Post 321. ANOTHER YEAR ANOTHER OUTLOOK.

HOME.
Our Roz.

Good news all you kind supporters who have been wishing Roz well in her battle with cancer. On 16 Jan she had the first meeting with her consultant since that double mastectomy and was informed – verbally to be followed in writing – that she is currently free of all cancerous cells. I cannot describe the relief. 
Please keep wishing her well, my dears, it's obviously working.
Thank you.
Nephew Phil. My Leader's nephew, Phil Butler, who has been a stalwart supporter of his cousin Roz throughout her illness, has phoned from his home on the mainland to say that initial stage cancer cells have now been discovered in his liver and lungs. We can only wish him safe recovery. Good luck and keep fighting, mate. You're a star. 
BLOODY TECHNOLOGY.

Internet Explorer keeps telling me (via a little box on Facebook) that Internet Explorer has stopped working. 'A problem caused the program to stop working correctly.' (It says) 'Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available.'
Beneath that a smaller box invites me to 'Close program.'
If I've offended 'em I don't know how.
Bloody technology! 
ONLINE IS AWASH.
With competitors.

Now that newspapers are passé and banks are almost lost from the high street I am wondering how long it will be before the Ban Everything brigade moves into Wipe the Web mode and seeks legislation to rid online of any company or individual with an annual income of less than £400m.
The legislation lobby strengthens under the groaning weight of daily newspaper journalists now flooding the web and understandably keen to establish it as a place legally occupied only by their own kind, i.e. paid purveyors of politically bigoted bosh. 
This country really does get more like America every day.
TELEVISION.
Good tele? 

If you are English you should know, if you are American you may not, that Father Brown - based on the fictional character invented by writer and broadcaster G.K. Chesterton KC*SG (1874 – 1936) - bears resemblance neither to this England at any time in the its pre or post WW2 history, nor to the popular-in-their-day stories written by Chesterton. I mention this to amend my earlier description of the series as: 'a watchable dose of dated hokum.'
It is watchable and it is hokum, but it is not dated. The age depicted has simply never existed. It is just a fantasy age drummed up by television producers and directors. In avoiding such notions of what constitutes 'good tele,' I now avoid any programme (antiques, snooker, quiz...whatever) wherein participants are given bloody silly nicknames, any competition finale where I am expected to wait longer than it would take to make a cup of tea to find out, after I have been told “the winner is,” just who the bloody winner actually is, and any show where the 'witty' presenter has clearly been instructed to take the piss out of fellow performers because 'that's what the public wants.'
If that's what the public wants, it deserves what it gets: dumbed down television.
I watch more films and repeats on my planner now.
And if you think I've written all this before, your memory is better than mine.
Watch your step and avoid road racing.

 

Post 320. TRUDGING ON HOPEFULLY.

INTO 2019.
Our Roz. 

On January 7th Roz went into St. Mary's Hospital, IW, for a double mastectomy performed by a team from Southampton: two surgeons worked simultaneously over some ninety minutes.
She recovered better than expected from the anaesthetic and, though sore, has felt well since and is now back in her own home under the care of a district nurse, of Mo, of kind friends, and of granddaughter Jess who is staying with her every night until full recovery. 
On the same basis, grandson Ellis is staying here with us.
I am just eternally grateful for the dedicated and skilled professionals who carry out such superlative work.
Suffice to say I have, over the past year, discovered I am nothing like as tough as I thought myself to be; a finding that has not escaped my Leader, who knows my every mood backwards. Well, even English boys of the nineteen thirties can't always hide their emotions. Sad though that we feel so guilty about showing them.
As mentioned elsewhere within these posts, I was a NHS employee for over three decades (1957 – 89), believed in it implicitly, often found fault with it, too easily fell out with snotty seniors, and thought then, as I still do, that politicians and shit top administration will eventually do away with any semblance of the wonderful public funded service it was meant to be.
We'll finish up following America again. Devil take the hindmost.
In the meantime, keep thanking the gods for all the wonderful doctors, nurses and administrative staff we still have left in Britain.
No final date for Roz to move here yet, but it should be before the month is out. Radiators are in (thanks, Dean, you're a good lad), carpeting is down and everything is ready.
Whether you know her or not, wish her good luck, eh?
MUSIC.
To relax.

Relaxing while working, with the little music centre doing its stuff.
A long time favourite CD of mine, Lars Vogt playing Schumann's Piano Concerto, with the CBSO conducted by Simon (now Sir Simon) Rattle. Young Lars played it beautifully at Leeds in 1990 and I ordered and picked up the recording from Symphony Hall Gift Shop, Birmingham, on a day trip to a CBSO matinee (a sixtieth birthday present from Mo).
We can't manage trips of that sort anymore, but we enjoyed them while we could. I console myself with the thought that if I went now I'd probably have to listen, before the real music came on, to some modern cacophony that infuriated me.
Which reminds me: since Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 was taken over by Lauren Laverne (from the excellent Kirsty Young), people young enough to regard twentieth century music as ancient have become the fashionable castaways. Listening to a recent choice I sourly remarked to Mo: “If I was rowing towards a desert island and heard that one's music I'd turn right around and row away.”
(Yeah, I know. Miserable old sod.)
But, to be fair, 'that one' would probably turn right around and row away if he or she heard any of mine. 
TELEVISION.
Hunters and hunted.

We are being caught up by police procedural in the crop of old coppers' memoirs currently in evidence. My favourite to date has been Manhunt in which Martin Clunes (brilliantly underacting) plays real life DCI Colin Sutton of the Metropolitan Police, a man who plainly never overacted throughout his entire career and as a consequence was, without doubt, frequently dismissed by glib bullshitters of higher rank.
DCI Sutton's painstaking pursuit of the serial killer Levi Bellfield was shown on ITV over three nights and - even to one who normally eschews both literary and screen 'true detective' depictions - was mesmerising stuff. 
Can't say the same for Hunted or ex cop Peter Bleksley on Channel 4: my disenchantment with reality television has been diminished by neither.
For the fictional detective devotee two new series with the return of Father Brown (BBC1) played by Mark Williams, a watchable dose of dated hokum, and Grantchester (ITV) starring Robson Green and, apparently for the last time, James Norton: a feel good dose of sham 1950s for the oldies.

I watch both with frequent smiles and an occasional groan. Love the premise, see the flaws.
THAT'S IT FOR NOW.
Thanks for your Christmas cards, all who sent them, and apologies to those who may have somehow been missed off our list. It came and went so fast.

All the best again for the New Year.
Mind how you go, and avoid picking up the phone to any number you don't recognize.