Society

America discovered by Welsh 300 years before columbus

As is well known by our American cousins Prince Madog ap Owain Gwynedd heir of Owain discovered America around the year 1200 some 300 years before Columbus and founded a colony near to Alabama (although the exact location of the earlier settlements is in dispute some claiming Tennessee a more likely location). Recent radio carbon dating evidence, and the discovery of ancient Welsh style artefacts (clogs and a leak peeler) and inscriptions in the American Midwest have provided proof positive that Welsh explorers, under the leadership of Prince Madog ap Owain (sometimes put as ‘ap Meurig’ due to name confusion) set up colonies there. There is actually a dispute over when exactly Prince Madoc sailed to America. some claiming that this was much earlier around 562 AD just after the Romans got fed up with the continuous rain in Wales up-sticks and left. This claim however does not stand up to scrutiny as it is known that Prince Madog was one of 19 children of Owain Gwyneth (the first true Prince of Wales) ‘the Randy’ who was an historical figure dating from the 12 century. A Welsh poem of the 15th century tells how Prince Madog sailed away in 10 ships and discovered America and whether truth or myth, was used by Queen Elizabeth I as evidence to the British claim to America during its territorial struggles with Spain. So there you have it the first link in the long history of the Welsh in America.

coracles
Old picture of coracles used in Wales
Mandan_Bull_Boats_and_Lodges-_George_Catlin
Bull boats used by first nation people based on coracles

I could say a lot more about the discovery (but you won’t because I am already fed up ed.) but I will sign off with some fascinating facts:

  • By proportion Welsh surnames dominate in eastern states (source National Geographic).
  • There have been at least 10 American presidents with Welsh ancestry (Mitt Romney the 11th!!). Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, James Garfield, Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon and Barack Obama.
  • Jefferson Davies the Confederate President (good Welsh name there).
  • Robert E. Lee – Confederate General
  • Benedict Arnold – Revolution general who defected from the Americans to the British side (oops!)
  • Signers of the declaration of independence: William Floyd, Button Gwinnett, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris and Robert Morris.

And last of all over 10,000 pages of memoires were written in Welsh that survive today from the American Civil War.

Just a little knowledge bomb to lay on you; the Welsh patronymic system describes family trees in terms of the male line and records the family association in the ‘ap’ or ‘ab’ prefix (ap is a contraction of the Welsh word ‘mab’, which means ‘son of’, ‘ferch’ means ‘daughter of’ incidentally) so Madog ap Owain means Madog son of Owain. Often a small epithet to the name like Llewellyn ‘the last’ (the last true Prince of Wales) is also used and so in a more contemporary context we might regard the real name of Mitt Romney (as he claims Welsh heritage via his wife) as Mitt Romney ap George the Gaff Prone in celebration of his recent gaff that the UK was not prepared for the Olympics (which is probably true actually).

For more information about the Welsh in America visit : http://www.alabamawelsh.com/ and if your interested in signing the petition to restore a monument to the great prince go here:

http://www.petitiononline.com/AWA0987/petition.html

Prince Charles treats us to more nonsense

The Deathly GM Crops and The Half-Wit Prince (Book 8)

Most of the time I regard Prince Charles as an amiable affable buffoon who talks a peculiar brand of new age sentiment and claptrap and dresses in a quaint Scottish (kilt commando style) way so beloved by our American friends across the water or who swans down the racecourse in top hat waving to the assembled masses on the rails. This erstwhile Edwardian who I think at heart harks back to those times when obedient yokels tilled the fields from dawn to dusk and tipped a respectful forelock in his ‘ighness’ direction as he swept by in his carriage to the big house (god bless yer guv) and people knew their place and the beautiful class structure of the realm stood in all its glory whilst he sat at the top of the pile as king (eh not yet the Queen is still very much hanging on ed.) with his subjects arraigned about him.

Now on the subject of GM crops (and about time too!!) HH has actually managed to hit a few (very few) good points but what surprised me about this whole issue was that a national newspaper gave his non-scientific bar room opinions front page coverage. I was actually about to buy a copy of the Telegraph to peruse on the train when I saw he was the lead for the day – this forced me to buy the broadsheet version of the Socialist Tribune (the Guardian) as a substitute so dear readers you can guess this was a serious setback.

As always I am interested in the purpose of these things and not in the content per se for if I want to hear some claptrap I can always talk to my pocket memo for five minutes then play it back. The point it seemed to me was to position Charles as next ruler and restate the inevitability of a continuation of the stultifying class structure we have in this country with the Windsor’s at its head. Demonstrating that he has thoughtful and erudite opinions (ok that didn’t work ed.) and in an unquestioning way accept and parade his views before the public. Also the writer sprinkled the article with discourses of justification of why this was an important piece due to the role HH would play as future monarch etc etc – not questioning the reasoning behind this rationalisation at all.

Often it is refreshing for the basis behind some scientific advances to be critically reviewed as to their consequences and costs – the debate about cloning being an example where there is not much understanding so very little control. GM crops are a potential benefit to society as a whole at least in the third world where they don’t have the luxury of choosing ‘organic’ or otherwise as we do in comfortable wet UK – and drought resistant strains of wheat may indeed be a breakthrough for them – and of course there are always the agribusiness monopolies wanting to maximise their profits which should be monitored. So there is a basis for debate which is underway but these more thoughtful insights do not get airtime or the grounds of critical debate are undercut by poorly informed half understood issues expounded for purposes of publicity and positioning of a future king.

Royston

Snippet from the Web

Lord Robert Winston, Imperial’s famously moustachioed professor of fertility studies seems to have got himself in a trouble over his comments relating to critics of GM technology.
In a speech at Whittington Hospital (somewhere in North London, apparently) a while back, the celebrity ICSM Prof spoke out against those who criticise any kind of genetic manipulation, saying that many protests were “ill-advised”. He was particularly forthright on Prince Charles, whom he called one of “the most genetically modified people around”.

Return the Bardsey Crown

The Bardsey Crown to Return to the land of Merlin

The Bardsey Crown to Return to the land of Merlin

No doubt everyone is watching with great interest the attempts by the Bardsey inhabitants (all ten of them) to have the Bardsey island Crown returned to its rightful place in Wales.
The Island is a god forsaken lump of rock off the Llyn Penninsula in the North of Wales once inhabited by Monks in a colony established there in the 6th Century by one Saint Cadfan. – and as an interesting side note is the imputed last resting place of Merlin – further emphasizing that the whole Arthurian legend is based on the Welsh Princes fighting off those pesky Anglo Saxons.

For many years, the Island had formed part of the estates of the Newborough Family of Glynllifon near Caernarfon who cheered up the locals by crowning the oldest male on the island as King – to be called Brenin Enlli (King of Bardsey). The coronation celebrations being the only known official example in the UK where the Queen of Bardsey was also heir presumptive to the Crown and the entire congregation were either cousins, brothers and sisters. The actual Crown is kept at the Maritime Museum in Liverpool who acquired it when the maritime collection of the Newboroughies was flogged off around the 1980’s for four pence halfpenny and a route map out of Wales – and there in lies the conundrum – those nasty English Liverpudlians are hanging on to it and not inclined to repatriate this artefact of past Welsh glory to its homeland.

The symbolism of the crown goes well beyond the tatty tin and brass it is made of and now assumes the role of an icon and memorial to those former Welsh Princes who went down gloriously in defeat at the hands of the invading Angles; from those at the dawn of time, to Lywelyn ap Iorwerth, Dafydd ap Lywelyn, Lywelyn ap Gruffudd (the Last) to Owain Glyndwr – this latter prince was the last real Welsh prince when the principality was lost by conquest at or around 1415.

Since the time of the Welsh Princes we have been fobbed off with a motley collection of loser princes and elder sons of Kings of England from Edward Blackadder of Caernarfon to the latest incarnation Prince Charles ap Windsor the Halfwit. This Prince whose only known attempts at Welsh are ‘ble ydy ‘r doiled’, and ‘ca ‘m oddi hon dduw adawedig chyflea’ – which roughly translated means ‘where are the toilets’ and ‘get me out of this god forsaken place’ which shows his commitment to the job.

I support any initiative that repatriates ethnic aboriginal art and artefacts to their rightful place – and the Bardsey Crown is right up there with the Elgin Marbles and the African Art pillaged from their rightful owners over the centuries. A suitable place for its final resting place must surely on the mantle piece in the gallery shop at the Oriel Plas Glyn-y-Weddw at Llanbedrog near Pwllheli where for a suitable fee visitors will be able to eat their welsh rarebit whilst reliving the days of yore by wearing the crown.

As a point of interest for our American cousins it may not be well known that Prince Madog ab Owain heir of Owain discovered America around the year 1200 and founded a colony near to Alabama. For more information about the welsh in Alabama visit : http://www.alabamawelsh.com/ and if your interested in signing the petition to restore a monument to the great prince go here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/AWA0987/petition.html

Above is a nice Picture of one of the ‘Brenin Enlli’ His Royal Highness John Williams taken around 1920.

Cheers

Royston

Campaign to get Red Lady of Paviland returned to Wales

The Red Lady of Paviland

As RoyMogg readers will be aware the ‘Red-Lady of Paviland’ currently resides in a box in Oxford and is the subject of action to attempt the repatriate the red-lady (actually red-bloke cos it is man!) to the land of origin Wales. The Red-Lady actually a red-ochre stained body of a man, is one of the earliest known Palaeolithic burials in the UK and quite rightly belongs as part of the heritage of the Welsh being an example of early occupation of this land some 25 to 26 thousand years ago.

The bones were discovered around 1823 by the reverend John Davies on a stroll and have been the subject of many false attributions as to what the remains were – not least that the body was of a woman not a man. One of the most colourful stories was that the ochre-stained skeleton had become a ‘painted lady’ as a consequence of the service she gave to the needs of the local Roman garrison in the camp on the hill just above the cave. It was a good story possibly dented by the fact that the woman turned out to be a man although this would have been no problem for the roman soldiers I am sure – particularly on a cold welsh night in some godforsaken posting in the south of Wales some 2 thousand years ago. This would also have given an alternative explanation to the bones being often referred to as the red queen of Paviland although for political correctness I cannot take this argument too far.

Anyhoo … in the early years of the 20th century this did not stack up as it could be seen that as well as not a female burial the mammoth ivories around the body were Palaeolithic. The red-lady has made a trip back to Wales in the meantime and is the subject of a campaign to get this fantastic artefact returned from the canny English but too no avail – there is even a campaign group dedicated to the cause called the ‘The Dead to Rights group’, set up by those who regard the removal of the skeleton as a “desecration” of a sacred site and mirrors the concerns of other groups dedicated to the return of plunder from the colonial era to their rightful place. I am not sure of their success but applaud their cause.

I have been to the cave myself some years back and it is a place of mystery especially when you are on your own – It does take you back and certainly grounded me as a modern day Welsh guy in the land where I was borne (ehh enough of this sentimental crap! ed.)

The Deathly GM Crops and The Half-Wit Prince

The Deathly GM Crops and The Half-Wit Prince (Book 8)
Most of the time I regard Prince Charles as an amiable affable buffoon who talks a peculiar brand of new age sentiment and claptrap and dresses in a quaint Scottish (kilt commando style) way so beloved by our American friends across the water or who swans down the racecourse in top hat waving to the assembled masses on the rails. This erstwhile Edwardian who I think at heart harks back to those times when obedient yokels tilled the fields from dawn to dusk and tipped a respectful forelock in his ‘ighness’ direction as he swept by in his carriage to the big house (god bless yer guv) and people knew their place and the beautiful class structure of the realm stood in all its glory whilst he sat at the top of the pile as king (eh not yet the Queen is still very much hanging on ed.) with his subjects arraigned about him.
charlie
Now on the subject of GM crops (and about time too!!) HH has actually managed to hit a few (very few) good points but what surprised me about this whole issue was that a national newspaper gave his non-scientific bar room opinions front page coverage. I was actually about to buy a copy of the Telegraph to peruse on the train when I saw he was the lead for the day – this forced me to buy the broadsheet version of the Socialist Tribune (the Guardian) as a substitute so dear readers you can guess this was a serious setback.

As always I am interested in the purpose of these things and not in the content per se for if I want to hear some claptrap I can always talk to my pocket memo for five minutes then play it back. The point it seemed to me was to position Charles as next ruler and restate the inevitability of a continuation of the stultifying class structure we have in this country with the Windsor’s at its head. Demonstrating that he has thoughtful and erudite opinions (ok that didn’t work ed.) and in an unquestioning way accept and parade his views before the public. Also the writer sprinkled the article with discourses of justification of why this was an important piece due to the role HH would play as future monarch etc etc – not questioning the reasoning behind this rationalisation at all.

Often it is refreshing for the basis behind some scientific advances to be critically reviewed as to their consequences and costs – the debate about cloning being an example where there is not much understanding so very little control. GM crops are a potential benefit to society as a whole at least in the third world where they don’t have the luxury of choosing ‘organic’ or otherwise as we do in comfortable wet UK – and drought resistant strains of wheat may indeed be a breakthrough for them – and of course there are always the agribusiness monopolies wanting to maximise their profits which should be monitored. So there is a basis for debate which is underway but these more thoughtful insights do not get airtime or the grounds of critical debate are undercut by poorly informed half understood issues expounded for purposes of publicity and positioning of a future king.

Royston

Snippet from the Web

Lord Robert Winston, Imperial’s famously moustachioed professor of fertility studies seems to have got himself in a trouble over his comments relating to critics of GM technology.
In a speech at Whittington Hospital (somewhere in North London, apparently) last week, the celebrity ICSM Prof spoke out against those who criticise any kind of genetic manipulation, saying that many protests were “ill-advised”. He was particularly forthright on Prince Charles, whom he called one of “the most genetically modified people around”.

A recollection of a wonderful moment – the Queen and I

So it is that time when all the country (well except for Prince Charles I guess who must be fed up of waiting for the top job) celebrate the Jubilee of our Madge. It is as if the entire UK population, to the bemusement of foreigners and Americans, like lemmings lose their collective mind and gad around like halfwits joyfully tugging their forelocks and bathing in the aura of someone who has not done a hands turn in 86 years. Anyhoo I actually missed the last one miserable git that I am and have planned to escape to the country for a nice long weekend for this one as well.

But before I clear off I thought I would share one of those moments when my life was touched by ‘Her Majesty’ and just as in the countless others who have recounted these magical moments over the last few weeks I will do the same.

It was many moons ago in the Royal Mews  just before Trooping of the Colour in the times when Her Majesty actually used to ride to take the salute. Anyhoo just before such events a few brush up lessons were required and so the Royal Mews riding school was strictly off limits whilst she was twirled around on the lunge and put through her paces. “Now Ma’am could you please put our leg on that lazy slab of useless horse flesh and get it moving” and so on…

…On occasion I used to ride at the Royal Mews with the civil service riding club. One day I bowled up and wandered off to the school to see if any of my friends were riding (well colleagues I was miserable even then and was billy no mates) opened the door and went to enter the school to be greeted by…

…’Oi you have to bloody well clear orf the school is taken you halfwit!!!’

Even though I was being given an earful I felt awestruck and touched by the great glory of the presence in the school on a grey job in the middle of the school – which was in case you are as slow as I am – Her Madge.

So my life has been touched by the presence just as all those idiotic royal reporters or anyone of the five thousand odd guests at one of those garden parties being held right now.

So have one on me I am ‘orf’ to my country seat in the garden.

Cheers

Clueless in London

Why is it that when the slightest things goes wrong with the signals or other lame excuse (usually at London Bridge) passengers (with the exception of me) and Bob Crows army run around like chickens with their head cut off having no clue what is happening.

Last week your truly bowls up to see a MASS of people staring skyward (no not at some apparition of the second coming) but at blank timetables and listening to garbled messages informing the masses that Gordon Brown is the second coming (no that’s not it I meant what we are supposed to do where we should go to catch a train).

Now I can be a little forthright (now you probably mean your arrogant, rude, impatient, irritable self we all know and love ed.) but I know where the train usually stops so in my true welsh rugby star way jinked through the crowds (as we should have done this weekend in Auckland) past the prop forward that was this immense lady jammed in the automatic gates to my train and jumped on. I must say there were a few ‘excuse ME’s’ and ‘how rudes’ on the way but sorry you have got to get on the bloody train. So there I was listening to the announcements: ‘the twain at platfoam one is the 17** to graveyard calling at ??????, ?????’. Crap am I on the right train? – now to cut a long story short I wasn’t – so off to platform three as it happens through the mass of humanity coming the other way – ask a guard on the way was this a train to East Croydon – no idea guv – (maybe if I’d asked what the fundamental theory of algebra was I might have had more success) – and jumped on with fifty or so other sweaty passengers on another train – yes the wrong one again – so we all piled off to the next platform for the right one.

Of course dear reader by the time I got to East Croydon I had missed two connections to sunny Lingfield and had to wait for a while for Southern to take me away from all this. Now why is it when a small engineering fault happens, no one knows what’s happening, the staff haven’t a clue, the commuters (me excepted) stand around like cattle with foot and mouth waiting to be chopped, no feedback or info available, and no prospect of the second coming to cap it off either (eh!! Ed.)

When are we going to get organised in this country!!

The Banking Crisis of 1825

Banking Crisis – Lloyds was a safe bank in 1825

The recent banking crisis and the failure of the Scottish attempts to take over the banking world in the UK two years back has set me thinking about the earlier attempts at setting up regional banks and in particular the setting up of the first real retail type banks in the UK. Many years ago numerous county banks were created in different parts of Britain, including Gods Country Wales. There were a number of so called drovers’ banks set up in mid-Wales at that time. Drovers as in ‘rawhide’, the famous cowboy series took the cattle (and sheep) to market and returned the money from the sale to the farmers – which could mean they had quite a considerable sum of money on their person. They would set off with chuck wagon, outriders etc. and fighting off Indians and Brumies would travel the some 180 miles to market to sell their stock.

This growing trade with London’s Smithfield market demanded a relatively secure way of transmitting bills of exchange – i.e. bank notes. One such example was the ‘Black Ox’ drovers’ Bank set up by David Jones of Llandovery in 1799 in the tap room of the Black Ox Pub where the deposits were kept in the coal scuttle behind the bar. The notes depicted the Welsh Black breed of cattle as the motif (shown below) – definitely a better idea than some second rate prince or monarch we now have to put up with nowadays. This Bank is claimed to be the first (real) bank in Wales founded by the drovers John Jones and David Lloyd although I cannot confirm both these names – The bank originally occupied The Black Ox at Llandovery, and later on had premises at The King’s Head inn from 1799 – 1848. An interesting side note on this bank is it later became the Lloyds Bank we all know and love as a main street player in the UK and taker of vast sums of tax-payers money in bailouts. A little earlier in Aberystwyth in 1762 there was a bank formed in the same year a customs office opened in the town, a bank called Banc y Llong (the Ship Bank), followed by a bank known as the Black Sheep Bank because of the picture of a sheep on its notes being chased by a shepherd with his trousers down. There is an example of a note shown below (no shepherd in this version).

In 1825 a crisis occurred which saw the collapse of many private banks across the country. A major factor was the over-issuing of notes and the allowing of debt to spiral out of control such that the sum total of the issued notes could not be honoured if they all came in for payment together. Other contributory factors included a tighter fiscal policy by the London banks a latter day ‘credit crunch’ and bad speculation in the booming industries in the north of the country coinciding with a slump in agriculture. I think this is surprising for the parallelism with what has gone on recently. The collapse of one or two banks caused a run on the others creating a ‘domino effect’ and general panic set in – there were runs on the banks! There are numerous stories from this period about the ruses used by the banks in an attempt to allay the panic. Staff would haul large sacks of scrap metal across the bank in full view of the customers, the sacks having a handful of gold coins on the top to make it appear that the bank had large funds. Nowadays we do this by pumping huge sums of taxpayers money by the European Central Bank to make out the banks in Spain for example are stable and we have Major Merkosy telling us not to panic as they have everything under control so the similarities could not be more obvious.

This is an Article I found on the Black Ox Bank

The Bank was called Banc yr Eidion Du in Welsh, because the notes issued by it were engraved with the picture of a black ox. This bank was opened in 1799 by David Jones *in rooms at the King’s Head, Llandovery. He was a*local farmer’s son and a former drover whose wife brought with her a fortune of £10,000. The business was very profitable, it was said that its founder “knew of more ways of making money than there are public houses in Llandovery.” There were a few !*When he died David Jones left an estate of £140,000 plus landed property. He was High Sheriff of Carmarthenshire in 1825, during the financial crisis of 1825/6, when 70 private banks in England and Wales failed, the reputation of the Black Ox was so high that customers had more faith in its stability than *in the Bank of England. He was followed in the business by 3 sons who opened branches in Llandeilo and Lampeter. The firm continued under the name of David Jones & Sons until 1909 when it was amalgamated into Lloyds Bank

Source: http://home.clara.net/tirbach/HelpPa…tml#Llandovery

Nice link to a post on the Welsh Pound

http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?p=523885

A local provincial banknote from Wales
A local provincial banknote from Wales

This is an example of a Black bull from Wales

Let’s ban reckless politicians as well as reckless bankers

Some years ago I was sitting in the accountancy module B212 ‘window dressing and off balance sheet techniques‘ during my Masters course when the lecturer at the time piped up that one of the biggest fears in was the fact that mortgages were lent long whilst money was saved or acquired from the market short. In principle short money can be called for very quickly whilst paying back a mortgage on demand is impossible. A interesting discussion took place as we considered the possibilities of savers suddenly loosing confidence and withdrawing funds to stuff under the mattress or inter-bank lending suddenly drying up. And the fact that as mortgagees we would be unable to pay our green loans on demand loans so all chaos could result. We also in passing have a quaint notion that the money in the bank is actually ours to call on on demand – look to how Cyprus handled their depositors!

Obviously I am drawn to this reminiscing from a course more than 20 years ago by the thought that we have actually looked into the abyss over the last few years in the banking crisis. If this loss of confidence had gone much further there is actually no way that any government could cover all of the required finance without long term fiscal consequences. When looking at any proposed bailout of 700billion in the US this was clear – the figures are simply too huge. So how did we get here when the risk was well known. We had all began to assume that the ongoing growth period from the mid nineties would go on forever – we believed for a short while the Brown and Bush nonsense that the boom and bust and the cyclic nature of economies was a thing of the past. Actually not many economists bought this line but there seemed to be over the last ten years a creeping complacency in the market and in the economy at large that growth would continue house prices would rise and all would continue as before. So we are just past the worst of it house prices are on the rise again and we are set for another round of wish and hope. I can’t wait for the first labour politician who tells us we can take the breaks of public spending.

One of the problems faced by HBOS for example was the breaking of the linkage between grannies saving, and loans being made to the newly forming families to buy their homes. Grannies tend to keep their money safe in a Bank for a rainy day – so save relatively long. More of the money that was being lent was being acquired on the wholesale market thus very short and when money becoming in short supply and loans were called in the whole circus came to an end. Coupled with this trend the window dressing of junk debt and reselling as triple A in other areas meant in some cases these inter-bank loans were unpinned by toxic and rubbish debt that could not in any case be collected. So a prediction of an accounting professor twenty years ago came all to true in a few turbulent weeks three years ago.

What is a little depressing about the saga  is they who carried out these feats of financial engineering received the plaudits of their peers only a short while before the drop. The CEO of HBOS for example was hailed as a ‘genius’ only a year before the end. To some extend it was rather pleasing to see another rueful former CEO contemplating the handover of his company in a garage sale to one of his former rivals. A 300 year old company was sunk in that case during his short three years at the helm – a nice achievement not unique unfortunately if you look across the water.

There is an old saying that goes ‘when the going gets tough the politicians run for cover’ and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic squarely place the blame on the city or processes such as short trading and not themselves. Not minded to the fact that their policies and management of the economic context and their abject complacency has led us to where we are now. In the UK eye watering public sector borrowing to finance the client state, virtually no monetary policy, the encouragement of a reckless financial environment the surreal belief that would go on forever and the belief in the infallibility of their stewardship and lack of responsibilities are where some the explanation lies.

We even have the left in the UK claiming the debt is being caused by the current government and it was the nasty banks that let the country down. Partially true, I knew quite a few of these rather intellectually limited but supremely arrogant idiots, but the almost criminal management of the economy by the Labour government and the financing of the client welfare state was at the heart of the problem in the UK.

If we are talking about banning reckless bankers how about reckless Politicians anyone?

REM

Christmas Spirit alive and well in East Grinstead

It’s that time of year again when itinerant panhandlers (i.e. carol singers) appear on my door-step attempting to sing a few strangled verses of some long forgotten carol before being sent away with a flea in their ear and a recommendation for a few singing lessons by yours truly. Last year some group of lads came around and made a vague attempt at Silent Night (oh I wish it was when they started). Now it happened they started up just as the Tele was playing up, her in doors was having a moan about my lack of Christmas spirit and that mutt of a sheepdog of mine was attempting to bark the bloody house down whilst attempting to get at said carols singers.

Actually in hindsight it may have been better to let her out … anyhoo in amongst all this cacophony I answered the door just as the second line … holy night … was tailing off into oblivion and a hopeful carol singer put out his hand for what I assumed was some act of supplication. WE DON’T DO THAT HERE CLEAR OFF I said (now RoyMogg readers may wish to know that this in fact is an entirely accurate description of events that occurred that fateful night ed.) and closed the door and turned around and saw my stunned wife and daughter telling me I cannot say that, lack of Christmas spirit etc etc. To my astonishment they run after these erstwhile vagrants apologising … ‘he’s a little tired, worked long hours, miserable git’ and so forth… giving them money for their efforts and wishing them merry Christmas and all that. Shocked I was – I thought I was being very reasonable but ho hum I guess it takes all sorts

In the Christmas spirit an alternative carol:

Good King Wencelas last looked out
On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
and When a poor man came in sight,
Wencelas set the dogs on him …

Merry Christmas to RoyMogg Readers