Now is the summer of their discontent

It's odd isn't it? These groups of extremely well paid people who declare that they earn and deserve their huge salaries, bonuses and all the perks of the job because of their superb performance - are the very ones now shaming Britain.

We have the Bankers - the poorest people in the country are being forced to pay back for their mismanagement, the rest of Britain having bailed them out already so that they could continue their telephone number payouts. You should not call it a salary when it's more like winning the lottery - every year, and equally undeserved.

We have the oil companies - knowing they had despoiled Nigerian landscape and economy and the lives of many Nigerians who dared protest, they nevertheless were permitted to move on to pollute another huge area of the globe, bringing Britain into further disrepute. I wonder how much they contribute to the British economy -and is it worth it?

We have the World Cup debacle, ludicrously overpaid footballers, who appear unbothered to make the effort required even to match other years' lacklustre showing, demoralised, soft and simply not hungry enough to perform.

- and we have the politicians, fiddling expenses, involving Britain in a war it never had a mandate to enter and now, a Government elected by mistake, busy slashing the lives of its citizens to ribbons in a desperate effort to cobble together the credit rating of the country so they can borrow more - to pay each other bigger salaries, maybe?

Performance related pay? Where did that idea go? If we stripped this lot of the salaries they did not earn or deserve - I don't think there would be too much of a budget deficit left. I can hardly wait for winter.

Huntington, Huntington, clippety clop

My visit to the Huntington Library did not start well. I had visited a Chinatown eatery in Los Angeles and had suffered a stomach upset in the night. I was exhausted and in some pain. Fortunately, I had a lift there from the 1950s motel in Pasadena where we were staying and had the prospect of a ride back again in the evening.
The Huntington Library takes itself very seriously indeed. After some hours of induction into the ranks of scholars, as they call their research readers, I was permitted to investigate their archives. After what seemed to be a very short time a screeching double ring on a bell jolted me from the near silent aura of the library: at twenty minutes to noon, we were being summoned to return material and proceed to lunch. This I gathered from the behaviour of the other, mostly oldish and eminent-looking scholars.
Continuing to follow the lead of others, I trooped out of the building only to realise I had no idea where I could wash my hands or eat lunch. I knew from the family visit on the previous day that no food or drink was permitted in the gardens within which the research library is located. Anyway, I had no food to eat and eventually asked an unsmiling guard, who directed me to a cafe I knew to be halfway across the garden. After a wrong turn into a tearoom for geriatrics, I eventually located the cafe. By this time, my fellow scholars were halfway through their meals, taken at small metal tables outside the building. No one encouraged my approach so I ate alone. This was to be the pattern for most of the week.
The garden opened at 12 and swarms of Pasadena/ San Marino matrons 'hurried' arthritically over to the cafe or tearoom to partake of a limited (cafe) expensive, (tearoom) and very average-quality lunch menu. If you did not beat this crowd to the slow paypoint, you could spend 10 minutes waiting in line. Fortunately, there was a 20% discount for scholars' food ( and for books at the book-store), which made the pain more bearable.
The gardens are rightly famed. Sumptuously laid out landscapes of Chinese, Japanese and dry gardens, a Shakespeare garden featuring the plants mentioned in the plays, conservatories and other areas I did not have time to explore are laid out in the spacious rectangular area of the garden, which also contains the house where Henry E. and Arabella Huntington lived, now adapted (and possibly extended) to the Art Gallery, containing many Gainsboroughs and other C18th portraits but a smattering of stuff from other periods, decorative arts etc.,and the Library itself, and exhibition halls displaying selections of the original books and incunabula collected by the Huntingtons, an American art gallery (briefly visited) and other buildings...
All this is patrolled by a large number of mainly pleasant attendants and guides. However, the treatment of the scholars seemed to be characterised by unfriendly guards and ultra-serious librarians, intent on making one realise that you were merely one of a long train of vastly-better-qualified scholars who had made this pilgrimage and would now have to submit to constant scrutiny by cctv, made to open bags for inspection every time one left the building, and being at the mercy of pages who would frequently lose or misunderstand the call slips one submitted. Long waits for requested material were normal and no notice was given for when this material arrived at the desk, so it was necessary to trek from table to desk repeatedly, in order to discover if the desired manuscripts had arrived.
Naturally, by the end of the first week, most of these problems, delays and inconveniences had been absorbed and necessary adjustments been made. I found out where the card catalogue was on the third or fourth day ( a long trek through the corridors) and finally realised how to order individual items rather than entire boxes. It would have helped if this had been evident from the beginning; unfortunately, I left after 5 days, not nearly enough time to discover the treasures that I doubtless missed in my preliminary sweep. I felt even more unworthy in leaving on Friday night, when I realised that the scholar's week should consist of work from Monday morning to Saturday night, which I had originally intended to do but curtailed the trip in order to visit friends in Northern California.
I did introduce myself to an interesting and extremely knowledgeable curator/archivist/librarian who advised me to read a memoir which I had not heard of but is available in Trinity Library. That reference may turn out to be the single most useful item of information which I gained at the Huntington Library.