On Being Thwarted.

I wanted to make a post about something I watched on YouTube last night. The comments showed how easily people’s views of a place – in this case North Korea – are swayed by the slant put onto it by the media (in this case the western variety, but I’m sure the media are the same the world over.) Their prejudice is soon well ingrained and their predictable responses follow a childishly acidic inevitability. The problem is that I can’t because I needed to quote one of the comments, and it’s gone. I just went onto YouTube and all the comments which were there last night are missing tonight. All, that is, except mine, which said:

I wonder how many of the good ol’ boys commenting on this video have actually been to North Korea and are speaking from experience.

So far it has one ‘like.’

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Instead I thought I’d post this scan of a postcard I was sent some years ago. I do so for no other reason than the fact that bells and cute kids are two of my favourite things, although I suppose it also illustrates my fondness for the internationalist persuasion.

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And I’m afraid nothing worthy of note happened in Ashbourne today (unless you count the fact that the young woman in the coffee shop maintained her habit of treating me like something-the-cat-brought-in-having-first-devoured-and-then-regurgitated-it.) There was, however, a major disappointment:

Some folks might remember that I once posted a ditty on this blog entitled Ode to an Ashen Coco. Well, for eight months I’ve been waiting for a reason to go into the lady Coco's money-changing establishment so I could say:

Ah, Coco, shall I compare thee to a smoggy day in old Beijing, where ne’er a merry roundelay is heard? For not a bird will deign to sing to woo his mate with lovelorn din, but coughs instead, in Mandarin.

Today I finally had the reason. I received a cheque from a picture library last week (first one in over a year) and needed to pay it into my account, so in I strode full of intent to do the deed and face the consequences (either amusement or crushing embarrassment were the most likely.) And you know what? She was on holiday for a week.