Stunning!

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Yesterday afternoon I was treated to the theatre by one of my sons. Not just any old theatre but a stunning three-act performance of an epic Japanese Kabuki play at Sadlers Wells.

The 46-strong, Tokyo-based Shochiku Company presented a two-and-a-half hour taster of the 18th-century drama, ‘Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees’, in which the mistress of the fugitive General Yoshitsune, fleeing from his brother who has established himself as Shogun, is barred from following him. She, Shizuka, is protected by a shape-shifting companion, Tadanobu, a mythical fox in disguise, who journeys with her through the cherry-blossom strewn landscape of Mount Yoshino.

The star of the show was Ebizo Ichikawa XI, who is a direct descendant of the 17th century Ichikawa acting dynasty. He took on the dual role of Yoshitsune’s loyal retainer and the enigmatic fox spirit, performing to a most wonderful scenic, vocal and musical background.

Kabuki theatre is highly stylised and ritualistic, and yesterday’s play was one of the theatre’s three most favourites which normally runs to five acts. The actors, beautifully dressed in traditional costumes were just staggering in their variety of moods, expressions, grace and, at times, their agility.

Maybe Kabuki theatre is not everyone’s cup of tea, but what I saw yesterday was just breathtaking and a tremendous Sunday treat.
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Requiescat In Pace?

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Rest in peace. That is what we are supposed to do when we finally shed this mortal coil. But not necessarily if you are a saint.

Saints are constantly being prayed to for assistance for all sorts of problems and situations. Some of them are sometimes exposed to the public gaze, and some of them even get to be paraded around towns now and again. Yet others, if their bodies remain incorrupt as saints bodies are supposed to, even get to have a medical exam.

Take Saint Rose of Viterbo, the 13th century virgin who at the age of just three raised her aunt from the dead before going on for a short reclusive life of holiness and penance. The saint, who lies in the monastery of Viterbo near Rome and is paraded around the town each year, has recently been X-rayed to discover whether or not she died of tuberculosis as originally thought.

Researchers found, however, that the saint, whose feast day is 4 September, was most likely killed by a blood clot in the heart; Cantrell’s syndrome, causing defects in the heart and surrounding tissues. You’d have thought that this would have been the end of the matter, but researchers say that at some point in the future they might be able to analyse her heart with ‘more modern technologies’.

Requiescat in pace is what I say.
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Clear Enough?

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A Southwark Crown Court judge has ruled that the three former MPs and one peer charged with expenses fraud are not covered by parliamentary privilege as they had claimed.

The judge said the argument that submitting an expenses form was part of the proceedings of parliament, and therefore protected by privilege, was akin to saying that the coin used in a slot machine was part of its machinery. There was no ‘logical, practical or moral justification’ for the four men using parliamentary privilege to prevent prosecution, he said, adding that there was no legal justification for it either.

That judgement seems to me to be not only very sensible but as clear as a bell.
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Should Have Asked Mickey!

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Most owners will attest to the intelligence of their dogs, large or small. In our case, we have two small dogs - Ollie, a Jack Russell terrier, and Mickey, a Yorkshire terrier. Each has their own endearing personality and each of them know just how to manipulate us when they wish.

It is Mickey who is, perhaps, the most manipulative of our two pets. At the same time it seems to me that he operates rather as some sort of impatient automaton.

For example, when we return from our twice-daily walks, he will loudly demand his doggie treat. Midmorning when we have coffee, and midafternoon when we settle for a cuppa, he demands another one. At around five o’clock he gets very impatient and voluble for his evening supper of a saucer of chicken. And so on.

To attempt to deviate from the strict routine he has imposed on us turns him into a noisy impatient bundle of fur. For such a little dog, the noise that he can create in the house if his demands are not met has to be heard to be believed. The curious thing is that if he is offered a titbit at other times he will usually turn his nose up at them, so fixed is the routine in his mind.

Ollie, on the other hand, is possibly one of the most patient dogs we have had. He knows Mickey’s routine very well and merely waits quietly for the treats to be handed out. He is much less manipulative than Mickey, but even he knows that if he feels like a treat he has only to come to where I am sitting and stare quietly at me for something to be eventually offered.

Our sons say that our two dogs rule our house, and we have never sought to dispute this for clearly that is the situation. I guess that, despite television programmes such as The Dog Whisperer’ which exhort us to treat dogs as animals and not humans, most dog-owners are as soft as butter when it comes to their pets.

The routine of our two dogs was brought to mind this morning by a report from the University of South Australia in Adelaide which has shown that pet dogs are less intelligent than their forebears, the wolf, or of Australia’s wild dogs, the dingo.

The researchers set up a problem-solving test in which, to reach a bowl of food behind a fence, the animals had to move away from the food, pass through a swing door and then come back on themselves. The wolves and dingoes passed the test in twenty seconds. but the domestic dogs failed altogether. They just pawed uselessly at the the fence and barked out of frustration, thus proving that they were utterly reliant on humans.

They should have asked Mickey. When it comes to food, he’d have beaten the other animals hands down with Ollie closely following in his wake!
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Back To Work

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Yesterday saw the last of the series of five-day strikes by some members of British Airways’ cabin crew which has disrupted the airline’s business and inconvenienced thousands of passengers. Now Unite, the union involved, is considering balloting its members for further strike action.

The dispute arises from proposed changes in the airline’s staffing levels and working conditions and the sticking point seems to centre around the withdrawal of travel concessions for those who went on strike.

Though discounted travel is certainly a perk enjoyed by those employed in the travel industry, there must be few companies that give free travel, and it is a surprise to learn that some BA staff members actually rely on free travel to get themselves to work.

Against a background of rising operating costs and falling passenger loads, British Airways surely have no choice but to try to reduce their own expenses. Haven't the strikers realised this?
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Who Is Competent To Judge?

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The Health Secretary has announced that hospitals will suffer financial penalties if patients are readmitted as emergencies within thirty days of being discharged. They are also now required to look after patients’ health and well-being for up to a month after their discharge.

It seems that hospitals are currently paid for each admission, including readmissions. The new plan is supposed to ensure that patients are not prematurely discharged in order to free up beds.

This seems all well and good on paper but it seems to me that much depends upon a doctor’s opinion as to whether or not a patient is ready to be discharged. In that respect, nothing has changed.

The question is: Who is competent to decide whether or not a patient that has been readmitted within thirty days was not fit to be discharged in the first place?
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A Small Price

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The TaxPayers’ Alliance has disclosed that the 218 MPs who were either defeated or who stepped down at the General Election last month are entitled to ‘golden goodbye’ payments of around £10.5 millions.

That, it seems to me, is a very small price to pay to get rid of that last lot!
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