DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT, WELCOME CLARE MACNAUGHTON

Sunday, November 1, 2009

DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT, WELCOME CLARE MACNAUGHTON

Welcome to Clare Macnaughton our new defence correspondent, Clare is the co-author of Immediate Response, her husband is presently on tour in Afghanistan, again.

Editor's note: Anyone else think she looks like Myleene Klass?

8 comments:

Gigits said...: Yes, she does look like Myleene Klass. Good luck to her in her new role on DP.; 11/01/2009 06:00:00 PM
Ollie Cromwell said...: I also think she looks like Myleene Klass. Having a read of Immediate Response now.; 11/01/2009 06:08:00 PM
JAFO said...: Makes a change nice from General Jock Strap.; 11/01/2009 06:16:00 PM
The Editor said...: Ollie, write us a review, Mrs Raft's must have been eaten by her dog.; 11/01/2009 09:14:00 PM
Bob Ainsworth said...: The very best of luck and I look forward to reading your posts.; 11/01/2009 09:22:00 PM
Submariner said...: Wotcha, Mrs M.

Mr Bob, am I correct in thinking that Mrs M is the only TDP correspondent to have unleashed her genuine image on the world (pictures from 30 year old Post Office Tower hi-jinks excepted, and possibly that one of Tynan with a can of Special Brew)? Are we entering a new era of glasnost?

I would send a pic but find my frilly gills tend to put people off.; 11/02/2009 01:27:00 PM
Mrs Macnaughty said...: hola peeps.

Yes - tis true am outed in Blogland as a bona fida genuine persona - bold times.

Bob and I are mulling over the debut post - keep watching. The cogs are whirring.

But thrilled to be part of the gang and to make it without a reality TV show audition to boot, or to write a book on motherhood, or showcase my piano playing - fabulous.; 11/02/2009 04:22:00 PM
SaltedSlug said...: Hiya, Mrs M.

Welcome to the big TDP blogging family.
Looking forward to your stuff.

Re: anonymity( or lack thereof).
I'm barely anonymous as it is, but I like pretending to be a cartoon slug so I'll keep up the façade a bit longer.

SS; 11/02/2009 10:18:00 PM

DANISH PHYSICIST HENRIK SVENSMARK ON CLOUDS

Henrik Svensmark

The rest of the episodes should play automatically.

Henrik Svensmark (born 1958) is a physicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen who studies the effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation. His work presents hypotheses about solar activity as an indirect cause of global warming; his research has suggested a possible link through the interaction of the solar wind and cosmic rays. His conclusions have been controversial as the prevailing scientific opinion on climate change considers solar activity unlikely to be a major contributor to recent warming, though it is thought to be the primary driver of many earlier changes in climate.

Career

Henrik Svensmark is director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish Space Research Institute (DSRI), a part of the Danish National Space Center. He previously headed the sun-climate group at DSRI. He held postdoctoral positions in physics at three other organizations: University of California, Berkeley, Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the Niels Bohr Institute. Svensmark uses a pacemaker because of a heart-condition.

In 1997, Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen popularised a theory that linked galactic cosmic rays and global climate change mediated primarily by variations in the intensity of the solar wind, which they have termed cosmoclimatology. This theory had earlier been reviewed by Dickinson. One of the small-scale processes related to this link was studied in a laboratory experiment performed at the Danish National Space Center (paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, February 8, 2007).

Svensmark's research downplays the significance to which atmospheric CO2 has affected recent global warming.

Cosmoclimatology theory of climate change

Svensmark detailed his theory of cosmoclimatology in a paper published in 2007. The Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Institute "investigates the connection between solar activity and climatic changes on Earth". Its homepage lists several publications earlier works related to cosmoclimatology.

Svensmark and Nigel Calder published a book The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change (2007) describing the Cosmoclimatology theory that cosmic rays "have more effect on the climate than manmade CO2":

"During the last 100 years cosmic rays became scarcer because unusually vigorous action by the Sun batted away many of them. Fewer cosmic rays meant fewer clouds—and a warmer world.

The book has been criticised by Gavin Schmidt[10]. A documentary film on Svensmark's theory, The Cloud Mystery, was produced by Lars Oxfeldt Mortensen and premiered in January 2008 on Danish TV 2.

Experimental verification

Preliminary experimental verification has been conducted in the SKY Experiment at the Danish National Space Science Center. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, is preparing comprehensive verification in the CLOUD Project.

SKY Experiment

Svensmark conducted proof of concept experiments in the SKY Experiment at the Danish National Space Institute.

To investigate the role of cosmic rays in cloud formation low in the Earth's atmosphere, the SKY experiment used natural muons (heavy electrons) that can penetrate even to the basement of the National Space Institute in Copenhagen. The hypothesis, verified by the experiment, is that electrons released in the air by the passing muons promote the formation of molecular clusters that are building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei.

CLOUD Project Experiments

Scientists are preparing detailed atmospheric physics experiments to test Svensmark's thesis, building on the Danish findings. CERN started a multi-phase project in 2006, including rerunning the Danish experiment. CERN plans to use an accelerator rather than rely on natural cosmic rays. CERN's multinational project will give scientists a permanent facility where they can study the effects of both cosmic rays and charged particles in the Earth's atmosphere. CERN's project is named CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets). CERN posted a 2008 progress report on the CLOUD project.

Debate and controversy

Galactic Cosmic Rays vs Global Temperature

Mike Lockwood of the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Claus Froehlich of the World Radiation Center in Switzerland published a paper in 2007 which concluded that the increase in mean global temperature observed since 1985 correlates so poorly with solar variability that no type of causal mechanism may be ascribed to it, although they accept that there is "considerable evidence" for solar influence on Earth's pre-industrial climate and to some degree also for climate changes in the first half of the 20th century.

Svensmark's coauthor Calder responded to the study in an interview with LondonBookReview.com, where he put forth the counterclaim that global temperature has not risen since 1999.

Later in 2007, Svensmark and Friis-Christensen brought out a Reply to Lockwood and Fröhlich which concludes that surface air temperature records used by Lockwood and Fröhlich apparently are a poor guide to Sun-driven physical processes, but tropospheric air temperature records do show an impressive negative correlation between cosmic-ray flux and air temperatures up to 2006 if a warming trend, oceanic oscillations and volcanism are removed from the temperature data. They also point out that Lockwood and Fröhlich present their data by using running means of around 10 years, which creates the illusion of a continued temperature rise, whereas all unsmoothed data point to a flattening of the temperature, coincident with the present maxing out of the magnetic activity of the Sun, and which the continued rapid increase in CO2 concentrations seemingly has been unable to overrule. This reply has so far not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

One of the first rebuttals of Svensmark's theory reanalyzed Svensmark's data and suggested that it does not support a correlation between cosmic rays and global temperature changes; it also disputes some of the theoretical bases for the theory.

Galactic Cosmic Rays vs Cloud Cover

In April 2008, Professor Terry Sloan of Lancaster University published a paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters titled "Testing the proposed causal link between cosmic rays and cloud cover", which found no significant link between cloud cover and cosmic ray intensity in the last 20 years. Svensmark responded by saying "Terry Sloan has simply failed to understand how cosmic rays work on clouds". Dr. Giles Harrison of Reading University, describes the work as important "as it provides an upper limit on the cosmic ray-cloud effect in global satellite cloud data". Harrison studied the effect of cosmic rays in the UK. He states: "Although the statistically significant non-linear cosmic ray effect is small, it will have a considerably larger aggregate effect on longer timescale (e.g. century) climate variations when day-to-day variability averages out". Brian H. Brown (2008) of Sheffield University further found a statistically significant (p<0.05)> 3 months)and GCR gave correlations of p=0.06. link

Comments 1

CLIMATEGATE - DR. NILS-AXEL MORNER ON SEA LEVELS

A letter similar to the one below has been doing the rounds and I wasn't exactly sure whether it was genuine, or not. This version is copied from the Speccie, and was sent to them by Dr Mörner, so we can assume it's legit.

I've been reading about sea levels for some time and from what I've read everything is pretty much as one would expect, they change, like the climate. I've also read about how low lying coral islands grow as the sea levels rise, it's what coral does, and dies off if the sea levels lower, so coral islands are always, just above the sea.

There was a tree on the shore of the Maldives for fifty(?) years. It's gone now, not because of rising sea levels, it had just become inconvenient to the warmists. link

If you follow the link the same Dr. Mörner is quoted as saying:

"“There came an Australian sea-level team, which was for the IPCC and against me. Then the students pulled down the tree by hand! They destroyed the evidence. What kind of people are those?”"

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner: Claim that sea level rising is a total fraud

Dear Mr President,

You are obviously very concerned about the effect that sea level rises may have on the Maldives. Your Cabinet has been photographed meeting underwater, and you have even declared that ‘we are going to die’ if the climate change summit in Copenhagen fails. I am now writing with what I hope will be some good news. The scientific side of the situation is quite different to that which you imagine. You are, in fact, not going to die.

Before I continue, I should perhaps state my credentials. I have been a sea-level specialist for 40 years. I launched most of its new theories in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I solved the problem of the gravitational potential surface, the theory that it changes with time; the rotation of the earth, how it affected the redistribution of the oceans’ masses — and so on. Last year, I was awarded a prize from Algarve university for my ‘irreverence and contribution to our understanding of sea level change’.

We both know that the 1,200 islands of the Maldives are all low-lying with the highest point only some 2.5m (8ft) above sea level. Hence, your nation is vulnerable to extreme storms, tsunamis — and, of course, any possible sea level rise.

The IPCC vision is a rise that by the year 2100 may amount to between 30cm and 50cm. This is based on model calculations. Our figure is a 5cm rise, plus or minus 15cm. In a newspaper article, you have suggested that sea levels may rise by between one and eight metres. Those figures, however, do not concur with the physics and known rates of ice melting. So those figures must be dismissed as impossible.

I have been on no fewer than six different field expeditions to the Maldives. We worked in the lagoon, we drilled in the sea, we drilled in lakes, we looked at the shore morphology — many different environments. We have always found the same thing: a total stability for the last 30 years, preceded by a 20cm drop in sea level in the 1970s.

We have presented a detailed documentation of the sea level changes in the Maldives over the past 4,000 years. The record of the last 500 years may be of special interest to the situation of your islanders. It shows:

The people of the Maldives had no problems surviving the 17th century, which was 50cm higher than now. Nor the last century, where it rose by 20cm. This bodes well for their prospects of surviving the next change.

I recently visited Bangladesh, a country cursed by floods. In the Sundarban delta, I documented very strong coastal erosion despite zero changes in sea level. So, even here, there is no global sea level rise going on today — just as in the Maldives, in Tuvalu and in Vanuatu, to mention a few famous sites claimed already to be in the process of becoming flooded.

By the end of this century, sea level may have risen by between 30cm and 50cm according to the various IPCC scenarios. Our records suggest a maximum of 20cm. Neither of those levels would pose any real problem — simply a return to the situation in the 17th and the 19th to early 20th centuries, respectively.

So why the scare-mongering? Could it be because there is money involved? If you inhabit a tiny island and can convince the world that its very existence is under threat because of the polluting policies of the West, the industrialised nations will certainly respond. The money is likely to flow in more quickly than the ocean will rise.

This is the fourth time I have written to you. Unfortunately, I think there is a problem with your email service because so far I have not received an acknowledgement. For this reason, I have decided to write this open letter in the pages of The Spectator.

So, Mr President, you and your ministers in the Maldives really don’t need to worry about a future life beneath the waves. You should pass on this message to the people of the Maldives. It is high time to release them from this terrible psychological burden.

Yours, Nils-Axel Mörner

NB: I have read that The Maldives won't get EU aid unless it goes along with this farce, so we shouldn't be too hard on the new President, he needs the cash.

Comments 4

CLIMATEGATE - NEWSNIGHT 4TH DEC 2009, ARSEHOLE EDITION

The 'arsehole' in question

Prof Andrew Watson on Marc Morano 2min 36sec - "What an arsehole"

Don't miss Fraser Nelson takes on Bob Ward from Sky News yesterday where the warmist gets 'hysterical'.

From The Times of London: UK Govt tries to suppress UK Meteorological Office's reexamination of 160 years of temperature data.

Update 7th Dec.: Prof. Watson is a YouTube hit

Comments 15

Editor's note: This was the most popular story on CBS News for two days, sadly the buggers didn't link me. Over 100,000 views.

CLIMATEGATE - A COSMIC RAY OF SUNSHINE

Following the progress of the LHC and what goes on at CERN is fascinating, it is one of the few places in the World where cutting edge physics by real scientists takes place, they are trying to unlock the secrets of the Universe and it has some interesting by-products:

Cosmic rays and cloud formation (CERN)

CLOUD is an experiment that uses a cloud chamber to study the possible link between galactic cosmic rays and cloud formation. Based at the Proton Synchrotron at CERN, this is the first time a high-energy physics accelerator has been used to study atmospheric and climate science; the results could greatly modify our understanding of clouds and climate.

Cosmic rays are charged particles that bombard the Earth's atmosphere from outer space. Studies suggest they may have an influence on the amount of cloud cover through the formation of new aerosols (tiny particles suspended in the air that seed cloud droplets). This is supported by satellite measurements, which show a possible correlation between cosmic-ray intensity and the amount of low cloud cover. Clouds exert a strong influence on the Earth’s energy balance; changes of only a few per cent have an important effect on the climate. Understanding the underlying microphysics in controlled laboratory conditions is a key to unravelling the connection between cosmic rays and clouds. continues

I can't find the results, but I believe that the theory was born out by the initial experiment which is why they're building a bigger and better one. The results should blow the CO2 lobby away like so much hot air:

The initial stage of the experiment uses a prototype detector, but the full CLOUD experiment will include an advanced cloud chamber and a reactor chamber, equipped with a wide range of external instrumentation to monitor and analyse their contents. The temperature and pressure conditions anywhere in the atmosphere can be re-created within the chambers, and all experimental conditions can be controlled and measured, including the ‘cosmic ray’ intensity and the contents of the chambers.

CLOUD and Initial CLOUD proposal

Nothing should be decided at The Copenhagen (collectivisation of the World) conference, or anywhere else until the results of these experiments are known.

You can't argue with real physics.

Update: CERN has kindly provided some further links:

Latest article on CLOUD
Scientific motivation (Ed's note: apply some real science to the issue)
Results from 2006 pilot run (Ed's note: it's true, now it just needs checking)
CERN colloquim (slides and movies)

Comments 5

AFTER TURBINES, . . . . KITES?

The turbine may be the icon of modern wind power generation for now but it could be replaced by the kite in most, if not all, wind generation applications sometime in the next couple of decades.

Turbines (for example) are, subject to engineering and economic constraints, mounted on the highest possible tower in order to capture faster/smoother winds (wind energy is proportional to the cube of the wind speed) but constructing a 70m+ tower, installing 60t+ of generator and control equipment on top of the tower and attaching 3x6t+ blades is extremely expensive and sometimes quite dangerous (installation can only be performed in low wind conditions at sites that are inevitably chosen for their consistently high winds). In addition, turbines can only operate within a certain minimum and maximum range of wind speeds (e.g. 4m/s to 25 m/s).

Modern airfoil kites coupled with specialised autopilot systems offer the real possibility of being able to tap higher, faster, more reliable winds at much lower installation costs (no tower, all heavy equipment at ground level) and comparable, or lower, maintenance costs, when compared to offshore wind farms (it seems likely that the kite control lines will need to be inspected and/or replaced on a fairly regular basis but this should be something that a man in a white van could do). Airfoil kites can also be flown in a way that offers the potential for them to operate across a much wider range of wind speeds.

Kite power generation has been an active area of research since, and almost certainly before, I first spotted it back in 2003/2004 and is now at the stage where a number of different groups have solved the all important autopilot problem:

Festo CyberKite: a German robotic solution to kite flying

Saul Griffith on kites as the future of renewable energy: warning, contains somewhat nauseating references to 'audacity' and Al Gore, the cunt

SkySail: a working system to cut the fuel consumption of container ships

James May's Big Ideas: featuring a Dutch group working on kite power generation

The Dutch group are considering sending kites as high as 9..10km, into the jet stream which crosses the UK and Holland, where the winds are strong and consistent. This seems a bit far fetched because a system failure could leave 10km+ of high-tensile steel wire draped over a random segment of the countryside, with the resulting threat to life, limb, property and power lines that a vast, unruly, 10km wire saw would pose.

On the down side, robotic kite flying is an extremely challenging technical problem and such a system is actually very delicate in comparison to a conventional turbine generation systems. The failure of any kite generation system is likely to leave a kite its control lines (even if they are only synthetic fiber) draped across a large segment of the countryside.

Realistically, kite-based power generation systems, working at altitudes of 100..1000m, could be with us quite soon, generating much more power than a comparable turbine system, generating power more days of the year, in more varied wind conditions, at locations that were not previously seen as good sites for wind farms and for a much smaller initial investment.

Author: Mr Black Hole Sunset

Comments 19

Marmalade

Rang Tina, my ex-wife, and asked if I could borrow her jam pan. "Just for one night. I need a pan big enough to take a gallon and I've only got one for boiling spuds and a frying pan" I told her. She made me promise not to burn it and so I went over to collect it. Tina always loved Christmas so I wasn't surprised to find the place done up like a grotto with crystal icicles and tiny white lights - nothing she would consider vulgar. She's living in a detached neo-Georgian new build - it was developed ten years ago after a politician left office and suddenly became a property developer in a deal which ran suspiciously smoothly by the standards of these things. Within two years the 13th century grounds of a local mansion had become over eighty executive residences, the Manor Hall Estate.

"I bet Jamie Oliver has his own jam pan" said Tina, ushering me in to the lounge - sorry, drawing room - to admire her real Nordman pine Christmas tree which doesn't drop its needles. "Jamie Oliver is a cock and I can prove it" I replied. Tina sniffed. "He's a millionaire, and his books are published. Delia made the mistake of recommending other people's cookware for no fee at all but Jamie realized he was the brand". She's right, of course. That will be Donald, her partner the supermarket manager, talking.

"Doing something special for Christmas?" I asked. You've got to be sociable when you're borrowing a jam pan. There was a fractional hesitation. "Donald will be networking with area managers in the pub in the morning. Mother will be over for lunch. I'm trying a goose with cranberry glaze in the American style. He'll have dinner here, but he has to go in to do some emergency pricing for the Boxing day sales. That's retail for you." Her mother will complain about the goose, just like she always moaned about the turkey, chicken, lamb and beef. You could give that woman a ballotine of peacock, swan and phoenix, but she'd gripe because that is what she does. Tina went to find the jam pan leaving me to appreciate the leather sofa, the pure-wool modernist rug and the gas coal-effect Victorian-style fire in its marble surround with bevelled-glass over-mantle mirror.

I looked around the room for an old friend; the chipped plaster crib set which Tina had made at school. She used to set it up under a silver tree, the one with the coloured lights where you had to check the bulbs each year for duds. The tree had long ago failed the taste test. It shed its tinsel until it was no more than a scaffold of coat-hangers and the lights were like a row of gappy teeth. Modern LEDS do the same job but cheaper and more reliably, or at least until they pack up and you have to throw the whole string away. There was nothing wrong with the plaster Bethlehem family that a little poster-paint wouldn't fix, though. I wondered if perhaps she didn't need a tiny plaster baby in a plastic crib to believe in any more, but as she returned she was silhouetted against the frosty lights of the Nordman near-as-dammit-immortal Christmas tree. Nothing.

"Here's the jam pan, Tynan. Please can I have it back by Christmas eve - I need to boil a pudding in it." She paused. "If you bring it back at three o'clock there might be carol singers. I'll do mince pies and sherry". Tina always made her own mince pies. She laid them out on a glass cake stand and dusted them with icing sugar, tapping it through a tea strainer with the edge of a teaspoon. Her hands were full and she couldn't do anything but giggle if you came up and tickled her. She always got sugar on her cheeks. You could taste it.

"Sure, thanks".

......

Marmalade is easy if you don't muck about with fresh oranges. Use the the ready-prepared Seville oranges which come in a tin. It usually costs £1.59 from the supermarket but you can sometimes find it on a stall in the market for less. The only other ingredient is sugar, but it takes a while to save 1.8 kilos from cafes so you'll have to buy a 2 kilo bag for £1.90 - but you might find it cheaper if you hunt around. The kit makes a shade under four and a half pints which is approximately 77p per pint. That's cheaper than a supermarket budget brand and gives a top-quality marmalade. The tin says it makes 6 lbs, but pints are easier to measure. Allow two hours for the process, which includes the cooking, clearing and bottling.

Scrub four pint-jars and a smaller one for the remainder. If using odds and sods of jars you measure how much water it takes to fill them by emptying them in to the jam pan, then measuring it back out with a pint bottle or jug. You need enough space for four and a half pints, remember. Set the clean empty jars in a baking tin in the oven on a low light to sterilize and heat them so they don't crack when they are filled with hot marmalade. By the time you've finished cooking nothing will be left alive on the glass. The scrubbed lids can go in as well.

Apart from the jam pan you will need a wooden spoon. A glass pint-measuring jug is handy as it will make pouring the marmalade much easier than using a ladle alone. In to the pan put 4 lbs or 1.8 kg of granulated sugar, the tin of prepared oranges and 3/4 pint of water. N.B. the sugar comes in 2 kilo packets so there is a spare 200g of sugar to put aside. To measure the water you can use either the jug or the tin has a special marker on the side so a jug is not absolutely necessary, but it makes life easier. Then scrub and put the jug in the oven as well. You'll have to handle it with gloves later, but at least it will be sterilized.

Stir up the sugar, oranges and water and keep stirring them with the wooden spoon over a gentle heat until, eventually, the mixture reaches the boiling point. Watch out for it rising up quickly - that's why you need a pan bigger a bigger than the volume of the marmalade. Warning - you are now handling half-a-gallon of citrus napalm. Then turn down the heat and maintain a simmer just reaching the boil for at least 15 minutes, stirring every few minutes.

After 15 minutes take a teaspoonful and tip it on to a saucer. As it cools it should behave like marmalade; it should wrinkle and be a soft jelly. If is still behaving like orange syrup which would run off the toast, it needs to be cooked for longer, so carry on simmering it. Test it every five minutes to see if it is at the setting point. It usually takes about two or three goes.

When you are convinced that it is marmalade, turn off the heat on the hob and ignore the part about a nob of butter. What's all that about? The foam disperses when you stir it. After five minutes the marmalade cools and thickens slightly so the orange peel stays where it is and doesn't float up to the top.

Lift the tray of jars out of the oven and avoid touching them. If using a ladle alone, prepare to get sticky, otherwise use it to fill the glass jug and pour the marmalade in to the jars. Some people insist on filling the jar to the brim on the grounds that this prevents any bacteria in the air getting in, but at that temperature I've not had much trouble. I filled the jars but not to the brim, put the lids on and waited for them to cool, checking they were firmly screwed down as the jars contracted.

When they are cool, add a label. The tin says they will provide labels for free if you send them a large return stamped addressed envelope. MaMade Leaflet and Label offer, PO Box 439, AL4 OYG.

Author: Tynan Wierd

Comments 4

MANDY'S DIARY, FREDAG 11 DEZEMBRE

Tricksy-Wu is sitting in her basket in a frightful sulk because I won't let her play with the Christmas tree decorations. I've done my own as no one does them precisely as I want them to be. There is a string of silver bells on a hairy string which took me ages to do. Ed Balls came and in, looked at it and said "Did you have a Christmas tree as a child, Pete?" It's so near Christmas I can hardly bring myself to correct him; think of it as a little gift from me to him. "No" I said. "Figures" he replied.

"How is Yvette getting along with her lines as Peter Pan - is she getting it the intonation on This man is Mine?" "Yeah, fanks mate, it's a complete gas rehearsing her in the full tights and boots" beamed Ed, who is playing Captain Hook "but they've had to put up extra rigging to haul Claire Short up for the flying scenes". Edward is playing Captain Hook and very much enjoys wearing the wig, too.

He flicked one of the silver bells and made ding-dong noises. "You made these yourself?" Yes, indeed I did, out of egg cartons and a dab of silver paint. I painted the string too - it was down in the stationery basement next to Jack's supply of S&M gear. "It's my craft tree. I'm setting an example of how to make things" I told him. "Riiiight" he sneered. "I'm in charge of business in this country and yet when I go to the shops I find everything is made in China. When I go to colleges I find they aren't allowed to make things in case somebody gets glued to the desk". "That's just a myth, Petey, we at the DCFS encourage full development of manual dexterity" "A nation of expert onanists is not going to pay back our squillion pound debt. Besides, that doesn't alter the fact that one of my godchildren did cookery at school last week and was supposed to make spicy bean goulash but they were only allowed to look at a chili pepper, not touch it". "That's not true" "That is true. They were told not to touch it because of health and safety. Are you calling my godchild a liar? I suggest you apologise." "Tou-chy. I'll look in to it and put how to de-seed a bell-end pepper on the Personal Development syllabus if it bothers you that much. Anyway, why are you worrying about it now?" "Because if you look around you at a restaurant you will see young people eating with their hands and being baffled as to the purpose of cutlery. It's no wonder our steel works are closing if people have no use for knives and forks. If they can't even spear spaghetti vongole, they stand no chance with advanced laser surgery". "It's best to suck spag bol off the spoon, you should see Vette hoover it up. Anyway, what's your plan?" "Well, for a start, I've torn loads of old press releases in to strips. I've got glue and I can make the strips in to paper chains as decorations." Edward picked up the iconic glass bottle of thin amber glue with its rubbery 'nipple' top. Next thing I knew he was making a paper chain, getting sticky down his shirt, and breathing heavily with his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth.

The staff at the drinks reception were suitably impressed with Edward's decorations, although Nurse Milligan, my agent and Gordon's carer from Number 10, looked pointedly at the carpet and the gluey footprints. I gave her a drink and thanked her as Gordon has been so much better this past few weeks. She gave me an hard look. "Beggin' yer pardon, yer Werchip, but what's in this fizzy punch?" "It's Cherry Perry, Nurse Milligan." "So that's like own-brand Babycham, is it?" "Yes, but with the delightful cherry twist. It was more expensive than the Lambrusco Rosso, but I thought, hang it, spend the extra sixpence." Nurse Milligan nodded thoughtfully. " Did I ever tell yer Werchip about when I was nursing for the BBC?" No, but I had a terrible feeling she was going to tell me all about it. Still, you never know what she might let slip which could come in handy. "I was on them costume dramas as nursing advisor. Historical nursing, that's my speciality. You can't beat rubber sheets and leeches, in my view, beggin' yer Werchip's pardon for diversifying, but that Oz Clarke, him as does the wine, he was always hanging around. He has a thing about corsets." "He never does." "He does indeed. Had me lacing him up from arse to tit, he did. But James May was having none of it, although it's May that would benefit from a little boning, if you ask me. But more to the point, OZ has a thing about wine. We had nothing to do but tastings and fill up his notebook. I should say this was an unpretentious little glugger is well-worth the whole six pence more than the £1.98 I happen to know Lambrusco Rosso costs." "You know, Nurse Milligan, I have often thought that a really good Scotch is more suitable for the medical fraternity." "You thought right yer Lordship Sir. Did I mention that Oz did a section on whisky?" "I rather thought he might have. I take it you would be able to pass an informed opinion on House of Commons whisky?" "I would indeed. In my opinion it is an excellent antiseptic, but if I wanted to drink surgical spirit I would stick to what ever forms the backbone of your punch. Now, if you wanted my opinion on drinking whisky, I should say Kilchoman is a little gem."

Bang goes all my savings on decorations.

Author: Woman on a Raft

Comments 1

Sunday, November 1, 2009