Who Invented the Flamethrower?

A new fave comedian of mine, the late George Carlin, on one of my favourite weapons, just for the sheer sick mindedness of those who came up with it. Still, they could do with it in those caves in Afghanistan (despite what Carlin says the US apparently got rid of them shortly after Vietnam)...

The First 1000 Followers..Seth's Blog

According to my  big brother's blog, the critical number of fans, customers, subscribers, and presumably followers, is 1000! If you keep those 1000 happy, everything will take care of itself. So, just another 999 followers to go, who will be next!!!

Strange Laws in Tallinn

It transpires that we have to keep the pavement outside our (communal) house clear, or relatively so, of snow. There's actually a chance of Tallinn city government, down at heel as it is, fining owners for failing to do so!
Luckily the Puumaja is equipped with snow shovels and the like for performing this public service, though I've managed to avoid it so far, the neighbours keep beating me to it! But I'm a busy man..

On This Day 344 Years Ago

...some things are everlasting..
December 25th 1665: "To church in the morning, and there saw a wedding in the church, which I have not seen many a day; and the young people so merry one with another, and strange to see what delight we married people have to see those poor fools decoyed into our condition, every man and woman gazing and smiling at them."

Hilarious Xmas Traditions

Tim Flowers is an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher based in the capital city of one of the baltic states. He is 42 years old. His previous job was working for the Post Office (main sorting office - as a superintendent) and this excellent and relevant background has given him a good grasp of the fundamentals of the English language, and the art of teaching it to others. He hails, as he likes to say, from Northamptonshire in England, a very glamorous part of the world indeed, and so is not at all out of place mingling with the glitterati of the Old Town where he hangs out on a Friday or Saturday night. He likes beer.
It's Christmas time, mistletoe and wine and so I thought that I'd ensure that I was worth every last penny of the fairly sizeable amount that the students have spent on my 'lessons' by finishing off term with a list of unusual, and really very amusing, xmas traditions from around the world. They must be true because I found the list on one of my colleague's desk, which was I think a copy of a copy of a copy of something from a now-defunct ESL website called "English language drop in shop" or something like that, I dunno I've never actually used the internet to put together teaching materials; my genius lies within the confines of my own cerebral cortex, ever able to come up with a dazzling array of explanations, games and anecdotes to keep them coming back for more (at least until the end of the course).
Anyway, here they are, brace yourself:

• In Luxembourg, children must skip anti-clockwise around an old, dead cat-sock (whatever that may be) before they can receive their present.
• Christmas is actually celebrated on 14th June in Kiribati. This is because it is in the Southern Hemisphere and, due to time zone differences, the day corresponds with 25th December in the Northern Hemisphere.
• A traditional Christmas dinner in England consists of turkey, cranberry sauce and, titter, mince pies, which aren't really pies at all, more like something like a giant jaffa cake.
• In Scotland, Christmas is called "Hogmanay" and culminates in the ritual slaughter of a pretend haggis.
• Instead of Father Christmas, children in Armenia can look forward to their presents being delivered by a spotty youth on a BMX.
  
• Due to a bye-law dating back to the regime of Oliver Cromwell, which has somehow been overlooked and remains on the statute book, the residents of Twickledrie in Southern Scotland are forbidden to celebrate Christmas.
• In Latvia, it is customary to drink Riga Balzams, an unholy concoction sold in strange-looking bottles, with holly sprigs.
  

So, looks like the final lesson's gonna be a laugh a minute.

Axe and Thou Shalt Receive

Canfield, Proctor, Nightingale, Zagler, Hill, Robbins, Tracy, Aaron... step aside please..there's a new success guru in town! Walt Gleeson is a highly successful, internationally renowned author of motivational books and CDs and other products. With a career spanning over half a decade, he has enthralled readers all over the world, from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Rhode Island, with such titles as You Can Do It!, You Can Do It! Too, Literally Make Your House Work For You and Become a Millionaire Whilst On The Toilet.

I just had to tell you about something interesting that happened to me the other day. I was waiting in transit at the Hatfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, when I noticed an elderly black gentleman sitting next to me reading a book. He was about my age, and I was just reflecting on how little we had in common, when he turned to me and said "you know, you want something real bad, all you godda do is axe. Axe and thou shalt receive".

This was undoubtedly the greatest meeting of minds in human history and the best piece of advice received by anyone ever, and naturally it just had to be yours truly Walt Gleeson. It's true. All you have to do is indeed ask and you will definitely receive everything you ask for. OK, God works in mysterious ways, and it may not be in exactly the way you anticipated. For example, you might ask for a Ferrari 355 in yellow and in fact receive a 355 page long yellowing copy of a biography of Lolo Ferrari, but that's just as good surely, so quit complaining.

It struck me just how far the negro has come since the bad old days of segregated buses, ad hoc lynchings and "no taxation without representation", I'm so glad that white people sorted out all the mess for them and we can all sleep easier now.

I realised that this message was sent to me for a reason, and that this man was, in a very real sense, working through me to reach my wider audience in some kind of synergy of binary-creative outputting with divine concretization.

I later beat a hasty retreat when I discovered he was a muslim.

Yo! Aksk!

Walt

I'm Not a Twat

Forgot just how great the Armando Ianucci show was. Ok his neuroses aren't quite as universal as I'd once thought, some things would translate well here in Estonia and others just wouldn't come up on the radar at all.
But it's perhaps the best stuff he's done, even more than the sublime Time Trumpet.

More Excruciating Clichés

Following my list of pet peeve clichés or unnecessary or overused phrases which can be viewed here, it's nice to see that others feel the same way.

This list focuses on the worst office phrases (by the way, why stop at 10?) but could equally be applied to everday life.

By the way is it a cliché to use the word cliché now?

One Of Our Boys Is Missing - Chapter 2, Hero in the Neighbourhood, Part One

Charlie 'Terminal' Moraine is a former special forces soldier who served in the legendary (especially since it's now defunct, along with most of the legendary British Army regiments) 53 Assault Reconnaisance Squadron in some of the world's hot spots (well they were hotspots if you were a special forces operative anyway) including Northern Ireland, Oman, Columbia at the height of the drugs war, and Chelmsley Wood in the West Midlands. The Puumaja Crew is proud to present, in serial form, his new book, 'One Of Our Boys Is Missing', covering his life story and over 20 years in the front line of one of the deadliest units since the Ottoman Janissaries.

Chapter two opens with Charlie's embarkation on a journey which was ultimately to culminate in killing loads of people, though nothing hinted at that yet.

So there I was, three months short of my eighteenth birthday, packing my kit ready for the trip down to Fedioukine Barracks, at Thrushingfold Depot in Oxfordshire. I had my travel warrant, sports kit, civvy clothes, and not much else.

The last few days at home I’d been doing a lot of reflecting; this is the point where, if this was on TV, a faded sequence of home movies would kick in - washing the car, with someone hilariously picking up a sud-coated sponge and throwing it playfully at another family member; my brother giving me a pummeling, then breaking off when he realized the camera was on him and hugging me and pretending we were the best of friends; one of my sister’s moodily slamming the door of her room in the camera’s face; no doubt the scene bookended with a fade-in of a jangly number by the Beach Boys or the Byrds.

But we’re not on TV and in the event it didn’t get much more sentimental than simply going out and getting lashed about five nights in a row. I was feeling a little bit unsettled, but I decided to repress this in the interests of playing up to what a hero I was and generally gobbing off about it. The last night came, to the pub as usual. I felt a bit guilty as my family had arranged a ‘going away’ dinner, which I proceeded to shovel down as I had an urgent appointment with John Barleycorn to get to.

The next morning, and with the mother of all hangovers, I did a final sweep of the house to check I hadn’t left anything, and felt my heart quite literally in my mouth, which made talking very difficult, as I came down the stairs and into the blinking sunlight, the taxi’s diesel engine idling, reminding me it was best to make this short. My mum and sisters presented me with an assortment of goodies - jam, books and the like, which I hid at the bottom of my bag and ditched before I reached the depot. I felt a few jabs of remorse, but the reality was I was going into the world of the military, a million miles away from the civvy world of jam and books, and I just couldn't risk the embarrassment of being busted as a secret reader. I did however find space for Quentin, my childhood teddy bear, and I'd even made him a little cammo suit. I had to keep him well under wraps though, and designed a secret compartment in my bag for the purpose - this was real contraband.

I'd like to be able to say that my father broke down when I left, chewing the flagstones in a display of abject anguish, and pounding his fists into the ground wailing 'why, why, why?' but in fact he just said 'good luck', and gave me a firm handshake. He was never one for goodbyes. But it was sad to be leaving the family fold, however dysfunctional they might have at times been, they were soon going to resemble the Von Trapps in comparison with the new 'family' I was joining.

All the neighbours turned out for my send off, and I felt like the most important person in the world, like Chistopher Columbus or someone, leaving for terra incognita. I reality I probably looked more like Christopher Robin, laden down with my little pack and sauntering off, naive, innocent, and with locks which were far too long and curly for my own good. As I shut the door of the taxi, I wondered when I'd next see them all again and how much I'd have changed (probably at Christmas and my hair would be shorter, and I'd be fitter).

The taxi pulled away, and, before I had time to warn the driver, shot over the give way sign at the crossroads at the bottom of our close, broadsiding into an early morning milkfloat, sending bottles full and empty crashing all over the place. The milk float driver was incensed, and in the ensuing argument between him and the cabbie I made my way back, feeling very foolish.

‘Come on I’ll take you’ my dad said – buying some extra time with the old man made things a little easier.

To be spun out some more...

If you missed the last installment, it's here

How to Stop a Kitten That Keeps Biting You

A vexed question indeed. I've found that keeping a big water spray thing, the kind that you use for ironing, to hand and giving it a blast every time seems to be working. Another ploy is to have a big tin of coins and shake it once, vigorously every time they nip you. The downside is if you don't have these cumbersome things to hand, and I don't always, and get it immediately you've been violated (or better still just before) the stupid thing doesn't seem to make the connection and just thinks it's being sprayed/rattled for no particular reason.
Good luck!

Origins of the Estonian Language Part 2

..see yesterday's post for the preamble..
As noted, old woman who swallowed a fly style, Estonian falls in the Baltic-Finnic sub-group of the Finno-Lappic sub-group of the Finno-Volgaic sub-group of the Finno-Permic sub-grop of the Finno-Ugric sub-group of the Uralic group of languages!
It's spoken in, er, Estonia, with emigre communities in the kind of places you'd expect to find them, by a bit more than a million people, and as a second language by a good couple of hundred thousand people from the "Russian" community in Estonia, plus, in tiny numbers, attempts at speaking it as a second (or third or fourth) language by those from other parts of the world mad enough to live here.
The language was standardised towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the South Estonian dialect (centred on the University town of Tartu) losing out to the Northern dialect (centred on the capital, Tallinn). Apparently there's still a strong difference today but I haven't spent enough time in South Estonia to catch it. There are also apparently strong dialects in the islands, notably Saaremaa. More than that, there are at least a couple of distinct, but closely-related languages, spoken largely or wholly within the confines of the Estonian border (both in the South East of the country in fact) namely Võru and Setu. I have no idea about these two.
As I have said, Estonian is quite closely related to Finnish, though the two aren't mutually intelligle. That many people in Tallinn can speak Finnish is largely down to tourism and the fact that Finnish TV could be received, presumably illegally, in the latter decades of the Soviet occupation, Helsinki being only 80km across the sea.
It shares the large number of inflectional cases as well, and the endings are similar, but not the same.
For much of its history, Finland was a province of Sweden, being ceded to Russia after the Napoleonic wars as a semi-autonomous grand Duchy, whereas Estonia came under the German orbit. Thus, German influenced Estonian (but not Finnish) profoundly, and Swedish much less (though there was some influence, especially in the islands where Swedish speakers resided until WW2. German lexis, paricularly concerning matters of governance, bureaucracy and the church, flooded the Estonian language and we still have many of them today (a few examples: "kirik" (church), "kraad" (degree, as in temperature), "plats" (town square)..).
The standardisation of the alphabet must have come a bit later than that of grammar; on visiting the bank of Estonia museum (more promising than it sounds) I noticed that on some of the early bank notes from the first period of independence (after WW1), twenty (viiskümmend in modern Estonian) was written wiiskümmend, i.e. using the German 'w' as a 'v' sound, and I'm told that the German double 's' letter was also used.
The unique letter 'õ' in Estonian, which causes problems for foreign learners, is something that sums up the language in general. Very difficult to reproduce accurately or even to distinguish from the more familiar "ö" sound. For instance, the Puumaja being located on Õle street, I'm constantly having to say "yeah that's what I just said" in response to corrections at my attempt to pronounce the street name. Apparently even some Estonians have a problem with it, most notably from Saaremaa where people, presumably due to the Swedish influence noted above, tend to default to the "ö" letter, much to the amusement of the rest of the country. This was lampooned in the film "Malev". In terms of its sound, the spoken language is, to the uninitiated ear, quite lilting and scandanviany sounding, though not as much as Finnish, and also has a certain breathy quality due to the high incidence of aspirated 'h' sounds (which I assume Russians have as much difficulty with as I do with pronouncing their 'kh' (as in 'ya khachoo') sound.
Despite the old stereotype of Estonians being slow, most people speak quite quickly, although sounds aren't run together as much as they usually are in English or Russian.
In general it's a very hard language to learn, exacerbated by the fact that people here speak such good English, though any efforts will usually be well received, and presumably something of a novelty, though the disappointing tendency, as in the other two baltic states, to be used as a pawn in the "these Russians who can't speak Estonian/Latvian/Lithuanian who've been living here since .." gripe.
Now on to actually learn the language rather than pontificating about it...

Origins of the Estonian Language Part 1

...go back in time five or ten years and tell the then-me that I'd have been posting items with headers like this and see a very perplexed man..
The Uralic languages, which Estonian forms an albeit-small part of, are a language "family" of about 39 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. In this Estonian differs from the languages of the other two baltic states, which belong to, and in fact are the only extant examples of, the baltic sub-group of the vast Indo-European family.
For historical reasons there are Hungarian speakers in neighbouring countries including Romania and the Ukraine.
As the name suggests, it has been postulated that these languages emerged somewhere in or near the Urals, a range of apparently unprepossessing mountains (though I've not been - yet) which have been lifted from relative obscurity as marking the delineation of Europe and Asia. This has however been disputed and some have placed the original homeland of the Uralic languages either to the South or West.
You may see Estonian listed as a "Finno-Urgic" language, in fact this is the more common classification for the layman or woman at least. I find this designation a little cumbersome; it hyphenates Finnish and Hungarian (or "ugric") which, as anyone who's seen or heard both will struggle to comprehend since they bear no resemlance to one another at all. Furthmore it leaves Estonian out of the equation along with a large range of languages spoken across, for the most part, North-Western Russia, but also including the various languages of the Sami people (formerly known as "Lapps"). Conversely there is nothing more in the "ugric" part of that designation bar something called "Ob Ugric"; whereas there are zillions of Finnic languages. Estonian and Finnish have a whole lot more in common, a similar inflectional system (though Finnish has 2 cases more and slightly longer case endings) and a lot of vocabulary, often concerning things like geographical features which have been around forever, seemingly either the same (e.g. kala (fish), maa (country/land)) or very similar (Ranta (Fin.)/Rand (Est.)=beach; Saari (F.) / Saar (E.) = island, Joensuu (F.) / Jõesuu (E.) = both towns meaning "mouth of a river" etc.).
Aside from all their differences, the Uralic languages have such features in common as the large set of cases noted above, no verb to have (you simply say "on/by/at etc. me there is..." a bit like in Russian, no grammatical gender (thank God), and the stress always falling on the first syllable (much easier than Russian or Lithuanian then).
A simplified breakdown of classifications is:
Samoyedic
Finno-Ugric
Hungarian (Magyar)
Ob Ugric (Ob Ugrian)
Finno-Permic (Permian-Finnic)
Permic (Permian)
Finno-Volgaic
Finno-Lappic
Sami languages
Baltic-Finnic
Estonian
South Estonian (including Mulgi and Tartu)
Võro (Voro, Võru, Voru; including Seto or Setu)
Finnish (and variants)
Ingrian (Izhorian) — Nearly extinct
Karelian
Livonian, Vepsian, Votic, all nearly extinct, incidentally Livonian is/was confined to one small region of the Kurzeme peninsular in Latvia.
Source, if you're interested: Wikipedia, of course!

The Puumaja Mees Is Unwell and Will Return Soon

Cold Weather

According to the thermometer on the car it was -14 degrees in the afternoon yesterday. Anyway it felt cold, but it's kinda nice too, a proper season too. Got the wood burning fire going daily now in the puumaja, which means I'm gonna run out of wood soon. Hopefully there's somewhere that will sell me some more..

Top Ten Stones Songs

Just a random list, which more or less fizzles out not long after Brian's demise..
1) Come On - simply as it was the first. Great harmonica work too.
2) 19th Nervous Breakdown - fantastically bitchy lyrics.
3) Under My Thumb - relatively sophisticated chord progression for the time, brilliantly evil (note to self, stop using '-ly' adjectival qualifiers, or whatver they are).
4) You Can't Always Get What You Want - so true.
5) Lady Jane - I was never sure if this was a reference to Lady Jane Grey, but it's a nice idea.
6) Ruby Tuesday - kinda renaissancey sound that an American band would never be able to pull off.
7) Stupid Girl - simple, get the impression they wrote, recorded and finished it in about two hours and that was all it needed.
8) Sympathy for the Devil- Purely due to the sentiment and the historical references to the Russian Revolution etc.
9) Start Me Up - great subject matter for a mainstream song, 'you make a dead man come' - just admirable.
10) Connection - from the Between the Buttons Album, again something that was probably intended as a filler and yet pisses all over most bands' finest tunes.

On This Day 341 Years Ago

[...ie 14th December 1668..]

This day I hear, and am glad, that the King hath prorogued the Parliament to October next; and, among other reasons, it will give me time to go to France, I hope.

[..would that it were that modern day monarchs in England would prorogue Parliament, preferably until twentington o'clock on the 33rd May.]

Excellent Way to Learn Russian

Since I've lived in all three of the Baltic States at various times over the past four years, it's not escaped my notice what, at times, a useful lingua franca Russian still is here. Instead of three languages of notable complexity and exclusivity (Estonian is usually plonked in a completely different language group than the other two, although it shares some items of vocabulary with Latvian) one, admittedly also difficult language, caters for all three. Not that it does exactly.The younger people often tend to learn English instead, and it's probably only possible to communicate on a superficial level with most balts in the language of the USSR, particularly here in Estonia (though presumably fine for the substantial 'Russian' population here). But, well, a lot of people can speak Russian here.
Viewing my inability to make progress in Russian bar more or less learning the alphabet plus a few daft and hackneyed words of phrases as little short of scandalous, and possibly a hindrance to getting by here (along with languishing Captain Scott style on the intermediate plateau in Estonian) it was definitely on one of my various lists as something worth doing. Forunately I got hold of the Michel Thomas method Russian courses about a month ago and haven't looked back since. As a part-time language teacher, this method had always held a certain amount of significance, or at least had done since I discovered it (via the German courses, and well before I was a language teacher). Thomas was of Polish-Jewish origin who, it is reported, discovered the deep and largely untapped potential of the brain when, of all things, he was being brutally tortured by the Gestapo (he was apparently a French Resistance agent) and discovered an ability to block out pain. I'll gladly leave that part to Michel but after the war he used his ability to extract confessions from former nazis under interrogation, this time without the use of violence, and subsequently opened a language school for the beautiful people, in Beverley Hills.
Actually it seems he was no snob, opening up his doors to school kids who'd been dubbed no hopers and seeing them make enormous progress.
I won't say anything about the method 'cos I don't think I could do it justice, except to say it's fun, if you can credit that. I've completed the foundation and 'advanced' courses (which isn't really advanced although gets you putting together, after less than 10 hours in total, constructions which might take others months or even years) and moved on to the 'vocabulary' course (which isn't really vocabulary, but a lot of essential grammar, guess they didn't want to scare people off). They're even available electronically , so you don't need to wait for a package from amazon.
I'm now speaking in Russian in shops from time to time where needed and looking forward to being able to read newspapers (which should be able to do by the time I've finished the vocab course) and speaking to real people.
Oorah!

Something for the List

Anyone that knows me, which is noone, will know that I have a penchant (relatively new-found) of making lists of things to do and ticking them off (or losing the list). Well, this will well and truly put a stop to, not the behaviour, but at least the random pieces of paper flying around. It's called 'Teux Deux' (as in 'to do') and it's great. Well, I say this, I haven't actually tried it out yet, but it's on the list! Of course it's far from the only electronic to do list app; I previously have used gmail's diary function, though that's not great for to do items (but excellent as a diary) as they get sidelined a bit in favour of the daily diary entry but this one seems really helpful and functional, enabling you to move things around if you don't get to do them on a particular day (or at least move them forwards - naturally you can't move back in time) cross them off, delete the crossed-off items OR leave them up if you like to feel pleased with yourself at how much you've achieved, etc. Of course you, as I, may have used other apps at work, but largely because you've been told to. What's nice about this is it's your own. Enjoy. Glad I managed not to call this post 'what a teux deax' or something hysterical like that.

On This Day 349 Years Ago

My wife and I up very early this day, and though the weather was very bad and the wind high, yet my Lady Batten and her maid and we two did go by our barge to Woolwich (my Lady being very fearfull) where we found both Sir Williams and much other company, expecting the weather to be better, that they might go about weighing up the Assurance, which lies there (poor ship, that I have been twice merry in, in Captn. Holland’s time,) under water, only the upper deck may be seen and the masts.

Captain Stoakes is very melancholy, and being in search for some clothes and money of his, which he says he hath lost out of his cabin.

[that would make me pretty melancholy too-ed]

I did the first office of a justice of Peace to examine a seaman thereupon, but could find no reason to commit him.

[not sure what form this examination might take! - ed]

This last tide the Kingsale was also run aboard and lost her mainmast, by another ship, which makes us think it ominous to the Guiny voyage, to have two of her ships spoilt before they go out. After dinner, my Lady being very fearfull she staid and kept my wife there, and I and another gentleman, a friend of Sir W. Pen’s, went back in the barge, very merry by the way, as far as Whitehall in her. To the Privy Seal, where I signed many pardons and some few things else.

From thence Mr. Moore and I into London to a tavern near my house, and there we drank and discoursed of ways how to put out a little money to the best advantage, and at present he has persuaded me to put out 250l. for 50l. per annum for eight years, and I think I shall do it.

[Think I might put out a little money to the best advantage - still it's easy what you can discourse about whilst drinking!!-ed]

Thence home, where I found the wench washing...,

[good stuff..]

..and I up to my study, and there did make up an even 100l., and sealed it to lie by. After that to bed.

[Me too-goodnight, ed.]

Cultural Reducator TIm Flowers

Tim Flowers is an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher based in the capital city of one of the baltic states. He is 42 years old. His previous job was working for the Post Office (main sorting office - as a superintendent) and this excellent and relevant background has given him a good grasp of the fundamentals of the English language, and the art of teaching it to others.
He hails, as he likes to say, from Northamptonshire in England, a very glamorous part of the world indeed, and so is not at all out of place mingling with the gliterati of the Old Town where he hangs out on a Friday or Saturday night.
He likes beer.

Managed to get through a whole lesson today without once using the textbook. Now, your run of the mill ESL teacher wouldn't be able to do this, mind, but I can wing this as I've been doing it so long, and I managed to get it down to a fine art, with just me talking for an hour and a half about US politics, something I know a lot about, the knowledge from which I know my students are all really keen to benefit
I see myself as a cultural re-educator; for years people in this country were cut off by a system which, whilst sound in its principles (Marx being a really sound person, something I know all about having read the first 11 pages of "Das Kapital" on the trolleybus before proceeding to sound off about it to all and sundry) was deformed in its execution. Trotsky 'now there would have been your man, such a shame they had to shoot him. Anyway as I was saying before I interuptted [sic - ed ](my flow of genius, these people who I teach really know nothing. They're all racist (probably) and they've hardly lived or seen anything of the real world. Well, one or two of them go on regular business trips to North America and the far east, and another just got back from a holiday in the Cayman Islands, but they're just tourists, they've no idea about how it really is for ordinary people. Forgot to set homework, as the students had already packed up and started leaving before I'd finished (we'd only overrun by about 14 minutes), oh well, homework is the Sanatogen of the masses, I don't believe in it (and I don't want to have to mark it either), surely just the honour of having me as their teacher is enough? Now, just for a quick ciggie break before I announce, unsolicited and uninvited, to everyone in the staffroom that that lesson I just taught was 'shit' (it wasn't really) though not because of me (I spent a full 8 minutes preparing it) but because of demotivated, unenthusiastic and lazy students...javascript:void(0)

Irritating and Hackneyed Things People Say and the Corresponding Punishment

Just a short run down (urghh, hating this already) of a select few of those lazy, placemaker cliches that even fairly educated people come out with just for the sake of emitting sounds from their vocal tract in an effort to numb the pain and emptiness, and the penalty that befits...
1) "At the end of the day". Ok I know this is figurative but that doesn't alter the fact that it's at best, a lazy, lazy verbal crutch and synonymous with "this is my opinion and/or line or sales pitch, nothing you say or do is going to alter it".
PENALTY: Firing Squad. At dawn. No, better still, at the end of the day.
2) "If you look at it logically"..as opposed to what? What are you trying to say, that your interlocutor is an irrational and neurotic individual who needs to be brought back to reality with a bang, courtesy of your incisive (and deeply patronizing) intervention.
PENALTY: To be patronized to death and canonized as, as Victor Lewis Smith dubbed Esther Rantzen, the Patron Saint of Patronizers.
3) "I don't want to make an issue of this". Yes you do. Insofar as I understand this meaning of the word 'issue', which is to say, point of contention or debate, it might be better to at least be honest and say "I'm not going to discuss this on an equal footing with you since you are not my equal at least in this case, so you are going to do what I say". Or words to that effect.
PENALTY: "I don't want to make an issue out of your death with torments..."
4) "It's just one of those things." Found myself guilty of this committing this affront to several hundred years of accumulated ingenuity and inventiveness in the English language, only the other day. I was talking about Estonia's occupation as part of the USSR as being 'just one of those things'. One of what things? What the hell do you mean? Furthermore, the cliche if I understand it correctly is intened as dismissing whatever it's being tagged to as being unavoidable or even insignificant, which was not what I meant, and which is why therefore this phrase is moribund - if it can't be avoided or isn't very important, then why bother commenting on it at all, you're just wasting time.
PENALTY: Death? Well it's just one of those things isn't it....
5) "History repeats itself" - ok, when the Spanish Armada comes round again or we literally reinvent the wheel then I'll subscribe to that, otherwise STFU. As an aside, a writer (unfortunately I've forgotten the reference - could be Andrew Marr) played on this beautifully once when he/she wrote that history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes..
PENALTY: Time for Torquemada to repeat himself.
6) "Sweden has the highest suicide rate in the world"...urghh..zzz...why do people say that? Even if it weren't merely trumpeting what a million people (or far more) have said in (formerly) smoky pubs up and down the land (I know, I know, a cliche too, at least I didn't put 'length and breadth..'), what conclusions are we to draw from it and what possible comfort can it bring to anyone regardless of whether they've been touched by suicide or no. Apart from anything, it's patently not true, at least according to wikipedia, though this info itself is out of date and seemingly impossible to corroborate.
PENALTY: deported to Sweden.
7) Finally, the phrase which really should have followed the grottiest, most one dimensional EastEnders character to the grave, but sadly didn't: "No offence" or it's even more florid bastard halfling "no disrepsect to yourself". The get out clause of all get out clauses (along with "it's meant ironically"). Surely by making such a statement you're in fact indicating that, yes, I do indeed intend to cause offence; either that or "oh shit I've just realized I said that to the wrong person, or when the wrong person was in earshot" thus indicating a certain amount of Janus-facedness since if that person hadn't been present then the get out clause would have been unnecessary.
PENALTY: To be reduced to tears by as sustained and ruthless verbal barrage, punctuated, of course, with the "no offence" disclaimer.

Something Like an Inverted Pareto Principle

According to my big brother Seth, if you give a group of people a certain job or task, 2 per cent of it will make a balls of it. That's not quite how he said it being the urbane and refined wunderkind that he is, but that's what he meant.
I have to say, I know he's American, but this figure seems very low to me indeed. Here in Estonia I'd expect something a little higher (but not a lot) since it means 98 people out of a 100 will get it right if he's right, and if that were the case there wouldn't be quite so many people wandering round with long faces, moaning about the bad 'economical and financical (sic) situation'...it's got to be more than 2 per cent of the population's fault!
Maybe I'm just pessimistic though. Or maybe most of that 2 per cent happens to find themselves in positions of responsibility and authority when we'd be better off turning the tables and all having a crack at things.
I think that's what happened in Britain during the war. Everyone had a crack at being foreign secretary, or chancellor or whatever, just for about a month at a time...

BFK Recommends Dodo - Shock

Benedict Francis-Kentigern, or BFK as we know him, is an affable motoring journalist of the old school. Dropping out of some big public school somewhere in England to pursue his passion of pretending to race cars, he's acquired such an array of tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, arran sweaters and empty travel sweet tins, that you can't help but ignore him. Look forward to BFK's occasional reports on motoring, cars, and what drives the people that drive them, in his section to be found somewhere on the site.
Hi gang, I just had to tell you about I new product which I'm really excited about and which has just arrived at the Puumaja. It's called Dodo Juice, and, despite it's name, isn't really made from a dodo nor is it primarily juice, but rather a vast range of hip-to-the-jive (or whatever the young people are saying nowadays) car detailing products.
Essentially, car detailing means keeping your car's interior and exterior uber-clean, and dodo juice focuses on the latter. No more ragged sponges from under the sink, and grit-swilling bucket of fairy liquid once every 3 months, you can now wash, clay ( to removed contaminants like bits of dead fly and deeply encrusted grime) polish, wax and protect your car, all using the Dodo Juice range.
In my opinion the waxes are the flagship products and they come in a selection of 8, four 'soft' waxes and four 'hard'. There's also a limited edition 'austintacious' range, which evokes memories of my old mini clubman days (well, I had a mini clubman key fob anyway).
These waxes look and smell very tempting (it was with a sinking feeling that my youngest grandaughter woke me up at zero-crack hundred hours when staying over the other weekend, saying 'Grandpa, this marzipan tastes funny'!) and have tropical themed names like 'Rainforest Rub' and 'Banana Armour' but there's a serious point to them. They contain Carnauba wax, derived from the leaves of a specific type of palm tree which grows in tropical latin america, and other natural ingredients including beeswax. This is what gives the waxes their protective oomph and helps to encourage passers by using your car's paintwork as a mirror.
There's a whole load more, including synthetic products called sealants, which perform a similar function to wax, quick detailing products like 'Red Mist', paraphernalia such as a huge furry glove nicknamed the 'wookie's fist' (for washing the car, it's a little more forgiving than a scouring pad I find) and even a spray called 'Time to Dry', which, believe it or not, speeds up the drying process after you've washed the car! Sunday afternoons in Shakespeare Drive will never be the same again, all the neighbours are going to want some Dodo Juice of their own now.
Well, they'll have to visit dodojuice.com to do that, or if in Estonia, they can always contact the Puumaja crew, who are now distributing this wonderful product, straight to your door if necessary. And...

ok that's enough plugging - ed

Don't See 'Old Dogs' at the Cinema..

..I beseech you. You'd be better off watching old dogs in the street, pissing against lamposts or shagging.

I should have guessed when I saw Robin Williams and John Travolta were going to be a in a 'comedy' featuring a dog, but no...in fact the dog premise is a lame tack on, an attempted metaphor I suppose but which just wastes everyone's time including those involved. This wouldn't pass the '10 minute test' chez the Puumaja, where my flatmate and I give TV1000's nightly offerings that exact amount of time to impress. A series of unrelated, poorly based 'japes' with these totally disgusting and un-cute 'cute' kids, continual screaming and shouting and overacting, bizarre visual gags and a denoument so predictable you could see it coming from the second or third minute, it was one of those rare movies that actually leaves me feeling angry.

As someone hilariously said about another turkey, Schindler's List is funnier...

Lesson learned, always read rotten tomatoes (which gave it 5 per cent!) or something very like it before checking out a movie and don't go to the cinema just for going to the cinema (especially if it's in Tartu and you live in Tallinn!).

On Religion

I got Hare Krishna'd the other day in the street in Tallinn, near Kaubamaja. Not for the first time...Still, far less likely to get mormonized here, than was the case in when I was working in Riga (which I'm now calling little Utah).
The guy who approached me was perfectly pleasant and not wearing any weird clobber. I later saw him having reeled someone in, a woman, they were speaking in Russian. I think that could be a part of the reason the mormons don't seem to meet with as much success, they're outsiders and, even if they may make some progress with members of the Russian community (as I think their organisation trains them up in that language, certainly all the mormons who've ever approached me have opened in Russian) they're still outsiders. Furthermore, approaching native Estonian speakers in the street in Russian isn't likely to endear yourself to them. It's just the way it is. Better to speak English.
I suspect the real reason is that Estonians simply aren't a very religious bunch at all; as you'll see, if you can find Estonia on a map, according to this survey they're right down there below even Sweden in non-belief in a deity, and coupled with a marked uneasiness with strangers makes for proselytizers having a pretty thin time of it here, especially in the winter!
I've been reflecting that, if this street proselytisation is valid (and I'm inclined to think it isn't, though if there's to be freedom of information I'm not sure how else one tackles that particular arena, for those that are genuinely interested but lack access to information) the 'correct' religion that a person could end up in might just be based on such happenstance of who you bumped into in the street. Which seems to me just wrong. No doubt they'd refer to that as God's will, providence etc, that this encounter happened. Which in some cases it could be - if the person was out looking for answers. On that other hand what if they were bludering along half drunk, or looking for a way to rebel against authority figures, or just to stand out from the crowd.
And this is my real beef with organised religion. Not that I think the whole thing is based on a lie; as an agnostic I don't believe you can prove one way or another about the existence of God, though from my own personal feelings and intuition there's something resounding down the ages, providing a basic moral framework (are there any countries where you get anything other than punished for murder, as murder?). There are truths to be found in all of the major religions and probalby most of the minor ones too. But...I believe, if you spend any time with people who claim to be representing an organized religion, sooner or later, you'll run into one or more of the following as the real reason behind their adherence:

1) cultural and historical (they were 'born a catholic' or whatever. Noone is born anything other than a baby human).
2) a badge (ie, 'you're not one of us').
3) to stand out ('my religion's different (ie better) than yours/the majority religion', etc etc).
4) to rebel ('my family were prods so I'm gonna spite them by converting to catholicism').
5) to conform ('my family are catholic and they'd never speak to me if I left the fold').
6) to get a sense of belonging ('catholics are different').
7) to get a sense of importance (you can 'be' somebody even if you're a nobody in everyday life).
8) to dominate others (religions vary hugely on hierarchies or the absence thereof, with catholicism way up there, islam much less so but with a nasty tendency to throw up self appointed seeming troublemakers. As an aside, this is a trait religions can share with the world of ESL teaching).
9) to prey (note spelling!) on others sexually (speaks for itself).
10) for something to do (especially for old ladies).
11) compelled to do it (forced attendance at 'worship', and I'm not only talking about the Taliban but this might include, in the US, court-mandated attendance at 12-step 'meetings', for example.
12) a sense of being a world changer, and almost messianic figure (Bono).
13) to proselytize (in islam it's called 'dawa'. In other words you get more kudos for the more people you hook in, and are really little more than a salesman or woman).
14) for the laughs (especially true of judaism!).
15) because you believe it is truth (ok this one's ok).

..there are probably loads of other reasons I haven't identified.

I'm not some pleb who's just watched a Richard Dawkins 'lecture' or something and proceeded to reel it off as if it's my own opinion; I've actually studied some of the major religions (including islam) in quite a lot of depth and even in the past been an active participant in (christian) communities, and as noted, I see myself as agnostic, not atheist.
I haven't really defined 'organized' and 'religion' and there's a certain vagueness here which doesn't make things any easier; indeed there collocation could be used to describe to a greater or lesser extent anything from the really major world religions, through to the smaller ones, social clubs, shamanistic local practices, crazy cults and even the 12 step groups of alcoholics anonymous and its clones.
This isn't an attempt to cause offence by dissing the various named and unnamed religions and I'd always welcome freedom of religious expression for all, including attire, right to worship, etc, something that you're unlikely to get as a dhimmi in some countries where islam prevails. But there has to be a trade off, including the right to criticize or portray religion and even God in a humourous light. But this has been raked over and over again enough in the media already, I'm not adding fuel to that fire..

On This Day 349 Years Ago...

From the pages of Pepys' diary, 4th December 1660 (Puumaja comments in [ ]).
"This day the Parliament voted that the bodies of Oliver, Ireton, Bradshaw &c, should be taken out of their graves in the Abbey, and drawn to the gallows, and there hanged and buried under it..."
[If I'm not mistaken, Oliver is none other than Oliver Cromwell, former East Anglian MP turned 'Lord Protector' of England, Scotland and Ireland and now somewhat out of favour; Henry Ireton was his son-in-law and a Parliamentary general, John Bradshaw, a judge who presided over the trial of Charles I. This episode concerns the 'execution' and mutilation of their corpses as an act of vengeance.]
"...which (methinks) do trouble me that a man of so great courage as he was, should have that dishonour, though otherwise he might deserve it enough".
[Little bit of politics, I assume Pepys kept his thoughts on this to himself (the diary was encrypted in fact). And people really did say 'methinks'!!!. I can't help thinking what a shame it is such things don't happen any more...digging up the body of out of favour politicians (former PMs spring to mind) and publicly hanging, drawing and quartering it in the middle of Westminster in the rush hour..well, you could charge money for tickets. Better than Simon Cowell anyway..]

Unattractive Enough to be a Model

I just saw a bit of a notably asinine program from the UK, one of those 'we're gonna have to let one of you go, and this time I'm afraid it's...', which is seemingly a sacred cow of a format nowadays. In this case it was models, or would-be models, and there were the requisite tears as one of the 'contestants', with a delightfully glamorous West Midlands accent, was told she was out.
Thing was, and I don't know if this is worth saying but anyway, noone's reading, I can see stacks of far, far more beautiful girls here in Tallinn every time I step out of the house practically.
I don't say this to boast, just I find it a bit frustrating how these people are held up as paragons of beauty when to my eyes they're very unappealing-looking, androgynous or bordering on ugly.
Maybe that's not the point, and models aren't here to provided titillation for males; fine with me, and I don't doubt that the objectification of women for men's pleasure is a bad thing, in which case would you please explain to me exactly WHAT they do to enrich our lives?
No doubt their critics are less kind; if they'd had any vestige of a personality it might have been something but they were equally or even more bland and off-putting in that regard too.
One of the 'judges' on the show perhaps encapsulated it best when he said, of one of the contestants, 'she looks like a model'.....so there it is, not she's beautiful or even just attractive. Provided she conforms to the industry standard that's already been set in stone, for the time being. A bit like saying this car looks like a car.

10 Heroes (relatively speaking) of Mine I've Outlived (at least in numbers of years - James Dean and Jimi Hendrix Guaranteed Not Included)

- Robert Johnson - musician
- Wing Commander Guy Gibson - Pilot
- John Bonham - musician
- Captain Laurence Oates - Explorer
- Francois Cevert - racing driver
- King Henry V of England - er, King. Actually he may have been slightly older depends on dates
- Jim Clark - racing driver
- Franz Schubert - composer
- Charlotte 'Marmalade Atikins' Coleman - actress
- Bobby Sands - political activist

...if I hang in another year or two I'll overtake Robbie Burns...

Noone Killed in Freak Accident And No Footage of Celebs in Compromising Situations Here

When trying to set up a business, I've noticed a phenomenon which I call SS- concentration-camp-guards-at-the-end-of-the-war syndrome, namely, that I've switched to attempting to get on the best terms with people I previously held in utter contempt. I've suddenly started having more sympathy for internet marketers, cold callers, even spammers in a way (no let's not go that far). Or at least I seem to feel I should do.
The logic behing this is that now the boot's on the other foot and I'm my own boss, surely now I have to go out and do all the networking, sales-y stuff and the like, something which fills me with a huge amount of dread and awe I don't mind saying.
So it was nice to hear confirmation from Seth that I was right all along and if I interpret my big brother correctly, that these people are indeed scum (not that he'd couch it in such terms, gent that he is).
Anyone who thinks it's ok to hit a hundred people at the same time, no matter who they are, on the grounds that if one of them replies it's paid for itself already, never mind the effect on the other 99 people, probably doesn't deserve a high place in the pantheon of worthwhile people.
In fact I wonder if the prostitute-card placers in central London phone boxes think along the same lines.
He opens by looking at the phenomenon of juicy headline writers reeling in even otherwise sensible people with promises of scandal and hype, hence the reverse heading of this post. Check it out.

'One Of Our Boys Is Missing - Part 4, Contractual Obligations.

Charlie 'Terminal' Moraine is a former special forces soldier who served in the legendary (especially since it's now defunct, along with most of the legendary British Army regiments) 53 Assault Reconnaisance Squadron in some of the world's hot spots (well they were hotspots if you were a special forces operative anyway) including Northern Ireland, Oman, Columbia at the height of the drugs war, and Chelmsley Wood in the West Midlands. The Puumaja Crew is proud to present, in serial form, his new book, 'One Of Our Boys Is Missing', covering his life story and over 20 years in the front line of one of the deadliest units since the Ottoman Janissaries.
In Part 4 our steely-eyed-deliverer-of-death-and-destruction-in-the-making visits the army 'liaison' office, and agnonizes over which regiment to sell his soul to.

'What makes you think you'd be any good to us?' the 'liaison' officer sitting in front of me snapped. He was an oldish man of about 34, greying hair, glasses, a warrant officer. I guessed that he'd had a long and active career behind him, and resented slightly having to drive a desk around a provincial recruiting office, dealing with the likes of me.
'...er, I like sports and the outdoors...er, and I'm keen and can follow orders' I stuttered. 'Well you can't follow them very well' he said 'you were supposed to bring two passport photos with you and you haven't...'.
The walls were covered with regimental badges from all over the army; famous regiments such as the Black Watch or the 17th/21st Lancers, and of course the two which held the most mystique and all-out boy's own promise of adventure, the SAS, with its winged dagger, and 53 Assault Recconaisance Squadron, with it's now-legendary badge of the skiing owl.
But these outfits were a pipe and slippers dream to me and the overwhelming majority of potential recruits who walked through those doors. A few months beasting in a depot, followed by a few tours or duty and maybe eventual promotion to Corporal was all that most of us had in front of us. '
..I suggest you take some of this literature away, read it and think VERY long and hard over it...' the liaison officer's voice abruptly cut into my frenzy of daydreaming
'...and if you're really stupid enough to think that we're going to need you you can come back in three weeks'.

After a great deal of deliberation, which amounted to talking it over with some mates in the pub (we were getting served in some of the less selective hostelries in the area by then) and a brief discussion with my parents who were in the odd situation of being dead set against it and yet wanting shot of me at the same time, I decided to go for the Royal Tank Regiment (RTR). Those tanks just looked fearsome, from the small reconnaisance vehicles through to the beast that I really wanted to get into, the main battle tank of the day, the Chieftain.
' Well you'll have to wait another six months before you can go to Bovingdon' (the armoured division's depot)
'..and even then you may not be suitable' said the same liaison officer.
‘It's a tough existence, cooped up in one of them tin cans while the hatches are battened down.' Six months? I was devastated. There was no way I was going to be able to stick another six months at home.

I took the trouble to read about the history of tank warfare. It turned out that they'd been invented during World War One, when they'd almost managed to keep up with a man walking at a moderate pace over easy country, but they'd never fulfilled expectations of breaking the deadlock. The heyday of the tanks was on the Eastern Front in World War Two when the Panzers and Tigers of the Third Reich had run headlong into the diesel-powered T34s of the USSR, the latter proving ultimately superior in the ensuing pile-up. But what I read about anti-tank weaponry made me blanch. The modern anti-tank weapons utilised the 'shaped charge' effect, which meant that the blast from the projectile was directed inwards through a tank's armour, rather than being dispersed evenly as in a conventional explosion. This would closely be followed by the contents of the shell, which could consist of molten metal or shrapnel, which would be squirted into the interior of the tank, showering everything in its path. Nice. I didn't fancy that much, strangely enough, and this combined with my impatience to join caused me to look for something else.

I worte to Ted an asked what he thought about it. He actually took the trouble to call on a payphone to give me advice.
‘BEEP BEEP BEEP…yeah, don’t bother with the armoured regiments, they’re shit’ he hollered at me. It sounded like he was talking to me through a vibrating plastic drainpipe.
‘…YOU WANT TO GO FOR ONE OF THE SERVICE ARMS LIKE THE REEMIE…’(whatever that was)…’
Nowadays I wouldn’t be able to have a conversation like this, harsh noises or distorted sounds just come across as a sort of white noise – another one of the effects of the occurrence.
‘…THEN YOU CAN USE YOUR SKILLS ON CIVVY STREET WHEN YOU COME OUT IN A FEW YEARS. WHEN I COME OUT I’LL BE ABLE TO WORK AS A COMPUTER PROG…
BEEP BEEP BEEP…….’

Well, that was my bimonthly contact with my brother over already. I didn’t buy his advice though. I knew from the outset I was going to make a career out of this, I don’t know why. So I poured scorn on going for one of the units like the Royal Corps of Transport, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (for this was the Reemie) or his own unit, the Signals. We call these units REMFs (Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers) in the Special Forces, our contempt for them just a little above that of civvies, notwithstanding the fact that we’ve all benefited from their services a lot down the years.
But I agreed with Ted that the tanks were out. The infantry - now here was something that might be suitable for me. It looked like fun, plenty of weapons training and some very famous and glamorous regiments to boot – important factors for a show-off like me.
'Infantry now is it?'
By now the liaison officer's patience was expiring fast.
'What makes you want to join them? It's a tough life. But here's some more literature'.
I was starting to wonder about all this literature the army churned out, they were regular little Charles Dickens's. It explained that the infantry regiments were organised on a regional basis and drew their personnel largely from particular counties. For example, the Staffordshire Regiment recruited from, er, Staffordshire, the Cosbies from the Scottish Borders etc. Officers were exempt from this parochial Domesday Book-style system; presumably it was felt that they were above such quaintness and were not bound to the land in the same way that the villeins were, so you had a situation where, for example, English officers could serve in Scottish regiments. I bet they loved that.
The two units which recruited in my neck of the woods were the Fusiliers and the 8th Royal Calthrops (Prince George's Own - and very nice for him too).

I plumped for the Calthrops straight away, They had a cooler badge and didn't wear a kind of feather duster on their berets as the Fusiliers did. They had a long and distinguished history, tracing their ancestry back to the Duke of Marlborough's wars in the early eighteenth century. Their speciality back then had been anti-horse warfare, hence their motto of ‘cave viam’ (watch where you step). With the advent of armoured warfare their role had been switched to anti-tank duties. Ironic given that I'd wanted to join the tanks only a few weeks before. I filled-out the necessary forms and was chuffed when I heard back from them within days giving me a date in October to arrive at their barracks in Thrushingfold. The town wasn't too far from my home area, in the Warwickshire/Oxfordshire borders. It meant I'd be able to go home at weekends, or so I thought, on the 100 cc Honda (yes I’d got Ted’s bike off him!).

So it was that my relationship with the British Army began, the best and only stable relationship of my life, and the first stage of my development into a total war machine commenced, though just what I’d have to go through to reach that stage was only about to be revealed to me, although that didn’t become fully apparent until a not-inconsiderable length of time had elapsed since that non-realisation failed to arise in my awareness at that time..


To be continued ...if you didn't see the previous 2 parts and are having a sleepless night, see Part 1 here, Part 2 here... and Part 3 here.

On Seeing Arvo Pärt at Riga Airport

I normally try to be cool towards famous people. Maybe it's having lived for several years in London, where pointing and screaming at famous people or asking for an autograph was so provincial and sad....
Here in the baltic states it's even more so; you just don't even look at famous people (or ordinary people). Maintain the poker face no matter what.
So it was with some trepidation that little 'ole me approached Arvo Pärt, one of the greatest living composers, notebook and pen thankfully with me. Would he rebuff me. Worse still would he get angry, a bit like this old Father Ted clip (not that I shouted out his catchphrase, he doesn't have one anyway - still, could have whistled spiegel im spiegel..)
I took the plunge, nothing ventured and any other cliches that spring to mind as cliches do, and approached him, starting off in Estonian and switiching to English in the hope that he might forgive my impudence on the grounds of being a, well, impudent foreigner. He was somewhat bemused at first and looked at me blankly.
I suddenly thought, what if it's not him??! I may as well have gone and put my head into the turbine of the jet taxiing across the apron at the time if that had happened, it would have been easier for all concerned. 'You are Arvo Pärt?' I said
'Yes'...so I reiterated the autograph question. Maybe he doesn't get asked very often. He's not exactly a pin up, and as noted the baltic ... in such things probalby sees off most of the fans. But in the end it was quite a big signature that I had to take away with me and will now keep forever.
I then spent the rest of the time studiously avoiding him and therefore continually running into him as we waited for the plane, then again as he was only a coupld of rows in front of me, and once we'd landed at Tallinn as well. I was starting to look like a stalker, or at least it was a bit painful, like this, again from Father Ted (1.00 - 3.30).
Oh well...Arvo Pärt.

Richard v Bill (an old youtube clip)

..it's not a question of does God exist or no, but something far more important than that....

It's Britain v. the US in an argument;-) !!!!!

....down-home, corny, side of the mouth schmaltz v. urbane, laconic pithiness...

... brash, intimidatory loquacity versus cool understatement

...and shock horror, those dangerous, shifty Europeans and their non-God fearing ways..

..see for yourself..

Going Out On Friday Evening Since There's Nothing On Telly Any More..

A bit whistfully mournful for a Friday night but I don't like to follow the herd all the time....what happened to

Music Videos (or for that matter bands) like this...

...comedian chat show guests like this...

or, combining the two, comedy music shows like this....


All the good people are dead:-(

Great Wedding Party

I slipped off the waggon, without hurting myself I'm happy to say, last Saturday night, but in a good cause - at a friend's wedding party. The actual ceremony was in Melbourne, it's one of those Aussie-Pommie love stories, which was a bit of a distance, but the party was in a hotel which I would in the past have thought was out of my league, in Farnborough, near London. It's only really on the map for having a great big airshow there every other year or so.
It was lovely to be back however fleetingly, putting up my feet as the football scores were coming in on the 'vidiprinter' as I think they still call it, walking round without a coat in the middle of November and being smiled at by strangers...
Anyway, bit like walking through a hole in time as I found all the old crowd from Wycombe days to be mercifully unchanged, and caught up with people I hadn't seen since I'd been away. All way to short and sweet. Cheers Dom!

What Accent Does My Blog Have? (Seth)

This is a little item my big brother wrote which you can view here,..
..to paraphrases someone who I wouldn't normally even phrase, let alone with paras, GB Shaw, who said something to the effect that it's impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without another Englishman hating him...ah yes, we English really 'do' accents more than anyone in the anglosphere and probably beyond...I'm talking accents, not dialects, that are made much of in the region of Europe where I live, or these little minority languages ( which reminds me of a witty aphorism, which means you've probably heard it long before me, that a language is nothing but a dialect with an army). But accents, proper, absurd, comical-sounding accents of the type which suddenly disappear when you're beyond 20 miles in any direction and are replaced by something else.
It's puzzling to north americans how such a huge variation of accents can be found within such a, to them, piddling little area of land. I remember Aleksei Sayle on a show with, I think, Bill Bryson, pointing out that a scouse (Liverpool) accent suddenly fizzles out in some side street somewhere in St Helens only to be replaced by another, presumably Lancashire or Mancunian, accent. In my own experience, growing up where I did which was very middle England and therefore quite 'posh', if people had an accent at all it was a Coventrian one, a rather flat sounding but quite homely chatter that's quite distinct from the more well-known lilting brummie accent. In fact in the next village along to us, a commuter dormitory town in effect, you suddenly started hearing brummie accents, particularly amongst younger people whose social lives leaned more in that direction.
What's even greater about England is it's possible to have no accent, and still be English (I've never met an American without an American accent or a Scot below the age of 80 without a Scottish accent of some kind, and rightly so).
I fancy that I fall into this category. As noted, I was from near Coventry but definitely don't have that accent any more (and am often berated down south for not having a 'brummie' accent) but I don't think I'm especially posh either. Of course it's in the ears of the beholder, but if Shaw's right, someone, somewhere has to despise me on the grounds of the way I speak.
But in any event, accent-neutral it is, which leads me to ponder Seth's thoughts on the fact that blogs have 'accents' too - the tone, vocab, syntax and even punctuation can create a written accent that can put people off or attract them simulataneously. I'm acutely aware of the plethora of sarky attempts at pithiness that bloggers, journos and the like come up with, so I must apologise for adding to this already-crowded field. I suppose that makes the blog's accent something like, though it hurts me to say it, 'mockney'. Hmm, I think I need to go to elocution lessons...

Intellectual Thirst - Seth's Blog

Something interesting from my big brother Seth Godiney, a very short post indeed (see, even he does it, so it's ok!) in which he ponders which comes first, success or intellectual curiosity (as expressed in reading books and, nowadays, blogs). I tend to think intellectual curiosity comes first and in fact needn't necessarily be followed by 'success', whatever that means.
But I take the point, all 'successful' people (by which I mean people who are truly human, not that necessarily make a lot of money or have a big, important job, though it's ok to do these things if you want) are intellectually curious, of that there's no doubt in my mind.

Puumaja Mees Is Unwell

I am ill today, will be back online tomorrow I hope.

Don't Believe The Hype - Seth's Blog

This is a (sorta) regular blog post dedicated to blogging the blogs of one of the most successful bloggers in the blogsphere.
Sethie Godiney is the diminutive sidekick to Seth Godin, an internet marketing guru, by my own unimaginative and lazy summation.My big brother's just posted a great piece about how irrational people are when they make purchases. Everyone 'knows' it's ok to, say, eat salmon at a wedding regardless of what the effects of salmon farming might be on the environment. People make purchases based on the flimsiest of try outs (kicking a car's tyres is one example he gives) and the experts know this. I'm guilty of this - once I just instructed an IFA (Independent Financial Advisor) to get me a deal whereby I could keep my old flat and rent it out and buy a new one (in which I rented the 2nd bedroom out) so he set me up with what was the UK equivalent of the Sub-Prime mortgage, the collapse of which in part started the current recession. I agreed on the basis of him running some meaningless numbers past me. I found out later he'd told the mortgage lenders that my income was about double what it actually was. Nothing particularly bad happened in the end (though the rental lost money and I'm having to sell that flat now) and a lesson learned, but better to learn from someone else's.
Essentially, he says, people are irrational, and there's a great example of this around the swine flu 'epidemic' and his cynical but sensible thoughts on marketing a swine flu vaccine..

'One Of Our Boys Is Missing - Contractual Obligations' Part 3

Charlie 'Terminal' Moraine is a former special forces soldier who served in the legendary (especially since it's now defunct, along with most of the legendary British Army regiments) 53 Assault Reconnaisance Squadron in some of the world's hot spots (well they were hotspots if you were a special forces operative anyway) including Northern Ireland, Oman, Columbia at the height of the drugs war, and Chelmsley Wood in the West Midlands. The Puumaja Crew is proud to present, in serial form, his new book, 'One Of Our Boys Is Missing', covering his life story and over 20 years in the front line of one of the deadliest units since the Ottoman Janissaries.
In part 3 Charlie's older brother Ted leaves home to join the army, leaving a dejected young deliverer of death and destruction in the making behind to keep watch on the home front.

Ted was two years above me and left school at 16, to go and join the army. I was impressed. My mother wasn’t so much and had wanted him to stay on and do his A levels (as I think all her friends’ sons were staying on) but in fact he ended up doing science A levels at Shrivenham military college, before going on to a career in the Royal Signals. I remember how jealous I was of him the day he left, he had several girls hanging on his every word and looked the part as he donned his motorcycle helmet, ready for the step into the unknown. My mother was crying, my sisters had come back from Uni especially to say goodbye. I was resenting not being the centre of attention but there seemed little I could do to change that. This was Ted’s day, not mine, and my turn in the limelight (or UV light) would come one day.

‘Hey Caspar, I’ll write you’ he said.

What US film or TV programme he’d been watching and why he thought it would sound cool was anybody’s guess but he didn’t half sound like an arse saying it. And he’d never called me ‘Caspar’ before, it was weird. But as I said it was his parade so I let it go.

‘I sure will, Teddy-baby’ I replied, and with a manly punch on the shoulder and a wink, he was off, flipping his visor down as he did so. Or at least he made it to the end of the street before skidding on a patch of oil, hitting a parked car and ending up on his side with the motorcycle on top of him, bent and damaged. The screams were distressing enough from inside the helmet, and were twenty times worse when we’d removed it. “My ankle’ he squealed. Minutes later he was sitting upright on the sofa in the living room, his leg stretched out on a chair, loving the attention. He’d just twisted it a bit and it had swollen a little and needed some ice. But to see him carry on, curling his lip at the assembled gathering of admiring girls and playing the wounded soldier, you could be forgiven for thinking he’d escaped from Colditz. Later on that day our mother put him on a train to Shrivenham, the bike had to stay behind (I had my eye on it) and Ted’s military career was on its way to a slightly inauspicious start.

I was pretty lost after he’d gone, and started thinking about what I was going to do once I’d left school. I was 14, and time was ticking. Indeed next birthday I came to realize I’d be 15, so a short mathematical calculation showed to my horror that I wasn’t getting any younger. I was hugely influenced by Ted’s letters home. It sounded great, heavily subsidized bar, all the food you could eat, a great social life, woman hanging off every extremity. He was due to go to Cyprus as soon as he’d finished basic training and that sounded fantastic. There was no army tradition in our family – my recent ancestors were, so far as I can tell, complete losers, who never got further than such dead-end pursuits such as International Aid Work, prison rehabilitation, nursing and other such pansy vocations.

The only person I'd come across in early life who did live up to this ideal was my uncle Don, who used to come round sometimes when my Dad was away on business, I think to keep us company. He'd been in the commandos in World War Two, partaking in the Normandy landings and subsequent action in France. He'd been wounded twice, married thrice, and didn't have a girl in every port so much as inhabit a kind of girl-filled free port, of which he was the chief customs inspector. The first thing he taught me was how to play french cricket. The last thing he taught me was also how to play french cricket, as one day my father came home from work very distracted and said that we wouldn't be seeing him again. It was a real shame as I always identified much more with Uncle Don than with my father, I was much more like him both in temperament and looks.

But I decided to follow Ted’s lead and go for the army. My mum was beside herself
‘I’ve already got one son in the army, what if there’s a war and I end up losing both my sons’ she whimpered. Mothers eh? it’s just self, self self.

My father seemed a little more receptive to the idea, probably getting me off his case was the major consideration.

‘Well your brother seems to have done well out of it. He got his science ‘As’ and has been made up to lance-corporal already’.

Yeah, he also got two local girls in Shrivenham up the duff I thought to myself. So the extra pay his promotion brought in will come in handy.

The very next day I was off to the army recruitment office in nearby Coventry, a small, functional place (the office I mean) tucked inconspicuously away between the Navy and RAF recruitment offices. It was covered from top to bottom in glossy posters promising a life of glamour, excitement, and lots of out-of-focus flames rolling out in the middle distance, or recruits standing around in the sunshine holding spanking new shiny weapons whilst a smiling NCO looks on. How little we knew. The only time it was ever anything like that for me was when we appeared on an episode of 'Blue Peter' doing a sponsored four tonne lorry-pull to raise money for Biafra. Most of the avergage recruit's time would be spent crying into their blankets, their teddy bears taken from them, wishing they'd never joined.

To be continued...if you didn't see the previous 2 parts and are having a sleepless night, see Part 1 here and Part 2 here...

Starting A Business Is As Hard As They Say It Is

Just put in my first order of Dodo Juice products. Dodo Juice produce a range of car detailing products, waxes, clay (for removing all the grime from a car's paintwork) sealants and a whole lot of other things that are a far cry from the bowl of washing up liquid and old sponge from under the sink, or exhorbitant swirl-o-matic paintscratcher machine, every four months or so.
It's been a learning curve just getting my head round the products but as luck would have it a buyer, a car valeting service here in Tallinn, got in touch with Dodo Juice who passed him on to me. Could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
The niceties of buying items at trade price, VAT in the UK and the Sales tax here, setting prices in the pegged Kroon and having to buy the products in the floating pound,  previously things that happened to other people, are slowly starting to make themselves known. What HAVE I started? Could be something good...watch this space for the forthcoming website..

Kitten Madness

..it started in the cellar of the puumaja.....nieghbours reported that items had been moved around, strange shadowy figures had been seen, and there was an odd smell in the air... Then the workmen finished and left, but not before they'd managed to inadvertently kill one of the two kittens that had been nesting there - the wee thing fell down a crack in the pile of rocks which I've inherited and guess I have to remove at some point, and froze to death. The mother, a very prolific begetter of kittens by all accounts , removed the sole surviving kitten and took up residence in the garage at the bottom of the garden. I'd decided to take it on as a pet, had wanted a cat for ages but never got round to it, and having cleared it with my flatmate the neighbours said it's all yours.
So now it is, I guess it's about a month old and so can't really walk but can certainly squeak a lot. I've got this bottle that's much the same as a baby's to feed it with even. If only people back home could see me now. Looking forward to when it starts doing some cool stuff, attacking things etc.
It was really a dry run to see if I could cope with a baby; not that that's on the cards any time soon. I thought that if I couldn't look after a cat then kids are out! And it's going well I'm glad to say. Anyway it won't be a kitten for long.
I keep referring to 'it' because it's too early for a layman to ascertain it's gender! It's name is Hapukoor which is gender-neutral anyway.

On Travelling And Returning Home

Canfield, Proctor, Nightingale, Zagler, Hill, Robbins, Tracy, Aaron... step aside please..there's a new success guru in town! Walt Gleeson is a highly successful, internationally renowned author of motivational books and CDs and other products. With a career spanning over half a decade, he has enthralled readers all over the world, from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Rhode Island, with such titles as You Can Do It!, You Can Do It! Too, Literally Make Your House Work For You and Become a Millionaire Whilst On The Toilet.
Hey, it's Walt here again. I'm typing this on my  gooseberry device, because I can do that.
I'm at O'Hare International Airport (executive lounge) en route to hold a 'crush your opposition to dust and then piss on the dust' seminar in Solihull, England. I look forward to going to the old country, it's always a pleasure to see the little antique churches and police-bobbies (they don't carry guns, how quaint is that?!), go for a cold beer and traditional English pretzels in one of the 'pubs', and take tea with Queen Elizabeth and King Phillip.
I was reminded whilst I was sitting in the executive cafe sipping on a Starbucks, of the lesson that Buddha , an important spitirual leader who lived over a hundred years ago, taught us. He said that, and this took the form of one of his 'cones', that you shouldn't speak unless you have something interesting to say....and I happen to think he was right on that score, maybe not in everything else he said (eg giving up worldly possessions and becoming a renunciant loser). I had to chuckle - you know, I ALWAYS have something interesting to say, so I'm fortunate in that regard, something I remembered as the waitress I just attempted to engage in conversation made light work of clearing my table and disappearing.
Oh well, which of us is on the minimum wage?!

I can see my plane is sitting there like a giant bird made of metal, ready for me to board through the first class entry, and I remember just how far I've come since I was a high school flunkout working part time in the bicycle store in Disney, Idabama. And you can too! IF you're prepared to follow exactly what I say and not dare to question any of it (if you fail to follow all of my steps you'll have no children and die by drowning). So I'm very happy to be able to spread the messgae to the other side of the pond, if I can understand their murdering of the English language in the (pre-selected) Q&A session after the seminar, as they've been in the dark for so long (quite literally, I think some areas of that little country only started getting a regular electricity supply a few years ago).
But however great these trips are, it's always even greater to come back to the US and remind myself how wonderful it is to be American and normal. Have a killer of a day.
Walt.

Russian v Estonian (Languages)

Having lived in the Baltic States for the last four years I've come to realize what a useful lingua franca Russian still is. Not a popular statement with some, no doubt. But the fact remains, since I've moved between Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn, eaten in enough restaurants, had enough run ins with police for minor traffic infringements (I was never once stopped by the police in 15 years of driving in England; in the first year of driving in Lithuania I lost count once I'd got into double figures) and tried to chat up one or two girls, it's become abundantly clear that Russian language skills are a must have here. Still.
The being held up for half an hour at the Lithuanian Polish border by officials suspicious of my UK passport and LT registered car ('I think he's from the Ukraine' one was heard to say, in Lithuanian) in pre-schengen days could so easily have been avoided; though I could have just spoken Lithuanian to them.
Here in Tallinn it's a bit different 'cos the standard of English is higher than in Riga or Vilnius (both of which were also good) in my experience, and also since Russian has a political connotation to it that's, if certainly present, not quite so seemingly contentious in the other two cities. But there's still a sizeable Russian speaking population here. Only yesterday I was surprised when the Russian shop assistant at my local Comarket perked up and said 'pazhalasta' in reply to my 'spaseeboh'; she had assume I was Estonian and used the standard 'aitäh'... since I'm neither Estonian or Russian it's not an issue for me and I give both languages equal footing.
There are few things more turgid or egregious in my opinion than ex-pats pontificating about Russians, or the relative situations of the Russian and Estonian languages here, seemingly almost always people who can speak neither language.
For the people that live here, sure it's a live issue. For outsiders, STFU. I don't think British people would think much of someone coming over there and gobbing off about Northern Ireland or, Scottish independence or the position of the muslim community in the UK regardless of their views.
So, I'm learning Russian and making really good progress. In fact in some ways my Russian is better than my Estonian already, even after just two weeks of learning (as opposed to a year and a half of Estonian). How so? Well, for English speakers, Russian is easier than Estonian, of that I'm convinced. There are plenty of cognates, and it is a very efficient language. But more than that (all foreign languages are hard in the end!) I've got hold of the Michel Thomas courses. For those not familiar, he was a language teacher who set up a school in Beverley Hills and whose clients were the great and the good, although he'd come from a Polish-Jewish background and fought in the French Resistance during WW2. In fact his discovery of the ability to block out pain whilst being tortured by the Gestapo was something he applied later to the language learning practice, which is effortless and certainly painless. No myriad of teacher's and student's books with catatonically dull or irrelevant subject matter and opaque grammatical explanations, no notes, no memorizing. His method's a bit like marmite, it tends to polarize people between likes and hates and it has its detractors. I'd done the German one some years ago and so was already a fan, and so I tried the Russian course, which is not done by the great man himself (he passed on a few years ago) but uses the same method and has an engaging lady teacher. One of the two students is intensely irritating, sitting  a bit close to the microphone I think, and abusing Russian pronunciation horribly, but not enough to put me off. I'll see how I go next time I'm in Comarket....

Top Ten European National Anthems

'cos Europeans do rousing tunes that put the rest of the world in the dark...

In no particular order...

• Poland
• Netherlands
• Hungary
• Scotland
• Latvia
  
• Estonia/Finland
• Portugal
• Lithuania
• Italy
• ...and what should be England's

Why You Should Invest in Silver Rather Than Equities or Even Property

Mention investing to a lot of people and it'll have them running for the proverbial hills. This can be for several reasons. Some are just afraid; it's risky - I could lose it all. Others don't think they're worthy of it. It's for well spoken people (or alternatively cockney barrow boys) in suits who drive flash cars, I can't cut the mustard with those types. Others still see it as selfish or greedy, or at the outer fringes of this continuum, part of an evil world system destined to be destroyed sooner or later by mass, direct action.

As with most prejudices and mass beliefs, this bears little resemblance to how it really is. I'll look at the above points in reverse order. Investing isn't in my opinion inherently wrong, or evil, or harmful to poor people in itself. Yes, it can be, and ethical investing could be one of the biggest growth areas in years to come as people seek comodities, industries or companies which don't exploit third world labour or damage the environent unduly. A good way to help the poor is to avoid joining their ranks if you can; productive people can and often do create wealth, not just horde it. Certain religions even require a fixed percentage of income to go to the poor and, call me old fashioned, but philanthropy is one of the nicest words in the English language.

It's easy to be intimidated by the appearance of the 'wealthy' , or at least what many people picture the wealthy to be like (but then again is anyone intimidated by a specky geek in Washington State or an old buffer in Omaha, Nebraska?). But it's OK to swim with the minnows. Swim with the sharks and you'll get eaten pretty quickly but starting small and keeping in the middle of the shoal until you've reached a decent size can be one of the smartest things anyone can do, and possibly a lot of fun too. There's no shortage of help out there with the internet, books etc and, surprise surprise, some investors might actually want to help other people to learn investing too. I don't see my ESL students as competition to my English language skills such as they are and am delighted by any progress that gets made.

Back to the first point, the risk. True, investing can be very risky, if you don't know what you're doing. Hand over your hard earneds to someone who has a qualification which may (as is the case in the US apparently) have taken a shorter time to acquire than official accreditation to practise as a masseuse, to invest in little pieces of paper (not even pieces of paper any more, just numbers floating in the ether) which can be extremely volatile, in an environment which no doubt lends itself to favours, incompetence and downright dodginess, and you could spend a good while regretting it. You wouldn't give your weekly food budget to a stranger and say 'go out and buy me some food' after all.

But there are safer, less or acceptably risky ways of investing if you're prepared to do your homework. Equities are possible, and there are indeed day traders here in Tallinn who, so far as I know, make a good living just doing that, sitting at their computers buying and selling and clearing all their positions by the end of the day .You have to know what you're doing there and of course you need the time. And equities markets can and do crash as we all know. Try borrowing money from banks to invest in equities!

Real estate (with the emphasis on the word 'real') can be a better bet. Speaking from experience, again you need to monitor things closely. Handing over your property to an agency and disappearing overseas can come back to bite you on the arse later on if you don't keep tabs on things. Of course you can't manage things yourself from a distance, and if like me you have practically zero DIY ability you'll need to pay people from time to time for the repairs and alterations which will happen from time to time even if you do live in the vicinity.  And there's been a lot of bullshit surrounding the real estate market in the UK; the buy to let bubble in the early '00s attracted squillions of amateurs (like me) who didn't really know what they were doing, on the premise of being able to make a quick buck because they were 'buying at the right time' whatever that means. Suddenly everyone became an expert on real estate and 'knew' when was the 'right' and 'wrong' time to buy (like there's a right or wrong time to buy a bag of potato chips, for example).If only it were that simple. This goes just as well for so-called experts (journalists, surely the lowest in the primordial ooze of the food chain, certainly way below salesmen and women, who at least aren't as a rule bone idle and silly).

There are professional investors out there who know what they are doing, but to join their ranks you need to have a bit of capital behind you for deposits (especially now, since although banks will still queue up to lend you money to buy property, the days of self-cert. mortgages, the UK equivalent of sub-prime, are over) and that's just the beginning. You need to have a good idea of why you're buying a certain property. Just so that you can say you own property like everyone else isn't a terribly good reason. One sensible reason is for capital gains, ie how much it will go up over the years so you can sell it at a profit - and remember the property market can sort of crash too, though not like equities. The other is for the income. If the rent you get from it is higher than the outgoings from the mortgage, insurance, service charges etc then it's a (taxable, probably small) income. You also need to know how you're gonna pay off that mortgage - is it interest only (in which case you're just giving money to the bank) or repayment?; are the tenants gonna be able to pay it off for you through their rent payments (something called amortisation)?, is the rate fixed or variable? (mine is variable meaning it goes up or down with the Bank of England base rate - since that is low right now in an effort to rejuvenate the economy it's nice 'cos the monthly payments are much lower than the rent, but when the economy picks up they'll go up again. It's not possible for me to change to a fixed rate at the moment, that's how tight the banks are right now, they're seemingly not taking on any new business from existing customers;  what is the yield? (ie the profit you can expect to make in relation to property value - calculated by total rent for the year x 100 divided by market value, this naturally changes but 5 per cent is considered a benchmark minimum); what you're gonna do when there are void periods (when there is no income cos the flat's empty - I've just had two and a half months of empty flat simply 'cos one of the tenants was a freak who disturbed other residents in the house and caused the co-tenant to move out, thus ending the agreement); what's the plan if the roof caves in or the boiler breaks down?..

..so the key word is control., how much influence you have over what goes on at the property. If you've not done your sums and continued to do them, you'll slip up sooner or later. As I'm overseas I have very little control over what goes on and so have to pay fifty quid every time a lightbulb needs changing (I'm only half joking) and I didn't do my sums in the beginning, I got an IFA (read: salesman, same as for equities) to do them instead. He told the banks my income was twice what it actually was. So I'm selling. Fortunately even in the downturn there's capital gains there so all is not lost, though this is largely down to chance.

An alternative is to do the same here in Estonia, and I may well do in future, but again, knowledge, control and, here, contacts are necessary if you wanna minimize risk, along with ideally Estonian language skills, and I don't have these fully yet.

Which brings us to the silver thing. If you'd mentioned this in the past it'd have conjured up images of pirate mapes with little Xs on them or shrewd, one eyed (not necessarily Jewish) dealers looking at things under magnifying glasses, but things have moved on since then. You can buy actual physical silver in the form of coins or bullion bars, but of course need somewhere safe to keep them. You can also invest online, for example here. Be sure to check out the credentials of the website beforehand of course (the aforementioned is kosher). So you don't need any physical silver in your home, they'll store it for you...at a cost, naturally.

But why silver? It's often dubbed the 'poor man's gold' and that's seldom if ever been truer than today. Silver has been hovering around the 17 USD per ounce (about 28 grams) mark in recent weeks, whereas the yellow metal is as high as 1100 USD for the same amount. So if you've got that kind of money lying around then go for gold, but otherwise, you don't need to be rich to start investing in silver. Furthermore it's a precious metal, of course, so it's never going to be worth nothing. Not ever. The only crash I'm aware of was in the early 80s after changes in regulations following the aptly-named Hunt brothers' attempts to corner the market led to a hugely artificially inflated price. Gold's price seems way high right now and we may see something of a downturn there in the future.

Silver is also likely to become scarcer. According to one figure I read, 95 per cent of silver has already been mined, so unless they suddenly find a whole load more, supplies will dwindle Add to this the fact that, unlike gold, silver has an industrial application. So a lot of it gets used up (compare that with gold - most of which that has been mined is still in existence somewhere). Photography is still an important use, even with the advent of digital cameras. It's value seems likley to rise more, although over the last ten years it has seen a steady increase from a little over 4 USD per ounce 10 years ago, to around 17 today (though the peak was in December 2007 at about 21 USD). So put simply, if you bought silver ten years ago (as I'm fairly certain, no less a man than Warren Buffet did) you'd have seen more than a quadruple return if you sold it now. Which sounds pretty good to me. Compare that with real estate in the UK at least, where over the sane period you'd be looking at less than double your money at current prices, depending on when and where and how etc. Then you'll have to deduct the mortgage debt from that.

There are potential pitfalls with silver too. Not everything that's called silver really is silver, rather like those silver stars you used to get as a schoolkid for a reasonably good essay; this is where the one-eyed magnifying glass person comes in. If you're buying physical silver coins or bullion you wanna look for something like Ag 999 which means it's practically all silver (but technically still an alloy). If you're investing in virtual silver you don't need to worry about that as noted above.

Another downside is environmental damage. Silver mines in places like Papua New Guinea, Indonesia or Peru, operated by the big mining companies such as BHP Billiton or Rio Tinto can and do cause environmental damage (silver is rarely found on its own but often along with other metals like lead). And I doubt the miners get paid all that much.

But on the plus side, today's price is today's price, not some wishlist price that can be the case with real estate either 'cos the owner gets greedy and believes they can get an overinflated price, or were hooked in by an estate agent who wanted the business and so overvalued the property, only for things to get protracted for long enough for the real value to drop further than was really the case in the beginning.

I remember laughing at some younger kids of a family friend who, upon visiting them, boasted about their 'real money' that they had, before producing a small gold bullion bar each, but they were right and this is the real reason you should invest in silver (or gold if you can, or why not Platinum, or Rhodium, or Palladium...) - it is real money. The cash we carry round with us, or (in some cases) spend ages squirrelling away for a rainy day, is forever losing its value. You need to spend it on something concrete really. This is why it's called currency. What do currents do but move, if they're any good? I remember as a kid being confused by the wording on UK banknotes about promising to pay the bearer on demand the sum of...however many pounds it was. I hopefully thought it meant somebody had to give me another ten pounds for the one I already had, if I demanded it, that was. This in fact derives from the days when a note was just a receipt for ..... a precious metal like gold or silver! Someone kept your gold for you safely so Dick Turpin or whoever didn't get it and you or the person you paid (or who robbed you) could retrieve that gold or silver at a later date by presenting this promissory note. Over time, it just became easier to pay and be paid in notes but the physical precious metal to back it still existed somewhere. These gold or silver standards have come and gone, but the final coup de grace was delivered by Richard Nixon who removed the US dollar from any kind of gold standard and made it free floating in December 1971, surely his biggest fuck up after (or even ahead of) Watergate.

Most other currencies followed suit if they hadn't already which means we now have'fiat' currency, which essentially means it's the monetary equivalent of the cars, if that...there's nothing backing the currency and government are free to print as much as they want when they feel like it. In the most extreme cases this can lead to crises such as that of the Weimar Republic when, as the story goes, someone going to buy bread left a wheelbarrow full of notes unattended and came back to find the wheelbarrow gone but the money untouched, or more recently, the million trillion dollar notes, or whatever they were, in Zimbabwe.

I wouldn't normally pay any attention to 'survivalist' extremists in the US and elsewhere as such people have an agenda that goes far beyond a mere desire to survive come what may, but I think they are right in their reported practice of  storing silver and gold for the very reason that in a currency collapse, as real money,  this could be the difference between life and death; at least if the hordes of lowlives streaming out of the big cities don't get their hands on it.

Don't just take my word for it, I'm just a humble part-time ESL teacher with an 11 year old Toyota Corolla diesel after all; good advice and information can be found here and here. And just to show I am trying to practice what I preach, I got myself down the Bank of Estonia Museum (much more interesting than it sounds) on Friday to make my first silver investment - 850 kroons (a bit less than 50 quid) on a couple of commemorative coins. These are the kind of thing I used to thing so boring as a child, or something that geeks collected. The 100 Kroon one actually costs 500 Kroons! Shit, I hope my address isn't anywhere on this blog - never mind, there are lots of Puumajas in Tallinn!