Post 503. MEANDERING ON.

WHILE IT ALL HAPPENS

AROUND US.
The Middle East is in chaos. Religious zealots are now openly warring with each other. The Americans whose meddling - slavishly supported by our lapdog lot - is largely responsible for it all, is finally making futile noises. Meanwhile, that puerile prick Putin still attacks formerly neutral neighbour Ukraine, that duplicitous dickhead Trump is quite likely to become the US President again, and we have an unelected Foreign Secretary who disappears at the drop of a bollock..
It beggars belief. 
Mo and I meander on. Mo is spending more walking time with a three wheeled frame (her right knee gives her hell) and I am constantly dealing with excreta leakage: not a nice subject, the latter, but colon cancer is not a nice topic. Yesterday, for the first time since I was told I had it, I looked on line for information about the cancer. Seems that, statistically, I may have a year or so left. I have a MRI scan next Thursday to which I am not looking forward. And that's that..
Most of the time I count myself lucky. I have a loving wife and family, a few good friends, some happy and some sad memories, and the firm belief that I  have seen the best of this country.
If I'm still here I'll not vote at another election, and I fear for our descendants, stuck with the rubbish currently on display. But I guess they'll manage even if, sadly, Powell was right.
Regret the downbeat tone of this post, my dears.

Put it down to my condition.
Be back in more cheerful mode next time..

Post 502. RANDOM THOUGHTS.

 IT'S BOAT RACE DAY

ON THE RIVER SLIME
First random thought: It is Cambridge/Oxford Boat Race day, and both crews deserve better than a shit filled river Thames upon which to fulfil their rowing dream. As I write, the Cambridge women have thrashed the Oxford women for the seventh time, so no change there. But nobody will be ceremoniously dumped into the river today: there are doctors among them who know better than to trust colleagues to the slime of the Thames. Oh, the Cambridge men won. too.
We glance at the race every year, but have never been to Cambridge and, other than visiting our daughter who taught at an Oxford school, the City of Dreaming Spires is little more more then backdrop to the Morse, Lewis, and Endeavour TV series to us. 
Second random thought: The clocks go forward an hour tonight. Well, that's April buggered up. 
Third random thought: We enjoyed The Mule, a film produced, directed, and starring Clint Eastwood. Whoever he plays, old Clint is watchable. When I first saw him he was Rowdy Yates In Rawhide. He was good. Then came The Man with No Name in the spaghetti westerns and the Dirty Harry films; all good. In 1971, with Play Misty For Me, he became a film director. He has gone on to become a better and better film director. And I like him even if he is an American.
Which is about it for this month. Mo and I are watching

a thriller set in New Zealand.

The box calls. 

Cheerio for now

Post 501. OUR LOCAL GENERAL PRACTICE.

 IS MOVING BACK TO TOWN.

LEAVING NO LOCAL DOCTOR HERE.
I have just received a letter from the GP Partners at the sole practice in Wootton Bridge telling me their rented (I thought it was owned by the NHS) surgery in the village is now in such a state of structural decline that it will probably have to be demolished and rebuilt. The Practice has been offered options for temporary accommodation to facilitate the undertaking of rectification works, but has concluded that the extensive work required would be too disruptive and a permanent relocation is the better option. The troublesome surgery (above) was erected only ten years or so ago, and I cannot help but ponder which bright planner of the time declared the site suitable for purpose? Whoever it was will not be unearthed. The buck never stops anywhere nowadays.
Oh, the customary local bigwigs have started to mutter dissent and will customarily be ignored.

The Island's Conservative MP, has become an openly testy interviewee on TV programmes debating the next general election. He understandably cares only about retaining a safe seat. 
TELEVISION.
We have been watching repeats from three series of ancient Inspector Lynley Mysteries on Drama. Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small were great as the thick aristocratic boss with the sharp working class assistant, and we enjoyed it. We have also been watching old episodes of Agatha Christie's Marple, starring Geraldine McEwan, and Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn. I thought I had given up on repeat repeats, but you can't stop watching truly watchable actors. We have also been directed to Whitstable Pearl and some episodes of The Brokenwood Mysteries (both on Drama) not previously seen by us, and all of it very watchable. We also watched Coma on Channel 5. Jason Watkins, Jonas Armstrong, and Claire Skinner were strong leads and David Bradley easily retained his position as the finest supporting actor in film or television anywhere. I dislike 'true crime' stories, so I found this mini series far too close to the truth. 

Everything else on television seems like one big PR exercise to convince me what a diverse (the 'in' word) country we now live in. I think divisive the more accurate word, but I'm an old grouch.

ON A MORE CHEERFUL NOTE:

THE LOVELY DOG, BUDDY.

Our late daughter Roz's much loved dog, Buddy, gives the lie to the theory that an animal who looks like him has to be a dangerous brute. Roz would have been fifty four on the twelth of this month: she died three years ago on the twelth of next month. She is never far from our thoughts. I republish the above picture as thanks to Sue and her family who, way back, sent it to show how he was settling in with them. I think he still has the same best pal and menagerie of interests.
Good for him. And you if you have kindly kept up with all this over the years.

That's it for now. Cheers.
      

Post 500. INCREASINGLY MONITORING

MY TELEVISION VIEWING.

TO SIDESTEP REALITY.
Sidestepping reality TV is a hard thing to do. The 'everybody will get fifteen minutes of fame' era is upon us, so it's cheap viewing for the easily pleased.
In my quest to avoid the intolerant views of  former gutter press journalists and Brexiteers under whatever current guise, I have all but abandoned the Jeremy Vine programme on Channel 5: might look in if there seems to be somebody of interest to me, but most of the token celebrities and failed old hacks who regularly appear are, to my mind, ignorable seat fillers.
By much the same token, I am too old and set in my ways to welcome programmes full of happy young souls setting Surrey, Kent, or Camberwell alight. Good luck to 'em, but I don't need watch. Nor do I bother with football now: the soccer world is a money pit packed with falling down foreigners and managers bravely wrestling with the English language. How the hell does Gareth Southgate pick an England team? There are scarcely any English players left in the Premiership.
All of which is an elderly mither that will probably be registered as racist, sexist, ageist (or a 'phobia')  by many of those who climb aboard every twenty first century bandwagon going by.
WELL, IT IS LEAP DAY, SO

AND A HAPPY BIRTHDAY 

to any 100 year old celebrating their twenty fifth birthday today. 

Enjoy it.

Post 499. IF YOU'RE NOT A GAMER

OR A MOBILE PHONE HUGGER

YOU'RE IN MY WORLD.
On the unworldly assumption that no change, for whatever reason, is ever for the better, I have survived thus far into 2024 without switching on my mobile phone each day or even looking for my (doubtless battery flat) ipad. I cannot bother to sit at my computer killing off fictional aliens, and I have been 'silent walking' for donkey's years. If that makes me 'Dennis no mates,' so be it.
If you are lost on a mountain and in danger of death (why do they do it?) then a phone call to a rescue team is a godsend. If you are a beleaguered mind seeking solace a phone conversation with some fixated crank can be a sadly fatal way out. A voice in your ear cannot match face to face contact. NHS patients in their droves are currently discovering that and will, I fear, continue to do so until whatever government of the day finally puts paid to the service altogether.

Never think NHS survival is a certainty. Insurance companies and Americans hover greedily.
Reality in all its forms encompasses us at an alarming rate. Politicians and the media regard us as gullible children. Professionalism, in anything but lying and deception (politics), is increasingly being replaced by puerile amateurism (just look at your tele). The world has gone bloody mad.

But cheer up. If you were born in a leap year you can have a birthday party soon.

That's enough until then.

Be lucky.

    

Post 498. THERE WERE EIGHT GIRLS

 LEFT TO RIGHT:
                                                     DORIS, MAUREEN, JEAN, LORNA.

                                                               PAT, RUTH, PAM, MARG.
A VERY ENGLISH FAMILY.
When, early in our relationship, Maureen told me she had seven sisters I was – as an only child with two (unofficial and part-time) foster brothers– intrigued and a trifle apprehensive. What would they make of their 17-year-old baby sister taking up with a thirty-year-old former soldier now a lowly NHS employee? They were a very English family. Mostly tolerant. Sisterly close. Quick of temper. Shrewd in judgement. I was a trifle apprehensive?
Mo introduced me to them gradually, mainly in their own homes, and answered the most often (thankfully kindly) asked question: “Where did you get him?” with: “I got him on the NHS.”

Over the years I came to know them individually, though all but one of them (oldest sister Lorna, an Isle of Wight  resident) lived in or fairly close to Portsmouth. they holidayed together at an island chalet complex every year, and were jokily known by its manager as 'The Sisters Grimm.'
I liked each of them as individuals. Being human, I had my favourites. Marg. was one of my favourites. She was the one who did not want to live beyond her seventies, who married Mike on the same day that our youngest child, Roz, was born (12 March 1970), who did the cryptic crossword in a broadsheet every day (a couple of times she attempted to teach me the knack, but I was hopeless), who swam thirty lengths at a local swimming baths three times a week, and whose television viewing in summer began and ended with  tennis at Wimbledon.
As the years passed on so, one by one, did the sisters until, with the death of Pam in 2020 (Post 348 refers), only the fourth born, Marg. and the last, Mo, were left. Now lovely Marg. has gone.
Throughout the last year or so her health, both physical and mental, went into decline and, despite every possible assistance that Mike (now in his late nineties) tried to give her, she was eventually admitted to the Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth, and thence to a NHS nursing home where, barely a week later, and two days short of her ninety fourth birthday, she died. 

There is little I can add except my commiserations to Mike who will be finding it all hard to take in, and my sympathy with dear Mo who now has none of her seven sisters. 
REMAINS ONLY TO SAY

MARG URRY nee HAMMOND.
A KIND, NICE PERSON AND
THE LAST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.

    

Post 497. THE BADGERS OF DEEP WOOD.

BY GUESS WHO

IS HERE IN PAPERBACK.
I had some rather nice Christmas presents last year, so forgive the old scribbler if he makes particular mention of one of them. Our son, Neil, gifted me the paperback of my book for children aged 6 to 18 (though I've always said 9 to 99), The Badgers of Deep Wood. It was a complete, and a wonderful, surprise to me, is printed by Amazon, and costs £12.69 to buy. Worth every penny/cent, says he. It is my one and only - probably ever  - published work of fiction, so I am delighted to have it sitting now between hardback sets of Philip Pullman and J.K. Rowling on a bookshelf that also contains a copy of  Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows.
The cheerful Badger cover was designed by Neil. What it is to have a graphic artist in the family.

So, like a television chat show guest, I have plugged the book and have not much else to say..

Please consider buying it if you have youngsters who might enjoy it. And read it to them. 

THAT'S IT

.BACK NEXT MONTH 

 

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