Cultured Views

What a Drudge for Prince Harry

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Poor Prince Harry. He made it more than clear that he intended to quit his army service unless he was allowed to be deployed with his soldiers on active service - he wanted to do his bit and be treated exactly the same as his men. Secretly, ten weeks ago, he got his dearest wish.

For the past ten weeks Harry has been on active duty in Afghanistan; fighting the taliban, going without the basic comforts, experiencing fear, facing every danger as his men. His deployment was to be kept strictly under wraps and a worldwide media embargo was put in place and for obvious reasons. Prince Harry would immediately become a target and thus would any soldiers serving with him if news of his deployment was made public. But all that has been ruined and Harry has to go home.

All thanks to a trash website in the US The Drudge Report. They broke the embargo, they told the world where Harry was and what he was doing. They endangered his life and that of his men. Not to be outdone of course, like a lot of snitchers wanting a piece of the pie, that gutter trash magazine from Australia, New Idea, hopped in and took their cue to publish the same story. About the only time New Idea have published an article bearing a grain of accuracy in it too. Then Channel Four UK eagerly followed suit…

Shame on the bloody lot of them. This young man  wanted nothing more than to serve his country just as his fellow soldiers are doing, to do the job for which he has been trained, to show that a member of the Royal Family actually has some bottle about him. He wanted to stay loyal to his men and fight alongside them. He has done that; but unfortunately a modern day media, with not a scrap of the ethics or scruples that Harry and his soldiers possess, have shown they have no respect for courage, bravery and sacrifice.  Or loyalty.

Here’s one to the Drudge…for being one.

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What’s the best way to ruin paradise?

Of course the answer is simple…tell the whole world about it! Let everyone in on the secret of your Utopia and every man and his dog will want a piece as well. And it is not often that the English like to share a nice piece of someone elses country that they have effectively colonised for themselves. But that is what has happened in a part of France, Dordogne, and the town of Eymet. Anyone who has been there will vouch for the fact that it has attracted British expats to buy and live there in their hordes. In fact, British people now account for 50 per cent of home ownership there.

For this trend the French can surely blame Peter Mayle and his books about Provence some years back. Personally I found them dull and uninteresting and, in a small way, patronising to the French characters he wrote about. Ever since Mayle wrote about how he bought a ruined barn for a few pence and did it up the Brit’s in their thousands have followed in his wake. Within a few short years Provence was teeming with pale skinned men in socks and sandals and women in knee length shorts, white trainers  and tank tops. They bought up all the ruined barns that Peter Mayle couldn’t be bothered with, did them up, and then sold them for a fortune.  Unable to afford Provence any longer fellow expats discovered the poor Dordogne, or as it is known now, Dordogneshire.

They fell upon places like Eymet and Sarlat snapping up homes from the unsuspecting French; the Brits arrived with hundreds of thousands to spend but paid only tens of thousands for their ‘bargains’. The French have since caught on about this!

They also snapped up all the ruined barns, abandoned farm houses, run down water mills - basically if it had a wall in place the Brit’s would buy, renovate and live in a toilet block if it was cheap enough to buy. They love buying a pile of rubble and doing it up. Their reasons are many; England has gone to the dogs, it’s not safe anymore, the education is no good anymore, it’s too expensive…France is safe, it’s cheap, the education’s good…

Makes you wonder about this. The Brit’s have stuffed up their own environment so they abandon ship and move into another one that suits them better. They are good at this kind of thing though. But what do they do in order to protect their little paradise? They boast in a newspaper article about how no-one locks their doors, no-one locks their cars, people leave their wallets in the cars at the shops ’because no-one will steal it here’. I mean… DUH!

These proud and gloating expats have just made Eymat very easy pickings!

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Fish - if you can’t catch them then buy them.

One of the many things my Dad was good at was not fishing…and all the worse because my Mum comes from a long line of women who loved nothing better than to stand with a fishing line on some pretty spot along Sydney Harbour, or The Spit at Mosman. My Nan was a champion at this past time and I remember her reeling them in, cutting their heads off and scaling the smelly things in record time. Whenever we had a fishing weekend Dad would come along, stand for about, oh, five minutes, with a rod and then toss it down and sleep in his chair or read the paper for the rest of the day. With Dad it was either unconditional surrender on the part of the fish or he got bored and gave up.

But one thing he did go in for, time and time again unfortunately, was keeping tropical fish. I wish he hadn’t because he had no idea what he was doing and his fish-keeping activities were more like a study in mass slaughter.  He really loved those colourful little tropical fish though and came home with an indoor pond outfit and a plastic bag filled with water and tiny fishies. In they went and all was fine for a few days until one by one they started floating to the top of the water. Back to the shop and back with more fish. The pattern was repeated several times over the next few weeks with Mum complaining about the presence of gold fish floating in the toilet - Dad would flush the dead ones away and seconds later they’d come floating back up again!

My Uncle though was an expert in this field and was very proud of his beautiful aquarium; he was totally clued up on maintenance of the equipment, water temperature, feeding, oxygen, etc. I remember he had this one fish - it was like a tiny minature shark about 3 inches long - for about twelve years.  It was like one of the family and he would allow us to feed it when we kids visited. Dad couldn’t compete with such skill as his fish were lucky to last three days; and it didn;t help when he decided to add blue food colouring to the pond water so that it would look a pretty colour. Trouble was, it also turned the little fish a pretty blue colour so this added to their problems.

In the end Dad tossed in the fish-keeping hobby and went onto other projects most of which went the same way as the fish hobby. My uncle though saw his fish thrive and survive for many years through excellent care and maintenance of both the fish and the equipment. Even when they moved house they took the tank and fish and they travelled well too. It pays to thoroughly research and do your homework when you are going into a hobby such as keeping fish; they have needs and habits as well as any pet and with the right care and attention they will give you years of interest and pleasure.

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