March 6th - March 12th 2006
Sunday Chilled
Saturday Limehouse
Friday Yachting
Thursday Lowri Turner 3
Wednesday Lowri Turner 2
Tuesday bizarre sex lifestyle
Monday When's Easter
Sunday 12th March
Apologies for radio silence - not that you're unaccustomed to that on Blogadoon - but my central heating boiler, with predictable perversity, has selected this current cold snap in which to give up the ghost. So currently: if it can't be done from under the duvet, it don't get done.
Blogadoon will return just as soon as I have found the approximately one and a half grand needed to fund a new boiler or a laptop, i.e. somewhere around late 2008.
Saturday 11th March
Limehouse, Winter 2006
Friday 10th March
Closer investigation reveals that Prince Albert of Monaco didn't actually say "There's more to life than a yacht in your harbour".
Which doesn't make it any less true, of course.
Thursday 9th March
Supplemental to yesterday's entry:
It's been brought to my attention (thank you, Alex) that describing Lowrie Turner as 'very very pretty' is something of an anachronism. So substitute: "Lowri Turner has appeared on television, and has photographs of herself looking very very pretty. What did you expect? Rocket science?"
There's also a further, somewhat more serious, point that occurred to me at some point last night, concerning social reach.
In my experience - and I appreciate it only applies to a certain subset of cosmopolitan metropolitans - gay people get to mix on equal terms with an incredibly wide range of types and conditions. Off the top of my head, I know, or have known, judges and petty criminals, nurses and epidemiologists, property speculators and electricians, policemen and peers of the realm.
I doubt that there are many MPs with a range of acquaintance that democratic. Tom Driberg in his pomp, perhaps. But hello, Driberg was gay.
Wednesday 8th March
There were many names omitted from the list I cited when I spoke, last week, of "..free speech - a principle which, sadly, has to apply with similar force to David Irving, Ian Paisley, Fred Phelps and Abu Hamza as it does to stupid Danish cartoonists.."
Many of you, it seems, would like to have added the name of Lowri Turner, whose inane column in the Western Mail I wrote about in January.
Ms Turner, you'll recall, delivered herself of the opinion that gay men (no mention of gay women) can never make good party leaders or Prime Ministers because they do not face challenges associated with having children: "I have gay friends whose biggest headache is whether to have a black sofa or a cream one. If they have a child it is a dog."
I know nothing of Ms Turner other than what I can find on Wikipedia, an entry which indicates that what little fame she has is grounded on presenting low-rating reality shows on television: not a natural candidate for a pantheon that includes Ian Paisley and Abu Hamza, you might think.
Members of the Welsh Assembly disagree.
In a letter to her newspaper, the Assembly's equality committee has accused Ms Turner of promoting homophobia, and have called for the paper's editor to justify his decision to publish the column.
The editor, predictably enough, promptly called in aid Freedom of Speech, adding that "Columnists are, by their nature, there to write challenging, often controversial things and, while their views are not necessarily the views of the paper or its editor, I stand by their right to express them."
I suppose there is some possibility that his original statement was written in Welsh, in which case we can blame translation errors for the divergence from what he meant to say, which was: "Lowri Turner has appeared on television, and is very very pretty. What did you expect? Rocket science?"
Tuesday 7th March
Recent search requests at Blogadoon:
06 Mar, Mon, 13:15:14 Google: "EXTRAVAGANT sex"
06 Mar, Mon, 15:33:18 Google: hothouse blooms
06 Mar, Mon, 19:27:09 Google: fishnet Jockstrap
06 Mar, Mon, 21:18:09 Google: bizarre sex lifestyle
06 Mar, Mon, 21:18:32 Google: animals shagging animals
07 Mar, Tue, 02:25:08 Google: new christie minstrels
Monday 6th March
(Repeated, updated:)
When's Easter this year?
Easter Sunday?
Whenever.
The same as usual - the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. As agreed at the Council of Niacea. In 325 AD.
Remind me what an equinox is.
Equi-nox, equal night. When day and night are of equal length. Which only happens twice a year. Once in spring and once in autumn.
Vernal.
Spring.
So this year's Spring Equinox is..?
The same as usual - the day on which the earth is tilted towards the Sun such that the sun rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the west.
Which will be when, precisely?
Precisely? 18:26, March 20th.
GMT.
UT. Universal Time. GMT's a few nano-seconds out apparently.
But back to Easter. The Spring Equinox is March 20th...
This year it is. If you're an astronomer.
Which I'm not. Patently.
The planets don't move like clockwork. The Spring Equinox doesn't happen at the same time every year. But priests - modern priests - don't have time to keep popping out to measure the movements of the planets. So the Church fixed the date of the Spring Equinox as March 21st.
Which church?
Most churches. Although the Armenians...
Move on! Where does the moon come into it?
Spring, the season of rebirth - in the northern hemisphere at least - starts at the vernal equinox, yes?
I guess.
So if you're looking for a good night to celebrate the arrival of Spring, which night do you nominate?
The nearest Saturday after payday?
The first full moon following the vernal equinox.
Better lighting!
Amongst other things, yes. This year it's April 13th.
So Easter is April 13th this year?
No. That's a Thursday. Easter is April 16th this year. Sunday.
Because..
Because Christ rose from the grave on the Sabbath.
But the Jewish Sabbath starts on Friday evening!
Easter is not a Jewish holiday. They have Passover.
So when's Passover this year? No! Don't answer that.
......previous week
