Wham!

So George Michael has gone to jail? What is it with these gay 1980s pop sensations called George? Boy George has only just been released from his prison term. I don't know the man, but I think George Michael must be something of a weirdo, with little or no sense of what it means to be a functioning human being in the 21st Century. But don't feel sorry for him; a mini-prison term will, no doubt, give his flagging pop career a mini-boost. If we’re really lucky, he’ll release another bland song, with a video which takes the mickey out of the British criminal justice system. I was, however, incredibly amused to see that on the wall just below the shop window he’d crashed into whilst smashed out of his skull, someone had written the word Wham! Nothing can beat a well-placed piece of graffiti!


I watched a bit of daytime television today and was horrified at the level of mental inadequacy that some people in this country seem to want to demonstrate. I was watching a programme called Pointless, which is a quiz show. The contestants were asked to name a state in the USA which had a coastline. The idea was to name one that the fewest people would have thought of. I sat there wondering whether Maine or Maryland would be too obvious, so imagine my horror, when the first contestant answered Orlando (that’s right - they were asked to name a state), and the next person said Detroit! The final contestant, was a SCHOOL TEACHER and he said Mexico! Mexico?! There are too many people in this world who consider geography to be an unimportant subject. We, as British people, love to laugh at the Americans who think Africa and Paris are both countries, but when a teacher thinks that Mexico is a state within the USA, we have to acknowledge that something is going very very wrong with our education system!

September 14th 1660 was a Friday and Pepys was busy sorting out his finances. He sent Elizabeth to visit his mother, who he’d heard wasn’t well. Quite why he couldn’t have found the time later in the day to visit her himself, I’m not sure, particularly as the news of her illness apparently made his heart “very sad”.

Pepys' mate, Luellin called in in the early evening, and dragged him off to the Mitre in Wood Street, where a great gathering of their communal friends were being “very merry.” Luellin was drunk and Pepys had been given the task of defending the ladies from his amorous advances. Pepys liked this role, because it apparently gave him carte blanche to kiss the ladies himself; “very often” and “with a great deal of mirth.” Hysterical!