Tweets seen
Over the past year, I have often wondered what will be left once the UK emerges —if it does— from the “panicdemic” measures…
Those tweets place me in a difficult position, opposed as I am to both parties and “lockdown” measures…
In any case, China is (obviously) a huge country with a huge population, and only small parts were “locked down”. The main Chinese economy was not much impaired. In the UK, the economy has been crippled by “lockdown” and other nonsense, the effects of which are mostly yet to be felt.
Until I went to stay and live in the USA (on and off, mainly in 1989-1993, but also in 1999-2002), I thought that the “Special Relationship” was at least to some extent real. I soon understood, however, that to Americans, even Anglophile ones, and certainly to the broad mass, the UK was down the other end of the telescope, hardly visible.
Long ago, in the mid/late 1970s, I was friendly with a lady of unusual and obscure Eurasian origins (part-Afghan, I believe; part-Irish too), who lived in London (in Kensington). She had been a journalist at one time in her youth, covering the Algerian conflict, unusually, mostly from the side of the Algerian rebels rather than from that of the French government and so-called pieds-noirs (French and other Francophone people long-settled in Algeria). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_War
It was not until years later that I knew that, on one side, her descent was from the mediaeval Norman rulers of Cyprus. Her maiden name had been de Lusignan [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_of_Lusignan].
Strange to think that, under other circumstances, this odd but rather fascinating (at times) woman (I should add that I was a possibly impressionable teenage boy of 19 when we first met) might have been a princess or whatever of a royal house.
Woodrow Wyatt, in his very entertaining multi-volume memoirs (of which I once owned copies), said that his son, who worked as a restaurant manager in the USA, was by descent the only Plantagenet pretender to the throne of England! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wyatt#Marriages,_children,_and_death; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wyatt; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wyatt#The_Journals.
Those memoirs are a good read, by the way. Incidentally, also, Wyatt’s daughter, Petronella, now a more or less washed-up journalist, was once and notoriously involved with the person presently posing as the Prime Minister of the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petronella_Wyatt.
Petronella Wyatt, however, is not descended from the Plantagenets.
More tweets
Well worth reading that whole thread.
I too prefer the traditional notation, though it is 45+ years since I was a chess enthusiast.
Maybe in 2019, but not now or in 2022, or 2024…
Rentoul got 3/10 this week (he claims an extra bit because he got part of question 4 right…). I usually beat Rentoul, but did no better this week, also 3/10, I think the worst I have ever done on these Saturday quizzes (I only knew the answers to questions 2, 5 and 6).
Alison Chabloz
The latest song from persecuted singer-songwriter Alison Chabloz:
Non-political, though maybe socio-political, by reason of the censorship imposed upon her.
More tweets seen
Interesting report.
Good grief…what next?
Late tweets
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
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