XUNICEF News and Views

ACRONYMS+ GALORE   As with almost anything related to UNICEF, an essential is an understanding of the acronyms (and other terms) used.  Thus, to be able to understand what follows, the reader will need to know: BBC = British Broadcasting Company nearest equivalent to ‘Truth Social’ DB5 = David Brown 5, a model of the elegant Aston Martin stable of sports cars DVLA = Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, a branch of British bureaucracy HMRC = His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, another branch of British bureaucracy, dealing with the UK’s (bleep !) tax man Ed Sheeran = Well known British singer, song-writer and musician ***** Today, 4th August, 2026, I read on the BBC News website, that Ed Sheeran has been accused by DVLA of failing to insure his Aston Martin DB5 which has been off-road since 2021.  All this time, it was held in the restoration workshop as part of the work was to convert it to an electric vehicle, so presumably it didn’t even...

Tara Handpump This article is not to track the creation and development of the Tara Handpump itself but looks at why it became so popular, so quickly.

The Royal Military Canal, Appledore Anyone wishing to understand the fractious relationships which exist between Britain/ England/ Scotland/ Wales/ Northern Ireland and the rest of Europe (especially Ireland/Eire) needs only to watch the film “Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines” (available on DVD both allegedly ‘New’ or ‘Used’ for anything between £ 5:00 and £ 20:00, or around € 6:00 to € 23:00 (Euros), depending. Available to stream (if you know what that means. . . .)) While the film was made in about 1965, the British attitudes to their neighbours/foreigners/others seems to have remained fixed in the past. This, incidentally, seems to reflect the immutable inability of the British to attempt to speak languages other than their own. Speaking Gaelic apparently doesn’t count. In the very early 1800s, Napoleon was eying England and its acolytes, remembering the insults which the French Dauphin allegedly aimed at Henry V in the 1400s and which caused Henry to invade – and c...

EMILY CULLEN AND SON, LEE In all my years of being a closet poet, my wife has only once thought that what I’d written was worthy of the word ‘poet’. All the rest were classified as ‘not worthy’. Somewhat ego-denting even when I thought I’d written quite a clever limerick:

Salmon by Lucinda Gibbs Readers of this blog may just remember an article on a particular painting by my mother which was stolen and found some considerable period later; was submitted to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 1978

It was on account of the rebels at Bujumbura Airport that I was made to buy a packet of coffee which I didn’t want.

BEWARE:  AN ARIAL, MECHANICAL TARANTULA Recently, an XUNICEF member (I checked), who will remain nameless, wrote to me in some excitement because his son had given him a very expensive drone which he was busy trying to understand so he could ‘fly’ it.  The fact that he had, in the past, trained pilots to fly, seemed not to provide him with the necessary intelligence. . . .

There are some things we take for granted in life like birth, death and taxes, and I would add to this list, the UNICEF driver. 

Ken in Bam In the latest New Scientist magazine, there was a lot of loose advertising material. Normally, I bin what I see as junk mail but this time, one item caught my eye.

William Bligh and Loyalists You learn the darnedest things. . . .which had me gathering the history of ‘The Mutiny on the Bounty’ which readers might want to check before reading on from here,

Ruins at Hatra, Iraq Recently, I remembered some ‘events’ at check points that we had to pass; a) To get from Amman to Baghdad and b) from Baghdad to Erbil and, of course, in the reverse direction, too Typically, to exit Erbil back to the real world (at that time), took the best part of a week – to get all the permits and so on. It meant that when my mother died in the UK, and I was in Erbil, I was unable to return to attend her funeral, which was sad for me but as all my four brothers were there, the family was well represented. With the distances that we were required to travel, it would have been easier and quicker had we been able to fly everywhere. However, the No-Fly-Zone put paid to air travel for most of the time. Only once during my time in Iraq, did I fly from Baghdad to Amman. It was on the day following the death of Princess Diana in Paris.   Given the situation, since the Check Points were manned by the Iraqis themselves, when UN staff came through, we were not...

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player. That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more.

BATHING THE BABY Every time I hear this ‘statement’, I always wonder who coined it first.

SHE-MAIL MEETS HE-MAIL What follows is about e-mail, e-mail addresses and common sense which need to work well together if one was working abroad as a consultant.

So it was that following some work in Nepal in 1979, where I ran into a number of VSO volunteers, that I felt compelled to visit the Head Office of VSO in London on my return to discuss my observations.

    UNICEF staff – in former years – came with a range of skills befitting their respective roles.  Health staff often were recruited from the medical profession – or perhaps from the local barbers’ shop; nutrition staff sometimes had experience within their family’s kitchen.  Communication staff were normally good at writing fiction and, “Yes, you guessed it”: WASH staff knew something about how water behaves – like when you spill it, it takes forever to dry up.

At the end of 2006, a near neighbour called June, died and it was her dying wish, so we were told, that she should be buried in her garden.  Quite apart from all the legal hoops through which her successors had to jump to accede to her wish, the owners of adjacent properties had to be informed. Luckily, our property lies at a higher elevation than where June was to be buried, but the immediate downstream neighbours were, understandably, rather concerned as to what the effects could be. Those neighbours are Mr and Mrs Windeler, now both deceased, themselves. Nevertheless, I felt the event should be celebrated in verse: ~ June ~ The summer season looms with the bounty it will bring The plants with pretty berries will soon themselves festoon, But in the Wind’ler garden, they will always ask themselves Whether June is full of berries or the berries, full of June.

NO SMILE – NO TEETH  

A YOUNG EXPLORER