Flights of the butterfly

  • THE TALE OF THE STAG HEAD OAK

    Once upon a time, there was a young oak tree. She lived in a hedgerow and hoped, one day, to grow tall and strong, like her friend in the next field. But, one day, she got sick. Maybe it was tree flu, I don’t know. But she was very ill. And she “died”. Only, of…

  • JOKES

    Difficult to know where to begin. Looked at the paper this morning and thought I’d opened a jokebook by mistake. Bojo will tell the Covid Panto that he delayed lockdown “amid concerns that people would tire of the restrictions and flout the rules”. Shorthand for “he thought they would be as greedy, self-centred and stupid…

  • FAKE NEWS

    This is from a posting on YouTube, by “New Newspaper Today”, titled “Italy now! A snowstorm with terrible winds buried cars and houses disappeared in the Aosta valley”. It seems somewhat strange that road signs in an Italian location are in English. How very cosmopolitan the Italians are. And how unfortunate for these tourists who,…

  • ISRAEL, GAZA AND FREE SPEECH

    The law does not allow me to express my opinion on this or any other matter. Consider this: You are asked a panel of ten questions and you have promised to answer honestly. Questions 1 – 8 are  no problem. But, your honest answer to question 9 is proscribed by law. Therefore you do not…

  • The Rules of the Railway

    Once upon a time, a very long time ago when I was a little boy, I had an electric train set. My Dad built it and it was beautiful. It had scenery and a tunnel. I hope my Dad knows now that I appreciate all the effort he went to. But there were problems. The…

  • The Onion

    The universe is like an onion. Well, not exactly, but there are aspects of it that are definitely onionesque. I am referring to the solving of problems. From this point of view there is a property of the universe that seems like an onion. Trying to solve the mysteries of the universe, from our first…

  • Facts

    Ah, facts. Don’t we just love ‘em? Here’s a fun fact: there aren’t any. Well, not in Realworld anyway. The other day, a young man, nice but arrogant, told me something. He said it was a fact. He said it more than once and said it emphatically. Facts do exist, but only in somewhere like…

  • Light and stuff

    It was the day of the Big Bang and we were all very excited. I had decided to surf the leading edge of the expansion( nod to Dark Star). I had borrowed my Mum’s ironing board and prepared a package of sandwiches and a flask of coffee. I also had one of those revolving yellow…

  • Reporting

    Once upon a time, a self-styled environmentalist was interviewed on a current affairs programme. He has, or had, supposedly, a house on the main road through the middle of Wales. He complained about “motorcyclists from all over the country racing along the road at night at 100mph”. The interviewer gushed, emoted and cooed sympathetically. But…

  • Ockham’s Razor

    We need to get this out of the way before we do any complicated stuff. William of Ockham (1287 – 1347) The trouble with Ockham’s razor is that it’s a two-edged blade and you can get a nasty cut if you start slashing about with it indiscriminately. There are many ways of stating, or misquoting,…