Thought for today:
"When I look at Stone Henge today, I often wonder if the construction is some great April Fool's prank that our ancestors have played on generations who follow. I ask myself, how any human force was powerful enough 4,000 years ago, to position in perfect balance, such heavy stone, one upon another? For all the public know, the top stones bridging space between the others may be nothing more than some great conspiracy to fool the gullible public. How do we know it is stone dating back four millennium? Just because it looks weighty does not of itself denote substance! It could easily be constructed of reinforced cardboard or some other light material which has been superglued and weathered to look in place. Let's face it, we are surely not the first age to have lived among those who love to fool and those who are so easily deceived.
Do you remember those days when English men, women and children didn't have to pay in order to see and touch their heritage. I can recall revisiting the site of Stone Henge in the 1980s and finding that all access to touch its stone had been restricted. It was now open to the public, 'at a distance and a monetary cost.' I recall feeling so rebellious and miffed about this at the time that I refused to pay and still managed to get on site and touch the stone before the police could be called. In fact I even placed some chewing gum behind one, just to let the folks know in another 4,000 years that I'd been there. Can you imagine the headlines in the next day's newspapers had I been caught? 'West Yorkshire Probation Officer sticks gum on historic stone!'
While on the subject of gum, I also put some chewing gum on the underside of my school desk at the age of six and also under Walpole's desk inside 'Number 10' during my fiftieth year, when the Majors kindly invited me and my wife for tea in their private quarters and gave us an escorted tour of the famous house. That was an afternoon I shall not forget so easily. After Norma introduced us to her husband, the PM broke off whatever he was doing and took us into the Cabinet Room. Minutes later as I looked around the room in which so many momentous decisions had been made across the centuries since Robert Walpole had been the first British Prime Minister in 1721, John Major noticed my eyes upon the PM's chair in the centre of the cabinet table. He then invited me to sit down in the seat of power, which I gladly did. Then he spent half an hour with us in his apartment upstairs, talking freely as though we had known each other years, while Norma served tea and biscuits.
During that cold February afternoon as I drank tea from the cup of the privileged, John Major (whom I considered to be a nice but somewhat less significant PM than Thatcher who'd preceded him), asked, 'Are you and Fiona warm enough, Bill?' I knew that it would be highly unlikely that I'd ever be invited to 'number 10' again and I did not want the opportunity to pass without making the PM fully aware of my feelings. I politely dipped my Garibaldi biscuit into my cup of Earl Grey tea and replied, 'I’m fine thank you, Prime Minister, but the poor miners of Yorkshire will most certainly feel the cold this winter since you’ve closed down all the mines and thrown them on the scrap heap!'
Had I not used my opportunity and said something about the way in which the Yorkshire miners had been betrayed, my deceased father, who'd spent his earlier years working in the Yorkshire coal mines, would have turned in his grave. (Please see http://www.fordefables.co.uk/theres-nowt-stranger-than-folk.html regarding a fuller account of my visit to 'Number 10' in 1992).
I've done some wicked things in my time, but have been relieved to discover that all the nice girls love a bad boy, providing he turns out to be a good man. Isn't it odd how truth often seems far stranger and harder to believe than fiction.
Have you ever left anything behind to let future generations know that you'd been there, and I don't mean the product of a one night stand?" William Forde: April 1st, 2016.
"When I look at Stone Henge today, I often wonder if the construction is some great April Fool's prank that our ancestors have played on generations who follow. I ask myself, how any human force was powerful enough 4,000 years ago, to position in perfect balance, such heavy stone, one upon another? For all the public know, the top stones bridging space between the others may be nothing more than some great conspiracy to fool the gullible public. How do we know it is stone dating back four millennium? Just because it looks weighty does not of itself denote substance! It could easily be constructed of reinforced cardboard or some other light material which has been superglued and weathered to look in place. Let's face it, we are surely not the first age to have lived among those who love to fool and those who are so easily deceived.
Do you remember those days when English men, women and children didn't have to pay in order to see and touch their heritage. I can recall revisiting the site of Stone Henge in the 1980s and finding that all access to touch its stone had been restricted. It was now open to the public, 'at a distance and a monetary cost.' I recall feeling so rebellious and miffed about this at the time that I refused to pay and still managed to get on site and touch the stone before the police could be called. In fact I even placed some chewing gum behind one, just to let the folks know in another 4,000 years that I'd been there. Can you imagine the headlines in the next day's newspapers had I been caught? 'West Yorkshire Probation Officer sticks gum on historic stone!'
While on the subject of gum, I also put some chewing gum on the underside of my school desk at the age of six and also under Walpole's desk inside 'Number 10' during my fiftieth year, when the Majors kindly invited me and my wife for tea in their private quarters and gave us an escorted tour of the famous house. That was an afternoon I shall not forget so easily. After Norma introduced us to her husband, the PM broke off whatever he was doing and took us into the Cabinet Room. Minutes later as I looked around the room in which so many momentous decisions had been made across the centuries since Robert Walpole had been the first British Prime Minister in 1721, John Major noticed my eyes upon the PM's chair in the centre of the cabinet table. He then invited me to sit down in the seat of power, which I gladly did. Then he spent half an hour with us in his apartment upstairs, talking freely as though we had known each other years, while Norma served tea and biscuits.
During that cold February afternoon as I drank tea from the cup of the privileged, John Major (whom I considered to be a nice but somewhat less significant PM than Thatcher who'd preceded him), asked, 'Are you and Fiona warm enough, Bill?' I knew that it would be highly unlikely that I'd ever be invited to 'number 10' again and I did not want the opportunity to pass without making the PM fully aware of my feelings. I politely dipped my Garibaldi biscuit into my cup of Earl Grey tea and replied, 'I’m fine thank you, Prime Minister, but the poor miners of Yorkshire will most certainly feel the cold this winter since you’ve closed down all the mines and thrown them on the scrap heap!'
Had I not used my opportunity and said something about the way in which the Yorkshire miners had been betrayed, my deceased father, who'd spent his earlier years working in the Yorkshire coal mines, would have turned in his grave. (Please see http://www.fordefables.co.uk/theres-nowt-stranger-than-folk.html regarding a fuller account of my visit to 'Number 10' in 1992).
I've done some wicked things in my time, but have been relieved to discover that all the nice girls love a bad boy, providing he turns out to be a good man. Isn't it odd how truth often seems far stranger and harder to believe than fiction.
Have you ever left anything behind to let future generations know that you'd been there, and I don't mean the product of a one night stand?" William Forde: April 1st, 2016.
