SNOUTS

I am an occasional smoker.
By which I mean, I never buy them, but if you open a pack of snouts, especially outside a pub two pints in, I'll happily cadge.
I'm not addicted. I'll go for weeks, months, without one. Then if I want one, I'll have one. No one is addicted. It is a myth bust open in Allen Carr's excellent book THE EASY WAY TO STOP SMOKING.
So I am not positioning myself as anti smoking.
But when I go to a client's offices and there is a constant stream of smokers heading out to the outside smoking hutch (now that smoking in any public building is banned) it does make me wonder whether an employer would be justified in paying smokers less than other workers. Five minutes for a fag. Ten fags a day, maybe more. That's an hour or so less a day than other workers. Five hours a week. twenty hours or so a month. 250 hours a year (or 30 and a bit days in old money).

Mmmm. A large cost, for sure.

REDS

The poppies at Allerthorpe hurt my eyes.
It was as though someone had painted them in a hideously loud high visibility paint.
They are all red, of course, but each is different seen against its individual background.
They are like a family all dressed up to the nines, but with each one trying desperately to outdo the others. Fantastic reds, screaming at you to be noticed.
A red carpet to attract the brightest of stars.

WALK ON

When the heaven has enough blue
To make a sailor's trousers
And the dew is fresh beneath the leaf
And joy comes easy,
You are singing your heart out,
Reminding me, Blackbird,
To drink in the radiance
Your song never forgot.

WALK ON

When the sky is black over Will's Mum's
And my spirit's lower than the ponded field,
It takes just one blackbird singing
To keep me walking forward,
Rebuild faith in my own heart's beating,
Keep me going in my own direction.

GLOBAL WARMING KILLS BRAIN CELLS

I seem to meet quite a lot of people who tell me I should do this, that or the other, or, more probably that I shouldn't do this, that or the other, because of climate change / global warming.

I generally ask them a couple of questions:

"What is the most compelling evidence you have seen of man's causality in climate change?"

And

"What's the best evidence you have seen that man can control climate change?"

Amazingly enough, I have never yet had a straight, factual answer to either question. The response I do get is a hateful look of the kind reserved for, I imagine, paedophiles, or some other species of vileness in the eye of the beholder, and the following sort of rhetoric:

"Ah... you're a climate change DENYER, are you?"

Nope. I'm not even a fully paid up climate change sceptic. Now. Where's your data?

I am a sceptic, though, about anything which becomes orthodoxy, which becomes axiom. Why? Because it offends the human capacity to inquire, to think.

It may be easy. But is it right?

I live in hope that someone is going to give me an answer to my two questions.

I will listen with a very genuine interest and curiosity.

A SHORT HISTORY OF.......................... HELICOPTERS

Today there was a helicopter at Laytham, hovering to inspect the high tension wires and pylons. The pilot was very skilful, keeping the chopper still as an onboard camera caught all the action of lines and joints. It set me in mind of my own occasional contact with aircraft of the rotary variety.

I was introduced to them as a very young man. The first I ever encountered were Westland Wessex. Big old things. I was taught to rappel down a rope to get out of them, blacked up and in camouflage. I can still remember the excitement of these rare, expensive aerial bus rides, which saved you miles of walking. I remember the orders:
"Make safe before you get in. When over the landing zone, take your turn sitting on the step. Sling you rifle over your shoulder. Grab the rope with both hands. Wrap your feet. Go when I say go. Down you go. All round defence at the bottom. Cock your rifle. Try not to kill yourself or anyone else." This was before the days of Health and Safety. No safety line and karabiner, Just NCO Instructors who delighted in telling you certainly spurious stories about the last young soldier to have fallen, and how he twitched about in spinal agony beneath the whirling rotors.
You were only supposed to summon helicopter assistance when absolutely needed, but the radio airwaves were full of young platoon commanders trying to cadge a ride.
"2 - 1, this is 2-1 Tango, I am experiencing heavy resistance. Very heavy. Request helivac immediately."
Then the RSM's voice.
"Negative 2 - 1 Tango. What do you think this is Mr. Berry? F**king Vietnam? Crack on".

The most unusual present I got when I married (bar the blow pipe and poisoned arrows) was a helicopter ride around the cirques and volcanic heights of Reunion Island. Very nice. Bit too short, I recall.

It was then quite a few years before I got to use a whirly bird in anger. I was doing a course over in Herefordshire and got, at late notice, a summons from a client to a presentation of a large proposal, in Milton Keynes. The course finished at, I think half three. The Milton Keynes meeting was called for five. "Only one form of transport will get you there in time," my PA informed me. "How much?" I answered. After wincing, I authorized the credit card. At three twenty seven, or something, the hotel receptionist came into the training room and announced "your helicopter is here, Mr. Berry." I said, "Ah, yes. Just ask them to hold on while I finish would you?" Then, after making my apologies to the open jawed room, I grabbed my overnight bag, walked out to the hotel lawn and the awaiting chopper, engines still on, slung the bag nonchalantly in the back seat and got in. "All set, Mr. Berry?" asked the pilot. "Let's go," I said. Then came the trip's only problem: concocting a wave cool enough to suggest to the training course now asssembled on the lawn that this was a customary mode of transport. At Cranfield airfield, my PA had kindly, and cunningly arranged for one of the client's managers to meet me. I emerged to shake their hand, feeling like an exotic rajah. I hardly need say, we got the contract.

Note to self, I thought wistfully today. Helicopter is the ONLY way to travel.

A LIFE'S JOURNEY

Ee. I've come a long way since I were a lad.

555.34 miles, to be precise.

My love is seeing your perfection.

A shite day.

I drive 200 miles to see a prospective client.
They've got the wrong time in the diary.

I return to another client seeking to postpone a vital programme.

Bollocks.

Only two remedies known to man: lager and curry.

"Are you trying to pick me up?"
"Yes."

"Well, you're succeeding."

Just taking the dogma for a walk .........................................