Contrary? Moi?

Another glorious week in Clownworld. Quite frankly, it’s hard to choose with bit of ridunkulous revelation to satirise so I’m not even going to bother. It’s all unravelling so rapidly, it’s hard to keep up. How many ‘business meetings’ so far? Lost count. It was pretty sublime to see Labour joining the Tories so soon in the doghouse. As if they’re not two sides of the same dodgy £3 coin anyway.

The clear thread of course is that Boris Must Go. Quelle surprise. Time to find a scapegoat and throw him to the wolves, then business as usual. As if over 500 MPs right across the political spectrum did not vote for repeated lockdowns and draconian measures that were obviously useless, every single time. As if they did not all vote to re-enact the heinous Coronavirus Act, every single time. If Boris goes, they must all go, plus all their advisers, and all those who helped enfore the idiotic rules that helped to destroy families, businesses, the futures of young people, leaving 1 in 9 of the British public currently on the NHS waiting list. 1 in 9! Average age of the poor people who have unfortunately died of Covid in the last 2 years? 82 years.

So, no, let Boris stay and fix the mess he made. As I said to a friend this week, thank God for Boris! Stay with me…. He’s one of the main reasons why you’re not having to show ‘papers please’ to some Shaun-of-the-dead enforcer every time you step out to buy a pint of milk or go out to work. Because it was obvious to anyone who cared to see that Boris clearly didn’t believe any of the nonsense he spouted. That’s why all his appearances/press conferences were so tightly stage-managed. If anyone can find a single clip where Boris seemed to even remotely believe what he was saying, I’ll put it on this blog with profuse apologies. Imagine my total lack of surprise to find him larging it all the way through the lockdowns. Clearly our esteemed leaders did not believe that they were at risk of imminent demise from the ‘most dangerous virus of all time.’ His invaluable gift of utter fecklessness has saved us from becoming Australia or Austria, or God forfend, Canada or New Zealand. Zero covid, a truly brainless idea even by the subterranean standards we’re working with.

The best part? The clamour that they must all be sacked. Replace them with other idiots who are all marching to the beat of the same drum. Believe me, keeping their job is the least of their worries. Why? Because if you take a shot at the King, you’d better not miss. There is nothing we can do to these people that will come close to repaying them for the damage they’ve done worldwide but I can assure you, a reckoning is coming. Cold comfort, I know but there it is. So let Boris and Co stay and fix the mess they’ve made or it will be a case of ‘different boss, same old lies’.

Onwards and upwards, we look forward to better times. Spring will be here soon enough, other people across the world are living with lush greenery, jammy dodgers. Hope you like the pictures and remember, it’s a beautiful world filled with wonderful people. Love and peace, and have a fabulous week.

Rural Nigeria
Geyser, Iceland
Bluebell woods, Hertfordshire
The sacred Olumo Rock of the Yoruba people in Abeokuta, southwestern Nigeria
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The Wheels On The Bus……

The God-Man Of The Hour

The wheels on the bus fall off, off, off……. Hasn’t it been an interesting couple of weeks in Clown World. Here we are, knee deep in the super-mutant, super-infectious Moronic variant (oh, that spellcheck 🙂 ), and the deaths have gone up by 400% (tabloid-speak) in just two weeks, to 7 people. All I can say is, Omigosh, the sky is falling, the sky is falling.

Not to belittle the loss to the friends and families of the deceased, I lost my father this year too so believe me, I know. But can I just say that in the UK in that same week, an average of 3,200 people died from cancer, another 3,200 died from heart disease. From the latest data on The Office of National Statistic website:

In the week ending 3 December 2021 (Week 48), 11,659 deaths were registered in England and Wales. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/3december2021

Kinda puts it in perspective a bit, doesn’t it? The families of those 11,659 people will be just as devastated, I’m sure. Meanwhile on the other side of town, the scientists at Imperial College led by Neil Ferguson say that if we don’t all hold our breaths and stay indoors immediately, and for the forseeable future, there could be 400,000 cases a day by the end of December, and 5000 deaths per day in the UK. Ye gods and little fishes. Where’s my trusty calculator: 65 million / 400,000 = 163 approx. We will all have had it by May and the 3 surviving citizens of the UK will inherit the country. Preposterous. BTW, as far as I can see, the only Omicron with/of deaths are in the UK, but events may have overtaken me since I read the papers this morning.

It all brings back the dreadful winter of 2018. Remember when we all locked down, huddling in our unheated homes as the bodies piled up in the morgues, never knowing if we would survive till the morning due to the deadly virus doing the rounds? Yes, me neither. This is the headline from February 27th 2018:

Killer flu outbreak is to blame for a 42% spike in deaths in January after 64,000 people died – the highest number since records began

  • Government data shows 64,157 people died in January – the highest since 2006
  • It is only the second time the toll has breached the 60,000 mark, figures reveal 
  • ‘Circulating influenza’ was blamed, released by the Office for National Statistics

By Stephen Matthews For Mailonline

Published: 15:16, 27 February 2018 | Updated: 16:36, 27 February 2018

What an absolute shower. The wretched media are ‘hoping that SAGE will give us back Christmas.’ Give us back Christmas!!! Who do they think they are? The nativity of the Living God and Creator of the whole Earth and these muppets who can’t guarantee that they will inhale after they exhale really believe such things are in their remit. Who are these uncircumcised philistines to defy the armies of the living God, to quote my boy David. I want to see them try and ‘cancel’ Christmas, maladjusted, miserable, joykillers that they are.

I’m going to attend even more church services this year so that I can show – not your planet, you don’t get to make the rules for humanity. And if the equally useless churches close their doors – Durham Cathedral, you’re on my list, you God-denying heathens – well, the Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit and little old me will have a lock-in and I’ll sing a gazillion worship songs and carols. I know most of you probably aren’t Christians, but no matter. Just whatever you do, don’t let faceless bureaucrats and behavioural scientists take away your joy. We gotta fight, for our right, to parteeee. So, go ahead and party like it’s 2019, or even as if you’re a Downing Street staffer…… 🙂 I’m sure you’re not idiots – if you’re sick, stay away from everyone else. You know, just like in the olden days before The Science.

In our bid to send peace, joy and goodwill to all peeps, we would like to wish you all a very Merry, healthy and fun-filled Christmas. And as this is AlaraApothecary and this is how we roll, we are sending each and every person who patronised us in 2021 a free gift. It will be winging its way to you straight after the New Year once the postal chaos is over. Thank you very much for your custom, for reading our rants, for your good wishes and may the joy and peace and blessing found in our reason for the season, Jesus Christ Himself, be with you this Christmas and in the coming year. Merry Christmas xxx

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Outliers

Welcome to this week, same as last week. Or, is it? I haven’t posted for a while, just too blooming tired from rushing around and staying positive. How exhausting it is just trying to keep on trying. But never fear, doom and gloom, begone. It helped that I had a couple of days off last week and spent most it just messing about, mooching around London with no particular place to go. I bring you glad tidings of great joy. Life continues, people are doing their thing, and the human spirit thrives. I spent an afternoon wandering around the V&A, looking at my favourite stained glass windows and the excellent collection of sculptures, eating the reassuringly overpriced afternoon tea (though, gotta say the Earl Grey and Raisin scone was pretty good), and walked into the cold, awash with tea.

Exhibit A, Natural History Musuem Winterwonnderland was in full swing and even though I had a rotten cold, I loitered in the cold just soaking in the sights of normal life. I paid for it by having to spend most of the next day in bed but it was a small price to pay:

Even better, I can announce the winners of the ‘People Of The Month’ award. Yes, I know it’s still only the 15th but it was a shoo-in.

I was watching one of the most depressing vidoes I’ve ever seen. It showed a group of young Chinese children with QR codes hung around their necks, waiting in line to go in to school. What kind of world reduces children to QR codes? They’re not even numbers. I could have wept. Then, a miracle. As the camera panned down the line of children, one of them started to smile and wave and then another child 2 spaces away joined in, then another in the next line. Yes, I know that they’ve got masks on, but trust me, they’re smiling.

Oh my actual giddy aunt, it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. This is why we will always win, no matter how oppressive the system is. There will always be one irrepressible person for whom the glass is half-full. It’s why we quote Solzhenitsyn not Mein Kampf. As a Christian, I of course think – Greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world – the divine spark can never be extinguished, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. But, even if you’re not a believer, you still know in your Noah (sorry 🙂 ) that we are immortal, we cannot be suppressed permanently. I’ll probably never know the names of my three young friends but I think of them as a superpower team – The Indomitablest. May God bless and keep them, along with all the other children. Have a great week.

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The Skeptics Club

Welcome to another edition of the Skeptics Club newsletter, motto ‘Why is this lying liar lying to me?’ It’s been quite a while since we posted but there’s been a fair bit of personal stuff going on that is way more important than the frivolous fluff we blather on about here. Hope you and yours are all hale and hearty. The last few weeks have been extremely rich in satire, frankly most of the daily news is beyond parody or satire. My recent favourites have been ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ and indirectly linked to that, South West Airlines and Hurricane Brandon. Those of you who know what I’m referring to are already sniggering away. For those who don’t, you need to find the clip of a NASCAR driver called Brandon Brown being interviewed by NBC news. You need to know that spectators at public events in the US have taken to hailing the most popular president in the history of the United States by chanting FJB. Hard to believe, I know. A man so beloved by his people that he needed 25000 National Guardsmen to protect him from the adoring crowds. The guards themselves needed to be vetted by the FBI in case they took a potshot at the C-in-C. 🙂 In the interest of truthfulness, the NG are usually called in for inaugurations, but fewer than 10000 usually suffice, even for the Orange Man. I digress. Watching that clip, I can only imagine someone was holding that reporter’s puppy for ransom. I mean, yikes! I actually felt sorry for her.

Now to SWA. They cancelled over 2000 flights this week, for reasons as yet unknown. After days of speculation, the airline announced that the flights were cancelled due to bad weather. Bad weather which didn’t affect all the other airlines criss-crossing the US. Hence: Hurricane Brandon, targetting only South West Airlines planes.

Meanwhile in sunny Canada, the Quebec health minister has decided to extend the deadline for making vaccines mandatory for healthcare workers by a month. Faced with the prospect of losing an estimated 20000 front line staff in less than a week, they issued a final, final warning. That really made me chuckle. Do you remember getting a final, final warning from your Mum or Dad? That was a sure sign that you were home free. The government consultation on mandating vaccines for NHS staff reports this coming week. They may indeed go ahead and mandate it. In that case, remember our advice – don’t get ill, and don’t get old. When we figure out how you can comply with that advice, we’ll get back to you. What I find interesting is why front-line staff who have never quibbled about having other routine vaccinations as a condition of service are now willing to lose their livelihoods rather than have this one. Are they mad antivaxxers? Clearly not, they have had the required routine vaccines and boosters regularly. Two possibilities : it’s a civil liberties issue for them, or they feel having the vaccine is too risky considering what they have seen on the job. What really intrigues me is that no one seems to be asking them. Pourquoi? I’m a libertarian, have the vaccine, don’t have the vaccine, live with the medical consequences. Some interviews with frontline staff would be extremely interesting for me.

I have always said the totalitarian nonsense piggybacking on the Covid issue will never hold. It’s a busted flush, and I still maintain that stance. And while we are following the science, here are some things that potentially worsen society that logic dictates we should look at:

Pregnant women must be forbidden from drinking coffee or alcohol. Yes, I know that advice changes with the wind but this week …….. They must also get 8 hours mandated sleep, not get stressed, give up working and eat prescribed meals only. Think of the baby!!!!! In fact, why not extend it to all parents? Think about the children!!!!!

Drinking alcohol should be illegal. Look at the NHS stats for alcohol-related illnesses

Being overweight should be illegal. It’s a sign that you’re overindulging in limited resources and not partaking of the mandated exercises

One hour of daily exercise should be mandated. Anyone too ill to carry this out should be assessed for their value to society by a team of actuarists

All illegal drug-taking or drug-dealing should be punishable by death. That includes drugs like nicotine and alcohol

Spreading STDs is very bad for society. Any extramarital sex should be a civil crime. If it involves transmission of a life-threatening STD, it should be coded as attempted murder

Well, who doesn’t wish to live in such a …. brave new world 🙂 I’m not going to disclose how many of these rules I break…… but have no doubt I’d be in prison right now, several times over. And that’s the crux, right there. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. Easy to go along when the issues don’t impact you but sooner or later, those chickens will come home to roost. We are all human, none of us is perfect. Society means that we all have to learn to get along with one another.

For our eye candy this week, I leave you with some more amazing buildings and artwork. These buildings may or may not have been built with the aid of the the most basic tools 200-700 years ago, with supplies delivered by horse and wagon. I couldn’t possibly comment…… Have a good one.

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Terra Incognita

Vinicunca mountains, Peru
Vinicunca, Peru – Rainbow Mountain
Rainbow mountains, Zhangye Danxia
I know. Can you imagine being drunk here? Zhangye Danxia, China

Another week in sunny Paradise. No, not really but at AlaraApothecary, if life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. It’s been a really busy time. There’s a prospective pop-up in London, there’s a new range of diffusers being finessed, there’s a photoshoot for an ad campaign, etcetera, etcetera. Sleep, you say? Pah, sleep is for amateurs. We laugh in the face of fatigue.

Not a lot to report. The news is still all about Covid and quite frankly, you need real faith to believe the whole farrago is sustainable. Let me say it again, Covid is a busted flush, it will never hold. All we are going through now is just sound and fury, signifying nothing. Yes, I have been called a crazy fantasist. More than once in fact but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. You know my motto, ‘Be of good cheer, greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world’ All news seems to be only bad news, and my heart goes out to the poor Afghanis. Talk about your nightmare scenarios, that whole mess just seems so intractable.

This week I frittered away my time looking at pictures of places I never knew existed. Rainbow mountains! Who knew? Well, apart from the citizens of Peru and China, obvs. The fact that these two hallucinatory landscapes occur at opposite ends of the Earth blows my mind. I’m not entirely convinced by the geological explanation of oxide and sulphide deposits. Why are the surrounding ranges unicolour, what deposited oxides and sulphides just there? Riddle me that. I love a mystery. You can probably tell that I was one of those ‘why’ children. This is why I love science so much. Needless to say, I refer to real science, not science by committee. My next thing is going to be about cymatics. Cyma who, you say? Just wait and see. It’s fascinating to see how many cultures have a creation story based on sound. My fave (after good old Genesis of course) is the Australian aboriginal legend of songlines. If you haven’t read Bruce Chatwin’s book, you’re in for a treat.

It would not be a post without my fave Tartaria buildings of the week 🙂 Yes, I’m still thinking about that, can’t figure it out yet but I’m puzzling, puzzling….and probably coming to the wrong conclusion 🙂

St Basil’s. A shoo-in, of course. Absolutely bonkers, I love it. It’s like a building made out of gelato, Mr Whippy style
Casa Batilo, Barcelona
Strong contender for all time favourite. O beautiful building of awesomeness. Chrysler building, NY

How much do I love the Chrysler building? Let’s put it this way, my heart has been known to skip a beat when I catch sight of it rounding the corner from Pershing Square. Issues? You bet! It’s weird, I don’t even like art deco generally but this building, wow. I must have a gazillion photos of it by now. Every time I go to New York, I take another twenty or so. Ridiculous. I leave you with a terrible medical joke which will hopefully successfully lower the tone. Have a great week.

A woman in labour suddenly shouted, “ Shouldn’t! Wouldn’t! Couldn’t! Didn’t! Can’t!”

“Don’t worry,” said the doctor. “Those are just contractions.”

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