Time passes

The fourth dimension is a concept that is hard to grasp.  The notion of "Before Time" is often bandied about but can we imagine a universe where time did not exist?  Without time of course, nothing can happen. Any event can only occur during the passage of a finite period of time and so our lives, and all of the changes and events that make them up are dependent upon the passage of time.

When we were children, time seemed to pass so very slowly. Every day was a long one, summers and winters lasted an eternity and the years crawled by. It took a great deal of time to grow up. It even seemed to slow down when anticipating birthdays or special treats.

As adults, time passes faster and faster, its relative speed being in direct proportion to deadlines and unwanted appointments.

Maybe time is actually speeding up. If it were, then we'd probably not be able to measure it, as events that we use to measure time would also adjust accordingly.  Maybe it is just our concept of time that changes as we get older and the past stretches out behind us and our mortality seems to be hurtling towards us .

Oscar loves to come to grandad's house for the occasional sleepover. It gives his parents a break and he knows that he will get lots of attention and that his obsessions with space rockets and diggers will be encouraged.  He stayed over the other night and enjoyed the Hipad, the puter and the bricks. He loves grandads big bath and the big bed that he gets to sleep in. He likes Grandad to read his bedtime story and he sleeps well. That  is he sleeps well until around 5.30 am.  At this unearthly time of day, he gets out of bed and needs help using the toilet. After which he likes to get into bed with grandma and grandad while he wakes up and grandad tries to get back to sleep.

I was lying quite still hoping  that he would doze off the other morning, when after a few moments of peace, a small voice said
"Grandad; in a minute we can go and dig in the garden."
I said "Yes Oscar, in a minute." and closed my eyes again. There was a silence that lasted all of 30 seconds, then
"Grandad; in a minute we can go and play with the bricks."
"Yes Oscar, in a minute. Why not try to sleep for a while. It isn't morning yet."
Thirty seconds later Oscar Sits up.
"Grandad; where is the Hipad?"
He knows very well where it is and I know that my night is done. So at quarter to six I am up with Oscar, looking at diggers and dinosaurs on the iPad, playing with bricks and generally avoiding going out in the garden where it is still cold, in order to dig.

Oscar's concept of time is so very different to mine and so I have to adapt to his, which can be quite hard, especially before six am.  His sleepovers are lovely but very testing, and a reminder perhaps of why childhood days seemed so long - it was because they start so bloody early.

Spring has sprung

It has been a while since my last confession. No I am not a convert to Catholisism, should that ever happen you will know that I have finally gone insane. Just imagine having to pop in to tell your priest every now and then, what naughty thoughts you might have had, or what dirty little deeds that you have done.  Most of us would need to pop in very frequently I am sure. It always seemed odd to me that as a Catholic you could commit sin after sin as long as you pop in and say sorry now and then. Anyhow, I am not really going to confess or even apologise for thing that I may have thought or done; it would make for very dull writing and even more dull reading.

So spring is here, the grass is growing and my densely unworkable wet clay soil has turned to unworkable concrete. The weeds are flourishing of course and each day the garden reminds me who is boss.  There was a time when I could work all day in the garden, but I know that those days are a long way behind me. Nowadays I have to work in spurts of varying lengths and my attempts to get on top of it sometimes feel almost futile.  The aim has become to reduce the work that will be needed in the future, and that means a lot of black plastic and slate and gravel to hold back the weeds  and eliminate at least some of the spade work.

The flower beds are covered in daffodils and wood anemones, with patches of creeping buttercup and bluebell leaves. Right now it looks fine but within a few weeks it will look what it really is - weed infested.

The garden is a stark reminder of entropy. Order is hard to maintain and has to be worked on. It needs a motive and it needs a concerted effort. Our bodies, our communities, our roads and buildings all require energy and materials in order to maintain them and once that energy is denied, there is inevitable return to chaos.  

We have a government that can see no further than its wallet. It is dismantling the vital machines that  maintain what we call society.  Everything seems to be falling apart, while a few concerned individuals struggle to maintain their own little worlds. Ministers believe in what they are doing and strive to maintain the huge division between haves and have nots, pulling up their ladders as they watch the masses upon which they depend, struggle  in the mayhem. They have nothing to confess either.

I am reminded of the words of T S Eliot.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Booze in the news

So,  according to surveys into people's drinking habits, we are only drinking half of the total alcohol sold in this country. This prompts the interpretation that we lie about how much we actually consume, most people feeling somewhat ashamed that they like a glass or three of their favourite tipple to take the edge off as it were.

I like to drink, wine mostly, but when I am out I prefer to drink ale.  Units mean very little to me and never enter my mind when drinking.  I rarely drink to excess, though for some, a bottle of red wine at a sitting would be seen as such.  There have been periods when I have been known to drink on a daily basis, but these days I try to confine it to weekends, a pint with a pub lunch on a friday and maybe a shared bottle of wine on friday and saturday nights and that is generally it.  I don't really have a social life as such and that makes it much easier to keep consumption under control. Going without alcohol during the week is not a problem and I know that I could easily do without it if I chose to.

If I go to the theatre of to a concert, I choose not to drink, mainly to avoid the inconvenience of having to go to the toilet during the performance.

It seems though that for many it is not that easy. On monday night I went to the O2 in London to see the Australian Pink Floyd. Actually I went to hear them as for me it is the music that matters. The show started more or less on time at seven thirty and they played the whole of Dark Side of the Moon. I sat at the end of a row, and forty minutes after the start, people were still coming in and struggling to find their seats. Most of them had glasses in their hands and clearly had been unable or unwilling to tear themselves away from the bar. One pair actually took their seats in our row five minutes before the interval.  Throughout the performance there was a steady flow of people going back and forwards to the bar and then of course inevitably, to the toilet.  It seemed that the acquisition of alcohol was the most important part of the evening for many, regardless of the inconvenience to the rest of us. For me the evening was spoiled by, not just a few, inconsiderate people.

Drink is so easily available and still relatively affordable, and although the pubs are complaining of a drop in trade, drinking heavily at home is becoming the norm. Maybe that is the cause of the disparity in the figures, we all know that drinking at home doesn't count.

Vinyl revival

I have down in the basement, a collection of several hundred vinyl albums. Many of these date back to the sixties and seventies and some are even older and were inherited from my father's collection. They range in genres from 40's jazz and swing, through 60s and 70s pop and of course centuries of orchestral music. Most are not in great condition, I never seemed to have the knack of keeping my discs in pristine condition, but I do still play some of them. I am listening to the second side of Abbey Road, the Beatles at their peak, and I am reminded of some of the advantages of the vinyl LP when compared to modern equivalents.

Playing a vinyl record was almost a ritual. First of all there was the sleeve. The designs on these twelve inch squares were there to tempt the potential buyers, and as such many of them were real works of art. On this one, we have the four  band members walking across a pedestrian crossing in Abbey Road. An iconic photograph that has been scrutinised for hidden meaning since it was released. McCartney's bare feet and that he was out of step with the others were taken a sign that he was dead; Lennon's white suit was also imagined to have significance. All nonsensical really but you cannot play the album without thinking of the history behind it.  The disc has to be removed from the outer sleeve and then the paper inner sleeve before being placed oh so carefully on the turntable, cleaned with care before lowering the tone arm and bringing the diamond tipped stylus into the grooved plastic.  There are clicks and pops that drive some people crazy but they are unique to each disc and in time they disappear into the background.   After  twenty minutes or so, the disc has to be turned over and when finished, returned lovingly to its protective sleeve.

I keep a small selection of disc handy and now and then I will take the trouble to play them, even though it is much easier to play a cd or an mp3 file on the computer.  These formats are far less personal and their crispy clean sounds are clinical and what we have come to expect.  It is easy to pick out single tracks and play them out of context, and many of us make compilations of songs that bear no relationship to each other.

I am at an age when nostalgia is a hobby I suppose.  I do embrace new technology though, I even have a smartphone that I don't use much, an iPad that I use a lot, three Apple Mac computers, a Brennan music system that can store 5000 cds and several systems for playing tapes, cds and of course vinyl discs.  Maybe it is nostalgia that brings me back time and time again to the latter or maybe it is my body forcing me into a little exercise.

Take to the streets but do it peacefully.

The default setting of human consciousness hovers around apathy. Mostly we are oblivious to the goings on of the world and tend to focus out attention only on the things that are of direct concern. Even then, by and large, we may moan and complain but do nothing. Large organisations, including governments know this and major decisions are taken every day, with opposition only from a small vocal minority, whose voices are rarely heard and almost never heeded.

We are living in a society that our ancestors would find ludicrous. Inequality has always been with us, but the degree of inequality has reached new levels that  we should find shameful. We have high levels of unemployment, much of the workforce working for a pittance and grateful to be in any sort of work. We have at the other end of the spectrum, celebrities and football players receiving huge incomes, and a financial sector that rewards its cronies whilst punishing the rest of us.

Many people can no longer afford to eat properly, let alone go to a football match or a cinema. It seems that prices for everything are rising unopposed.

Mahatma Ghandi was a pacifist and yet managed to bring about the downfall of the British Raj in his native India. His methods included peaceful protests and civil disobedience.  He began alone but soon gathered huge numbers of followers. Only then did his voice make an impact, and his non violence became difficult to oppose.

We live in a democracy, a far from perfect solution to government, but so much better than alternatives. In theory power lies with the electorate, but of course nothing is quite so simple. In reality most people believe that their vote is worthless; the same candidates often being returned to parliament over and over again, and so many choose not to vote. This feeling of powerlessness is at the root of the lethargy and apathy that has got us into this situation.

I remember in the 60s, a mass movement that boycotted produce from South Africa. How instrumental that turned out to be in the downfall of apartheid, I am not sure but at least people were flexing muscles.
Maybe it is time to boycott football matches, movie theatres and the like, and begin a revaluation of people's worth.

The best of times and the worst of times

Ok I know that I am getting old and that my views of popular culture are tarnished by the patina of time, but I listen to new music and sometimes despair.  Chanting obscenities or gibberish to a thumping beat may be what kids are presented with and perhaps it is the inevitable product of an evolutionary process that has produced a generation, of which many of whom seem to have lost a sense of direction.

The reason for the Oxford trip the other night was to attend a concert performed by  one of our best symphony orchestras. The program included works by Chopin, Glinka and Tchaikowski.  I haven't been to such a concert for some considerable time and it was a joy to experience wonderful music performed by real musicians, and what crossed my mind was that this is one of the pinnacles of man's achievements. Composers, rightly, are given most of the credit for the works that they write, and yet, without the dedicated professional musicians that interpret those writings, their efforts are nothing to most people, but scribblings on a page.  In order for great music to be delivered to us mere nobodies, there has to be a convergence of some of the finest minds with talents that are rare and precious. They, together, become one with the mind of the originator and bring to life, music that is priceless.

There have been many bands of musicians of many genres that have achieved wonderful things, producing music that has had the power to move and thrill audiences. Some bands evolved and grew to almost orchestral proportions, inspiring an anti - music trend called punk. Punk bands took music back from the dizzy heights and ran it screaming and kicking into the gutter. Punk, like the banal Rap of today was purely visceral, and lacked any intellectual thread. Punk was a protest against quality and against talent and so today we have a music industry that is on its knees, for probably the same sort of reason. Boy and girl bands abound and any of the scarce real musicians are forced along a pathway that renders their own work pretty much subsumed into the musak promoted by the get rich quick.

I was heartened by the fact that there were many young musicians in the orchestra and yet the program notes suggest that most of them come from eastern Europe.

Celebrity status

One thing that I loathe and detest more than anything else is reality TV, and the ongoing trend of bringing more and more of the so called real world into all of our lives through the TV screen.  The programs that I have been unfortunate enough to see, seem to focus on the poorer sections of society, placing people, albeit with their consent, under a microscope so that the rest of us can mock or even pity  them.

It seems from the little that I have seen, that the focus of much reality TV seems to be on the lack of education, that so many people seem proud of.  It appears that failing at school is always the fault of someone else.   I recently watched a programme that got together disparate people and got them to cook dinner for each other. These were professional people, and the only reason for watching was that a relative was involved.  It is an appalling program, clearly edited to show people up in the worst possible light, with a patronising over commentary.  Many people seek fame, maybe more so than fortune. To be on the TV allows one celebrity status, at least in their own mind, but why oh why do we have to be subjected to it more and more?

Too many people

Every now and then I leave the shelter and security of my little space and venture into the big bad world. Sometimes it is through necessity and rarely through choice. Visiting old friends is worth the effort and the weekend was fun, despite the tedious drive west.

On friday night we went to the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford for a sublime concert by the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. That however is not what I want to talk about.

The evening began with a drink in a pub very close to the venue. It was raining hard and the pub seemed inviting with plenty of time before the concert began.  It was a very small pub, dark and very full. There was only standing room near to the bar and even that was very limited.  The bar itself was rather like a corridor and for the first time that I can recall, I began to feel very claustrophobic. I was being jostled from all directions and it was impossible to move to a space. I hated the feeling and could not wait to get out.  No-one else seemed bothered and so I had no choice but to tolerate the situation. I do seem to be able to engage in a sort of self hypnosis that enables me to detach from unpleasant situations such as the dentist's chair, and that seemed to work. Once outside I was fine and we joined the queue to get into the concert hall.

The Sheldonian is a wonderful building, more or less circular and quite austere in terms of seating comfort. There are no numbered seats, in fact there are no proper seats at all; it has a series of large steps that serve as seats. We got in fairly early and chose seats at the front of the balcony with a good view over the orchestra. All was fine, if Spartan for a while but as the performance time grew closer, the place filled to capacity and then beyond. More and more people squeezed in and had to sit anywhere that they could. My space got smaller and smaller and soon I had people sitting on my feet and others with their knees in my back. My levels of anxiety were as high as I can remember them ever being, and had it been possible to escape easily I think I would have done, however the programme began and there was no choice other than to sit very still, in an uncomfortable posture and try to focus on the music.  By the time of the interval, those behind had clearly had enough and left, and so the second half of the concert was a very different experience and by the end I could relax. I was still more than glad to get out into the rain however and even the crowded pavements seemed to offer relief.

I seem to be losing my ability to be with other people. There was a time when crowds did not bother me, but now they do and I know that I will try very hard to avoid putting myself through that again. Having said that, next month we have tickets for the O2 and that will involve a much bigger crowd than were at the Sheldonian on friday. I look forward to that with some trepidation.

Here we go again

Another year and as yet nothing to write about. I suppose that in the scheme of things, that last year was an eventful one and i hope that 2013 will be somewhat less so.
Life in Kent seems to have settled into some sort of pattern and I am enjoying regular contact with the grandchildren. It is alarming that in a couple of months, Oscar will be going to school. It will only be on a part time basis, but even so it will be a major step for him and his parents.  He is growing up so very quickly and continues to make me laugh. Only the other day, we were walking in the woods and he stood to attention, saluted and said "Yes Sir Grandad". I suppose that he picked it up from Toy Story, which seems to be one of his obsessions, along with diggers, dinosaurs and space rockets.
Matilda is 6 weeks old and has little conversation, but very expressive eyes. She is an unknown quantity as yet but a very placid and co-operative young lady so far.
I'd like to make some resolutions for the new year but I won't, largely because I never really keep them and don't see the point.  There are many ways in which I could improve myself but that would require some sort of motivation, and that is sadly lacking.
Even vowing to write more regularly would be futile; I write only when the mood takes me, and even then it is getting harder and harder to find things to write about.  Oh I can rant about all sorts of things, but nobody is interested in my opinions, quite understandably, and no doubt there will be a rant from time to time.
I will wish anyone who reads this a happy new year, even if it is late in coming.

If evil exists then it is here

Almost daily there are reports of what the Taliban are doing to their own people. Some describe them as freedom fighters, others as terrorists, but the reality is probably that they are just vile thugs who love to inflict misery on their fellow human beings.

I read with horror the report of one of their victims having been accused to using tobacco. He was taken and his hand chopped off. The hand was then boiled for a while before being sewed back onto his bleeding stump.  This morning we read of Vaccination workers being executed, depriving children of the right not to die from infectious diseases like polio.

The list of atrocities is endless and yet this criminal and vile organisation continues to attract followers and benefactors. Somebody is supplying them with weapons and with supplies and maybe it is time that they too are named and shamed. Perhaps their fellow Muslims could make a start by condemning them without reservation, but to criticise another muslim is not the way of Islam is it?

It is a cold damp and grey day here. The sort of day that makes you want to shut the doors and curl up with a good book. Days such as this one can be depressing, but I look at these reports and am thankful that I do not live in an Islamic state - yet.

They walk among us.

I like to think that I am calm and even tempered. Very few things get me worked up these days, one of the functions of advancing years perhaps.  However, the other day, I found myself in an online debate with two fundamental creationists.  I know now the meaning of red rags and bulls.  Someone once said that if you could reason with a religious mind, then there would be no religious minds.  I found out for myself that it is so true.

My own position is that of an atheist, having rejected the very idea of a deity many many years ago. My    limited scientific education led me to a very different understanding of the world and our position in it. The scientific process relies on questions, hypotheses, experiment and evaluation of evidence. Usually experiments provide part answers and open up new questions. It is about open mindedness and an ability to adjust belief on the basis of fresh evidence.

The discussion, went on for much longer than it should have and the only argument that the creationists could offer  revolved around a complete misunderstanding of the process of evolution. As in their eyes, evolution does not provide all of the answers, the process is rejected and in its absence there is a need for a creator.  One of them even quoted the laws of thermodynamics, the second  of which states that matter cannot be created or destroyed, whilst stating that everything must have been created by god. She could not see the irony in that.

My repeated challenges to their viewpoint resulted in personal attacks on me, which I do not mind, but then to be accused of being aggressive, simply for restating unanswered questions was a step too far. Entering any sort of discussion with people who distort the truth to suit their ends is futile. These people live in a different world to me and have minds that are so blinkered by doctrine that they have lost the ability to debate effectively. I will try hard to steer clear in the future.

Music

I have been listening to Striggio's Mass in 40 parts and Thomas Tallis' Spem in Alium, and again my mind has turned to  people with big ideas.  Music, for me, is as near as can be to a "spiritual" experience and to have the imagination and creativity to produce work of this magnitude is simply amazing.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cn7ZW8ts3Y

Both works were written in 40 parts and demonstrate an ability to hear a complexity of harmony that is extraordinary. As it happens both works are based on religious texts, which mean nothing to me, but the music is overwhelmingly beautiful.

I once heard the Tallis in an art gallery in Ottawa. A room had been transformed into a chapel and an "Artist" had arranged 40 loudspeakers on stands around the room. Each part had been recorded separately and to stand in the centre of the room gave an all round experience.

Beethoven was recorded as being totally deaf by the time that he completed his Ninth Symphony and so he must have been able to hear the complete work in his head. To listen to that piece is an amazing experience anyway, but to know that the creator was deaf adds a new dimension.

Music has amazing power and its influence on emotions and to some extent behaviour is not to be underestimated. Perhaps musicians should rule the world.

Hair today gone tomorrow

Today, Oscar is booked in for his first ever hair cut.  It is getting out of hand and it even annoys him sometimes and so his parents have arranged for a potentially traumatic event.

Until I escaped home, I was sent every two weeks, to have my hair cut, and in those days it was for a short back and sides. I can still smell the barbers shop and have vivid memories of sitting for what seemed hours, waiting for my turn. Every adult customer, when shorn, was asked the same question before they left. "Anything for the weekend sir?" and now and then, discrete exchanges would take place as condoms, not drugs, were traded.

The hair once scarily shortened was plastered with brylcream or something similar, and half a crown was handed over. The outside air always felt so cold and my scalp felt like sandpaper, my ears protruding like a small pair of wings. It wasn't until teenage years that I dared to rebel and insist that the barber took less off and made some attempt to create a style.

Leaving home was liberating in so many ways and I stopped visiting hairdressers altogether.  I guess that someone must have trimmed it from time to time but I have no real recollection of that and by the time I started teaching, my hair was long and blonde. It stayed that way until it started to grey.

Now there is a lot less for a hairdresser to do and I am back to regular attendance, though not every two weeks. The half crown bill has multiplied a hundred times and more and i am pretty sure that condoms are no longer available.

Big ideas

Yesterday, Oscar came round as he often does, and being a creature of habit, headed straight for the toy box and the bag of bricks that I made for him.  That and the plastic digger are his favourites and only the temptations of Toy Story and "Buzz Light tits" can distract him from this.  He usually drags me down to floor level and says something like - "Granddad build a house." or it may be a wall or a boat or a space rocket, and I can usually comply or bluff. This is usually followed by him demolishing whatever I am building, with the digger, and then we start all over again. Yesterday he floored me by asking me to build a planet.  I know that he imagines that Granddad can do anything, but I had to admit defeat on that one.

It got me to think about big ideas, and the ability of some to think, not just outside of the box but also outside of their own experiences, and just how does this come about?  Do we all have that innate talent? Is it beaten out of us from an early age by being told what we cannot do? I know that my parents had that tendency and maybe their parents before them were made constantly aware of their own limitations and those placed upon them by society and circumstances.

I look at major constructions with a sense of awe. To see something as mundane as a motorway junction from the air is an inspiration. Someone imagined it and made it happen. Skyscrapers mushroom all over the world and each one is an amazing achievement of man's ingenuity and vision. We routinely fly all over the world in fragile aluminium tubes, taking for granted the genius that went into building a device that can carry hundreds of people at great heights and speed.

The history of humanity contains records of individuals who have been inspired to create on huge scales and I admire those who have had the courage to put their visions into effect. Even those architects that built religious buildings are worthy of huge respect and admiration, even though the learning process may have been costly in human life.

We owe our children a future, and only by allowing them imagination and hope, can their minds be freed to imagine. Our education system is not doing that. We force feed them with carefully selected information, like geese being prepared for Fois Gras, and blinker them with lies and dogma. We divide them on cultural and religious grounds and brand them as successes or failures on the evidence provided by inadequate and irrelevant paper exercises.

I wish that I had sufficient vision to imagine building a planet and I hope that Oscar's imagination will not be stifled before he has a chance to grow. Who knows, we may need new planets one day.

Mark

It was november in 1968 when my brother Mark was killed. I was at college and that day is forever etched into my memory.  I remember being awoken by the sub warden knocking at my door early that sunday morning, and i could tell by his face that something was not right. He told me that there was a phone call for me and that I could take it in his flat.  I dressed hastily and lumbered down the 14 flights of stairs, not waiting for the lift, wondering what could possibly have happened. I cannot recall the chain of thoughts that passed through my mind but I do remember the overwhelming sense of dread.

As I picked up the phone, my mother's voice sounded so far away; she was having difficulty in speaking and then she told me that Mark, on his motorcycle, had been in a collision with a car on his way home the previous night, and had died immediately.  I felt a numbness and told her that I'd come home as soon as possible, knowing that I had no money for tickets.  I went back to my room, locked myself in  and collapsed onto the bed. I cried that morning more than I had ever done, and when there were no more tears I put on my coat and went for a walk in the rain. I wanted to be alone, I needed time to sort out my head and the rain seemed to help.  By the time I got back to my room, I was soaked to the skin and cried out.  Only late in the day did word get out and my friend Dave rescued me from my despair.

I have never felt so desolate as I did that day, and dismal november days like today remind me of it. Mark would be approaching his sixty first birthday now, had he not been out that night, or had ridden more carefully than he did. As it happened he was approaching his eighteenth birthday when he died.

I still think of him and what he might have become.

What's in a name?

This has been a good week. On monday night Matilda Georgie weighed in at eight pounds fifteen ounces in old money.  She is a lovely little thing and both mother and baby are doing well. It feels good to have both a grandson and a granddaughter and I am so happy for all of the family.

My great grandmother was Annie Matilda, though I suspect that had no influence on the choice of the name; in fact looking back through the family tree, it would seem that there was another Matilda in the dim and distant past.

Matilda Georgie does have a link with her brother whose name is Oscar Bailey. Their mother is a fan of the movie - It's a Wonderful Life - and the lead character - George Bailey.  We will be watching it again this festive season as we always do, but this time with a real sense of completion.

Welcome to the world Matilda - I hope that it improves as you grow older.

Strange Rash

I feel rather fed up at the moment. For years now I have had a recurring problem, an inexplicable complaint that has been described by the medical profession as ideopathic. That mean that they have no clue as to what is the cause and therefore can offer no treatment.  It is spasmodic and I can go up to  year without any occurence, but now it is back.  It starts, almost always, as a small red patch in the centre of my left palm. It itches like crazy and then rapidly spreads to both hands and often the back of my scalp. In really bad outbreaks my body gets covered in hives and nothing I can do makes any difference. I have tried quadruple doses of powerful antihistimines and they just seem to make it worse, so I just have to ride it out, hoping that it will recede soon. I also feel unwell in a way that is so hard to put into words. The itching palms is awful and keeps me awake at night, but the worst thing is when it spreads to my feet. Thankfully they are pretty well itch free right now, but I dread that coming back.  The itching is strange and subcutaneous and always gets worse at night. Last night I was up every hour, more or less on the hour, running my hands under the cold tap, and as a result I am also sleep deprived.
I have had allergy tests and they prove negative, and I can see no external event that could act as a trigger. So anyway I feel pretty crabby

Police Commissioners? Why?

Yesterday, after much deliberation, I decided to vote in the elections for local police commissioner. Not, I hasten to say, because i knew anything about the candidates, or even about the role that they will have, but because this whole scheme has been formulated by the likes of Teresa May.  I happen to live in the bowels of Tory land and I am sure that their candidate will have gained the most votes, even if it happens to be a goat with a blue tie round its neck.

Here the polling station saw a steady trickle of people exercising their right to put a cross, or two, on a scrap of paper, an expensive exercise indeed as the tax payer will be footing the bill. Today all those bits of paper will be sorted and the successful candidate given the extensive powers that HMG have seen fit to bestow upon them. This includes the powers to control budgets and to hire and fire Chief Police Officers.

I feel that the running of the police force should not become a political animal, we endured Thatcher's private army in the days of the Miner's strike and that did the police no good at all. I was brought up to respect the police force and I still do, but should it become officially a political weapon, then I think that  I and many other law abiding people will lose that respect. This is, like many governmental schemes, ill considered, and the real losers will be the police themselves.

Wild things

While awaiting the arrival of number two, I am loving spending time with grandchild number one. Walking in the "forest" is a particular pleasure. We talk about nothing and everything, while he collects sticks, kicks through the leaves and looks out for squirrels. He elects to walk rather than ride these days and only gets back into the push chair when his legs get tired. I try to tell him the names of things and he tries to memorise them, maybe one day he will be able to pass something on to another generation.

There was a time when I knew the names of most of the wildlife that I came in contact with. It was deemed important when I was a kid, to be able to identify things in case you were tempted to eat anything that was toxic.  In a time when food was scarce, being able to find free food was a great bonus, and I am sure that I could have survived in the wild had I needed to. There is a plethora of food out there and it is only because people are so well fed today that the knowledge is dwindling.

It would be nice to think that Oscar can look and see an oak or a sycamore, rather than just a tree, and to know that stinging nettles hurt and that dock leaves can give a little relief from that pain. He should know that hemlock is poisonous and that toadstools with white gills probably are too. However the most important knowledge is learned from necessity and I hope that he will never need to look for food in the wilds.

In the meantime, we have fun and at his age that is probably the most important thing. I am so happy to share that with him while I can.

Grandchild number two

Tiger, as the unborn and unknown is affectionately described by its sibling, is late. It was due over a week ago and is stubbornly hanging on, probably far too comfortable where it is, or maybe not yet prepared to emerge into the world that we have all made for it.

Tiger will be born into a world that bears little resemblance to the one that I grew up in; so much better in some ways and yet so much worse in others and it seems to be getting worse. Individual freedoms seem to be at the root of many of our problems.  Human rights legislation has, over the years, led to the improvement of conditions for so many people and yet for many, the practicalities of human rights remain intangible.  In reality we are only free to do what other people allow us to do.

Abu Qatada has been released from prison, where he has been awaiting deportation to his home country to face criminal charges.  The international court of human rights has decided that should he be sent back to Jordan, that he cannot be fairly tried, and so deportation is not possible.  His rights have been placed firmly in the driving seat and the rights of others, whose lives he has damaged, and the harm that he has the potential to do is disregarded.  He is now free to go on inciting his followers into acts of racial hatred and possibly terrorism unless he can be re-arrested and tried in this country. Even his location is kept secret and no doubt he will be asking for a change in identity, a handout of state benefits and possibly compensation for time served in prison.  He comes from a culture where human rights are limited to those who wield the power and they tend to be men. It is a society in which there is little freedom of expression, no freedom of religion and where so called "Honour Killings" are acceptable.  It is a culture that condones genital mutilation and the suppression of free thinking, and it is this culture that he and his like, are wanting to instil into this country. It is a culture that is steeped in hypocrisy, inequality and violence, that sees the west as the enemy.

I was brought up to believe that freedom comes with responsibility. When we earn the right to drive, we are expected to drive carefully and within the laws of the road.  The same principle holds for any of our so called freedoms.  Qatada will not be bound by western cultural mores and yet he will enjoy the same luxuries that others here enjoy.  Perhaps it is time that the human rights laws were re-examined.

I have no concept of the world that Tiger will grow up in. I hope that it is one where there will be more tolerance and understanding than there is now, one in which freedoms have to be earned, and one in which religious bigotry plays no part.