Vulcan Part 1

This is an Avro Vulcan, Britain's Cold War bomber.

They were huge aircraft, measuring almost exactly 100 ft long (30.48metres), with a wingspan of 111 feet. They were smelly, dirty and noisy - I worked on them and loved it!!


I'd known the Vulcan ever since I was a boy... After the aircraft began deliveries to the RAF in the mid/late 1950s, Vulcans could be seen almost daily in the sky above my home town in Yorkshire - tiny white triangles coming in at high altitude from the south, and using the distinctive coastline and harbour shape to make practice bombing runs by radar.

There was talk of a *black box* which the crews were supposed to be trying to attack, somewhere near the town. Much later, I learnt EXACTLY how the fabled black box really worked...

In 1966 I joined the Air Force, and in training got my first moderately close-up view of a parked Vulcan at my training station at RAF Cosford, but in 1967 I was posted to a Vulcan station, and finally got *hands-on*!!

But before that, I had a crash course in the black box. What the crews used for training was, in fact a camera, called the R88. It was mounted above the navigator's radar screen, and photographed the screen periodically during a bombing run on long spools of 35mm film.

When the navigator pressed the bomb release, a light came on in the camera, to mark the moment, and the analysts could judge how accurate the dummy attack was.
Remember that in theory the plane was dropping an atomic bomb, so *close enough was good enough*, up to a point.

My duties, as a photographer, included *doing the R88's*, or in other words developing and printing the films so the crews and the analysts could view them. Sadly, the squadrons that flew from my station never flew over my home town. Instead they spent a lot of time pretending to devastate the industrial city of Scunthorpe, which was probably not a bad thing...


By October 1967 a new camera, designed to be fitted in the bomb-aimer's position, had been introduced. I'd never seen the particular model before - even in training it was unknown, but it was a good camera, known as the F95 Mk 9. It was mounted vertically over the bomb-aimer's window, and with a wide-angle lens it could cover a large area of ground below the plane on 70mm wide film. Like the R88, it was designed only for analysing bombing, although from time to time crews did take some high altitude pictures...

Part 2 coming soon.......

All Blogs Bright and Beautiful.....

I'm having great fun with this blog!!

I've just passed the 100 visitor mark since I set up the counter, (I admit 7 visits were from me, before I discovered how to set the counter to ignore me) and it's nice to see people showing interest. It's true that I shamelessly promote the blog when I'm online in ESL chat, but I have also been stumbled across by strangers, which is quite nice.

For anyone considering a blog, I'd heartily endorse the idea, and say just get started!!. Following the instructions will get you going, but there are some pitfalls, and it took me a while to get my own blog running smoothly.

There are many sites offering blog space, and naturally I am using Blogspot/Blogger. It seems that Blogspot has grown out of Blogger, and this has caused a little difficulty in refining the setup.

Blogspot also seems to come in two versions, and anyone starting in Blogspot should register with the Beta version straight away. It's also necessary to register with Google, I found, but I already had that. I'm not sure why this is required - it's not well explained, IMHO.

It also appears that instructional text hasn't caught up with some of the latest versions or developments, and you may see the screen display and the help files at odds with each other sometimes.

But having said that, once you've got the thing going, it's great!!

Lots of things can be customised from the *Dashboard* - the basic control panel that sets up the blog - and can be changed readily. It's probably not the best idea to change the blog title and the web address repeatedly, unless of course you are trying to shake off persistent readers, but even that can be done easily.

The template - the screen that one sees when reading blogs - can be changed easily too, but that brings up another problem. If one is familiar with HTML (more below on this) then one can tinker with the appearance of elements of the template, ad infinitum, but if the template is changed from the Dashboard, all customising is lost.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is a funny thing... Either you know what it is or not, but it's what creates the appearance of a web page from simple text, and the blog is in reality a slightly jazzy web page.

If the basics of HTML can be grasped, and there are any amount of tutorials on the web which will help, the keen blogger can start to play tricks. Already I've figured out how to add a textured background to my blog, an extra section in the sidebar, and some sidebar editing. Nothing too rivetting there, but it does help.

Adding a visitor counter was a bit trickier, because (as mentioned above) the installation instructions didn't coincide with what appeared on-screen, but it became possible to do some *copy-and-pasting* using the EditHTML feature of the composing window, and the result was good.

Not being an HTML geek, and having a poor memory, I had to refer to a very helpful site which gave a series of tutorials on different aspects of HTML. One feature I found useful was the *table* tag, which has already enabled me to display images side-by-side onscreen. (The native HTML editor in Blogspot uses an HTML style that I can't get my head round, to be honest, especially when it's displayed in such a small window), although I do recognise some elements which I can copy and paste, and then edit.

A lot does depend on the browser used to view the blog, and the display (screen) resolution can also make a difference, but that's something else open for experiment...

I'm looking forward to getting more confident with HTML, and using it to greater effect in the future...

The Gates of Paradise - a promise to a friend

A Promise to a Friend

Please don’t be sad, my friend, but I must go.

The days allotted me by God have run,

And he has called me home to give account

Of my poor life.

And sadly I leave this life, yet gladly go

To my reward.

But I have erred, and sinned, displeased the Lord

Through mortal wrongs

And risked a sterner judgment than I’d hoped

But this I trust shall be a saving grace:

That I have loved my fellow-man,

And friendship is another word for love.

And you I number dearest friend of all –

How we have loved each other through the years

Talked away hours, chatted through the night

Put right the wrongs of earth and man

Explored our souls,

And tried to understand the mind of Him

Who rules us.

So now I go

But this I promise you, my dearest friend:

That I shall wait for you:

Before I go in to that wondrous place

I’ll find outside the walls a shady tree

And sparkling pools where for a while I’ll bide.

The waiting shall be little sacrifice

For I must be the one who welcomes you

When, in good time you come to join me there.

I’ll wipe your brow and ease your thirst

Bathe you in crystal waters

Comfort you - my friend.

And then – the final act ordained by fate

For we must gaze upon the face of Him who made us

And I would stand beside you when we do

So shall we rise with gladness in our hearts,

And side-by-side we’ll go the final mile

And hand-in-hand as friends we’ll walk

Together

Through the Gates of Paradise

A date with Destiny! - or is it History?

Today, 23rd November, is a day that will always stand out for me, for several reasons.

Reason 1

On this day in 1969, I made my first parachute jump. At about 1220 hrs I climbed out onto the wheel of a Cessna 172, registration 5B-CAR, 2500 feet above Kingsfield Airstrip, in Cyprus.
John's first jump, 23 November 1969

Some 2 minutes later I was safely on the ground, surprisingly close to my intended landing site.

Parachutes were nowhere near as sophisticated in those days as today, and the landings alone were enough to put most rational people off, but I persisted, slowly, making an average of one jump per week for the next 2 years, and graduating to rather better parachutes as time wore on.

I quickly progressed from basic *static line* jumping, where the chute opens as one falls away from the plane, to free fall jumping, and before I left Cyprus in 1971 I had progressed to delayed falls of over 30 seconds.

Back in England I found some good groups to jump with, although I never became terribly proficient at formation jumping (*relative work*), though i did some nice *small stuff*, but i found that I enjoyed demonstration and accuracy jumping.

I became a sport parachute instructor in 1973, and worked until 1977 for two different clubs, The Sport Parachute Centre, at Grindale, and the Peterborough Parachute Centre, which was an amazing experience.

Instructor Kiwi John at the Peterborough Parachute Centre

In 1977 I was about to take up a job with a major parachute company, when i was invited to be Chief Parachute Instructor of The Free Fall Parachute Club at Langar, near Nottingham.

It was weekends only, and for a few months of the summer it was a wonderful time, but eventually I had to quit, in favour of my job. Plus I found myself at odds with other instructors, because i was siding with a renegade operator....

In another blog I mention some of the work I did for the parachute company I worked for, and that too was a fantastic time. I had the opportunity to work with the military sometimes, and get behind the scenes in curious situations.

I almost became the first UK civilian to jump from a Royal Air Force Chinook helicopter in the course of my association with the RAF, but they declared that it hadn't been cleared for free fall yet. Like - all you did was jump over the back - people had done that for years with other services!!! Typical military thinking in Britain!!

But i did get to ride in some other military aircraft, and often jumped the RAF's remaining Argosy, as well as a Hercules. My 600th jump was from the tail of a Hercules, dressed more or less like this....

Kiwi John dressed for action, military style!!

One curious aspect of my demonstration parachuting was an involvement, through one of our company directors, in aerophilately. Crudely put that's stamp collecting with an aviation theme, and in this case the theme was commemorative covers delivered by parachute. These were decorative envelopes issued to celebrate special events, and I found myself making several demonstration jumps into strange and wonderful places carrying boxes of covers. On one occasion i dropped into the RAF Museum at Hendon, to hand the covers to legendary fighter pilot Sir Douglas Bader, and on another I landed in the grounds of Sandringham Castle with covers to celebrate the royal wedding of Charles and Diana. (see below).

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My last season of jumping was in 1983, shortly before I was married, and I think my last jump was a demonstration into the local mental hospital - they always said you had to be mad to go there!!!

In all I made just short of 700 jumps, some far more memorable than others. The final picture is one of the best - a solo drop into Kensington Palace, London, carrying a box of commemorative covers.

Free fall over London

Reason 2

On this day in 1963, the first episode of Doctor Who was shown, in Britain, and I watched it with my brother.

Doctor Who has become the longest-running science fiction series on TV, although it started out with an educational intention. Much, much more about the programme can be found in this Wikipedia entry.

That I saw the programme at all was amazing, since we didn't have a TV at home at the time, but my brother and I were on a permanent invite to go *two doors down* to our neighbour, whose son we went to school with.

We would watch the evening children's broadcast, which would include such stuff as Captain Pugwash and Noggin the Nog, together with Popeye the Sailor and Looney Tunes, and as soon as the theme for the evening news began, at 6 pm, we would troop home again for dinner.

It was when I was getting my facts straight for this blog that I realised how much my memory had changed events, however slightly, and this brings me to Reason 3 for remembering this date.

Reason 3

For years, in fact until this week, I had somehow believed that when we got home from watching the first episode of Doctor Who, we found our parents in a state of shock over the assassination of President Kennedy.

But in researching for this blog i realised that JFK had been assassinated at 6.30 pm (our time) on Friday, 22nd November - that is, 24 hours earlier.

It's not impossible, but highly improbable, that our parents didn't find out until the evening radio news on Saturday, and so my memory of those days must have been combined.

History, they say, is not what happened, but what we remember happened, and for 43 years I have associated JFK's assassination with Doctor Who - close, but not close enough......

Sheik al-Hilali, and the Cat's Meat, an update

Sheik al-Hilali managed to outrage a large number of people in Australia and around the world a few weeks ago, following a Ramadan sermon in which, amongst other things, he likened women to plates of uncovered meat, subject to the unwanted attention of roaming cats. I wrote a blog about it (here), and so did almost everyone else who wote a blog, it seemed.

On Monday this week, our 60 Minutes TV programme showed an interview with al-Hilali, at his home in Sydney, where he was asked about some of the comments that he made, and what he meant by them.

Overall impression was of a venerable old chap in a nice house, with his wife and two charming daughters, not to mention the Aussie convert son-in-law.

It was evident that the interview was really a PR exercise, as the Sheik never really answered any of the questions, but deflected them with jokes or side remarks, and the whole thing seemed frighfully decent.

The gist of the interview was that, according to the Sheik, he is the victim of misunderstanding, and media propoganda. The media, it seems, *have it in for him*, and he never meant whatever it is he seems to have meant.

The *uncovered meat* comment was simply misunderstood, he said to the interviewer, although he didn't offer an alternative explanation for what was originally a long and carefully constructed comment which would seem very hard to misunderstand. Also overlooked was how Muslim women's groups in Australia were outraged by the remarks, and how they could have misunderstood the Sheik.

As to rape, the Sheik did say quite firmly that *The man who commits this crime should not live in society*, although other remarks during the original Ramadan sermon seemed to a) blame women for rape, and b) criticise sentences passed on the Lebanese-Australian gang-rapists.

On a question of beating wives, the Sheik joked that his wife sometimes hit him, at which the whole family fell about on the couch - it was a truly touching moment. But the Sheik also firmly stated that Islam does not allow beating of wives, which i could have sworn was not so......

The Sheik speaks little English - when asked why not, he comically replied * Too late, mate*, which is almost certainly true. He declares Australia to be the *Best moderate country in the world*, and that one should *Love Australia or leave it*, which sounds fair to me.

Final comment was along the lines of *My words as currently understood I stand behind*.

I'm somewhat cynical as regards the Sheik's comment; from reports read or recieved it seems that this Sheik, in common with some other Muslim clerics, tends to *have a bob each way*, and presents two different faces, one public, and one private, and when found out, claims to be misunderstood or persecuted.

For myself, andf especially after seeing this latest interview, I think I understand the Sheik very well indeed.....

Halt! - Who goes there???

Here in New Zealand we drive on the left of the road, like most former British colonies (together with a few other countries like Japan and Thailand). I know most countries drive on the other side, but overall the basic rules are the same, just reversed left-for-right in some locations.

In most countries (where rules are observed) the usual is to give way to traffic on the driver's side. So at an intersection, I would give way to traffic on my right, which is pretty logical. And if I was driving in Britain, and I was turning right across a road, into a side street (remember I'm starting from the left side of the road) I'd expect to wait in the centre of the road until all oncoming traffic (including turning traffic) had got out of the way.

In NZ they have a different idea.

It's called the Right-Hand Rule, and it didn't exist until about 1977. The theory is that you give way to anything that might hit the driver's door. Logically, if you are turning left into a side street, you have to give way to the traffic coming the other way, and turning into the same street from across the road.

Some larger intersections have turning bays and traffic islands to make that easy, but in a smaller, older street system it's all down to the drivers. In principle it's quite easy.... (Remember I'm driving on the left here)

Case 1. I'm going to turn left into a side street. I indicate my turn, and as I slow to turn I see another car coming the other way, also signalling to turn into 'my' side street. I apply the Right-hand rule, and stop, so I give way to the other car as it turns into the side street. Easy.

Case 2. I'm going to turn right across the road into a side street. I indicate my turn and as i slow to turn and move to the centre of the road, I see a car coming the other way, signalling to turn into 'my' side street. I apply the right-hand rule, and as he gives way, I continue my turn into the side street. Easy

Or is it??

Well lots of things we do in life depend on many people agreeing to co-operate, and follow more or less a common set of rules. Driving is probably the most striking example, and in NZ, obeying the right-hand rule brings up the need to follow procedures not laid down in the Road Code.

Here I am back in Case 1, (driving on the left) about to turn left into a side street. The car coming the other way is indicating to turn across in front of me into the same side street. I look in my mirror. What's the traffic behind me doing? If the road is narrow, the traffic can't get past me, and so I give way, and so does everyone behind me, until the other car turns across into the side street. Textbook!!

If it's a relatively wide road the traffic will try to overtake me, so the turning car can't complete his manoeuvre. (Nyahaha!!) I regain right of way, and turn left, as the traffic behind me races past. That's not in the book, but it works.

Here I am in Case 2, about to turn right across the road and into the side street. The car coming the other way is signalling to turn into the same side street. The traffic behind him can't get by, and he gives way so that I can finish my turn. Textbook!!

But if the road is wide, the traffic is going to race past, and the give-way driver may not realise this. So it's up to me now to give him some kind of sign that he will immediately interpret as meaning 'Thanks for doing the right thing pal, but I can't get across just now, so you may as well go - all the best'. And then I wait in the centre of the road until I get my break.

But wait! - There's more!! There's a case 3. I'm not turning. I'm going to the supermarket, and it's way down that road. Ahead of me there's a Case 1 guy, turning left, and in the middle of the road, coming towards me is a Case 2 guy, waiting to turn across into the side street. Case 1 is trying to figure out if I am going to go past, so he can turn, or if he should favour the Case 2 driver.

Case 2 driver is watching Case 1 guy AND me, as I approach. Am I going to race past Case 1 driver, or will I have to stop behind him?. Does he signal Case 1 to go on with his turn, or does he assume I'm not a problem, and turn in front of me?

I'm watching both of them. Even if there's room for me to go past, there's no guarantee that Case 2 driver won't try to sneak across in front, leaving me no time to stop. Or that Case 1 guy won't start to turn, and collect Case 2 guy, who panicked and tried to beat me across the intersection. It gets very complicated some days, and it's not covered in the Road Code....

In the end it's a matter of looking at non-driving related things, like body language, age and gender, and making educated guesses as to what will happen next.

This rant was sparked by the doddering old fool that my wife encountered yesterday. As she began her Case 2 turn, seeing him coming the other way, and indicating, and assuming he would give way, she was startled to find that he had forgotten to cancel his signal, and was going straight ahead, nearly wiping her out in the process.

How much we depend on others to do the right thing!!!

The war I never went to

In the mid 1970s my world was parachutes!

I had begun parachuting (skydiving) in November 1969 although it was strictly sport jumping, even though I was then in the Royal Air Force (RAF). I did make 2 military jumps for aircrew training, but that was all.

After I left the RAF in late 1973, I trained as a sport parachute instructor, and worked professionally for 4 years at two leading parachute centres in Britain. It was a wonderful time, training a long string of novices, and then persuading them to step out of a plane at considerable height!

Plus I made demonstration jumps at public events – great for the ego, if sometimes a little tough on the nerves….

By 1977 I was ready for a change (to cut a long story short), and I interviewed for a job at a major parachute manufacturer north of London. It was a junior position to begin with, but I oversaw various small design projects, and helped with different aspects of parachute development. Then one amazing day, I was officially adopted as the company test jumper, and began to make live jumps on our prototype parachutes.

A small development team was formed to design a new type of chute for the military. The square (or ‘ram-air’) parachute is common now, but in the late 1970s it was still relatively novel, and the military were keen to take advantage of the greater performance the design offered.

The design that emerged was a canopy of about 32 square metres, much larger than today’s parachutes, but large enough to support a fully equipped airborne soldier. The company designation was rather mundane: ‘PB11’, but it was also named ‘Skyknight’, and that sounded far more glamourous. I made the first live jump on the prototype chute in January 1980, and went on to use it for regular ‘fun jumping’ and demos, as well as taking it overseas (Pakistan, Italy and Denmark) to demonstrate to other potential military customers.

We produced another 22 assemblies for pre-production assessment by our ‘clients’, and in a parallel development we even built a radio-controlled version, which eventually hit the ground at considerable speed, and ended THAT programme forever!

In the excitement of running development programmes, it’s easy to forget the end use of the equipment being worked on. Even easier, in peacetime, to ignore the military role that our equipment could play in conflict. And we never dreamed…

In a few weeks in 1982, things changed. In the middle of Anglo-Argentine talks to try to resolve issues of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Las Islas Malvinas), Argentinian Special Force troops came ashore near Stanley in the early hours of Friday 2^nd April, and in the course of the day succeeded in overwhelming the British garrison, and capturing the Governor-General, Rex Hunt.

Reinforcements rapidly arrived from the mainland, and the islands were secured in Argentine hands. The scene was set for the 10-week Falklands Conflict.

The Easter holiday was the following weekend, and in England most of us went about our normal business. During the long weekend I met my future wife for our second date, and we went paragliding. Easter Monday was a holiday too, of course, so it was back to work on the Tuesday the 13^th.

I arrived at work at 8 o’clock on Tuesday morning, as usual, and was met at the door by my boss, CJ. Something was clearly up, and he rushed me across the road to the N^o 1 factory to meet a man (called Chris, I think) who was driving a very plain yet obviously military Land Rover.

Chris had come from Hereford, base for the Special Air Service Regiment, and in his Land Rover he had 11 of our Skyknight assemblies. The task was for the factory to check, modify and repack all 11 before close of business - before lunch preferably. The procedure required that all assemblies be unpacked, and stripped down to their basic components.

Production and Inspection would examine each of the sub-assemblies straight away, and any repairs or modifications (to bring each assembly to the current standard) would be done immediately. Then the Chief Packer and his merry man would re-assemble and repack each reserve parachute, whilst I would pack the main parachutes. This was far from standard procedure, but in the circumstances, nobody thought anything of it.

CJ organized a packing area, by taking over the games room next to the staff dining room. We cleared away the table tennis table, and that gave enough floor space to lay out and pack the Skyknight main parachutes. We hadn’t then mastered packing a ram-air parachute on a bench – it was normally done on the ground anyway - so it was easier to go with what we were familiar with.

Inspection kindly gave me an assistant. Our chief inspector (who was a casual jumper himself) found one of the girls in inspection, Hazel, who had also done a parachute course, and he arranged that she and I would pack the chutes up to the point of attaching them to the harnesses.

It was a huge task really, but we got stuck into it, and systematically worked our way through the growing pile of inspected main canopies. Time went by very fast, and we worked very well together, Hazel and I.

I don’t recall when we finished, but I seem to think we worked into lunchtime, as a number of workers were a bit put out, initially, that they couldn’t get in to play snooker or table tennis.

(I forgot this bit in the original writing) It should be mentioned that when colour schemes for the parachutes was selected, a pale blue material, called *Air Superiority Blue* was chosen, The top and bottom surfaces of the canopy were made in this colour, so that if used in typically cloudy conditions, it would be difficult to see the parachutes descending. The ribs which joined the top and bottom surfaces together, and gave the canopy its wing-like shape were made from white material, for performance reasons.

Somewhere in the midst of all the packing a thought struck me, and i asked out loud *What are the Argentine national colours?*. Everyone standing about began to laugh - in the terrible irony of the moment, we were surrounded by bundles of pale blue and white cloth

Eventually it was done. The packed main parachutes were attached to their harnesses and closed into their packs by the Chief packer, and Chris loaded up his Land Rover and was off. I had no idea what the plan was, but it was obvious that the SAS was getting serious, and the Skyknight was likely to be used in anger.

On Wednesday we did the whole thing again!!! The other 11 parachute assemblies had been found, and once more driven overland in the early hours. We discovered during the day that the first batch of parachutes had been taken directly to waiting troops, and they had made a night jump into Wales (into a region resembling the terrain of the Falklands) by way of a training exercise. Clearly the SAS were getting serious.

Nothing more was heard of our equipment. The SAS are very secretive, and would even decline to mention parachute problems when it might ‘give the game away’.

But weeks after the end of hostilities I had cause to visit one of the military trials units, where our parachutes were evaluated by the Air Force. During conversation one of the technicians referred to a plant pot full of moss from Pebble Island, which stood in his office.

‘How did you get moss from Pebble Island?’ I asked him

‘It came back in one of your Skyknights’, was the reply.

They must have picked it up when they collected all the equipment after the war was over.

I never left England, but in a sense I was there.

*Cabaret*, by William Shakespeare

Did Shakespeare write *Cabaret*??


No, of course he didn't - it´s a story set in the decadent Berlin of the 1930s (for the truly pedantic, I admit that the story begins on New Year´s Eve 1929), and contains elements that Shakespeare would have relished - love and rejection, betrayal and conflict.

He would have had a ball writing *Cabaret*, but of course being dead for 300 years or so is rather inhibiting....

*Cabaret* started as a Broadway musical in 1966, and had a revival in 1985. But most people know it from the 1972 film version, where Liza Minelli played the lead, and sang the title song in the infamous KitKat Club.

I never saw the film, and never saw the musical itself until this weekend. Jackie, a friend of mine, had joined the local Light Opera Club, and this was her first production. She got tickets for my wife and me, and we went along for what was a most enjoyable performance.

Jackie was a member of the Chorus, and so she played in the crowd scenes, singing along with the other members, and dancing basic Chorus-type steps. She had no solo spot, and she didn´t have a speaking part, but she was there on stage, supporting the principals. Jackie was a little dismissive of her role when we chatted afterwards, and so I was obliged to share with her my *Spearholder Philosophy*, which I´ll share again here, and re-introduce Shakespeare at the same time....

The immortal Bard wrote, in As You Like It:

*All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...*

The way I understand that is to consider that life is like a huge play - if we want to live well, we play well - we try to choose good parts, good productions in which to appear. Go back to the theatre for a moment. If you want to appear in something grand, you´d probably choose a play by Shakespeare.

But it´s unlikely that you´d walk straight into a leading role. You´d more likely start out as a spearholder. You´d get a small part where you may stand in the background, (and maybe hold a spear).

It may not be very thrilling, but at least you are appearing in a Shakespeare play. You may have to perform this role over and over again, and you may not progress beyond being a spearholder. But opportunities come and go, and you may one day get a small part, perhaps saying something like *What now, my lord?*, or such like. Not a huge part, but essential to the production. Youre still doing Shakespeare!!

It may stop there, or you may get very lucky, land a lead role, and deliver one of the great speeches. For my part it would be Henry V´s speech before Agincourt:

*And gentlemen in England now abed
will think themselves accursed they were not here.....*

The spine tingles - it´s the best of the Bard - it´s Shakespeare.

We´re playing our parts on the stage of life. Most of us will have bit parts all our lives. We´ll be spearholders. But if we choose to perform in a decent production, then our humble contribution will have some effect. We will support our fellow *players*.

And we may be promoted - we may get the small speaking part - we may get a leading role.

If we play the part well, we will have lived well, regardless of our actual role.

The Bard wrote: *All the world´s a stage...*

He could just as well have written: *Life is a cabaret...*

Wallah Wallah, Cat's Meat

Before I get too many complaints, let me explain the title...

In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, visiting street traders had no motor horns or recorded jingles to play to attract customers. So they had to *Shout their wares* when they arrived in a neighbourhood, either pushing a hand cart, or with a horse and cart.

What they shouted usually related to their particular product, and did not have to make sense. For example, my parents assured me when I was young that fruiterers often shouted *Apples a pound, Pears*, which makes no sense, but at least you know it's a man selling fruit!

Before commercial petfood was available, horseflesh would be sold around the houses, and the cry of the Catsmeat Man was, I swear, *Wallah Wallah, Cat's Meat*. Why? I have no idea. But it's a distinctive cry, and fits strangely well into the following item.....

Well, lets's talk about Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali.

During a Ramadan sermon in a Sydney mosque this year, he described women as 'weapons' used by Satan to control men, and compared them with uncovered meat. He told the worshippers "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it... whose fault is it - the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem."

He went on: "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab (veil), no problem would have occurred." Further report here.

Now, I have a number of issues with this man, and I am going to take the time to go through them. Read to the end, and then stop and think. These are my own thoughts, but magnified a thousand times through the *blogosphere*.

First thing to understand is that he´s in part trying to criticise a Sydney court´s ruling over a despicable series of gang rapes perpetrated by muslim youths, and seeming to put the blame on the women (and young girls) involved. See here for details...


The Sheik in further comment criticised the 65 year sentence handed out to the ringleader, but as the link shows, this was actually 55 years, and was halved well before the sermon, although a further 10 years was subsequently added after a retrial on one of the counts.

The Sharia penalty for rape is......??

Now I don´t know if the rest of you are in the same century as me, but in my humble opinion, the fact that a woman, Muslim or not, should choose to walk uncovered in public does not entitle any man to molest her, and certainly not for 14 to gang rape her. But the cleric seems clear on this - it´s the fault of the uncovered meat, he says - the woman's to blame....

Why does this bother me, you may ask? As I suggested there are several reasons, so here goes....

First, women are NOT uncovered meat. If the cleric talks about women in general, he talks about my wife and my mother, and they are NOT to be described in that way.

Second, if the cleric mentions Muslim women, I have to defend them too. Many of my chat friends are Muslimah, and I consider his characterisation of them to be disgraceful. None of you, my sisters, deserve to be seen like that.

The cleric goes on to suggest that if the woman is at home, in her room, in hijab, there is no problem. Well yes, if we never go out, we will be safe from all molesters, except for those in the house, of course, but that´s another matter.

Many of you will know that I have an interest in Islam, and have studied for some time in various ways. I never converted, although it could be said that I came close. (More on this later on request)

This is why I take more interest than perhaps would be usual for an Anglican, in a case like this. Women, I have repeatedly been told in my studies, are equal to men. (And have been, supposedly, for 1400 years). It takes a case like this, and it´s not an isolated case, to show that it isn´t so in the minds of certain people.

Was the sheik referring to women in general in his sermon? References to hijab suggest he was talking about muslim women, but when commenting on the rape verdicts, he clearly meant non - muslim. Regardless, a woman has the right to walk the streets unmolested.

The molestor - the cat - if there is one, will be a male, and it's he that should be controlled - it's he that should be harangued in the mosque. Never forget that!!!

كيوي جون

An update has been added here