UFO alert! UFO alert!!

In case you didn't hear, UFO alert!

We love it. Yes, the acronym that really drives traffic to your website (http://www.derryjournal.com/, in case you're interested) or indeed your blog (well, you're here, aren't you?) is back.

UFO's have been spotted at Culmore in Derry ('What?! Again?!' I hear you cry). See http://www.derryjournal.com/journal/Is-Culmore-Road-a-UFO.5597998.jp

Got an email from a correspondent in that area this morning -

Hey there,

Hope all's well. Great story in today's paper about the aliens. Where in Culmore was the guy from? Should we reinforce the house in ---- Park against alien attack? Strange how the aliens picked the more upmarket end of town to appear eh? Perhaps fearful they'd get their hubcaps nicked if they parked in, say, Ballymagroarty. . . I kid.

I'm sure aliens are seen just as frequently in Ballymagroarty. Anyway, the idea of UFOs getting their hubcabs nicked . . .

My reply -

Hi,

Talked to our reporter and the man wants to remain anonymous but she's seen the video and her comment - "It's mad, mad, like. People are saying, could it be Chinese lanterns? but there's no way."
Could it be planes? "No way, there's about twenty of them. It's mad!"
So sounds like it's mad . . .

UFOs have been spotted quite a bit but it's hard to point to anything really useful that all this alien activity has done for mankind. Until now - the Journal's web traffic went through the roof when we posted our famous 'tax disc' UFO (again in Culmore, as I recall . . .)

The aliens over Culmore in a rather fetching 'V' formation . . .

An aid to inspiration

Here's something we're going to encounter more and more. My blog now appears to have taken on a life of its own. I logged in and came directly to this 'new entry'. Not a home button in sight, and all I wanted to do was to add Leona O'Neill's blog to my 'Blogs I'm following' category (actually I find it hard enough to follow my own blog - we're all time poor these days).

The point is, it's the blog that's doing this. It's taking the decisions - I have the illusion of free will. It's like the friendly woman in Starbucks who immediately starts the Venti Cappuchino. Soon my car will be heading straight for the Journal office, even on my day off (what's that? - ed. (had to put that in)). The porridge will be on first thing in the morning, though I feel like LIDL's fruit and nut muesli. We already have 'predictive text'. When I go up the town later, the staff at Next will already have the 6 months - 9 months boy's babygro at the checkout (scary). Staff at the Green Oaks retirement home have me pencilled in for 2035 (hopefully). The funeral oration is already prepared ('But perhaps his most glorious moment came when he rescued the Observer . . '). 'God' has the hairs on my head counted (or have I read that somewhere before?) The computer will automatically put every second part of the sentence in brackets (like this).

Anyway, what was I talking about . .

A real test for Google Images - what you get if you put in 'Martin McGinley at 80, still harbouring [or rather, 'harboring'] the illusion of 'free will''

Magical Glenlough

Frank McNally of the Irish Times must be on his holidays in Donegal. And clearly he's had a look at a copy of US painter Rockwell Kent's excellent book, to be found, among other places, in the library in Letterkenny. Kent spent time in remote and magical Glenlough, a valley near Glencolumbkille.

Or, since Frank's featuring Glencolumbkille a lot (it was Fr McDyer and the composer Arnold Bax in another column) it might be that excellent local guidebook he's using for ideas. Anyway, it's all good stuff. See
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0827/1224253337118.html


Latest on Rockwell Kent includes a three-hour documentary. John Cunningham at the Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny is the man to talk to. Incidentally a local historian in south-west Donegal, Christy Gillespie, reckons, after intensive research, that the case backing up local legend about Bonny Prince Charlie being in Donegal (as well as being in Glenlough, he left his razor in a house in Ramelton, it seems) is looking a strong one.

And when we talk of Glenlough, we remember the great fiddler from Meenacross, James Byrne, whose life was cut short last year. His solo album was called 'The Road to Glenlough' after a waltz of his.

I did a piece about a walk to Glenlough for the Irish Times. Haven't got it to hand, but you can read the highly impressive first paragraph at -

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2004/0827/1091051900256.html

Home ideas

Lot of wasted space in your hall? Why look further than the new 'Euro Trio' from Bathstore?! -

Is nothing sacred?

Startling news just in by email -


Press Release

Churchill - The Greatest Briton Unmasked
Nigel Knight

"I have not always been wrong. History will bear me out, particularly as I will write that history myself”
Winston Spencer Churchill
"Nigel Knight lays siege with well-informed gusto to the legend of Winston Churchill” - Martin Bell

3rd September 2009 is the 70th anniversary of the British declaration of war against Germany and it comes at the time of a startling re-assessment of Winston Churchill’s role.

In the popular imagination, Churchill is the greatest Briton but in his compelling appraisal of Winston Churchill’s political career, Nigel Knight reveals in his book ‘Churchill – the Greatest Briton Unmasked’ that not only is there little truth in this picture of his wartime premiership, Churchill’s strategy was in fact disastrous both in peace and war.

Such is the interest in this reassessment that Intelligence Squared has organized an event on 3rd September when Nigel Knight will debate this issue with –
Professor Norman Stone
Pat Buchanan Senior advisor to three US Presidents and
two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination
Professor Richard Overy
Antony Beevor, historian
Andrew Roberts, historian

From the debacle of the Gallipoli campaign in the First World War when he was First Lord of the Admiralty, to his contradictory economic policies as Chancellor; from his wartime blunders, and to the post-war period when he was marginalized by world leaders, this provocative new book shows how history has conveniently forgiven Churchill for momentous mistakes.

Backed up by rigorous research, Nigel Knight sheds startling new light on the life and career of Winston Churchill, shattering the sentimental myth of Churchill as ‘The Greatest Briton’ and forcing his legacy to be reappraised.

Nigel Knight is a lecturer in British Government at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He is the author of Governing Britain Since 1945.

Press enquiries please contact: Nigel Knight on 07771 530 829, nvk21@cam.ac.uk.
Or Sally Goodsell 07881 828 041, sg@international-marketing.co.uk
Intelligence Squared, www.intelligencesquared.com/events.php
David & Charles publishers, www.davidandcharles.co.uk

Obama's holiday reading - 3,000 pages

Reading 'Netherland' at the moment, by Corkman Joseph O'Neill (and it's really happening, it seems most novelists are younger than I am . . ) . Anyway, here are details from the London Independent of Obama's holiday reading in Martha's Vineyard this week -

On top of the pile stacked on Barack and Michelle's bedside table at the 28-acre estate they have rented for $35,000 (£21,000) on the western tip of the Massachusetts island is Hot, Flat and Crowded, the climate change polemic by New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman. Subtitled "why we need a green revolution", it makes a leftish call to arms regarding the future of the planet.

Mr Obama's second choice is historian David McCullough's magisterial biography of John Adams, the often underrated second US president, who was the subject of an award-winning HBO docu-drama last year.

The novels include two crime thrillers: Richard Price's Lush Life, and The Way Home, a novel by George Pelecanos set in Washington, DC – which, much like Obama's best-selling autobiography, explores the relationship between a father and his son.

Completing the set is the novel Plainsong, by a little-known writer called Kent Haruf. Set in a small town on the Colorado plains, its existence on the reading list may reassure voters that Middle America has not been ignored by their metropolitan commander-in-chief.

Publishers are keeping a beady eye on whether the famous "Obama bounce" – which has helped sales at the first family's favourite clothes stores, such as J Crew – will continue to apply to their troubled industry. The President's endorsement is said to have lifted sales of Joseph O'Neill's novel Netherland about cricket in Holland and New York last year.

The books were unveiled to reporters on Monday afternoon, at an official press briefing. Although world leaders have in recent years become accustomed to leaking details of their holiday reading, cynics often wonder if the lists might actually be little more than the fictional concoction of spin-doctors.

George W Bush caused bemusement in 2006, when he attempted to bolster his academic credentials by alleging that he was reading L'Etranger, by French existentialist Albert Camus, in translation.

Imagine him having to read it in translation . . .



Came across what looks like an interesting link along the way (searching Google Images for 'George W. Bush looking brainy') if you're interested in photography - http://ldesign.wordpress.com/category/epa/

True Romance

A former Journal man is anxious to keep us up to date with events in Durham and forwards this report from PA -


DRUNK NEWLYWEDS SPENT WEDDING NIGHT IN CELLS
By Tom Wilkinson, Press Association
A couple spent their wedding night in the cells after they were arrested at a bus station for being drunk and disorderly, police said today.
Newlyweds Harry and Claire Arnold got into a row with a security guard who asked them to stop smoking as they waited to catch a bus home from Durham.
Police were called and they were arrested, but the custody sergeant took pity on the couple when he heard they had married that morning and gave them a caution rather than making them each pay an £80 fixed penalty.
The couple were married at Durham Register Office on August 10, with 40 guests, in a ceremony that had taken four years to plan.
Afterwards, their twins Thomas and David, aged two-and-a-half, were christened.
They celebrated at Coxhoe Workingmen’s Club, with friends and family, including daughters Claire, 15, Emma, 12, and Caitlyn, 10, and Mrs Forshaw-Arnold’s father, David Forshaw.
The couple then had a romantic dinner for two at the Water House, a Wetherspoons pub, in Durham.
It was on their way home that trouble flared.
The bride, who wore a garter bearing a plastic imitation gun, said later: "Both the ceremonies went really well.
"But it was a nightmare wedding night. I was crying my eyes out. I was devastated.
"The police said ’We’ve never had a bride and groom in before’."
She was allowed home in the early hours and was given a lift in a police car.
Her husband was released at 4.30am and had to walk five miles home to Coxhoe.
A Durham Police spokesman said: "The couple had been celebrating, having got married in the morning and having their children christened in the afternoon.
"They took exception to being asked by a security guard to refrain from smoking inside the bus station.
"Eventually police were called and they were arrested for being drunk and disorderly.
"They were taken to the city police station and admitted the offence.
"They could have been issued with £80 fixed penalty notices but because it was their wedding day, the custody sergeant decided they should both receive a caution."