This is Me!

I've just completed an on-line quiz!
The result is shown in the graph above.

I'm told I am a "centrist moderate social authoritarian".
(Left: 0.18, Authoritarian: 1.78).

I wonder where you chaps might appear in the graph?
The link is shown below.

http://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/political-spectrum-quiz.html

:-)

Espionage at the Conference

I've received an email from a lady I knew very briefly in New Orleans. That was a long time ago. I’ve no idea how she traced me, and I’m still unsure why she should wish to make contact, or what she is trying to say.

Yes, I’m sure the email is from her - from Maria - the lady in the audience. Gosh, I remember her. I remember that prickly feeling, like a wave of electric shocks, running up and down the back of my neck when I saw her enter through the doorway at the back of the hall. She inclined her head apologetically and sat down, and I carried on with my speech.

I caught another glimpse of her later at the evening cocktail party. She was talking to two other speakers, who I recognised as competitors of my company. Was she one of them? I didn’t know.

It was exactly a year later, at the same venue, when I saw her again. There’d been no cocktail party this time. Instead, the conference organisers had decided to throw a party in a Carnival Warehouse across the water. I’d decided to give the party a miss, because I had a morning flight to catch the next day.

And those electric shocks happened all over again, because there she was, in the hotel restaurant, dining alone. I guess you can guess the rest. I left her sleeping as I tip-toed away the next morning. And, not exactly inadvertently, I’d packed her delegate dossier together with mine in my briefcase.

In the following year, my company made nearly a quarter of a million dollars pure profit out of the contents of that dossier. We realigned our systems and created an advertising blitz that blew the other company away.

And now I’m sat here, looking at her email. And she’s writing to me in exactly the same slightly stilted, crazy English, virtually devoid of punctuation, that was her style of writing in her dossier:

”Canary - i want a man who knows what love is all about you are generous kind thoughtful people who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. you have ruined me for other men i yearn for you i have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart i can be forever happy will you let me be yours Maria”

Well, I’ve unscrambled this text, just like I did her dossier all those years ago, and it reads as follows:

”Canary, I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy--will you let me be yours? Maria.”

:-)

I showed all this to my beloved partner (we have no secrets about our past lives). This is her take on it:

”Canary - I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn. For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Maria”

:-(

My Clever Socks

This is a somewhat detailed account of my first experience with a new pair of really high-tech socks. It is also something of an intelligence test, so I hope you will concentrate.

I should explain that this particular pair of socks has the embroidered motif ”Left” on the left sock, and there is a matching motif ”Right” on the right sock. The illustration above is only a basic model - my new socks are much more high-tech, as you will gather from the description below....

The ”Left” and ”Right” motifs are embroidered just above the sock toes, and each motif appears twice on each sock. Now you may wonder why each motif appears twice on each sock, but the explanation is really quite simple. You see, some people will look down at their feet to check that each sock is on the correct foot, and other people (like me) are in the habit of checking by looking in the mirror.

For this reason, each motif appears once on the upper foot facing the wearer, who can easily read it when looking downwards, and it appears again closer to the toes facing forward, away from the wearer. This makes the forward-facing motif easy to read in the mirror.

I think the chap who invented my socks must have been a keen driver, because the forward-facing motif ”Right” or ”Left” on a sock is written in exactly the same back-to-front and inverted way as the words “Police” or “Ambulance” on the front of emergency service vehicles. When you look at these words through a mirror, they appear the correct way around. Now that’s very clever, you may say.

But the really, really clever thing about these socks is that the motifs are embroidered with a bright yellow thread that is luminous. This is extremely useful for someone like me who tends to get up in the morning just before daybreak. Rather than switching on the light and disturbing my partner, I’d resolved to keep my luminous socks on my bedside table, where they would be clearly visible and easy to put on when I woke up. And I reasoned that I could use the luminous light that would be emitted from my socks to help guide me when I got up from the bed and started moving around in search of my underwear.

Well, you can imagine my consternation this morning. I was standing there in my socks in the dark, viewing the reflection of the luminous writing in my cheval mirror. And horror upon horror, I could see in my reflection that my socks were on the wrong feet!

But I hadn’t gone to all the trouble of buying these socks, only to find myself wearing them the wrong way round, had I? So I immediately sat back down on the bed, pulled the socks off, and put each sock back on a different foot.

Then I stood up to check my feet again in the mirror.

I was pleased to see that the socks were now on the correct feet. But the luminous writing had dimmed, and had a strange fuzzy appearance. Even worse, the inverted writing at the toe of each sock, which should have appeared in correct English in the mirror reflection, had magically been transformed back into an inverted format. And I was shocked to see that the writing was upside-down.

It must have taken five minutes or so of feverish intellectual turmoil, with me standing in the dark and staring at my mirror, before it dawned on me that I had pulled my socks off from the neck down. This had effectively turned the socks inside out before I’d swopped the socks around and put them back on again. So I had inadvertently inverted the inverted writing, and turned it upside-down. The writing on the socks had lost some of its luminous clarity because I’d exposed the reverse side of the embroidery.

So I sat back down on the bed, took each sock off in exactly the same way as before (thereby turning it inside-out) before replacing it on the same foot.

Then I stood up to check my feet again in the mirror. Yippee! I’d solved the problem!

That’s when a bedside light was turned on behind me. I turned and saw my girlfriend’s face grinning at me.

“Why have you got your socks on the wrong way around?” she asked.

I turned back to look in the mirror. “But I haven’t!” I exclaimed.

But I had. Can you figure out why?

:-)

A Sight for Sore Eyes... (Alter Ego)

.
Have you ever been a witness?

Photofit is a technique used by the police for building up an accurate image of someone to fit a witness' description.

Photographs, rather than drawings, of individual features are used to construct an image of a suspect.

Below, you can see just a few of the Photofits issued by police in the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.




Personally, I can't believe my eyes at these disreputable discrepencies. So much for eye-witness accounts, I say!

Meanwhile, here in Tenerife, the police have issued yet another Photofit mugshot.

This man is, by all accounts, seriously deranged.

Do you trust your eyesight?

:-)




:-)

Deliverance...

The Ancient Greek geographers described the islands west of the Straits of Gibraltar as the “Islands of the Fortunate” (" μακάρων νῆσοι “). They were referring to the Azores, Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands, Madeira Islands, and the Savage Islands.

Well, after many visits to the Canary Islands which began in 1979 and which increased in frequency over the years, I became one of “the Fortunate” – and started living here in Tenerife, which is the largest island in the Canaries.



Four or five years ago, there was a wave of illegal immigration by the Less Fortunate from West Africa into the Canaries. They arrived in open boats, known as "Cayucos", which looked like large canoes, and which were typically powered by a couple of 40HP outboard motors, carrying up to 150 people at a time. They came from countries like Morocco, and from countries even further away like Senegal and the Gambia in the south. There were smaller open boats too, the "Pateras", which could carry up to 30 people.

I saw many of these fragile craft arriving, usually being towed into harbour by a Guardia Civil patrol boat after having been intercepted on the high seas. The condition of the would-be immigrants was, more often than not, utterly lamentable. Some had spent two weeks at sea, and were suffering from exposure and dehydration. Many had died en route.

Then they stopped coming. The Spanish government, helped by the European Union, stepped up its maritime patrols and negotiated deals with West African governments to prevent the would-be immigrants from leaving the continent.

Life here in Tenerife returned to normal - until one day two weeks ago. That’s when I took an early morning walk, far along the sea shore, beyond the man-made tourist beaches.

I’d left my car at the end of a dirt track, and started my walk by clambering over the breakwater that separates the last beach from the big Atlantic Rollers that attract so many surfers here. I’d been along this stretch – the rough surfer stretch - before, but this time I wanted to reach the headland point, and see what was on the other side.

It was slow going, picking my way step by step along the narrowing seafront, with the towering cliff on my left, and the sea swelling closer and closer on my right. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t particularly dangerous, just slow and careful steps. You wouldn’t want to slip on wet volcanic rocks and fall and possibly cut yourself.

As I said, it was slow and careful going. But I got to the headland point and worked my way around into a small cove. And the first thing I saw was a Patera, on its side, its bow smashed and wedged up on rocks that would have been below the water line at high tide. Apart from a couple of jerry cans, the Patera was empty.

Then I saw them, two forlorn figures, sitting on a patch of sand at the far side of the cove. I yelled and waved to attract their attention as I made my way over to them, but they just sat there, side by side, eyes downcast, staring at the ground before them. As I drew closer, I could see they were two young girls, without a single possession between them, lost in a world of their own.

I pulled out my mobile phone, but decided against calling for help. Instead I used it to take a photo of the scene, whilst deciding - for the first time in my life, to take pity and do the right thing on my own. I took them back, to my place, where I’ve been caring for them ever since.

I’ve included the photo in the space below.











Photo below...











:-)

Old Angers (1)

:-(

Sorry, in my dreams last night I recalled one of my many angers.

My history teacher at Grammar School was an Intelligence Agent in WWII. He was a hero. He’d even married a Scandinavian Princess.

His trick, with eleven to fifteen-year olds, was to grip the hair of one of the seated boys before him. He gripped the hair just above the ear, and twisted. The idea was to force a boy's forehead down until it hit his desktop. The pain of having your hair twisted and pulled like that is excruciating.

Passive resistance hurts like hell. My head never moved, and, surprise, surprise, by the time I was an older teenager, over 6 foot tall, with lots of bone and muscle, he was as nice as pie to me. I can laugh about it now, and say that's the explanation for my slightly receding hairline.

But now it's nearly 50 years later. Why do I sometimes dream about it and wake up angry?

How strange, the way the subconscious works.

Double Dippy Doldrums

Can anybody here tell dippy old me if the second dip in a double-dip recession is likely to be better or worse than the first dip?

I met up with my old mates Frank, Max, Joe and Charlie yesterday. Like me, they’d flown back to the UK from their winter homes abroad to catch up with family and friends. Of course, a major topic of conversation was the financial crisis. And each of us had a horror story to tell about the way in which the recession had affected our lives.

Frank told us he’d had a terrible time so far. He’d piled into the Stock Market when the FTSE plunged below 4000, and then sold out after it soared well above 5000. Gosh how I feel for him, because the poor chap doesn’t own a single share in anything now.

And Max had a hard time too, when the government gave him and his girlfriend £2000 each to swop their old bangers for brand new cars that cost far less to run. How sad; the poor souls really loved their old cars.

Joe told us how he’d been forced to stock up on lots of goodies when the VAT rate was reduced to 15%. Then Joe broke the sad news about his son, who had bought his first home after the threshold for stamp duty was raised, and after the purchase price fell to a level where the tax was not payable.

And let’s not forget Charlie, whose fixed rate mortgage of 5.09% on his London second home expired and reverted to a standard variable rate of 2.5%. Shocking, isn’t it?

I’m down in the dumps too. Last December I exchanged 10,000 Euros for Pounds Sterling, after which I waited until June when I exchanged the Pounds back into Euros. And would you believe it, in that period of time the Euro per Pound rate changed from 1.09 to 1.21.

Alas, there’s nothing I can do about it, so tomorrow I’m leaving the UK and heading back to the Canary Islands – with my 11,100 Euros of spending money.

I wonder if the second dip of this double-dippy recession will be just as dippy as the first dip for dippy old folk like me and my mates…

:-)