Paul Malpas

I awoke this morning to a pleasant surprise a chap called Jesse who often posts insightful comments on to my blog, came up with a good point. See my blog comments on yesterday’s Admitting Defeat. I immediately dashed off a letter to Pierse & Fitzgibbon, which I give below:-

Dear Sirs,

I acknowledge your rather shrewish letter of 17 February 2010 and note by your tone that you realised mankind had left this planet several years ago and that you now only write and speak to the inanimate.

Perhaps a little advice would do no harm here and it might help in your dealings with the lumps of stone that are scattered around.  Erratics we call them in Archaeology.

A friend of mine with experience in this field that we are mired in, wonders why this car reg. could not have been matched up sooner with my payment.

He goes on to say “Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, we do not have more than five numerics in our reg. nos. They imply you imputted six.  Who did the systems analysis work here?  My point is, the fact that your payment was accepted on the net would seem to indicate that your reg. no. was validated.  It would be intetresting to see, if, in fact, you did key in the right data.”

Perhaps you might put it to eFlow that their system is flawed and needs replacing and also this piece of advice must be worth money, so how about paying my costs.

Yours Faithfully,

Paul Malpas.

We will see if anything will happen but I am definately going to send the file to the Ombudsman.  When I hear something, so will you.

To change tack, I have, for the last few days, been researching the life of a British soldier who served in the Army in the middle of the 19th century in India.  He was born in Ballygar in Galway in 1828 and made it through the Famine.  In 1847 aged 19 he enlisted in Warrington and joined the 29th Foot (Worcester regiment) and spent 12 years with them serving through the 2nd Sikh War in the Punjab and the Indian Mutiny in 1857-8.  Volunteered to join the 80th Foot when his first regiment went home and served eight years with them, serving all over central India and in the North East in Assam and Bhutan in the Himalayas and when they went home joined the 88th Foot (Connaught Rangers). where he spent his last two years in service, taking part in the Grand Durbar of 1866 at Agra before walking 500 miles to Rawalpindi to build a road. It was at Rawalpindi, which is at the other end of the Khyber Pass from Kabul that he developed presbyopia, which stops the eyes from focussing at near sight and he was discharged unfit for duty.  He was probably the fittest 40 year old around after all his endeavours.  He came home, married a girl from Williamstown, had five children and died at 51 years old and he his buried in Glenamaddy graveyard.  He packed a lot in and saw a lot more of the world than most in those pre-Ryanair days.  In all his 21 years in the Army he never rose beyond a private and never received a pension but he would have been a great man to sit and have a pint of Guiness with.

Another thought that struck me was that the British Army have not moved far in 143 years.  They are only 200 miles away now in Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

So here’s to you Bernard Lohan, may you forever rest in peace and may your god go with you