Wokeism: the madness spreads

The latest outrage, fully justified, is at the editing or Bowdlerising of Roald Dahl's children's stories to suit current prejudices. Terms that appeal to young people's ruthless, nasty natures will be taken out and sometimes modifying phrases and sentences will be added.

Netflix bought the rights to these tales from the owners, the Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC), in September 2021. The 'streaming platform' will use the butchered material to produce anodyne drivel similar to Disney's modern animations.

There is a wider tendency to promote the idea that reality will conform to how you wish it to be, and part of that is to falsify the past to make it look as if it was always that way. 

Human maturation involves finding out that things aren't always how you like, or think. Wokeism is a block to growing up and that is why its followers have a hysterical infantile reaction to facts, ideas, principles and people that confront them.

It also means the loss of irony and humour, which are ways of recognising that life has contradictions and surprises.

About ten years ago I was working with special needs children in a unit for primary age pupils who hade been excluded from mainstream school because of their extreme behaviour. A pair of trainee social workers came to work and observe for a while, and to one of them I told a joke about ADHD (a common problem with our kids):

Q: How many kids with ADHD does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Hey, let's go out and ride our bikes!

The girl's mouth twitched at the corners, and then she said, 'That shouldn't be funny.'

That's what our education system has done: instead of a knowledge-based curriculum there has been a long program of cultural indoctrination and turning young people into supersensitive over-reacters, mealy-mouthed prigs and lazy condemners.

We are becoming so detached from reality that we are ripe for conquest.

WEEKENDER: NHS hospitals and the Four Horsemen, by Wiggia

It is over four months since I last had a piece up on Broad Oak Magazine, and looking back I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to scribble something again.

Time has passed so quickly during the period from the end October last year, it is as though someone has taken a slice of time away from my life and in many ways they have.

A brief resume of events: at the end of October I came in from working in my garden complaining of feeling unwell. My wife suggested I go and lie down for a while as I looked rough, this I did and promptly passed out.

The next six weeks or so had no meaning for me as I was in a coma for nearly three weeks and what followed was just a blur.

It transpires I had pressure on the brain which was operated on and just as they finished another problem, a bleed, was discovered so they went in again. No sooner had they finished with all that then it was discovered, I have no idea how, that there was serious infection of the bowel; there was a gruesome side line to what was a difficult operation that I won't disclose here and during all this it was declared I had Covid: full house!

It was fortunate for me that I was out of it during this period, and little was revealed in the early days afterwards, which was just as well as I started to have delusions. I also became quite emotional which really is not me in a normal life; waking in the night to discover I had been crying for hours was a whole new experience and just added to the general feeling that the visions were real and not the result of what had happened to me, even to the extent I was asking why my mother had not visited me; as was pointed out I had buried my mother some years before, yet my visions told me otherwise, it was an unnerving experience but slowly I came through all this and started the road to recovery.

Strangely only one vision remained with me from those early days in a coma and that was the four horsemen of the apocalypse lined up at the foot of my bed, and however fanciful it appears now it was very real at the time. Maybe it was a glimpse of the other side, or maybe it was as most would say just a dream, a coincidence, I will never know.

I was initially in Addenbrooke's hospital Cambridge, though I remember nothing of that time. I started to come round when moved to the N&N in Norwich where the slow recovery started and finished in a rehab cottage hospital a few miles south of Norwich.

Looking back on my lengthy stay I have to say that 95% of the staff were brilliant, even the land whales - who it has to be said numerically seem too large a number by far - were in no way impeded whilst doing their job. On the downside some of the foreign assistants brought in to fill the gaps were deficient, with very basic levels of knowledge, and many were unintelligible.

Speaking to someone else who has just had a long and difficult time in hospital, it appears this is common; as she said, don’t have any searching questions for the night shift where most of the helpers (?) who look like nurses are, but really are not.

There is no doubt that management are pushing for maximum capacity: single rooms become doubles as an example. Much that is coming from the top is purely number crunching and has little to do with patients' well-being.

One of the few positives to come from all this is the fact my drinking of alcohol is still allowed, not that I am indulging presently; the thought of having to sell my cellar, such as it is, would probably have finished me!

I am currently waiting for a report from my surgeon on whether I should continue to take my anti-coagulation tablets. They have been necessary since I had serious blood clotting around five years ago, obviously they do not aid the brain bleed and have been suspended. It remains to be seen after another brain scan if I go back on them having had them withdrawn, it seems like a case of buggered either way, but what do I know.

And I am still waiting for a reply!

The NHS is rightly castigated for its food. The main hospital lived up to the to the image of reheated items that had gone stone cold again. A few dishes saved what was an almost total disaster, but anything with mash, pasta, mince, was ghastly, cooked vegetables arrived either stone cold, dry, tasteless and mostly all three; a raw cold uncooked macaroni cheese said it all.

On the other hand the rehab hospital had food and a menu one would look forward to choosing from; a different supplier was the difference, resulting in a chalk and cheese situation: decent tea and seconds if one smiled nicely.

Now back home I face the long haul to get back on my feet and start to live a normal life. My first aim is to learn to walk again and get outside; it is difficult to believe the deterioration that takes place when one is confined to a sick bed. The first time the physio asked me to sit on the side of the bed and with a frame and try to stand was unnerving, it was as though my legs did not exist, and although hugely improved it is proving to be a slow road back.

Falling is my biggest fear, as the total lack of strength in the body means, as I have discovered, one gets out of balance and just keeps falling, as has happened a couple of times. My protection of the head was the foremost thought for obvious reasons.

So despite all I am still here, though another episode like this last one is not something I would be likely to survive.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Martha Davis, by JD

 Another fine jazz/blues/boogie piano player (new to me) is Martha Davis.

When it comes to 'boogie woogie' piano the names of Meade Lux Lewis or Albert Ammons spring to mind. And many more such as Pinetop Smith or Pete Johnson. The ladies also embraced the style but they are not so well known. Here is one of those ladies - the wonderful Martha Davis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Davis_(singer)

(... see also - https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2017/01/friday-night-is-music-night-dorothy.html to hear Dorothy Donegan.)

Britons: Painted People and Blue Priests

The fruit loaf called by the Welsh 'bara brith' means 'speckled bread' in their tongue.

This reminded me of the word 'Brythonic', a term coined for a group of southern Celtic languages by John Rhys, Oxford's first Professor of Celtic and a fellow of Jesus College.

Now I speculated (speckle-ated?) that the 'bryth-/brith' could be connected, since the ancient Britons painted themselves, and in an early twentieth century article I found this:

'... the name of Briton apparently comes from the word 'Brith,' painted, while Giraldus Cambrensis records that 'Glaswir,' 'blue men', was in his time the name for the Welsh clergy, probably a survival attached to the priestly caste from heathen times. It is probable that both Britons and Caledonians adopted the practice of painting from the earlier races among whom they found it observed.'

'The Pictish Race and Kingdom,' by James Ferguson, in The Celtic Review, Vol. 7, No. 25 (Feb., 1911) - page 30

https://zenodo.org/record/1570180/files/article.pdf?download=1

FRIDAY MUSIC: Humphrey Lyttelton, by JD

 Humphrey Lyttelton (1921 - 2008) was a trumpeter, clarinetist, bandleader, and composer who was the leading force in English jazz for more than 50 years. In his later years he was perhaps best known as the host of a BBC weekly radio comedy titled I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. The programme, which was a send-up of panel shows, was noted for its word play, ribaldry, and plain silliness.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Humphrey-Lyttelton

Humphrey Lyttelton Bad Penny Blues

Tin Roof Blues - The Harlem Ramblers, Humphrey Lyttelton

Humphrey Lyttelton Ce Messieu Qui Parle

Humphrey Lyttelton and His Band - Close Your Eyes. 

Recorded in London on April 20th 1956

Humph in his prime with Wally Fawkes, clarinet and Bruce Turner, soprano sax.

...... and a short clip of Humph as 'chairman' of the radio show "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" the antidote to panel games! The panellists are Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor and another whose name I cannot recall; the fourth panellist would normally be Willie Rushton but not on this occasion.

The balloon goes up

Friday’s flap about a Chinese weather balloon over the USA… One rumour was that the bloon was dirigible, which is odd since it seems to have wobbled along a very circuitous route to get over those US missile sites, however briefly.

Laughable, in a Strangelove kind of way. Even the BBC news site was wondering why the Chinese would use a balloon when they already have spy satellites that could probably read the headlines on your newspaper.

The kerfuffle may have been a litmus test for the gullibility of morons, like BoJo’s claim that Putin told him in a phone conversation that he (Putin) could drop a missile on his (Johnson’s) head in a minute - we await the killer audio clip.

Why would the American elite care about morons anyway? They cost more in measly social benefits than they pay in taxes, they don’t vote and they have barely enough English to read the National Enquirer, let alone put pen to paper to castigate their Congressmen. Klaus Schwab is talking about implants in everyone’s head to read their innermost thoughts; thank goodness for AI because much of the intercept would have the spy class driven crazy by the garbage or shooting themselves out of boredom.

In reality, this petty incident is more a litmus test of the Great American Empire’s desperation to keep war fever going and pivot it towards China.

For it’s clear that Russia is winning, has all but won, the conflict in Ukraine, in conventional terms, at least; and the Russkies have been very careful indeed to avoid triggering NATO’s Article 5 - see how eager anonymous spokesmen were to accuse Russia of killing a couple of rural Poles with a missile, and the Establishment’s chagrin when it turned out the explosion had been a stray Ukrainian air defence rocket.

Again, the seeming irrationality of the Right Guys is even greater than their aggressiveness. Do they imagine that an all-out conflict would be contained within Europe? Or perhaps they hope not; maybe it’s the Great Winnowing of Morons, with the privileged few hunkered down in their bunkers, planning to repopulate the West with superior types. I don’t suppose the admission list for this breedorama will include the grossly overweight and sexually blurred; at least, not among the females. There’s a great movie to be made out of this but it would kill Hollywood to do it.

Getting information from ‘alternative’ sources is like picking peanuts out of poo, but the alternative, the mainstream news media, is almost pure horseshit, so what can you do?

I gather the Russians have been chewing though the triple-layered Maginot line that the Ukrainians built over eight years; and that the promised supplies of tanks etc to Zelensky(y) are token and if they actually arrive will be swiftly destroyed, leaving the EU/NATO even weaker. I hear that the American defensive umbrella that for so long released European finances for their social programs is failing and so EU countries will be wondering why they should remain Washington’s vassal states; especially when the US has blown up Nordstream and is now selling them expensive American LNG, and when a planned war with China (on the other side of the world) will shut off the supply of cheap finished goods.

It’ll take a lot more hot air than is in that balloon, to persuade Europe to collude in its own demise. At least, you would think so, if there was a functioning democracy, instead of types like the idiot Baerbock, contemptuously turning their backs on their electorate.

COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Mazes, by JD

Here are some a-maze-ing mazes to vex and dazzle the visual cortex. I was thinking that number five could be built with stone walls to serve as a small sheepfold: