Wednesday, 30 September 2015

Booze, religion and light



30 September

And so another months slides away behind us. I wonder how much my readers (and I am thankful to each and every one of you) have manged to achieve during this month, and what their aspirations are for next month. One on Facebook this morning was a pledge to write one page every day. On the face of it I like that one, but as it reads it does seem rather vague to me. I mean, what size page is it aimed at? I’m using an A4 pad to write Arathusia with an average word count of 220, making it 6800 words. But what about the A5 writers? I also have notebooks here that are even smaller. Perhaps the pledge would mean more if it included page size, I don’t know – what say you my readers?

Sometime ago I started a story that include a number of murders of gay men. This is another one that needs to be looked at again. However, I was reading a novel the other day that I really enjoyed where men were being raped; I won’t say more in case any of you might want to read it yourselves. The novel is latest Scott Cullen yarn from Ed James. And it gave me an idea as to where I can go with my story when I get back to it. I have so many stories/novels on the go right now, I’m not sure when, or even if they will all be completed. I have a poster here somewhere that used to live on my wall until we moved here. It shows and man with frazzled hair sitting down with a worried expression on his face; along him are the words, ‘God put me on this world to do certain things; I’m so far behind right now I shall never die.’  

BBC Midlands today story is of a ‘corner shop’ being allowed an alcohol licence. Nothing in that itself of course, but this shop is close to the Bourneville estate in Brum. The Quaker family who built the estate refused to allow and booze to be sold within its 1000 acres, a ban that is still in play even now. The rights or wrong of someone’s religious views are not at issue for this blog today through. What the story has done is to remind me of another corner shop and what happened to it after new owners took it on.

You see, my family and I were fairly regular customers of the shop from when we first moved into our house in Bracebridge Street. So one day as I drove past I stopped to get a few cans of cider for later that evening. That was found out it had been taken over by new owners. Looking around I noticed that there was very little of anything in there, and what there was, was aimed squarely at the Asian population. The man who approached me and if he could help was dressed in the normal day to day dress of a Muslim. I asked if they had stopped selling drink and he said yes. I left at that point.

We still use the pharmacy on the corner of Bracebridge Street and I had to call in there one day with a new ‘script. Because the street is now a one street I had to drive along it to come home, and guess what? That very busy, very happy little shop was now closed and boarded up. In this case it was down to the religious views of the new owners which banned to sale and consumption of all alcohol. Their faith had cost them more than they had expected.

The nearest offie to that one, Asian run again, is about 500 yards off, and I suspect that their taking have gone up a good bit. There’s another one about 500 yards on further that this one, and this one is Muslim run and yet it sells booze. Perhaps there’s a lesson here for some folks.

Today’s photo then … 


A street lamp in the Royal Mews.

And today’s funny …

Ivan Ivanovich, the great Russian scientist decides to do an experiment to know how fast a thermometer falls down. He takes a thermometer and a light, a candle light, to the 3rd floor of a building and recognizes that they are reaching the ground at the same time. Ivan Ivanovich, the great Russian scientist writes in his book: "A thermometer falls with the speed of light."

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