A short post on February 29th, love children ("copii din flori"), useless bishops, pirates

Talking of Martisor reminds me that yesterday was February 29th, the day when in England by tradition women are permitted to propose marriage to men. 

I was only reminded of this because Boris Johnson's live-in girlfriend announced on Twitter or Facebook that she was pregnant and everyone else hastened to congratulate the happy couple or to make tedious political attacks on the Prime Minister related to state hand-outs and children in poverty. 

I like Boris, for all his sins, which are legion, and I wish the pair and their unborn baby all the best, but I happened to remember that 118 bishops of the Church of England condemned him for using the phrase 'Surrender Act' to describe  delaying Brexit if no deal with the EU was agreed. 

No bishops or clergypersons have been reported as condemning the fact Boris Johnson is about to father a child by one woman while married to someone else. Any bishop who did so would thereby make front page news, so none has.

What is my point? My very unoriginal but very heart-felt point is that cobblers should stick to their awls and bishops stick to talking about sin - and not talk about things about which they know less than nothing. 

This goes for Catholic bishops too, I am sorry to say, going up to the top.

By the way, Boris refuses to answer questions about how many children he has. Five are known to the press.

There came a day in the 1970s which the Daily Telegraph announced was the 21st birthday of Frederick, hero of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance or The Slave of Duty. He was apprenticed by mistake to be a pirate (instead of a pilot) until his 21st birthday and, unfortunately for him, was born on 29 February. I see that someone on the net thinks he reached this milestone in 1948.