Concert for Corpus Christi 2022

The front of the church is the perfect setting for the Corpus Christi concert. However, it is not the best setting to get good photographs. The main lighting is a large floodlight behind the band. The floodlights at the front are too far away to reach the band. 

On the plus side though, the open air setting is OK for getting a sound recording as long as you set the recorder close enough to avoid the crowd noise but not so close that you miss the instruments at the sides. 

My photographs are in an album in the sidebar and here is my recording of the music. 

The heat wave continues

 We like it hot but not too hot!

Very odd

 We knew that celebrations for Corpus Christi had to be cancelled during the pandemic. However, this year we expected them to resume. 

The odd thing is that there are has been no publicity on Facebook or on the town's website about this. 

Luckily, my friend Christopher messaged me on Whats App last night to find out if we would be able to go to the concert for Corpus tonight at 10:00pm. We are really glad he did because otherwise we would have missed it. For those of you who are interested, it will take place in the Plaza de la Constitucion. 

Now we are wondering if the procession following mass on Sunday night will take place. 

Shoulders required

 

Hurrah

We enjoyed the Coches Locos event when it was part of the Fiesta programme. 

To be fair, it had run its course and there were fewer participants in the latter years. 

Hopefully, people will be inspired by its return and come up with some novel ideas for their vehicles.

 

You can keep the bills

 Before I went to college, I worked at the Post Office in Penistone for a year. Then I worked there again each holiday to keep me in money. 

The regular postmen and women told me tales of one postman who used to dump letters on his round to save him the trouble of delivering them. He was caught out when a cache of letters were found in a hedge. 

It seems that a postman here in Alicante was doing the same thing but on an industrial scale.

From Monday to Friday, he clocked in at the central post office in Alicante, picking up bags and bags of mail to be delivered.

But  what the former postman did next is now under investigation after more than 20,000 undelivered letters dating back to 2012 and 2013 were found crammed into bin bags at his home.

The discovery came after the 62-year-old sold his house in Biar, a town of about 3,600 people at the foot of the mountains near Alicante. When a construction crew showed up to renovate the newly purchased house, they found rubbish bags scattered throughout.

After the man ignored repeated pleas to empty the house, the builders began opening the bags. What they found were stacks of sealed letters, bills and frayed official correspondence dating back a decade.

Police suspicions swiftly fell on the former owner of the house. In 2013, the post office had opted not to renew his temporary contract, citing what police described as “irregularities” that had plagued his delivery route in his year as a postman.

The man was  arrested by the Guardia Civil last week and accused of “infidelity in the safekeeping of documents”.

Skin of his teeth

 The vote of no confidence result means that Boris Johnson has survived as Prime Minister. 

Johnson says that the government should now “move on” following a “convincing” and “decisive” result. Really!!

“We’re going to bash on,” said the prime minister. “As a result of this decision by the parliamentary party, which I welcome, we have a conclusion to something which has been dragging on for far too long and we have the ability now to unite, deliver and get on with the people’s priorities, and that is what we are going to do.”

The problem is that 148 of his MPs voted against him. In order to move on, Johnson will need to convince them that they made a mistake -  that they should now place their trust in his leadership and back him. Of course, he also has to convince the electorate that he is the right person to continue leading the country. 

Recent polling suggests that Johnson has gone from hero to zero since the 2019 election when voters were sold on his "get Brexit done" mantra. 

Not only is Brexit not actually done, there have been a catalogue of other mistakes, lies and U turns that people will not easily forgive and forget. 

In the early days of Covid, Johnson refused to accept the seriousness of it. Many of us will recall his notion that all we had to do was wash our hands to the tune of "Happy Birthday" and all would be well. He then allowed his Health Secretary to send elderly patients back to care homes resulting in needless deaths. He condoned the awarding of dodgy contracts to friends and family and he backed his advisor's lying excuse for his trip to Durham and his excursion to Barnard Castle to "test his eyesight". 

His backing of Owen Patterson, his refusal to sack Pritti Patel when she was found guilty of bullying her staff, his refusal to sack Matt Hancock after video evidence showed he broke his own rules. Even his support for Gavin Williamson after the exam result debacle showed that Johnson favours loyalty over everything else. 

Then of course we had funding for the redecoration of his flat  he neglected to come clean about. There are also issues about his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri that need to be resolved.  

Finally we come to "partygate" which Johnson thinks had nothing to do with him in spite of being fined 

Of course his admirers will point to the things he got right like the vaccine rollout but do those outweigh all the rest of the lies and misdeeds he has perpetrated over the years? 

Johnson may well hope to win those dissenters in his party and the public around - we shall see. I am not sure I would want to continue in post knowing that so many thought I was unfit to lead. I can only conclude that Johnson must have enormous self belief and the skin of a rhinoceros. 

Could it be crunch time

 After months of speculation when some MPs said they had sent in letters to Sir Graham Brady, Chair of the 1922 Committee, only to say they had withdrawn them because the timing was not right, the magic number of 54 letters has been reached and a vote will take place tonight between 6 and 8pm. 

In order for the vote to be carried, 180 of the Tory MPs will have to vote against the PM.. As we might expect, most of his ministers have already voiced support because if Johnson goes, they will likely go with him In fact there are said to be 150 MPs who are indebted to the Prime Minister so they too will probably vote for him. 

The likelihood is therefore that the Prime Minister will survive but of course he will be deeply wounded. Although, as things stand, there cannot be another vote of no confidence for a year, that can be changed. If the two by elections taking place later this month prove to be disasters for the Tory Party, then MPs will be fearful for their jobs at the next General Election.

Even those who show support and point to Johnson's achievements cannot deny that he has been economical with the truth on so many occasions. There is an interesting web site that catalogues the Johnson's illustrious past. 

By far the best option would be for Johnson to resign but nobody believes that is going to happen. 

Back to the bad old ways

 To be honest, Britain never did fully change over to a metric system of measurement. Distances on roads are still measured in miles and beer is still sold in pints. People refer to miles per hour. and miles per gallon even though they buy petrol in litres. 

Those of us who were at school before metrication was even thought of still have nightmares about some of  the units of measure we were taught.

We had to learn about furlongs, chains, rods, perches, roods and acres. Damn, it took all of our mental capacity to calculate in inches, feet, yards and miles let alone cope with these quaint extras. 

Then we had to master volume - gills,  pints, gallons, quarts, pecks and bushels. 

Weight brought us in contact with ounces, pounds, stones, hundredweights and tons. 

Currency was no better with pounds, shillings and pence added to which we had half crowns, florins, guineas etc. I remember one teacher who delighted in setting mental maths tests where you had to calculate how many three penny bits there were in a given number of guineas. 

Those who followed had an easier time of it and maths teachers gave a huge sigh of  relief. They still had to contend with 60 seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour etc but at least every other measurement was sensibly metric. 

Now, it seems that the Prime Minister wants to bring back imperial units to the UK. Not to replace the metric units but to be used alongside them if people so wish. 

Imagine if you go to the market and one stall sells apples by the kilogram and an other sells by the pound - no problem you can do the conversion in your head to see which is the better value. 

Of course, if you are a company  selling to the EU, you will still have to use metric units. So you could end up with two systems for your goods - one for Britain and one for the EU. You'll also need some imperial scales alongside your metric ones. 

Sorry Mr Johnson, I cannot see any way how this will improve people's lives in Britain any more than issuing blue passports did or putting crowns on beer glasses will. 

A litany of shame

 After months of waiting, the much anticipated report by Sue Gray has been published. 

The contents will have been read by the world who will now form their own opinions of what went on in the seat of UK Government during the Covid crisis.

None of it makes for good reading. It is a most shameful account of behaviour in the so called Mother or Parliaments. 

Even in normal times, when there were no rules about mixing and parties, the account of what went on would be an absolute disgrace. That these parties took place during lockdowns when the rules forbade such mixing just adds to the shame.  

The Prime Minister was at many of these parties even if it was only for a brief time. He had the opportunity to shut them down but didn't. Rather than that, it seems that he encouraged them. By his own admission, he thought it was his duty to congratulate staff and join with them to celebrate staff who were leaving. What did it matter that the rest of the country had to stick strictly to the rules, they could not have leaving parties or wine on Fridays. 

After he had done his "bit" the PM claims to have gone back to his office totally unaware of what ensued at the gatherings he had just attended. Clearly, he could not hear what was going on next to his own flat. Nor did he notice the piles of empty bottles littered around the place in the mornings, the wine cooler brought in and the state of the garden including his son's broken swing. 

There were no parties, no rules were broken, there was nothing to see as far as he was concerned. It's just a pity that most of the country and the rest of the world don't see it that way.  

And now he asks us all to move on. He's made an apology so let us forget the whole sorry business and get on with wrecking the country further.