Post 339. A SMATTERING OF ADVICE.

FOR THE WOULD-BE SCRIBBLER,

 

Do use a notebook.

If you are the would-be scribbler who, reading this, has the notion of writing a blog of your own, you may possess and even regularly use an 'ideas' notebook. If you do not, I strongly advise that you obtain one and keep it close at hand to instantly record those moments of genius you get when you least expect them.

I have a notebook and a couple of pads: gifts I seldom use (you may not be surprised to learn). I should use them. I would if I could find them. I just forget where they are and when I do find one I lose it as soon as I've made a note in it. I also kid myself, when I get what I think is a bright idea, that I will easily retain it in my head.

Big mistake.

Lord alone knows how many ideas I'll eventually take to the crem. with me. Reason I'm writing these words now is that the bright opening topic I thought up last week was gone from me by the weekend. You may well be less forgetful than me, but take no chances. Use a notebook.

The forthcoming election.

Back in the early days of this blog (Post 8) I wrote: I shall try not to mention anything faintly political again. I lied. But there's a lot of that about at the moment.

Faux humble pie was much in evidence on all sides by Wednesday evening of last week. Apologies abounded from leading politicians for just about everything from speaking their minds to breathing. This is, after all, the age of 'apology for everything.'

The exception to the rule appears to be the leader of the opposition who has adopted “Let me finish, please,” as his mantra whenever an interviewer attempts to interrupt his remorseless flow. 
I wait in vain for the interviewer to say: “No, Mr. Corbyn, you are here to be interviewed. If you merely want to perform your act, please do it somewhere else.”

By the same token, I do wish some top person, both in Health and in Education, had been bold enough to say to the Prime Minister: “No, Mr. Johnson, our hospitals and schools are not pawns to be used by smiling politicians with their shirt sleeves rolled up. Go back to doorstepping and give healthy grown ups the chance to tell you you're talking bullshit.”

As things stand I don't believe a word said by any one of them on either side.

I think the Tories will get back in. 
There will then be at least five more years of total chaos. 

FRIENDS.

Three old pals. 
'Anonymous' John, Ian and David. 
Both John and Ian have had a less than ideal year healthwise. Like most Brits I never quite know what to do or say at such times, but before the year is out I'd like them to know that our (Mo and my) thoughts are constantly with them, as are our very best wishes.

And (combination of dithery memory plus unacceptable inaction) I missed a chance to meet up with David recently. I am sorry about that. Had we met I might have told him how much I appreciated his email comment on the picture below: Just fabulous, I wondered where it had gone! Anyone get the registration number?

Now that's the reaction of a real policeman.

Good luck with the Christmas decorations.            
Mind how you cross the road.

Post 338. AND ANOTHER THING.

ABOUT GETTING OLD.

 

You can't avoid cynicism.
Another election on the way and here they come, oozing from the woodwork, with their visits (jacketless in rolled up shirt sleeves) to hospitals and their paternal posing in schoolrooms surrounded by cute kiddies. It's like a Hollywood casting couch for UK members of parliament. 
Anything goes. 
Today the Tories are saying that if we vote them back in they will drastically cut immigration and that a vote for Jeremy Corbyn will see a veritable tsunami of foreigners flooding our cosy clique of a country. It's an appeal to that shitty facet of the British psyche that used only to be seen on football terraces.

As for old Jeremy himself: at present he seems hell-bent on widening the north/south divide by unfavourably comparing tardy governmental reaction to flooding up north with what might have been had it happened in Surrey. 

Y'know what? North/south/red/blue/stay/leave, I'm sick of the bloody lot of it. 
Will no one ever wake up to the fact that we're now just a piddling little spot on the world atlas, not the Great British Empire we were brought up to believe we were (and had a divine right to be) when I was a boy in the nineteen thirties? Those days will never come back, thank God, no matter how much we depressingly creep to America or try to convince ourselves we are still of worldwide importance. We're not big enough to constantly be indulging in petty area rivalries, either. The North -  South thing is just as stupid as the Catholic - Protestant thing and almost as self-destructive. 
Rulers divide to conquer.
So let's try to find somebody who wants to govern for the benefit of country, not self, without childish point scoring, or playground bullying, or appealing to isolationism. 
I might even vote for them.
What? 
Yeah. It's an impossible dream.
I'd be convinced they were lying.
YOUR AGE SHOWS

In your musical taste, too. 
I know I've said as much before, and may well do again, but I have been reminded ever since Lauren Laverne took over Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 that my musical taste is no longer compatible with that of the majority of modern castaways chosen to reside on that imaginary island. Many of my favourites are no longer with us. 
As I write this, Harry Nilssen (above) is serenading me for the umpteenth time on the Steepletone with A Little Touch of Schmilsson. He follows Georges Guetary whose Ma belle Marguerite CD features 23 mono recordings 1946 to 1951. Wonderful. 
While I would determinedly row my boat away from the music I heard from most desert islands now, Nilssen's rendering of This Is All I Ask and Over The Rainbow, or Guetary's I'll Build A Stairway To Paradise would have me  landing on a tide of musical enthusiasm. 
Takes all sort, don't it.
Back again before the election all being well.
Mind how you go.