2 (35) NO? AH WELL...

THE MIDDLE EAST.

 Ever wonder? Seen those television shots of underground tunnels housing ISIL - ISIS - Daesh (whatever) fighters - terrorists - nutters (whatever)? 

Seen those bombed to buggery buildings wherein lived women - children - collateral damage (whatever)? 

Ever wonder whether, every bit as much as twisted religious teaching, big power bullying has done nothing but escalate fanatical hatred over there? 

Ever question whether raining bombs down willy-nilly can possibly bring an end to it all? 

Ever ask why the hell we keep sticking our noses in? 

No? Ah well...

HOME. 

Promises promises. So a government that was not going to allow fracking below protected sites has now agreed to said fracking. 

Another U-turn? Another promise broken? 

Well, no, the drilling will have to begin outside the sites and can then insidiously encroach below them. 

Does that sound like political flimflam to you? 

No? Ah well...  

What flood defences? Here we go again.

God knows how much is supposed to have been spent on improving flood defences in Cumbria over the last six years but it hasn't had much effect, has it? 

Right now the poor devils suffering from that disastrous flooding of the past few weeks must be asking: what flood defences? 

It might take a ludicrously simplistic mindset, but wouldn't we be better served pouring money into flood-proofing places like Cockermouth than in pouring bombs down on foreign countries with whom we are not officially at war? 

No? Ah well...

BOOKS. 

Finished reading No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay (my thanks go to Viv, for putting me onto it) and was inordinately pleased when I again guessed, very early on, who the 'surprise' villain was. 

Also read Hogfather, Terry Pratchett's 20^th Discworld novel and a glorious send up on the subject of Christmas. I chose to read it, quite by chance, at exactly the right time of year, which was an added bonus. HO.HO.HO. 

TELEVISION. 

Clear out time again. 

Nurse Jackie, played by lovely Edie Falco (above), was a drug addict, two-timer, liar, thief and, at her best, a superb nurse. Her story, sad to say, has just ended in the only permissible way a story like hers could end. Presumably she won't be back. 

Dr. Who, played by Peter Capaldi (who I like), has taken his leave again. I did not much enjoy the last series, have no idea where he might land next time and, sad to say, no longer care. 

But he will be back. 

Grimm, played by David Giuntoli, has shoved off on half term holiday taking the rest of the likeable cast and their make-up artists with him. 

They'll be back. 

The Walking Dead, headed by Andrew Lincoln, also tend to disappear for short breaks, usually when a mainline character has fallen prey to lurching scriptwriters dressed in rags. 

Occasionally this viewer disappears, too, but that is only when he loses patience with the strangulated cacophony of approaching zombies. 

Who made that bloody soundtrack? 

What? 

Oh, they'll be back (in one form or another). 

THE FESTIVE SEASON. 

Lor, don't it come round quick!

Half our Festive gear is still unpacked. 

But a week away from Christmas Eve. 

My Leader has done what she can in the card writing and present wrapping line.

I have contributed only by taking it to the local post office, which is now in the Spar shop up the road. 

I'm sure many nice people will have been missed in the controlled panic that inevitably surrounds us every Yuletide, so I take this opportunity to bid 

A HAPPY AND PEACEFUL CHRISTMAS 

from Mo and I and the cat Shadow to all who read these words, be they: Google Staff, Government Snoopers, Net Browsing Insomniacs - or simply 

Cheerful Regulars. 

GODBLESSYERWUNANALL! 

2 (34) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY X.

WHAT A WASTE.

The eighties. In 1981 there was race rioting around England and hunger strikes by Republican prisoners at the Maze prison in Northern Ireland. The Conservative government was having a rough ride and blaming it on the last Labour government because that's what politicians of all parties automatically do. 

I was wryly amused when, in 1982 (and as quickly as they had been formed), Area Health Authorities were abolished. On the Island there was a muttering departure of top egos (most of them carrying fat redundancy cheques) and that was that: work procedures changed but little, the remaining top jobbers - many of them prize examples of confidence over competence - cultivated new ways to justify their existence and most patients either did not notice the changes or were stricken with apathy. 

A couple of weeks after it was all over I ran across the departing AHA Chairperson in a local department store. I had first known her when she was a quiet little member of the NHS Executive Council. 
Promotion to Chair of the AHA had magically transformed her into a provincial Margaret Thatcher, complete with the patronizing voice and dutiful, sycophantic retinue. Demotion had clearly upset her and she bemoaned the removal of her favourite high-flyers with the words: “What a waste.” 

I tried to look sympathetic as I responded: “Well, we all have to accept change don't we, my dear.” 

It was one of her own 1974 pearls of wisdom. We never spoke again. 

Those still working were the lucky ones. The country was in a state of recession with 3 million out of work. Things were looking increasingly grim for the Thatcher regime when along came the invasion of the Falklands by Argentina. 

Prime Minister Thatcher sent a task force to liberate the islands and its success carried her back to power in 1983 by a landslide 379 seats (a 144 majority) There followed a massive programme of privatisation and deregulation (just about every nationalised concern except the NHS) and the eradication of the entire coal mining industry. 

This appeal to the self-serving profiteer in many a worthy citizen, together with sympathy for those Tory MPs and their families who had suffered in 1984 from the IRA bombing of their conference hotel in Brighton, led to a third Conservative re-election in 1987. 

Did I say somewhere that the eighties had to be an improvement on the seventies? 
I was joking. 

Job-wise I plodded along giving the best I could to whatever I did and gradually becoming more and more disenchanted. 

Finally, late in 1988, with another gigantic reshuffle of the NHS pending, I got to the office one morning to be told that a colleague in the hospital finance department had been given early retirement. The member of staff who met me with the news was one I trusted implicitly. 
“Good for him,” I said. “I wish I could.” 
I then went into my office and waited for the summons to the Administrator's room: it took about half an hour. 

“Ah, Dennis,” he said, “I am told you want to retire...” 

So, at the end of March, 1989, I took early retirement. The following month my last Barnden's Beat was published in Link, the Wessex health staff newspaper. It was headed No regrets... and summed up - past, present and foreseeable future - why I was not unhappy to leave the NHS. By the time it was published Maureen (pictured below with our young buddy Hannah) and I had taken off on a driving holiday that took us up as far as Inverness in Scotland. 

  No. I had no regrets.

2 (33) WORLD NEWS.

THE MAYHEM IN PARIS. 

Murderous, quasi-religious zealots. 

I had started on a post about the eighties when the headlines from Paris came through. Memories of Thatcher, race riots, picket strikes and the transfer of the utility services to privatisation, faded into insignificance when faced with the news that murderous, quasi-religious, zealots had butchered and maimed over two hundred innocent civilians in the French capital. 

Clearly the lunatics had broken out of the asylum again. 

There is little I can opine that has not been better expressed by informed minds in the media. In i this week there was an excellent article by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown expressing, with regret, her belief that we shall need more state surveillance in Britain.* 

There was also thoughtful input on the mayhem in Paris from i regulars Ian Burrell, Stefano Hatfield, Simon Kelner (below) and Matthew Norman. 

Kelner's View (Thursday Nov. 19th), headed Glorious night for football – just forget about the game, was particularly pertinent. Whilst lauding the “great dignity and wholeheartedness” with which English football fans showed their empathy with the French people at Wembley last Tuesday (“ ...it is at times like this that we see how powerful, emotionally connective, and – yes – relevant sport can be”), Simon Kelner saw it as just a one-off. It would not “turn us into more thoughtful, compassionate people,” nor would it “encourage us to put national interest aside for the greater good.” And it would not stop “England supporters screaming abuse at French players should the two nations meet in proper competition next year.” He concluded that we must celebrate this welcome “outbreak of humanity” for now and added: “I just wouldn't read too much into it.” Too right, mate. 

My apologies to Mr. Kelner and i for so cheekily quoting his work in this amateur blog post and I promise him (the first editor of The Independent, no less) that it won't happen again. He did write what I was thinking better than I might have done, though, and I wouldn't credit that to many scribblers. 

Personal thoughts on the entire Middle Eastern conflagration are hard to portray. My sympathy for the kith and kin of those irrationally murdered in France and elsewhere by stupid born bastards calling themselves ISIL - or whatever - is matched only by my concern for the many innocent souls killed and injured in the (don't tell me it's not indiscriminate) bombing of locations in Syria and Iraq. 

What (I constantly find myself asking), in the name of all the oil in the ground, are we and the Americans and the French and any other nation outside of the Middle East, still poking our noses in there for, anyway? And is it worth hundreds of thousands of lives - maybe even WW3 - to get it? 

For chrissake, somebody, find a cheap alternative fuel for motor vehicles. Let's get out of this nightmare. 

*I think we are already the most photographed populace in the world, even when the powers-that-be no longer have the funds to keep all the cameras running. But who knows? Yasmin A-B could be right. 

Be back soon. 

2 (32) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY IX.

SOME THINGS JUST DON'T HAPPEN. 

The seventies (continued and concluded.) 

Edward Heath's beleaguered Tory government departed in 1974 and a Labour government led by Harold Wilson finally gained control, though only with a very narrow majority. In 1976 Wilson was replaced by James Callaghan and the Labour government borrowed from the International Monetary Fund.

Things, as my mother used to say, had come to a pretty pass. 

On the work front, I could see no point in the new Area Health Authority which, I was convinced, was a totally unnecessary tier of management. I did not like hospitals, had never wanted to work in or around them, heartily disliked the more overbearing of the buggers who did, was blunt in conversation about it and fell out rather pointedly with one or two of the more arrogant of the ilk along the way. 

Honesty is not always the best policy. (Ask Gerald Ratner. Ask Brian True-May.) So in 1978 when my (former Southampton; still living there; got to the office every morning at about half ten, went home every afternoon at around three) boss, the FPC Administrator, took his retirement, I applied for and, unsurprisingly, did not get the vacant post. The interviewing panel, which included at least one of the aforementioned ilk (judge not a man by his friends but by his enemies), gave it to a good talker. He came over from the mainland. I had come across him in the past: he had scant ability but had neatly mastered the art of moving from place to place before his mistakes caught up with him. Within a year he moved onwards and upwards. A bearded version of him then obtained the post. I didn't apply. No point. 

Some things just don't happen. 

What did happen was that Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first female prime minister in May 1979 and three months later Lord Mountbatten (cousin of the Queen and a popular governor of the Isle of Wight) was assassinated in Ireland.

My Leader has since remarked that the NHS in the seventies (like the Dementors in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books) drained me of all joyousness. I do regret putting her through that. A man brought up in the thirties really should have done better than bring his workplace home with him. 

Anyway, most of the protagonists are now dead and my dealings with them best forgotten. The eighties surely had to be an improvement. 

HOME. 

Nice people. 

We are blessed with an abundance of nice people who come by to tell us how much more the old surgery now looks like a family home. 

We have also been visited by the fire brigade's safety officer who fitted the place with smoke detectors and advised us how to reduce the hazard of accidental fire. A pleasant and worthwhile bloke. Our thanks to him.

TELEVISION. 

There has been much coming and going about which more next time. For now: 

The Graham Norton Show (BBC1 last night) captured the first television interview in 42 years by Maggie Smith - a magic appearance. 

If you missed it, look it up on one of those repeat thingies. Worth the viewing. Even the ubiquitous Mr. Norton is tolerable in such company.

2 (31) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY VIII

AND THAT WAS THAT.

The seventies (continued). 

The man from the ministry was Sir Richard Hayward CBE (1910 - 1994), regarded in some quarters as a poacher turned gamekeeper, but a pleasant bloke man to man. I met him at the wet end of Ryde Pier and drove him to the Executive Council offices for his appointment with my boss. I was quietly impressed by him and he was openly impressed by my elderly, midnight blue, Humber Hawk. (Of all the cars I ever owned that one was my favourite, too.) 
It transpired that the forthcoming NHS shakeup planned to bring together the disparate governing bodies of hospital, family services and local health. Area Health Authorities would be formed and, since it was an island, the IOW would have its own Area Authority. At the same time, Executive Councils would be disbanded. (City offices like Portsmouth and Southampton would be closed down entirely and taken over by the County office.) Nationwide they would all be replaced by Family Practitioner Committees with brand new members and lay chairpersons. 
It was a prize example of the political/civil service maxim: “If it ain't broke, for chrissake mend it.” 
Executive Councils were Insurance Committees up until 1948 when the newly formed NHS took them over, amended their function and renamed them. They were run by Clerks who, in the main, were qualified Insurance Institute members and knew their business. 
I don't know whether the same could be said for hospital management which was predominantly headed by the medical profession until the establishment of the NHS. Non-medical administrators were then recruited, largely from local government departments which, in all too many cases (I always thought), must have been bloody glad to see the back of them. 
In 1974 they, together with all the Clerks of E.C.s and allied health bodies, were to find they were jobless and their jobs had been put up for grabs. They could, of course, reapply for that job or they could seek a similar or improved post elsewhere. 
The new Authorities (Sir Richard told local heads of departments) would have new members and they would choose their own top officers to suit new, forward thinking, requirements.
By the time this esteemed Departmental spokesman had departed, all the top dogs in health on the Island (other than those already on the retirement list) were hastening to hone their interviewing techniques and assess the opposition on their ladder to Area Health Authority greatness. The smell of ambition was palpable. 
My own boss went for an interview at Portsmouth E.C., where my old boss had just retired. I might have gone for it but, in the circumstances, judged I would stand no chance. In the event, my boss was offered the job and tactfully turned it down. It transpired that he was also in the lineup of hopefuls for the post of Area Administrator on the Island. He was interviewed for that and he got it.
I became Acting Clerk of the IOW E.C. for the last six months of its existence (which included all of Ted Heath's three day weeks).
The Portsmouth and Southampton E.C. offices were duly closed down. The boss at Southampton was four years away from retirement and of similar experience to my old Pompey boss. He joined the shortlist for the post of IOW FPC Administrator and, unsurprisingly, was appointed. I was shortlisted, but the interview was a formality; in that company I was not to be remotely in the running. 
Much later I learned that Departmental specialists like Sir Richard, who had been sent to disseminate reorganization propaganda nationwide, had left firm advice that where Clerks departed from Executive Councils their Deputies should not replace them as Administrators of the new Family Practitioner Committees: such vacancies should be filled by outside applicants. So the 1974 reorganization changed my title from Deputy Clerk to Assistant Administrator. And that was that. (To be continued.) 
HOME. 
Surprises. 
Maureen had a change of hair style. (We both tend to be rather conservative about such things.) I like it and everybody says it suits her. 

That's my girl.
Moving house is a traumatic and at times surprising experience. Among the pleasant surprises afforded us has been an awakening to the many damned good books we had so far failed to read in our library. Meanwhile, the cat Shadow (below) has discovered the simple pleasure of cross-legged repose. I told him it wouldn't be allowed in a hospital and he muttered something. It sounded like 'Bollocks.' 
READING. 
Finished Maskerade by Terry Pratchett. Splendid. The Phantom of the Opera will never be the same again. 
Have read A Fresh Wind in the Willows (1983) by Dixon Scott; one of the previously unread books in our home library and a creditable little follow up to Kenneth Graeme's masterpiece. 
Am reading No Time for Goodbye (2007) by Linwood Barclay, another overlooked gem from the home library: more next time.

2 (30) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY VII.

EVERYTHING WAS TO CHANGE.

The seventies. 

In March, 1970, daughter Rosalind came into the world; a lovely little caulkhead (person born on the Isle of Wight). I think I knew there and then that we would stay on the island until we kicked the bucket. Now she is a lovely grown up caulkhead with a smart daughter at Uni and a great young son whose picture can be seen at the end of Post 2 (29). 

Everything was to change. 

In April 1970 the Beatles finally broke up with the departure of Paul McCartney (Lennon had gone in '69): pop groups would never be quite the same again. 
In 1971, London Bridge was transported to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, as proof that the almighty dollar could buy anything. Didn't bother us. Our little family was settled in a charming old semi-detached house at Wootton Bridge and I was firmly established in my NHS post. 

Decimalization was introduced into Britain and overnight our spending money fell to less than half its value the previous day. A cheerful 240 pence to the pound was reduced to a paltry100. Governmental claims that prices would adjust accordingly were bullshit; prices didn't - and never have - adjusted. 
A twopenny box of matches was still twopence after decimalization, but a shilling was worth a mere five pennies, not twelve: QED. 

In 1973 Ted Heath took the country into the European Community (I do not recollect being asked whether I wanted to join, but suddenly the 100 pence to the pound caper made sense). 

The decade had started with the ruling Conservative party struggling, among other things, with the organizational needs of an ever growing and increasingly costly National Health Service. 

Politicians of every persuasion, their civil servants and their advisers (clinical and academic), have forever been disruptive fleas on the NHS hide. It's what they do. 

From a career point of view the seventies is not a time I care to remember. 
There was one bright spot. 

In 1972, Ian Dillow, the then supremo of Wessex Regional Hospital Board's trail blazing (and eventually award-winning) quarterly newspaper, Link, accepted my first light-hearted contribution to its pages: this became a regular column, Barnden's Beat, which survived until my departure from the service in 1989. Life was pretty good. Our baby was flourishing and the youngsters were doing well at school. At work I was deputy to a boss who was ten years older than me and with whom I got along very well. My dealings with the professions and the members of the Executive Council were amicable. In the scheme of things the Clerk would retire at the age of 65 and I, with some seventeen years of management experience under my belt, would succeed him. 

Then, in the words of an old Frankie Laine song, along came junior swinging his little axe. 

Junior was in fact a senior civil servant who came hotfoot by train and boat to the Isle of Wight from London to smooth the way for a huge reorganization of the NHS as we knew it. 

It was to put an emphatic end to any future career prospects I may have thought I had. 
(To be continued.)
HOME. 

Settling in is still taking longer than anticipated, but the back garden trees have been cut back (and down where necessary). The garden is enormous. 

My Leader has been re-covering a chaise longue in the conservatory. Guess who decided to try it out before she was finished? 
More when I can take it all in.

 

2 (29) SO WE'VE MOVED.

AN OPENING SMILE. 

HOME. 

Back to Wootton Bridge. 

Yep, another new start, and none the easier when you're that much older. Essentially, we must thank daughter Roz and her partner, Nick, for the hard graft and dogged determination they have put into transforming a sadly run-down branch surgery into a pleasant and ultimately, we anticipate, rather desirable private residence. They did it all in their spare time (both have jobs), so we count our blessings. 

We are also indebted to daughter-in-law Pauline and son, Neil, for their kind hospitality during the final stages of the work; for a while we were homeless and only travelled to Wootton to feed the cat Shadow (unhappily imprisoned in one of the two upstairs bedrooms for close on a fortnight). 

When we finally moved in and freed him he let us know - loudly for two days and nights - just what he thought of the entire bloody exercise. 

He is now sound asleep in his current daytime chair. His distress, compounded by spasmodic pain in one of his back legs, was short-lived. The arthritis/ bruise/ strain/ subsided, the paws adapted to the stony car park behind the house, the overgrown garden didn't seem quite so enormous anymore and...sorry, Rosie...there turns out to be a pretty little tortoiseshell female cat living next door. 

Taking stock. 

I am taking somewhat longer to come to terms with it all. In the current property climate (only in London and the south east can it be called a market), the ideal prospective purchaser is finding it almost impossible to get a mortgage. The bankers who buggered up banking and had to be bailed out, are now approaching minor money lending with all the confidence of ice skating gazelles. This means that estate agents (many of whom couldn't sell salt to pygmies at the best of times) are once again spending long hours examining their fingernails; in this buying crisis their only positive clients are would-be landlords eager to buy properties to rent out at the top rental prices in Europe. 

During the last war these profiteers were called spivs or drones: in the Thatcher years they were unsurprisingly lauded as opportunists and entrepreneurs: now they have gained ersatz respectability and are described as property developers. They front television programmes and talk about their 'portfolios.' In common with their predecessors they are chancers who appear whenever there is a crisis. As people with whom to have dealings they are slightly less desirable than dog shit on your shoe. 

So from whence came the only offer our estate agent conjured up in the year we were on the market? No need to ask. But, all things considered, the consensus was that we needed to move. So we did. Mine was the lone dissenting voice and I said little. 

Caveat emptor! 

In the unlikely event that I am alive to experience another move, however, mine will be the voice that instantly responds to punters who say they have “done their homework” and follow it up with what Phil and Kirstie chirpily refer to as “a cheeky offer.” I shall gently enquire which banana boat they thought I came in on and follow that up by telling them to fuck off. 

I am no dealer, but I am wryly familiar with the maxim Those who can...do: those who can't...set up a blog and whine about it. 

Ergo: this topic is now closed. 

READING. 

Finished Terry Pratchett's A Slip of the Keyboard and learned a little about what made him a world famous writer. 400 words a day, 365 days a year for one thing! I'll pass. 

(Have just started his Maskerade. The incomparable witches are at the opera. More next time.) 

Also finished Ben Macintyre's A Spy Among Friends. Silly sods the lot of them. 

A CLOSING SMILE. 

Holiday time. 

Our grandson and his family dog. 

Who cares about the weather?

Cheers! 

2 (28) YOUR LIFE IN THEIR HANDS?

AFTER A TWO YEAR WAIT... 

Wednesday 10th June: 

At lunchtime, the telephone rang. It was a call from 'Donna' at St. Mary's Hospital on the Island offering Maureen an appointment for a further operation on the leg which, two years and eight months ago, underwent a hip replacement. (She has since walked precariously with a stick and hardly a couple of steps without one.)

She was out. 

I contacted her. 

She rang the hospital to say that we have sold our house and are waiting on the legalities to determine (indeed, are trying to pack for) the forthcoming move. After two years plus of waiting, she asked, does it have to be this quick? Three or four weeks hence would see us in better condition for it. 

Donna switched into hospital coercion mode. She could, of course, ring again in three weeks time: “But if you refuse then you will be struck off the list.” 

Right, that's it then. What time tomorrow? 

7.15 am. 

So, at what seemed to me to be bloody midnight, we arrived at the Island's only remaining hospital on Thursday 11 June to by told by a pleasant little ward sister (Filipino I think - or can't you say that now?) that my Leader was second on the list that morning and I could ring at one o'clock. 

In the event, Mo came out of surgery at about 2 pm following an Exploratory Left Hip Abductor Repair - LTHR (bigger scar than last time) and the surgeon’s instruction that this was to be treated in the same way as another hip replacement. 

On the Saturday she rang to tell me she could come home. The Isle of Wight Festival was under way so I suppose the hospital thought they might need the beds; there was already a poor bloke in a side ward who had been at the festival three hours, tripped, broke a leg, said farewell to the £270 cost of his ticket and was destined to miss a great performance by Fleetwood Mac. 

Anyway, all the necessary aids for convalescence had been installed here (borrowed from the Red Cross, blessem) and the little Leader is now, in her usual fashion, setting about a return to normality, or what passes for it in this house. 

Oh, she has looked up hip abductor repair on the web, too, and it transpires that the symptoms are exactly those she has been describing to everybody involved in her follow up appointments for the past two years. Ne'er mind. Somebody finally twigged. 

Your life in their hands? 
Tell me about it.

TELE GETS WORSE. 

A cat's view. 

The cat Shadow has taken to adorning my Leader's chair; he sprawls comfortably atop the sturdy little recliner - stretched out behind her head - and moves but occasionally to remind her he is there. Sometimes he will drape languidly across the back of her neck like a black and white cat stole. He eats frugally and sleeps a lot. He would rather look out of the window than watch television and currently I feel he has more sense than either of us. 

Tele gets worse. Reality outnumbers entertainment and when it comes to reality I can't be fussed with what goes on next door - on either side - let alone down the terrace, so I certainly don't give a toss what's going on in the Big Brother house or whether, at the instigation of an English confirmed bachelor with an inappropriate beard, two characters named Mich(elle) and Mel(anie) are - or are not - going to buy a renovated French farmhouse with gite. 

I did watch the cup final. When it finished the cat Shadow suddenly opened one eye and said: “You got that wrong, then.” 

I gave him a Den's 'don't go there' stare. “What you talkin' about?” 

 “You said Arsenal would be at least three up by half time and would probably win six nil.” 

“Well I wasn't far out, they won four nil. Aston Villa weren't really in it.” 

“No, you got it wrong,” he said, “by two goals.” 

“So sue me. It was a pretty good game though, don't you think?” 

He yawned. “How the hell would I know? I was asleep.” 

He wasn't asleep for The Republic of Ireland v. England. 

He went out. Proof positive that he has more sense than either of us. It was a friendly. It finished nil - nil. It was bloody boring. 

Less so the Slovenia v England game which England deservedly won by three goals to two: at times, in the second half, Roy Hodgson's team almost did look the business.

Armada: 12 days to save England. 

My Leader and I watched this together. Presented by Dan Snow (looking very alone on a small boat in the English Channel), it had Anita Dobson playing the self-absorbed, penny-pinching Queen Elizabeth I, a true Tudor and classic example of why the French and the Russians did what they did to their royalty. 

Truth to tell, the whole thing is better put across in about three minutes if you watch Horrible Histories The Spanish Armada, which can be seen on Google. 

READING TAKES LONGER. 

Finished: Terry Pratchett's Soul Music. It took me right back to the sixties, what I remember of them. I did dismiss most of the music as rubbish at the time. What did I know? 

Am still reading: Ben Macintyre's A Spy Among Friends. What treacherous bastards they all were.

Reading takes that much longer nowadays and I have a recovering hipster to keep an eye on: she, for her sins, bought me the late Terry Pratchett's A Slip of the Keyboard (first published in GB in 2014). She has since been unable to concentrate on anything other than my reading aloud hilarious chunks from the maestro's reflections on life, death and hats. Worth every penny. 

If I'm not back quite soon we'll be on the move.

2 (27) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY VI.

ADVICE FROM A BALD-HEADED BARBER.

The sixties (continued). 

So there we were. Middle of the swinging sixties. Two children and a roof over our heads. Not much else. Still, compared to many we were lucky. I certainly was: my young wife had great legs and it was the age of the mini skirt. Financially, though, we were treading water and close to sinking. I had reached the lofty grade of Higher Clerical Officer: the salary was not enough to support a growing family. It was hardly enough to justify a car (even, as it was by then, a little Austin A30), let alone my monthly haircut. But the car was a snip from a friend of my mother and the haircut was an impossible to avoid essential: impossible to avoid because there was a very competent 'short-back-and-sides' barber in the road alongside the office and essential because no self-respecting ex boy soldier would go around with hair like a dosshouse drunk.
Anyway, I liked the barber. Didn't know his name - or he mine – but he always greeted me with: “How are you, sir? And how's the wife?” 
My response to both questions never varied: “Fine, thank you.” This exchange was enacted long before I met Maureen or had any notion I might ever marry. Never asked why he thought marriage suited me; perhaps it was my worried look. 
He had an interesting background which included a spell at a barbershop on Portsmouth Town Station. The senior barber at that time had been a Mr. Morris, a Russian Jewish immigrant justifiably proud of his sons, Aubrey and Wolfe Morris, who were actors.
Such little snippets enlivened our conversation as my barber snipped along. If required, he finished off the haircut with a shampoo which, he maintained, had to be done twice in succession if it was to nurture the hair. He was bald, so it was hair-care advice from a bald-headed barber. 
Did I take it seriously? Of course I did.

 Elsewhere in the world a bunch of people whose barber was probably a 'stylist,' the Rolling Stones, had a huge hit with (I can't get no) Satisfaction. Never did work out why Mick Jagger had that problem. 
In my case it was down to the tightly monitored staffing grades and levels imposed on Executive Councils by the Ministry of Health on behalf of the taxpayer. There was no promotion to be had at Portsmouth; if I wanted a pay rise we would have to move. In the event, Malcolm X had been assassinated, Twiggy had been named face of the year and England had won the FIFA world cup before such an opportunity came along. 
In 1968 experienced officers were invited to apply for the post of Deputy to the Clerk of the Isle of Wight Executive Council (NHS) at Newport, I.W. I applied and, to my surprise (because I never, ever, interviewed well), got the job. 
I reported back to my boss at Pompey with the words: “So you were right when you thought a man who came here from the army wouldn't stay long.” 
He laughed. “How long ago did I say that?” 
It was eleven years. 
We finally moved on 1 July, 1968. I had then been the Island E.C.'s Deputy Clerk/Finance Officer for three months and was beginning to understand the ins and outs of it.

 It took longer to take up residence in our new home (though house buying at that time was not the traumatic experience it is now), but we eventually settled in Wootton Bridge, a village three miles from Newport. The commute was an easy one; there was very little traffic on the roads over here in those days. 
We quickly settled back into the routine of young family life (few concerns outside survival and bathing the kids). 

When, on the 21 July, 1969, Neil Armstrong said: “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” it barely registered that the swinging sixties were swinging to an end. 
The Barnden family had its own giant leap to consider. Maureen was expecting our third child. 
(Oh yes, I remember the sixties.) 
HOME. 
The election. Went. Voted. Same wet plank with a blue rosette got in. Never accuse islanders of unpredictability.
BOOKS. 
Have read: Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death, by M.C.Beaton, a bread-and-butter yarn from a prolific writer (well, writers have to live, too) and am reading Soul Music by Terry Pratchett and A Spy Among Friends (Philby and the Great Betrayal), by Ben Macintyre. More later on both. 
Mind how you go. 

2 (26) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY V.

IF YOU CAN REMEMBER THEM...

The sixties. 

It has been said, too often, that if you can remember the sixties you weren't there. I can remember them well enough and that says it all. Never in my life smoked pot or wore flowers in my hair and, from my mid-twenties onwards, had little time for the music of the day. Was never a 'teenager' for that matter; they came later. Back in the forties you were just a spotty adolescent. Never lived in a tented commune with the smell of damp clothes and cannabis and free love, either. Might have been a nicer person if I had; but no, all that passed me by. I wasn't there. 

Met my Leader for the first time in 1961 (she tells me). We first went out the day the Berlin Wall went up. I'm not sure whether that signifies anything. We drove, in my Fiat 600, to a pub out in the country that she “had heard was quite nice.” When we got there the owner of the shop where she worked and one of his male assistants just happened to be “having a drink” in the lounge bar. What a coincidence! We had a pleasant evening and as I drove her back home I realized, in silent amusement, that I had just passed the first test: had I not I would have been driving alone and her boss or his assistant would have escorted her home. You'd have to be a complete moron not to admire feminine guile like that. 

The following year we were married: sold the Fiat (complete with fog lights and abarth dual exhaust) to help fund it. Went on honeymoon to Cornwall in a hired Mini with bald tires. Nobody gave a sod in those days. Later bought a former McDonald's fisheries van to drive to and from work. Cats followed me around for months. Well, I like cats. Mo found work with our local newsagent and I carried on working for the NHS (poor money, but one day there would be a pension). 

It was the year The Beatles recorded their first single (Love Me Do), and it was the year Marilyn Monroe died (who knows how). The assassination of JFK in 1963 was less of a surprise than it might have been. In a country where everyone has the right to bear arms, the decision to drive the American President into Dallas in an open car had to be fatally optimistic didn't it? That said, I don't think any of it affected us much. We were new to married life and gently happy. At the beginning of February 1964 our son, Neil, was born at a nursing home in Emsworth, on the Hants/Sussex border. Towards the end of July, 1965, his sister Jacqueline was born at home. Back then, hospital - home - hospital were the advised birthplace venues for successive babies. Might not be the same now. In the NHS, as in education, the police and all the public services, the bureaucratic goalposts were (and still are) constantly changing. It's the prerogative of politicians to meddle and, one way or another, they always do. If I had a thousand quid for every Minister of Health (from Derek Walker-Smith onwards) who was a total twat, I'd be a very rich man. (To be continued) 

READING. 

I finished Terry Pratchett's Men At Arms (published by Gollancz) with the smug self-satisfaction of a man who has come late to Disc World and still has a load more of the series to read. Do I need to laud the genius of the late Sir Terence any more? Surely not. If you've read him you'll know what I mean: if you haven't, get on down to your local bookshop and spend a few quid. You'll not regret it. 

The World According To Noddy (Constable). Noddy Holder's “life lessons learned in and out of rock 'n' roll” is an easy read. Lots of famous name dropping, but if you are as famous as he is you are bound to have lots of famous names to drop. The man is entirely down to earth and it is plain that what you see is what you get. I like Noddy so I liked the book. 

Apropos the above: Our son went to the Reading Rock Festival in 1980 and came back full of how Slade, a last minute booking, had stolen the show.

“You'd have thoroughly enjoyed it, Dad,” he said. “Nobody gave them a hope and they turned out to be the best thing there.” It did not surprise me. 

That was the festival where, as he was leaving, Neil was shoved up against a wall and searched for drugs by the police. He has never been a smoker - tobacco or anything else - or a drug user, so must have been chosen on appearance alone. (In his teens he could look a bit way out.) Anyway, they found him to be clean and sent him on his way. 

I have already told the next bit many times, so skip it if you've heard it:
I was paternally peeved. 

“Did you take down any of their numbers?” I asked. 

“No, why would I?” 

“Because you hadn't done anything wrong. If they'd done that to me I'd have taken down their numbers and written a stiff letter of complaint to the Chief Constable about it.” 

He shook his head: 

“They wouldn't have done it to you, Dad. You'd have walked down the middle of the road in your suit, tie and waistcoat and the only thing they might have said to you is: 'Good day, sir.'” 

A wryly accurate assessment which I doubt would still apply today. 

Enough for now. More fairly soon if my computer hasn't been packed for a move by then. The cat Shadow, unabashed by age, has found two new girlfriends next door. I fear he will strongly object to being shifted.