Two Notes on the Reckless Tendency.

I had a little adventure this morning. I decided to do my Uttoxeter shop today, since yesterday was so foul, and was quite shocked by the amount of water flowing off the fields and onto the bottom lane which runs for about two miles beyond the Shire. This turned out to be a relatively minor inconvenience, however, because as I approached the river bridge outside the village of Rocester (Roman name, note; they had a garrison there a long time ago) I saw that the whole of the road on my side of the bridge was under a substantial depth of water for a distance of fifty or sixty feet.

I should have turned around at that point and taken the longer, higher route to Uttoxeter, but I didn’t because I’m subject to the occasional reckless streak. And as Macbeth said: to return were as tedious as go o’er and so go o’er was what I did – slowly. I felt the front of the car pushing the water aside and considered how silly I would feel if I didn’t make it. (You occasionally hear of cars getting stranded in fords and floods, don’t you, and it’s always tempting to think ‘what a prat!’) But fortune was on my side and my precious little French princess took me through, giving me no more than a sharp rap on the knuckles by way of a soft brake and a juddering clutch which she relinquished after an hour’s rest in the town car park. (My little Clio is a real heroine, you know. I love her to bits.)

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And talking of heroines, I decided today that the woman who runs the British Heart Foundation charity shop in Uttoxeter is really rather handsome. She also has a voice redolent of the Lady B’s dear mama, which is an added bonus of no little merit. In short, she has class. And so now I’m seriously – or maybe only temporarily, for who can tell? – considering donning my Sherlock hat and engaging her in conversation to find out more.

I probably won’t because she’s middle aged (although not by much) and a lot of middle aged women scare me witless. But you never know. Maybe one day my occasional reckless tendency will come to the fore at an opportune moment and my latest case will begin.

Don’t bother watching this space, though. I doubt it will be worth the effort.

A Flaw in the System.

I was reading an article on the BBC News website this morning about something unsavoury going on in the cesspit that it is American politics. It reminded me that the world is generally run by a bunch of thieves, liars, abusers, and other rank opportunists who will do whatever’s necessary to gain power and bask in the glory of their achievement. Some of them simply take power and hold onto it, of course – people like Putin, Assad (until recently), the little fat guy who runs North Korea, and so on. But America is a democracy, right?

Indeed, and democracy has much to commend it, but it also has a few loopholes. One of them is that if you want one of the august body mentioned above to get the reins of power, all you have to do is surreptitiously engineer the situation so that the people are offered a choice of two bad guys. And then the majority of the population will turn out and vote for one of them. Job done. Or so it seems to a cynic like me (and cynics are sometimes right, don’t forget.)

And so it amuses me to imagine that, given the techno savvy there now is in the world, the next Presidential election might be able to be punctuated several times a day by subliminal mind control on every TV station in the nation. The people must be instructed to stay home and put out signs at the front of their properties which read:

GIVE ME SOMEONE WORTH VOTING FOR AND THEN I’LL VOTE

Maybe I can manage to arrange to be the world’s best hacker in my next life.

And here’s what’s fascinating me at the moment: I have a suspicion that Elon Musk has designs on using his wealth and influence to be the next President of the good ol’ US of A. Imagine that, or don’t if you value your sanity.