Post 316. DORMOUSE LIKE.

UNTIL SUNDAY MARCH 31, 2019.
I SHALL HIBERNATE. 

Daylight Saving Time will come back then and Seasonal Affective Disorder should sidle away. 

Now the confounded clocks have had to be put back again. I used to think the only people responsible for such nonsense were powerful shareholders in car battery firms. But batteries are more efficient nowadays - and many only replaceable from the firm that manufactured the car - so the cause of our clock tinkering this year, if media mouthpieces can be believed, is the former second string of scapegoats, Scottish farmers, who don't like the dark days. 
If that really is so, surely the sensible solution would be to make supermarkets pay the farmers fair wholesale prices for their produce, then the poor buggers would be able to afford electric light. 

I never welcome winter. When I retired from the NHS in 1989 we seriously contemplated moving to Scotland - land of one of my great grandfathers - and never looking back. We took a motoring holiday (I didn't mind all the driving in those days) and went on a recce up as far as Inverness. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Lovely country. Great people. But the weather! Until you have spent a wet weekend in Fort William you have no idea what rain off the Gulf Stream can be like. Incessant is the word. 

On the way up we ran into snow, too. It was April. By the time we got back home we were decided. Property wasn't selling well on the Island. Better stay put. It's a small place with the customary quota of small minds, but there are worse places to spend your retirement. 

Guess we made the right choice. 

All the family lives over here now. 

OTHER HOME NEWS. 

Our Roz. 

In conjunction with her treatment, Roz has been gifted a couple of head warmers which, the weather not being north of Watford weather, she tends to forget to wear. Shame. I think she looks good in both of them and particularly so in the one pictured above.

Tomorrow she is back for another chemotherapy session. Had a bad reaction after the last two. 

We can only hope for a better outcome this time.

TELEVISION. 

Andrew Lincoln is leaving The Walking Dead (Fox). The next episode will be his last and it seems likely that this will be the last series as such. 

John Simm in Strangers finally found out all he wanted to know about his murdered wife. 

Good acting all round but the entire story could have been fitted into three episodes and by the time we reached the eighth I didn't care who did what or why. 

The Ghan (BBC Four) was a very long, and apparently very expensive, train ride from Adelaide to Darwin. We quite enjoyed the soporific ambience, but why anybody would pay close on 3000 Australian dollars to spend 54 hours studying scrubland is way beyond me. 

Ah well. To each his own.

Sleep well. I did after this.

Post 315. BACK TO TECHNOLOGY.

WANT IT OR NOT. 

Change is lurking round the corner.

                            Publish your passions, your way

             Create a unique and beautiful blog. It’s easy and free.

Another SOB story. After all my boring threats and abortive attempts to update the layout of this delightful - but unmistakeably yesteryear - blog format, Google Blog seemed to have taken the initiative with the above message which, together with the odd news that I had 'signed out' of my old blog, invited me to create a new one: the invitation being so arranged that I was unable to access the 'new post' page of said old blog. Is there no limit to their cunning? 

I am scribbling this post on Open Office Writer and hoping that the computer lifeboat captain will contact me when my latest save our blog (SOB) story reaches him. 

If it does, the status quo will probably prevail.*

HOME. 

Pauline and Neil. 

Our daughter-in-law and son celebrated their twenty fifth wedding anniversary on Tuesday. Doesn't seem possible but nothing does when you get to our age. 

Mo bought them a congratulations card weeks ago.

Forgot to post it. I was no help. I only remember our anniversary because it comes five days before my birthday (and I only remember that because folk ring and ask what present I shall be saying I don't want). 

Anniversary card, containing apologies and belated congrats, gone now. 

Perhaps we should have a suitably amended version of that message put by for Christmas use. 

Our Roz. 

Roz (on the left of picture with me, her sister Jac and brother Neil) last week underwent a chemo session on two successive days and suffered the not unexpected after-effects. 

Her house in Newport IW has been sold and we are adapting the accommodation here with a view to giving her some breathing space with us for a while.

Mo continues to do all she can for her and we stay buoyant. 

TELEVISION. 

Travelogues. 

Though I normally eschew mockumentaries that seem designed to provide footloose thespians and risible reality show 'celebrities' with freeby holidays, I somehow avoid associating them with 

Joanna Lumley, whose Joanna Lumley's Silk Road Adventure (ITV) has seen Ms. Lumley breathlessly swanning across magical lands like Kyrgyzstan. 

Her sojourn at a camp on the southern shore of Lake Issyk Kul provided the following remarks about the super tent with lavatory and shower room (and signs that it was still somebody's home) allocated to her: 

“I think somebody is living here. I'm inconveniencing them. I've thrown them out. I don't mind doing that. I'm rich and important...” 

It was so gloriously Patsy and tongue-in-cheek that only the most determined anti Lumleyite would believe she meant it. I certainly didn't. 

Though, when it comes to important, Joanna Lumley is the only person I've ever known have a Wightlink ferry brought back for her when she was seconds late to catch it at Ryde Pier. 

From what I recall, she had an appointment at 10 Downing Street so they called back the departing ferry. Yep, she actually is that important. 

No more to say except that 

Ben Fogle, whose New Lives in the Wild (Chanel 5) has also been a firm favourite, was charming, non-judgemental and prepared to muck in with everybody he encountered in this recent series. I gather he concluded it all by climbing Everest. 

Well done. 

In real life (as we few who are not celebrities think of it) Mr. Fogle and his family are every bit as charming. Some time ago when Roz was walking the dog Buddy here on the island, a pair of little girls ran up from behind her to ask if they could stroke him: their parents quickly caught up, apologised for the children's exuberance, gained ready permission for them to make the requested fuss of Buddy (not something to which he is at all averse) and quite made the day for Roz and a blissfully happy dog. 

That family was, of course, the lovely Fogle family. Ignore scandal seekers, there's not much wrong with Ben. He's one of the good guys. 

*As you will have gathered, the computer lifeboat captain duly obliged. Hence the status quo. Thanks again, Neil. 

Google willing, see me later.