To party or not to party that is the question...

...and the good citizens of Kingston upon Hull have resoundingly decided not to party, that is as far as the streets are concerned, when Prince William and Kate Middleton are married on 29 April.

According to the press this week the local council has received not one application to hold a party on the Queen's highway to celebrate the nuptials of her grandson. Of course this may just be the refusal of your normal tight fisted Yorkshire man to pay for the privilege, especially for such things as insurance, warning cones and all the other paraphernalia of the nanny state.

Some say it is the spirit of Oliver Cromwell and a republican trend which goes back nearly four centuries. It may have something to do with their ex MP John now Lord 2 Jags Prescott, who rose from humble toil as a merchant seaman to Deputy Prime Minister and finally to TV ad man for car insurance. But who better to provide some knock out spirit to get the party going!

No, Timelord thinks none of this really touches the spot. The jaw dropping reality of the Royal Wedding is that it reminds us all of the wedding of William's parents nearly 30 years ago and that jug ears Charles is still king in waiting. If that thought doesn't dampen the party spirit nothing will.

Remembrance of Things Past....

...has nothing to do with Teapot's birthday. It is of course the monumental 4,000 plus page novel by Marcel Proust.

This year has seen its serialisation in four parts on French TV as part of a crackdown by Nicholas Sarkozy on the dumbing down of French culture. Reality shows out... Proust in. For four episodes that is. After which presumably it's back to Bruce Forsyth or Simon Cowell or whoever is their equivalent over the Channel.

There is a certain irony in that since it took the first English translator of this magnum opus over 9 years to flog his way through it and then he died before he had finished the last book seven.

However one must not knock the efforts of our Gallic friends to translate the unintelligible and try to say in ten words what they used to say in a hundred. I have personally witnessed this phenomenon on days at home as Teapot spends hours locked in deep debate with our friend Thierry from Grenoble. They are translating the Godfather's blitz diary which make the works of Proust seem like the Beano.

When all is finished. If it is ever finished there may be another blockbuster fit for transmission on TV5

If you think you've got a weight problem......

.....you should have been at the Royal Society this last week when the brain boxes among us scratched their heads and worried themselves about the kilo.

You see the kilo has been putting on weight.... or may be perhaps losing weight. Who knows? You see the international standard for the kilo is set by a lump of platinum which has been kept inside three dome like bell jars at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris since 1879.

It is held under lock and key and every now and then taken out for comparison with official copies. And that is when the boffins notice all is not well. A few micrograms not well, in fact, up to 69 micrograms not well.

It is going to take a few years to sort all this out by giving up on the good old platinum and working out a new standard based on Planck's constant.

So when you tip the scales after a shower and wonder why the reading seems to show a few more micrograms or perhaps even an odd extra kilo just put it down to those goings on near Paris. When Planck his done his stuff then is the time to give up on the biscuit barrel and the cake box. Until then who knows if the scales are right or wrong. And if old Schrodinger is to be believed who knows if there are really any biscuits in the barrel?

Which reminds me of the old question. How many kinds of physicists are there?  Answer three. Those who can count and those who can't!

Happy weight watching..

Dreaming...

...was the byword of Darryl Kerrigan, hero of the Castle, my favourite Aussie film. And we sure have been dreaming these last 7 or 8 weeks as the 5 Ashes Tests have been played out down under.

Did we really watch all that cricket and listen to our radios in the small hours? Alistair Cook cannot have scored over 700 runs or Jimmy Anderson taken 24 wickets. Can they? Was it really three victories by an innings and the rest?

I am convinced I will wake up soon as if from a hibernation to the usual noise of Pom bashing headlines from the Aussie media as our brave lads go under Down Under again. But in the meantime let the dream continue.

Or in the case of Mr Kerrigan the nightmare. It just may be a good many years yet before the Ashes can again  go straight to the pool room.

Journeys

Christmas is full of them.

Journeys for Joseph and Mary, for the shepherds and the magi and all to Bethlehem. Some knew the way.  Others like the magi came a distance and took a detour to Jerusalem first even though they had the first ever SatNav.

And this Christmas Mrs FLN all the way to Dallas on her own.  Fighting her way through the snow and the check in queues and seeing all the disappointment of so many stuck at Heathrow these past few days and wondering if she would ever make it. And now she's approaching the Great Lakes as I write this. I am so proud of her.

But she is not quite alone in fact because I am reliably told that those intrepid reindeer Robbie and Rudolf are making the trip as well. Rudolf was all ready to fly Mrs FLN to Heathrow to make the connection. After all a few hundred miles down the spine of England is a mere training outing for Santa's finest the day before Christmas Eve. And they will be keeping a close eye on Mrs FLN all the time she is in the cowboy state.

There are other journeys some of my friends are taking which will not end this Christmas and they are not about going to Bethlehem.  Sometimes those journeys will seem very alone. Yet even then I would be surprised if there isn't a reindeer around somewhere. Watch out for them if you do not know already who they are.

Lord High Executioner

Am I the only one of the planet who is beginning to tire of Mr Julian Assange. 

There is only so much self righteous arrogant priggery a Timelord can take especially when it is the kind of concentrated dose this guy dishes out for our daily consumption. Perhaps it is all that frustrated or not so frustrated testosterone lying around in his system. If I were his host at his mansion retreat I would fear for spontaneous combustion and a nasty hole in the floorboards.

Like all men full of their own importance there is a certain comic touch about our Julian. As judge jury and executioner dispensing his leaks like the thunderbolts of the gods he protests when his targets bite back. How WS Gilbert would have loved him.  

Of course his acolytes turn their fire on those who dare oppose him. Paypal  Mastercard and Visa risk denial of service attacks for withdrawing their services from wikileaks.

So can Timelord now expect the wrath of the Anonymous for daring to publish this blog. Fear not. I  have lodged 3 million replicas in every galaxy of the solar system just in case.

A's bees swarm....

....C sees the bees and seizes them with E's. Whose bees are they?

So went the exam question in Timelord's Roman Law paper a long time ago now. And since then I have had a sort of sneaking admiration for these industrious insects in their hives if not a liking for the honey they produce.

Keeping bees in urban areas has grown in popularity in recent times in line with the ravages of bee colonies by parasitic mites. Timelord has even thought of a hive to the rear of the Tardis. Making illicit honey used to attract a $2,000 fine in New York but now there is a thriving community of bee keepers in Brooklyn. But sadly the bees have started turning red and their honey looks like bright red goo.

Careful detective work has discovered that the bees have been hitting the corn syrup at the local cherry factory in record numbers. They have found out that bins of marinating cherries are moved from one warehouse to another It only takes one bee to find a yummy treat like this and A's bees will swarm there along with C's D's E's and everyone else's. Forget the hard work of pollinating flowers and fruit trees and the like especially in a big city even if it is a mile to get there. And the result is not quite the delicious honey their owners were expecting.

It makes you wonder if the bee hives of Burton might produce marmite flavoured honey. Now there's a thought!