YesBut that was the last week in May

Finish the work in 48 weeks, that's a laugh, he’s been trying to open that umbrella for nearly five months.

Monday was Spring Bank Holiday, as I explained in Monday's blog the London Tourist industry employs shamans to do a rain dance to ensure the weather is so ghastly that it forces tourists, in order to get out of the rain, to dig deep in their pockets and pay to get into cinemas, theatres and other tourist traps (sorry I mean attractions). Just for the fun of it, last Monday the shamans while dancing also did a gusty wind chant!

Somehow amongst the rain England managed to beat the West Indies at cricket. For the benefit of USA readers, cricket is a sport played between two teams each with 11 men dressed in white. They hang around for five days while another two men dressed in white coats decide whether the “light” is good enough to play. If “bad light” is declared both teams go into a pavilion to play cards, watch TV, listen to MP3 players, and play practical jokes on each other. If the “light” is declared good, one team throws a ball at two of the other team members, until “bad light” is declared again. A “Test Match” played between two countries is even more effective than a rain dance at ensuring bad weather.

I’ve nothing to say about Tuesday and Wednesday, I’m not sure if this is because nothing of note happened; or I was so cold on Monday I got hyperthermia and slept through the next two days.

Thursday morning I decided to stick my head out from under the bed covers. It looked dark and grim, ducked back under the bedclothes, turned over and went back to sleep. It was only when Mrs YesBut forced me out of bed on Thursday afternoon that I realised the woollen cap I had been wearing to keep my head warm in bed, had slipped over my eyes, and the sun was shinning outside.

On Thursday schools in England were given the legal right to search pupils who are suspected of carrying knives. That news surprised me, I thought they had always had the right - evidently not, it seems if a teacher thought a pupil had a knife they would have to notify the police who would come to the school to search the suspect. Mind that might not have been a bad idea, I wouldn’t like to be a teacher searching one of these young thugs for a knife - “so you want my knife, here have it” right in your heart!! What went wrong? Where are the long lost days when the only dubious object in a schoolboy’s pocket was a length of string, a whistle, a packet of itching powder and a frog?

So President George W Bush has just discovered Global Warming, and is urging countries to agree on long-term goals for greenhouse gas emissions. The mans a genius. That’s why he beat Al Gore - poor Al could never get his head around problems affecting the environment Next thing he’ll discover Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction.

Next Wednesday I will be posting the first blog in a series on memorials and public sculptures. Yesterday Westminster Council said they were going to place restrictions on further statues being placed in central London. That shouldn’t place too much of a restriction on the blog, there’s already +350 in Westminster, then there’s the rest of London, UK and the World.

It was forty years ago yesterday that the “Fab Four” Beatle’s iconic LP “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" was released. It remained in the number 1 position of the Billboard 200 for 15 weeks, it topped the UK Albums Chart for 27 weeks and the Australian Albums Chart for 30 weeks. This year the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame awarded it the “Most Definitive Rock and Roll Album”. They just don’t make records like that anymore.

I thought at least last night Brazil would brighten up the week for me by beating England at football (soccer). The Scots, Irish and Welsh just love it when England lose. But they only managed a draw. But at least Brazil scored in the last minute, just when England had thought they had won.

The British artist has set a $100 million price tag on his “For the Love of God” diamond encrusted platinum skull. It is the highest price asked for a work of art put on sale by a living artist. The piece cost $30 million to make, the purchase of 8,601 diamonds weighing a total of 1,106.18 carats accounted for a large proportion of the cost. But if a scull is worth £50 million what is YesBut’s Images worth?

Why not participate; click here and leave your suggestion of a caption for today’s YesBut’s Image.

UK Spring Bank Holiday - yuck

In early April I was in Wales; I posted a blog to say how un-seasonal the weather was. More like July - children eating ice cream, women in short sleeved tops. It turned out to be the warmest April on record. People were talking about a long hot summer with the inevitable restrictions on water use.

Then came May - it has behaved like an unruly mixed-up teenager, throwing in-turn sulks and tantrums. The beginning of last week it was wet and cold, but by mid-week it started to warm-up. But by Saturday afternoon it was back too heavy rain and cold.

Yesterday was Whit Sunday more heavy rain, and today is Spring Bank Holiday, which normally is the time when the UK starts to stir and prepare for hopefully an inrush of summer tourists. When I say hopefully, I’m reporting the tourist industries view. Me - well anybody who has read my previous blogs know I really detest tourists; they make my life a misery, blocking up: the pavements, access areas to Underground stations and shops. Sorry about that little rant - no I’m not sorry, if I can’t rant on my own blog, then where can I rant?

As I was saying London and the other tourist attractions around the UK start opening up. Deckchairs are put out in parks - though this year with the hot April they were put out a month early. In seaside towns small hotels wake up from their winter hibernation.

For future reference of overseas tourists to the UK, please take note - it doesn’t matter how much you read about it being warm and dry in the UK, remember, whether it’s the Spring or Summer Bank Holiday, in the UK,

Bank Holiday = guaranteed rain.

For years, why it rained on Bank Holidays, remained a mystery. Then YesBut’s top investigation reporter discovered the truth. The owners of London’s tourists’ attractions don’t want tourists to go window shopping in Oxford and Regent Streets or sunbath in the parks. They want the tourists to dig deep into their pockets and pay to go into their attractions. So for a week leading up to Bank Holidays they employ a group of shamans to do rain dances and cast rain spells.

Last Thursday and Friday Trafalgar Square was covered with turf, to convert it into a “Village Green”. The idea was to demonstrate how London is made up of a number of villages which have grown together to form an urban conurbation. But each retains its own individual characteristics; Chelsea is unmistakably Chelsea, while Hampstead with its heath has its own unique character. Well if they had left the turf there for yesterday and today the rain and trampling tourists would have converted Trafalgar Square into a Chinese paddy field.

This morning as well as the rain the tourists will have to cope with gale force gusts of wind.

YesBut global warming - easy solution declare everyday a Bank Holiday.

Click here to see YesBut’s Image of the day.

YesBut I only want to go for a walk.

I truly detest tourists. I am easily pleased; all I want is to go for a walk unimpeded. But tourists are totally oblivious of other people and their surroundings. They stand as a group, blocking pavements or walkways with gormless smile on their face waiting for their photograph to be taken. While another member of their family stands looking at the camera as if it’s a piece of advanced technology that has just dropped from outer space - “It isn’t working you dumbo because you’ve left the lens cap on“. While this is happening, they expect people to walk around them, and not interfere with the photo-shoot.

Then there are their football shirted snot-nosed ice-cream eating brats. Well ice-cream eating is a misnomer. The ice cream they don’t manage to rub on their faces they dab on passers-by’s clothes. And if it isn’t ice cream its grease dripping ketchup saturated hotdogs bought from a East-European illegal immigrant who hasn’t washed his hands since immerging at Dover from underneath of a truck transporting Polish frozen turkey giblets. One bite of the sausage and instant diarrhoea.

They are merely a nuisance while they are standing still, when they move they become positively dangerous. They absentmindedly push their pram not looking where they are going. If a year ago they hadn’t thrust their appendage so decisively, they wouldn’t be encumbered with a pushchair now.

Why can’t they be contented and stay at home - take a chair out to the garden, have a barbecue get drunk on cheap vodka, and allow their kids to play football with a tin can while eating Pot Noodle.

Go home and leave me alone.

Why Tourists are a pain in the arse

Talk on the Radio of the drop in the value of the American dollar! My mind immediately switched to tourists. I know tourism makes a big contribution to the UK economy but tourists are such a pain in the neck. It could be any town or city which is a tourist attraction, (York, Canterbury, Edinburgh, Dublin, Cardiff, etc.) but I take London as an example, and just one part of London - Westminster Bridge.

Starting on the South Bank. First you have the London Eye and the other tawdry attractions in the former County Hall. The tourists and buskers in this area makes it difficult to walk unimpeded along the embankment. The top of the steps onto the bridge is blocked by a tout for Big Bus Tours. Walking across the bridge is impeded by tourists taking photographs - they expect people either to stop or walk on the road while they take five minutes to take a photo of the Eye. Then there are the sellers of honey coated peanuts, the Chinese selling smuggled cigarettes (why hasn’t the police acted against these). And the most ridiculous of all, those who bend aluminium coat hangers into names.

(I can just imagine in thirty yeas time an edition of “Cash in the Attic” on - ”well what have we here?”, “its Aunty Mary’s postcard holder made from aluminium wire”, “how interesting”, “what’s it worth?”, “on a good day, with the right buyers at the auction, 3p”, “ho wonderful, that will make a big contribution to the costs of our planned Caribbean cruise”.)

The steps down to the north bank Embankment are always blocked by tourists who have decided it’s an ideal location to hold a meeting to plan the rest of their lives. Tourists are oblivious of everyone around them; they block stairs, entrances and walkways. And they shout if they are talking in a foreign language.

A point in their favour, the majority don’t spit.