Post 413. A FAST FAREWELL TO 2021

 A  CRAP YEAR.

THAT ENVELOPED US IN A DARK CLOUD..
I am going to waste scant time on this. It has been a darkly clouded year for our family and I hope yours has been a better one.

For us, the death from cancer of daughter Roz on 12 April is constantly brought back by the myriad reminders of her residency here for the two years throughout her brave, subsequently unsuccessful, fight for life.
She is, rightly, always on our minds, though we try hard not to give way to self-indulgent grief.

Grandson Ellis is still with us and maintains remarkable outward composure.
Granddaughter Jess clearly misses the close friendship of her mother but does not allow it to become self-pity.

They are their mother's children and her obvious pride in them has been utterly justified.
Other than that, is has been a crap year. I do hope yours has been better.
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW.

AND TO HELL WITH THE BLOODY COVID!

        

Post 412. IF YOU READ THIS BLOG

HAPPY CHRISTMAS.

THANK YOU FOR BEING A FRIEND.
With especial thanks to our pal of many years, Maxine Boyd-kerr and her mother, Gail, for the totally unexpected invitation to join them and family for lunch on Christmas day. They are lovely people and, though predetermined plans for the festive weekend precluded our acceptance, we were honoured to have been considered in such a thoughtful way. 

Have a very merry couple of days, dear friends.
Your kindness has cheered us immensely.

CHRISTMAS CARDS IS A COMIN'.
Christmas cards is a comin'

Their Santas are in sight.
Christmas cards is a comin'
There'll be reindeers in flight

And presents even though we're stuck at home

And presents even though we're stuck at home

Look here! The Christmas cards is a comin'

There'll be worries tonight.
(Did we send one to them? Did we send one to them?)
FESTIVE ENTERTAINMENT.

It will be television again. Much of it repetitively dire stuff filmed last July by perspiring participants in full winter getup. Much of it I shall sleep through or otherwise avoid.

Way back when our Sky set-up was amended I lost coveted recordings of Lars Vogt (Beethoven piano 1 and 5) and Daniel Barenboim (Brahms piano 1 and 2). Disconsolate, I wrote to Sky Arts and was advised by two helpful staff ladies that those offerings were no longer on their play list. An optimistic staff male later begged to differ, but the ladies, of course, were right.
However, I now have two splendid replacements that will ensure a happy Christmas for the cat Angel and me. I have the wonderful Dutch violinist Janine Jansen playing 12 Stradivari violins and I have the splendid Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki playing Beethoven piano concertos 1 to 5.
We shall be happy.
One small point: have been interested to note that the presenters of the Beethoven piano concerto are billed as Krystian Zimerman, Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Would be interested to know where Jan Lisiecki, Tomo Keller and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields went. But I do love a good billing cock-up.
Thanks for recordings and the laugh,

WISHING YOU ALL A HAPPY AND COVID FREE CHRISTMAS  

 .             

Post 411. THIS TIME IT WAS MAUREEN.

TAKEN TO HOSPITAL

AFTER A FALL AT HOME.
There was a bloody great crash, followed by five days in hospital, and now Mo is getting about with a walking frame - very slowly.
I didn't hear the phone ring at seven o'clock in the morning: she did and scrambled out of bed fearing it might be brother-in-law Mike ringing to say that her sole remaining sister, Marg.,who has lately been through a disturbing sequence of health problems, had been admitted to QA Hospital, Portsmouth, again. It wasn't. And, so far as we could later find out, it never was anybody we knew. It was probably just another confounded nuisance call from a former bastion of the British empire. Whatever: she lost her balance trying to struggle into her dressing gown and down she went. Just how she catapulted from the side of the bed to the floor at the foot of it is beyond comprehension, but being beyond comprehension has always been part of her charm.
I got her back to bed, but it became apparent she needed more than an old man's sympathy and breakfast on a tray. She needed treatment in hospital. Two kind and efficient ambulance men duly arrived and took her away. She finished up in a pleasant little side ward at St. Mary's with two other patients. The main ward sister was our next door neighbour when we lived in Newport: it's a small world, the island.

That was on the 10th of this month, so she spent her seventy eighth birthday in a hospital where, thanks to Covid (for want of a better way of putting it), no visitors are allowed access.

With the help of ward sister Heidi and our hospital based granddaughter, Jess, she did get her cakes and chocolates however: so on the day she was probably the most popular patient she could possibly have been with most of the nurses and fellow patients about her. She likes to share.

A fortnight ago yesterday, in the evening, two pleasant ambulance men brought her home by ambulance, wheeled her up the drive, carefully deposited her into her chair in the living room, and left. We were on our own again.

Oh, nice people have been and presented us with convenient seating for the shower and the toilet. Other than that we have been left to our own devices.
So Mo is getting about with a walking frame - very slowly, and I am gradually reawakening the half of my brain that went to sleep way back when 'Mo does that' became the order of the day.
And for the benefit of any macho moron who may mistakenly read this, being a housewife is bloody hard work and requires one helluva load of thought.

Stay safe, kindly non-macho reader.      

Post 410. STILL STAYING UPBEAT.

OR TRYING TO.

NOT MUCH IS MOVING.

Current movement in this house is comparable to that of the cat Angel pictured at the end of my last post and the picture shown above. It ain't startling.
I am trying to stay upbeat. A variety of favourite music on the Steepletone; the fan heater warming up the garden room; writing the blog; it keeps me pushing along. All in all it's an immense privilege whether I can afford it or not. We hang on here by the skin of our teeth: an amalgam of stubbornness, disinclination to broach finances, and despair at any possibility of a fourth move since my retirement in 1989.
Now there is a rumbling that all elderly folk in large houses could be forced to downsize or get themselves tucked away in an old people's home. This, the theorist posits, would free thousands of large houses for young people to buy, especially those with families. A reasonable theory. 

In practice young people need sensibly priced family homes, not overpriced barns. The majority of the homes abandoned by downsizing oldies would be bought by greedy property dealers intent on transforming them into grotty flats from which to obtain exorbitant rents.

Don't talk entrepreneurs to me, a WW2 kid. Spivs are just spivs: nothing more, nothing less.
Morally we are property paragons anyway. Though set in a vast garden this is not a large property, our grandson still lives with us - and hopefully will at least until he completes his time at Platform One College of Music - so we are well placed on the desirable old fart's ladder. By the time we reach the stage where kicking that ladder away makes sense, I shall probably have kicked the bucket and the family will be debating: 'What shall we do about mother?' or in this family: 'What does Mum say she wants to do?' (It had better be the latter or I'll bloody well come back and haunt them.)
Which is enough about us for now. I'm still all adrift from that confounded hour change.
TELEVISION
The box across the room becomes more and more a home cinema, less and less a radio with pictures. Oh, we still watch the news on BBC1, a reasonable selection of quiz shows, select bits of a boring morning (well, there's nothing else on) chat show, most of the competitive prancing dancing, cooking, sewing stuff, and the proliferation of celebrity walking and talking Britain documentaries, presumably launched because it works when undertaken by Julia \Bradbury (for whom we have considerable regard. Get well, lovely girl, get well).
RIGHT NOW 

It is ten to five in the evening GMT here.

Almost dark and I need to put my feet up.
I think we'll ignore the adverts and have a quiet Christmas.

Why am I even thinking about it?

BACK BEFORE THEY ARRIVE

 

  

    

Post 409. ANOTHER MONTH ENDED.

THE CLOCKS HAVE GONE BACK.

AND AS USUAL
Some smartarse tried to convince me I'd get an extra hour's sleep. I didn't and I won't for at least a  month or more.. It is not perversity. It is the inbuilt time clock. I shall be awake and ready to get up at around a quarter to nine British Summer Time until nigh on Christmas and maybe right up to the end of the year. I awoke at bang on 8.45 BST this morning and went around making sure all the clocks - except the one on the oven which is a bugger to mess about with - were put back to what they have to read now. I'll sort out the oven when I can find the instruction book and the patience. It was raining buckets outside and the guttering is leaking badly in a couple of places which didn't help my mood.  Lord knows what this bloody hour thing does to night shift workers, but (as I boringly say every year) it sure niggles me.
I know: the words GET and A LIFE spring to mind. Thus to
THOSE TEDIOUS MEDIA TYPES.
Why are so many real life media types totally unlike the person they transform into when faced by a microphone or camera? Hear them chatter to their own kind on radio or television and butter wouldn't melt. They come alive. They are the nicest, most approachable, people in the world. Run  across them away from the spotlight and they are so far up themselves you would want no conversation whatsoever with them, not even from six feet away with a mask on.
Most of them will be given honours by HM or the Government. Ah well.
I'VE GOT ALL I WANT.

He does his best to stand in for Shadow.

And it never varies.
He and his sister are much valued.
Cheers.    
 

Post 408. A CONTEMPLATIVE TIME AGAIN.

A TIME TO REALIZE

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER.
Said he, following three coronavirus jabs, a flu jab, an ECG, a blood pressure check-up, and a blood test (please also bring a urine sample in a surgery supplied container). Nobody can say our surgery isn't working. I still have no idea what the doctor on whose list I was placed back in 2015 looks like, but I have seen a panoply of pleasant practice nurses so I'm not grumbling. 
Whether your local surgery is providing a service at all seems to be in the lap of the gods. General practice is currently in a shambles. There is an alarming shortage of GPs and, from the look of things, a disinclination on the part of those still active to be buggered about by London based bureaucrats. NHS Executive Councils (later known as Family Practitioner Committees) were also manned by bureaucrats, but they were locally based bureaucrats who could be confronted face-to-face when a doctor (or dentist, chemist, optician) had a grievance to air and, believe me, many of them did. So did a steady flow of unhappy members of the public. No point anyone looking for that source to express their discontent now. Gradually, in the drip drip drip of change wrought upon the NHS by respective governments over the years, all those sound, convenient, local offices have disappeared. I really don't blame doctors for rebelling against the ill-administered post Brexit shit heap they find themselves in, even if I do wonder why the almost secretly introduced offer of a whole lot of cash and a degree of autonomy (bequeathed them sometime ago) did not appear to have rung a solitary alarm bell among them. I can only hazard the guess that majority greed in their ranks outvoted minority common sense. And by then there would have been no sound local lay voices advising them, as some might have done, to proceed with the utmost caution if the Department of Health was offering enhanced profits for less work. When something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Which is more or less what voted us out of the EU in 2016. But enough of that...

TELEVISION.

My Leader and I watched the four part Series 2 of GUILT (BBC iPlayer) and should have seen the first series before doing so. When the second series concluded we were no more aware of what it was all about than we had been when it started. We stayed with it right through, though, because the entire cast was excellent.

We also watched Josh Widdicombe and Judi Dench be suitably overcome at the discovery of who they are in Who Do You Think You Are (BBC1). We like them both and it came as no surprise that both are in some way linked to royalty. Aren't we all?     

IF YOU KNOW YOU ARE

GOOD LUCK

And go carefully

Post 407. THIS IS THE DAWNING OF

THE AGE OF APOLOGY

AGE OF APOLOGY.
When the century is in year twenty one
And the word gay doesn't just mean fun
When populism rules the roost
And with a word you'll be undone

This is the dawning of the age of apology

Age of apology

Apology

Apology

I know.
It's daft.
But it does seem to be the world we are living in now.
And I do get fed up with it, despite the alternative.
Perhaps it's the onset of the usual bout of SAD. Perhaps it's the dearth of any post Post comment from anybody on anything since Post 362. SOMETHING ORIGINAL? (published 24th June 2020) when our daughter, Jac, put me right at the time the ludicrous new rule for 'a minimum of £75' to be spent on one of the Bargain Hunt items - plus a something from somewhere - was introduced.

Or perhaps it's just conscientious people at Google Blog shielding me from the more unpleasant responses to my opinions. An unlikely explanation. Few dickheads read me: few dickheads can read and even fewer could write anything to which I'd be bothered to respond.
Or it may be that you nice folk who do glance in this direction have changed from the old computer to A.N. Other and are (1) no longer receiving me or (2) unable to message me by other than email. If it's the latter, I can be reached via:
dennisbarnden30@gmail.com

Pleasant people will be replied to pleasantly.
Unpleasant people will be told, without apology, to piss off.

Anyway, winter's coming.

Good luck with your fuel company.

Post 406. EVER FIND YOURSELF ASKING

WHY

I ASK IT CONSTANTLY. There is much to ask it about.
For a start, why does the government of this country persist in the belief that we have some sort of 'special relationship' with America? The only thing we have, or ever had, in common with that huge nation is language. Most Americans converse, loudly, in English. Other than that the country is as foreign to us as is Russia, China, India or any other nation with whom we cannot hold a discussion without an interpreter. Our ignorance of any but our own language has always put us at odds with the rest of the world. So why does any child of this country reach puberty without being fluent in at least two languages? Most Europeans are bi (or even multi) lingual. Seems we have neither the teachers for it, nor the will. And, though many may think otherwise, shouting loudly in English does not count as another language.

Anyway, still fooled by the special relationship myth, Johnson recently went seeking trade across the pond to get bugger all from Biden. The American cold shoulder is nothing new, so why do the silly sods in our government never learn?
BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY.
Why, when you take to liking a particular product, does that product become impossible to buy?

Why, when you long to see the back of something, does that something long outlive its welcome?
Why do we heed the words of any self-styled expert who appears on chat shows?
Why do we believe a solitary word conjured up by advertisers?
Ditto estate agents and 'property developers.'

Ditto tabloid journalists.

And why have the British Isles become such a mishmash of  irreconcilable grievances?
Why, for example, are insane Insulate Britain and suchlike protesters currently parking their arses on motorways, presumably until one or several of them is run over and killed?

The lot of 'em need to get a life, or just go home and watch...
TELEVISION.
Some of which has of late been quite watchable.
I'll start with the best first:

The gently comic pair are back on BBC2.
This week was worth watching not only for the locations, the fishing, and the banter, but for Paul's hilarious impersonation of Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar.
Endeavour (ITV)

A short Series 8 ended with an episode worthy of reshowing at Christmas.
Leeds International Piano Competition 2021. (BBC Four).
Not so much to my taste this year. Five pianists playing a concerto in an hour and a half led to modifications, and a performance of Brahms 2nd piano concerto sans the third movement (Andante) duet with the cellist was unfair to the performer and to Brahms.
Ne'er mind, three years time they'll probably be playing only modern discord.
FINALLY,
Since I neither fanny around with Facebook nor teeter along with Twitter, my thanks to all the lovely friends and family who greeted my ninety first birthday.
Much appreciated.

That goes, too, for the team that provided me with the booster Covid jab the following day.
Be safe, you. 

 

Post 405. THE INVISIBLE MAN.

THERE'S A JOY TO BEING HIM.

BELIEVE ME.

When that splendid writer H.G. Wells wrote The Invisible Man in 1897 he introduced readers of Pearson's Weekly to optics scientist Griffin.
Griffin, a bit of a psychopath in the days before elementary students so much as heard the word, invented a way of making himself invisible (see Wiki entry on Invisibility containing the above diagram) but did not have the foresight to ensure he could reverse the procedure. He then took to killing people until he was himself killed.
Served him right.

Being an invisible man today is nothing like as grim. Depending on whether or not you take to killing people - and most of us thankfully don't - it can be a joy: you feel unencumbered by responsibility. All you have to do is live until you are old. Preferably far beyond the age of retirement. Then, at first unwittingly, you will become every bit as invisible as you want, or sometimes don't want, to be. I quite enjoy it. It's like being one of those trusted servants of posh people in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds. People impart all sorts of private information to you simply by holding highly confidential conversations with others in your presence without noticing you are there. It helps if you are not easily offended: in direct contrast to how physically thin-skinned you come to be, you have to become mentally thick-skinned with age. It helps even more if you have a sense of humour: but doesn't everything?

Things I cannot laugh at I dismiss. They include many 'ists.' Racists, sexists, ageists, opportunists, privileged careerists and imitation socialists. And when it comes to those opposing pandemic vaccination, supporting the government, or denying global warming. Huh!
Let's get back to

TELEVISION.
Two fine old films:

The Titfield thunderbolt in which Stanley Holloway buys into the re-opening of an extinct railway in order to enjoy its extended licensing hours.Very British.
Plus: Witness for the Prosecution in which, on Tyrone Power's behalf, Marlene Dietrich fools Charles Laughton with a cockney accent that makes Dick Van Dyke's chimney sweep sound like a Pearly King. It was black and white and directed by Billy Wilder. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Also: Vigil is a new BBC1 serial starring Suranne Jones and a threatened nuclear submarine. Two episodes down and four to go. Glorous escapism.
AND LAST BUT BY NO MEANS LEAST

Jac and Mike brought Mike's lovely daughter Hannah (above) to see us yesterday. Hans, who is studying at Notts University, is having a short holiday down here. It was great to see her again.
We are mightily fond of her and she will always be family to us. 

Now it's the end of the month and I must disappear.
Talk amongst yourselves... 

     

  

 

 

Post 404. HERE COME THE OPPORTUNISTS.

OR, IN THE VERNACULAR.

THE GREEDY BASTARDS.

They have had their eyes on the NHS ever since its inception and now, using the pandemic as reason, our populist government is publicly showing the truth of its concern for the great British public: it proposes inviting private healthcare firms (and how many MPs have 'advisory' roles, pals, shares, in them?) to take another generous helping from the NHS purse.

There is nothing new in this: private contracting has covertly taken place for years, but the current climate has enabled the acquisitive bastards to justify their greed, and there is now no disguising the privatized foot in the door. The excuse is the enormous backlog of patients awaiting hospital treatment, much of it surgical, in wake of the pandemic. NHS hospitals on their own, the crystal ball holders claim, will be quite unable to cope. So stand by for a flurry of expensively subsidized 'private' NHS care. Watch as the opportunistic new 'providers' unctuously undermine years of dedicated health care provided by NHS staff whose calling has gifted them scant remuneration and the requirement to pay parking fees in hospital grounds.

As for the PM:

"Our NHS," eh?

Who does the pernicious little prick think he is kidding? Given the chance, he and his cunning cronies will turn it back into an American-style (or pre 1948 British) health insurance bonanza before you can so much as say 'is there a doctor in the house?'
ALONG WITH THAT
Tried signing on with a dentist as a NHS patient recently? The majority of dental surgeries will politely tell you to bugger off. Business, my dears, has determinedly bypassed bureaucracy. It started to happen way before the pandemic and those of us who are the NHS patients of a dentist now remain so only out of our dental practitioner's kindness of heart. When we privileged folk are gone there will probably be no more family dentistry obtainable under NHS arrangements: the only place where such treatment may be found will be in increasingly overcrowded hospitals run by increasingly untrustworthy Trusts. Well, gullible Brit, you didn't think the incessant reorganization of 'our NHS' since 1974 was for your benefit, did you? Get real.
BUT THERE ARE STILL GENEROUS PEOPLE.

ROZ'S CHILDHOOD FRIEND WENDY.

Wendy, who recently visited here from Brighton (Post 402 refers) works in the Sussex Police Communications Department. Her palpable sadness over Roz's death moved us deeply and when she went back home we were in no doubt that she would seek a means of expressing her thanks to the health staff who unremittingly serve those beset by cancer. Now we learn that Wendy's colleagues have handed her £160 (an entire £1 per head mufti day collection) to donate to the Macmillan Nurses charity in Roz's name. Our heartfelt thanks to Wendy and those generous Sussex police colleagues.
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW.
Don't go too far. We may want to speak to you again.
(What police TV show didn't that come from?)

 

  

     

Post 403. EVERY CELEB HAS A BOOK IN THEM.

AS A PANDEMIC SIDE-EFFECT.

EXACERBATED BY LOCKDOWN.
Every celeb who has access to a television studio has plunged into published print. All are eager not only to be seen in public again, but to emerge in the unlikely persona of a twenty first century Enid Blyton. Most have written a children's book. At the risk of sounding dismissive, I put that down to their probable assumption that you don't need spell (or even know) too many big words to write a children's book. All you need is a member of a publishing house staff to 'guide' you, the facility to be seen on the box for a few minutes to plug your masterpiece, and you're away.
God bless lockdown.

Now they are lining up for a place on a chat show. Any chat show. And it's not that easy. Unemployed actors, 'resting' entertainers, semi-retired television presenters, and the whole of the inexplicably famous fraternity, must be yearning to corner as many guest appearances on television as does the ubiquitous Ann Widdecombe. Somebody has a good agent.
To date I have read nothing plugged by any of the desperate celebrities on my television screen. If any of them with a 'lovely story for children' ever appears on a chat show I am watching and advertises it with the words: "I read D.W. Barnden's 'The Badgers of Deep Wood' and thought; I could do better than that..." I shall read their book, if only to satisfy myself that they couldn't.

The late Christopher Hitchens once famously commented "Look, everyone has a book inside of them...which is exactly where I think it should, in most cases, remain."
Amen to that.
TO CONCLUDE.

THAT'S ALL FOR THIS MONTH.

My Leader has been weekly shopping and I am standing by to help Ellis unload the car.
Y' don't sit around being a bloody author in this house, mate.

Anyway, they've never heard of me on television.

     

Post 402. BUDDY HAS BEEN BACK.

YOU DIDN'T NEED TO KNOW.

BUT I THOUGHT I'D TELL YOU.
Sue, his new guardian, brought him here last Friday: a daughter was getting married on the Saturday so it was all systems go in their house and if Buddy had remained there he would have had to spend long spells on his own. He is no recluse. He likes people.
So he had a break at his weekend retreat.
It was lovely to see him again. I had quite forgotten the delight of scooping up poop off a wet lawn. It was worth the trouble. He still enjoys chasing a ball on that lawn. I get worn out throwing it before he does retrieving it, but we are one man and his dog for as long as the game lasts. Afterwards he has a biscuit and we both have a drink: then he has a nap with his 'baby.'
Daft? Of course it is. It's the English with animals.

He cheerfully went back with Sue and her husband, John, on a damp Sunday morning. His demeanour suggested he still liked our company but was not unduly sorry to be leaving us. That's fine. We shall still see him occasionally and he obviously gets spoiled rotten where he is now. Sue, John, and family are clearly the right people for him. He is happy and so are we.
Oh, the wedding went well and was blessed with ample sunshine.
THEN CAME THE RAIN

ON SUNDAY.

When Buddy departed the weather was unpromising but no more threatening than it normally is in this weather obsessed country during July.

We then received a welcome visit from one of Roz's childhood friends, Wendy, with her daughter Lyla. Wendy and family were over here from Brighton on a short camping holiday. Her widowed father still lives here. A pleasant afternoon was spent reminiscing and our guests departed in similar unpromising but unthreatening weather as that earlier experienced by Buddy and Pals.

Then came the rain.

Our semi-relatives and pals Daryl and Sian - voluntary dog walkers for Buddy when we most needed them - live in Binstead, the next village from us on the way to Ryde. Sian's house was badly flooded, and Daryl's decidedly dampened, in the drain-blocked shambles (pictured) that followed the most damaging downpour ever to hit that nice little village.
Mo has a brother-in-law who still believes there is no such thing as global warming.
But he did believe in Margaret Thatcher.

Yeah, I know.

SLOWLY BUT SURELY.

WE ARE DECLUTTERING.

Apparently the shops are running short of stock again and that seems to be down to thousands being pinged by the latest NHS App (another disaster) and a 'let's grab more of everything than we need or some other bastard will have it' attitude that re-emerged in this country during the Thatcher years and will not go away. There is no end to some people's selfishness. You just have to live with it.
Decluttering our house might also be described as selfish. We are gradually parting with Roz's collection of footwear and clothes. Quite a lot of her furniture and household gear has gone to family and friends. We want to see the remainder gone as quickly as possible. While it is here it is a constant reminder. We shall pass on the residue to cancer charities. That will be what she would have wanted. Perhaps we may then be less starkly saddened. Sadly there is no end to deep-rooted grief, either. You just have to live with it.
A SENSE OF HUMOUR HELPS.

WHY AM I THINKING WESTMINSTER AGAIN?
We just have to live with it.
Cheers.  

    

Post 401. THAT ELUSIVE NEW BLOG FORMAT.

HERE AT LAST.

THANKS TO GOOGLE
A couple of years or so back we found ourselves ringing a 'specialist' firm at a cost of £30 ($40.82) - payable in advance - to find  out whether the couple of my prescription drugs that the dog Buddy had purloined, in my momentary absence to fetch a glass of water, would cause him any harm.
Transpired they wouldn't.

My Leader later related the story to a dog owning friend whose instant response was: "Don't ever get caught like that again. Any problem of that sort I ever have I just Google it. They give me the answer without rifling my bank account on the way."
What a sensible lady.

So, not for the first time (I've been having a problem printing posts in the old blog format for what seems to be forever), I sought Google advice. You never get to speak to anybody. Hell, with all the people who use Google they'd never get off the phone. You just click onto them and read very carefully their response to your problem and, sooner or (in the case of this ancient Englishman) later, the solution will be presented to you.

And here it is.
I like it and think it might provide an answer to an irksome problem I have experienced when printing the old layout - sentence spacing.
I have run it past the computer lifeboat captain (our Neil) and he says it looks fine.
I don't suppose you care and I don't blame you. A blogger fussing over post layout is about as important as an assistant film director worrying over whether an actor was wearing a white silk or a white cotton shirt in the last shot. Nobody else except, perhaps, the director (or a pedantic actor) will give a shit.

It's not like paddling a tin tub across a busy shipping channel to be seek asylum in England, is it?

What?

Ah yes...

THE WEATHER,

THERE'S BRITISH FOR YOU,
Two pen'orth of sun and we're banjaxed! My Leader is acting like somebody who has been abandoned by a camel train in the Sahara. Not me. From age 18 to 21 I was stationed in Cyprus, mostly living in tin Nissan huts that would have horrified the health and safety lobby today.
Warm weather doesn't bother me.
Mo's outlook has not been helped by the car breaking down again, Happened yesterday in Marks and Sparks car park. The staff there were lovely, she says: but it looks like her Dacia Stepway will be going nowhere for her until sometime next month. One of its failed parts has to come directly from France.

So now she is busy making cushions for Jess and worrying lest I wander into the garden and get sunstroke. Yeah, that's nearly sixty years of married life for you.

Good, ain't it.

Stay cool you select few.

 

Post 400. Index 8 Posts 352 - 399

Allen, Dave: 380 Angel. the cat: 357, 367,390, 395 Appleton, John: 371, 374, 376 Appleton, Sheila: 374 Aristotle: 396 Atlas, the cat: 395 Attenborough, David: 384 Bakewell, Joan: 380 Barenboim, Daniel: 384 Barnden, Jac: 365, 374, 381, 389, 395 Barnden, Kym: 360 Barnden, Mo: 354, 359, 368, 371, 375, 384, 398, 399 Barnden, Neil: 375, 395 Barnden, Pauline: 375 Barnden, Roz: 352, 357, 359, 362, 363, 364, 366, 368,374,386, 387, 389, 390, 391, 392, 397 Barnden, William: 396 Barrow, Clyde: 366 Bean, Sean: 399 Beard, Mary: 357, 396 Berenson, Saul: 353, 356 Bhaskar, Sanjeev: 388 Biden, Joe: 374 Bolton, Michael: 357, 390 Booth, Webster: 365 Branagh, Kenneth: 381 Brightman, Sarah: 384 Bronson, Charles: 385 Brown, Johnny Mack 353 Brown, Wally: 368 Brown, Claire: 368 Bryson, Bill: 381 Buddy, the dog: 357,367,390, 397, 398 Butler, Phil: 371, 376, 381, 384 Byrne, Gabriel: 353 Campbell, Alistair: 360 Carter, Joelle: 375 Catz, Caroline: 399 Chan, Catherine: 385 Charles, HRH Prince: 359 Child, Lee: 367 Churchill, Winston: 356 Connolly, Billy: 374 Considine, Paddy: 371 Costner, Kevin: 366 Cotton, Billy: 353 Craven, M.W. 387, 391 Creasey, John: 375 Cummings, Dominic: 359, 360 Curtiz, Michael: 362 Daheley, Tina: 362 Danes, Claire: 353 Davison, Peter: 369 Dayer, Ellis (grandson) 357, 359, 368, 374, 390,392, 395 Deam, Jack: 399 de Havilland, Olivia: 362 Dench, Judie: 388 Derham, Katie: 383, 396 Diamond, Anne: 373 Dillow, Ian: 352, 371, 376,386, Dillow, Jean: 352,386, Donohoe, Peter: 356, 359, 384 Durante, Jimmy: 279 Eastwood, Clint: 358 Edwards, Sue: 392 Egan, Peter: 388 Elliott, Harold Charles: 372 Elliott, Fiona: 376 Fields, Dorothy: 399 Fields, Gracie: 396 Flanagan and Allen: 396 Gillen, Aiden: 355 Gnann, Moritz: 396 Goggins, Walton: 375 Graham, Stephen: 399 Gray, Effie: 353 Hancock, Matt: 362 Hanks, Tom: 385 Harding, Daniel: 399 Hardy, Robert: 369 Harrelson, Woody: 366 Harry and Meghan: 358 Herriot, James: 369 Higson, Charlie: 369 Hollywood, Paul: 363 Hynek, J. Allen: 355 Izzard, Eddie:388Johnson, Boris: 355, 364, 374, 382 Johnson, Samuel: 387 Kane, Harry: 398 King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson: 396 Kuusisto, Pekka: 355 Ladd, Alan: 362 Ladd, David: 362 Lassgård, Rolf: 381 Law, Jude: 371 Lawrance, Brian: 396 Lehar, Franz: 365 Leonard, Elmore: 375 Levit, Igor: 399 Lowe, Andrea: 399 Luke, Thomas: 356 Madeley, Anna: 369 Malofeev, Alexander: 365 Margolyes, Miriam: 374 Mathison, Carrie: 353, 356 McGovern, Elizabeth: 353 Mitchell, David: 388, 391 Mitchell, Victoria Coren: 391 Moore, Grace: 365 Morgan, Hilarie Burton: 389 Morgan, Jeffrey Dean: 389 Morgan, Sian: 390 Mortimer, Bob: 369 Newman, Paul: 366 Ogden, John: 384 Olyphant, Timothy: 375 Parker, Bonnie: 366 Patinkin, Mandy: 353 Patten, Vincent Van: 385 Pavarotti, Luciano: 357 Plant, Jim: 360 Pope, Bill: 363, 383 Pratchett, Terry: 391 Preece, Nat: 368 Preece, Moira: 368 Prince Philip: 389 Pullman, Philip: 356 Queen Victoria: 361 Ralph, Nicholas: 369 Rankin, Ian: 367, 381, 382, 396 Rashford, Marcus: 399 Rawicz and Landauer 353 Rea, Neill: 375 Redford, Robert: 366 Rhodes, Cecil: 383 Rigg, Diana: 369 Robinson, Peter: 399 Rook, Clive: 352 Rowling, J.K. 356, 361 Ruskin, John: 353 Sachar, Lpuis: 356 Saka, Bukayo: 399 Sampson, Nick: 375 Sancho, Jadon: 399 Schama, Simon: 357, 361 Schmeichel, Kasper: 398 Schmidt, Joseph: 365 Schotz, Susanne: 381, 382 Serkis, Andy: 385 Shadow, the cat: 368 Simply Red: 352 Southgate, Gareth: 399 Soward, Pat: 368 Spark, Muriel: 396 Spike, the cat: 357, 367, 368, 390, 395 Shenton, Rachel: 369 Statham, Jason: 362, 385 Sterling, Raheem: 398, 399 Stott, Ken: 367 Sturgeon, Nicola: 382 Sutherland, Fern: 375 Tauber, Richard: 365 Taylor, Pana Hema: 375 Thompson, Emma: 353 Timothy, Christopher: 369 Toksvig, Sandi: 371 Tommaso, Freddie De: 395 Tompkinson, Stephen: 399 Trump, Donald: 355, 374 Vine, Jeremy: 362, 373 Vogt, Lars: 359 Walker, Nicola: 388 Wall, Kim: 381 Walsh, Barney: 374 Walsh, Bradley, 374 Waterston, Katherine. 371 Webber, Andrew Lloyd: 384 Wesley, Mary: 356 West, Samuel: 369 White, Daryl: 390 White, Jessica: 375, 390, 392, 395, 397 White, T.H. 356 Whitehouse, Paul: 369 Whitfield, David: 395 Woodman, George: 356 Woodhouse, Callum: 369 Woods, Mike: 389, 395 Zengel, Helena 385 Ziegler, Anne: 365 

Post 399. FOOTBALL'S STILL ABROAD.

MORE SCREWED-UP PENALTIES AND

OH DEAR, ENGLAND...A 3 - 2 loss to Italy.

I looked up from my book (my usual accompaniment to all the tippy-tap passing, professional shirt pulling, falling down when challenged near the penalty area, ditto and rolling in agony when breathed upon within the penalty area, and expostulating with the referee over any decision not in your favour) when I heard the dreaded words:
"So now it's the penalty shoot-out"
"That's it then," I said quietly. "We've shit it."

We had. A penalty shoot-out is a ludicrous lottery. It is no way to end a game. You might as well toss a coin.

Ne'er mind. Gareth Southgate and his team will (as Dorothy Fields once wrote) pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again.
They are a credit to their game and to their country.
The same cannot be said for the horde of bloody morons who gate-crashed the stadium before kick off, or the racist twats who showered abuse on Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Raheem Sterling after we lost out in the penalty lottery. Far too many social media arseholes (nameless cowards) masquerade as football supporters.
Sometimes makes you wonder what this bloody country is coming to.
TELEVISION.

The box seems somewhat desolate without Wembley and Wimbledon. What remains is the same old array of tired formats and narcissistic presenters.

There is still some stuff worth watching if you are prepared to go for it though.

Maureen watched Time, the BBC prison drama starring Sean Bean and Stephen Graham (above). She said it was wonderfully acted (with that pair it would be) but ultimately very sad.
I have not seen it and, though I like both actors, may chicken out. I think it could be a bit too realistic for me. I feel queasy  even driving past the prisons on this island. Some very nasty deviants are incarcerated over here.
I recorded the Summer Night Concert from Vienna 2021 (BBC Four) which was broadcast at the same time as the Euro football final was being shown on BBC and ITV. I watched it the following night and it was a harbour of calm after that penalty shoot-out.
The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Harding, gave its usual polished performance of works by Bernstein, Elgar, Debussy, Holst, Sibelius and Verdi, and pianist Igor Levit enchanted the audience with a splendid performance of Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

All this in the wonderful Schönbrunn Palace Gardens, Vienna. I am so glad I recorded it.
I shall watch it again and again.
You're allowed to be square when you're ninety.
In complete contrast, Mo and I are watching re-runs of  DCI Banks.
Stephen Tompkinson is Banks: his police colleague and sometime girlfriend is played by Andrea Lowe, his disturbingly straight DI no.2 is Caroline Catz, and reliable Jack Deam plays his team's reliable DC.The books were written by Peter Robinson.
I believe five series were made between 2010 and 2016. Not sure what sort of order they are in on this ITV3 showing, but we have thoroughly enjoyed every episode we have seen so far.
Thank you, Mr. Tompkinson and friends

And that's about it for now.

My next post will probably be Index 8.

If you're not in it, don't sue me.
If you are in it, don't sue me.

   

    

 

Post 398. A GEORGE CROSS FOR THE NHS.

 WELL-MEANING TOKENISM.

BUT NOT A DECENT WAGE
The Queen has awarded the George Cross to the NHS for seventy three years of dedicated service with particular emphasis on the courage shown by many NHS staff throughout the COVID pandemic.
I imparted the news to my book reading lady of the manor as we sat in bed with our morning cuppa.
Scarcely glancing up from the book she enquired dryly: "Who is going to wear it?"
I do love that woman.
She was right again though. This gallantry award is nothing more than tokenism. Well-meaning, I'm sure, but mere tokenism. It is not the grateful approach that awarding NHS staff decent pay and free parking within hospital grounds would be. It will not put a cent on the wage slip of any nurse, junior doctor, or ancillary staff member in or around a hospital. It is much the same futile gesture that the recent 1% pay rise to nursing staff was. It will not put a roof over the head of any one of them, let alone buy them the sort of home they could afford if all they did was kick a football about. 
Which brings us to...
FOOTBALL

HURRAY FOR ENGLAND!
A  2 - 1 win over Denmark.
I think they did it fairly enough by modern football standards.
In extra time, the full time score being 1 - 1, Raheem Sterling crashed down in the Danish penalty area.
Did he fall or was he pushed? Who cares (other than the Danes)?
The referee gave England a penalty.
Harry Kane made a bit of a pig's ear of it, but was fortunate in that it rebounded off Kasper Schmeichel to be firmly rebooted into the net.
Then, English euphoria, the game was won.

So it's Italy at Wembley next Sunday.
I expect we'll watch it.

WELL, IT'S VERY QUIET HERE.

BUDDY WAS ALWAYS PRESENT.
Not a noisy dog, but a constant presence in the nicest possible way. He is missed, but we gather that he has settled down nicely in his new surroundings, is enjoying all the  admiration and attention, and is generally living the life of Riley.
Good for him.
And we shall still be seeing him from time to time.
Life goes on.

.  

 

Post 397. BUDDY HAS MOVED.

.TO A NICE HOME IN RYDE.

WITH A BRAND NEW FAMILY.
Our granddaughter Jess took him last Friday night. We thought it was to be  for a trial weekend with his new adopters, but she sensibly pointed out that there would be no point bringing him back here if the weekend was a success, that would only confuse him: so she took his entire bag and baggage and departed in the sudden, certain, factual, way that the young and confident do such things.
Ah well. He didn't need us. We're old. We'll get over it. He is a dear pal who deserves a happy future.  Roz bought him when he was a puppy: was devoted to him and he to her. Other, possibly, than Jess herself (who is currently in no position to keep him), nobody will ever replace Roz in his affections. We did our best, and we have been assured he will be much loved by his new family. We wish them joy with him, and him happiness with them. 
We shall be able to see him occasionally, which is good. 
He has come quite a long way from this.

Now he barks at dogs on the television.

It's a token gesture.
He's a Buddy.

Well you didn't expect football from me, did you? 

Post 396. MOSTLY TOO MUCH TELEVISION.

BUT IN A MORE DISCERNING WAY.

GOGGLEBOX (Channel 4).
I have again concluded that I could never have been a participant on Gogglebox. 
That said, I do like many of those we see watching it, no matter how inexplicable I may find their positive responses to the abundance of trash they are required to watch. Whatever their recompense, most of them are value for it. My invective-laden outlook would immediately rule me out.
Never mind Aristotle's 'Give me the child until he is 7 and I will show you the man,' this man's 7 year old recollections include Noddy and Big Ears, Mr. Plod the Policeman, the Ovaltineys (and their bloody awful theme tune), Gracie Fields singing Little Old Lady and Flanagan & Allen singing Underneath the Arches. There was also an Australian crooner called Brian Lawrance who my mother quite liked and my father insisted was 'a sissy' (quite why I do not know as, to the best of my knowledge, he never ever met the man): but my father could sometimes be very English.
In our house there were little tin seats at either end of a fender box where small children could sit and be taught how to toast crumpets over an open fire. There was a deal of boring adults-only conversation about family and work and the politics of the day, and there was the mantra 'children should be seen and not heard,' and there was all the palaver about King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson.
Of more importance to our family in 1936, my father gained second prize in an All England Amateur Bass Singer competition held at one of those Palaces in London (Crystal or Alexandra): I believe he sang a piece from Hiawatha's Wedding Feast (probably Onaway Awake Beloved) and was told by the judge that he forfeited first prize because he held his rolled up sheet of music in his hand and Hiawatha wouldn't have done that.
My father, afterwards, was his usual phlegmatic self.
“I doubt Hiawatha would have worn a monkey jacket and a bow tie, either,” he said. “But they'll have needed a reason not to split the first prize.”
I know I keep saying it was a different world, but it really was.
The small boy who was taken to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 (totally unaware that the dwarfs should have been called 'persons of limited size') was a long, long way away from the old man who has recently watched and enjoyed Ian Rankin talking about Muriel Spark (Sky), Katie Derham (the most elegantly feminine wearer of trainers in the entire world) discussing The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra with Moritz Gnann and the BBC Orchestra of Wales (BBC FOUR), and finally, because nothing can follow it, absolutely any subject presented by delightful Dame Mary Beard (pictured – with apologies for the impudence) on whatever channel she may have appeared.

And I think she would agree with my
THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH:
Only an ignorant yob boos another country's national anthem.

Post 395. NEVER GIVE UP.

WHATEVER ELSE.

TODAY IS FATHER'S DAY.
Or, as my realistically-minded children might describe it: another commercially contrived celebration day invented by the Americans.
Jac and Mike arrived yesterday with a dad's day dinner: 'lamb shanks with roasted vegetables and all the trimmings.' A lovely gift.
And I am writing with Jac's further present, the Freddie De Tommaso CD Passione, playing in the background. Nice disc, but his producers should have excluded Cara Mia from the line-up: if you are not going to finish on the David Whitfield top note, don't do it.
A week or so ago Neil gave me a self-winding (for an active tennis player which, of course, I am not) watch. It stopped in a few days and, despite his careful instructions when he gave it to me, neither Mo nor I can restart it. It has a great name, though, and looks nice. He'll start it again when next he is here. Meantime, I smile every time I look at it: it is the ideal unfather's day bonus and will be cherished right up until I kick the bucket.
THAT'S ABOUT ALL FOR NOW.

Ellis stayed overnight at his father's home to be there for today: he'll be back here later on. Glad to say he continues to confidently walk the bass guitar road, to the approval of the music master of his former school.
Jess's little house is starting to look great, We have seen it, and her recently acquired kitten, now. The kitten was given the name Atlas before it was discovered to be a girl.
In this family some oversights just keep repeating: remember the girl named Spike and the boy called Angel? They've never seemed to be bothered.
Anyway, this is Atlas.

Cute or what?

Post 394. STILL AVOIDING.

AWARDS CEREMONIES AND...

MOST COMPETITIVE CRAP,
Any doubts that I was becoming my old self again were quickly dispelled once the 2021 awards season began. I do not care who, or what, wins or has won anything this, last, or any other year. I cannot be having with jubilant games winners who hang all over each other in flagrant disregard of pandemic rules, and I long ago tired of award- winning actors winsomely playing the mock modesty role.
To my jaundiced eye, none of it has been helped this year by the racism lobby. Y'know I really don't give a toss what colour, creed, race, or gender an arts/sports person is. I try to maintain good manners to all and deplore discourtesy under whatever guise it may appear. As a consequence I am disconcerted by the intensity of current racial disharmony. I would no more boo a footballer for taking the knee than I would have booed Smith for 'mooning' at the borstal governors in The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. The England footballers who were booed recently had a point to make (and so did Smith). I respect that: Pity the feeble-minds who don't.
I also think freedom of speech should not apply only to those with whom you agree: if you dislike what a speaker has to say, don't refuse them the right to say it: just ignore them.
Same goes for picture hanging. Whether Magdalen College, Oxford, takes down or hangs up a picture of the Queen, or any other monarch, is none of my bloody business.
It's no good calling me woke. Woke is 'the past tense of wake' to me.
And don't try labelling me with the 'privileged white Englishman' tag. I was born white, English, working class, and innately bolshie. Went to half a dozen elementary schools between 1935 and 1945, then into the army for close on twelve years, then clerking in the NHS (1957 - 89). Never seemed privileged. Always had somebody to answer to. Was not blessed with the mindset to focus beyond the confines of my own world.
Still find it difficult.
Never mind. All the old farts like me, and that dwindling number who saw action in WW2, will soon be gone.
England will become a fully multiracial nation. Scotland will, too, but all of them will wear the kilt. In Wales they will all sing. Every Welshman can sing: even those who can't (it was the same in Liverpool after The Beatles.became famous).
Ireland and Northern Ireland will probably become the fifty first state of the USA and feel they have more to sing about than any of the Brexiteers ever will.
What?
I know.
How Can You Buy Killarney?

Toodle pip.

Post 393.RIGHT! BACK TO NORMAL THEN.

RESCUE ME FROM ROBOT VOICES.

ALEXA IS TECHNOLOGY ENOUGH.
I quite like Alexa. She is the robot voice that only speaks when spoken to. She conjures up music when asked and generally seeks to please. She is not that irritating little party in the car who tells you to 'turn left now!' when you are on a forty mile stretch of unbroken motorway with nothing but fields beyond it: nor is she that robotically welcoming young woman who answers any call to a business with the words: 'This conversation is being taped for training purposes.' Do you believe that?
The telephone has become a monster within which lurk Bombay Welsh voices seeking to con you out of your bank card details and tiresome petty dictators directing you to press button 1,2 or 3 in response to a voice recorded on a machine. I seldom use the bloody thing now. Growing old and still being able to put one foot in front of the other is, in the view of one currently that fortunate, privilege enough in this country today,
Times have changed since, just over forty years ago, the government more than halved our money with the introduction of decimalization. Little of it has been for the better.

THE LATEST THREATS are the compulsory transference of all gas driven appliances to electricity, the introduction of driverless, electrically powered, motor cars, purchases of lord-knows-what-weight goods carried by drones, the inexorable upsurge in the management of our lives by soulless robots, and the ghastly realization that political and media control of the country is now largely in the hands of a coterie of amoral public schoolboys.
Let us start with the gas/electric thing. Isn't that going to be just like the diesel/petrol thing? How many times can well-meaning voices cry global warming wolf? I'd like to think it is government listening to experts, but am more inclined to the view that it is government listening to its number who are electricity company shareholders.
Trust not the moneyed few, they always want more. They will be pleased to see you up to your neck in hock for the replacement of a serviceable gas appliance or petrol/diesel fuelled vehicle, with an electric alternative. They will label it progress. The word that better describes it is greed.
Whatever the label, it will be sold under the guise of 'saving the world' and will be accepted by the same servile public that failed, decades ago, to firmly advise local authorities and suchlike public service providers that they are the employed, not the employers, and could stick any form of tax-related extortion, other than the basic one on income, precisely where the sun does not shine.
So far as I am concerned, people in influential positions should be reminded that power is there to be used, not abused. As it is, the rule makers up there get away with far too much without being brought to book. Always have. Always will.
That's the monthly grouse done for.
Enjoy your bank holiday.

Hang up on any voice you don't know. 

Post 392. THE DAY IS DONE.

ROZ HAS BEEN CREMATED.

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE....
Our Roz was duly cremated on Thursday 20th May, 2021. A fine selection of her friends, many of them  former and current colleagues, together with a determinedly available proportion of kin, gathered in a cold wind to be admitted, late, into the crematorium which, it transpired, lacked the up-to-date technology necessary for a planned slideshow of Roz moments to be shown during a playing of  Madness's It Must Be Love, one of her favourite discs. Pictures and song together would have been so much more effective. I gather suitable protestation has since been made to the authority concerned. The outcome of the hoo-ha it caused was that the on line ceremony screening  came to a premature end, too. Not at all the way it was meant to be. Ah well.
Young Ellis, her son, looked good in his suit.

The ceremony went off well. It opened with The Mamas & The Papas singing Dream a Little Dream, which encouraged those who cry in public (and some of us who don't) to shed their tears early on.

Celebrant Sue Edwards then welcomed the mourners and initiated the proceedings with Loving Memories of Roz. 

This was followed by a moving Tribute to Mum from her daughter, Jess.

Madness then did their stuff (sans slideshow) and the ceremony ended with Closing Words  which included an excerpt from Roz's poem:
Loss & Gain.
Roz Barnden

I lost my hair
I lost my mind
I lost my tits
I was what remained of this

I lost my twinkle
I lost my spark
I lost myself
I became leftovers on the shelf

I lost my confidence
I lost my oomph
I lost my self esteem
I was just a person in between

BUT

I gained strength
I gained power
I gained resolve
I never knew I could be so bold

I learned to deal
I learned to face
I learned to cope
That's what eventually brought me hope

With resilience and positivity
She came back, what once was me   

AND YOU'LL NEVER BE GONE FROM US, LOVE.

Though I can't convince this chap of that.
Take care, friends.