Living on an island has both advantages and disadvantages. By and large the advantages outweigh the alternative unless of course you want to go anywhere. The mounting cost and the inconvenience of the ferry is becoming a real issue and the time is coming when the pull of the mainland is beginning to exceed the magnetism of life overseas.
The prospect of selling and buying all over again does not appeal though, and as spring begins to wake up, i am seeing all of the things that need doing before even considering putting the house on the market.
Apart from the upheaval, there is the gamble involved in moving to somewhere new. At present I enjoy a great deal of isolation, peace and quiet. Interactions with neighbours are minimal and I can go for days without seeing anyone. There is no traffic noise, no sounds from the neighbourhood and a house that by and large suits my needs. To find somewhere that meets those specifications, would be most fortunate, and I realise that many compromises must be made. I am not sure that I want to renovate another house. My body and mind are not really up to that and there is no bottomless pit of cash either.
What is clear though, is that ties to the Island are becoming fewer and further between and that this is probably the right time to consider a final move. Over the next few months I must give this serious consideration as I am sure that there will be things that I have not thought about.
Monday 28 February 2011
Sunday 27 February 2011
My ear still rings
On Friday night, I put aside some of my prejudices and went to see a band called Fleetwood Back. Now i am not normally a fan of tribute bands and I am not convinced that my mind has been changed as a result of that experience.
One thing that the evening reinforced, was my increasing intolerance of the general public. Events like this tend to focus my mind on what is happening around me rather than what I am there for, and as always the audience was complete with its fair share of dick heads. I know that I am easily niggled but what is it about some people that gives them the right to be completely unaware of or uncaring about others. Every public event seems to me to be the same in this respect. There are always those that turn up late, and you can guarantee that their seats will be in the middle of a row, ensuring the disruption of as many people as possible. The same people will probably want to go to the toilet part way through as they didn't have time to go before, and yes, they are the last back after the interval. There are those who insist on keeping their smartphones on; ostentatiously reading their precious texts, oblivious to the bright glare that draws the eye of everyone within twenty metres. There are those that insist on singing along, out of tune and often with the wrong words. Some like to bob up and down in their seats in, or out of time to the beat, and those who leap to their feet at every available opportunity.
Why do I always end up sitting next to the guy who sits with his legs spread as wide as they will go, invading my space and forcing me to spend my time with my knees pressed together and straight in front of me?
The band on friday were of course living in a fantasy world where they make their living pretending to be someone else. They had made great efforts to dress like and even look like their heroes, and from a distance the appearance was pretty authentic, though I confess that when I first saw the faux Stevie Nicks, I thought it was the fat guy from Gavin and Stacey in drag.
Performancewise, they were competent. What they lacked in subtlety they made up for in enthusiasm and sheer volume, and they did get better as time passed. Such a pity though that they did insist on entering into dialogue, in which they stayed in character and a false American accent, badly done is enough to make anyone cringe.
Anyhow - the audience gave them a standing ovation, partly because the band had urged everyone to stand up for the final "Go Your Own Way", but on balance they probably deserved it.
I guess that I am just getting old.
One thing that the evening reinforced, was my increasing intolerance of the general public. Events like this tend to focus my mind on what is happening around me rather than what I am there for, and as always the audience was complete with its fair share of dick heads. I know that I am easily niggled but what is it about some people that gives them the right to be completely unaware of or uncaring about others. Every public event seems to me to be the same in this respect. There are always those that turn up late, and you can guarantee that their seats will be in the middle of a row, ensuring the disruption of as many people as possible. The same people will probably want to go to the toilet part way through as they didn't have time to go before, and yes, they are the last back after the interval. There are those who insist on keeping their smartphones on; ostentatiously reading their precious texts, oblivious to the bright glare that draws the eye of everyone within twenty metres. There are those that insist on singing along, out of tune and often with the wrong words. Some like to bob up and down in their seats in, or out of time to the beat, and those who leap to their feet at every available opportunity.
Why do I always end up sitting next to the guy who sits with his legs spread as wide as they will go, invading my space and forcing me to spend my time with my knees pressed together and straight in front of me?
The band on friday were of course living in a fantasy world where they make their living pretending to be someone else. They had made great efforts to dress like and even look like their heroes, and from a distance the appearance was pretty authentic, though I confess that when I first saw the faux Stevie Nicks, I thought it was the fat guy from Gavin and Stacey in drag.
Performancewise, they were competent. What they lacked in subtlety they made up for in enthusiasm and sheer volume, and they did get better as time passed. Such a pity though that they did insist on entering into dialogue, in which they stayed in character and a false American accent, badly done is enough to make anyone cringe.
Anyhow - the audience gave them a standing ovation, partly because the band had urged everyone to stand up for the final "Go Your Own Way", but on balance they probably deserved it.
I guess that I am just getting old.
Thursday 3 February 2011
Another rant
Within any culture, there are ways that people go about their lives and many behaviours are specific to particular groups and have developed for logical and sound reasons. Cultures have evolved along with the multitudes of discrete populations, and are fundamentally the reason why we have boundaries and borders. Quite rightly, nations are proud of their cultural heritages and will strive to protect their ways of life.
Time passes however and the world has changed. Borders are largely more permeable and the flow of people from one country to the next is diluting populations and aspects of individual cultures are absorbed and blended, or should be. There are however areas of total inflexibility where countries are dominated, not by a naturally evolved way of life, but by ideas thrust upon them by zealots, fearful of having freedom of thought and speech, just in case their facile and ludicrous edifice should be torn down in a deluge of logic.
In Pakistan, a teenage boy has been jailed for something that he wrote in an examination paper. He is being held under blasphemy laws that have no moral or logical basis. They are so corrupt that anyone can accuse another without having to provide evidence, and once accused there is no defence. I have heard this defended on cultural grounds. We have a huge immigrant population that is growing disproportionately and though I applaud a multicultural society, it would seem that a significant portion of these people do not wish to integrate into our culture but simply to propagate their own, and many would like to introduce their own laws. There will come a time when they are a majority group and such laws as those in pakistan could find themselves dribbling into out statute books. Within any country dominated by one religion there is no scope for tolerance nor is there any flexibility. There is just one set of rules and that was written a long time ago in a part of the world that has remained unaltered in many ways since medieval times.
We need to prevent the continuation of ghettos and do more to integrate all of these groups into OUR culture before it is too late.
Time passes however and the world has changed. Borders are largely more permeable and the flow of people from one country to the next is diluting populations and aspects of individual cultures are absorbed and blended, or should be. There are however areas of total inflexibility where countries are dominated, not by a naturally evolved way of life, but by ideas thrust upon them by zealots, fearful of having freedom of thought and speech, just in case their facile and ludicrous edifice should be torn down in a deluge of logic.
In Pakistan, a teenage boy has been jailed for something that he wrote in an examination paper. He is being held under blasphemy laws that have no moral or logical basis. They are so corrupt that anyone can accuse another without having to provide evidence, and once accused there is no defence. I have heard this defended on cultural grounds. We have a huge immigrant population that is growing disproportionately and though I applaud a multicultural society, it would seem that a significant portion of these people do not wish to integrate into our culture but simply to propagate their own, and many would like to introduce their own laws. There will come a time when they are a majority group and such laws as those in pakistan could find themselves dribbling into out statute books. Within any country dominated by one religion there is no scope for tolerance nor is there any flexibility. There is just one set of rules and that was written a long time ago in a part of the world that has remained unaltered in many ways since medieval times.
We need to prevent the continuation of ghettos and do more to integrate all of these groups into OUR culture before it is too late.
Wednesday 2 February 2011
Farewells
I have written before about my friend Elizabeth Green, who I have got to know well over the last few years. She was a neighbour, and her dour and overbearing husband meant that we had little to do with either of them until after his death. Since moving away, I have been visiting Liz frequently and enjoying hearing about her life. She was evacuated during the war and spent much of her childhood away from her parents and acting as a surrogate mother to her younger sister Alice. She went to art school in London just after the war and eventually went into teaching. She was forced into marriage because in those days living in sin was not permissible for female teachers. Though she loved John in her own way, neither of them wanted to be married and their relationship was shall we say different. John fell downstairs one night in a drunken state and broke his neck. After that he was housebound and became a burden that she wasn't prepared for. After a number of years of suffering he died and Liz was left in her large house filled with paintings and arthritic hands that ensured that there would be no more paintings to be done. In recent years she has spent her days in front of her TV, chain smoking, becoming more and more agorophobic and waiting for the inevitable.
This week there was a gas leak in her house and she had to be evacuated...again...... This time to an old folks home and from there to hospital. Like a fish out of water she became confused and disoriented and sadly last night she died. I will miss her.
Tuesday 1 February 2011
It is later than you think
Douglas Adams, in his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, said that "time is an illusion- lunchtime doubly so."
Yesterday saw the funeral of my aunt Joan. I didn't attend; instead I will talk about her for a while. She was my fathers older sister, and lived for 88 years in the house where she was born and grew up. She was a spinster with her own hairdressing business, fiercely independent, right wing, and very difficult to get on with. Joan fell out so easily with everyone in the family and eventually alienated herself to the extent that only near neighbours would visit to make sure that she was still alive.
Joan was found unconscious on the tiled floor of her unheated home in the depths of winter and was taken to hospital where she came round and refused food, water or treatment of any kind, and died more or less as she had lived-alone.
Her rented house had not been properly maintained, the windows and doors rotting and draughty, the roof leaking and carpets and furniture mildewed and mouldering. Cupboards were stuffed with clothes and shoes that had once belonged to her parents, and nothing seemed to have been thrown away in years. My long suffering Sister who had visited her regularly and suffered abuse for her efforts, assisted neighbours in clearing the house, knowing that her small estate had been willed to those neighbours, and organised the funeral. I toyed with the idea of attending but as i never visited when she was alive, I could see no point in making the long journey to say goodbye to her corpse. I can do that from here. I do not feel guilty. We choose our friends but family is thrust upon us. My remaining Aunt on my father's side is also very ill and she is as mad as a bag of cats. I will not be attending her funeral either.
My dear friend Liz is 84 years old and yesterday had to be evacuated from her house because of a serious gas leak. She was transferred The stress and lack of opportunity to smoke brought on a funny turn and so they have transferred her to hospital, oddly to the last ward that I was in. I suspect that Liz will not be going home again. It would appear that the house needs a lot of work to make it safe and when that can be done I have no idea. Her relatives are either very old or far away or detached from her and I suspect that many are just waiting to inherit their share. Liz is a lovely human being and sadly losing her memory very quickly. I know that I will miss her when she goes and hers will be a funeral that I will certainly attend, should I be in a position to do so. However one can never be certain. Joan I will not miss, as we had no relationship to speak of; the sad thing of course is that she had no real relationships at all in her life and that there is no-one left to miss her.
Yesterday saw the funeral of my aunt Joan. I didn't attend; instead I will talk about her for a while. She was my fathers older sister, and lived for 88 years in the house where she was born and grew up. She was a spinster with her own hairdressing business, fiercely independent, right wing, and very difficult to get on with. Joan fell out so easily with everyone in the family and eventually alienated herself to the extent that only near neighbours would visit to make sure that she was still alive.
Joan was found unconscious on the tiled floor of her unheated home in the depths of winter and was taken to hospital where she came round and refused food, water or treatment of any kind, and died more or less as she had lived-alone.
Her rented house had not been properly maintained, the windows and doors rotting and draughty, the roof leaking and carpets and furniture mildewed and mouldering. Cupboards were stuffed with clothes and shoes that had once belonged to her parents, and nothing seemed to have been thrown away in years. My long suffering Sister who had visited her regularly and suffered abuse for her efforts, assisted neighbours in clearing the house, knowing that her small estate had been willed to those neighbours, and organised the funeral. I toyed with the idea of attending but as i never visited when she was alive, I could see no point in making the long journey to say goodbye to her corpse. I can do that from here. I do not feel guilty. We choose our friends but family is thrust upon us. My remaining Aunt on my father's side is also very ill and she is as mad as a bag of cats. I will not be attending her funeral either.
My dear friend Liz is 84 years old and yesterday had to be evacuated from her house because of a serious gas leak. She was transferred The stress and lack of opportunity to smoke brought on a funny turn and so they have transferred her to hospital, oddly to the last ward that I was in. I suspect that Liz will not be going home again. It would appear that the house needs a lot of work to make it safe and when that can be done I have no idea. Her relatives are either very old or far away or detached from her and I suspect that many are just waiting to inherit their share. Liz is a lovely human being and sadly losing her memory very quickly. I know that I will miss her when she goes and hers will be a funeral that I will certainly attend, should I be in a position to do so. However one can never be certain. Joan I will not miss, as we had no relationship to speak of; the sad thing of course is that she had no real relationships at all in her life and that there is no-one left to miss her.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)