Observations from a Hill

Further to last night's reflections on Trump's pre-enthronement pronouncements; all the news-feeds this morning report on his latest fantastical outbursts regarding the wildfires currently raging through the Los Angeles Hills, fanned by hurricane force winds and fuelled by tinder-dry land. Apparently, according to Trump - and he should know, being possessed of, in his estimation, one of the world's greatest intellects - the blame for the conflagration lies squarely on California Governor Newsom and President Biden's shoulders. I quote from his post on 'Truth [sic] Social':  "Governor Gavin New scum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way...". Charming reference to the Governor, I must say,  and entirely bef...

  I know Trump's full of crap and given to rancid hyperbole in servicing his own sketchy career, but the latest ramblings from Donald the Duck really do sound like the thought-processes of a man entering the early stages of dementia. OK, renaming The Gulf of Mexico "The Gulf of America" will upset an awful lot of good people, but will in itself have little geopolitical effect should it ever actually happen; but the suggested taking of Greenland as a US territory and suggesting that he might annexe Canada in the process is tantamount to a suggestion of an intended future declaration of war: what on earth are we to make of that? Even if he's only half-serious, it's a tad disturbing that a person in his position would think it fit to voice such thoughts. The only saving grace at the moment is that the Republican Party appears to be fragmenting in much the same way as the British Conservatives, with everyone on the Right taking lumps out of each other in the theatre o...

It's ironic that the advances the human race has made on the road to 'modernity', or the world in which whatever date is current, have almost always been environmentally destructive in one way or another. In advancing the prospects of our species in whatever way, we have always - and until very recently often unwittingly - jeopardised the very environment that supports and enables our continued existence. Most of us imagine that the tipping point of mankind's influence on the quality of the environment was the advent of The Industrial Revolution. But no: I was reading a piece in today's Guardian newspaper about the pernicious influence of the metal smelting of the the Roman era in the Europe of the Pax Romana, that two-century period of relative political stability that came to an end in AD180, leading, ultimately to the fall of the Roman Empire. It seems that the Romans contributed some half a million tonnes of lead pollution to the atmosphere in that period; the f...

Well, it looks like the nascent bromance between Musk and Farage has already gone south on the whim of the capricious former South African egotist. What a pair of oxygen wasters: the planet's in enough strife without their using valuable and diminishing resources as it is. As to Musk's [why is it that I'm so tempted to call the guy 'Muskie'? Anyone that remembers the cartoon series Deputy Dawg will know to which character I refer] claim to be a major proponent and enabler of free speech via his bastardised X platform; why is it that he routinely cancels anyone that disagrees with his frankly deranged Weltanschauung. But then again, I suppose, he's the boss, and woe betide the naysayers, what ho? He's just a child in billionaire's raiment; much like infant emperors of past history, elevated to authority before their time: but in his case, there have been no regents acting in loco parentis: his - likewise for that matter, his passkey to the executive bath...

I was having a pint of John Willie Lee's excellent bitter at the Anglesey Arms in Menai Bridge this afternoon, on my way to pick Jane up from work in Bangor - a circuitous route, admittedly, but a good pint's a good pint, all said and done - and set to perusing Julian Hollands railway miscellany "More Amazing and Extraordinary Railway Facts". I do love a good miscellany: they make great dipping material and go particularly well with a pint or two! What I hadn't realised, and I guess many others might not also, was that the Beeching report that led to the axing of the bulk of Britain's branch lines in the middle of the last century, eviscerating a network that had been built to service communities across the UK, no matter how small or far-flung, was not the only report he produced. There was slated to be a Beeching 2.0; not so much an axe this time, but rather a guillotine. The power of the road lobby was just getting into full stride in the 50s and 60s and the...

In pondering what the bejesus to write about this afternoon [as usual], I've been casting around the various news sources that infest Fairview Heights from time to time for ideas. One of the key issues at the moment, of course, is Donald Trump and his impending re-admission to the highest office in the world: one of the scariest thoughts imaginable for millions of Americans, let alone those of us in the rest of the world who will inevitably suffer at the hands of the Orange One, politically and economically. There's a couple of his intended policies/directions that will be pivotal on a global level. The first, of course is sanctions. The second is his absurd alleged intention to make cryptocurrency a federal reserve asset. The former, particularly with regard to China, is weird enough, as he seeks to alienate the world's global manufacturing and trading giant from the US economy: it will be interesting [and disturbing in equal measure, no doubt] to see how he intends to re...

There's so many things that deserve comment today, from rollbacks to social care and poorly thought-out net-zero policies, to Trump and crypto, to Musk, etc. etc., but I'm going to leave that for another day as I'm ranted out. And so, in true OFaH tradition, I leave you for today with a lazy cooking post. Pictured, my first foray into cooking steak in an air-fryer. I also cooked the potatoes in the thing, as well. The sauce was an improvised construct of whatever stuff was left over from Christmas: half an onion languishing in the veg basket, a small [tiny] bottle of prosecco, the remnants of a chicken stock cube, boiling water and - inspiration! - a teaspoon of beef extract. Whilst the steak was cooked to perfection; medium-rare, of course, it lacked the char that comes from pan or griddle frying, which to my book is one of the delights of cooked meat: the very stuff that the health paranoids throw their arms in the air about. If you don't eat red meat that often - and...

I guess one of the most important questions we ask as adolescents, when meeting a potential friend and/or boyfriend/girlfriend; or, perhaps in seeking out what tribe we might belong to, is: "What music d'ya like?". It certainly was the case in my youth, and has probably always been [and maybe always will be] the case, as the discovery of music has been central to the process of growing up and finding one's way through the hormonal maelstrom of one's teenage years and on into adulthood. Let's face it, we all - or most of us, at any rate - need a soundtrack to our lives. Which brings me to open-mindedness with regard to music(s). It's something that has been in the background of my own personal musical journey from a pretty early age: nine or ten years of age, I'd guess, when I discovered my love of [particularly] guitar music. I loved pretty much every form of it from a very early stage in my youth, to be honest, but at the point that I moved schools in...

New Year once again: true to my prediction in yesterday's post, I was sound asleep by midnight, and even missed the sounds of the brave souls out in the teeth of the storm outside letting off fireworks, because I was listening to music on headphones. I'll post a piece about the album [and its genre] I was listening to, presently. However, suffice it to say, I eventually woke from the rigour mortis of dream-sleep at around half-past-eight this morning, with my sole thoughts turned to getting a brew on [that's a pot of tea to the uninitiated: nothing to do with beer], which I duly did, unwinding the cramp of sleep and jolting my brain into semi-action with the tannin and caffeine hit of 2:1 Assam to Earl Grey tea [loose tea, naturally], as is my normal custom. I used to favour a lovely Rwandan tea, blended with safflower, which Marks & Spencer used to sell, but unfortunately no longer do, but there you go: Rwanda is better known these days as an intrinsic part of the dodg...