Plus ca change

 It has been a while. Here we are on the cusp of yet another Christmas and I stumble upon the settings for this old blog. I have been reading through some of the old entries, and although much has changed, so many things remain the same.

We now have a third grandchild. Jacob came along two years ago and is a real delight. Jamie and Jo are rightly proud of him. Oscar is now at secondary school and Matilda is in year 4 and loving school.

The Tories are cling on to power but the cracks are opening up and the festering malignancy that is the Conservative party is oozing everywhere. Boris Johnson must know that his days are numbered and the knives are out, sharpened and ready. Another corrupt and nasty candidate will take his place, and with a few soundbites will have the Tory faithful back in harness.  The Labour Party has been successfully assassinated by Keir Starmer and the right wing press, and so come an election, the unthinking and uncaring will probably put the Tories back in. The political climate is thoroughly depressing to say the least.

Trump came and went, but he has left a huge trough of supporters, steeped in right wing self obsession.

Then we have Covid. I remember when it first arrived, people were saying it would be gone by the summer, and I was saying that it is here for a long time. It certainly is here and adapting to whatever is thrown at it. Current thinking is that we have to learn to live with it.

Anti vaxers are everywhere, claiming that vaccinations is and infringement of their human rights, as is the wearing of masks. Such is the nature of society in Tory Britain. Everyone has rights and only some have responsibilities.

I haven't written much at all recently, I seem to have lost my enthusiasm. I have hundreds of thousands of words assembled in various places but nothing in my head. Getting old, I know is a privilege, but it does come with issues that are hard to deal with.

New experiences

I am at an age where there is pretty much nothing I need, new body parts aside. When it comes to birthday gifts, people tend to go for experiences and I have had a couple of them recently. The first was a gin making experience in a local distillery. They manufacture, on a smallish scale a gin called Greensand Ridge, and I must say that it is a brand that I quite like.

We were treated to a very pleasant and informative evening, culminating in our own choice of herbals from a very wide range, and the distillation of our own personal bottle. Lack of control on my part led to a the production  of a very aromatic 47% that actually tastes quite good but must be applied carefully.

Yesterday we had a lesson in sushi making at a local sushi restaurant.  Again the experience was interesting even though it was hard to follow verbal instructions, partly due to traffic noise and my poor hearing, and partly due to our Japanese instructor.  We played with sticky rice, sheets of seaweed, and bits of fish, cucumber and avocado for a very fiddly hour, at the end of which we each had produced a meal which was the combination of the above into a pretty arrangement with a huge emphasis on sticky rice. It was fun I suppose, and might have been more so if I actually liked sushi. I like avocado and cucumber but the rest of it I can happily live without.    I think that sushi for some, is rather like bottled water, or paper cups of Costa coffee; it is fashionable.

Not listening

I hear that Amazon is producing a male version of Alexa and calling it Alex.  It is fundamentally the same as Alexa but doesn't listen.

Women are always complaining that men don't listen. It is true, we don't and the reason is simple; we are conditioned not to.

If you work in a noisy environment, you learn very quickly to ignore the noise, filtering it out as it were. Even if the radio is on in the background, unless there is something really gripping, it gets easy to ignore.

Most women love talking. It is fascinating when a bunch of women get together. They talk and when they are not talking they are rehearsing what they are going to say next rather than listening. Gaps in the conversation can be measured in nanoseconds, dead air has to be filled.  They can say the same things over and over again but no-one cares, it is called social intercourse. Phone calls can last hours with neither party getting bored, it is a mystery what they talk about.


Most men talk for a different reason. They talk to convey information, social chit chat may be an expectation but it is not a natural pastime.  Most men are quite happy with silence. Idle chatter tends to distract from thinking, and when that chatter is continuous and repetitive or irrelevant, it becomes a background noise and is filtered out. A phone call often lasts minutes at most, and once the information has been passed on it ends.

Do not expect a man to pick up on instructions or requests if they come bundled in a long diatribe. He won't be listening.

          

Getting old

Getting old is probably better than the alternative but it certainly is no laughing matter. I used to smile at our next door neighbour who would regularly tell me that old age does not come by itself, and now I know what he meant.

He and his wife were a dear couple, who, by their own admission had lived  their lives in better times. The modern world was not for them and I felt that they were both ready to leave it when their time came.  Maybe it is the same for all of us,  there comes a time when things start to get away from us. Technology is moving at such a pace that it is hard to keep up with it.  I watch my nine year old grandson using computers and his games, and he leaves me standing. I have a Playstation and already he knows more about it than I do.

We have a smart TV just like most people, and I know that it is remarkable and capable of so much more than the demands I make on it. It's the same with my phone. I carry it around most of the time and pick up the odd message, but actually making calls is not something that I have had much practice at.  Our home is awash with wifi and bluetooth and we have Amazon dots in most rooms. Even the guest room has one so that guests can listen to music or interrogate Alexa should they wish to do so.  We are told that these things are not listening to us and that they only respond to the wake up word, but if they are not listening, how do they know when a wake up word has been spoken? We are all under scrutiny all of the time. I don't care because I have nothing to hide and my life on the whole is pretty dull but there is a principle at stake here.

We are living in a world where elections can now be manipulated using data that is collected from social media and goodness knows where else.  The rise of demons like Trump and other potential dictators has all been assisted by the manipulation of peoples minds; democracy is in its death throes.

I maintain that I was born at the right time. Things were hard when we were kids but they were getting better. We had healthy food, clean air, real freedom and great music. The kids today have none of those things and that is so sad.

I am lucky to be alive I guess, kept that way by a bloody good health service that neither bankrupted my parents or myself with the cost of years in hospital and replacement body parts. So I live with the aches and pains and the narrowing horizons and take each day as it comes with a degree of gratitude.

Adipose

Have you noticed, that cars are getting bigger as years go by.  Even the Mini and the Fiat 500 have increased in size and engine capacity. A possible reason is that people have increased in size and that many need a pretty large vehicle to get into.

Hospitals struggle with beds, wheelchairs and operating tables, and I am sure that many dentists have difficulties accommodating  larger patients in their chairs.

The stigma of being fat is diminishing as more and more people, choose to allow themselves to become outsize. Some say that it is not a choice and that it is a hormonal thing or that it is genetic, or because of any other possible causes.  The real reason though, despite possible help from those factors, is that people eat too much. Food that is surplus to the needs of the body is converted into fat and stored in huge reserves all over the body.  Many people seem obsessed with eating, and are rarely seen without a supply of junk food to keep them going.  It is sad that junk, high calorie food, is cheaper than healthy alternatives, but there it is.

We are getting fatter, of that there is no doubt. There is a much greater risk of having to sit next to an obese person in all sorts of situations; how often do we wait in an airport boarding lounge, hoping and praying that the real fatty will not be sitting next to us, overflowing into our own personal space?

Perhaps the increase in obesity is a good thing. For one thing, obese people do not live as long as they might, thus relieving some of the pressure on populations. Another thing is that the fatter a person is, the more carbon they store, thereby reducing the greenhouse effect. Maybe in years to come, fat bodies will be preserved post mortem and utilised as an energy source; crematoria are already having to adapt to accommodate the larger person.

It is all about choice of course. Lifestyles have changed a great deal in my lifetime as have attitudes towards body shapes and sizes. It is a shame though to see primary kids already obese or on their way to becoming so. Not being taught about the health issues associated with obesity is a form of child abuse.

I carry a lot more flesh than I once did. I make no excuse, I eat more than I should and probably consume too much alcohol. I also do not exercise enough, though for that I have some excuses. I will make a promise though, that is not to wear very tight clothes and especially skin tight black leggings.

Carpets

We just had much of the house re-carpeted. It is over now and I admit to feeling quite tired. Rooms have to be emptied as far as possible, so that the fitters can do their job, and that involves putting other rooms out of use and a great deal of humping furniture and other items about.  This morning I returned the CDs and DVDs to their shelves. They were in some sort of order before the disruption and now they are not. It has made me wonder whether sorting them again is worth the effort. There are hundreds of them, most of which are there just to fill the shelves.

I remember when the children were young, having a house carpeted and showing them that if you scuffed your feet over the carpet, you could become electrostatically charged. That was a mistake as all too often afterwards, I became the object for discharges, especially if taking a nap.

Because everything in the front room had been disconnected, I was unable to watch the debate between our would be Prime Ministers. By all accounts it was the usual embarrassing display of self aggrandisement and I am rather glad to have missed it. It would appear that we need some sort of super hero to get us  out of the mess that we are in right now. Whatever happens in the next few months, there will be a population that is split, acrimoniously down the middle, in a way that we have not been split before, largely thanks to social media.

With everything being disconnected, there was no access to any of that for a few glorious hours. Maybe we need more carpets.

Open wide

It is a warm day and in forty five minutes I have an appointment at the dentist. Nobody enjoys going to the dentist I am sure, but I guess that it is worse than the alternative. My parents generation had all their teeth extracted in their twenties. It saved money in the long run I suppose but it meant that their entire adult life was accompanied by plastic teeth that were soaked overnight in a glass by the bedside.

I am mindful of this when I go  and even the pain of the bill, makes me thankful that the teeth I have are my own.  This is just a check up and I hope that nothing needs doing. She will poke and prod while talking to me very quietly in a voice that I cannot hear while her nurse hovers about looking busy.  I vanish into a sort of trance in which I dissociate myself from whatever is going on.

I am reminded of an awful joke about dentists.  A woman is sitting in a dentists chair, terrified. She says to the dentist "Id rather have a baby than a filling."  The dentist replies "Well make up your mind and I'll adjust the chair."

There, that took my mind away for a few moments and now I must change into something more respectable before we go.

Interesting times

We live in interesting times.  At a point in history when we should be forming unions, we are instead seeking division.  Trump's America is in a parlous state, and thanks to Nigel Farage, so is the UK. There has always been a split between the right and the left, but the current division has gone much deeper and the wound is much more serious.  Both of the main political parties are divided on the one issue and are in danger of imploding, allowing clueless parties to fill the gap.

We have a ludicrous battle for the leadership of a party that is on its last legs, each candidate determined to deliver a policy that was voted for by a small majority and which is now supported by a minority, because if they don't, they will be seen as betraying democracy.  They are like headless chickens, flapping around trying to win support.  One of these less than honourable gentlemen will assume the leadership of the Tory party and thereby become Prime Minister. Immediately there will be proposed a vote of no confidence which could lead to the fall of the government and the precipitation of a general election. Then what?

We have a bunch of idiots representing our interests in Europe, and they will of course do no such thing. They are there only to sabotage  and should not be paid or entitled to any financial claims. If they are going to screw things up, it should be at their own expense.

Childish protest

I remember when I was at school in the 1960s, being involved in a protest against the obligatory school cross country run. For many it was an annual humiliation and for others it was just something to rail against. They were turbulent times; massive cultural shifts were taking place and the world was changing rapidly. Authority was being questioned and challenged wherever you looked and it felt good to be part of that.

Our protest was harmless and got a few of us into more trouble than it was worth.  The start of the race involved the whole year group, apart from those who were excused on medical grounds, lining up across a starting line dressed in white PE kit.  A not very large group of us chose to wear red socks, which made us easily identifiable, and when the starting pistol fired, instead of racing off, we walked; in fact we walked all the way and of course came in as a group in last place.  It was a futile, adolescent exercise of course and achieved absolutely nothing.

Today was the opening of the European Parliament. It begins with the European anthem, which is Beethoven's Ode to Joy from the ninth symphony.  A large group of our MEPs, the Brexit party chose to turn their backs in a token gesture. Childish and pathetic in the eyes of the world of course, but that is the Brexit party.

I am sure that each of them will be drawing their salaries and claiming huge expenses despite doing nothing to enhance the organisation. 

Musing on music

I can just remember when 45rpm and 33rpm vinyl records replaced the old, heavy and frighteningly fast 78s. I still have my collection of vinyl records but they are consigned to the basement and will probably never get played again. It all seems so much trouble now, to find the record, to take it from its sleeve, dust it, place it on the turntable, clean the stylus, place the stylus onto the run in groove and listen to the clicks and pops before the music begins and more clicks, pops and even jumps during playback.

Vinyl is making a comeback and there are people out there collecting the half century old records that I grew up with. I am pretty sure that mostly my old discs are battered and worn and of no interest to anyone, and that they will inevitably end up in charity shops or landfill sites.

Along came cassette tapes and quantum leaps in technology and soon we were compiling our own selections of music, recorded from our own, or friends LPs or even from the radio. The sound quality was quite acceptable and the tapes did not accumulate more clicks pops and scratches. I have a huge collection of tapes; they are also in the basement.

It was CDs that saw the demise of vinyl. Crystal clear digital sound from small, light plastic discs that were originally said to withstand all sorts of damage without the sound quality being marred. Nobody mentioned the effect of childrens fingerprints.

Then home computers with massive data storage enable us to copy our collections onto hard drives, select songs and play them at the touch of a key. Now there are no fiddly tapes or discs and the CDs have become redundant. I have hundreds of them and rarely play one; soon they will be consigned to the basement.

Now we have Spotify.  For a few pounds a month, I can stream from I don't know where, any music that I want and play it in any room in the house or even on my smart phone or iPad.  There is nothing else to consign to the basement apart from me.

Fortnite

For those of you, who think that the above title is simply yet another spelling error, it isn't. Fortnite is a computer game, and not one that I particularly like.  It has been around now for a couple of years and is a free download that makes it accessible to anyone with the means to play it. It may be free to play but there are in game purchases, which, if you are young and malleable are a vital part of the gaming experience.

I played it once, or attempted to. There are variations in the game but the one I played involved a hundred people parachuting down onto an Island with the aim of killing all the others. There are weapons, and ammunition statues and places to hide, but everything is very fast paced  and so I did not survive more than a few minutes. Your opponents are all real people from all over the world, and you can, if you are so inclined, interact with them by message or by talking to them.

I find it a little worrying.  Oscar is now nine and he is addicted to the game. He is not allowed to play it on school days, but when he is not playing, he watches Youtube videos of others playing it.
Watching him play is educational. His reaction speeds are quite something, and he knows exactly what he is doing. He only talks to his real life friends and their conversations are quite incomprehensible. Recently he has been more interested to the creative mode of the game, building and manipulating the landscape and setting lethal traps. It has a language and culture all of its own and is a huge moneymaker for its makers.

I guess that eventually the obsession will wear thin and the kids will move on to something new; whatever it is we will probably not approve.

Another day

I hope that my announcement yesterday was not too great a disappointment to some people.

In a town and at a time, not far away, indolence had become an art form. Never had there been such a concentration of idleness. There were some that just about kept the town ticking over but the bulk of the population had one purpose in life and that was  to watch TV. There were plenty of jobs that needed doing, but no-one prepared to do them, fruit and vegetables remained unharvested and bottoms of old and young alike, remained un-wiped. Hospitals remained uncleaned, cars were left unwashed, roads unswept and civic gardens un-manicured. Most of the factories had closed and taken their businesses abroad.  It was only when the pubs began to close that people began to even notice, and even then they could not wrench themselves away from their screens. Apathy was rife.

News of the unfilled jobs slowly leaked out and people from places, where if  you were lazy, you died, began to move into the town to do the work that the townsfolk had spurned. It was a slow process but gradually, the town began to improve. Hospitals were cleaned and bottoms were wiped again.  Fruit and vegetables were harvested and local farmers began to look happy with their lot.  Roads were repaired, and cars began to look sparkling new. The Civic gardens became a thing of beauty all over again.  Old abandoned shops reopened with unusual names and new exotic restaurants opened to cater for the exotic appetites of the new and growing influx of people. The town was growing at a steady rate as more and more of the vacant jobs were filled. The old and shabby houses that had long been abandoned were refurbished and inhabited by the families of hard working folk, and still the bulk of the people remained glued to their televisions.

All went along quite well, the TV made sure that the people were kept stupefied, and stupefied they were. They felt informed because they had seen it all on the telly. Everyone was an expert and so the real experts ceased to be listened to and so left the town. They knew who to vote for in elections because the television told them, and they knew that all was well with the world for the same reason.

One day a rather weird fellow arrived in the town. He wore odd clothes and an even stranger grin.  “Just call me Nigel.” he would tell the small crowds that would gather around him in the few pubs that were left. He would buy them drinks and tell them all sorts of outlandish tales and soon became very popular. News of his presence soon spread and people began to tear themselves away from their televisions to listen to him in the hope of being bought a drink.

He was the biggest news that the town had seen in years and before long he was making appearances on local television, ironically dragging more people away from it and towards him. People would find out which pub he was going to be in and they would flock to it. Pub managers soon began offering him appearance money as well as free beer. His band of followers grew and grew, they hung on his every word, unable to distinguish between lies and truth.

Then it happened. He began to turn their attention to those who had no televisions because they were too busy working. He made the suggestion that the reason that his followers had no jobs was because of these newcomers. Pretty soon they all agreed with him, after all , if you repeat a lie often enough then people will believe it. He told them that all of their problems were rooted in this group of outsiders and convinced them that he could put things right.  Soon his supporters began to organise marches and protests outside the town hall and the Mayor and the town council began to get very worried.

“We want our jobs.” they would chant as one voice, which was strangely ironic as most of them had never had any sort of job. “Nigel for Mayor.” was much more worrying for those in the town hall, who had enjoyed a quiet life for a long time and had got quite used to it. It was clear that they had to listen and so the Mayor arranged a meeting with the strange man. By this time Nigel had gathered around him a group of tough looking men and one or two large muscular  people of indeterminate gender. Annette and Loretta looked more fearsome than the rest of the gang whose members tended to give them a wide berth.

Nigel, flanked by Loretta and Annette stalked into the Mayoral chamber, and without being asked, sat down.  Nigel grinned in his usual inane fashion and waited for the Mayor to speak. Loretta picked her nose while Annette scratched her rather large belly.

“Well, Mr  ummmmmmm” said the Mayor. 

“Oh Just call me Nigel, everyone else does.” The grin widened almost to the point of his head splitting into two.  His companions grinned awfully too.

“Well ummm Nigel.” Said the Mayor, staring at Nigel’s ghastly tie. “You seem to have made an impact on the town. The council don’t like it.” Loretta and Annette stopped grinning and leaned forwards menacingly. The Mayor blanched and continued hesitantly.  “I have been authorised by them to offer you a substantial reward if only you will put things back to how they were and frankly, just go away.” 

Nigel smiled and Loretta and Annette leaned back.  There was a long and pregnant pause before there was a reply.

“How much?” said Nigel through his grin. He was mercinary if nothing else.

The mayor took an envelope from his desk drawer and passed it over the desk. Nigel’s grin broadened even further as he opened the enveloped and then pocketed the cheque. The Mayor wondered how his head stayed together.

“Consider it done. As soon as the cheque clears.” said Nigel and stalked from the room without another word. His bodyguard trotted behind like faithful Labradors.

Over the next few weeks, Nigel and his gang visited each and every newcomer to the town, and strangely, each and every one of them left soon after.  True to his word, Nigel left too and his gang of followers no longer had anyone to follow and so went back to their TV sets. 

Soon there were no dentists, so teeth went rotten, many bottoms remained un-wiped, the old and insane had to be looked after by their families and the hospital had to close because there were no doctors, nurses or even cleaners. The streets remained unswept and un-repaired. Many high street shops closed along with all of the takeaways that had gone so well with the TV. Fruit and vegetables on the local farms rotted in the fields and the few businesses that had moved into the town closed down.  Even the charity shops began to struggle.

Now there were plenty of jobs that they did not want, the people were happy and went back to their TVs and got fatter.  As for Nigel, he took Loretta and Annette and moved to another town also not far away. 

I am still alive.

It has been a while since I even looked into this blog. I know that I vowed to write more but somehow things seem to get in the way.

I turned 70 this year and though my mind finds it hard to accept, my body reminds me on a daily basis. Since I last wrote I have had a knee replacement and another lens replaced with plastic. Pretty soon there will be less of the real me than the replacement parts. I am not complaining though, without those interventions I would not be able to function at all well, so I blunder on through what some call the twilight years.

My main reason for being here in blogville today is to revisit and copy some of the entries into a printable format. It is a vanity I suppose that makes me want to pass on the contents of my mind to my children and grandchildren, though I don't suppose in reality, anyone will be at all interested. That is the nature of our endings. Nothing that is not materially of value will be committed to black plastic bags and either binned or donated to charity shops, ready to complete another cycle.

Since I last made an entry here the only writing I have done has been with a creative writing group. It is a small selective group of old ladies and myself and we meet when everyone is available, which seems less and less often. The world has a habit of getting in the way of things. It is an outlet however and I need outlets.  Most of my time is spent at home and much of that time I am alone. I find that I like people less and less and choose not to venture out unless I have to.  Pubs and restaurants are noisy, it seems that many find it necessary to shout and I find it very hard to follow a conversation.

So I have become the grumpy old man who is losing faith in the human race.  I am out of touch and largely out of sight and mind, and what is more it suits me.

Old people

Visiting a retirement home, a modern euphemism, is a very mixed experience.  We go in once a week to play bridge with a couple of residents, which is fine and enjoyable for us as well as them. Jim is 85 and Monica much the same age, though it is not polite to ask. They have led interesting lives but now they are left by their families, for good reason no doubt, to wait for the inevitable.

Looking around, our bridge played are remarkable in that for the most time they have full possession of their faculties. Many of the other residents are not as fortunate, although that is a subjective viewpoint.

The home is beautiful, it is warm, well appointed with lots of space. Residents rooms are comfortable and roomy and the staff are wonderful. I am sure that it is not cheap, and has the feel of a hotel. However, the stereotype is still there; a number of residents sit around looking, unknowingly at each other or sleeping the day away. Conversation is rare, and there is an inescapable feeling that they are just waiting to die. They do have activities laid on and even trips out, but even so it is so sad that people have to endure this in their final days. Most are placid and isolated in their minds, while a few are vocal and never seem to stop moaning or complaining and others barely know where they are or why, let alone what day it is.

Mealtimes are a highlight for many, and they seem to drift from one meal to the next in the silent company of others.

Jim yearns to be taken to the pub, something that doesn't happen at all, so we have agreed to take him out for lunch on friday. I hope that it goes well.

Signs of spring

Daffodils are already pushing through the waterlogged soil, and are the fist sign that spring is not too far away. Of course there is much winter left to endure, and who knows what the next few weeks will bring?

I am having a clear out at the moment, a sort of spring cleaning if you like. I am a hoarder, I can't throw something out if I think that it might have a use somewhere down the line, so although most rooms in the house are laden with books and likely  to remain so, my garage and workshop are now under attack. Not only is it filled with stuff, the stuff is also disorganised and largely redundant.

I have boxes of transformers and leads from previous electronic devices; most of which will never have any use. This week I have discarded dozens of SCART, phono, and telecom fittings, along with leads and drives that were only used on the very old Mac computers, I don't even know what those connections are called.  I found an old Zip drive complete with a set of discs that I have little memory of their contents; that and others like it have found their way into the bin. I have multiple duplicates of USB leads, mains leads and an assortment of audio and video connectors that will never be used again. So many things in my life are becoming redundant. I still have three complete HiFi systems, one of which I use in my study, albeit occasionally, another is boxed and stored in the attic and another is in the garage and does get played when I am working down there. I cannot bring myself to get rid of these. On day the ability too stream music or to play the store on the computer may not work and so there is an insurance. Life without music is unthinkable.

I hoard useful bits of wood, lengths of plastic and metal piping, plumbing and electrical fittings. Some of these will be going soon, but it is hard to think of those things as redundant.

So I am creating, or clearing space, and simultaneously making it easier to get rid of stuff when I have gone. At the moment what I have done is making very little difference I know, and besides space calls out to be filled. Who knows what will fill the void?

Bits and Bytes

Ok I missed a day already. See what I mean about resolutions; there is always something that gets in the way. Yesterday it was grandchildren, who are rather demanding of attention, usually both at the same time. My grandson, like me, is a fan of video games, and unlike me he is good at them.

My first brush with video games was a Sinclair Spectrum computer, with 8Kb of RAM. Programs had to be typed in on a basic keyboard, so you would spend more time typing than playing. The same was true of the BBC computer that followed; though it was a more powerful machine with 32Kb of Ram and a proper keyboard.

Nowadays I confess to owning and using a Playstation 3 and a Playstation 4 as well as two Apple Macs, an iPad and a smart phone. Yes I am a computer victim and am fully addicted.

Yesterday I was playing a game and proudly ,making a lot of progress, having practiced for quite a while. Then in comes the seven year old, who, never having played before, takes over with minimal instruction, and proceeds to make me feel both inadequate and stupid.

Children are so plastic and can adapt so quickly and we are getting left behind at an alarming rate when it comes to IT. However it is a worry that he has reached a level of addiction that has taken me a long long time to achieve. Thankfully next week he goes back to school and will have to tear himself away from screens for a while, and I will have no excuse for not writing.

Changes

I have a hearing difficulty, being totally deaf in one ear, is a real handicap. Not only is my hearing reduced but also I have no idea where sounds are coming from. The ability to hear one voice among many has become impossible and this has consequences in social gatherings. This change in my body has had profound effects on my life.  It has also underlined another change that seems to have become an acceptable norm. In the media, TV or radio, there seems to be a tendency now, whenever there are groups of people, everyone wants their say and so therefore everyone seems to talk at the same time. The civilised interview is a thing of the past. Like me, everyone has an opinion on everything, and wishes to express that opinion. To do so while others are expressing theirs, leads to a cacophony of noise.

It feels like  the world is on the threshold of something. This year should be interesting, and hopefully not in the sense of the old Chinese curse.  The political far right seems to be on the rise and is spreading like an infectious disease and is dragging along with it, those unable to think for themselves.  2017 saw the rise of UKIP, albeit temporarily, and Trump, both riding on the back of racism and self preservation.  The world is changing and changing fast.

Change is an inevitability, it is a function of time and it cannot be halted. Even in the Arabic world, not noted for progress, there are fundamental changes afoot.

Change is neither good or bad, it just is, and one change may suit some but not others. I am getting older and for those of us who are slowing down, change can be uncomfortable. We have no power to oppose it and so we must go along with it.

In a world that is clearly in trouble, we should be coming together to address some of the pressing problems. Instead we are becoming increasingly divided. Every nation seems to want to shut their doors and peep through lace curtains at what is going on elsewhere. Each nation wants to impose their own views and culture on everyone else, and like the voices in a crowded room, no-one is hearing anyone else.

Anyway this is the 2nd  day of 2018 and my resolve to write has been maintained. I hope that 2018 is good for everyone, but I suspect that at the end of it, we will be even more divided.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3vxEudif8

The Pughs part 2

A new beginning

Mr  Pugh woke up the next morning to a strange and eerie silence. He climbed out of bed, pulled down his flannel nightshirt that had somehow ridden up to his waist, and eased open the ragged curtains. The street was coated with a pristine carpet of snow. He shivered, availed himself of the chamber pot, and dressed hastily. Suited and booted he stumbled downstairs with sleep encrusted eyes.  Of Mrs Pugh, there was no sign.  He made a cup of tea, using the teabag that had so far lasted three days, and decided to make one for his wife.  He considered adding poison but settled for milk.  Wondering at her tardiness in rising he tiptoed up the uncarpeted staircase and knocked gently on Mrs Pugh’s bedroom door.  There was no answer so he tentatively opened the door. “Tea my dear.” he whispered in case she was asleep, and stepped over the threshold for the first time in years. The brightness of the morning peeped through holes in the moth eaten curtains. He placed the cracked cup and saucer on her bedside table and opened the curtains without making a sound.

She was sitting up in bed, her half moon glasses sat astride her thin nose, and an ancient bible that belonged to her long dead family was clutched in her bony, blue veined and liver spotted hands. Her eyes were open and glazed and and her thin blue lips were formed into an unfamiliar and discomforting smile

“Time to get up Mrs Pugh.” he softly said in fear of being scolded or worse.  There was no reply and no movement. Mr Pugh crept silently towards the bed. Her face looked very grey and there was no movement of her chest to suggest breathing. He touched her icy cold face and withdrew his hand.  Mrs Pugh was dead and clearly happy to be so.  

For a moment Mr Pugh was startled and confused, but it was only a moment before he too began to smile, and then the smile grew into laughter as he clumped around the bare boards of the bedroom in some semblance of a dance, his steps echoing off the unadorned walls of the bedroom. For the first time since before he was married he felt joy, and wallowed in that feeling.  He stopped his little jig and moved to the bedside. He removed her spectacles and closed her eyes.  He  covered her face with the bedclothes  and skipped down the staircase and into the kitchen where his tea sat  waiting and cooling.  He sat at the ancient table, slurped down the tea, which is not easy when you are smiling, and realised that this was not the end of anything but the beginning of something new and exiting. He had escaped, he was free, he could do as he wished whenever he wanted. Now he had this liberty, he had no idea what to do with it.  Nothing this exciting had ever happened to him before and he didn’t know what to do.  Who should he tell? What should he tell them?  He decided that for now he would tell no-one anything. He wanted to enjoy the moment.

He went back upstairs and into Mrs Pugh’s bedroom and pulled back the sheet, exposing only her face, afraid of what he might see if he exposed more of her. He stood back, looked her in the face and stuck out his tongue, half expecting her gimlet eyes to open. They didn’t, so suitably emboldened, he stuck out his tongue again and blew a raspberry in her direction. He moved around the bed blowing raspberry after raspberry until he got bored.  He covered her face once more, picked up the now cold cup of tea and left the room closing the door behind him.

He whistled as he made his morning porridge and, in celebration, added a large spoonful of sugar. As the porridge boiled in the blackened saucepan, he opened the front door onto the sweet day. A bottle of milk on the doorstep, cream frozen and the foil top pecked away by hungry tits. What lovely birds, he said aloud and closed the door. He whistled as he toured the house untidying things; he lit a fire and piled on lumps of coal regardless of expense, and made another cup of tea. 

He sat contentedly in front of the fire, warming his feet,  gazing into the flickering flames and decided that today he would give the church a miss. He smiled once more and dozed as he had never been allowed to before.

He awoke with a start from a deep sleep, he imagined for a moment that all of this had been a dream and that he would soon be feeling  the wrath of Mrs Pugh descending upon him. The fire had died down and strangely, the clock that he had always hated had stopped its eternal tick tock. The house was silent.

This was the first day of his new found freedom and so, digging into the bowels of Mrs Pugh’s deep brown handbag, he found, among the used handherchiefs and religious bric a brac, her purse, which rarely saw the light of day. He opened it and took out the collection of coins that it held and put them into his waistcoat pocket.

“Time to go out.” he said bravely to no-one in particular, donned his heavy coat and his hat and stepped out of the front door, childishly slamming it shut behind him. There was a cold wind blowing from the sea and the snow squeaked under his tread as he wandered into the town. As he neared the cluster of cottages that was generally referred to as the town, the footprints in the snow increased with many leading to the door of the sailors arms.

Some of the hardier women were there on their glassy doorsteps, arms folded under their ample, floral house coated bosoms, their hair invisible under the standard headscarf, and their pursed lips in a permanent expression of disapproval. The less bold simply viewed the world through their lace curtained windows.

Mr Pugh walked through Main street with a spring in his step, if that were possible in several inches of snow. Curtains twitched and eyebrows raised at  his passing, and there was a palpable communal gasp as he entered the Sailors Arms, where the clock on the wall was stuck fast  at opening time.

When he entered the snug bar, there was a silence, the silence that is reserved for foreigners, and the eyes of all of the drinkers turned towards him. He had never been seen in the Sailors Arms before and had never been seen smiling.  The silence faded slowly as the drinkers returned to drinking and the dominoes resumed their  clacking on the worn wooden table.  Mr Pugh walked to the bar.

“What will you have, Mr Pugh?’ said the landlord.

“ A pint of your best bitter.” said Mr Pugh, adding a “please” like an afterthought.  He paid and took his, anything but best, cloudy ale, to an unoccupied in the corner of the bar, where he sat, still smiling and looking at his fellow drinkers. The first mouthful of beer tasted very bitter and not at all pleasant, but he knew that this would pass.  The second was a little better and by the time he had finished half of the glass, it tasted good and was already passing on its effects to his unaccustomed constitution. He finished the first pint with a satisfied gasp and with a pleasurable belch, rose from his seat and paid for another. The second pint slipped down very easily as did the third, fourth and fifth. The drinkers, once they realised that Mr Pugh was now one of them, allowed him to lapse into the obscurity of the corner.

Having failed to melt the snow, the sun had long since slid away in shame, and darkness coated the town once more. The fishwives had gone back into their homes to nag their husbands and children, leaving the snow to itself. The lights in the bar  and the thin light from the rows of houses were barely lighting main street as he tottered out of the bar and into the snow once more, remembering the direction of home but forgetting his hat and coat.  He trudged back up the hill, not in a straight line and eventually came to an unsteady halt outside his front door. He turned the handle but the door was locked. In his hurry to leave, he had forgotten to take his keys. He giggled stupidly at this predicament, relieved himself noisily and carelessly against the wall and slumped down onto the doorstep, his happy but fuddled mind wondering what to do next. His eyes drooped and he fell into a deep and satisfied sleep, snoring into the night.

He was still there the next morning when, before the sun had struggled reluctantly over the horizon, the milkman found him, frozen stiff with a smile on his face and an icicle hanging from the tip of his nose.

January 1st 2018

Not being one for resolutions that I would never keep. I did decide to try to write more this year. Even without readership, writing has become, in recent years, one of the things that I can still attempt, and though I may not be particularly good at it, it gives me pleasure and satisfaction.

I admire good writers, and by good I mean those who can capture the imagination of the reader, or those who are able to make others think. To write for a living could be wonderful, or of course it could be very stressful.  Writers block is a very real problem for anyone who likes to write or has to write, and although my writing has no value or importance to anyone else, I still like to reach out in some way to a part of myself, a part of me that was dormant for most of my life.

So anyway, I am determined to write more. Part of me would like to write each day as a sort of diary, but that is unlikely. Most days I would have nothing to write about, even though I may have a lot to say, and I am done ranting. It is a truth that no-one else cares about what we think, so self expression is really a waste of time.

Today is the first day of the year and many people will have been celebrating last night and will today be suffering the consequence of overindulgence. Some of us have done that enough times to learn that it isn't worth it, so a shared bottle of wine was as far as we went. So we started the day with clear heads and without upset digestive systems.

Having washed the car in the rain, the rest of the day is free to fritter away as it is for most people before they go back to work tomorrow.  I wish them all well and a Happy New Year to everyone.

Creative writing

A Christmas Lunch (Apologies to Dylan Thomas)

The winter sun crept apathetically above the horizon, bringing a weak and insipid light to the grey and sleeping town. The  clatter and clink of milk bottles in their crates and the hobnailed steps of the milkman and the clip clop of his horse on the cobbled street were the dawn chorus that drew the people from their beds.

Mr and Mrs Pugh had been married for as long as neither liked to remember. They were childless, loveless and friendless and occupied a charmless shabby cottage on the outskirts of Llareggub. Their wedding night, all those years ago, had been a total failure, and their one and only attempt at consumation was so disagreeable to them both that they never tried it again.  After that, their relationship had gone rapidly downhill and where there had once been a degree of tolerance of each other, there was only a thinly disguised, and very sincere, antipathy.

At first light they both crawled out of bed and dressed ready for the day. Mr Pugh in his blacker than black worn out suit that he wore every day of the year, and Mrs Pugh in her spinsterly and tired dark blue frock and wrinkled lisle stockings that had been repaired so many times there was more repair than stocking. Her black and moth eaten shawl was her only salty to winter. They ate their porridge in silence, Mrs Pugh reading a worn out copy of the People’s friend, tut tutting at the contents, while Mr Pugh looked at his wife with a loathing that was more tangible than his  porridge.

“It is Christmas eve Mrs Pugh” He said after a long silence.

Mrs Pugh regarded him over the tops of her half moon spectacles. “I know what day it is Mr Pugh” she replied venomously. Hatred hung in the dining room like an icicle.

There was a rat a tat at the front door, which spoiled the moment. Mr Pugh swallowed a lump of porridge and left the table.  He opened the front door to see Willy Nilly the postman standing and holding out two envelopes. Mr Pugh took them, ignored the other hand held out by the postman, who hoped in vain for a christmas tip, and slammed the door without a word.

One envelope was addressed to him and the other to his wife.  He laid it on the table in front of her, hurried back to his end of the table and sat down to his cold and meagre breakfast. He slit open the envelope with a grubby thumbnail feigning surprise at  the contents. He withdrew the christmas card with flourish and read the greeting inside. “To Mr Pugh from Mr Pugh” it read. He smiled. “Aren’t you going to open yours dear” he said.

“No Mr Pugh, I know what is in it. I’ll keep it until next year.”  “Again” she added without a smile.

Breakfast over, Mr Pugh donned his mole black bowler hat and set out down the hill.  He was the dreaded schoolmaster, and also  the chapel warden in Llareggub, a post that he had held for a decade, even though no-one used the church other than for sleeping off a night at the Sailor’s Arms, or for their last and permanent sleep.  The residents of the town had long ago lost any use for god, a mutual arrangement that suited both parties.  In school holidays Mr Pugh went to the chapel each day, mostly to escape from Mrs Pugh. He would exchange greetings with the rueful and rudderless Reverend Eli Jenkins, dust and sweep and generally pretend that he was doing something useful, pottering slowly until it was time to trudge up the hill to his refrigerated and soulless home.

The sun sank with a sigh of relief and the town began its slide into velvet darkness once more.

It was getting dark as he passed the Sailor’s Arms, already there were the sounds of singing, fuelled by weak Welsh beer, flooding out into the street and bright light oozed from the dirty windows. Part of him yearned to join the  revellers and share their evening journey into oblivion, but he knew that if he weakened his life would be even less worth living than it was already. So Mr Pugh walked on.

They were sitting in the freezing dining room, lit by a single candle, as they did every day, drinking a thin soup that Mr Pugh slurped noisily and Mrs Pugh slowly sipped from her spoon whilst glaring at Mr Pugh across the table. The only sound other than Mr Pugh’s slurping was the steady ticking of an ancient grandfather clock that had suffered the toxicity of the Pughs for generations, and yet still continued to function. 

“You are a pig Mr Pugh.” said Mrs Pugh as she wiped a spot of soup from her withered and puckered lips with the edge of the table cloth. She drummed her taloned fingers on the bare table as she glared at him.

“Yes my dear.” Wheedled Mr Pugh, as he finished his meagre meal. He picked up the dishes and carried them to the scullery where he rinsed them in cold water, dried them on a greasy tea towel and placed them into the cupboard that held two cracked cups, one saucer, and two unmatched plates.

He sighed deeply and returned to the dining room to snuff out the candle leaving Mrs Pugh in darknesss.  “Thankyou pig” she hissed.

“You are welcome my dear.”Mr Pugh wheedled and shuffled off to bed. He shivered as he lit the bedside candle, undressed and put on his grey flannel nightshirt and climbed between the cold  grey sheets.  He heard the  heavy tread of Mrs Pughs large feet as she climbed the stairs to her own bedroom.

There had once been mice in the house but they, unlike Mrs Pugh, had voluntarily eaten the poison put down for them, death being preferable to life with the Pughs.

He picked up a dog eared book and began to read. The life of Doctor Crippen was the only book that he owned and he had read it so many times that he almost knew it by heart. He read a chapter before his eyelids drooped and the book fell to the floor. He forced his eyes open, blew out the candle and fell into a deep sleep.

Mrs Pugh  let down her hair from its tightly packed snowball bun and and put on her cold and starched nightdress that came down to her ankles, climbed  into bed without a shiver and fell asleep almost immediately. 

Mr Pugh dreamed that he was murdering Mrs Pugh as he did every night, and each morning woke up feeling disappointed.

Mrs Pugh lay on her back and dreamed her own puritanical dreams, her mittened hands outside the bedclothes.

Mr Pugh woke with the Christmas Day dawn to the sound of the cracked bell of the chapel, and, left the house as usual. He walked down the hill into the town and was ignored by the women on their knees, scrubbing the worn front doorsteps eroded by time and elbow grease.

The few shops were closed for the day and the fishing boats were harboured and empty, bobbing gently on the grey and oily water.

His refuge, the chapel, was open and the Reverend was there on his knees, talking to a god that he had long ago abandoned and who had abandoned him. Mr Pugh sat  and listened as Eli Jenkins continued to complain about his lot and cursing the godless town.

The day went by, no-one came; eventually the reverend, sloughed off his vestments and vanished, leaving Mr Pugh dozing and alone.  Clouds of breath vented from the still solitary figure and the at last the cold seeped in waking him. It was time to go; he locked the church door and wandered slowly back up the damp cobbled street, passing warmly lit houses disgorging sounds of jollity and high spirits. The air was thick with the smell of coal fires but that faded along with the sounds of laughter and children.

Mrs Pugh was there, ready seated at the dining table, having prepared their evening meal. In the centre of the table was a saucepan contains some overcooked potatoes and scrawny roasted chicken that  looked as if it had starved itself to death. A small  and smoky coal fire burned in the grate, its flames too shy or too scared to dance.

There was very little meat to share, but Mr Pugh made an effort to strip the carcass of every morsel. His grip on the knife tightened as he regarded his harridan of a wife; enjoying the thought of impaling her. Instead he served her the potatoes and  tiny portion of dry white meat and as a final  insult drowned the poor offering in a thin brackish gravy.

He poured them each a small glass of sherry from a bottle that had been in the cupboard for a number of years, and raised his drink as a toast.  “Merry Christmas Mrs Pugh.”  he said, almost sincerely, and drank his  stale sherry in one gulp..

Mrs Pugh’s stony face broke into a scowl and she sipped her drink with the disdain that she held for everything and everyone. She said nothing.

They ate their meal in silence, he, eating hungrily while she pecked at her meal like a sick bird, and as they did every night of their sad little lives, went to their separate beds, hoping to dream of better things.

“Goodnight my dear”

“Goodnight Pig”

The Sailors Arms emptied, the drunken men and women tottered out  and sang all the way to their homes. Their voices thinned out as they went their merry ways. The lights in the houses flickered out one by one, and as the darkness enveloped the town, and  it, along with the Pughs, drifted slowly into sleep.