speaking called the Big Muddy after the river which the feuding big boys want to own and deprive the water supply to the other. The real delight in the film is when Charlton Heston gets his comeuppance. The film is of epic proportions lasting close to 3 hours but never strays away from the interactions between the main characters. While it may be considered dodgy that a sea going shipping magnate would settle down in the West with a school teacher,. But are cultured individuals suggesting an education but equally at home with the practical things of life and the wide open spaces of the former Texas ranch lands are similar to the ocean, as point which Peck makes in the film as he goes off exploring with a map /chart and a compass. I cannot remember the other film at the moment/
All this is of no significance really as this week has seen two tragedies bound to affect the position of the UK and the USA in Afghanistan and the US fear about the enemy within although the latter has just happened and the details are yet to emerge. More young men have died, one only eighteen years of age.
Five British soldiers were killed and other severely wounded when an Afghan policeman they were training turned his gun on the men who was helping his country. It appears the man was a plant designed to undermine the core policy of training the Afghans to police themselves and provide internal security. As with Iraq it is necessary to look at the big picture. We, the US and UK need a strong military presence in teh country especially on the border with Pakistan to prevent Pakistan becoming an extreme Muslim country with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
In the USA a Muslim psychiatrist officer and a fort town with 46000 troops, support staff and their families has killed a dozen individuals and severely wounded a score of others. It is not clear if was also a planted extremist or their are other issues.
The European Treat has been signed and will now have a President, Embassies and a foreign Minister. It is likely they will go for a minor figure as President and therefore not Tony Blair with David Miliband the likely to be given the post. This would leave a by election in one of the safest Labour seats in the country for Peter Mandelson to leave the Lords and return to the House of Commons and then become the party Leader after the General Election if Labour loses which will be the outcome unless Cameron’s creditability is destroyed. He has damaged his position admitting that the commitment to hold a referendum over the treaty was hot air and that once ratified by all the Unites States of Europe, there was no return. Faced with the combined threat of the UK independence party and to less extent the National Front, the Tory party is at risk of major divisions about Europe. Their record in relation to the credit crunch is also questionable and the Cameron economic team is not regard in the city with confidence and threats of stopping the bonus culture has not gone down well in the city if it is meets with universal public approval. Labour’s prospects have changed although there are several jumps before Mandelson can take centre stage.
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