Ding Dong The Bells Are Going To Chime

Well number one son did the deed last week and married the lovely Lili in a wonderful church in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I was there with my wife, my ex-wife (both featured in this photo, together), three of Tims siblings,( two, Hannah and Rebecca, also featuring) , the mad mother-in-law Tim has inherited, various friends from the UK and elsewhere and the randoms from Brazil who made up the numbers.

The service was wonderful, the bride looked fab, there was a free bar and I made my speech in Portugese, much to everybody's amazement. It got some laughs but I am not sure if that was a result of mispronounceation or that they actually got how diffciult it is to surf the net of 'famous Brazillians'!

The Brazillian wedding culture is quite strange. For example, I spent all of the Saturday until just before the wedding (5pm) in a beauty salon with the bride, bridesmaids and others. I was there to provide male company for Tim and this is an expected ritual. The bridal party all left from the salon, and for somebody who take 20 minutes to get ready it was a bit of a strain, especially with the Ireland v England rugby match on the tele at Murphy's down the road.

That said, it was a superb event and apart from the conception, it was the first life moment I have been at for Tim. For that alone, it will be the Special One.

Under the Hammer

I have been drinking off and on in a pub in Twickenham called The Tup. The rugby club use it after games on Saturdays, but Gillette Ray and I usually pop in for our Tuesday night club if there is a footie match on.

It has been a bit idiosyncratic as far as decor is concerned. A series of tup related cartoons have been blended with several prints by Beryl Cook, Jack Vettriano and others.

I have always vowed to offer the builder for some of them should the pub ever get a make-over. I already own a few Beryl Cooks but the one in The Tup would not be my first choice.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when a couple of Tuesdays ago I walked in and the 'Beryl' was missing. I looked round quickly and saw that both the others I liked had price tags on them. Further questioning of the new manager indicated that they were taking up too much wall space and did not fit the new Tup image. He clearly did not know what he was selling, so a quick deal was struck and they now reside in Chis. the manager was happy as he needed a new glass washer and he the 'Beryl' was the pick of the bunch, but how wrong could he be.

Only a select few of her screenprints command decent money, most of her litho's can be picked up for a few hundred pounds.

No, the one I wanted was 'The Partys Over' by Jack Vettriano and it became a Valentines present for SWMBO .Jack Vettriano is a Scottish artist who's most famous work, The Singing Butler sells more posters and prints than any other artist in the UK. The original recently sold for £750,000. He, like Beryl Cook, is frowned upon by the establishment as not really being a proper artist and consequently you will not find either hung at the Tate Modern.

Jacks pictures do have a smouldering sexuality about many of them and consequently the beer drinking Ruggers who frequent the Tup will now have to fantasise over something else.

Ice cold in Alex

Well sadly I have not appeared in The Sunday Times rich list, ooops, sorry, The Sunday Times top 100 blogs here. That must be in part due to the delinquency I am demonstrating with my regular entries.

If its not work getting in the way (shurely not?....ed) then its the social distractions of Edinburgh which are responsible. I have been eating and drinking pretty well lately, and it has caused me to stumble upon one of those annoying restaurant habits which I think should be stamped out.

I tend to drink white wine when I am out, and a crisp nicely chilled Chablis usually fits the bill perfectly. Imagine then when I ask for it in a wine bucket, and a contraption more filling for flowers turns up at the table. I really can't understand why they try to indicate that this cooler thingie can begin to take the place of an ice bucket. If the wine is slightly warm then the cooler will maintain it at that temperature, and placing a few ice cubes in the bottom does not alter the effect.

So come on all you patrons who read this site, get those wine buckets in when next I visit, and dump the coolers round the corner at the florists.

Snow snow thick thick snow

Today it snowed with great vigor in the London conurbation, and sure enough the whole thing stopped. I don't have a problem with that as I had planned to work in London all week and not travel to Edinburgh.

With my surname I kind of have a feel for this sort of thing occurring.

It was interesting as I walked down the High Road to see that some house owners and shops had cleared the snow, and others had not. As I understand it, if you clear the snow and the postman slips and damages himself then you are liable for the injury, if you leave the snow to its own devices and he falls over its 'an act of God' and just tough! I always leave my snow untouched...

Turnham Green was like a scene from a Lowry painting, and I would post my photos but my phone has packed up, humbug. So if I find they are on my memory stick when I get a new phone I will post them later.


I also have some pictures of Chiswick Business Park I did manage to recover. I will post them later too. It will probably thaw later which is always the down side of the beauty which snow can bring to a grey city landscape.

Lady Godiva

I learnt an interesting fact this week, one which I admit I have had rows about previously and it appears I have been wrong. Merchants in England and Wales do not have to accept Scottish bank notes if they don't wish to.

Now I always thought they did as they were same value and had the same wording relating to payment to bearer as the Bank of England notes. I knew Jersey money was not legal, but had no idea Scottish was discretionary.

it was brought to my attention as there is a campaign North of the boarder to make these notes compulsory tender. I am not sure why as most places do accept them, but the sweaties are always looking for something to dis the rest of the Country with.

The Bank of Scotland ( soon to be Lloyds Group) , The Clydesdale bank and Royal bank all produce their own notes, and there is a fine old market in forged notes which fly around at and during the Edinburgh festival.

I wonder how much it costs them to print the stuff, either they should stop and save themselves the overhead in these times of banking crisis, or they should work a few extra weekends at the print producing extra to eradicate the debt they have racked up with the government!

...I wantmy baby back.....

Race has become the hot topic at the dinner table, overtaking house prices, second homes and the physical attributes of the Swedish Au Pair. This is all due to Black being the new White, a metamorphosis for which Barack Obama has become the catalyst.

I thought I would test this out using my IBM worldwide employee directory. There are seven Weathers in our organisation, me in London, a no relation in Leeds, and seven in the USA. Its strange, but the two of us in UK are white and the five in the USA are not. I thought I would test this a bit further, and test out our roots. Sure enough all our Irish cousins are white and have been for generations.

Carl Weathers, the actor is black, as is Clarence Weathers the ex-American football player, but research in Wikipedia indicates there is a diversity and dilution of my transatlantic theory, with Weathers even being tracked to Australia.......strewth, and Beck Weathers is worth a look at too.

Not sure what this proves, but it would be fascinating to trace the Weathers roots from Ireland to American and where the Afro-Carri bean influence first came from. A project for old age me thinks. Here is the Wiki Weathers list

Get up that chimney

A happy New year to all of you. Its the festive season which has generated my first thoughts of the year.

During the industrial revolution, the use of child labour was commonplace and well documented by Dickens and others. It provided a source of cheap and subservient labour at a time when the momentum of the revolution needed to be maintained. they worked in mines and factories performing a wide range of menial tasks in terrible conditions. ...and you tell the youth of today that, and they just won't believe you... to paraphrase Monty Python.

Now we are in the midst of a new revolution, and we are missing a trick by not deploying children to help.

I am referring of course to the technological revolution which continues at a pace that adults are struggling to keep up with.

What I say, therefore, is lets get the child labour principle back in vogue. I think when you go to Richer Sounds, Comet, PC World or elsewhere and purchase something, you should get a seven year old thrown in. You can take them home, get them to configure and install the particular electrical product you have purchased and away you go. The child can be fed at your discretion with portions comparable with the size of the task they have performed, and then a call to said retail outlet will result in a cab arriving to take them back for their next assignment.

That should keep them off the streets, teach them that a square meal does not automatically turn up when they are hungry and that the better they are at something the more they are rewarded....more? the boy asked for more?