Pure Moonshine-Shouting my sincerity

2012

2012-01-06T12:14:00.003Z

This is supposed to be the year that the world ends, according to the Mayans. Of course they didn't see their own end coming and that does not give their prediction a lot of clout. However, there is much going on that does give some credence to such a possibilty.

Personally, 2012 has not been a great year. I have been ill for the last three weeks and this week, with just one week to go until the move, our buyers backed down and so we go back to square one. The following day, Mother in law, who was in a care home for a couple of weeks respite care, fell and broke her hip. She is 86 and such things at her age are not to be taken lightly. She was struggling to look after herself as it was, so goodness knows what will happen now.

Globally we have the American Republicans and the Muslims - two groups of fundamental religious maniacs, both utterly convinced that their god is on their side and that the modus vivendi is written down in ancient ramblings of middle eastern mystics. They use their religions to justify anything at all and i am not sure which is the scariest. It would seem that the republicans are on the rise - surfing a wave of greed that epitomises the American way of life, and their dog eat dog philosophy has to be a recipe for disaster.

And then of course there is North Korea. A nation so far suppressed that they don't know they are suppressed. Maybe the word was removed from the dictionary. The population seems happy to starve while supporting the second biggest army in the world and an arsenal of weapons that makes even China nervous.

We have the former Soviet Union, broken into corrupt and despotic states and the whole of Africa that seems ungovernable and which is ready to be taken over by Islamists. While over here, economic doom and gloom is exacerbating the gulf between the rich and poor and the vast majority are bathing in a prolonged and apathetic stupour, knowing that whatever government we have, only ever represents the interests of the few.

Maybe the Mayans got it right.

Happy New Year

2012-01-02T14:08:00.001Z

So another year begins, gilded with optimism and ambition. Huge life changing resolutions have been considered, sincerely made or rejected, and many already broken. We live in the hope that things will get better, but experience teaches us that this is an illusion, and that in reality, things are likely to deteriorate for most of us. While the haves are feathering their nests, and continue so to do even in the bleakest of times, the have nots will continue to struggle, fighting for the crumbs handed out in the name of charity. Nothing much has changed in the post war era. Balances of power have shifted and technology has advanced far more speedily than people’s ability to cope with it.

I once had a Scooter. It was an old Lambretta, that I bought for two pounds from someone who must have felt that they had done really well. It worked, though never manage to break any speed limits. It was for me the greatest technological item that I owned. It was a foothold on a new kind of freedom, and I loved it. I even understood how it worked. I was familiar with pistons, spark plugs, gearboxes and brakes. I could even do routine maintenance and could recognise faults and manage basic repairs. Ok my knowledge and abilities were at a basic level but there was no sense of mystery.

When I open the bonnet of my car, to check the oil or refill the windscreen washer, I know that the underlying propulsion system is fundamentally the same as my old scooter, I recognise little that is packed so neatly into that space. Should anything go wrong under there, I am completely at a loss as to what to do. The same applies to virtually every mechanical device that I use today. Even a toaster has become impossible to maintain. No-one is interested in repairing and so we just replace anything that fails.

I am of course sitting at my computer and always grateful for the fact that it is a Mac and therefore more reliable than most. For the majority of us the workings of these machines will always remain a total mystery. While I do understand the basic principles of memory chips and the logic systems of programming languages, I have about as much chance of repairing a computer as I have of doing an oil change on a Jumbo Jet. Most people have no understanding of binary notation and some will never manage denary either. Computers left the man in the street behind, decades ago, just as we were coming to terms with BBC Basic or the Sinclair ZX80. Technology rules the world and the technocrats of course have absolute power.

This year, technology will zoom forward yet again and the helpless humans will wallow in the wake, making use of what we are given and becoming increasingly more reliant on systems and programs that we understand less and less. People will continue to kill people, others will destroy the environment for their own personal gain, cities and towns will become more crowded and retail traders will continue to fail, draining the high streets and enhancing the prospects of the Amazons and other online businesses. The poor will get poorer and the wealthy won’t care at all. The status quo for some will be maintained but one day, this fragile entity that we call society will fall apart. All we can hope is that this is not the year.

Traditions - do we need them?

2011-12-30T10:36:00.001Z

Traditions are habits, behaviours or ways of thinking that are passed on from generation to generation. Modern Biology refers to these phenomena as Memes and there is now a branch of science called Memetics. They are elements of what we call culture and each culture has its own set of traditions.

One such group of traditions we call Christmas. This is in essence a midwinter festival that was hijacked by the church as another means of manipulating the poor. Now that the church has lost most of its power, the reins have been handed over to the world of commerce with all the might of the media behind it. Christmas is huge business and still the poor are the ones who are being manipulated. The have nots are encouraged to spend what they do not have in order to accumulate the trappings of what the media tell them they want, and the financiers allow them to max out credit cards in order to pay for it. People already in debt, exacerbate their situation each year by going along with the herd in the hope that they can clear the debt before next Christmas.

It is such a silly season with people buying stuff for others, largely stuff that no-one wants or needs. Fortunes are spent sending greetings cards around the world, often to people that we barely know, let alone care about. Why do we do it? So many people loathe the whole festival these days; even the churches fill up with once a year worshipers who only go because it is traditional. Nowadays it is likely that a midnight mass will turn out to be a drunken brawl, as getting drunk and fighting are seen by some to be traditional. Even priests were brawling in Greece this year.

We also seem to be accumulating traditions. Covering your house with gaudy tasteless illuminated decoration has spread from somewhere; probably America, the seat of tastelessness. We are supposed to be concerned with energy efficiency and yet millions of Megawatts are wasted each year in high streets, stores and on the houses of so many. Those people would not go around wearing a tee shirt with “I am a twat” written on the front and yet they will adorn their houses with frosty the snowman or inflatable Santa Clauses, sucking energy from the National grid like hungry leeches. No doubt the huge energy bills will add to the ever increasing debt.

It has become a season of greed and selfishness. It perpetuates the consumer society and is one cause of misery for so many. It is a bone of contention between faith groups, and therefore another cause of dispute and lack of understanding. Rubbing any aspect of religion into people’s faces is wrong, traditional or not.

The end of the year

2011-12-20T11:50:00.002Z

Another year has passed and the world is no better a place than it ever has been. The human race remains stupid, greedy and divided, and those divisions have little to do with geography and much to do with philosophy. In Douglas Adams' Hitchikers guide to the galaxy, there is a philosopher's strike, which though seemingly idiotic, would in many ways be a wonderful reality. Philosophy is by it's very nature divisive and has been the root cause of so much suffering. Philosophy gives us religion and it gave us communism. It gives us Conservatism and Socialism, it gave the wealthy excuses for the perpetuation of the class system that still lies like a canker at the heart of our society. Any philosophical system asserts an authority that is undeserved, and yet people follow in their droves, content to allow other, "cleverer" people to think for them. In the west, we value freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and yet there is precious little evidence for the latter in the bulk of the population. We switch on the TV and accept what we are told, trudging ever onwards towards whatever the capitalist system offers.

The end of the year has been stress filled for so many people who have seen their incomes devalued or even being taken away, thanks largely to a system that is based on greed and gambling with other people's livelihoods. We have a government that serves only the wealthy whilst claiming that we are all in this mess together, and yet there seems to be no alternative. We are in a hole and yet we keep digging, hoping to find treasure.

I am moving house. At least I hope so. Our fates lie in the hands of the solicitors who make money out of us by shuffling paper. Documents are sent out via email, printed out by clients, signed and posted to them. They seem to do no chasing up, leaving all phone calls to the clients. I am sure that they do something but it seems that they are taking a lot of money for a service that has seen better days.

I will be sorry to leave this Island. I have spent forty years here and it feels like home. However, the crossing to the mainland is so expensive and at present so frequent, that it makes sense, economically and familywise to make the move while we are still capable. So this could be my last entry from this side of the water. Thank you for taking minutes of your life to read this, and I do wish you a happy holiday and the very best luck for next year.

Moving on

2011-12-02T11:45:00.002Z

I have lived in the same town since 1971, and now it is time to move The great stimulus being Oscar of course. At 20 months he has a huge pull and it will be so nice to spend more time with him. (I think)
So the house is in a state of chaos, even though we do not have a moving date, there is so much that needs sorting and rationalising. So much clutter accumulates with time and i am a hoarder - I can't seem to throw anything away on the basis that i deplore waste. However, black bags are filling and being dispatched to the appropriate places. Charity shops are benefitting and through local freecycle groups, individuals too are making use of stuff that I have been hanging on to.
There is sadness and joy associated with such a big upheaval. It has been a long time since i experienced mainland life and no doubt there will be a change in pace that I will need to acclimatise to, though I will probably stay at home just as much as I do now.
However, there will be new opportunities of course and I am sure that babysitting skills will be called upon frequently.
I will miss friends that I have known for a long time and maybe there will be new ones, but I am not good at socialising so we shall see what happens there.
On the whole I feel that it is the right thing to do and that this is the right time. I now await the legal processing to be completed before we get a date for completion - I just hope that it doesn't take too long.

He is growing up

2011-11-09T09:21:00.000Z

baby boomers

2011-11-08T09:31:00.003Z

So Michael Jackson's family are planning a series of law suits, blaming everyone in sight for the shortcomings and death of their famous cash cow. They must be obscenely wealthy already and yet rather than grieve the loss of their relative, they are grasping for yet more money. They are representative of the avaricious unpleasant society that we live in today.
Those of us born in the years immediately following the second world war are referred to as the baby boomer generation, and are being held responsible for the current state of the world. Every generation blames the one that came before, and so I guess that the current younger generation will one day be held accountable too, probably for the appalling quality of music as well as the debt ridden state of the nation.
As a child, I, and many of my own generation, was brought up to abhor debt. If you wanted something, you worked and saved until you could afford it. People saved money all year long so that they could afford christmas. Summer holidays were almost unheard of, and we accepted wearing clothes until they wore out. There were no credit cards, many people didn't even have bank accounts.
Now, everyone wants everything whether or not they have the means to pay. Everyone has a car, or more than one, no-one is without a washing machine, tumble drier, flat screen TV, games console and most impressively the latest and most expensive mobile phone. Many people are up to their necks in debt, taking out more credit cards to pay off what they owe until they get to the state when they can no longer pay. Nowadays it seems that debt is a badge of honour and no longer a stigma.
We live in an age of consumerism, driven by the capitalist system that thrives on the perpetuation of greed. By making those at the bottom of the pile think that they are somewhere else if they accumulate the trappings of those at the top, the parasites at the top make sure that the wealth continues to flow in the right direction. The bank accounts of the wealthy, like black holes, suck in more and more gaining a stronger and stronger pull, while the rest of us struggle to keep up. The spiral intensifies and sooner or later the whole edifice must collapse.

The late and the very late

2011-10-12T12:27:00.000+01:00

I seem to get annoyed so very easily these days, and by such trivial things. Bigger things don’t seem to bother me in the same way, the big things worry me and concern me but do not irritate me like the trivia do.
One current gripe is TV advertising and the way that they set and describe prices. What once was say five hundred pounds has now become four hundred and ninety nine pounds; irritating enough but when spoken is has become just four nine nine. Is the language becoming digitised along with everything else? I can see no justification for this trend but the practice is firmly embedded now and seems unlikely to change.
Another cause of my discontent lies in the media as a whole, and refers to perpetrators of crimes and also their victims. It seems now that should you be unfortunate enough to be murdered, robbed, raped or pillaged, you are judged according to your way of making a living. Beth Scroggins is never referred to as simply Beth Scroggins, she has to beBeth Scroggins, solicitors clerk. Why? Why not beth Scroggins, lovely girl, or Beth Scroggins stamp collector, or even just plain and simple Beth Scroggins. I once saw an ad in a local Portsmouth paper, offering a job in a Tampax factory as a fitter. Imagine that. It would be bad enough being murdered but then being referred to as Bill Sykes, tampon fitter would compound the misery.
We as a society seem obsessed with success that is measured in terms of our earning potential, and in the eyes of the press our worth is not in who we are but in what we do to make a living. When I am murdered, probably for irritating the wrong person, will I be reported as unemployed or as a retired teacher, ex farm hand, ex factory worker, ex fruit picker, ex Portsmouth Football club sweeper, ex barman or what? I think that Corpse would be more appropriate.

Cheese on toast

2011-10-07T10:46:00.004+01:00

I love to cook. When i go out to eat, I find myself analysing the dishes that I enjoy and trying to work out the ingredients and the methods used by the chef. I then take those ideas and attempt to replicate them at home. I read cookery books and steal ideas from them too, but when it comes to cooking, I rarely follow a recipe. I see cooking as a creative art and love to invent and tweak dishes. Mostly it works quite well and most people consider my food acceptable at worst. Good food need not be expensive, and most things that I prepare are done on a low budget.
Not long ago, I went with the family to Pizza Hut for lunch. I am renowned for my attitude to pizza, which I often refer to as cheese on toast, which fundamentally it bears a striking resemblance to, though in the latter there is more cheese. A pizza may look wonderful when it arrives at the table, but my word what a mark up in price. A handful of dough is flattened, baked and smeared with tomato slurry, various scraps are thrown on and the whole thing is baked again for a few minutes, and for that you can pay up to ten pounds. A rapid analysis suggest that the ingredients could cost up to a pound, unless of course you are buying in bulk, in which case you can probably halve that. Ok they taste nice but why are we prepared to pay such inflated prices for something so simple?
Try lightly toasting some bread, smearing it with tomato puree, sprinkling some grated cheese, some chopped olives or anything else that takes your fancy, popping it under the grill and voila - faux pizza, cheap and cheerful.

Hair

2011-10-01T14:22:00.002+01:00

I have been listening to the soundtrack from Hair. It was a wonderful show, and in the sixties it was full of hope, colour, freshness and melody as well as protest and pathos.
The 1960s did seem a time when a generation looked at the rotten world of politics and through protest, both physical and in song, hoped to change the world for the better. Let the sun shine in was the mantra and many believed that it would happen.
Yes some changes did take place, there was a break away from the previous generation and the greyness of post war life. Pop music became a phenomenon, fashions and lifestyles slowly changed and there was a sense of liberation and optimism that now seems so misplaced.
The planet is still polluted, there are more wars going on than ever, black people are still seen as inferiors by huge parts of the American population, ignorance and apathy are rife, and still the politicians bleat on about how much better their policies are than others.
We are in a worse mess than we were post war. Yes then the country was in deep debt, the population living largely in basic accommodation and yet there was that ray of hope that things would get better. It seems now that things can only get worse, and still the men in suits are making decisions that feather their own nests at the cost of the rest of us as well as the planet upon which we depend. It is not the planet that needs saving, it is us.

Gender issues

2011-09-30T11:09:00.001+01:00

I am a little weary of hearing that women get a raw deal, of glass ceilings and of sexual inequality. In my humble opinion, women get a pretty good deal these days and in so many ways are advantaged rather than the reverse.
There was a time when this was not the case, women had to struggle to gain what they have today and in doing so, have brought about huge changes in society, which while being of benefit to women in general have not necessarily improved the society in which we live.
Our education system changed even before the advent of the National Curriculum, in order to shift the balance in favour of girls. There was a time when boys were higher achievers in many subjects in schools. This was recognised and strategies employed that disadvantaged boys and enhanced the achievements of girls. Now, more or less across the board, girls achieve greater academic levels than boys. This of course follows through into the fields of further and higher education with more girls gaining qualifications than boys, with all of the consequences that follow. Has anyone noticed how many police chiefs, doctors, solicitors and heads of educational establishments are women?
The media offers strong positive role models for girls, some more desirable models than others, but nevertheless, a disproportionate amount of presenters, newsreaders and so on are women. In TV drama, women are more often than not presented as strong characters with men presented as being weak and inferior or just downright stupid. The consequences of this will be far reaching and downright dangerous. It seems that the only role models for boys are sportsmen and bland members of boy bands.
Women in the west are so very fortunate. Only this week in Saudi Arabia, after having been given voting rights, a woman has been sentence to public lashing for daring to drive a car. A large proportion of the world population are repressed, subjugated and have plenty to complain about. Maybe those women who shout so loud about equality should count their blessings.

Indian summer

2011-09-29T11:47:00.002+01:00

Strictly speaking the current wave of warm weather is not an "Indian Summer". Indian summers are usually periods of warm weather that follow heavy frosts and as yet we have had nothing like a single figure temperature. I am being pedantic I know, and enjoying the sunny spell just like everyone else that is not a farmer.
Autumn is a lovely time of year and for some people that I know, it is their favourite season. The colours of leaves, the hedgerow fruits, the smells and the misty mornings all have their charms, but for me, all of these are the harbingers of winter to come. The shorter days, the dying plants and the migrating birds and insects are a sadness and i am reminded that spring is a long way away.
The economic life of the EEC has been quite short, and it seems to have reached a state of development where the super wealthy have harvested the fruits and filled their larders to bursting and migrated to their winter homes in the sun, while the rest remain. The frosts are biting hard and the damage done may be irrepairable. There is little left to sustain the community in its current form, and the prospects for a financial Indian Summer do not seem very likely. Winter will be very long, very cold and very expensive.

Oscar

2011-09-28T14:22:00.001+01:00

Points of view

2011-09-28T14:21:00.000+01:00

It seems that I go through phases where I have plenty to say and others when think, what is the point? I know that I have a tendency to rant and that others find it tiresome; some even being bold enough to tell me so. Most people that I know, see the world, all of it, in shades of grey, whilst I have a tendency to see some aspects in black and white.
For me, sometimes, trying to see both sides of an argument is like being a liberal democrat. By sitting on the fence, you are neither one thing or the other, diluting and diluting everything down to some mediocre regression to the mean. While keeping the peace it rarely solves anything; though polarised viewpoints may not either.
When two people take on views that are totally opposed to each other, it does not mean that the reality of the argument lies somewhere in between. It is quite possible that one of those arguments is actually right and the other wrong; so accommodation of an opposing point of view may well be a distortion of the truth. For example, there are, I believe, some people who think that the Earth is flat. Now i believe, on the basis of a great deal of evidence that the Earth is more or less spherical. To meet somewhere in the middle of this would mean that the Earth is a hemisphere with a flat side and a rounded side. Ok that is a compromise and a ridiculous solution that appeases no-one and so i will continue to argue my case and so will the flat earth devotee. Many arguments are as polarised as this one and rather than fight in one corner, so many people will do their utmost to appease both parties in the hope of keeping the peace. It doesn't work.
Agreed there are arguments where an appreciation of shades of grey are clearly desirable, and where entrenched viewpoints are counterproductive. The situation in Israel and the relations with Palestine being a good example. Both sides are deeply entrenched in political and religious dogma and neither side is prepared to give way. In That situation middle ground must be found and agreed upon, and that seems so unlikely.
By making stands and arguing a case, i am considered by some to be bigotted, and perhaps i am; another failing to add to my list, but I will continue to voice my opinion even if no-one else wants to listen.

Canary Islands

2011-09-19T13:23:00.002+01:00

Since I lost put finger to key, I have been on holiday in Lanzarote. A haven for ex pats, lots of English bars, but despite that, a wonderful place. I am not fond of travelling, especially by air, and the flights were predictably uncomfortable, noisy and not very pleasant. I have to say t this point that I was not at all looking forward to the trip, the thought of spending a week in Chavland in the sun did not appeal, but things turned out well in the end.

The Island is not as i expected it, and although there are the shaven headed, tattooed Lobsteroids present, they are thin on the ground and easily avoided. The local people are so very hospitable and pleasant, the food wonderful and the climate perfect.

Putting airplanes aside, I would go again.

Times to come

2011-08-18T11:45:00.003+01:00

Well the riots came and went again, for now. In that time people have ranted and raved, expounded, pontificated and ranted; it has brought out the worst in most of us. To watch our young people behaving so badly was very disturbing and although they were blindly attacking property rather than people, it was still very frightening to watch.
I remember realising that as a high school teacher, my role was largely about bluff. At any time those students could, if organised, simply walk out of the school, run riot and do whatever they wanted. There was nothing that the school could do to stop them. The same is true of gangs in the streets; if organised, they have great power and there is little that can be done to stop them. These I am sure are just the beginnings of more widespread civil unrest.
We live in a society that thrives on blame and accountability. When anything happens, someone has to be blamed and suitably punished, and so of course gut reactions required the rioting youths to be shot, horse whipped, disembowelled or locked up for life. Parents were to be evicted from their council homes, benefits were to be stopped and all those involved publicly humiliated.
Only days later, heavy prison sentences are being handed out and there is now an outcry saying that the sentences are too harsh.
Our police force are being granted new guidelines (powers) so that they can respond differently, if and when the unrest breaks out again; when it does and heads get broken and young people die, there will be further claims of police brutality and so it goes on. This is part of the price we pay for living in a democracy, and a very divided nation.
I certainly do not condone the actions of a relatively small number of mindless hooligans who bashed up their own communities, but the damage they inflicted was contained. The damage done by the bankers in recent years is widespread, long lasting, and the perpetrators were never brought to any form of justice and are still being rewarded, while the rest of us suffer from their greed and vandalism.
Yes the rioters should be punished; they should have been sprayed with a dye so that all of them could be caught, not just the ones who showed their faces, and then perhaps rather than take away the benefits from those who claim them, they should all have been given long terms of curfew and community service, repairing some of the damage and cleaning up the communities that they normally terrorise, earning the benefits instead of expecting them. Obligatory evening classes in citizenship and responsible parenting might also keep them from the streets and give them insights into a different way of life.
The greatest challenge though is to give people some hope and something to strive towards. This will never happen under a government that is more interested in the welfare of those that already have everything.

Midsummer madness

2011-07-25T10:07:00.002+01:00

The tabloids, and therefore the bulk of our population seem more interested this weekend in the demise of yet another unfortunate junkie, than they are of the terrible events in Norway or the catastrophic famine that is sweeping through eastern Africa.
Amy Winehouse made some bad choices in her life, but they were hers to make and she probably died appropriately, and at the same age as so many teen idols have done before. The peoples of Somalia do not have the luxury of choosing how to die. That choice has been removed, partly by the drought that has gripped their lands for so long, but also by the civil strife brought about by warring factions, probably funded by other countries. The Islamic forces that maintain chaos in Somalia are refusing still, to allow aid from foreign sources, claiming that moves to help their people are politically motivated and so the people continue to die or to undergo terrible hardship and long journeys to neighbouring countries.
The world of Islam is utterly contradictory. Muslims will generally claim that they are peace loving, caring and charitable people, and yet virtually all centres of conflict in this world involve Islamic forces. Yes there are Islamic countries in the United nations, but when do we ever see any of them supporting their fellow Muslims in places like Somalia. It would seem that religious dogma is far more important than the lives of women and children. It is a pity that Saudi Arabia, and the other wealthy Arab nations cannot practice what they preach, and plough some of their enormous wealth into supporting those who never were given a choice when it came to their religion.

The boy done good innit!

2011-07-20T13:43:00.003+01:00

I know that I am getting old and with that comes inflexibility and to some degree intolerance. I also know that languages are dynamic and constantly evolving to suit the needs of changing cultures. Having said that, I do get irritated by some trends that seem to be creeping slowly and steadily forward.
There is a leaning, in North America at the moment, but we all know that what happens there will happen here too, towards the abandonment of handwriting being taught in schools. The reasoning being that it is no longer necessary to be able to write anything by hand. This will do for literacy what the calculator did for numeracy, and generations to come will be utterly reliant on electronic devices for any sort of communication.
English is a beautiful language. It is the language of Shakespeare, Byron, Keats, Tennyson and Terry Pratchett; it is the chosen language of international communication and yet is is becoming devalued by the popular media to such an extent that within the forseeable future, it will bear little similarity to that spoken by my generation or even that of our children.
Influences from poorly educated sports pundits and commentators have eroded the use of adverbs to the extent that they are on the verge of extinction. Afro-caribbean youthspeak dominates youth culture, and then there is the slow but steady trickle of Americanisms that are forever polluting the vocabulary of English speakers everywhere.
I am no expert in the fine use of words, but to me the spoken word can be beautiful. Continued erosion of the literacy of the young can only lead to the conversion of what once was wonderful into something akin to gibberish.

Pot luck

2011-07-13T10:32:00.003+01:00

I find it amusing when people come into large sums of money and say that it won't change their life. True it may not change them as a person, though even that is debatable, but money does make a difference to the way people live and the way that others see them.
Last night, someone in this country won 160 million pounds on the lottery. I find it hard to envisage that much money, but I know for certain that should that person be me, my life would change and so would the lives of a lot of people that I care about. I would probably not be tempted to pour it into the major charities as i suspect that much of the cash that they raise does little good in the long term, but I'd like to think that I could give a lot of people a step up the ladder.
When you think about it, money is only meaningful when you don't have enough to pay the bills. I have been in that position many times and like a lot of people, I spent most of my younger days trying hard to avoid debt. It wasn't always possible and of course for all of my working life, I had a mortgage that meant that I had to keep working in order to make the payments. Now I "own" my house, though of course all that means is that I have a lot of money tied up in bricks and mortar and I no longer am indebted to one of the modern day usurers. When I die, the house will eventually be sold and all that money will then be passed on to my family and so it goes on.
I have enough money at the moments to fulfil my basic needs, and I guess that is because my needs are becoming simpler as the years pass by. My needs are governed by my income and my desire not to get into debt, and I know that should I be lucky enough to win the lottery, my needs may suddenly change. However in order for that to happen, I'd first have to buy a ticket.

Spot the child

2011-07-06T10:17:00.002+01:00

Oscar has chicken pox. Childhood diseases are things that we all take for granted as we all survived them. We think of many of these ailments as trivial and for some that may have been the case, but what people forget is that some of these illnesses can have catastrophic effects. When i was a child, illnesses were matter of fact, and if a child got say chicken pox, everyone would bring their kids around to make sure that they all became infected, in the sure knowledge that once you'd had it, you didn't get it again. It was the same with measles, though now we know that measles is a nasty disease that can cause all sorts of problems including, in a worst case scenario, death. So in an enlightened age we have vaccinations against many of these infections.
A few years ago, a renegade doctor, whose work has since been discredited, claimed that there was a causal relationship between the MMR vaccination, and the likelihood of a child becoming autistic. Many parents, understandably as it appeared in the Daily Mail, refused to have their children vaccinated. Of course some of them went on to develop autism, and the rest were simply prone to contracting measles, mumps and rubella.
In order to be effective, vaccination must be given to a significant proportion of the population. This confers what is called herd immunity, and means that should the disease occur, then it will be contained within a local area. Lack of herd immunity allows epidemics to arise, and in some cases pandemics.
There are new strains of some diseases that are being imported through immigration from third world countries and we are all at potential risk from resistant strains of TB and Polio. Antibiotic effectiveness is rapidly being eroded by overprescription and lazy application, and all of the time, bacteria and viruses are mutating and evolving into forms against which we have little or no protection.
Obsession with personal hygeine, though not apparent in everyone, means that infants environments are virtually sterile; their immune systems are not allowed to develop properly, and so they are more easy targets for infection. Our warm draught free homes are incubators for all sorts of unseen agents, and these agents are beginning to win more battles in this war that seems unwinnable.
Oscar may or may not get chicken pox again; that is down to his ability to generate the antibodies that he needs. he has had his MMR vaccination but there are so many other enemies out there. Whether he meets them or not, and how he copes with them are largely down to luck, and perhaps pharmacologists receiving enough grants to produce the ammunition that we need to turn things around once more.

Os

2011-06-30T14:27:00.002+01:00

Behaviour

2011-06-28T13:09:00.002+01:00

There is a school of thought, probably with a low attendance rate and failed by OFSTED, that believes in behavioural change as a mechanism for driving evolution. Natural selection, as described so eloquently by Charles darwin in the nineteenth century, cannot fully explain the way that the human race has evolved, and now it would seem that there are no real selective agents at work. There are no advantages in physical strength or even mental agility in terms of survival value; thus it is likely that the way we behave will be more significant for generations to come.

From a distance it would appear that most people behave in ways that are expected of them, led largely by the media, through advertising, populist TV and a weak and watered down education system that has been manipulated as a political football and watered down by successive governments in order to reduce the ability of people to think for themselves.

This week and last, thousands have flocked to Wimbledon to pay huge sums of money in order to watch tennis, many worshipping at the shrine of a young arrogant Scot who declared his feelings about England a long time ago. The media is full of him, only because there is no Englishman out there who can bonk as well as he can. So his adoring fans cheer and shout for someone who loathes England and the English. Fascinating media manipulation and a true demonstration as to the way in which we are led.

Holidays

2011-06-13T11:47:00.002+01:00

My phobia of holidays has been fed, nourished and watered this weekend, leading me to speculate on why on Earth we seem to go to such great lengths to take them in the first place.
It is impossible to escape the one thing that many people are trying to escape from. Reality follows us around like a faithful dog, and like a dog it always has the capacity to bite your arse just when you least expect it to.
When you take a holiday, you are taking a huge risk; stepping outside of one's comfort zone inevitably leads to problems, whether it be in the quality of accommodation that you will find, or the nature of the others that you find also trying to escape.
I am trying to find the positives here, but having spent several hundred pounds on a weekend away, I am struggling to come up with anything other than a change of scenery, that were worth spending that much cash on. I didn't sleep well, the food was ordinary, the weather indifferent, and the journey intolerable. Sitting in a traffic jam for two hours and then having to extend a three hour journey into a seven hour marathon is not my idea of fun.
Going abroad is worse. I loathe airports and the cramped metal tubes that carry millions of sheep to exotic destinations where they can burn themselves to crisps, drink themselves sick and return with more diseases than they set out with. Unless you are lucky enough to have shed loads of money, any holiday you take is constrained, and it is impossible to escape from ones fellows however hard one tries. You can of course find places where no-one else goes, but there are usually reasons why they don't go there and so you might just as well stay at home.
Inevitably then, holidays are spent milling about with people that you don't really want to have much to do with, spending money on overpriced food, seeing tired sights, waiting in queues, moaning and complaining at how bad everything is, and then coming back to pay the debts that your time away have incurred.
I know people who regularly fly off to find the sun. They lie on a beach somewhere for a week, come back red or brown and probably have aged their skin by ten years in the process. I just don't get it.

2011-06-07T11:49:00.002+01:00

Moaning and complaining seems to be a national passtime and there are some who are never happier than when complaining about something. If your country is invaded by jackbooted psycopaths, if your government is stealing everything to feather personal nests, if your bankers are bleeding your economy dry while unemployment rockets, if the poorest are made poorer by reduction in benefits, if price rises turn essentials into luxuries then there is something worth complaining about.
A group of cyclists are hoping to ride naked through Portsmouth in order to highlight the problems faced by cyclists on our increasingly busy roads. Of course, the blue rinse brigade is up in arms and may take to the streets to protest on the grounds that public decency may be affronted. Maybe there will be counter protests against the blue rinsers and so on.
The thought of cycling naked does not inspire me, nor does the prospect of following behind large pink wobbly bodies. The likelihood is that most of the participants will have bodies that, like mine, are best kept under wraps. Having said that, nudity is not offensive. We all have bodies and they come in such a variety of shapes and forms. I assume that those who find skin offensive, still bathe fully dressed.
Of course one person's freedom can tread on the toes of another but that is life. We are free to do what others allow us to do and that is all. Freedom is a myth.
Personally i hope that the naked cycling event does take place. It could provide an entertainment for many, bearing in mind the potholed roads and the distinct possibility that it may be cold.

Blackbird no longer singing

2011-05-30T12:15:00.002+01:00

I am very fortunate. I enjoy freedoms that are denied to so many others, and that is a sadness. I am sitting here listening to Mahler intermingled with birdsong from the garden just outside my window and contemplating what to write about. I have no real problems or worries in my life and yet I feel ill at ease.
"Life is nasty, brutish and short." I was reminded of that recently. For weeks, a pair of blackbirds have been building their nest in a bush by my front door. They laid a clutch of four eggs and the female has patiently sat, waiting for her brood to hatch and for her family line to continue. Such tame birds: when not on her nest she would wander around looking for food, more or less ignoring me, as I appeared no threat to her. This morning I looked into the nest, and found that the eggs have indeed hatched, and the corpses of her little brood lie cold in the remnants of the shell. The female has vanished, no doubt the victim of a neighbourhood cat or a bird of prey. I confess a sadness that is not altogether rational, and have been contemplating mortality in more general terms.
I am at a time in life when my limited range of skills and talents have less and less value. There is not much that I can do with a poorly equipped toolkit and I seem to have slipped into an uneasy contentment, that disturbs me on a more or less daily basis. I watched Morgan Freeman and jack Nicholson in The Bucket List, the other day and feel the need to perhaps produce a bucket list of my own, while I still can; and maybe to amend that list on a week by week basis. Long term goals have never been my forte, and I have never been good at resolution keeping either, but again, this is not the first time, I want to make more of what days i have left. I have given this a little thought and by recording items here, at least I have a reference point and others might wish to add items to my list. So far I have the following ;-

To learn a poem - maybe more than one
To make something with my hands.
To write a short story.
To paint and actually finish a picture.
To learn a new skill.
To do something good for somoeone else.
To meet someone new.

The last one will probably be my greatest challenge as I am not at all good at socialising any more and have lost the need for the company of others.
I will do my best to begin ticking things off the list, as and when and if I can achieve those goals. In the meantime, life passes by and I will probably continue to make little impact on the world as a whole. I hope that my comfortable existence continues as it is, at least for now, but like the blackbird, I have no idea what is coming around the next corner.

Never never land

2011-05-18T10:55:00.002+01:00

When i was a kid, and it doesn't seem that long ago, if you wanted something, you paid for it with cash. If you hadn't enough cash, you couldn't have it and so you saved your pennies and halfpennies, your threepences and tanners, your bobs and two bobs, half crowns and so on until you could afford to pay. That way you knew the value of something and were more likely to take care of it. Of course there was hire purchase available, where you borrowed and paid off your debt week by week, but we were encouraged not to do that. Hire purchase was called the "Never never" for a good reason, and its use was a step on the road to financial disaster.
How the world has changed. Now we all have credit cards and many people are up to their necks in debts that they may never pay off. I know some whose credit cards are tiered so that each one is used to pay off the debt on the previous one. We borrow money for mortgages, the country borrows money for everything it seems, and at the neck of all this lies the poison that is our system. The real parasites of this world are not those claiming benefits, or making a few pounds on the side that the tax man does not see, but those who sit in plush offices, manipulating the markets, buying and selling debts, trading in things that do not even exist, gambling with money that belongs to someone else, secure in the knowledge that their six figure bonuses and huge profits on the side will be protected, however much they lose.
The wealthiest group in the world are those who make nothing. It is the greed of the hedge fund managers and their like, that allowed people with no income to borrow ludicrous amounts of money and thus produced the avalanche of financial crises that we are all now experiencing. The present government of course blame the previous one, but they know deep down that in such a poorly regulated system, no government can keep check on the criminal activity of the bankers that bleed us dry every moment of every day.
I have savings and no debts, but of course that is a disadvantage. My savings decrease in value and the fact that I own my house means that I will probably have to use that to fund any care that I need in my old age. Those who reach their dotage in debt, will of course have everything paid for them, and i suspect that in not many years to come, they will be the vast majority.

we're all just bricks in the wall.

2011-05-17T13:15:00.002+01:00

The Wall, arguably, Roger Waters' magnum opus, is a strange creation. It could be viewed as an introspective whinge about the hard life that has led to his millionaire status. There can be few people that have made so much cash out of expressing their hatred for the way that they were brought up and in particular for their mother.
However, the stage show was wonderful. Waters remains a consummate showman and has put together a remarkable staging of his work. His vast ego remains intact, as does his musical ability and incredible sense of timing.
I saw this production at the O2 last weekend, and was impressed by the venue almost as much as by the performance. I was less impressed by a number of my fellow human beings however. Having paid a minimum of seventy five pounds for a seat, one might imagine that people would want to enjoy every last second of the performance; alas there are many who find the urge to drink copious amounts of alcohol, far more important, regardless of whose pleasure they may be disrupting. To drink oneself silly is of course a human right (allegedly), but to spill expensive lager , to tread on the feet, and to block the view of fellow concertgoers is to my old fashioned way of thinking, totally unacceptable. Why pay such sums of money for a ticket only to spend the whole evening walking to the bar or the toilet?
Once again, I found myself despising the behaviour of my fellow man, reinforcing my own unsociability. Waters creates a wall between himself and the audience; and to a great extent I can see where he is coming from.

Bin and Gone

2011-05-03T10:04:00.002+01:00

It seems that the balance of world peace lies once again in the hands of two groups of religious fanatics. Watching the celebrations in New York yesterday, though understandable was quite nauseating. Ok so Bin Laden, a thoroughly disturbed individual, is dead, but the group that he represents is not and someone will rise to take his place and the rest of us will wait with bated breath to discover the horrors that the Arab world will unleash on the west. His assassination will appease the republican morons in the USA but will do nothing to defeat the growing and pernicious movements of the Arab desires to take over the world and defeat those who they perceive as unbelievers.
Christians as well as Muslims claim to be peace loving and yet here we have, bible belt USA murdering arabs all over the world, while arabs in their turn resort to equally cowardly attacks on innocent people, muslims included, all over the world. Killing their figureheads is like cutting the head off the medusa and does nothing to eradicate the toxin that is inherent within both cultures. The religious foundation simply underpins and justifies the violence, allowing adherents permission to use thuggery in the name of their own particular God.
If I were president of the USA, right now i would be feeling very nervous.

The brainless in awe of the chinless.

2011-04-28T13:23:00.003+01:00

The majority of people like to have a leader. To have someone to follow is a comfort as well as a way of abdicating responsibilty. Leadership is an essential skill and without leaders, society would cease to exist. Good leaders produce successful groups, whether in business or in sport or any other field, and when things go wrong it is the leaders that take the blame.
Unfortunately many people are so easily led that the media can exert a very powerful influence and can govern the way in which people behave. The press has been guilty in the past of whipping up hatred against many minority groups; gays, hoodies, black people and asians have all been subject to media initiated campaigns that have more or less instructed those who like others to think for them, to hate others without really knowing why.
The press can castigate a political party, reporting their own versions of the facts in order to turn the populace against them and thereby control the electorate and the outcome of elections. Advertisers spend ludicrous amounts of money to sell useless things to people, and it works. Human beings are gullible and potentially so very dangerous when following blindly.
Tomorrow is a perfect example - More of the aristocracy are getting married in order to produce more aristocratic mouths for the public to feed. The media have hyped the event to the extent where it seems that the vast majority will be glued to their TV sets so as not to miss a second of the procedings. There are flags and bunting in the streets and parties organised, real money spent on worthless trinkets and trivialities and the whole of the fashion industry now hangs on whatever clothing hangs from the royal bride to be. What a lot of nonsense!

2011-04-21T10:12:00.002+01:00

Having recently spent a wonderful week with my grandson, I have come to the conclusion that people of a certain age should be prevented by law from becoming parents. Being around a child is physically and emotionally draining as well as all consuming. It is hard work being a parent, and even harder as one gets older. Children need, and demand attention, they learn from constant interaction between the world and those around them, and it is a parent's duty to put the needs of the child first. For many this comes naturally but that does not make it any less of a full time and very difficult job. There are no opportunities to throw sickies, or to take a long lie in when you have been up half the night changing beds, mopping up sick or changing smelly nappies. Babies need routines and you change these at your own peril.
I love Oscar in a way that I never imagined possible. He is simply amazing and I will do everything that I can for him, but I know that I could not cope with his demands on a 24 /7 basis. I am too old and lack the energy, and yet there are women of my age who still wish to become mothers, and men older than myself who still become fathers. To me it seems sad and strange that a parent should not have a chance of watching their child grow up and to put a child at risk of becoming an orphan at an early age seems irresponsible to say the least. Parenting is a massive responsiblilty and should never be taken lightly, and yet is it a biological function that we take for granted, most parents rushing into that territory without thinking things through. I guess that if it were possible to think through the issues fully, to imagine the pains of birth, and the trials and tribulations that come with it, then parenting would very soon go out of fashion. For those over 60 however, there is no excuse.

Sadness

2011-04-05T09:55:00.001+01:00

It is raining and I find myself at a loose end. It is a time of change for me and I am not comfortable with some changes, however I have to remind myself that I have been lucky and have no cause to complain.
I just finished a wonderful book; reading it that is, I don't think that I have a book in me. Jostein Gaarder's The Solitaire Mystery. He is a Norwegian philosopher/theologian who writes about philosophy in terms that even I can understand. Rather akin to a modern Alice in Wonderland, he looks at the world and at belief, through the eyes of a child, and it is through the eyes of innocence that the world looks wonderful and mysterious and fascinating. As I get older, this is much harder to recapture, and my experiences with other people amplify my cynicism to the extent that I am finding it harder and harder to believe in anything or anyone. A valued friend and colleague once said to me - "The only thing that you can rely on others to do is to let you down." By and large he has been proved right. So I find myself withdrawing again and looking for hints of that wonder and amazement that only the natural world can provide.

William Blake - Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight
Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov'd by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov'd
Shall never be by woman lov'd.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy's foot.

The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist's jealousy.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,
And return'd to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.

One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket's cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

Just a pic

2011-03-24T10:24:00.000Z

A birthday

2011-03-22T10:32:00.002Z

Oscar is one year old today. How quickly the time flies and how rapidly he changes. This time a year ago he was still keeping everyone waiting and i was convinced that he had to be a girl. Now he is a personality in his own right and is developing so many skills that will see him through his life. Happy birthday little man.

In motion

2011-03-18T10:34:00.003Z

Since my last post, a tentative approach to an estate agent resulted in hands almost being bitten off in the rush to get the house on the market. Within a week we have become a commodity and have already been peered at and poked at six times. Having strange people wandering around the house is a little like having your private parts examined by the doctor, and don't you just hate it when they say - "Oh dear!" in that tell tale tone.
I have been asked if, next time there are people viewing the house, if I would kindly not be there. I don't know what i am supposed to do; go for a walk maybe or perhaps go and sit on the swings in the park while people I don't know and don't want to know are breathing on my furniture. Of course I will comply as it is what is expected of me, but I will not pretend to like it.
Of course, all the details, including full colour photos, are there on the net for anyone to peruse so now I can be violated remotely by anyone who knows where I live, and of course by those who randomly find me on their computers. It is a strange feeling, rather like being given a massage by a large hairy person of indeterminate gender.
Of course it has also meant that we need to look for somewhere else to live. Our target area is 150 or so miles from here and so our searching has to be remotely controlled and that in itself is far from easy, though i have to say that Google maps makes it a lot easier to eliminate possibilities. It has been a reminder that I am a bit of a social misfit and that I have prejudices that are based on past experience of neighbours from hell, and there lies a huge issue when it comes to choosing a house.
For now there is a long list of properties that all look much the same, and until we can make the trip physically, it will be hard to make a shortlist and impossible to make a choice. Having said all that - someone needs to give me enough money to enable me to move.

To move or not to move

2011-02-28T11:26:00.002Z

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.

My ear still rings

2011-02-27T09:58:00.003Z

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.

Another rant

2011-02-03T13:05:00.003Z

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.

Farewells

2011-02-02T10:06:00.002Z

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.

It is later than you think

2011-02-01T09:23:00.002Z

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.

The sound of music

2011-01-06T12:14:00.002Z

It is sad to see the demise of HMV. There was a time when most high streets had a selection of stores that sold music in its various forms; and then along came HMV and the others fell by the wayside. The chain is likely to close a number of its outlets in the not too distant future and this means that some towns will no longer have over the counter music available.

The music industry has been in trouble for a while and the blame has been laid on illegal downloads. Why would anyone buy what you can get for free? Companies have tried various measures to combat this type of piracy and because the practice is so widespread, none of their curbing efforts have been effective.

People blame the demise of the record shop on Internet shopping, and of course it is easier and cheaper to buy music that way. I know that I always buy music and movies from Amazon or Play.com from the comfort of my office, not that I would describe myself as significant in the cash flow crisis that is dragging HMV down.

I have always liked music. It is an important part of my life albeit as a receiver. In the old days when I was alive, the music industry was flourishing; singles cost around 35p and each week a vast and varied range of new singles hit the shelves. Top of the pops was highlight of everyone's week and the charts were based on actual sales. Albums would cost One pound 50 and the covers were works of art worthy of hanging on the wall.

I saw the Beatles on stage, it cost 25p for the ticket and later, at college we hired Status Quo, already a known band, for forty pounds - Yes forty pounds for the band, and for that they played all night. I paid 20p to see Cream and the same to see many other bands; even then it wasn't a lot of money. Bands would play small venues and none complained that they were not making a living. Most of them did that for years, learning their trade and selling the occasional record, and yes there were the odd one hit wonders with little or no talent but to stay in the game you had to be a musician. Bands would often pay for the love of it and of course there were many even then that thought they should always do so. The Isle of Wight festival in 1970 saw 600,000 people arrive, many of whom had no tickets and baulked at paying three pounds for the three days. There were riots and the clash between business and ordinary people marked the beginning of the slippery slope.

Then of course big business took over and the stadium concerts began, and with a hike in size came a hike in costs and the spiral of profits soared. I paid 60 pounds to see Genesis along with thousands of others at Twickenham. All of that band are already wealthy - what is that all about?

There is musical talent around today but there is little that shouts out to be purchased. Much of what is on offer these days comes from synthetic kiddie bands whose talents are minimal but sufficient to slake the uneducated thirsts of todays kids. The rise of Hip Hop and Rap provides an anti-music that is fashionable among the politically correct and is anathema to those who like melody or lyrics that are comprehensible.

HMV's biggest problem is not the pirates or the internet, it is a shortage of anything worth selling that has brought them to their knees.

A fresh start?

2011-01-03T09:49:00.002Z

I don't make new year resolutions as a rule. They are far too easy to forget and rarely do I maintain the enthusiasm for new things.
I am sure though that the number of people in their lycra shorts and new trainers, that I see jellying their way around the morning streets, have decided that this will be the year that they leave the couch and burn off some of the adipose tissue that has accumulated during the previous years. I am sure that the lycra will not wear out and that the spanking new Nikes will get little use after the first few days.
I went for a walk on January the first and my faith in my fellow man took yet another dive as I ploughed my way through streets littered with vomit, beer cans, broken bottles and rejected food containers.The way of life of so many of us has become ugly and utterly self absorbed. LIttle thought is given to others, and the notion of being nice or polite to fellow citizens seems to be a trait that is very rapidly vanishing. We have become obsessed by the present, by the here and now, and by the accumulation of material things that at the end of the day have little or no worth. We all die and no-one counts the black plastic bags that those goods end up in.
Having said all this, I realise that by withdrawing from society is not an answer. By doing so I am abdicating any responsibility for what goes on the world, and that in itself is irresponsible and self destructive. So this year I am determined to reverse my implosive tendencies and try to spend more time with more people - No doubt it will last no longer than the lycra shorts.

The end of a decade

2010-12-31T10:14:00.002Z

The last day of 2010 and millions of people around the world will be anticipating a night of celebration. For many that will mean dressing up and setting out to get as drunk as they possibly can, ensuring that the start to the new year will be as painful and unpleasant as the last one and the one before that.
David Cameron assures us that 2011 will be a tough year, but that his machinations will see the country slowly recover and get back onto its feet. There speaks one who has never known what it is like to be poor, jobless and helpless. For many of those who voted for him, 2010 has been a year of misery, and the next year promises more of the same. When the energy bills come in after this cold winter, even more will find their wages insufficient to pay the bills.
For me 2010 has been a good year, largely due to the birth of Oscar, and an ability to play a small role in his life. His arrival has changed so many things and has given me a completely new focus. I had no preconceptions about grandparenthood and was rather unprepared for the bonding that took place from the first time that I met him. He has given me a new lease of life, and I view his growing up and development with an enthusiasm that feels rather wonderful. He just had his first christmas, and although he was pretty oblivious to the whole thing, he added a magical ingredient to my least favourite time of year.
I hope that your year has been a good one and that despite the mismanagement of our countries by self seeking politicians, that you can find happiness and optimism in the New Year.

Season's salutations to my reader

2010-12-18T12:05:00.001Z

Dilemma

2010-12-13T09:23:00.003Z

For once I feel sorry for our home secretary. She has been placed in a very difficult position regarding the proposed visit of Pastor Jones to to the English Defence League. She can ban him from entry to the country and face accusations of prevention of free speech or allow him in and risk him inciting racist behaviour. Her dilemma does raise some important issues, and I am sure that many people have mixed feelings about the whole thing.
Pastor Jones is a loony and he wants to address a bunch of right wing loonies. I can see no reason for preventing that. No-one has to listen and clearly he can be arrested if his words are seen to be inflammatory. What concerns me is that had he been planning an attack on say Atheism or Buddhism, there would be no fuss and even less publicity.
We bend over backwards in order to appease one particular religious group and it seems that we do so because of fear. We are afraid of the consequences of confronting them and their failure to integrate into our society. Fear is dangerous and the situation will not go away, despite successive government's head in the sand approach.

It has begun

2010-12-10T11:27:00.002Z

It is the season for Nativity plays, when that sickly sweet middle eastern fable gets re-enacted by children and others old enough to know better, all over the world.
Proud parent will watch their toddlers tread the boards - many for the first and only time in their lives, wandering around dressed as peasants or angels or whatever, not remembering what to do or where to go and everyone loves it. Especially the church! How better to get punters in than to engage the children in a bit of a panto and then to make the parents feel guilty for not going to church more often.
Then there is the silly Santa Claus nonsense! Surely even the most intellectually damaged child can see that the high street is full of strange men in red suits wanting them to sit on their laps? How many Santas can there be? And how can he get around everyone in one night?
We tell the children so many lies and when they grow up they find it hard to distinguish truth from reality and that is how the Liberal Democrats got into government.

Not my fault

2010-12-07T13:17:00.002Z

My blog seems to be attracting some unwelcome attention. Someone ore something, probably a bot, its sending in all sorts of comments that are fundamentally advertisements for various companies and I do not welcome these. Comments yes but random rubbish no! That is my role, and i will not have someone else doing it here.

The internet is a wonderful Earth shrinking phenomenon, but like everything that becomes accessible to all, it has become bloated and corrupt and will no doubt be our undoing in the end. We have a generation of kids who are becoming addicted to games online, we have Wikileaks attempting to destabilise the world through its anarchic approach to secrecy, we have porn virtually everywhere, scam after scam via email, and then of course there is Nigeria.

No-one seems to read anymore, there isn't the time as we spend it glued to google or facebook or whatever quick fix seems to do the trick. We are all becoming absorbed into this beast which seems to have a life of its own, and now it is growing horns and teeth. Sooner or later it will consume us all.

This is the way

2010-12-06T10:13:00.003Z

I love movies, well some movies anyhow. The other day I watched The Bucket List again. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play the roles of men, my age or thereabouts, dying of cancer. The idea of a bucket list is that they have a list of things to do before they die, and luckily Jack Nicholson has enough money to make most of their wishes happen.
I was lying in bed this morning, contemplating getting up, when I drifted into the half sleep state and was thinking that perhaps I too should have a bucket list. At my age, nothing can be taken for granted and more and more parts are wearing out. To my alarm, and this was a few hours ago and nothing has altered, my list has nothing on it. Obviously I would like to see my Grandson grow up, but other than that all ambition seems to have gone. Most places that I want to see i have seen, and most things that I want to do i have done; those that I haven't done I am no longer capable of doing or were never possible in the first place. What does this mean? Is my life done and dusted already? Am I just wasting space? Or do i have something still to offer? This has been a sobering morning and i feel pretty detached from everything and everybody. Maybe this is the way the world ends - "Not with a bang but a whimper!"

The Big O

2010-12-05T10:34:00.000Z

The art of con

2010-12-05T10:18:00.002Z

I was reading an article the other day that described the varieties of tea that are available. For me, tea comes in handy bags, and as long as it is hot and strong, I am not particularly bothered about its history. I know that I should be more selective and should probably seek out tea with a fair trade label, but I don't. We can all be apathetic and cannot possibly care about everything.
What prompted me to comment was reference to a particularly expensive tea that is sold to those who have more money than neurons. I think it is called White Virgin, though I may be wrong, and costs a huge amount of cash. What is special about this tea? one might ask. Allegedly the difference between this tea and others is that it is not touched by human hand, and is harvested by women wearing gloves who cut the leaves with silver scissors! I confess that when I read this I laughed. So ......... what! How does this improve the purity or flavour of the tea?
I was reminded of growing up in a market gardening area in the days when every fruit and vegetable was harvested by hand. Brussels Sprouts were always picked after the first frosts, often is bitterly cold conditions. You can't wear gloves to pick sprouts and hands get very cold. Quite often pickers would pee on their hands to warm them up - a sensible solution to the problem.
We live in a society that seems obsessed by labels; so much so that there is a huge illegal industry out there forging labels so that people can buy them more cheaply, and now everyone can sport the Gucci, Armani, Burberry and all the rest of the must have labels. Now of course, it is hard to tell the fakes from the real and so who cares. It would seem that some people will spend all they have just to be a little different from the crowd, and yet by so doing they are just joining a different crowd.
I still love Brussels sprouts but always make sure that they are well washed and peeled before cooking.

Happy Chappie

2010-11-08T16:23:00.000Z

Poverty

2010-11-08T16:06:00.002Z

I am not poor, but neither am I wealthy and never expected to be. Of course poverty is a relative term and as such it is likely that a significant proportion of our UK population will soon be slipping into that category. The cuts that the Condems intend to impose will result in mass unemployment with no jobs being created to absorb the waves that are certain to come. Unless those who are about to join the unemployed have made provision for that day they will be in serious trouble.

As a child I never thought of myself as being poor, but compared to most people today, we were very poor indeed and had no access to the so called essentials that people expect today. In those days, if you couldn't afford it, you just didn't have it, and we had no choice but to live within our means. We lived in a small council house with no double glazing or even roof insulation. When it snowed, as it often did, the snow was often blown through the roof tiles and into the loft where it had to be shovelled out before it melted. We had no heating, other than a single coal fire in the living room, and no hot water, other than that boiled in a kettle or in an old copper boiler. Our WC was outside across the yard and the bathroom was supplied with a cold tap only. We had no TV, no car, no computers or video games and few changes of clothing. Food was scarce and so we ate what we were given by and large; and if kids wanted money they worked for it. Everyone that I knew was more or less in the same boat though and so the way we lived seemed quite normal and we were not particularly unhappy, nor did we feel deprived.

From that position of course the only way to go was upwards, and life did steadily improve as the years went by. The standardof living that I enjoy now has been a long time coming and it would be hard to go back downhill again. For many that will soon become a reality, though i doubt that many will go back to the state that we lived in in the 50s. I hope not.

Throwaway

2010-11-01T11:20:00.000Z

Toxic waste is never far from the news, and in an ever expanding technological era, the disposal of it continues to be a problem.

Landfill sites are becoming harder to find, waste treatment facilities are few and far between, while the stockpiles of poisons get ever larger. Some companies are shipping the stuff abroad, paying others to take on the problem of disposal, and vast heaps of our garbage is inflicting harm on the poor of those nations, whilst those in charge reap the benefits.

The Chinese have the right idea. They export theirs by the container ship load, and we, like many other western countries, pay them for it. It is November so pretty soon the shops will be full of it, all ready for that unmentionable one day in midwinter.

I think that he likes my cooking.

2010-10-29T12:33:00.002+01:00

a money saving idea

2010-10-25T15:10:00.002+01:00

I have come to the conclusion that the world does not need health and safety inspectors. Just let loose a toddler in any situation and they will gravitate uncannily to whatever is not safe for them. This is instinctive and there is no training required. Admittedly they will need supervision but even so the saving worldwide could be enormous.

Wittering on

2010-10-22T11:57:00.002+01:00

As I write, my grandson and his mum are on their way here. Emma needs a holiday and I am looking forward to spending some time with them both. The house has been cleaned and tidied and as much as possible has been made baby safe. As he is crawling now, that is not entirely possible and no doubt he will zoom in on and identify the items that I have forgotten about. Kids have an uncanny knack of finding the things that they are not supposed to touch and he is no different to anyone else.
So for the next week I will find my time taken up by a very demanding but very loveable little chap, and if past experience is anything to go by, I'll be pretty exhausted at the end of it.

I am aware that I have written little in this blog for a while. I guess that on some level i need an audience and often i feel that I am writing to myself and that gets a little dull. Then of course I have had little to write about. Retirement is not always wonderful, and I can go days without talking to anyone. My forays into the outside world are becoming fewer and further between and my tolerance of people in general seems to be wearing very thin. It is almost as if I am unconsciously withdrawing into my own tiny space little by little and I may eventually fear the prospect of leaving it. Rather like a dying star there may come a time when I implode.

An ex colleague imploded this week. He had been ill for a while and so his demise wasn't surprising. All sorts of people have written tributes on the usual social networks, and none of them seem to have any connection to the man that i knew and detested.
Perhaps it is a good thing that people look back at the positives and forget the hard truth when people's lives come to an end. To speak now of what I, as well as most of his colleagues knew about him would not be appropriate, though I will not join those who wish to see him in such a rosy light. I do feel sorry for his family and close friends, but I will not miss him.

Before long, no doubt, Margaret Thatcher will go the same way and the media will already be preparing for the event. Obituaries will already be primed and ready for release and as is always the case, she will be seen in a glowing light and people will mourn her passing with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I may be in a small minority that will not rue her demise and will probably celebrate the event.

I have no doubt that my own end will be a cause for celebration for some and i hope that they will have the courage of their convictions and do so in style.

The way it is.

2010-10-17T10:54:00.002+01:00

There is a rumour going around that the word "Gullibility" is to be removed from the Oxford English Dictionary.
Human beings are programmed to trust other human beings and as a result the vast majority of us are easily misled or conned. Most cons are pretty harmless. The stuff that is reported in the newspapers must have some relation to facts but the pressure to sell forces the publishers to massage and manipulate in order to make stories more interesting or attention grabbing. I pity any scientist who's findings get seized by the tabloid press, only to be sensationalised and misrepresented in order to scare or to raise the hopes of the public.
Commercials, especially those for female maintenance products are truly awful. Outrageous claims backed by pseudoscience, are swallowed whole by desperate women trying hard to stay youthful, whilst others truly believe that a caffeinated soft drink can make you fly.
We laugh at the old westerns where, dubious characters made a living by selling snake oil or the elixir of life and yes these people still exist. Now they sell far more exotic products, at much higher prices to a population that, though supposedly more educated, remain as stupid as ever.
Politicians sell policies that are worth less than the glossy paper that they were presented on, and thrive on the ignorance that they preside over. Religious leaders, (Ok I couldn't resist it.) propagate their own mythologies and lies, and find no shortage of takers. Parents present their kids with Santa Claus and the tooth fairy...... and so it goes on. Lies upon lies are the natural order of the day and people wonder why it is that as we get older we tend to become cynical.
It is worth remembering that the system in which we live is dependent on the fact that many of the people can be fooled ALL of the time.

It ain't fair

2010-10-11T13:22:00.002+01:00

There is so much babble in the press about fairness, level playing fields, equality of opportunity and so on. The forthcoming cuts are said to be fair and from the point of view of those about to wield the knives, they will seem to be. Those in charge tend to come from privileged backgrounds where they already have the advantages of wealth, intelligence and social placing. For them it is almost impossible to imagine being without those things, however in touch they might claim to be.
Life is not fair. It is nasty brutish and short and for some it is nastier more brutish and shorter than it is for others. People who crave fairness are disillusioned. The only true fairness lies within the legal system, which, on paper anyway, puts no-one above the law and our courts do make an effort to put that into practice. However, within any system there is corruption, and the wealthy, or well placed may find ways to bend any system in their favour.
We are the products of our genes, and they provide a biological lottery, with unpredictable outcomes. We have to play with what we are dealt and make the most of what we have.
Children need to be made aware that fairness is a rarity and that the best they can hope for is a bit of luck or a tremendous amount of skill in playing the game.

Teeth

2010-10-11T13:20:00.000+01:00

Beginning the food adventure

2010-09-21T10:07:00.002+01:00

Burning of books

2010-09-14T14:51:00.002+01:00

The burning of books has always been a controversial act, and yet it is an act that can be interpreted or used in a variety of ways. It is the custom in some parts of the world to burn worn our religious texts as a mark of some form of respect. In other cultures it is seen as a form of censorship or as a snub. Pastor Jones used the threat of making a bonfire of the Q'ran as a means of sticking two fingers towards the mad Mullahs and getting himself on the map at the same time. There is no way that his actions can be justified in the current climate, and had he carried out his threat, goodness knows what may have been preciptated as a result.

The whole series of events raises interesting points though. Burning of the American flag seems to be an almost daily event in places like Kabul or Tripoli and yet such actions are not condemned by the world as being , pardon the pun, inflammatory. Again it seems that the world of Islam is the only sector of the world population that cannot be provoked without fear of some horrific backlash that is likely to result in the deaths of more innocent people.

I for one am tired of hearing that Islam is a religion of tolerance. Pick up a copy of their sacred book and open it almost randomly and you will find passages that suggest otherwise. It would seem that the worst thing that one can be is an unbeliever. Such are condemned throughout, to hellfire and damnation or just death in the short term. That doesn't strike me as being tolerant.

We have the military wing of Islam, refusing to allow elections to take place, threatening to cut off the ears or hands of those who vote. Then we have women sentenced to death for "crimes" such as adultery, or flogged in public for exposing their faces.

What exactly do they tolerate?

2010-09-14T14:49:00.000+01:00

Respect

2010-08-30T09:50:00.002+01:00

I have an old friend, a fellow teacher, whose views on life the universe and everything are very different to mine. He is a Christian and is a man for whom I have the greatest respect. I respect him for what he does and the way that he goes about his life, and because he was one of the best teachers that I ever met.

We are constantly told that people deserve respect because they have faith, and this is something that needs to be brought into question. Religious leaders are held in awe because they "have faith" and of course because they wear the fancy dress associated with their particular club. We are supposed to hold these people in awe and of course many people do.

Why should the fact that someone has a strong belief, give them the right to be respected? There are many who believe that the Earth is flat, others that we are constantly visited by UFOs and some that think that a conservative government is a good thing, and these people are rarely held up as pillars of society or as anything else other than figures of fun. Yet Barmy Bishops, Mad Mullahs and the rest of the leaders of those unwilling to think for themselves are held in high esteem by society at large.

One of the most dangerous men in the world is coming to Britain along with a huge entourage, and we as tax payers will be contributing three million pounds as a contribution to the expenses. The Pope will of course be welcomed by the masses, although he can expect to be met by some degree of protest. As leader of his dedicated band, he has a lot to answer for, but in his position he can justify anything on the basis of dogma, and so will probably stand aloof from the protesters, maintaining his stand on abortion, paedophilia and contraception.

I have never met the pope and have no wish to do so. I do not respect him nor his office and I fail to see why we as a nation are shutting our eyes to the perils that he and others like him are inflicting upon the world as a whole. Respect is not a divine right, but alas there are many who believe that is the case.

Irrationality

2010-08-25T16:01:00.003+01:00

Anyone who knows me will verify that I am reasonably placid and not easily angered. For some that in itself is an irritation as i don't rise to provocation. However odd things do make me feel really irked and often it is trivialities that other people see no harm in that get me going.
The other night, whilst staying in my daughter's house, I found myself watching the X Factor on the TV. I should have left the room and gone for a walk or gone to bed but I chose to stay. For those lucky enough to live abroad, the X factor is a "Talent" show. The word Talent is in inverted commas as I feel that such a word has no links to the X factor. In this show, a panel of judges, none of which seems to have a shred of talent themselves, let alone personal skills or even charm, preside over appalling performances by anyone who has the brass balls to stand up on stage and make idiots of themselves. Occasionally someone crops up who can copy a current pop song and it is they that get the plaudits from the panel and the privilege of going on to the next round. As the weeks go by the numbers get thinned out and the TV viewers get to vote on who should survive. This of course costs them money which goes to swell the bank accounts of the judges.
I believe that talented musicians emerge from years of practice and study and not through singing karaoke whilst out of their heads on cheap lager. However this is not the feeling of X Factor fans and those fat cats who run the show. It is about raising someone from the gutter to pseudostardom, whilst making huge profits from those who can least afford it.
The parade of contestants last week, and most likely next and the week after was like a queue of unemployables with an audience selected from a care in the community programme.
This show is extraordinarily popular and represents the terrible state of the popular music industry that is pushing tasteless pap down the throats of the youngsters of today.
I feel better now!

Being Granddad

2010-08-23T11:40:00.002+01:00

I have spent the last week, well a considerable part of it with Oscar. He is a lovely little fellow and as babies go, he is very good. Having said that he is also exhausting. How mothers cope, especially single ones, is way beyond me. A baby is a full time occupation and a drain on ones energy.
I seem to be able to get him to sleep now and then, but his mind seems always on the go and he wants attention all of the waking hours. It also seems that attention alone is not sufficient. I can carry him around for hours or even stand with him, but will he allow me to sit down? It seems that I must be uncomfortable in order for him to be settled. How does he know i wonder? He can be fast asleep in my arms but as soon as i sit down, he wakes up.
Having said all that, he is a joy to be with and most of the time he is a smiling chuckling little chap who is fast becoming a little boy rather than a baby. I already tell him stories even though he understands not a word, and i look forward to the pleasure of doing the same when he is able to.
I know that he won't remember me next time i see him, but there will come a time when he does and i hope that he anticipates seeing me with as much pleasure as I anticipate seeing him.

Innocence

2010-07-13T12:18:00.000+01:00

Originality

2010-07-06T09:24:00.002+01:00

I don't think that I have ever had an original idea. The vast majority of us are in the same boat, and what to us may seem novel is not and has almost inevitably been thought of my someone else. Someone said that there are only a small number of stories, and that all the novels ever written are just variations on that limited supply of themes, all new novels being dervatives of those that have gone before. Being original gets harder and harder as time goes by as each field of human endeavour must have its limitations. In the early 20th century an eminent physicist was quoted as saying that we knew all there was to know about physics, and of course that was how it appeared before the discovery of sub atomic particles and radioactivity. All of a sudden, physics became the new frontier all over again.
There are still vast areas of science that remain huge challenges and for the prepared mind there is still much scope for discovery and new ideas. An there lies the rub. So few of us have minds that are open and prepared. Modern society does nothing to encourage free thinking. We educate or children to jump through hoops and pass examinations that require little more than memory of facts, and because educational institutions are bound by accountability and the production of standardised products, this sausage production line continues through to the majority of universities. These are churning out graduates, some of which can barely look after themselves let alone get jobs and push the frontiers of knowledge back.
We are so fortunate to live in enlightened times. We have all the advantaged and are no longer suppressed by the stupefying blanket of the churches. Throughout our history those organisations have tried their hardest to block freedom of thought, and have failed spectacularly, with pioneers prepared to risk their freedom or even their lives in order to pursue that freedom. Only in recent years has Rome apologised to Galileo for jailing him for asserting that the Earth orbits the sun. It has taken them hundreds of years to reach the same conclusion.
No government wants a free thinking populace, and with the controlling element of the church losing its power, the media, Television in particular, has been the tool by which we are regulated and steered. I was at a dinner party the other night, where Gordon Brown was being attacked by many of those around the table. Not one of those people had any personal knowledge of the man, had never met him and yet, they were all able to say how awful he was. They were basing their argument on nothing more than what they had read in the tabloid Tory press and had seen on the television. All spouted the same lines and of course will have been led by the nose to the polling booths to vote for the ConDems, and for a while will think that the new government are wonderful.
Many times i have said that I have a yearning to write. I read a lot and admire so many that are masters of their craft, and when i sit down to make an attempt at doing so I find myself overwhelmed with my own lack of originality and so i get nowhere. I have ideas of course but cannot claim them as my own. Maybe the only way would be to forget everything that I was ever taught and start again from scratch; maybe then I'd even discover myself.

World Cup Willies

2010-06-29T09:31:00.003+01:00

Apart from the really dedicated fans, and the multinational community that live here, the World Cup is over and done with for another four years. Our team, so feted by the press before they left, have returned this morning, creeping into the country at sparrow fart, unsurprisingly without a reception to welcome them home.
The excuses will be made and the deep analysis will begin, millions of words will be written about why our national team was so deplorably bad and yet the truth of the matter is that fundamentally we are just not good enough. The rest of the world has improved and we have not.
England was once a major world player in more or less everything, but those days are long since gone and there are few fields in which we can claim to have some sort of lead. We are still there in the arts, and hanging on by the skin of our teeth in some aspects of technology, but sadly we no longer excel in very much at all.
We have become a society driven by greed and the desperate urge to acquire as much material wealth as possible whilst doing as little as possible to attain it. We are alcohol fuelled has beens, with a whole generation prepared to settle for poor standards in more or less everything and it is no wonder that so many prefer virtuality to reality. Thatcher's declaration that there is no such thing as society has borne fruit and with the CONDEMS in power, the fragmentation of what little remains will continue.
We need people to accept rewards that do not involve vast sums of money, job satisfaction should be a reward in itself and those that work should be paid a good living wage. Is a football player worth more than say a doctor or a policeman?
Our players have become vastly overpaid and overindulged, and like overfed animals they do not have the hunger to win. I'd like to see a world cup in which all the teams were comprised of amateur players. They would train together as a team and play together as a team, and although we may not see the dazzling individual performances of the likes of Messi or Ronaldo, we may see more sides either winning or losing as a team.

A narrow thing

2010-06-24T11:13:00.003+01:00

Well England managed to squeeze a result from the game and will go through to the last 16 in the finals, meeting the old enemy on Sunday and probably having to suffer the traditional penalty shootout. The press and the country are of course rallying behind them again because this time they did their jobs properly and so they ride on a small crest, that is until the next game.

There did seem to be a reduction in the number of St George's flags everywhere, especially on cars, but that I reckon had more to do with the facebook story that the government had requested all men with small penises to sport a flag on their car so that a survey could be taken. That seems to have been forgotten very quickly - oh the short memory span of the Sun reading Condem supporters!

Grandson

2010-06-21T13:16:00.002+01:00

World cup woes

2010-06-21T12:11:00.003+01:00

Writing is a strange occupation. Some days it is easy to sit and write a few pages, the words just seem to fall out and assemble themselves appropriately , or not, onto the page, while most days it is a real struggle. I often feel that I have something that I want to say but cannot seem to generate the energy needed to express myself.
Since I last wrote anything, the world cup has been the all consuming news, in such a timely fashion burying the fact that we have a "Condem" alliance running the country. The machinations that will see us all suffer from a death of a thousand cuts are going on largely un-noticed as everyone's attention, The England Team excepted, have their attention on football.
South Africa is under the world microscope and so far, things seem to be going well. The pitches and stadia seem to be good, crowd behaviour has been benign, buried under the roars of the awful vuvuzelas, and there have been good games as well as bad ones.
The English press of course have been up to their usual tricks; building up the team as if they were the next best thing to gods, and then as soon as they fail to produce miracles on the world stage, condemn them as the worst things since sliced bread. That is the price of fame here and it is no wonder that some refuse to join the bandwagon and set themselves up for the merciless attacks from press and fickle public alike.
At the moment, the St George's flags are still flying hopefully. They adorn the walls of the housing estates and flap noisily from the roofs of bay racer's cars, and a lull of disquiet reigns waiting for the decisive game on wednesday afternoon, that could see the England squad of ridiculously wealthy ball kickers either save their embarrassment or leave South Africa to the teams that are able to put that new ball into the net.
Should the unthinkable happen, it will be the first time since 1958, and the players may have to sneak back into the country under cover of darkness or individually through various backdooors. The manager, so feted by the press in recent years will have to resign and the flags will come down and no doubt litter the gutters for weeks.
Football needs to come to the attention of the axe weilding chancellor, and the ridiculous wages that these primadonnas are paid need to be taxed heavily. Maybe then, like many of the filth rich, they will leave the country and some proper footballers who love the game can be used to replace them.

Vive La France

2010-06-07T11:52:00.002+01:00

I have just got back from a trip to what has become my favourite country, France. As we all do, I found myself making comparisons with home, and although being on holiday is not the same as living somewhere, I find France to be a refreshing change. The roads are excellent and driving on them is a pleasure compared with say the M25 or any major road at most times of the day. Drivers seem more courteous and considerate of other road users and maybe this has a lot to do with the low traffic density as much as the attitudes of the people.
I love the way that the people, wherever you go, acknowledge your presence. People talk to each other and greet each other, something which we seem to have forgotten how to do.
On the downside, France has a number of drawbacks and I am slowly learning that for most of France, work is something that they like to keep in perspective. Sundays are hopeless as everything is closed, not that ther was much to be open in the village that we were staying in. Lunchtimes are impossible too - again everything closes for at least 2 hours from midday, so you might as well just go back to bed or go for a long walk until things start to move again. Many places also close on mondays or tuesdays and then there is the half day closing on wednesdays. Most of the time we were there, people were notable by their complete absence, and frankly that suits me very well.
The ferry crossing was tolerable because we had booked a cabin on the way over, and on the return trip the boat was free from the infection of school parties. I was reminded though of the huge drawback of public transport - that being the public!
However, my love affair with France continues and I will quite happily go back there at any opportunity. One day I might even learn French, though that would mean that I'd have to speak it!

Lake Balaton

2010-05-22T10:59:00.003+01:00

Summer seems to have come with a vengeance. Only days ago we had to have fires going and now every door and window is wide open and the house is really warm. It seems such a waste of time to spend it indoors, but there are still things to do and too long in the sun, we are told, is bad for you. It never seemed to bother us as kids, though I suppose we wore more clothes in those days and rarely lay about soaking up the rays. Sun screen was for us a thing of the future and sunburn a lesson that you didn't easily forget.
I think the last time that I got sunburned was in 1969 after a bunch of us canoed our way across Langstone harbour and spent a few hours sunning ourselves in the sand dunes. The pain that night and for the following days was intense and debilitating, and although the ministrations of some rather lovely fellow students were quite interesting, there was no compensation for the stupidity of my actions that day. Since then I stay in the shade where possible, and for the sake of other people I keep my body covered.
No doubt the sun worshippers will be out on the beaches today and white flesh will sizzle in the heat, skin will redden and peal and global warming will get the blame. The sun also brings out the summer outfits, some of which are actually attractive to look at, but I am sure that some should be made illegal, if not on the grounds of decency, then on the grounds of bad taste.
Today will see scores of disposable barbecues pouring out smoke over every common, beach or park as people fall for the supermarket practice of dressing up unsaleable cuts of meat and past their sell by date vegetables as barbecue fare. These will be ceremonially burned, polluting the air and creating a litter of aluminium foil, unburned charcoal and scraps of inedible food.
Drinkers will join the smokers outside the pubs and shopkeepers will bemoan the lack of sales whilst wishing that they too could be at the beach or the park.
The same will be happening all over Europe as the weather seems set fair for a few days and i am sure that even the shores of lake Balaton will be festooned with bikini clad beauties as well as beached whales in lycra.

Stupid questions

2010-05-19T15:38:00.002+01:00

Of all the questions that are meaningless and impossible to answer, I would guess that most of them start with why? Try conversing with a four year old if you disagree.
"Why is that picture up there?"
"Because it looks better there than on the floor."
"Why?"
"Because we can see it better there."
"Why?"
"Because the light shines on it better."
Why?
"It just does -ok!"
"Why?"
You know what I mean, and it isn't just children that ask that question. How often are we asked for our opinions only to have that awful follow up - "Why?"
Most of the time the Why question is impossible to answer fully without incurring the inevitable repeat. Even fundamentals like "Why did you make Chilli again?"
"Because i wanted to."
"Why? we had it yesterday."
It's probably because that's all i could find or all i could be bothered to do but I have no idea really.
From a purely scientific point of view, asking why is rarely productive. "Why are there rainbows?" for example can produce all sorts of stupid answers that offer fairies, leprechauns or God as perpetrators. It is much more sensible to ask What is a rainbow. That can be answered reasonably lucidly by most intelligent people, but there is usually some dimwit at the back who will follow your explanation with a "But Why?"

Why did I start this??????

Keeping abreast

2010-05-17T15:52:00.002+01:00

The press are being castigated for trivialising the role of women by, for example commenting on Theresa May's outfit and shoes. Now I don't wish to defend the media in any way shape or form, they are as best a pretty pernicious bunch and would sell their own grandmothers if that had any left, but on this issue I think that castigation is rather unfair.

There are huge differences between men and women and many of us celebrate that fact. Having said that, most women are rather obsessed by their appearances and seem to spend a small fortune on maintaining an image, a habit that becomes increasingly expensive as gravity and weathering take their toll. While most men seem content to let nature take its course, women struggle to keep up with the latest fashions. Some become obsessed with shoes and with some it may be collecting underwear.

Some women love to show as much of their skin as possible, with skirts up to their armpits and fleshy bosoms hanging out of their tops, and then moan and complain when men stare at them. Who are they kidding when they say that they dress like that just for themselves. Most women want to be admired by both men and women, they yearn to be looked at and compared to those around them. Just watch two women meeting for the first time - don't bother to listen to the conversation just watch the eye movements as they scrutinise each other comparing outfits and makeup; and if both are wearing the same thing, watch how the sparks fly.

Some women pay a fortune to have implants to accentuate their breasts, some to the extent that they can no longer walk properly and pay scant attention to the fact that in later life those prostheses will level out around their knees.

How many women; of course there will be some: would be content to turn up to work in a shirt and tie along with sensible shoes and trousers? Until they dress in the same way as men, they must expect to be treated differently. Just because I might glance at your cleavage or admire your thighs does not mean that I cannot take you seriously.

Eyjafjallajokull

2010-05-16T11:38:00.002+01:00

So the small volcano in Iceland is creating air travel mayhem once again. It would sem that much of the UK airport system is again to be paralysed as millions of tons of ash and carbon dioxide as well as sulphur compounds are pouring into the air with no sign of abating.
I hate flying, not that I am scared of crashing, lets face it most pilots would rather do anything than crash. What does it for me are, primarily, airports. As soon as you enter an airport you become part of a queue that seems to never go anywhere. The check in is a pain in the bum and then there are the lounges, where people mill like sheep waiting for flights to be called, haemorrhaging money on vastly overpriced food and beverages. Shell suited parents with their fat kids predominate and are not easy to ignore, and the noise of the assembled throngs penetrates every cubic centimetre of space. If ever I am tense it is in such diabolical situations. Then there are the departure lounges where everyone sits in plastic rows eying up the fellow sheep and hoping that you don't get to sit next to the huge woman who takes up two of the seats in the lounge, or the noisy kids with their games consoles and bags of sweets.
Then there is the plane - an aluminium tube with seats packed so close together that there is room for either you or your legs, and you know that once in, it is almost impossible to get out.
There was a time when the cabin staff were pleasant almost to the point of servility, but now it seems that they are doing you a favour. The food is awful, drinks are hard to get hold of and expensive and the flight is occupied by the dreadful thought that you have the prospect of getting out of an airport at the end of the journey, while breathing in air that becomes increasingly contaminated by the bodily odours of all those on board.
Holidays are allegedly about relaxing and one that involved flying is as far from that as one can get. So next week i am off to France - on a boat. Eyjafjallajokull can do what it wants and I will remain calm and relaxed in the knowledge that if it stops the boat from sailing then we are in deep trouble.

Day Two

2010-05-13T17:30:00.000+01:00

Day one

2010-05-12T14:40:00.005+01:00

Here we are, day one of the new Tory/tory coalition and already the unemployment figures are rising. It is amazing what can be accomplished with almost no effort at all. It was sad seeing Gordon Brown leave office yesterday but he did so with dignity and I have no doubt that before long, many people will be wishing that he was back.

Change has a way of percolating slowly through the food chain, the pain usually being felt from the bottom upwards and getting diluted as it goes up, while the benefits work the other way around. I recall a tale, perhaps apocryphal, about a tribe of South American Indians who held a particular mushroom species sacred. The reason for this was that it, when eaten produced a wonderful high and the high ranking priests were the only ones allowed to go tripping. However, many pharmaceuticals pass through the body unaltered and the high priests, no pun intended, would urinate into jars that were passed on to the lower echelons in the priesthood who would then drink the pee and experience a trip all of their own. They in turn would pee into jars that would be passed down and so on, until the lowest of the low would get to drink the pee and receieve no benefit. This is the future folks and I hope that you are higher up the ladder than I am.

2010-05-06T10:57:00.003+01:00

Apparently Oscar was awoken this morning by his bowel movement. These eruptions can be startling and messy too, and we all hope that this sort of event is not something that we can look forward to.
It seems fitting that this should happen on election day. The polls have been open since seven and no doubt there has been a steady trickle of disenchanted folk just itching to scratch their cross on the ballot paper, before carrying on with their day, which they know will probably not change very much regardless of the outcome. I would imagine that those who have been campaigning all these weeks are having a lie in, in preparation for being up all night to find out what sort of conservative government we will have for the next five years. Whatever happens the damage will soon be done and we as a country will blunder on towards the next crisis and there will be someone else to blame; there always is.
What happened to society? What happened to personal responsibility? What happened to truth? Today there is no such thing as an accident. Someone is always to blame we are always looking for scapegoats and looking for someone other than ourselves to take the blame for whatever goes wrong in our lives. The no win no fee legal system is partly to blame of course but that in itself has grown in a place where there was room for it to grow, and no-one bothered to pull out the weed until it had seeded and spread.
Whatever the outcome tomorrow, there will be no change, at least no change that is discernable to most of us. Yes times will get tougher, money will be worth less and all of us will have to make sacrifices but the filthy rich will still get richer while the majority pay for the mistakes of the few. Oscar will still grow up in a better world than those who grew up in the thirties and forties, but in many ways he will be less well off. I hope that he learns that there is more to life than material gain, that people matter more than property, and that you do not have to follow the doctrines of others in order to live a fulfilling life.

Gardens

2010-05-05T12:05:00.003+01:00

I am not a gardener but I potter about trying to get things to grow and usually failing miserably. When you have a garden ther seems and unwritten obligation to keep it looking like something, but unless you have the will and the ability, it is hard to keep it up. I like a nice lawn, and I work quite hard on keeping my little patch of grass healthy. I feed it and cut it regularly, trim the edges and reseed or returf the bald spots each year. It gets more attention than many ladies nether regions and yet it manages to look good for few weeks of the year only. As soon as it starts to get warm, it starts to let me down and by the end of the summer it looks like one of the less fertile areas of the Gobi desert.
This year I decided to get on top of the vegetable patches too and assiduously dug, raked and weeded them so that they would be ready to accept the seedling that I had started off in the greenhouse. Then we had to go away for a ten day period and of course it chose to be warm and sunny and when I got back, all my seedlings had died. I now have a choice - to say sod it and forget the garden this year, or to buy lots of plants from a garden centre and let them die when we go away on holiday again. The former option seems more attractive but then the whole place will become overgrown and shabby and I'll have to spend hours getting it back to a reasonably tidy shape. It all seems pretty futile and I can understand why many people cover their gardens with paving or gravel. Even that though is a lot of work and expense, and it looks pretty awful too.
I suspect that the size of the garden, along with a body that is failing will be the trigger that initiates a move, and probably away from the island that has been home since 1971. The mainland, or at least one of its inhabitants beckons and it cannot be long before the siren call has to be answered.

Change?

2010-04-30T15:51:00.003+01:00

OScar has been here for a week and I am amazed at how much time and space he can occupy.

The media are flooded with the forthcoming election, and it is beginning to look as if the country will get the government that it deserves. This is unfortunate as the nation as a whole has yet to recover from the greediness and grasping philosophies of the last Tory government, and few can remember what they are really like.

The tory mantra this time seems to be the word "Change", and this taps into the nature of a society with a short attention span. Management and middle management seems to flourish on change for the sake of it, and everyone taking on a position feels the necessity to bring about changes regardless of need and regardless of what has gone before. Workforces get tired of seeing the same cycles repeating themselves and so become cynical; but it is the way of the world.

A worrying statistic is that almost 50% of the population are below average intelligence and it is this group that are most likely to be persuaded to vote in the direction that the tabloids lead them. Unfortunately most people cannot remember what a tory government is like and that is a great pity as we are likely to find out once again to the cost of most of us and the benefit of the few.

Fortuanately Oscar is oblivious to all of this and as yet unable to stand on his own feet. With his mother to cater for all his needs that is fine for now, but in the future he will need to change that. Woe betide anyone who cannot.

Mistakes

2010-04-21T09:24:00.002+01:00

We all make mistakes, and some learn from them. Clearly women all over the world have been making a huge one in dressing immodestly, and therefore, causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. According to learned Islamic clerics they should desist immediately so that the Earth can settle down. These people expect to be taken seriously?

Yesterday I lost concentration for a while and made a mistake that caused me a great deal of regret for a couple of hours. I have no excuse, I should have seen it coming but I didn't think about it at all until the damage was done, however I am pretty sure that I won't do it again.

I had spent some time in the garden and realised that in my recent prolonged absence, I had lost most of my seedlings. Now i don't grow much but I do like Chilli peppers and so decided to deseed a fresh one and try once again. I am a hands on type of person and so I split the tiny red chilli by hand and separated out the seeds to dry them. Then the phone rand and I dashed off to answer it. That was the distractor, and once I'd done there I went to the loo. That was the error. I had no sooner finished and washed my hands when i realised that I had done those things in the wrong order. Part of me began to burn-intensely and all I could do was thrust it under the cold tap. It didn't help, the stuff must have been absorbed into the skin and the pain was horrible, all i could do was squirm and curse my stupidity. I dashed around the house hoping that a frenzy of activity might distract me. Believe me when that part of you is on fire there is nothing that can distract from it, and so I suffered in a silent scream for the rest of the afternoon.

So lesson learned and contrary to common wisdom, it is best to wash your hands BEFORE going for a pee.

Another phase

2010-04-18T11:20:00.002+01:00

It is tempting to make this an Oscar appreciation page, but I know how boring other people's children can be and so will resist. These have been a strange few weeks however and getting back to normality will take a while, especially as we are now in the silly season of a general election.

It would seem that this will be no ordinary election as the populace seems to hold most politicians with little respect and some with a real hatred. Nothing is cut and dried and at the moment it looks as if there are three horses in the race rather than just the usual two old nags. The rise of the Lib Dems may seem refreshing to some, but the real danger is that apathy will win the day and a very low turnout at the polling booths could be a disaster. Support for the far right is on the increase and it is likely that these pernicious little bands will rally a great deal of support. We shall see in due course, I just hope that we don't end up with the government that we deserve.

Seasons

2010-03-28T12:50:00.002+01:00

Having spent a few days meeting and getting to know Oscar has been wonderful. I have never really been one for other people's babies but I must say that seeing him was something very special.
Returning home was difficult but necessary, and his arrival has been made more poignant by the news of my Mother's death. She died last night, taken finally by pneumonia after a long struggle with emphysema, the price of a lifetime of smoking. I don't feel sadness, just a sense of relief as her suffering has been long and terrible. If there is a sadness, then it is that she didn't get to meet Oscar, though she did live long enough to be aware of his birth, and to know that she has become a great grandmother even if she could never enjoy that. I guess that now I am an orphan - Goodbye Mum - be at peace.

Welcome George

2010-03-23T10:52:00.002Z

Last evening, just as I got to the pub to start the quiz, the news of George's birth arrived. He weighed in at 9lb 1oz and mother and child are doing well. He has been called Oscar Bailey Lander and this is quite spooky. As you might have already read, I used the name George as a matter of convenience, and unbeknown to me, that was also what my daughter had taken to calling him. What is more, the name Bailey was taken from her favourite movie, It's a Wonderful Life, the central character being George Bailey. How weird is that? I may have to think a little on this before writing more. Welcome to the world Oscar Bailey, may it be a better place having you in it!

Come on George

2010-03-18T10:56:00.003Z

George seems to be either too lazy, too comfortable or too lost to find the way out. Maybe today will be the day, I do hope so for his mother's sake.
Uncertainty is a bit of a mixed blessing. It can be nice to be surprised, but it is a great convenience to know in advance when an event is likely to take place. Apart from anything else it makes planning a lot easier. I know, I don't have much to think about, let alone plan, and what I do on a day to day basis has little impact upon anyone else and even less on the world in general, but even I have commitments of sorts. I am having to prepare my monday night pub quiz well in advance and having to leave it with the barman in case I cannot be there. He doesn't like doing it one little bit but then he shouldn't worry as if I am not there, a whole team will be missing and that means it probably won't run anyhow and would it really matter? However I see it as something that I have to do, at least for the forseeable future.
Anyway George, I do hope that you make an appearance soon so that some semblance of normality, albeit a new type, can return to family life.

Oh ps - I don't suppose it will make any difference but whoever is posting their ads here, please don't!

Still waiting

2010-03-16T12:35:00.002Z

Well George resolutely remains in a cosy and warm place, and who can blame him/her? Reality will arrive soon enough and the process of living and carving a niche in the world will begin. Perhaps George has been sensibly waiting for the weather to improve and today the sun is shining again and no doubt the temperatures are beginning to climb towards a seasonably acceptable level.
It isn't just George that is late, everything seems to be on hold at the moment. Spring flowers are late, the frog mating fest was late and the usual upsurge in insect life has been delayed. It is as if the natural world is holding its breath and waiting for the instruction to start. We have got used to a succession of mild winters and early springs I guess and also lost the ability to wait. Today's world is about immediacy; everything has to be here and now and the quality of patience is fading from our lives. No-one seems prepared to wait anymore, and that is a shame as quite often the wait and the anticipation is more rewarding than the actuality.
I believe that I am a very patient person. I learned patience in my childhood, there was little choice, and also through a career in the classroom, though I have to admit that it was stretched a little there from time to time. To teach patience to children is difficult, especially today, but I believe that to do so is to give them a gift that they will one day appreciate.

Waiting

2010-03-15T11:54:00.002Z

I am awaiting the arrival of my first grandchild. He/she was due on saturday, but as is common with these things, the due date and the day of arrival did not co-incide. It is a strange feeling waiting for the appearance of a stranger that is likely to bring about changes in ones life and I find myself thinking about his/her future and what it might have in store.
So many children come into the world each day and the path that lies before each and every one of them is a lottery. Many are born into terrible situations, even in so called civilised countries like those in the west, while others have every advantage known to man. I suspect that George, I'll call it George for now as that is a pretty unisex name, will have a great start in life, with a beautiful home, loving parents and hopefully, the support of the rest of the family.
Even so George faces a hazardous and unpredictable future in which a tiny decision can make so much difference to the rest of the life that they face. Many hazards are beyond anyone's control and the future of human life as always remains in the balance. It seems that humanity must make some choices soon in order that we as a species can continue to evolve and make all of our lives better. George will be born in a world that lies on the brink of major changes and I can only hope that those changes will be positive and that one day George can make a contribution to it.
I am unlikely to see George grow up and can probably make very little difference to his/her life. I will plant a tree for George on the day of the birth and maybe one day George will look at the tree and see it as my substitute for a prayer on his/her behalf.

I'll drink to that

2010-03-02T12:52:00.003Z

British pubs are closing at the rate of nearly 40 a week, or was that a day? It is no surprise though as landlords (and ladies) are being squeezed buy heavy taxation from the government, hyped costs from the big businesses who own the breweries and suppliers, massive rates applied by local authorities and on top of all this the recession that is crippling all but the bankers who caused it.
The pub is a part of the social network. A place to meet people from the locality, to talk , to argue and to find out what is going on in the world. For some people it is a lifeline, and it may be the only place they can go to find company without the need for an invisible friend.
I run a pub quiz. This was instigated on a monday night in an attempt to draw in punters on the quietest night of the week, and sometimes it works. Last night there were just the two teams however, a total of 12 people, all of whom of course bought drinks at the bar. Had we not been there there were 6 others in the pub and by the end of the evening that was down to two. The landlady is of course worried for the future.
I maintain that village pubs in particular are worth saving and it is time that the community realised how important these little gems can be. It seems that churches can generate huge amount to rescue their crumbling fabrics and are often the recipients of lottery grants to keep these edifices growing and yet the numbers of sheep that heed their shepherd on a regular basis is waning.
I will assert that many pub communities actually do more good in the community than some of the churches, and should therefore be elevated to a higher status, or at least given the same tax consideration that the churches get.
We need the pubs. They add colour and variety to our towns and villages and the big advantage they have over the church is that pubs do not have pulpits.

just a thought

2010-03-01T15:47:00.000Z

On the fringe

2010-02-24T10:57:00.003Z

Schools are being told that it may be illegal to enforce the wearing of skirts by girls on the grounds that it may discriminate against transexuals. Do the people that make these decisions believe that transexuals are not going to be discriminated against for other reasons? We are all subject to discrimination and have to learn to live with it. People are people and all have their prejudices. I confess to being prejudiced against those with extreme right wing views and those at the other end of the spectrum. I am prejudiced against those who worship stupidity and see it as a badge of honour, and those who put religions in front of their regard for fellow human beings.
I am discriminated against all of the time, on the basis of my age, my gender and probably the way that I dress and the opinions that I hold. It is all part of living in a society, or in my case on the fringe of society.
I was wondering how far t his PC madness can go, perhaps the following could become illegal in the future

Taking driving licences away from blind people or alcoholics.
Locking prisoners in their cells without a bedtime story.
Giving kids homework
Not giving unemployment benefit to those in work.
Speeding fines
Maths tests
The list is endless - unless we wake up and realise that all of this is just a terrible dream!

Contrasts

2010-02-22T12:03:00.002Z

This weekend, for reasons that I will not go into, I saw The Brits Awards and also the BAFTAs. I am not a fan of either show, though I do believe in praising achievement, as long as that achievement has been the result of effort rather than circumstance.
We seem to have evolved a culture where the concept of praising achievement has been taken to silly extremes. I some schools children may be rewarded for just turning up, and others for managing to behave in a civilised way. Others who do this as a matter of course, receive nothing other than confusing messages.

Anyhow, the two "ceremonies" were fascinating in the sheer contrast that they demonstrated. On one hand we had a slick, well presented and civilised display of talent, with intelligent people being given well deserved accolades for, in some cases, years of work, honing their craft to the highest of levels. And then there were the Brit awards.

Ok I know that I am a grumpy old git, as my son likes to remind me, but there was a time when Britain produced a plethora of talented young people who could outshine the rest of the world when it came to pop music. There was little of that talent on display this year. The most memorable talent was an American and the rest, bland, ordinary and unoriginal.

All that we can seem to offer is surface. We have pretty boy bands who sing reasonably but are utterly dull unless you happen to be a twelve year old girl, sexy girl bands who appeal to most men until they start to sing, and the rest seems to be Hiphop, a brand of sound that seems to me incomprehensible and of no worth whatever. Britpop is in a sorry state, and like all aspects of modern culture becoming dominated by women. It is a shame as there are many talented bands out there, producing new and original stuff, but alas they do not fit the moulds that the likes of Simon Cowell produce. The only saving grace is that the average act these days has the life expectancy of a mayfly.

An unpleasant experience

2010-02-15T11:59:00.002Z

I have an old lady friend who I visit from time to time. We drink tea and laugh a lot, she talks about her childhood and some of her happier times, and if necessary I do odd jobs for her. Like many older people she gets into a state of panic very easily and I have told her over and over again to call if she needs help. She is reluctant to do so and so yesterday afternoon as I was settling down to a post lunch doze, she called, and I knew that she was panicking.
When I got there, she was indeed at her wits end. Something had got into her fireplace and was making a great deal of noise. Now this is an old large Edwardian fireplace that has been fitted with a gas fire of considerable vintage. It is sealed in with a sheet metal screen that is screwed into the fabric of the fireplace and the fire itself sealed in with gaffer tape. The whole thing was moving and it sounded as if some large beast was fighting to get out. The sheet metal bulged outwards and bits and pieces were clearly cascading down the chimney.
I ushered Liz very slowly out of the room, not wanting her to be there when whatever it was was released, made her a cup of tea and proceeded to dismantle the arrangement that had lain their untouched for decades. Of course the screws were corroded in and could not be budged and so I eased the fire away from the chimney, disengaging it from its flue and from the heavy duty tape that held it in place. While this was going on the occupant of the dark space behind had fallen silent. Beneath the fire was a hole that led into the cellars below. What on Earth could have come up? However that thought was dispelled when I realised that there was no connection between that hole and whatever lay beyond. Unable to free the sheet metal barrier I could only thrust my hand through the flue to investigate what had been making the noise and that hole wasn't very big. Tentatively I groped around in the dark, half expecting to be bitten or dragged screaming into oblivion - I watch too many bad movies! Nothing! Whatever it was had moved out of reach.
I found a walking stick near to the front door and returned - thrust said stick up aforementioned chimney and waggled it around. Mayhem in the chimney resumed as the trapped beast sprang back into action and I caught my first glimpse. A large and very scared Wood Pigeon was struggling to get back up the sooty passage that it had come in by and was hopelessly failing. Almost as scared as it was, I resumed my attempts at grabbing it, grasping it's tail firmly I endeavoured to release it from its prison. I succeeded with the tail but alas it had become detached from the poor bird in the struggle and i was left with a large handful of warm feathers. There was now less of the bird to struggle and the poor thing flapped and floundered while i tried to grab it by something else. I found a wing and eased it from the hole, most of the wing feathers came out in my hand an the now dismembered bird escaped into the room in a cloud of feathers. On all fours I chase it around the room, under chairs and around furniture, under curtains and over sofas until the petrified beast ran out of will to live and I grasped it with both hands. I could feel its heart pounding in my grip and see the fear its eyes. I couldn't bring myself to wring its neck and so released it outside the back door. To my amazement it flew away. I still don't know how it managed that with no tail and one and a half wings. No aircraft could have achieved that I am sure.
I returned to the room of carnage, picked up the feathers and reassembled the fire, feeling quite shaken by the plucking of a live bird and feeling very bad about the pain that I must have inflicted.
The consolation of course was that Liz was back in posession of her peace of mind and that should the pigeon meet a swift end in the jaws of a fox, it will be preferable to a long death in a fireplace.

Pie in the sky

2010-02-14T12:50:00.003Z

I am well aware that what I think may well be completely wrong, and that others hold completely opposite viewpoints that probably have the same validity or otherwise. It would be a duller world if we all thought the same.
We are running towards a general election and the two contending parties are squaring up to each other and beginning to show traces of their true colours, though I don't suppose what they say between now and whenever the election happens, will make much difference to the outcome.
We as a nation are in a financial mess, and have been put there by mistakes made by a greed that is inherent within our society. Everyone seems to want something for nothing, and the banking world took things into their own hands, attempted to make a few too many fast bucks and now we all have to pay for what they have done. The bankers however continue to recieve their huge bonuses, and will receive unending support from the conservatives on both sides of the house. Budgets are being designed and ways of clawing back the bankers losses from the rest of us are being proposed on one hand and rejected by the other. The current government want to increase taxes, especially on the wealthy, while their opponents prefer to rob the poor and keep them in their places, forcing the elderly to sell their homes in order to fund their care in later life. This will of course remove the last incentive to invest one's earnings in property as those without houses to sell will be looked after anyhow, and those recipients of big bonuses will have cash to spare.
Voting at the next election will make little difference to most of us however. Only the wealthy can gain from a new Tory government and almost no-one can gain from maintaining the status quo. Surely we should consider the end of party politics, and strive to elect a government that represents the interests of us all.

Coming and going

2010-02-10T16:34:00.005Z

People come into and leave our lives all of the time. I have been lucky enough to have met a large number of wonderful people, most of whom have sat before me in classrooms. Of course not all of them were in any way close and our relationship was both fleeting and professional, but nevertheless our lives did brush for an instant in time and we may have learned a little from each other.
As we grow from infant to child and from child to adult it is probable that more come into our lives than leave; I can still remember becoming aware of the finite nature of existence when just a boy, and being told of the demise of an elderly neighbour who i was quite fond of. The memory is crystal clear and the profound nature of that realisation represented a real turning point in my consciousness. He had gone. Forever. The end. Even then I had no belief in afterlives; those concepts are there to comfort those who fear death and cannot handle not being here. A hundred years ago, none of us were here. We did not exist by any definition of the word and in another hundred years we will be in the same state and the world will have moved on.
I am at the stage when few people come into my life, and those that do are often not welcome. Many people that I have cared about have gone; some have died and others simply gone along different pathways. Just a select few remain and those I value beyond material things.
I am not easy company, and do not make friends at all well anymore. I share my mind with very few and my feelings with less, and guess that makes me at best self centred. I rue some of my past and some of the friends that I have lost and have learned much about trust, and feel that on days like today, that I have changed little over the years. I am self contained to a great extent and realise that I will probably never feel fulfilled, but that is true of most people so there is no cause for complaint.
In just over a month my daughter is expecting her first child and I am looking forward to meeting someone new. I hope that this new life will be one filled with good things, but mainly that he or she will, when she gets to my age feel a sense of accomplishment and that their life has been well lived. Good luck little one, you will need it.

a short rant

2010-02-08T16:36:00.002Z

So our first Asian Judge has proclaimed that Sikh children should be allowed to wear their ceremonial daggers to school. The claim that no Sikh child has been involved in knife crime strikes me as being rather irrelevant, and surely it is time that such ludicrous claims should be dealt with unsympathetically. It seems that as long as you can tie in a behaviour or a habit to a religion then every one else is scared witless to challenge it. Sikhs have no more right to carry knives in public than anyone else and they should be stopped from doing so, because it is the law of the land. We are not a Sikh society; sick perhaps, but thankfully we are not yet ruled by any religious sect.
In the same day's news we hear of a sixteen year old girl, buried alive by her father for talking to boys. Where were her rights? Once again we see that religion is not about peace and goodwill to one's fellow man; it is about bowing to the will of an idea or to another human being who expounds upon that idea. When oh when will people wake up to the true source of evil in this world?

Waxing lyrical?

2010-02-04T16:14:00.002Z

I like to think that I have an eclectic taste in music; I do listen to a lot of it and generally tune in to radio 3 for mornings and listen to my collected stuff in the afternoons and evenings. As i write I am listening to Beth Gibbons and Rustic man, a band I know nothing of but the noise that they make is very pleasing.

I do try to listen to whatever comes my way and try to understand what musicians are trying to do. There was a time when they were more about making music than making money, but I am afraid that those days are long gone. I am sure that there are plenty out there for whom the music is far more important than the paychecks but everyone has to live.

What we listen to and enjoy is a very personal thing and there are genres of music which to me have no impact or meaning and i am sure that is so for everyone. I cannot relate in any way to Rap or Hip hop, and at the same time cannot comprehend the music of many modern classical composers. I don't particularly like Johan Strauss of Franz Lehar, and most traditional scottish music irks me.

I can understand then that many people can not relate to what I listen to. The leap from britpop or indiepap to Mozart or PinkFloyd is a huge one and therin lies a chasm which some will never cross in either direction.

Pop music is about youth culture and history shows us that the quality and type of music is an audible commentary on the times, or at least it has been since the forties and fifties. Good times and bad times have a way of producing music with impact and meaning for those to whom the music is aimed.

Good music has power to move people, either thought the overall sound, rhythm, melody or lyrics, and no one has yet managed to have a universal appeal. Even the Beatles at their best never achieved that, and they probably reached more ears than Beethoven ever did. And so when I hear what seems bland, banal and tediously plastic song releases, I must remember that someone out there actually relates to this and that makes it valid.

Bring it on!

2010-02-02T10:00:00.002Z

Well the struggle for equality continues with the government attempting to change the ground rules and remove glass ceilings allowing freedom of opportunity for all. Now I do agree that we should all have access to the same opportunities, but we should also be realistic.

Well the ex-Nazi leader of the most powerful religion in the world seems to be planning a visit to England because he fears that the new legislation will give free access to positions in his church to homosexuals of all things. How terrible that would be? No longer would they be able to discriminate on the basis of sexuality - or anything else for that matter. Within decades they could be taken over by men in dresses, waving handbags in strange ceremonies.

This is an organisation that preaches tolerance, and yet displays very little of that to anyone who lives outside of their faith. It values poverty as a virtue as long as they don't have to endure it, and like all big companies has vested interests in it's own power and survival.

In my opinion an influx of homosexual bishops could only do them good! A lot of choirboys would be far safer than they are now.

Just how stupid can we get?

2010-02-01T13:04:00.002Z

Surely we have reached rock bottom in the stagnant pool of political correctness, when it is not permitted to advertise a job for a reliable worker on the basis that it discriminated against those who are unreliable. Does this mean that to demand a qualified or experienced worker is unfair on those unqualified or inexperienced? There has to be a point beyond which we cannot go without losing touch with both common sense and the world of reality.
Some people clearly still believe in equality, and yet this has never been realistic. Our society only works because of inequality, it always has, and as long as there are people it always will. All animal populations are made up of individuals that are different. Some are stronger, fitter, prettier or more able to breed than others. Some are better fighters and some are better at finding food. It is this fundamental inequality that drives the process of evolution, and although those with religious faith would have us believe otherwise, the principles of evolution still apply to humans. Apart from biological inequalities we are also subject to inequalities of geographical and cultural bases and so although laudable in principle we do not even come close to equality of opportunity.
I hope that when I travel by air, that the pilot is far more able than I am in handling an aircraft. I hope that the surgeon to whom I entrust my life has not been given the job because someone thought that he deserved a chance, and I hope that the car that I drive has been designed and assembled by some sort of intelligence.

Retail things

2010-01-28T11:36:00.002Z

One of the benefits of the world wide web is that it by and large protects me from shopping. I have never liked it but my reasons for that have changed as I have grown older. As a youth, I would trail around with my mother, knowing that we could not afford to buy the things that I would have liked and always having to settle for what was affordable, which of course was never very much. Shops for me were placed that offered temptation and made me painfully aware that I was poor.

Of course things change, and for now at least, money is not an issue. I still trail around the shop, pushing a trolley and watching time passing so so slowly. My input is rarely required and mostly irrelevant and this morning I spent a while composing a list of reasons for hating the whole experience. Near to the top of the list are strangers. People with long faces, ambling around like myself, blissfully unaware of those around them, shuffling from aisle to aisle all probably feeling the same sort of antipathy to each other. There seems to be a rule, that wherever you happen to be you are always in someone else's way, so it is impossible just to stand in neutral and disengage from the whole experience.
Following someone while pushing the trolley is a nightmare, far worse than driving in a convoy. Take your eyes off the leader for one instant and said leader vanishes into the maze of aisles, evoking another rule, that being whichever way you go is the wrong way.
I hate trolleys - I always seem to get one that has a wheel that sticks, making steering difficult, and as the load increases, impossible. Mostly I am tempted to pick up the trolley and carry it around, though the ergonomics make that tricky and plainly it would be a stupid thing to do.
I hate the fact that it is impossible to buy just a jar of coffee without having to choose between hundreds of combinations of brand, type, size etc. I loathe the uniformity of fruit and vegetables and the fact that one store is much the same as any other.
I despise the appalling attitudes of some of the staff who in some stores seem to imagine that they are doing you a favour, and I loathe the use of psychological opportunism in the way that supermarkets display goods persuading people to buy what they do not need.
For me, the perfect shopping experience is to search through my favourite sites, make my selection and simply type in my credit card details. To enhance my experience i really do want an iPad, and that I will order online.

I believe

2010-01-26T11:09:00.003Z

An accusation that is often thrown my way by those that have religious convictions is that unless i believe in something then my life must be without meaning. At this point in any discussion I usually bring things to a halt, as to argue further leads to a circular debate that goes nowhere.
It is impossible not to believe in something; it is part of being human, and with most people it is possible to change beliefs in the light of experience or when presented with evidence. Most of us at some time in our lives believed in Santa Claus, Fairies,the bogey man, God and the Easter Bunny, because we were told that these things existed. Parents pass on these untruths as a means of controlling their children, either by threat or anticipation of something good. Most of us grow out of these fictions and do not hold our parents responsible for misleading us, but some do not and hold onto those beliefs with grim determination. There are even those who believe that the earth is flat and many that believe that the holocaust never happened. Fundamentally some people can be induced into believing anything.
I am a natural sceptic and yet I too have beliefs, and there are many things that I believe that I cannot prove. I believe in Science as a process. Where Science scores highly is in it's scepticism. The scientific process is based upon hypotheses formed from observations. These hypotheses are tested experimentally over and over again, until the outcome of an experiment allows the formulation of a Law. A law might state that under circumstance A, B will happen, but with Scientific laws, this only applies until it can be proved otherwise by different experiments. There are many principles that have stood the test of time and can be accepted as truths, and even the most rabid fundamentalists cannot argue that.
I believe that there are probably other life forms in the universe, and that the universe is so large that we will probably never find evidence for their existence. I believe that the universe is eternal and that there is no creator nor need for one. I believe in energy as the currency of the universe and its transmutability.
I believe in the Atom and its structure of fundamental particles, and that one day we will understand the very nature and origin of those particles.
I believe in Evolution and that we are merely a part of an ongoing process that too few people understand.
I believe that people are intrinsically good and that some are made evil by the life into which they are brought. I believe that adherence to the writing in one book leads to a narrow view of life that hinders the moral progress of humankind.
I believe that capitalism is wrong, but as yet we have no workable alternative. The system has produced huge benefits but has also produced a world that is obsessed by property and material things. We have become greedy and self obsessed and this in turn has fuelled religious backlashes and the terrorism that is a canker on civilizations.
I believe that we are failing to make good use of extending lives and that many people are left to rot by the rest of us. We think more of pets than we do of fellow humans and many elderly folk die without dignity in squalid conditions.
I believe that our children are neglected by parents and society in general, and that many children should be taken away from their abusive parents while they still have a chance.
I believe in friendship, family and freedom of thought and expression. I also believe that there is no God but of course I cannot prove it, any more than I can prove that there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! I believe that saying something is true, however frequently, does not make it true.