The Final 'Just A Thought'

It is with great sadness that I am writing to tell you that my father Brian died on the 17th February 2011.
He enjoyed writing this blog to the last, and we hope that you enjoyed it. Alasdair (his son)

And What Then?

It is reported that American bioarchaeologists are going to ask for royal approval to exhume the body of King Henry VIII in an attempt to prove that a rare disease caused his ferocious temper.

It seems that ‘Kell-positive’ blood coupled with McLeod’s Syndrome in later life causes muscle weakness and even schizophrenic behaviour and may explain why a much-loved prince became a murderous tyrant king.

King Henry VIII is buried in St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle after he died in January 1547 at the age of 55. After a jousting accident in 1536 he became susceptible to an ulcerated leg injury, boils, violent mood swings and possibly untreated Type II diabetes.

Whether or not the researchers obtain royal approval for an exhumation of King Henry’s hair and bone DNA samples remains to be seen, though one feels it is unlikely the Queen will grant the request.

But what will it prove? That there is just another cause to the king’s behaviour? And if DNA samples prove that Kell-positive blood and McLeod’s Syndrome are involved in the case of Henry VIII? What then?

Will researchers be wanting to dig up every bad-tempered individual from the past to test them as well?

.

Thar She Blows!

The classic American novel, Moby Dick, was written by Herman Melville after he read about the dramatic events of the Essex whaling ship which had been rammed by a sperm whale and sunk in 1821.

After the Essex sank, Captain George Pollard and his crew drifted at sea without food and water for three months and even resorted to cannibalism before they were rescued. Captain Pollard went on to command the Two Brothers which two years later struck a coral reef in shallow waters off Hawaii, but eventually gave up whaling and became a night watchman in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Now the remains of the Two Brothers are thought to have been discovered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about 600 miles north-west of Honolulu. Though the wooden frame of the ship has disintegrated in the warm waters, harpoons, hooks and cauldrons to turn blubber into oil have helped to identify the ship.

I love these maritime stories. We can send rockets and men to the moon, but finding things at the bottom of the oceans often seems much more daunting. But here, after much research and effort, a tangible link to an American maritime classic has been uncovered.

.

Proud

Now and again Parliament does the right thing.

For they have now shown two fingers to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg who were insisting that British prisoners should have the vote.

It does not matter in this instance what MPs voted on and I can’t say that I have any sympathy for British prisoners who, in punishment for their crimes, have temporarily lost their freedom. The point is that our elected representatives have upheld Britain’s sovereign right to make its own decisions by defying demands from an unelected body consisting in some parts of people with no conception of our own ancient laws.

This may well be the ‘one small step’ to our Parliament paying more attention to what Strasbourg wants in comparison to what we as a sovereign nation wants. If so, what happened the other night is a very good thing.

.

Blimey!

Let’s suppose you are a fisherman and that you are sailing close to a busy cross-Channel lane off Beachy Head, near Eastbourne in East Sussex and you spot something floating on the water’s surface. Blimey - it’s a torpedo!

This is what happened to fisherman Peter Storey earlier in the week who, not knowing whether the torpedo was live or not, bravely tied a rope round it and brought it ashore into shallow water. Later, the Royal Navy Bomb Disposal team comes along and finds that the erxplosive charge had corroded and that the torpedo posed no threat to shipping.

Mr Storey was a brave man for he had no knowledge of explosives and one hopes that there is some sort of reward for removing something that may have been dangerous in a busy shipping lane.

On the other hand, it would be interesting to know how this torpedo ended up where it did seeing that it was confirmed as a British Mk 9 device which had a stamp stating it was last checked and tested in 1955.

Wow! Last tested? What happened to it in the meantime?

.

What A Good Idea!

An Indiana-based company called Little iApps has created the first application for the Apple iPhone giving guidance for Catholics who wish to return to the confessional.

The application, which has received its imprimatur from Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese, is not designed to be used in the confessional itself but gives a step-by-step guide to the sacrament to those who have been missing for a while. The app, costing just $1.99 in the Apple iTune Store gives password protected advice on performing the sacrament as well as a list of acts of contrition.

Unlike some of the things that come onto the market, this simple application seems to me to be an eminently good idea since anything that helps people along the path of spirituality is bound to be one.

.

‘Ain’t Science Wonderful?

Last July divers exploring a Baltic Sea shipwreck believed to have sunk some time between 1800 and 1830 found 145 bottles of what is believed to be the world’s oldest champagne.

On arrival at the surface only one bottle burst open and this proved to be a bottle of beer which experts are trying to recreate if there is enough living yeast or other microbial cells present in the remains.

It’s many years since I drank alcohol, but it would be wonderful to try a beer made to an authentic 200-year-old recipe.

.