The great borrower

27 August 2011

I love ART.  By art I mean visual art; paintings,  statues, architecture and the like.  I like music too but dance is pretentious nonsense to me.  Literature is OK  then, with this in mind, did any of you see the Andrew Graham-Dixon show on telly during the week called Art of Russia?  it was good and you can still catch it on BBC iplayer if you're quick. 

  

He interviewed one Russian guy who it was claimed owned the largest collection of Russian Icons in private hands.  Towards the end of the interview Graham-Dixon likened some of the paintings to sum American works.  The Russian was really upset by it and he got a bit angry.  He said something like, "Who is America?  They own nothing and borrow everything.  Even their language is borrowed and not their own!"  That comment got me thinking.

He is right you know.  Not only do they borrow just about everything they butcher it to their own uses and then forget they borrowed it in the first place.  Look what they have done to English for a start!  Now they claim its American if challenged.  They don't do the same with any other language do they?  

Sir Frank Whittle invented the jet engine - yet the yanks pay little respect to him for that.  And what about Alexander Fleming and penicillin?  How much credit do they give for that little earner?  They claim to have built the first atomic bomb, well, yes they did but they worked on the inventions and discoveries of other to do so.  Even their much trumpeted rockets were built on Germany ideas and inventions.  And don't forget that the first computers were made here in the UK, not in Yankydoddledandyland!  Even the World Wide Web was invented by a Brit!   

Maybe the place should be renamed to the UBS - the United Borrowing States ;-)))

Anyway, enough of that!  We took Kile to Brum last Saturday as I said we would.  He wasn't at all spoilt rotten while we were there, honest!  He's old to enough to have his own watch now, so he got one.  He saw some radio controlled cars that he liked - he got one.  And last of all he got a large water canon thing he liked the look of - he got one.  Well, it's not often we have him so why not.  Oh yes, we did actually buy something for us too.  We bought some long stripes of plasters that we like and Jan bought herself a new over shoulder bag - she goes through them like I go through pints of real ale.  Speaking of which ...

The baddie in my first book The Mission drinks real ale too.  At around 10.20 last night I finally got the last of the proofreading done and later today I will get it sent off to CreateSpace for the last Proof copy and then I can release it into the wild.  Getting really excited now.  

Here's some photos of Kile form last weekend ...