It is now the day after Boxing Day. Between arriving back in Wales on the 16th and Christmas Eve I decanted six litres of the olive oil pressed from my olives in Kambos earlier this month. Today, as my recovery from the illness that struck me in late November, accelerates I sat down with my son Joshua and enjoyed a plate oil that oil with some crusty bread for the first time. It was delicious with a peppery after taste hitting the back of your throat. It reminds me that I have yet to complete the tale of this year’s harvest.
My old Oxford College sent me an email just before Christmas wishing me happy holidays, festive break etc. It did not mention Christmas which, adopting the vernacular of the age, I told Hertford, caused me great offence. I pointed out that they may be Godless liberals but the reason they got time off work at this time of year was because it was Christmas, the time when many of us celebrate the birth of the Lord.
One of the many things that those inside the global warming GroupThink cult are unable to explain is why we should believe 30-50 year forecasts about climate change when the ones made 20 years ago have already been proved to be utterly wrong. It is as if we based our response to covid on the work of Professor Ferguson whose forecasts of hundreds of thousands of deaths from avian bird flu, swine fever, etc had proved so completely bogus. Oh, we did because“experts” inside the GroupThink are always right… but back to global warming.
As our phones had warned the weather went downhill rapidly overnight. The wind was already howling and the rain falling as we arrived back at the Hovel. During the night I was woken up repeatedly by lightening and enormous thunder claps which arrived almost at the same time. The storm was directly overhead.
It looks increasingly grim on the Albanian front so harvester T and I soldier on. It is hard work and by the end of every day my bones ache and I long for bed.
I overslept a bit and a couple of major triumphs from my day job pulled me out of action for an hour or so. The net result was that after harvesting 20 trees on day two we manged just 15 on day three. There is another reason: we are now moving further from the house so dragging back mats laden with olives (and leaves) to be sifted on the grill takes that bit longer.
I hope that you are all wrapped up warm back in Blighty. I do not want to make you all jealous but this was my work atire all day, here in Greece. Yes, as you can see below, it was T-shirt weather.
My plane from Manchester was almost an hour late. That meant that poor olive harvester T, back for his second stint, had five hours to kick his heels at Athens airport but at least he was able to buy supplies for the day ahead. Foot to the floor and with the roads almost deserted we hit Kambos by 10.30 and thought we’d stop off for a quick drink in what was once Miranda’s. Schoolboy error number one.
Ammar Mifleh was a man with a career in terror which on the West Bank means trying to kill Jews. Last week he attacked an Israeli soldier, trying to steal his rifle. In that attack he stabbed the soldier in the neck. The soldier pulled his gun and shot Mifleh dead. The whole incident was caught on video so there is no doubt what happened. But the UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland offers his take below.
The British mainstream media, led by the appalling Daily Mail has, from the start of the war in Ukraine bigged up Russian Casualties, bathing in the blood of every dead Russian. Day after day there are videos straight from Kiev showing Ukrainian snipers getting kills at record distances, drones blowing up Russian tanks or some other heroic act meaning more Russian mothers will be mourning their sons this Christmas. But there is a big omission.
I am not often asked wherev I am from. If so I’d mumble someing about Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire and that would be that. Nobody would ask “but where are you really from?” forcing me to discuss Kent, Dorset, Worcestershire -on two sides – and my illegitimate great grandmother who was from God only knows where. I am more often asked where my wonderful wife is from and that is because she has brown skin. I say Nottingham.
There is much wailing as the results of the 2021 Census are published and so that for the first time in almost two thousand years the majority of folks in England and Wales do not identify as Christian. Well sort of, many of the supposed godless are just like Cambridge University bisexuals. They will see the light sooner or later. Let me explain on this day before Advent.
I always thought the Tabs were a bit queer but further down this article in the Mail is a survey suggesting that less than half of Oxford Students are straight so has Oxbridge been over-run with gay folk? Quite obviously the answer is no and this is another sensationalist load of cobbers from the wretched Mail. The stats in the Cambridge survey were: straight 49.7%, gay 11.9%, bisexual 29.7% and other 8.7%. In Oxford 49% were straight 33% bi and the other 17% gay or other. However…
Its not just the greedy nurses who are lying about how they all need food banks to survive and who are thus demanding a big hike to a package which is already massively greater than the UK median wage. Across the public sector they are all at it. I have highlighted before the greed and mendacity of the teachers, but in 2022 the lazy scumbags are telling porkies as never before. Meet Louise Atkinson who when not working hard and getting a good screw from being a Labour councillor in Carlisle is a teacher. Heaven help her students.
In these days when every comment about Ukraine can see one black-listed by someone, I find myself having to preface this article by saying that I am no apologist for either President Putin or for Joe Stalin. However, having tried for the past year to re-write the present with the ghost of Kiev, the Auschwitz style gold teeth and other spoofs, Ukraine is now trying the most monstrous rewrite of history, a claim that the Holodomor was an act of Russian genocide. The clear implication is that Russians like genocide against Ukrainians. The tweet below sets the case.
