What if?

Has anyone made the same mistake as me and started following 'Lord Thomas of Wellington'? Has he turned into 'Bachelor at Wellington' and started to 'communicate' using a language which appears to be either made-up, or Indonesian?

Have you, like me, got so fed up with this relentless stream of meaningless words that you have tried to stop following him, but have been unable to because of A: the inability to understand the instructions from Google in that language; B: the fact that he seems to have disabled the 'stop following this site' button; or C: you are too stupid/tired/emotional to be able to carry out what should be this simple task?

The thing is that I never agreed to follow 'Bachelor at Wellington', and I don't know how it ever came about that I started. The original site (if it is connected, which I think it must be) is still there, so it's not as if he has just changed the title. This is not the way to make friends, I think, and even if you have befriended someone in the past through simply feeling a bit sorry for them, it is no way to treat them by punishing them with pages of incomprehensible bollocks. In this day and age, it should be quite possible to un-friend someone, but I have had several attempts to do that and failed. Any suggestions welcomed.

There was a great little cartoon in yesterday's Guardian newspaper, which was about 6 frames on the hypothetical break-down of the entire internet system, beginning with a depiction of a newspaper declaring, "INTERNET BREAK-DOWN NOW IN 10TH DAY" I tried to hoist it off the net, but cannot find it.

In the next frame, people are wandering around in public with placards onto which photographs of their breakfast had been stuck, with captions like: "Sausages! num num num num!"

In another frame, hundreds of men are leaving a sex-shop with armfuls of pornographic magazines.

In the last frame, an entire street is shown at night, and people have painted huge messages onto the fronts of their houses saying things like, "GOING TO BED NOW. NIGHT!"

I love these 'What If?' style things, and there has recently been a re-run of a classic 'what if?' drama on the radio, entitled "Fatherland", from the book of the same name.

The 'what if?' scenario in this play begins with the premise that Germany won WW2, and the Nazis have been in power in London since 1945. The play begins in the 1960s, I think, when their practices and laws have been well-established. The Gestapo run everything behind - and in front - of the scenes, and there is an undercurrent of dread and horror which is augmented by some brilliant music, which permeates the whole atmosphere.

The thing is that the concept for the setting is so believable. It could have happened, were it not for the intervention of the USA and some determined people such as Churchill and - dare I say it - Bomber Harris. Fatherland captures the desperately depressing mood perfectly, and all resistance is mercilessly crushed by the authorities.

They recently unearthed some lacquer recording cylinders belonging to Winston Churchill, and they have been digitally transcribed and restored, playing on the radio yesterday for the first time.

As well as including his favourite music (which include Marie Lloyd!) they also had some of his earliest speeches, from when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the early 1930s.

His sheer ambition and determination comes through very well (best English orator for about 100 years) and so does his silly sense of humour.

His Great Grand-Daughter, Arabella Churchill (photo above and video below), was a key figure in most of the Glastonbury Festivals, working alongside Michael Eavis, etc. Sadly, she died a few years ago.

A friend of mine was working at Glastonbury one year, when he incurred the wrath of Arabella. She marched up to him and began giving him a severe bollocking, about one foot away from his face.

My mate did not hear a word of it, as all he could see was Winston, screaming at him as if back from the dead. I wish I had met her - I love true Brit women like that: