Paul Brownjohn @Paulos_the_fog@social.cleverlibre.org

A woman approached me via Instagram sending me a message. I replied politely and asked her why in particular she chose to contact me; a question to which she declined to respond. we continued chatting and she posed a lot of questions about my life whilst telling me relatively little about hers and this continued for several days.
After four days, she declared that she loved me and believed I was her soul mate. After six days she was sending me pictures of her in her underwear whilst continuing to proclaim her undying love for her “soul mate”. Finally, after eight days she started asking for money!
Now whilst it is pleasant and mildly amusing to have somebody declaring their undying love for you on a daily basis, my red line was always “the moment she starts asking for money she can eff-off” and so the moment I received that request I blanked her.
90% of me just wrote her off as a con-woman hello specialising in ripping off elderly geezer's but the 10% left, wondered if she was suffering from some sort of mental illness; a psychosis of some sort or, more probably a manic bipolar episode.
The 10% of me that was concerned was relieved to see that she suddenly popped up as one of my followers on Instagram under a totally different alias but using a profile photo that was absolutely obviously my “soul mate” using a different name.

A thought has occurred to me, recently there has been an enormous proliferation of sightings of UFOs.
Okay, I know this is a bit outrageous; a bit “conspiracy theory”, but what if we are being, and have been being observed, by more advanced extra-terrestrial beings than ourselves for years, nay even centuries. What if they have been quite content to leave us alone to develop in our own way up to now. What if they are fully aware that we have developed nuclear weapons, the wholesale use of which would almost certainly render the planet completely uninhabitable. What if they are aware that Putin is about to deploy one or more nuclear weapons; an act that could very easily indeed lead to in a full-on nuclear exchange between Russia and the West.
In summary, what if they are about to intervene to say “OK guys doing that will be fatal for your species and every other species on the planet and we're not going to let you do it”.
I suppose the fear has to be that they are very, very much more advanced than mankind and not necessarily particularly friendly or patient with idiots like us.
I suppose some good could come out of it, maybe they would confiscate every privately held firearm in the USA!

I have just been listening to some recordings by Sir Malcolm Sargent and reading a little bit about his life.
I never realised firstly that he was from a humble background; his father was a coal merchant, and that he got where he got not by paying for expensive tuition but on merit!
The other thing I didn't know about old shagger Sargeant was that that he hobnobbed with the royal family and had torrid affairs with two of them; namely Princess Marina and Edwina Mountbatten. the former was a widow although it is alleged that her husband was in fact gay anyway, however the latter was married to Louis Mountbatten who, it is widely alleged, preferred young boys to women. Mountbatten was known to be extremely close to the then Prince Charles and Mountbatten’s penchant for young boys does make one wonder if there was any impropriety between him and the future king.
An extract of one of Sargant’s recordings of the Karelia Suite (by Sibelius) was used by the BBC as the theme tune to the news and current affairs programme “Today”. That version is played very much faster the most conductors would have it played and it is rumoured the Sir Malcolm Sargent did that because he was in a hurry to get away to see one of his many lovers!
Allegedly, he had innumerable lovers apart from the two mentioned along with a number of illegitimate children.

The daughter of a friend of mine at age about nine I think was outstandingly good at French so much so that she was sent to a senior school for advanced French classes.
Having been told this, and being able to speak French pretty fluently, I tried speaking to her in French. A look of panic appeared on her face, and she shouted to her mother “mum, Paul’s talking funny!”
I subsequently learnt to my utter horror, that at the school she attended, only written French was taught not spoken French. She was learning a foreign language, but she had absolutely no idea whatsoever what it sounded like.
To me, that is complete insanity. What on earth is the point of teaching a foreign language as an academic written subject when what the pupils will be needing to do is to express themselves verbally in that language and to understand what people are saying to them in that language.
The British educational system is even worse than I thought it was!

Well, you learn something new every day:

allegedly, the dildo was invented before the wheel. Who would have thought!

Can anyone tell what the difference is between following someone and subscribing to them and how you subscribe?

The resignation of Jacinda Arden is a terrible blow to democracy and good governance.

She showed the world the way a country should be run!