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First, I get my  January module results and find out I got full marks in the postmodern novel module, then my dad tells us he's got a new job 40 miles closer to home, and then, just half an hour ago, the head of the Hampshire Music Service phoned me up and said that I've been promoted to the full Hampshire County Youth Orchestra from the Strings!!! Rock on!!!  I'm joining as soon as the SO have done our annual Andover concert (when I'm leading a piece for the first time ) and I'll be going on the Italy 2007 tour in the summer. WOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Oh yeah, and I got Rad Racer as well .

Over the past few weeks, I, along with most of the rest of the world, have been keeping a close eye on our colonial cousins over the great pond. It has come to my notice over the last month that the true reason for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq is now perfectly clear. I suppose I must stress that this is my opinion, but still, it is obvious now (to me, anyway) that we did not invade Iraq for weapon of mass destruction, Saddam Hussain or, even, as the cynics would have you believe, the purely economical benefits of oil. Nor did we invade Afghanistan purely to rid it of the undeniably horrid Taliban as the first stage in George W. Bush's global crusade, his "War on Terror".

I would put it to you that all these official reasons for Middle East action are but smokescreens, short-term objectives that are vaunted as the ultimate purpose of the operations, when in fact they merely hide the truth. This sort of thing is going on all the time, most of you will probably already have noticed how certain news stories seem to disappear from the mass media's distorting fish-eye lens at convenient moments for the governments of certain countries (one notable example being the loans for peerages debacle in the UK, knocked off the front pages, or indeed any pages, by the H5 N1 outbreak in Suffolk). Whilst not exactly propaganda, this "selective focus", as I call the media's penchant for appearing to change their main stories when Blair gets uncomfortable is facilitated, but not necessarily caused by, our showbiz-oriented society. This is not a modern concept, though, ever since the middle ages, rulers have been having subtle words in the ears of those who are in the public domain, diverting attention away from themselves.

It is my theory that such a smokescreen operation is now in place, has been for at least the last four, perhaps as many as the last twenty, years and has no forseeable ending. The reason that America and the UK have been invading Iraq and Afghanistan is so that in the (now uncomfortably near) future, the people of these "liberated" countries will somehow owe them something, and they can be used as staging areas for a fullscale assault on the real target of this middle-eastern war: Iran. Iran's recent provocative actions certainly make this course of events more likely, such as today's report of an Iranian missile test in 2005, during the development stage of space-capable warhead-delivery systems. That was two years ago, how much R & D have they achieved by now, I wonder? A working system which just needs appropriately prepared radioactive material for war-readiness? In conjunction with this release on the Iranian state news website (the source admittedly changing the credibility of the news, at best, to threatening propaganda, at worst an understatement implying that they aren't as advanced as they, in fact, are) the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

"...said on Sunday Iran had no reverse gear on its way to mastering the technology to make nuclear fuel, voicing fresh defiance before major powers meet to discuss the dispute.

[My italics]

America's response has been predictable at best, their recent, stupidly named, "Son of Star Wars" project betraying their fears over the Iranian region and the Russian collaboration implied by the Iranian use of one of their rockets causing diplomatic shockwaves around the world. This could easily heat up the long-running Cold War (those of you who thought it had long been over, I would suggest, are wrong), especially with the current White House actions such as the creation of

"...a Pentagon panel...to plan a bombing attack that could be implemented within 24 hours of getting the go-ahead from President George W. Bush."

If the UN and German contingents currently meeting in London do decide on a resolution which Ahmadinejad deems unacceptable, then the Iranians, and the rest of the world, may be forced into yet another conflict with no end in sight. One of the Iranian deputies to their foreign minister had this to say of the situation: "We have prepared ourselves for any situation, even for war."

I'll finish with a phrase which is often misunderstood: "May you live in interesting times." I'm unsure as to who said it first, but as Terry Pratchett asserts, it is most definitely a curse. Who would wish to live in times as interesting as these?

Apologies, the linking thing's not working properly, so I'll have to give the URLs of this news to anyone who requests it personally, or you can google it yourselves.

Well, Thursday afternoon at 12:34 I touched down in London Gatwick North Terminal to be greeted by nine degrees celsius temperatures, heavy drizzle (though not heavy enough to merit the term "rain") and grey, overcast, iron skies. A stark contrast to the 17 degrees (in the shade) average temperature over the previous five days in the Cote d'Azur Provence Alpes-Maritimes region of southern France. It really is great to be back in England. But I've barely started and I'm already getting ahead of myself. As I have mentioned before, I've been on holiday!

Destination

The Cote d'Azur is on the mediterranean coast of France, bordering Italy and encompassing Monaco. If you've ever visited you'll know that it really merits its name, the azure seas (yes, even in February) sparkling an iridescent blue as the sunlight reflects of the deep, welcoming waters (seriously, even in February). It also has a reputation as one of the richest areas in the world, the Monte-Carlo district of Monaco (the second smallest country in the world after the Vatican) evincing the opulence of the locale. Surprisingly, and slightly disappointingly, there is actually only a single casino in Monte-Carlo, predictably named the "Monte-Carlo Casino". Only I have one recommendation if you go to Monaco, do not eat at "Fredy's" in the old quarter; they rip you off a bit. Monaco was only a flying visit, we were actually staying at Nice, a nice place, particularly because of it's people, views and...

Culture

Really, this was a cultural trip as well as just a relaxing holiday. I have French orals coming up in April/May, so I had to get into as many deep conversations as possible. And we're not talking ordering a coffee at a bar either. With one chap, I managed to get into an argument about the upcoming presidential election (I favoured Segolene Royal, the Socialist Party leader, he preferred Nicolas Sarkozy, the Conservative). Another time, I had to interptret while my mum had a conversation with some random guy we met on a train about house prices and the police force. Some of it was fairly useful, though, for our "Topics and Texts" writing paper, we are studying the resistance 1939-45, and we ment one man whose father had been in the resistance, and he told us about a war criminal from WW2 who had recently been caught hiding in the church we were standing right outside. I got even more interested at this point, because Maurice Papon, a similar collaborator who managed to get in de Gaulle's good books just after the war, had recently died, causing a whle lot of political flak for Sarkozy (who supported his burial alongside resistance heroes). Needless to say, we ended up with several tonnes of French newspapers, most of which I haven't yet read, but all of which I will need to read by Monday...better get on with that.

Le Carnaval de Nice: Roi de la tres grande melee

If any of you have seen Nice carnival, you know why it deserves a sub-topic of its own. The exquisitely detailed decorated floats, the foreign paricipation (from Brazil, Germany, Spain, USA and Algiers), the hundreds of dancers...it is topped probably only by Rio carnival in its scope and beauty. If you ever get the chance to go to the Nice carnival, take it, becaus although it does cost money (E7.50, if memory serves, just over £5) to get in, it is well worth it, the spirit of the Cote d'Azur really shining through in this marvellous display.

Transport

Perhaps this might seem a little bad taste given Virgin's recent misfortunes (Fox, didn't you say you live in Cumbria? How far away are the happenings from you?), but I really REALLY think we need to take an example from the French public transport system. In the whole time we were there, there was one single delay: a train arrived 3 minutes late. That was it. It is so punctual, organised, the sytem is helpful, so you know exactly where you will need to be to get where you need to go, oh and it's cheap as well.

The bus from the Holiday Inn where we had to stay the night before we flew out (we live a fair way away from LGW, and besides, weren't going to leave the house at 2:00 am, so we could check in at 5:00 ) to the airport cost £2.50 each (£7.50 in total). A bus, on the other hand, from Nice bus station to anywhere along the whole coast (they even crossed the border into Italy, some going to Ventimille) cost E1.30 (about 90p, so around £2.70 for all of us).

Let me just re-iterate that.

A bus for all three of us from our hotel in France to ANOTHER COUNTRY cost only 20p more than a bus for ONE PERSON on a ten-minute trip from a Holiday Inn to LGW. It's not as if they cut down on quality either, the buses were not really buses in the true sense of the word at all, more like coaches; the type you get on National Express. And, crucially, they came on time. Admittedly, this was comparing one-way tickets, so let's look at trains. Trains were similarly cheap, a similar route, from Nice to Ventimille, two-way, costing E5.30 per person, about £3.71. The full journey (which we didn't actually do, we only visited two countries: France and Monaco) would take around one and a half hours, the equivalent in the UK probably costing at least three times as much, one way.

That's about it, really, well, about as much as I can write at the moment anyway. I'm pretty sure that's covered everything, it was just a really enjoyable, entertaining, helpful experience that I would recommend to anyone.