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Answers

The winners are –
Morning-AJ did best so is ahead of the rest Congratulations.
Kaybee came second after 'phoning a friend' so to speak.
As to the millions of runners up who have expressed their total indifference to such an exciting challenge, I am at a loss for words.
The answers are ...

No 1
No 2
No 3
No 4

Movie quiz

Each picture represents a well known movie. Try to guess what its title is. None of them are new movies, so people of my generation may stand a better chance at guessing.
Apologies for the rather childish drawings, I am not as skilled in art as some.

Number one - there have been several versions of this movie but the first was the best

Number two - A haunting theme tune and a damn good plot

Number three - What a long movie this one is

Number four - An epic struggle and love blooms

All over for another year

So here we are, another Christmas with the family over and back home again once more and now into the Year 2011.
Two thousand and eleven!
I still have not yet completely got over the idea that I am alive the other side of 2000AD, let alone a decade past then. 2000AD was the date when everything happened. All my life until then, every projection and forecast began with ‘By the year 2000…’ Also we should have all been living on the Moon, subsisting on food pills and wearing shiny silver suits with a personal jet pack by now.

Mind you, no one predicted that everyone would have a personal computer and be able to talk to anyone in the world with free video communication if you want, shop from home or find any TV programme, past or present.
Other wonders that have crept into our lives that were never predicted are that my car knows if a bulb has failed, which street it is in, how many miles to the gallon it is consuming and how far I will get on my remaining fuel.
My phone is a minature two way radio that is more intelligent than ENIAC (a 1950s computer) and uses a radio band that would have been undetectable around the time of my birth and a modulation system that would be undecipherable even if it could have been received.

My grandmother had an old fashioned black Bakelite pedestal phone and you could make a whistling sound if you put the earpiece against the microphone and so end an unwanted conversation with feedback and pretend there was a fault on the line.

We had no dial and a live operator would say ‘Number Please’ when you lifted the receiver. I don’t think my other grandmother even had a phone at all for many years. Now I feel undressed if I go out without my mobile phone (cell phone in American).

Mankind has been to the moon and now cannot afford to go back. What would Dan Dare or Flash Gordon have said about that?

When I was young, the first Moon landing was only a matter of time and it was bound to be a British space ship, manned by moustachioed ex WWII fighter aces that had transferred to Spacefleet and would plant the Union Jack on the moon in the name of the Queen. The Americans would probably have been second but no one suspected the Russians would get into space at all, let alone first.

Seriously, we were ahead of the Americans at one point when their rockets were exploding and proving the old saying ‘that what goes up must come down’, we knew why they were having problems and had solved them on the British Black Knight and Blue Streak rocket design, but due to government short sightedness the plug was pulled leaving the USA a clear field in space technology.

A successful launch of Black Knight c 1959 in Woomera Australia

It is some of this American space technology that brought us the minute microelectronics which allows a mobile phone to be such a compact and powerful product, and the research all paid for by the American tax payer, thanks very much. This also allowed the games industry to produce the games machines that are now totally interactive. Ironically the technology that drives electronics development is led by both the military and the games market. PCs would not have high resolution colour graphics screens if it had not been for games software demanding more and more realistic graphics, when the PC originally only catered for text.

It is often incorrectly quoted that one of the founders of IBM once stated that there would never be much demand for computers and thought that five was the maximum market due to cost and lack of expertise to operate them. This may have been true in the early forties but as a prediction it would have been wildly wrong since even greetings cards now have a more advanced computer chip in them than was available then, which plays the obnoxious sounding message when they are opened. However, you can get a greeting card which allows you to record a message that does not have to be obnoxious.

So life in the twenty-first century is not all shiny suits and jet packs, but a lot of unforeseen changes, and we have a new lifestyle that would baffle people from earlier generations.

So congratulations to all you wonderful people who have dragged yourselves into the 21st century and can receive this message and a Happy New Year to you all.

Season's Greetings

Having dug the car out of the snow I am met with some redundant information

You may need to click on the picture to read the message my car is giving me.

A Book Review - Rupert Bear

In these stories a much loved character that is known as Rupert Bear is featured in a continuous series of adventures. What most people should realise from his name is that he is not in fact a fictional character at all, but a real person. All fictional bear characters invariably have a name starting with B, Bruno, Barney etc. As his name is Rupert we can see immediately that like Winnie the Pooh, it is a real name. No one could make up a name like that.
Describing him as a bear is rather unkind because there is nothing ursine about him apart from the shape of his head. Unknown to most people, he is completely human but suffers from an inherited genetic deformity analogous to the Elephant man, but more symmetrical in effect. His deformity is an inherited condition that both his parents and many of his relations suffer from too, and may in fact be a mutation. Other symptoms of this condition are that he is completely hairless and his body chemistry causes his skin to be paper white most of the time. His complexion sometimes takes on a brownish yellow hue, something like a sun tan, but which is actually the reverse and is caused by a lack of sunlight since this colouration is most predominant in midwinter, particularly around Christmas time.

Rupert is brown in midwinter

Rupert is otherwise completely human, having correctly proportioned limbs and five fingers and five toes on his hands and feet. However, he rarely takes his shoes off, even when playing at the seaside, and appears rather reticent to expose his feet. I can only assume that whilst not deformed visibly they need his special supportive boots that he wears constantly.


This poor child has been brought up in a kind of reservation which is shared by other similarly afflicted people, including an entire family of ‘Elephant Man syndrome’ people who are much more elephantine than Rupert is Ursine, having very deformed bodies giving rise to thickened skin, a trunk like appendage on the face and deformed hands and feet. Most of the other unfortunates living in the same location have the same white pigmentation and as with Rupert’s friend Bill, a black banding which gives rise to his nickname Bill Badger. The white areas on most of these victims, turns a slightly different colour around mid winter too, ranging from the brown Rupert shows to a grey colour for the Elephant family.


Amongst the deformed people living in Nutwood you will run across a few healthy people who are employed by the institute. The ‘Professor’ and the scientist, known only as the ‘Chinese Conjurer’, are medical professionals who are working on possible cures, but the main aim of Nutwood is integration with the outside world.

These two men have dedicated their lives to helping people like Rupert

To this end carefully selected staff are encouraged to live in along with their own families and mix with the afflicted and are slowly integrating them into a modern society.

Occasionally Rupert and his family travel outside this area, often to a particular destination, a small seaside town referred to as Sandy Bay and the nearby Rocky Bay, where they mingle with many normal people who are unusually kind to them, obviously aware of the project and ‘that there but for the grace of God etc.’ The names of these places given in the stories are obvious disguises for the real locations.


Mixing with normal people can be quite traumatic for poor Rupert and sometimes after a long visit away from Nutwood he requires counselling.

I felt everyone really hated me

As well as dedicated professionals, occassionally this is done by voluntary groups often recruited from the Girl Guides, since they are able to retain a child’s perspective.

Sometimes being accepted by these children is important therapy

To pay for this vast and very long term project, apart from the yearly Rupert annuals on sale around Christmas, a great deal of merchandising is done based around fantasy versions of their life, which whilst a steady mans of funding for the institute, is also a subtle means of preparing the outside world for the sight of these unfortunate, hideously deformed, people when they are finally integrated fully into the outside world.
This project has been running for several decades and needs to be staged very carefully to avoid trauma on the part of the victims and encourage acceptance on the part of the outside world. One very interesting side effect of the complaint which causes these ghastly deformities is that almost all of the victims have incredible longevity and they age so slowly that over the entire length of the project few have shown any signs of ageing. This too is being researched very closely since it is obviously of great interest to the outside world and seems to have been passed on to some of the social workers and medical teams that have had long term contact with these victims. This is not advertised widely since it is little understood and the team would be overwhelmed with volunteers whose only motive would be to gain longevity.

It is difficult to imagine what it must be like for the children to remain immature for such a long time, but with only one or two exceptions, notably the Foxoid brothers and the porcine girl, they seem well adjusted and remain perpetually cheerful and in good spirits.


Because of the longevity of many of the long term people working there you will see a number of different styles of clothing being worn from many different eras, which suggests some have been working there a very long time indeed. Amongst the inmates of this institution, symptoms can be limited to just his skin pigmentation and the longevity.


The two characters shown below, the Regency gentleman and the Pike man, who has been in the area a very long time, have no visible mutations at all other than longevity and a greater or lesser degree of skin pigmentation disorder.


Normality in appearance is not always a sign of dedication to the project, because certain unfortunate cases have been unable to cope with the longevity and have lost touch with reality. In their minds they believe themselves to be genuine pirates or bandits and so on and before discovery are often able to hide in the vast Nutwood grounds with fellow delusionists, living the life of an outlaw and so reinforcing their delusion.

The published stories that have come out of this amazing institute, as opposed to the unpublished details of certain case studies which remain too disturbing to reveal, whilst more often are fantasy, not all are entirely fictious since delusional patents believing themselves to be real bandits or pirates have needed the authorities to flush them out of hiding so that they can be restrained and given therapy.

Because Rupert and other children are free to roam the Nutwood grounds, they have occasionally stumbled across these unfortunate victim’s hideouts and become involved in their recapture. On these occasions, the marketing department quick to realise the potential as a narrative, have used some of these real life situations as the basis of various published adventure stories.
Long before I discovered the truth behind them, Rupert stories were an important part of my childhood literature and I read and re-read any Rupert Annuals I was given for Christmas. Now I am aware of the wonderful charity that is behind these I am overwhelmed with admiration and hope that modern science can improve the lot of thes remarkably cheerful individuals.
All the stories are very entertaining and I give them 9.9 out of ten for readability and despite the tragic truth behind these stories I would recommend them for any child.
Because the Nutwood institute is entirely self funding, they have a registered charity which can be found at www.nuttwood.org where donations may be given via Play Pal.

Are we being ripped off?

The answer is YES WE ARE!

Manufacturers are slowly, sometimes oh so slowly shrinking their products whilst retaining the same price. I have noticed this shrinkage on several products recently, particularly tubs of yoghurt, sandwich fillers and the like, where once opened you can see that there is a distinct drop in the level of identically priced foods.
We stocked up on Cheese strings for The Granddaughter and Grandson this autumn and I rediscovered that I like these too, so we bought a few recently for me. Guess what? Exactly the same package but a much shorter cheese string! No doubt we will soon be seeing a new packaging with NEW IMPROVED cheese strings and inside cheese string in a package resized to disguises the loss of cheese in this new pack.


They are not the only ones.
I sometimes buy Kleenex balsam tissues, if I have a heavy cold, they really work and keep my nose from getting sore. I had a cold not long ago and needed to stock up again and found that Kleenex have changed the name and called it Soothes.


Apart from the new name, the box is the same but the contents are now less. I have not had a cold since buying the new packs, so I have not yet been able to test these still keep my nose pain free. Maybe that has not changed but the label does say 'with a touch of basalm'. So maybe that is reduced too.

Above the Kleenex box unopened

The Soothes box unopened

It is not just the tussues that are soft, as far as these cynical manufacturers are concerned, we are not their loyal customers, but a soft touch to be cheated. Disguising the changes to their product is sneaky and I don’t like sneaky. I would not be too incensed if the price went up a little, I would grumble but resign myself to the change because it seems to be inevitable, but sneaking a cost cut into a box which is otherwise assumed to be the same is a real rip off and really annoys me! I am more upset by someone trying to sneak a change past me than by an open up front price increase.
So do they think we are all stupid? – of course they do!