Post 376. LAST INCARCERATED WORDS.

BEFORE LOCKDOWN ENDS

ANOTHER SAD MONTH.
This is going to be brief.
It has not been a happy month.
One of my wife's former workmates, and a friend for close on thirty years, Fiona Elliott, died suddenly. Unable to attend her funeral, we watched the crematorium service on the net. Ah, the wonderful world of technology. It was a surreal experience but one to which we shall become ever more accustomed I fear. Our heartfelt commiserations go to her husband, Barry, and entire family.
We also had starkly realistic news that friend Ian Dillow and nephew Phil Butler cannot yet relax in their respective attempts to best that bloody disease, cancer.
Phil has been back in hospital and Ian is awaiting another appointment.
Dear old pal John Appleton, too, has been going through a particularly rough patch.
I don't have the words to rightly express our concern for them.
It is constant.
AND THAT'S IT FOR NOW.
I have had a swollen, painful, left foot which is just clearing up. Well-wishers have been told that it was gout caused through me being posh and eating too much rich food.
What?
No, I've no idea what it was.

Oh, the illustrations have been put in to cheer things up a bit.
Be lucky.

Post 375. FIRST THINGS FIRST.

HOME.

TWO VERY SPECIAL BIRTHDAYS.
Since my last post two of the leading ladies in my world have celebrated birthdays. Mo (pictured backing British farmers: dunno why, none of them sent her a birthday card) reached the august age of seventy seven on 12 November. She won't mind me disclosing that; she's still thirteen years my junior.
All the family got in touch by any means possible and it was a thoroughly enjoyable day.
Then yesterday we celebrated granddaughter Jess's twenty fifth birthday.
Roz organised a lockdown get-together and quiz that enabled us all to meet on our family laptops. Must have been a dozen of us from half a dozen locations. It all went splendidly and was a triumph of technical ingenuity at a dicey time.
Sadly missing from the proceedings was our artist daughter-in-law, Pauline, who has now been found to be suffering from a form of cancer and is undergoing the onset medical procedures. Neil is doing everything he can for her. We can only wish them the very best. What can one say? That bloody disease.
STILL WANT TO BE A WRITER?

THEN YOU HAVE TO WRITE.
You can't just sit and stare.
I'm no doubt repeating myself here, but one of the prolific crime story writers of yesteryear (John Creasey I think) once asked an audience of ambitious would-be scribblers:
“Are you really set on being writers?”
And in response to their unanimous affirmative said: “Then you shouldn't be here, should you. You should be away...writing!”
Every SAD season for as long as I can remember I have found myself sitting at a keyboard wondering whether I've had enough of me in print and whether perhaps you have, too.
Trouble is, if I gave up writing altogether I'd just sit and stare, and you can't just sit and stare; that would be a totally negative thing to do. So I knock out a few words and hope for the best.
At my time of life I'm not likely to obtain sudden literary fame and now that lockdown is with us again every dubious celebrity in Christendom is turning up on television to advertise a – probably ghost written – book. So even if I produced a saga of should-be best sellers there is scant likelihood they'd make it past first base without the cloying insincerity of (in my case non-existent) television buddies to plug them.
It's a funny old world.
Always has been.
I do sit and stare of course: weak-kneed I know, but still can't resist the box in the living room.
TELEVISION.
We have looked in on Gogglebox (Channel 4) once or twice and reached the conclusion that it is as well we are not among the couples whose programme views are televisually recorded.
The forthrightness and profanity evinced in this house by yours truly alone would have the law at our door even more quickly than they got here when, some years ago, Mo gifted them a batch of her home-made cheese straws.
No, it wasn't bribery, it was repayment for their kindness after her - then relatively new - car gave up the ghost at an awkward location in Newport. What? Yes, she makes very good cheese straws.
And we have some great coppers on this Island.
Now where was I?
Oh...yes....

We recently binged on Justified, a modern day western which ran from 2010 until 2015 and starred Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins, Joelle Carter and a host of splendid fellow actors: a most enjoyable medley of mayhem based on stories (mainly Fire in the Hole) by the late Elmore Leonard. To offset that diet of violence we have also been watching episodes of Brokenwood, half a dozen series of nicely observed whodunits from New Zealand starring Neill Rea, Fern Sutherland, Pana Hema Taylor, Nick Sampson and, of course, a host of splendid fellow actors. There's no shortage of talent in the acting world today. Opportunities to perform have always been sparse though, and the cursed Covid must seem like the final straw to more young hopefuls than ever before.
Ah well. Keep learning your lines: and avoid bumping into the furniture.

Post 374. HERE WE GO AGAIN.

NATIONAL LOCKDOWN TWO.

WITH SCHOOLS BACK IN ACTION.
Two of our family (daughter Jac, a teacher, and pupil grandson Ellis) have been required to go back to school. The second lockdown does not apply to schoolchildren and those who teach them.
As you nice people will know, Roz, a LSA at Medina College, resides here. She is in the 'shielded' category, temporarily unable to work at the college, and currently locked down with us. Grandson Ellis, who also lives here, is required to attend that same college every day. Work out the logic of that.
Apparently pandemics cease at school gates.
Perhaps we should simply scrap the slogan Save our NHS.
How about Bugger the Teachers and Anyone Close to the Aged?
Or even...
LET'S EMPTY THE SUPERMARKETS.
Have you ever wondered why, a couple of days before a two day Christmas break, people can be seen pushing trolleys towards supermarket checkouts with maybe a dozen loaves of bread piled atop their festive shopping? Ever thought: they can't all be hoteliers, or guest house owners, or nursing home proprietors: so what the hell is the size of their family? Ever thought: I wonder how much of that load the avaricious bastards will have to throw away?
The moment there came warning of another lockdown they were at it again: only now they were heading towards the checkouts with trolleys laden with enough food and toilet rolls to last right through this year and next.
So much for “We're all in it together.”
We're not. In every group of people there's at least one pain in the arse.
America has just got rid of its most obvious one.
TRUMP IS OUT.
I didn't think they'd get rid of him. Every trigger happy bullshitter in the USA was rooting for him and there are a lot of them.
I guess it was just a case of enough is enough. Replacing a politician with a reality show spin merchant may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but the reality soon palls.
In this country we once replaced a royal with a commoner and look where that got us. Charles the First was (like most royals) a waste of space, but Cromwell, an empowered 'man of the people' who replaced him, was a petty dictator.
Best leave palaces to royalty and politics to politicians, no matter your thoughts on those fitting either description.
If it was left to me I'd pull down all the palaces, replace them with affordable housing, and pension off the royals. By the same token, I'd only give politicians ten years in which to do their worst. I'd then present them with a good pension and tell them to piss off.
Anyway, just over half the USA has voted Trump out, so now they'll have much the same atmosphere in their country that we've had in ours since Brexit. Difference is, theirs will be with guns. Good luck with that.
Trump now seems hellbent on earning himself the title “sore loser of all time.” What a dickhead.
AS FOR US.
Maybe we'll even come to realise how tenuous the 'special relationship' we are purported to have with America really is. President-elect Joe Biden Jr. (77), who likes to describe himself as Irish, will have no more time for England than does any of the Welsh, Scottish, or Irish nationalists around us in the British Isles. I think only a handful of Americans are aware the UK exists and those that do see it merely as a quirky provider of visiting entertainment to the USA (e.g. Billy Connolly, Bradley and Barney Walsh, Miriam Margolyes), as a repertory company of television actors prepared to play baddies with an English accent, or as a handy area in Europe wherein to site the nuclear weapons an unfriendly power might attack as a conflict opener.
Let's face it, we're on our own.
And that, with the boy Boris and his bumbling bunch in charge, ain't particularly reassuring.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST.
Old friend Anonymous John has discontinued using his computer. Healthwise he has had a very hard time for a very long time. Our hopes for his complete recovery are constant. He and Sheila have now gifted me his fine Canon PIXMA printer. Mine did need updating.
So thank you, John, I shall try to put it to good use.
You may not be surprised to learn that Roz had to install it for me. Sometimes I wonder how I ever learned to ride a bike.
It's too late for 'soon' but get well, old mate, get well.
You're a one-off and much missed.