Cheltenham sin

Cheltenham from Friday evening, and it didn't take too long to find the Sinners' Enclosure, which rather conveniently was in our very hotel.

There seemed to be a strong emphasis on horsing around in that particular area and actually in the hotel in general, with some fun touches like the extra bathtub in the bedroom of the imposing Georgian building.

We later found the informal and very enjoyable restaurant underneath a chandelier of wine glasses.

They know a thing or two about red nectar at the hotel and we drank a special Gevrey Chambertin with our supper. Of course, by Saturday evening, we'd also explored the town, but that is a whole further story.

year of the rat

Bob-kat just commented to me with that alleged Chinese curse about interesting times. A lot of people believe it is level one of a three level curse originating in China.

Most Chinese folk seem to refute it though, saying that it was made up by a westerner in the 20th Century a bit like the various 'Confucius, he say' type of statements.

I'm taking no chances here though. I've decided to hang lots of bright red lanterns from a couple of weeks ago celebrating the year of the rat onto the top of rashbre central for the day, to ward off any evil spirits that might be passing.

"They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom", as Confucius might have said.

fiddle de dee

Sometimes when I'm travelling (like this week) the act of keeping a blog sort of conspires against me. I don't usually spend more than about 10 minutes on a post, but sometimes even for that I'm caught short if the electronics don't work.

I prefer to add a picture if I can, but as my PC flickr loader has crashed I can't add anything from my camera today. And yesterday the network links were rather intermittent in my previous hotel. Its quite embarrassing when the line crashes in the middle of adding comments to someone else's blog, when its not quite what I wanted to say.

I'm guessing this hotel will have better food, though I need to work this evening on a presentation for tomorrow, so It'll be room service again. I did venture out for a few minutes to a nearby coffee shop though in order to have some sense of the people and the place instead of just the white box view of hotels and meeting rooms.

Some of my friends say this is a little like being a spy, travelling around, random hotels and so forth, but I don't think I'll be applying for a job with SIS, even if it could improve the news.

And there certainly seems to be a fair amount around today, Castro resigns, the Bridgend tragedies, Gordon's latest positive thought and even 'our Tone' getting back onto front pages with more talk of the European Union presidency. Now he's being supported by Sarkozy the whole thing may turn out to be a bad idea. According to my friends in France, Nikky is well past the honeymoon stage with the electorate, even if not so with Carla. Allegedly Germany's Angela Merkel is also not so keen along with those that have started a 'Stop Blair' website.

Then there's Vince who cabled his ideas about the rocky northern bank long before the teams of highly paid consultants concluded with the same idea. As its anathema to new Labour to nationalise things again, it will be interesting to see how long dithering Darling survives, or indeed whether Gordon makes a sacrifice of him.

And now that the '125% of property value' mortgages are surfacing and the separate Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) called 'Granite' has been used to hold all of the 'good' money from Northern Rock, it gets kind of interesting to see what is left in the nationalised shell - presumably a much smaller than anticipated number of less than 'rock solid' securities.

Perhaps Westminster, too, has also been caught short in the current situation.

its only temporary

I'm travelling this week and yesterday arrived at my current hotel around mid foggy evening. I've stayed here before and had a vague memory that the room service food wasn't very good, but it was late so I gave it a try anyway. My memory was right so tonight I'm holed up here with a carrier bag of salad dips from a nearby supermarket (there's not much else around here except a football stadium).

The thing was, as I arrived at the check-in yesterday, they seemed to know me and had all my details right down to the newspaper I'd like in the morning. The paper didn't arrive though, so I'm only catching up on the news this evening after a busy day from first meeting at 07:30 and the last one ending at 20:00.

So National Rocktastic has only just entered my thoughts, with the new excited, nationalised public servant Rockin' Ronnie in charge on £90,000 per month whilst he presides over the £55bn debt which is increasing at roughly £3bn per month. Of course the share price has zoomed south from £4+ to around 90pence over the last few months as well, so we seem to have the company equivalent of a nationalised death star in the midst of the British Economy.

The smiling Tweedledum and Tweedledee-like pronouncements from our arm and eyebrow waggling leadership restore confidence that everything is all right really, but I can't help wondering still where the money gap will end up. Now the taxpayers are directly involved, I'm sure we'll at least be forking out for the recent £100m of legal fees accrued, £55bn divided around the UK taxpayers is still quite a lot of per capita wonga.

So just as my hotel serves 'home made favourites', Gordon and Alistair are telling us that they've taken all the right decisions at the right times.

As the Northern Rock website says today: 'Business as Usual', then if you hit 'proceed', the next screen proclaims 'Catch it while you can'.

though the night is daylight-saving

I've just had three interludes with different people who have been staying up late (partying; not sleeping; just chillin'). I was marvelling with one of them at the cold crisp night and the superabundance of stars. Somehow I had a flashback to a well-known poem by Adrian Henri called 'and so we'll go no more a raving' (which is best recited with a Liverpool accent) and then I remembered this one which sort of fits the night-time too.

Galactic Lovepoem
Warm your feet at the sunset
Before we go to bed
Read your book by the light of Orion
With Sirius guarding your head
Then reach out and switch off the planets
We'll watch them go out one by one
You kiss me and tell me you love me
By the light of the last setting sun
We'll both be up early tomorrow
A new universe has begun

Made in China

There's something immensely hypocritical about the way that world powers can separate sport and politics when it suits them.

The planned Beijing Olympics is a case in point, where some recent polemic suggests that there's no connection between the host country for a sporting event and any of its other actions on the world stage.

China has been moving to the centre of manufacturing and progressively increasing its importance as a world economic power, yet it has both internal challenges in the way that it handles its own people and additionally is supporting the Sudanese government in their continued carnage within Dafur.

Over the last five years, more than 200,000 people have been killed and a further 2.5 million forced from their homes in the conflicts.

Furthermore, within China itself, elementary rights of freedom of speech, assembly and belief are systematically violated.

Journalists, academics, people of religion and varied activists are routinely detained in a gulag-like environment. The internet is censored. Tibet has had the democracy sucked out.

Steven Spielberg has flagged the problem by withdrawing his services as artistic director to the event, but it can't have escaped many that there's parallels with the German Olympics of 1936, when Leni Riefenstahl directed films whilst Hitler moved his Third Reich emblems further into prominence and hid the anti-Semitic posters which had been placed in Berlin.

Now that a strong letter of protest has been issued by a coalition of Nobel Prize Winners, Athletes and some politicians, it at least sets the stage for some close scrutiny of what is happening.

If the Olympics are supposed to be about peace and international co-operation, then China's President Hu Jintao needs to fix a bloody thing or two. China is buying two-thirds of Sudan's oil and selling weapons to Khartoum which can only further support the Dafur massacre. The silence about Dafur inside China is now being emulated with attempts to include gagging clauses to prevent discussion of the politics by athletes planning to attend the event.

UK's politicians are mixed up on this one at the moment. Olympics minister Tessa Jowell says that calling for a boycott of this summer's Games over the Darfur crisis does not serve any purpose.

Meanwhile Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, is under pressure to take a stronger line during his visit than Gordon Brown did recently in Beijing.

China wants to draw a distinction between the games and human rights by saying linking them would "politicise" the Olympics. I hope some of the politicians and the major sponsors involved learn lessons from the history of Berlin.

what we did at before the baftas

Now that Shoot Bafta! has loaded more of the pictures from our wanderings in the West End last weekend, I thought it would be worth posting a summary.

I'm not sure that anyone could derive the original captions for this subset of the fine work produced by looking at them, but if anyone wants to have a go, then most welcome.

We were mainly in the heart of tourist London around Soho where, in addition to a large number of restaurants and cafes, there's other forms of trade in abundance.

One of the clues featured the Windmill Theatre, and another one was something to do with PG.

Some people managed to find very interesting uses for tea bags, but I think if I posted those pictures they may shut down rashbre central.

Come to think of it, several of the pictures could probably shut down rashbre central.

As you can see, there was all manner of 'Frenzy' in attempts to find unusual ways to make a point and quite a lot of clothing inventiveness and some inventiveness even without clothing.

There's many more shots here in addition to those featured from The Bottleheads, Snappy Tom, Wee Papper Girls and Global Girls. Our rashbre centrral team didn't win any prizes, but we still had a blast.

Okay and as requested by Naomi, here's some more sensible shots of the BAFTAs.

addiction to the twiglet zone

Debra, this may help.

tentation

The Brits have television series called "Big Brother" and "Celebrity Island" where a cross selection of oddball characters are filmed continuously whilst undergoing mild forms of torture. Its cheap television and sometimes dominates a whole channel for days at a time.

The French have a television series called "Ill de la Tentation", where fit, beautiful people are filmed continuously on a paradise island whilst being expected to pair off in front of the cameras, whilst drinking Pina Coladas and Mojitos.

The Brits seem to feature the unclothed upper bodies of participants in their tabloid press, where they become minor celebrities and some of them make a lot of money on the appearance circuit later.

The French seem to feature the unclothed upper bodies of participants in their tabloid press, until those featured cry 'non' and take them to court for image infringement and overtime abuse for being filmed 24x7 in a series when they are only expected to do a 35 hour week.

I see the first three French participants have just been awarded payments after court appearances for the abuse of working hours whilst performing hard on a sunny fantasy island in the Maldives.

political pause

I arrived near Westminster a little early in the morning before a planned meeting. Instead of heading for the nearest coffee shop, I decided to wander along the South Bank.

It was a crisp and slightly foggy along the Thames, with the sounds slightly damped by the mists. I thought the Houses of Parliament looked quite thoughtful and relatively peaceful before the usual political hubbub begins.

Eros

Many folk will be thinking of the Italian Cupid today; I thought as a Londoner, that the appropriate Greek Eros of Piccadilly would be my slight variation. In one story, Apollo made fun of Eros by saying he was a poor archer, and in return Eros caused Apollo to fall in love with the nymph Daphne who was not so keen on Apollo.

The main story, though, is about Eros in the struggle between love, trust and the soul epitomised by Psyche. Eros's mum, Aphrodite gets a bit annoyed that men are finding Psyche too attractive. Eros is told to make Psyche fall in love with someone ugly. Unfortunately, Eros then falls for Psyche himself but gets betrayed by her jealous sisters and has to make a wounded escape, leaving Psyche looking for her lost love. To gain reconciliation, Psyche performs three tasks using powers of nature to eventually become immortal, gets reacquainted with Eros and eventually bears a daughter Hedone named after pleasure.

So next time Cupid fires his bow, remember it can sometimes get complicated, though its great when it ends with happiness.

re: cycle

I see that there's a plan to increase the Congestion Charge in London for Chelsea tractors, from the current £8 per day to £25 per day. It applies to cars in Band G and is supposed to start in October. Announced a few hours after the plans to set up a Velib style bicycle rental scheme for London, along the lines of the one in Paris.

I think the bicycle idea is a good one, although there are always stories of schemes where all the bicycles get stolen, like the previous scheme in Cambridge, where the full set of 300 bikes disappeared on the first day.

Some places like Amsterdam seem to have solved the bike theft problem, mainly by everyone driving around on slighlty old looking bikes all fitted with the same strange back wheel locking device. The Amsterdam weather is similar to London, so that should be a good sign.

In Paris the Velib bikes are a sort of gun-metal colour and very heavy, so whilst quite retro stylish, they are not particulalrly nickable or usable out of their home context. Unfortunately because of the first 30 minutes being free, then chargeable, there's a new style of bike-rage when the bikes are being returned to the sometimes insufficient docking stations. Paris also has a few interesting hills, so bikes can be in short supply at the top of some areas.

It will be interesting to see whether the new Green Low Emission Zone to restrict smelly lorries, the increased fees for gas guzzlers in the centre, the relatively pervasive and good value Oyster card and now the rent-a-bikes will somehow change the nature of travel in the centre of London.

I enjoyed the zone around Leicester Square on Sunday with quite a few of the roads closed to traffic and people able to walk around large but still relatively accessible central areas like a super pedestrian precinct.

So now the "soon for re-election" Mayor of London has to see whether (a) the schemes and changes get accepted and then (b) whether they really make a positive difference.

I hope so.