Author Archives: James Higham

Monday [12 to 15]

(1008)(1043)

 

15. The yearly cycle of nature

Had to quickly rush for the ipad … heard them all calling first before I could see them, suddenly they were flying over … apple logs about the picture (also must clean the windows outside):


It’s also mushroom season:

https://acorneroffrance.blogspot.com/2025/09/seasons.html

This is also from France:


14. How long is it going to take?


13. Gary Neville


12. Blonde joke … Lucia B on Quora

A blonde sits down on a plane and starts to read her book but the guy sitting next to her, a lawyer, won’t leave her alone. Finally, he says to her, “Let’s play a game. I’ll ask you a question and if you can’t answer it, you owe me five dollars. Then you ask me a question and I can’t answer it, I owe you a thousand dollars.”

The blonde says, “Okay.”

The lawyer says, “What’s the distance from the earth to the moon?”

Without a word, the blonde opens her purse, takes out a five-dollar bill, and hands it to him. She then asks, “What goes up the hill on three legs and comes down on two?”

The lawyer thinks about this; he does an internet search; he calls his friends and asks them but he’s stymied and he hands the blond a thousand dollars. She puts it into her purse and goes back to reading. The lawyer says, “Hey! What’s the answer?”

Without a word, the blonde opens her purse, takes out a five-dollar bill, and hands it to him.

Monday [8 to 11]

(0911) Universally low grey cloud out there, no sun. (0919)

 

11. Nick Dixon … no url, sorry but he can be found

… concerning his show today:


10. Steve B’s chart quiz

9. Here are the grandmothers and mothers

8. Two faces of Eve

It seems, with the ladies, to be not so much a continuum or normal curve but fabulous versus appalling.


Then we get this below way too often, which triggers thoughts of barge poles and would not go near:


Only as she was called out repeatedly on TV … which is part of the wider malaise of unprincipled young females of zero moral compass, slave to me me me, instant gratification via n1s, diseases and nothing but trouble …

… which in one sense protects them from rape by indigenous males but in increasing danger though from invader savages who see them as easy meat. And as our boys won’t go near them now … to whom do they turn in parks at night?

While grandmothers and mothers were still a factor in families, the insanity of the hormonal years was tolerable … but now? Especially with no fathers around?

Last word from a young lady:

Monday [4 to 7]

(0614) Still dark, dear reader. (0752)

 

7. It’s hit the fan dowunder this morning, UK time

6. Steve at 1169

  • Portland Police Bureau Blames Conservative Journalist for Being Attacked by Antifa
  • Gavin Newsom Flips Out Over President Trump Ordering California National Guard Troops to Portland After Judge Blocks Oregon Guard Deployment
  • Transmissions Reveal Democrat-Controlled Chicago PD Was Ordered to Stand Down During Ambush on Federal Agents
  • While Kyiv Waits For NATO-Made “Ukrainian” Flamingo Missiles, Russia Keeps Striking Hard At Ukraine’s Energy And Infrastructure
  • “Czech Trump” Andrej Babis Wins Election, Returns As Prime Minister
  • “Shock Outcome:” Japan Hardline Conservative Takaichi Elected Party Leader, Set To Become First Female Prime Minister
  • Russian-led union of Eurasian countries, modelled on the European Union, strengthens ties with the UN
  • Much more.

Wishing Steve well and hoping he survives the family get-together. I once went on a road trip to avoid the family-gathering on Christmas Day, arranging to rock up around 1600 to my parents’ place … not sure it was ever forgiven by the wider family, never checked to find out.

5. The multi-decadian Charlotte


4. Andy at 1169, also here

Just before he was brutally murdered, Colonel Muammar Ghadaffi (sp?) said something along the lines of, “get rid of me and the floodgates of sub saharan immigrants will open”. Like so many dictators who have been swept aside in recent years he only cared for his own people. He kept his southern border tightly shut. Jobs in those oil fields were for Libyans, not Africans from the south. I was reminded of his statement when I saw this article. | https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/05/libyan-national-army-offers-to-help-uk-with-migrant-crisis/

Monday [1 to 3]

(0450) Morning all … dark.

 

3. Call it a weird attitude, ladies and gentlemen

… but reader comments are a vital part of this blog complex of four sites, plus OoL. Were I to x-y graph HQ as first column of the “x bar”, then NOWP, UHC-WP and lastly Jstack, excluding OoL altogether, it would come out as a hyperbola, its nadir being UHC-WP till recently … slight rise to the neglected Jstack due to quite a few mutual subscriptions between fellow substackers.

I’ve no idea of HQ stats, deliberately not installing it in the dashboard for operational reasons … I’ve found, from long experience that they become the focus for the blogger/tweeter and he/she will tailor the content to up the stats. I don’t like that on X and don’t like it on blog or vlog because it prevents going after this or that topic freely.

There’s been some activity at Jstack in comments … always was due to the nature of substack … I’ve been thinking I need to get comments there more visible here, as they tend to be thoughtful:


Meaanwhile, WP itself (across the two WPdotcom blogs) sent this yesterday:

This is the second most neglected site after Jstack until recently when I’ve started bringing it more into action and I really must get Jstack into it … problem at the latter is the dash and navigation tools are appalling there, requiring all sorts of clicking which they want us to do, plus it suits text only there with one pic per post, which is not my mode of blogging on the whole. To be fair, it arranged the line in the sand text nicely yesterday … Jstack does well text only on a “select all and paste” basis.

NOWP? Well comments count, by definition, is high, plus views. OoL wildly varies from a few hundred a day to a thousand and a half, depending on post … as it should be imho … the nature of the post determining interest at OoL.

2. DAD at 1169

a) Meet the new French government: same as the old government. Twenty-six days after being appointed—a record under the Fifth Republic—Sébastien Lecornu has named the first part of his government. Unsurprisingly….

b) “I’d Rather Die in Jail”: Telegram boss slams EU over Free Speech. Pavel Durov says French prosecutors and Brussels elites are using his case to intimidate platforms into censorship….

c) Cover-up at the EU! EP leadership blocks committee of inquiry into EC chief’s vaccine deal….

d) Grandad Gaston, an octogenarian will not have to leave his resin harvester’s hut in La-Teste-de-Buch (Gironde), as demanded by the Conservatoire du Littoral (Coastal Protection Agency)….

1. Met office dishonesty via TDS

This opened the TDS post on their reports on Lowestoft and a few others:

“Last August, the Daily Sceptic drew attention to the UK Met Office inventing temperature data at its fictitious ‘open’ weather station at Lowestoft. Figures were said to be compiled from “well-correlated neighbouring stations”, but research by citizen sleuth Ray Sanders found there were no such operations within a 40-mile radius. At the time, the Daily Sceptic referred to the matter as a “smoking gun” and said that unless the Met Office could finally reveal its workings out, “the only realistic conclusion to draw is that the data are invented”. No explanation has been provided but in a shock unannounced move the Met Office has now withdrawn all the Lowestoft data from its historical record back to when the site closed in 2010. Similar withdrawals of data have also occurred in the stations at Nairm Druim and Paisley.”

Further down in the article, it mentions that they’re “calling on” the Met Office to investigate all temp readings up and down the country but of course … only inaction and brick wall. That is, citizen journos will have to do it station by station by station, while the M.O. unprofessionally and unethically sits on its haunches, obstructing.

Here are the opening TDS items today … see Blogrolls, centre column:

Sunday [11 till close of play]

(1645) Good almost evening, folks. Wanted to run War Room first but think it better it appears on the page above my rant.

 

16. And so Sunday evening arrives


15. Watershed years


14. Rupert’s at it again


13. There’a lady over at Gab

… who is one of two I visit there now … a slip of a gal as you can see from the profile pic and I visit once a day if possible:


12. Steve at 1169

War Room snippets…

  • Curt Mills: Trump Standing Strong And Not Bending To Foreign Power While Achieving Peace In The Middle East
  • Curt Mills: The Vanguard Of The Russian State
  • Mark Krikorian: Hemispheric Defense Against The Biden Invasion
  • Tej Gill: Threats On The Table: War With The Cartel

11. A hopefully shortish rant from me

Two topics.

a. That one I backtracked from … the Toodles and Steve one. Yes, well are each can handle themselves and things around and good thing too. I refrained days ago from speaking but as Steve is doing the family bit tomorrow, it seems best do this now.

I really don’t know why bullies largely left me alone, still do, and the other nutters I try to avoid. Reason I avoid is that feuds are a total bore. You see, even if he did manage, with his hangers on, to duff me up, I’d track him down and things would accidentally start going askew in his life, until I became bored wi’it. Only did it once.

Christian conscience is also something to be reckoned with or some promise you made your mum or dad … you know the type of thing. It does limit what we do. Thing is, when I go downstairs and stand down there on the path for any reason, there must be something in the manner, I seriously don’t know because if it’s foreign coming this way, it usually crosses the road and walks down that way … must be my underarm pong. Not being of massive build, not wimpy either, that can’t be a factor. It might be just being aware of surroundings, sharp, noting things etc., as I always advise girls to do too.

Anyway, not going to dwell on that topic.

b. That line in the sand post at OoL and all over the place. Very few views at OoL, which is fine, shall see, but that Lara Logan quote I thought particularly perspicacious … that girl has been through the wringer after an armchair ride ending in Cairo.

If you put this post item’s part a with this part b … I’m thinking any with at least half a brain knows where this is going. Put those with the Alex Marshall quote earlier and it’s becoming clearwr and clearer … time to gird our loins, whatever that means. If it means have a bath, then I did, an hour ago.

At this point, there’s no better quote than Ephesians 6:10-16 imho. For someone with a warrior mentality and whose body is strong enough to follow that up, then the decision is “how far peaceable, when to suddenly turn savage”. We’re very close to that now … there are way too many kidding themselves otherwise or who are hiding behind faux security.

That’s it for now.

Sunday [7 to 10]

(1403) Afternoon all. Just going to pretend everything was as usual and I didn’t have another three hour sleep … I’d hardly say fully refreshed but at least more refreshed than many Saturday nighters out there. 🙂 (1503)

 

10. This one does require some input from the former CCCP


I was not there during CCCP days, it was closer to the end of the decade … and yet old CCCP (USSR) practices still abounded … old habits died hard … and one of those was that in each “yard” there was an open space between four eight storey high apartment blocks in which you’d find a grassed area, benches, frames for rug beating, children’s play equipment, plus nice low wrought iron fences bordering gardens.

Were you to wander outside, say towards a local school’s waisthigh wire fence, there might be a hut where you could go under cover of darkness to denounce your neighbour you suspected of untoward thinking or behaviour. It was a formal matter, Denunciation, just as any bureaucratic form-filling was seen as sacrosanct, even holy. Once I was hauled over the coals for being less than calligraphic in my filling in of my class roll?

In awestruck voice, the lady whispered: “Etot DOKUMENT, J,” before taking it away and issuing a new one to fill in.

That’s the situation we’re heading towards now in the west … question is … will Oz get there first … or will the UK?

9. This is Christian?

Asking for a friend.


8. Elon corner again


7. Steve B’s chart quiz … usual ask

Early Sunday movie

 

As in I’m going back to bed.

“Richard Greene, David Niven, George Sanders and William Henry are the four men part of “Four Men and a Prayer,” a 1938 John Ford film also starring Loretta Young.

Frankly I felt as if I came in at the middle of this film, though I saw the whole thing – but I never actually did figure out the plot. The boys’ father (C. Aubrey Smith) has been dishonorably discharged from the army and telegraphs each son that he wants to meet them at the family manse.

The discharge was unfair – he was set up – now, I’m guessing here but it had something to do with illegal arms. His sons want to help him, but moments later, he is murdered in his study and his papers stolen.

Taking what info they have, they split up and travel to India, South America and Egypt to find the people their father mentioned who can help clear his name. Loretta Young, who plays Greene’s madcap girlfriend, chases him shamelessly in a variety of outfits.

I still can’t decide if there was too little or too much fooling around by the brothers. For me the comic stuff never does come off, Niven being the exception.

The acting, however, is good. Richard Greene might have been Tyrone Power’s only rival at 20th Century Fox, except that he returned to England in 1940 to enter the service. This was his first film under contract to Fox. He was very handsome with a nice screen persona; baby boomers may remember him as television’s “Robin Hood.”

Loretta Young is dazzlingly beautiful – I actually didn’t find her annoying as she seemed to fit right into the frenetic energy of the film. Sanders and Niven turned in their usual fine performances.

There’s a nice turn by Lina Basquette, too, as a foreign woman with information. For those who don’t know Lina, well, she was a silent screen star and half-sister of dancer Marge Champion.

Lina was married to Sam Warner; after his death, the Warners took her child from her and made sure she never worked again. She eventually went to the dogs – literally – by becoming a breeder and judge at the Westminster Dog Show.

In a New Yorker Profile done in the 1990s, she claimed to have been propositioned by Hitler and said she had done work as a spy during World War II. She also declared Eric Braeden of “The Young and the Restless” her favorite actor and ended up meeting him.

Lina appeared at Cinecom when she was in her late 80s, and the audience, used to seeing elderly actresses in wheelchairs, was shocked at the end of “The Younger Generation,” one of her early films, when she didn’t walk – but ran onto the stage, looking incredible, to answer questions.

For me, Lina’s appearance as Ahnee is actually the high point of “Four Men and a Prayer,” featuring some very attractive people in a half-comedy/half-drama and a confusing plot. Thankfully, Ford didn’t stick with this genre.”