Wales Leads British Olympic Effort
So Nicole Cooke, carrying the Welsh Dragon high, cycles to a gold medal and sets the standard for the British Olympic team.
Meanwhile, at home, far too many people are adopting a cynical, world weary attitude. Shame on you!
Barbara Ellen, sexy new columnist at The Observer says “Call off 2012, Beijing Is Boring”. Well, she may be appreciable eye candy (useful for all those soirees columnists just have to attend) but she is resorting to the oldest trick in the journo’s book – if you can’t say something sensible then slag it off.
More disturbing is the pub talk, the man on the Clapham omnibus who also claims to be bored.
Listen killjoys, cynics, non-Welsh Brits, in a fortnight’s time there will be a tear welling up in your eye. You’ll want to and, undeservingly, will, feel part of it. Your patriotic spirit will be reborn and you’ll be screaming as the next British runner, cyclist or egg and spooner takes gold.
The Olympics are a wonderful, inspiring celebration of mankind. I remember them throughout my childhood and I am cheering for our boys and girls from the very beginning. The rest of you are welcome to the party however late you arrive.
Russia Invades Georgia
So just as they chose to invade Afghanistan on Christmas Day, the Russians have chosen to invade Georgia on the day the China Olympics open.
It is by no means certain why they choose such an occasion. Perhaps it is to draw attention to the event while the world has an international focus. It may actually serve to emphasise the message they are sending by this action. On the other hand, it may be that Moscow hopes our attentions are distracted by the Olympics and it will
be better able to get away with this sort of conduct now than at any other time.
Russia is asserting its might for its strategic interests in the same way as the USA does. There will be many innocent lives lost. There will be massively increased profits for Russian and Western arms manufacturers.
Ultimately Georgia’s destiny must be to be truly independent so Russia’s action can only fail and should be abandoned immediately. On the other hand there is much talk of agitation in the area by the USA, possibly CIA warmongering.
I fear the die is cast – thousands are going to die. Perhaps it will continue until November when Barrack Obama becomes President-elect and insists on peace.
The worry is that we are all playing with high stakes. Last year Georgia openly cooperated with the CIA to arrest a Russian trying to sell bomb-grade uranium…
Riz Lateef
Sorry, can’t resist this. It always used to send me into fits of giggles at my own stupid joke when I lived in London. I’d forgotten the lady existed until she was on the national news the other night…
She’s been nicking them skins again!!
Walking The Dog 9
High summer. A blanket of thick grey cloud and a force four or five south-easterly blasts a fine drizzle into my face. We’re checking out the aftermath of yesterday’s invasion and the pleasant surprise is that there’s no evidence at all of the drama that was played out near the Langstone bridge.
The world, his wife and about a thousands grockles invaded our space yesterday all in search of a dying whale. Actually there were probably about a hundred turning the sea wall in front of Langstone millpond into a grandstand. It’s a well known fact though that one grockle causes a disturbance in the Force equivalent to 10 locals so the initial, instictive estimate is more accurate.
Sid, the harbourmaster, came into The Bluebell at lunchtime on Thursday and relayed the news. I took a walk up there with the dogs out of interest and the fantasy of a five figure photography fee. To be honest, I don’t understand the fuss. I know that Captain Kirk and Mr Spock have helped to endow whales with mystic, spiritual qualities but I see more interesting, exciting and tragic things nearly every day in Chichester harbour. When the grockles arrived the following day I don’t think one of them turned round and noticed the 30 odd little egrets roosting in the trees just a few yards behind them. The television crews certainly didn’t.
The entire area was in gridlock. Glorious Goodwood and the whale turned our local paradise into an extension of the M25. Television crews and photographers with lenses as long as my arm clogged our roads and pathways. In the harbour itself, massive RIBs, the inshore lifeboat, helicopters and even a police boat added to the mainly manmade drama and the huge cost of it all. All credit to them though because this morning when I walked past the millpond where yesterday there was even a tent erected for the press and the multiple veterinary, wildlife and eco professionals, there wasn’t a single scrap of litter to be seen.
The same morning that the sorry whale paddled up the channel between Thorney and Hayling, Capone, Carla and I were on the other side of Thorney, in our latest favourite spot, waist deep in the saltmarsh grasses. Our friend the heron came into sight and as we sidled up towards him I was delighted to see that his mate was there. My longest lens is a mere few inches so, as best as one can with two dogs squabbling over a stick, I tried to get closer.
The birds took off and escaped me but as we reached the limit of that direction where a vicious barbed wire fence hinders any further progress, I saw them both on the side of the river bank. Then I saw double, for perhaps 60 or 70 yards in front of me were four herons casually watching the water and thinking about breakfast.
This was a truly remarkable sight. Much more interesting to me than a enormous, sad mammal lying in the mud and I managed to record it at the limit of my zoom lens. This was my scoop, captured in glorious Kodak colour while the grandstand roared and cheered and applauded.
Karadzic Faces The Music
It was heartwarming to see Karadzic looking frightened and vulnerable before the very dignified Judge Alphons Orie at the war crimes tribunal. We must now grant him undeserved due process before he is sentenced, undoubtedly to life imprisonment.
I am deeply and fundamentally opposed to the death penalty but I will glady make exceptions for subhuman monsters like Karadzic and Mladic as the Iraqis did for Saddam Hussein. It would be good to see Karadzic twitching and jerking at the end of a rope. In fact, why not spare him the drop and let him strangle slowly.
Jimi, Carlos, Eric – Look To Your Laurels
I saw this boy on BBC South Today. Incredible!
Christine Bleakley – The One Show
Where else in the world is there anyone as consistently, ever-increasingly sexy and gorgeous as Christine?
What future is there for those of us who are too old, too ugly and too hopeless?
A proud Welsh, Punjabi, Sikh girl
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7529694.stm
It moved me to see how Welsh pride and hwyl transcends race and religion as Sarika Singh emerged from the High Court and was determined to say “I am a proud Welsh, Punjabi Sikh girl”
Walking The Dog 8
If I was to say that I bumped into Capone on the foreshore posing as a Japanese tourist you’d say I’d flipped. Were I to propose that some 30 exotic herons were nesting at Langstone millpond you might think I was exaggerating. To say that the maize in the field next to my house grew a foot in the space of one humid Saturday…
Well it’s all true. Unfortunately, my greedy anticipation of some innocent scrumping in the sweetcorn field has been thwarted. A previous pilferer assures me that it’s cattle feed and the more you boil the cobs the harder they become. It does amaze me though, the way this stuff reaches for the sky. Planted in May as two or three inch shoots it now averages a foot above my head and, yes, on that very hot and humid Saturday it put on a full twelve inches.
Behind Langstone millpond I counted 28 little egrets nesting in the broadleaved trees. 
This feels more like something that you might see in the African bush but there they are, distracting me as Carla’s beady eyes focus on the coots and mallards taunting her from the pond. Little egrets were unseen in the UK until 20 years ago but now they seem to be taking over Chichester harbour due, we are told, to the effects of global warming. I wonder when the ostriches and flamingoes are going to arrive?
As for Capone’s antics well I wish I’d had a camera to record them. It was in the leg pocket of my trousers, the strap dangling carelessly.
As Capone put in another withering Ieuan Evans style run down the nearside wing he managed to pass his head through the camera strap. The pocket was ripped clean off my trousers and as he felt the weight he came to a shuddering halt and turned back to look at me, my camera hanging round his neck. He thought he was in trouble but not for long!
We’ve discovered a truly magical new walk recently. It’s as close to virgin territory as you can get on the south coast. I’m pretty sure that there’s no other humans have passed there in many months or even years, perhaps not since some maintenance work was last carried on the Thorney Island airfield approach lights. Judging from their sorry condition that’s been a very, very long time. It’s on the right side of the MOD boundary so I don’t think I’m in danger of being shot on sight. It’s saltmarsh with acres of waist high grasses and patches of damp but parched and cracked mud that sounds hollow as you walk across it. The dogs thunder across it sounding like a herd of buffalo and there’s a pair of herons, huge cormorants and shelducks always in the same place, vastly 
offended by our invasion. Walking here is an overwhelmingly soothing experience. Cares and worries just evaporate and I find myself returning to the car with a wide, involuntary and peaceful smile.
Only three days after that sweltering Saturday the temperature has dropped 10 degrees and out on the foreshore under thunderous skies there must be another 10 degrees of wind chill. My two favourite dogs are about 40 yards out squabbling over a stick in the heavy chop that’s thrashing in from Hayling.
Rain or shine, calm or wind, it’s just perfect out there.
A Plug For The Bluebell
Before I am outblogged by a blogger, I have to put in my plug, plugs and more plugs for The 
Bluebell Inn in Emsworth. Until now, mentioned only once in Walking The Dog 2, I have certainly been remiss in failing to acknowledge the important part that The Bluebell plays in my life in Emsworth. I am, after all, desperate for a free roast beef and horseradish baguette.
I am not a pub person. Or, at least, I wasn’t until I started frequenting The Bluebell but even here I confess that having walked in in the evening I have walked straight out again after discovering a tribe of boorish, beered-up twenty and thirty-somethings.
During the day though, The Bluebell is a delight. It is only right that I share the responsibility of propping up the bar with Owain and Sid because otherwise it might fall down and where would Giles and Chris and Nicole be then?
Tom, the former landlord, who I hold very responsible for the genial atmosphere that prevails is presently recuperating at home. My sympathy for him is, of course, not at all compromised by the three weeks he spent in Cuba with his 19 year old girlfriend immediately before his health scare.
Capone and Carla are made very welcome and I am considering starting a fan club for them as potentially a far more lucrative business than anything else I have ever done!
It is no exaggeration at all, though, with or without a roast beef and horseradish baguette, to say that the food at The Bluebell is exceptional. I have never been less than delighted with anything from a pot of cockles to a baked sea bream. They even do the best frozen chips in town!
Last week I travelled to Dorset and, just north of Weymouth, called into The Old Ship Inn at Upwey. There I selected, for £5.95, a ham and tomato baguette which, when it arrived, was probably a fraction longer than the word itself and “filled” with carefully crazy-paved supermarket ham (we have to go metric here because two millimetres thick doesn’t work in imperial) and a couple of slivers of tomato. That, combined with ten crisps and two slices of red onion, made me appreciate what I have at home.
The Bluebell does not even deserve comparison with that. Nowhere will you find finer food at better value and if I’m offered a roast beef and horseradish baguette for saying so, I will, for propriety’s sake (but very reluctantly) give it to my dogs.
Peter Reynolds 