Alluring, Ambition and Absurdity

'If you read a lot nothing is as great as you've imagined - Venice is - Venice is better' Arbit Blatas

Two programmes this week featured Venice, Jamie Oliver's 'Jamie Does' and 'Dr Who'. Jamie was definitely in Venice and Dr Who may have been although most of the filming is said to have taken place in Croatia. Yet both programmes managed to show parts of this amazing city and Venice is a feast for the eyes. You can actually feel your eyes being nourished by its beauty and serenity.



Although Jamie is huge fan of Italy and Italian food he had never been to Venice before and, of course, the focus for his visit was not the wonderful buildings, museums, art galleries or the canals and gondolas, but the food. Jamie said ‘Look at all the mosaics and stuff’ and then he rolled up his sleeves and got stuck in, literally, at the Rialto Market, getting covered in black ink from the innards of a squid. The aliens on Dr Who, when not looking like beautiful, ethereal virgins, looked as if they had crawled down from a stall in the market – huge, ugly crustaceans.



Whenever a view of Venice appeared my heart skipped a beat, stunned by its sheer beauty and familiarity.

'Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best.' - Henry Van Dyke

Yesterday my 4 year old grandson said, guitar in hand, 'I want to be in a Rock Band'. He then gave us all roles in the band, his mum was assigned the drums, his uncle the keyboard and I was to supply the vocals. It is surprising how 'rocky' you can make the 'Grand Old Duke of York' sound and I was really getting into it. Half way through the second performance my grandson stopped, looked at me and said 'Umm Nan, guitar players in rock bands can do the singing so don't really need you.'Sacked. By a very small family member. Always knew I couldn't sing. But for a minute there I was Janis Joplin.

I hope that whoever the Lib Dems cosy up with they don't go back on one promise I heard one of their candidates make last week. The promise to ensure more pubs and clubs offer live music.

I was puzzled by a report in today's paper about the pollingqueuesgate fiasco. In Nick Cleggs constituency voters were apparently divided into two queues, along the lines of a supermarkets '5 items or fewer' system. One queue was the slow queue and this was the one officials decided students had to line up in leaving the 'fast' queue for 'long term residents'. How can one queue be fast and one slow? Staff at the polling station said that many of the students had not brought their polling cards along with them and that led to a delay in processing them. If dividing people into two queues was necessary why not have a queue for those with polling cards and one for those without? I didn't have my polling card when I went along to vote on Thursday and it made no difference whatsoever to the time it took the official to find my name on the list and tick it off. It would have taken exactly the same amount of time to take my polling card and use it to find my name on the list and tick it off. If this report is true it would seem the officials deemed one persons vote more important than another persons. One of those told to join the slow queue told reporters 'At 7.30pm we were told all residents were to move to the front of the queue, and to form a separate queue from the students. When asked why, the officer said it was because the students were “only temporary residents”, with the impression that it meant our vote counted for less.’ Naturally this led to angry exchanges. Another student said ‘I heard and challenged a woman who said that she should be able to get in first as she “paid all her taxes” and “offered something to society”.’

Some people eh?