Reasonable Rumsfeld...

...Donald Rumsfeld's departure from office was greeted with some universal good cheer around these parts. We never warmed to the man and were appalled by his deluded, ill-conceived, ill-planned, fatally flawed, horribly implemented [etc., etc., you get the drift] invasion of Iraq. But whereas many also took some considerable chorltlement whenever his bumbling public utterances were given in evidence as proof of the idiocy of the man, I was not one such.

He was, in particular, perfectly correct in asserting that there are things we know, thing we know we don't know and things that we don't know we don't know - and of them the last is the most dangerous and to be feared.

Exemplum of this nostrum has just sorely been presented to my now grieving heart this very morning around our breakfast table. How is it possible I am asking myself that one can live in close - and usually harmonious - contact with a human being as spouse [H of course] and not know that there are aspects of her character, personality, spirit and soul that have, to date, been utterly unknown?

For on commenting how pleasing it was to wake to find England in such a strong position in the second Test, on remarking on the particular triumph of a double century from Collingwood, on mildly mocking Shane Warne's despairing negativity of being reduced to bowling around the wicket to Pietersen, etc., etc., H's sole reply was to ask "Oh, is the Ashes still on then?"

Gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case. Acquittal by acclaim!