One of my great joys in this life is to take the ferry from Victoria to the mainland, for it’s views are second to none. If as we hear, life started four and half billion years ago, how many of my ape like relations saw what I am seeing, although I have a tea in my hand?

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It is always poignant if not almost melancholy, to watch home videos when your children were young and so were you. To see again the shadows of those long ago years playing before your somewhat disbelieving eyes brings about a turmoil of joy and sadness. The wonder of your babies brought back to you and for the great majority, the disappointment of what was not accomplished in the interim. That is life I am afraid. I suppose that we should just be happy that we can revisit those images for think of how many past generations could not.

For me I am very proud of my children, for they have all turned out to be good citizens.

I think it is interesting that at the battle of Vienna in 1683, the Turkish commander Kara Mustapha having lost the battle and  preparing to escape, could not leave behind the two things he loved the most. Therefore he beheaded his favourite wife and an ostrich.

He was later strangled in the approved manner by a silk scarf operated by several men on orders of his Turkish masters.

At our dear club, we have developed the perfect way to know if one is drunk and therefore to have one’s car keys confiscated. Rule 1264-02 reads as follows:

“If a member of the club who is enjoying an alcoholic drink while within the club environs, begins to believe that Mrs. Hynde-Quarters is attractive, is deemed to be sufficiently inebriated and is therefore not allowed to drive home.”

Once again I think our club has found the middle road for these sort of situations and I offer this example to the rest of the world. In the rare case of a female member drinking too much, then the Brigadier is used as the “high water mark”.

Cheers

Nigel