A Quick Taste of Winter

 There was some highly interesting weather over the UK this past weekend. A great chunk of freezing air sat over the north and a warm, wet front rolled in from the south. Where they collided heavy snow and torrential rain followed. 

This might have been purely of academic interest to me, but fate decreed otherwise. For Mrs C and I were having a few days away, staying in the unexpectedly delightful Llandudno and the weather bomb struck the night before we planned to depart homewards. Amidst increasingly dire warnings on the media, I made various contingency plans. If all the roads were blocked, with reports of airlifted supplies being dropped onto those trapped in their cars - we would stay put in our hotel. If it was possible to leave but treacherous conditions might be encountered en route - find a welcoming cafe and indulge in a really long lunch. Otherwise charge up the mobile phones, stock some food and water and drive on in hope.

We woke on Sunday morning to find the town under snow but rain was now in charge and there was a few cm of slush on the ground, neither the deep snow nor the glassy and deadly ice that I had feared. With nothing worse than wet trainers, I was able to drive out of the town and though the worst hazards were fog on the A5, coupled with idiots who insisted on driving in the middle lanes of the motorways despite the empty inner lanes up which I was bearing down on them, we made it home. 

We planned to go shopping on Monday morning. That one failed pretty fast because the rain kept up all night and all the roads into our little village were flooded. Environment agency live monitoring of the River Alne showed it to be close to a record high for the past 20 years. 

We were lucky. Had we planned to begin our trip on Sunday, we would have had to abort. Had the bad weather hit a few hours earlier we might have got to within a half mile of home but been unable to go further. As it was, I think we got away with it.

Senator Cassius "Not Guilty" of Assassination, Court Rules

 The case brought against recently elected Imperator of Rome, Senator M. Bucinum Cassius by surviving members of the J. Caesar party has been thrown out by the senior magistrates, writes our correspondent with a free ticket to the Celebrate The End Of Tyranny Games.  It was alleged that Sen. Cassius and others had skulked around the Forum late at night with their togas over their heads, scrawled "Caesar must go" on the wall of the Forum of Pompey and had  been implicated in the death by violence of the last surviving member of the First Triumvirate. 

Witnesses spoke of Caesar going into the Senate House together with the accused, then going "Aaargh" a lot before gasping "Et tu, Brute" and expiring. They then reported that Senators Cassius, Brutus, Casca, Cinna, Cimber and others came out with blood on their togas and gave each high fives on the steps to the Senate.

The defence pointed out that nobody could possibly identify the assailants as all Senators looked exactly the same in the dark (white togas, bald heads etc), that it was hardly the fault of the defendants if Caesar had gouted blood all over them while they tried to come to his aid, that Caesar had thanked them all for their services, leaving his dear friend,and possibly illegitimate son, Brutus in the place of honour at the end and that they weren't there anyway, but were all visiting their aunts in Herculaneum at the time. It was suggested that the murder had been by a "sinister force", almost certainly organised by Parthia and there was no point in investigating any further because certain people in high places had insinuated that it would be very bad for the health of the investigators.

Speaking to supporters in the Forum after the decision of the court, Sen. Cassius said he bore "no ill-will whatsoever" to those who had brought the charges and that a prolonged stay in exile, possibly for at least 50 years, would undoubtedly be a just reward to any who survived leaving Rome. Cassius also suggested that any other criminal charges against him or his colleagues should be dropped, as should any charges that prosecutors might consider bringing in the future. 

"I am the Imperator" he said "And pretty damn close to being a god. In fact, I sense a sort of heavenly presence around me. Jupiter himself is on my side. So anyone who wants a thunderbolt up the arse knows exactly what to do."

Sen. Cassius declined to answer any further questions and mentioned that he had urgent Imperial business on the golf course at Baiae. 

Cinna - I am not Cinna

L. Cornelius Cinna has issued a proclamation that he is not Cinna the Poet, has never written poetry and has no interest in the arts of any sort. The proclamation contines that if he were ever to write verses, they would be a damn sight better than anything Cinna the Poet ever produced. They would rhyme for a start and not always begin with "There was a young virgin from Pisa".

Late sports results

Lions 14 Runaway slaves 0 (Lions go on to play the Christians in the semi-final)
Bears v Pack of dogs  1 -  21 (after extra time)
Gladiators 10 Other Gladiators 10 (replay Tuesday, if any of the wounded pull through in time)

Senator Cassius' New Administration Takes Shape

 From our correspondent newly arrived in Rome and trying to settle in at a one room, no water, flat on the Aventine hill

Having secured his election as Imperator of the Roman Republic, and with his toga freshly washed after the "unfortunate incident", Senator Cassius has begun the exacting task of finding the most upright, just and wise men to replace those who have vacated their offices due to being found with a dagger in the back. He has summoned the best augers to the Temple of Bacchus where, he said, the Gods spent most of their leisure time, and with the most conducive atmosphere for such a solemn proceedings.

According to an auger with whom I shared a tasty dormouse on a stick, the traditional procedure is for the applicant to pray devoutly, before an auger inspects the entrails of a freshly slaughtered goat to learn the Divine intent. However, Sen. Cassius chose a different method. He threw a chicken into the air and declared that it was the will of the Gods that his very good friend, (and not at all envious), P. S. Casca, should become chief magistrate. 

Some of the augers muttered about impiety but Sen. Cassius next threw a die, said that it showed number 4 and that meant that another very good friend and experienced back-stabber, M. Cimber, was destined to lead the Praetorian Guard. He commended both men to the Senate and announced he would continue revealing the blessed guidance of the gods in the coming days.

Those Election Results in Full

Sources: various, including some plebs who reckoned they knew, a muttering soothsayer, and a lady I met in a taberna who declared herself to be a Vestal Virgin but this was her night off.

Caesar, G.J.    (Slaughter the Gauls and make J. Caesar divine emperor party) - Unavailable due to ill-health and several unwanted daggers.

Brutus, M.J.  (Noble party)  Sulking in his tent

Antony, M.  (Full of eastern promise party)   Gone off with Cleopatra 

Lepidus, M.A. (Triumvirate party)  Too slight and unmerited

Cicero, Q.T.    (Independent) Talked too much

Cinna the Poet.  (Crap poetry party)  Still crap.

Cassius, M.B.  (Honourable party)  Acclaimed winner due to all other candidates' untimely death, retirement or mysterious relocation to the Cloaca Maxima.

The World Goes White

 

Here's something I thought I might never see again. It's been years since there was an appreciable amount of snow in sunny Ruislip. But we are not in Ruislip any more. This is the view from my new home in Warwickshire. 

It's been a strangely patchy blast of arctic air. Across the West Midlands and southern Pennines, plenty of snow. In northern England and the south, just rain. It will probably clear up by midmorning and start thawing later on so there is just a brief window in which to admire the view. We still have a cold few days ahead but are promised temperatures creeping back into double figures by the weekend.

This time last year prolonged rain brought flooding. This year we had loads of rain in the spring and summer, but very little since. And foreigners wonder we are obsessed with the weather.

Twenty Years On

In November 2014 I was somewhat bothered, if not bemused, to find that I had been writing bits and pieces for this blog for ten years. I am bewildered and befuddled [Enough of words indicating confusion beginning with B: Ed] as I note that a further decade has elapsed and yet this blog still refuses to die. I pen these words from the rural heart of beautiful Warwickshire, and neither Ruislip nor commuting feature heavily (or at all) in my thoughts, except for a sigh of pure schadenfreude at this sort of news report.

We do have the odd travelling problem. Last year our village was cut off by floods on the roads both in and leading to it; fortunately there was no lasting damage and the waters receded within a day. Sometimes the A46, the main road between Stratford (to our east) and Alcester (to the west) is clogged with traffic or has been closed due to accidents. As I rarely use it, and can always find an alternative given a bit of warning, this doesn't matter. The biggest frustration is being stuck behind a slow-moving tractor or held at road works.

Anyway, I think I am legally covered by calling myself an ex-Ruislip commuter.

The main event within this column was the ground-breaking series, 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, published between September 2019 and May 2020. I had more time to complete it than I had expected because the Covid epidemic began in the UK in early March and we were in lockdown by the end of the month. We also covered, albeit with cunning camouflage, the strange Presidential career of The Most Popular Man in the World, thanks to our unnamed correspondent in Karakorum, who was there when the mighty Mongol Empire gave under the sway of one G. Khan. And a large number of businesses came under heavy fire for stupid or misleading advertising and risible PR Claims, including Aberdeen Standard Life who changed their name to Abrdn (to get down with the kids and be more cool), Coca-Cola who tried to get us to believe that Kate Moss personally chose some trashy prizes they were trying to foist on an uncaring public and, quite recently, the bare-faced cheek of Vodaphone and Three who claimed that competition in the mobile phone/broadband market would be increased if they merged.  We shall continue to scrutinise all such enterprises and to hold them to account.

Where will we be in another ten years? The signs are not encouraging. Wars in Europe and in the Middle East, the growing polarisation of liberal democracies versus dictatorships and the short-termism of politicians everywhere mean that climate choice, species extinction and the destruction of the natural biosphere on land and, especially, in the oceans, will not be addressed adequately. There is another factor that rarely gets discussed - world population. I worried about this as a student, a long time ago. Since then the population has more than doubled and is still growing. The idea that the finite resources of the planet can continue to provide improving lifestyles for so many more consumers was never discussed at all when I studied economics back then, and is rarely mentioned today in political debate. But the outcome is going to be migration from hot, poor countries to anywhere else on a scale unparallelled in human history; the small boats bringing migrants over the English Channel are just a foretaste.

Anyway, you don't come here for serious stuff. We shall go on trying to find humour wherever it may be lurking, be it behind the news headlines, in advertisements, in popular culture or, if sufficiently chortle-worthy, in unpopular culture.  We shall probe politicians, antagonise admen, petrify pundits and, er, you know, the other lot [I'll get the thesauraus: Ed]. Terms and Conditions will continue to apply wherever we can shoehorn them in. Exclamation marks will be deployed and, somewhat regrettably but there is nothing I can do about it, stupid bloody interventions in italics from the Editor will continue to be injected. 

We are Ramblings!