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Vic Rolfe

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  1. Vic Rolfe

    A message to Meimei

    By Vic Rolfe,


    Why do we have to have categories anyway?!
    Meimei was my dearly loved 14 year-old Siberian Husky in the Philippines.
    She passed-away peacefully the other day. I can't complain at that as she was well-loved and well looked after by my two youngest daughters. She enjoyed life. She was a real surviver and she lived to a ripe old age.
    My only regret is that due to these ridiculous and largely useless travel bans, I was not able to be with her even once during the last 15 months of her life. 'Just one more of the billions of Covid-19 fall-out stories from around the world...
    I rescued Meimei from a pet shop when she was about 18 months old. She'd already spent about six months, as far as I can work out, in a filthy little cage in the shop window. From the moment I picked her up, she loved her Big Daddy like, well, (words fail me...) Well like only Meimei could! I was there for her when she was younger and I spent as much time as I could with her in her older years. I only wish I could have seen her in her last year of life. My kids told me that Meimei was waiting for me to come home.
    Covid bull...
    Well... Maybe she understands now.
     
              I am going to miss you Meimei. And I will always love you...
               Your Big Daddy forever!!
     
    Here's Meimei in her younger days, not too long after I got her - having a good look over the wall at some goats in a field there!!

  3. Vic Rolfe
    Well... It would have been nice if I could have started-off the first blog on my brand-spanking new personal website, with something a little more cheerful. But there's not much else to talk about, these days...
    Hopefully, I will be proven totally wrong and we can all get back to "normal" before too long?!
    In the meantime, I have enabled "Guest Posting," just in case anyone wants to make a comment. (Just check-out the "Guidelines" link in the main navigation bar, on a laptop - or that little "hamburger" thing on your cellphone, for more info. on posting as a Guest.)
     
    Here's my take on covid-19...
    The best that I can say about it, is that this is the biggest fiasco in the entire history of the human race.
    Needless to say, anyone can "prove'" their own point of view by trawling through the literature and scientific papers that fit their point of view. Here's an article that happens to fit mine:
    (Whether or not you agree with the main points presented, I do think that this article does make some very valid points that are, at least, worthy of some further discussion?)
    https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/
     
    Right... Well I don't think that the vast majority of people have any idea how much damage has been done by all this madness... They think that you can just switch off the world economy for months on end - and then everything will somehow miraculously return to "normal?"   They think that governments can just keep on printing money when they are already heavily in debt? We have heard nothing but budgets and "no money for this, no money for that," for as long as I can remember. And now they seem to be "pulling it out of thin air?!" And wouldn't it have been nice if they had spent just a little bit  of all that money that they are now throwing at the problem, on increasing the number of hospital beds, and building up a strategic stock of  ventilators and medical supplies to cope with just such an emergency. Years ago. Not when it is already way too late? Instead of that, what we have never stopped hearing over the last few years has been: "Cut, cut, cut!" And all in the name of the great God of the economy. ('Not much of that left now, then - I don't suppose?)   No. This is only the beginning... And it is just going to go on and on. The final damage and loss of life caused by economic melt-down all around the world will far outstrip the few million deaths, at worst, that we could have expected, if we'd just taken sensible measures - (early enough, instead of long after the 'horse had already bolted') - and tried to keep the world "ticking over" as best we could have done, under the circumstances.   At the very best, this will take years to sort-out. Things will never get back to the "normal" that we used to know. Whatever happens now, the world has changed forever. That's the best-case scenario, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to even think about any of the alternative scenarios...   Anyway, I'm not a fortuneteller!   Right now, I am just wondering when they will let us out of this ridiculous quarantine so that I can try to make a bit of money before the world economy goes into complete melt-down. (As I write this, I am on a ship that has been at sea for virtually all of the last three months - since before hardly anyone had even heard of a so-called coronavirus, let alone SARS-Cov-2. It is now a full 16 days since are last port call - Salalah, Oman - when no one was even allowed off the ship. We all had our temperatures taken when we arrived here in the UAE. Nobody is sick on board the ship. We are all fit as fiddles! And they still won't let anyone down the gangway.)   And I thought that seamen would be considered as essential workers?     I am also seriously beginning to wonder if I will ever be able to get a pint of beer down the Royal Oak in Hollywater, ever again??!!!     Watch this space, as they say?  
  4. Vic Rolfe
    The cover photo shows the Perfect Strangers Band, with Bhebot on lead guitar at the Amazonia Bar in Ermita, Manila - some time in August, 2005
     
    Here's the lyrics to the Led Zeppelin song, the title of which I stole for my blog!
    Ramble On - from Led Zep II
    Led Zeppelin - Ramble On Lyrics
    Courtesy of azlyrics.com
     
     
  5. Vic Rolfe
    Cover image: NOW AND THEN: The Seaman’s Union on Ruperra Street, Newport - used with the very kind permission of the South Wales Argus
     
    Before you shoot me, please note the quotation marks!
    So who did say that?
    During a recent email rant with a friend of mine, over not being able to get off a ship in the UAE, having already spent four weeks in quarantine - and despite the fact that Emirates are providing a limited number of repatriation flights to the UK - I mentioned to him that nothing had changed since the 1966 seaman's strike. We are still treated like the "scum of the earth..."
    I remember, when I first started sailing at the tender young age of 16 years old, in 1974, being told by one 'hairy-arsed seaman,' that Harold Wilson was the one who had said: "Seamen are the scum of the earth."
    My friend is at lot better than me, at British history of the 20th century. He informed me that he was not so sure about being able to attribute such a statement to Harold Wilson?
    I then done a quick Google search, and, to be honest, I couldn't find any reference to Harold Wilson ever having made such an outrageous remark. What I did find, was this:
     
    From Jim Dyer of Newport, in the South Wales Argus, in an article dated 27th September 2016 and titled:
    NOW AND THEN: The Seaman’s Union on Ruperra Street, Newport:
    https://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/14753223.now-and-then-the-seamans-union-on-ruperra-street-newport/
     
    So, OK, it wasn't Harold Wilson then, after all... But, as we always say, at sea:
    "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story!"
     
     
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