Heads up to my old mucker Connor.  He dropped me a line today asking if I was ok as I hadn’t posted for a while.  When I checked, it has been almost 2 months.  A tad too long me thinks.

Lets put that right.

Where was I last time ?  Well, in the last couple of months I sold my house in Portugal, I am sure I wrote about that before.  I have also officially returned to the UK.  Not only returning, but adding immensley to HMRC pleasure, I have also started two new businesses.  If we are chums on facebook, you would most likely have received an invite to like my new venture.

The business went live as of 1st September and I am currently sitting in Gatwick Airport waiting for a flight out to Buenos Aires and then onto Uruguay so that I can join my first customer, a sailing yacht called Pumula.

You can read about her here  Pumula

A small craft by my standards but also high tech and complex, hence the captains request for an engineer of my stature to do the trip from Montevideo around the tip of South America and up to Valparaiso in Chile.  If the incoming new engineer impresses the captain with his skills during that trip, I will get off and head home.  If not, the skipper will ask me to stay on for the delivery between Chile and Tahiti. Two very big trips for a novice engineer to undertake, hence my attendance to help him along.

I see the Canadian premier is in a little trouble this week – for black facing 18 years ago.  Interesting.  People say black facing is racist.  I struggle with that a little bit.  The old definition of racist according to the OED was ‘a belief that a race is inferior to another’ and I just don’t see how black face fits into that category.

For a couple of reasons.

If you were a racist and hated black people – why would you black up ? Surely dressing as any character, regardless of colour is an aknowledgement of their achievments ?

In the instance of Trudeau, if you are dressing up as a person of colour ( I use that term not for political correctness but purely because it covers a broad range of races), for that dress up to be effective, you would need to be of the same colour skin surely?  Let me give you an example.

I want to go to a fancy dress party as the great, Mohamed Ali – floats like a butterfly stings like a bee, his hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.  If I want to go as Ali and  I go white skinned, how will people differentiate between say Ali and Henry Cooper?

Its an interesting question.

You might even argue that if only naturally black skinned people could go to fancy dress as Ali – where’s the equality in that?

I coupled that statement with another thought.  If you were a black person going as Henry Cooper, would you white face to prevent the reverse confusion?

I managed to watch a BBC interview linked below.  I watched this with interest, as, people of colour (again for the wide coverage rather than PC) all suggested they had no problem with this.  Some stating it was a long time ago, others stating that he should be judged on what he is achieving today.

I was interested in those views because we are being told that blacking up is offensive to black people.  I didn’t see any black people complaining.  What I did see was one white woman complaining how wrong it was.  It does give power to my thoughts that all of the noise is not a serious defence of right and wrong, but nothing more than a political points scoring exercise.

The danger with that?  The normal people of the world get tired of hearing it. So when there is a real case of racism to be answered, our ears are numb to the call – numb and deaf.

Dont take my word for it though – see this interview for yourself here.

BBC Interview

Now, all of that aside

I walked into the duty free section at Gatwick Airport tonight.  Duty Free areas a shit now aren’t they.  They force you to weave your way through all that shit that you never want to buy.  Sneaky really – trying to lure you in with bright lights, pretty girls and the false promise of cheaper goods than you can get on the high street.

It is my least favourite part of the airport if I am honest – I would rather lick random toilet seats than pass through there.  Tonight though – it was, very briefly, a very pleasant experience all owed to an old song I heard while walking through – I almost stopped to listen.  A very brave and smart person put this on the playlist for a duty free shop selling perfume – but I don’t care, I appreciated it.  Bravo

D’arcy rocks.  This one’s for you Connor – speakers at 10 please !!

Fuck – music was good back in the day!