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.

       

 

Post 391. WE ARE KEEPING ACTIVE.

IT'S ALL YOU CAN DO.

OUR ROZ WILL BE CREMATED on 20 May 2021 at the Isle of Wight crematorium.
The non-religious ceremony - gods have never been high on our list of certainties - will be given selective screening on the net. The family met here with a representative of the funeral directors earlier this week and emerged from the experience relieved of a few organizational concerns and (to my ancient mind) a lot of money. I shall probably have more to say at a less stressful time, but right now can only say thank you again to all those lovely friends of our girl who, since her death, have been in touch to express their sorrow and sympathy and to offer any help needed. 
MEANWHILE.
I have finished David Mitchell's Back Story. Takes you up to when he met, and a few years later married, Victoria Coren. A good read. I am still reading Born in a Burial Gown by M.W. Craven and have started to re-read Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad.

Reading, like normality, is not so easy right now.
Good luck with any lockdown reprieve.

Post 390. DREADFUL NEWS, DEAR FRIENDS

OUR LOVELY ROZ IS DEAD.

SHE DIED OF AN EMBOLISM BROUGHT ABOUT BY CANCER on April 12, 2021, in St Mary's Hospital, Newport, Isle of Wight. She was 51 years and one month old: brave, kind, and fiercely loyal to family and friends.
Here she can be seen peeping out to smile for the camera on what none of us dreamt would be our last ever Christmas dinner together.
Mo and I have been welcomed to spend Christmas day with her and family, both at her former home and here, for more years than either of us can possibly remember. The festive season will never be the same again.
Rosalind Anne Barnden was the youngest of our three children: a bright infant, a determined youngster, a nightmare teenager: and a wonderfully worthwhile adult. All in all, a woman to be reckoned with. 
As soon as she could walk she wanted to ride a horse. Knew she could do it: then proved it with decidedly favourable reports from the two most respected riding school instructors in the area. She was a natural horsewoman. Might have gone a long way, but there was never equestrian country money in the family and I guess boys eventually became more interesting.

For a variety of reasons, school was not always the happiest place for her. She was bright, but clearly had no desire to take the path followed by her older siblings and seek further education at a university. She did, however, excel at athletics (high jump, long jump, and two hundred yards) and, from around the age of twelve, held an Isle of Wight high jump record that I believe was only beaten some three or four years ago.
Her teens were spent in a state of rebellion about which, years later, she would reflect: 'I was a nightmare to you two and I don't know how you put up with it.'

We knew. She was family and there was a fine young woman waiting there.

She tackled a variety of jobs. Shop worker. Barmaid. Door girl. Manager of the IW branch of a security firm. Hospital cleaning supervisor. And, eventually, a LSA at Medina College, Newport, IW. where her  empathy with the more disturbed and difficult of youngster was regularly evidenced.

She was twice married, twice divorced, and had a child from each marriage: Jessica, who is now a clinical pharmacist at St. Mary's Hospital, and Ellis who is still a pupil at Medina College.
Jess has just bought her first house. It is in Ryde. Needed TLC. And she and boyfriend James are busily making it habitable.
Ellis, who readers of this blog may know has been living here with his mother since March, 2019, will remain with us at least until the end of this term when his Medina education will be completed: a recent audition for Platform One music college in Newport was successful and he will start there in September. He plays bass guitar. Whether he will then opt to live more permanently with his father and stepmother in Cowes will be for him to decide.
While we live there will always be a home for him here.

Roz's dog, Buddy, who is still pining for her (the person of utmost importance in his entire life), along with her cats, Angel and Spike (to whom I am the most important as long as I have a bag of cat treats in my hand) are welcome to remain with us, too.
Jess's father, Daryl, and his other half, Sian, are currently exercising Buddy daily, and Ellis is making sure the entire pack is watered and fed. I think Roz, who recently renamed herself Bee on Facebook (apparently something to do with privacy), would have been deeply touched both at this kindness and by the myriad messages of condolence and offers of help from near and far.

She had some wonderful friends. So do we: and great family.

It was on 14 July, 2018 (Post 309), that I first reported: 'The younger of our two daughters, Roz, has been diagnosed with invasive breast cancer...and has prepared herself with a thoroughness that has been one of her more positive traits ever since she came of age.' The post concluded: 'At present we are feeling very old and sadly aware that we have nothing to offer but concern and love.'

That has remained throughout.
Years ago, on one of her special occasions, I gave her a tape of Michael Bolton singing 'If I could.' It expressed, better than I ever did personally, exactly how I felt about her.
I hope those of you who loved her and somehow get to read this will forgive all that is missing.
There has been so much and I am not as tough as I would like to make out.
Too many tears.
No child should predecease its parents, let alone:
ROZ BARNDEN 12. 03.1970 – 12.04.2021.

Daughter, sister, mother, devoted friend. 
Wherever you are, you won't stand  any nonsense, kid.
Love you xx 

Post 389. YOU'RE GLAD THEY ARE THERE.

BUT DREAD NEEDING THEM.

OUR DEAR DAUGHTER ROZ is back in hospital. 
The ambulance took her on Tuesday.
She had been suffering considerable pain for many weeks (see posts 386/7) and it had reached the stage where she had difficulty even in making her way to her en suite bathroom. She struggled down the stairs when the ambulance arrived, however, and was loaded straight onto a mobile stretcher and thence into the ambulance and away: what a lovely crew the ambulance people are.
She has since undergone innumerable tests, undignified delving etc. No word yet of when she may be back with us.
We wait and hope.
TELEVISION.

Gogglebox (Channel 4) continues to prove that the people watching television can be more amusing than much of the crap they are required to watch. This week, amidst the customary dross, they viewed a harrowing Line of Duty episode: their reactions to the climactic scene in a lake were worthy of BAFTAs. And it is to the programme producers' credit that they did not interrupt it with 'breaking news' of: The Death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. This forthright old fellow was almost a hundred and had a privileged life saying and doing pretty much whatever he chose to say and do. I think the assertion that he has been a firm prop to an occasionally teetering throne is a fair one. But he was no saint, and the decision by every BBC station, presumably at the instigation of its new Director-General, to fill a complete day and more with carefully doctored propaganda about him, was unnecessarily OTT. 
The Walking Dead (Fox UK). A few weeks ago I mentioned watching the opening episodes of The Walking Dead and, considering the pandemic, giving it time to settle in. A couple of nights ago we watched the latest episode, Here's Negan. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Negan (in case you didn't know), supported by his real life wife, Hilarie Burton Morgan, gives an acting master class in what was probably the best background story ever told in any series of this comic book inspired horror tale. Well done Mr. and Mrs. Morgan.
AND FINALLY.

Daughter Jac captured this picture of yours truly wearing Mike's driving glasses and emailed it to me under the heading Den Corleone. Mo had expressed mild concern after my last blog post that somebody might put out a fatwa on me. I doubted that. Would you threaten a guy who looks like this?
Had your jab yet? 

Go for it.

 

Post 388. DISMISS RELIGIOUS MANIACS.

WHATEVER THEIR RELIGION.

DON'T PANDER TO THEM.
This scene outside Batley Grammar School was an affront to democracy and reflected very badly on its religiously maniacal complainants. Parents, of whatever race, colour, or creed, should not gather en masse outside a school to demand the dismissal of a teacher; nor should they, individually, shove junk food through school railings to their school going children when a school has banned junk food.
Where education is concerned, I see religion and junk food in much the same light: neither is particularly desirable. That being said, for a short time I was a pupil at a church school where, despite the cant, I was quite happy. As a WW2 kid I knew nothing of junk food.

A teacher in religious instruction once conjectured to my classmates and I that the 'loaves and fishes miracle' performed by Jesus could perhaps be translated as: 'He persuaded all those who had brought food with them to share it with those who hadn't.' When I took that home to my parents their reaction was a mild: 'Really?' So throughout my life I have held the cheerful belief that (a few head cases apart) we in this country do not get too worked up over religion.
The behaviour pictured above was outrageous and in some of the countries that those involved came from would have been dealt with severely. Here it should at least have earned them a stern rebuke, a flat refusal to take any disciplinary action whatsoever against the teacher, firm advice that they could, if they were dissatisfied with the tuition at the school, take their child elsewhere and, finally, a gentle reminder that, while cautiously welcomed, if they don't like the way things are here...
To be fair, I feel much the same about all those Brits who move abroad for the sunshine, set up Little England enclaves because they are too thick or lazy to learn the language of their new country, and firmly believe that the 'natives'  will understand them perfectly well if they speak loudly in English.
Nationalism is a blight: and religion and politics cause the bulk of the world's troubles.
I am well aware that demanding sensible eating habits of overweight junk food lovers is, like any attempt to reason with religious maniacs, a pointless exercise.
But for chrissake don't pander to them.
READING

Currently reading M.W. Craven's Born in a Burial Gown and David Mitchell's Back Story.
Mr. Craven introduces us to another detective with a somewhat surprising name, Avison Fluke, and I am already well with it.
Mr. Mitchell is turning out to be much the same in print as he is on television. I like him 
More later.
TELEVISION.
We watched Eddie Izzard and Judi Dench in the film Six Minutes To Midnight. Took me right back to the days of Went The Day Well? and Green For Danger. Didn't even mind that, in the lead up to the climax, the girls and their Nazi teacher apparently walked from Bexhill to Beachy Head. Poetic licence.Well done, Eddie and Co. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
We also saw the final episode of Unforgotten. Nicola Walker, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Peter Egan and a fine  company of players. We do get some great TV drama in Britain. Congratulations to all concerned.
I cannot remember the last time I felt quite so sad at the end of a series.

AND A LAST WORD ON EDUCATION.

Stay safe. Stay open-minded
    

  

 

     

Post 387. IT'S NOT SIMPLE PATRIOTISM.

IT'S INSIDIOUS XENOPHOBIA

PEDDLED BY POSTURING POLITICIANS.  
Modern television coverage shows that Westminster is never packed with our chosen representatives, in or out of lockdown, unless they are discussing their own (let's forget inflation) remuneration.
When Samuel Johnson said "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" he was right, whatever the context of his remark. What we are experiencing in this country right now, though, is not simple patriotism, it is insidious xenophobia peddled by posturing politicians in Union Jack bedecked surroundings. It is populist bullshit and we should be concerned lest our country become too much a clone of Germany in the nineteen thirties.
I might have started this post with a picture of the PM, backed by the compulsory complement of limp UK flags, but then I would have had to mention his name, and I am disinclined to afford him name-dropping recognition in my blog: he has yet to mention me in any of his newspaper articles. 
Which brings me to another thing. Politicians writing in newspapers.
Don't they get paid enough as parliamentarians?
Are they so bloody desperate they have to appear on reality television?
Must they flout their views on social media?
I know it's the twenty first century, but they are still elected to be politicians.
They are not chosen for their prowess as journalists, or their talent as show biz personalities, or their reliability as Facebook friends or, God help us, as Twitter tittle-tattlers.

So they should stop playing to the gallery and get a touch of decorum.
Even the most hidebound, mealy-mouthed, back stabbers in past governments had a vestige of dignity.
Though, to be fair, that could be down to the fact that there was no TV or social media, and newspaper proprietors openly pulled all the top parliamentary strings anyway. 
As for the Union Jack.
I think we had enough respect for that not to use it as a petty political backdrop. 
But there y'go.

READING.

M.W. CRAVEN
Credit where credit's due, Mo put me on to The Puppet Show and, just as she had been, I was totally intrigued. Now I have read the follow up Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw yarn, Black Summer, and am completely hooked.
Mr. Craven was born in Cumbria, brought up in Newcastle, completed a degree in social work with specialisms in criminology and substance misuse, became a probation officer in Whitehaven and eventually took redundancy to become a full time writer. His stories have everything. The detective with the daft name, The hilarious female assistant/computer genius. The lot. And the author spent ten years in the army from the age of sixteen, which has to be a bonus.
He's great value. If you like detective stuff and have not read him, do buy him.

ROZ

Roz has been suffering painful side effects, which include broken bones, in connection with her secondary breast cancer. She bravely fights on. Please spare some of your very best wishes for her.
Thank you. 

 Until next time.

 

Post 386. I HAVE TO WRITE THIS.

HOWEVER LITTLE I WANT TO.

 
LAST WEEK WAS A SHIT WEEK, 
As you will perhaps have heard if you are family or friend, that bastard cancer has hit our brave Roz again and this time it is in her liver, backbone, and lymph nodes. It is, she has been formally advised, treatable but not curable. Her immediate response was to circulate the above picture.
This in a week that started with news from friend of many years Ian Dillow of the negative result relayed to him by those monitoring his brain tumour treatment.
As he succinctly put it: “Just heard from hospital. Basically brain is buggered. No more treatment of any kind. Just a matter of time now. I’ll still fight all the way."
He would like, he tells us, to see Spring.
We'll second that: and more.
Here he is with with Jean.

Our kindest thoughts my dears.
AND THANKS BE FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS.
Ironically, for want of a better word, on Friday of last week Roz (pictured below with her loyal Buddy) reached her fifty first birthday.
She had been warned of the unfavourable cancer news on the Wednesday, kept it from us until our return from my second covid vaccination on the Thursday (because she 'didn't want to worry us') and then, it being confirmed, broke the distressing news.
So her birthday wasn't quite the joyous occasion we had all hoped for.
There has been a vast outpouring of love and kindness from her many friends, though, and the quiet reassurance of support from all the family (including Pauline who is currently, with Neil's staunch help, recovering from cancer surgery undertaken recently at Southampton Hospital).
Yes, friends, that is the way of it here right now.
Can you forgive me if I am without interest in the wrongdoings or otherwise of the Windsors?

Stay safe: avoid punch-ups with policemen.  

Post 385. TO THOSE STILL LOOKING IN.

THANKS AGAIN.

YEP. THANKS for staying with me.
You are, as the actor Andy Serkis might say, precious.
I do worry that my meanderings may have become tediously personal of late, but I'm too ancient and dyed-in-the-wool to change now. No matter how anticipated, the death of family members and friends in recent months, together with the latest pandemic lockdown, has been a soberingly introspective experience. I need a new CD cleaner, too. 
What? 

Oh, thought I'd throw that in apropos introspection.
My Leader will immediately point me in the direction of the almost unused old one which my ever active mind has somehow forgotten. Or she may have ordered a new one before anyone can blink. 
John who delivers the Amazon stuff lives in our driveway.
ENTERTAINMENT.

WELL IT'S ONLY THE TV now, isn't it.
Sorry to harp on, but little of it is to my taste. I dislike being fobbed off with increasingly banal versions of the same old mishmash. Television producers (to whom originality is clearly a dirty word) lazily modify everything they see as popular and plug it to way past its going home time. I cheerfully avoid much of it.
Have looked in on the opening episodes of The Walking Dead and NCIS. Not sure, but give 'em Covid time.
Have recently seen three quite interesting films (two old, one new) on the box. They were interesting insofar as they featured a recognised leading man with a comparatively unknown young co-star.
Back in 1973 Charles Bronson and sixteen year old Vincent Van Patten were in Chino, in 2012 Jason Statham and thirteen year old Catherine Chan were in Safe and, as recently as 2020, Tom Hanks and twelve year old Helena Zengel made News of the World.

Each of the leading actors shone in scenes with their likeable co-star. I think actors are generally advised to avoid acting with animals or children, but those partnerships were pretty nigh perfect.

THIS PARTNERSHIP ISN'T BAD, EITHER.

TAKE IT EASY.
Cheers.

Post 384. ANOTHER BLOG POST LOST.

HIT A WRONG KEY AGAIN.

SO I'M BACK AT THE COMPUTER KEYBOARD WITH LITOLFF: 
Concerto Symphonique 2 and 4 played by Peter Donohoe who I am convinced has hit very few wrong notes in a distinguished career, then with Daniel Barenboim (Brahms Piano 2), who would probably regard any wrong note by anyone as a personal affront, and I may finish with Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 played by John Ogden (who I have on video playing Rachmaninov's 2nd and gently tutting at a spot where, almost imperceptibly, he touches an unwanted note). Now where was I?
Hit a wrong key!
Wiped the entire draft of this blog post. Nothing saved and no back up. Swore my soul to hell! It isn't the rewriting so much as the remembering what I was writing about. Nowadays my short term memory can seldom be found where I thought I'd left it. I do remember that it had something to do with fame again.
Oh...yes...

LOOKING FOR FAME?

I'D SOONER RELAX.
The one thing you learn about fame on an island like this is that, whoever you are (actor, broadcaster, television celebrity, national treasure), you should not expect recognition.
Islanders have a very healthy outlook on the famous: ignore the buggers until they've proven they are something more than a giant ego. A few of them manage that right away and are popular. Given time, others scrape by and become reservedly accepted. 
Those who envision awed respect are studiously ignored.
Two people unlikely ever to be burdened with fame, Mo and I, have only been in wordless proximity to two immensely famous people worth the mention: Years ago, waiting with friends outside a nightclub in London to board a black cab, we vaguely recognised the angry-looking passenger who disembarked from it.
We clambered aboard, chattering that we ought to know who that was, and the cabbie, taking pity on an obvious bunch of provincials, said:
“That was Mr. Andrew Lloyd Webber.”
When we remarked that, for all his success, he looked far from happy, The Knowledge said: “Oh that's because he's looking for his wife. He looks like that quite a lot nowadays.”
Andrew Lloyd Webber was married to Sarah Brightman at the time.
The other much lauded national treasure we came across was David Attenborough.
He was sitting at a table in a large bookshop on the main street in Edinburgh where it would seem his publishers had booked him to sign copies of the immensely expensive tome that accompanied his immensely popular television documentary of the time. Don't ask me which one: there have been so many of them. 
Anyway, just for the record, he looked more determinedly disconsolate, more unapproachably lonely, more totally and utterly pissed off, than any world famous television presenter – national treasure or not – should ever look, in or out of the public eye.
So much for fame.
ANOTHER SAD VIEWING.
In Post 381 I mentioned the death of Mo's nephew Phil.
Last Wednesday we were afforded the opportunity to see his funeral service on a computer link.
In normal times the crematorium would have been crowded. With lockdown there was just a sparse family attendance, but the ceremony, free from religion, was affectionate and heartfelt, and concluded in a way that was so Phil Butler it brought tears to our eyes.
They played PLAY UP POMPEY
The entire Fratton Park crowd. Full blast!
Thank you, lovely family.
RIP, mate.

Post 383. GRANDPA MET CECIL RHODES

IT WAS A BRIEF ENCOUNTER.

WHEN OUR WORLD WAS VERY DIFFERENT.
Back in the eighteen hundreds my mother's father, Grandpa Pope, was an apprentice baker to Judge the Baker of Hastings. His duties included the delivery of bread which he carried, in a basket, to customers near and far. He would have been about eleven years old. 
One morning he made a delivery across a field to a large house and on his way back, at the gate in the fence bordering the field, saw a man on a horse approaching. He opened the gate and, when they were through, closed it behind them. 

The horseman abruptly reined in, shouted: "Good lad! Catch!" and threw him a coin which he duly caught with his free hand.
"Keep that, boy," the rider advised as he departed. "And when you're old you'll be able to tell people Cecil Rhodes gave it to you."
I was young at the time my grandfather told me the story, but old enough to have heard of Rhodesia. 
"So did you keep it?" I asked.
"No, spent it within a week," he said. "To me he was just another posh fella on a horse."
I have upheld that matter-of-fact outlook to national heroes ever since.
I am seldom disappointed.
MUSIC.

KATIE DERHAM.

Mo and I. Either end of the settee. Feet up. No tele. Reading. When I said:
"I do hope the Proms will be back soon. I miss lovely Katie Derham." 
"With her trainers," said Mo.
"And, on Last Night, a pretty dress and her trainers," I said. "You have to look up to a woman like that."
"You certainly do." said Mo.
That's fifty nine years of marriage for you
TELEVISION.
We binged until the repeat demise of George Gently and binged until the repeat near demise of AC12 (Law and Order) and now we're just about binged out on repeats.
We found we'd forgotten almost all of it anyway. Sad.
NCIS is back and The Walking Dead will be back on 1st March.
Death in Paradise has just finished again: our hero still hasn't told his pretty lady sergeant he loves her, so there's bound to be another series.
I'll watch 'em  all if I'm not asleep with a cat.

Stay safe buddies.
 

 

 

  

Post 382. EVEN THE OLDEST FRIENDS.

SOMETIMES DON'T GET IT. 

MY DEFAULT STYLE is DISTRUST when the FONT NAME is BREXIT.
Earlier this week an old friend forwarded the following – probably concocted by a brexiteer - email to me:
Dear Ms Nicola Sturgeon,
As your country voted to remain in the EU, the UK Government has diverted your share of Covid-19 vaccines to Brussels. Please contact the EU Commission on what dates you might receive your vaccine supplies. You will of course be in an alphabetical queue behind Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Romania. 
Love and kisses,
Boris 
I decided that Nicola Sturgeon should not be begrudged a reply and the following day sent my old friend this response on her behalf: 
Dear Master Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson,
When I require a rant from a patronising, puerile, public school Sassenach I shall cease to be a Scot. 
Scant regards, 
Nicola 
To which my old friend replied: Very good Alan. You've missed your vocation. 
Which would have been quite flattering if my name was Alan.
Ah well. 
READING.
I finished A Song for the Dark Times, another good Rebus yarn by Ian Rankin. Told you the man was a page turner. Now I have started on The Secret Language of Cats by Susanne Schotz, who starts by telling me she has five cats and talks to them all.
I've never found talking to the beggars difficult.
Getting them to listen can be hard. 
TELEVISION. 
Death in Paradise (BBC One) Sound acting. Lovely location. Dire dialogue. Unbelievable comic characters. Pitiful plots. Worldwide popularity (I am told).  What?
Oh, I watch it, but I'm just another lockdown detainee.
63 Up (ITV) We have watched the seven yearly pry into the lives of this pleasant group of individuals from right back when they were seven years old. Those still with us are now approaching the age of retirement.
Michael Apted, the man who directed them from the beginning, died on 7 January, 2021.
I can only thank each of the participants for their stoicism in the face of such constant public scrutiny, and wish them all the very best for the future. 
That's all for the time being.

Post 381. I KEEP READING.

VERY SLOWLY...

BUT WITH NO LESS ENJOYMENT. On Jan 8, 2020 (yes, 2020), I wrote that I had just started reading Bill Bryson's The Road to Little Dribbling and conjectured: it's a long one so lord alone knows when I'll finish it. It turned out to be 460-ish pages long. I have just finished it. Droll, informative, sharp, straight, and gloriously humorous, it is typical Bill Bryson and I should have absorbed every last word by February 2020, even at my island driver's speed, but I got lost somewhere between his views on the paucity of worthwhile BBC television and his final weird experience of the Duchy of Cornwall. When I finally returned to it last week I found myself smiling, laughing, agreeing, regularly saying: “Only a very popular Yank could get away with a comment like that, mister,” and respectfully admitting: “Well there's another thing I didn't know...”right until the end. The man has national treasure status. I like him despite that and I hope he's here for keeps. 

NOW I'M READING

THANKS to daughter Jacqueline I am also a quiet disciple of Ian Rankin. One of my two book Christmas presents from her was the latest John Rebus thriller, A Song for the Dark Times (Orion 2020). which I started mid week and am already about two thirds through: fast reading for me but Ian Rankin is that sort of page turning writer. In this one, the begrudgingly retired detective is called back into action by a late night telephone call from his daughter, Samantha, whose husband has been missing for two days. It's splendidly written of course. I empathise with the ageing Rebus, a man well aware that he is no longer up to knocking your average thug's head off. My fervent hope now is that the writer avoids a Morse, a Van der Valk, or even a Wallander, ending for John Rebus. I think the old guy should enjoy a peaceful retirement: or is that just me? He was a tough cop, not a NHS desk jockey. 

AND WHAT WAS THE OTHER BOOK?

 Oh, The Secret Language of CATS by Susanne Schotz (HQ 2018). Haven't started it and when I do I probably won't believe a word of it. I'll ask the pair we have living here: they'll know.

TELEVISION. 

We have watched The Investigation, a Danish crime drama on BBC2. Six episodes covering the investigation into the death of Swedish journalist Kim Wall. This is a compelling police procedural series and the excellent cast includes (in the role of Kim's father Joachim Wall) Rolf Lassgård who was arguably the best Wallander ever (on a list that includes Kenneth Branagh).

FINALLY THIS MONTH. 

It is with deep regret that I record the death from cancer of Maureen's nephew Phil Butler: a brave, cheerful, popular Gosport resident and lifelong Pompey FC supporter. Phil was in his early sixties, worked hard all his life, and only recently retired. We loved him and will never forget him. I do hope you've found your mum and dad, mate. 

 

 

Post 380. SECOND APPOINTMENT CANCELLED.

SO NO SECOND JAB YET, 

DON'T CALL US, WE'LL CALL YOU. I had the letter two days before I was due to attend for the second of my Covid-19 vaccinations. Don't bother coming on the date originally set, it advised me, and concluded in the way I understand most unsuccessful stage auditions have since time began: Don't call us, we'll call you when it's convenient for you to be given your second appointment. Unlike Dame Joan Bakewell,  I shall not be threatening the Health Secretary with legal action. I can't afford lawyers. Anyway, both our daughters are in the teaching profession and our granddaughter is a pharmacist at the only hospital left here since successive governments and their civil service minions set about buggering up the NHS. From the outset all three of them should have preceded me in the queue for a jab. Their lives are still ahead of them. I will be far happier when I know they have been protected than I would be in knowing that Pfizer's recommended twenty one days between doses had been strictly adhered to in my case. All in all it's the usual government cockup. C'est la vie. 

MUSIC.

 I have never taken much to awards. That could be down to the fact that I have never been caught winning one: I am not a willing - or even slightly interested - competitor. It is also something of a certainty that I will never choose the person who is going on to win any competition I am watching, or to which I am listening - ever. I blame the judges. I hear now that a rapper has, not for the first time, been given a music award and, even in a world where nobody over seventy dare venture an opinion in any but a PC way without incurring the wrath of Fractious on Facebook or Tantalised on Twitter, I have to admit that, (like most modern classical music which to me is discord for the tone deaf), rapping comes over as an indecipherable monotone delivered on one unmusical note. These youngsters don't know what lyrics are. We had the real thing in my day. Lyrics like Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey: A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you? and  When you come to the end of a lollipop: Plop goes your heart! It was the stuff of romance. They don't write gems like it anymore. I wonder why? 

As Dave Allen used to say: "May your God go with you."

  

   

Post 379. NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS.

MADE ANY HAVE YOU?

I TRY NOT TO. Can no longer be bothered with promises I know I won't keep, even to myself: though I must admit the temptation is there. This year I was tempted to resolve the routine switching on of my mobile (cell) phone every morning. I may have resolved that last year, too. It didn't happen. I forget and it doesn't seem all that important. Hell, nobody is going to press the red button because I'm not on my mobile. Friends can always phone me on the land line. Few do. A great deal of my NHS career was spent on the phone placating disgruntled members of the public, mollifying the more demanding of doctors, ignoring the frequent incandescence of (mostly ex RN officer) dentists, and sympathising with put upon pharmacists for the multiple scrutiny their professional competence underwent. So I have not been a particularly keen or sparkling telephone conversationalist since, nearly 32 years ago, I retired. 

AND AS A CLASSIC FM LISTENER

YOU NEVER STOP HEARING that Ts and Cs apply. It is advice that concludes the majority of Classic FMs multifarious adverts, to none of which I ever listen. I also blank the 'this is me' ramblings of the handful of presenters who have drifted over to commercial broadcasting since it was ruled that the income of high earning BBC presenters would be publicised if they were not simultaneously employed by another broadcaster: dual employment apparently labels them freelance and shields their earnings from publication. I honestly don't give a toss how much any of them earns. I do wish they wouldn't keep reminding me who they are, though. They (and all the bloody politicians in the country) should be better known by what they purport to do than by name. Their names really do not matter. Inside a year after their departure, from whatever post, they'll be forgotten by all but those closest to them. As Jimmy Durante once sang: 'fame, if you win it, comes and goes in a minute.' So make someone happy, you lot. Stop reiterating who you are. At the beginning and the end is quite enough. Politicians should only be named when they've cocked up of a job: most of those in the UK government would qualify.          

AND IN AMERICA.  

THE SILLY BUGGER DID IT. Yes, departing President Donald Trump finally pushed a few hundred of the inbred sociopaths who support him into attacking Congress. What did he think he was doing? And what sort of country gifts an egomaniacal reality television tosser such power? Well, it showed the world on Wednesday. Anarchists with guns. Only this wasn't the OK Corral in 1881, you gun-happy morons, it was Capitol building in 2021.

You're a big country.

Do grow up.   

 

 

Post 378. THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL...

IS PROBABLY A NON-STOP EXPRESS TRAIN.

SO TO END A CRAP YEAR this short post is written wishing all who read it A Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2021.
If we missed you out in this year's somewhat diminished festive card bun fight please accept our apologies. My Leader did all that again this year and I sat around looking suitably helpless – a knack I have perfected to a fine art.
Sorry to be so downbeat, but with the new high speed coronavirus on the loose, and Facebookers currently spreading the message HAPPY NEW TIER EVERYONE, next year's prospect looks no better.
I gather we have not been helped over here by those brave locals who (never mind Hands - Face - Space) have declared themselves too independent to keep a sensible distance from others or wear a mask.
Christ!
And we did away with lunatic asylums!
Well, we're all locked indoors, so now what do we do?
INVARIABLY WE TURN TO NETFLIX.

AN IMPROVEMENT ON THE REST, even if it is mostly a load of 'B' movies. I'll not list 'em, or rabbit on about Christmas Tele.
No more negativity this year my dears.
Anyway, this computer is in the extension/conservatory/garden room/whatever and it's bloody cold here right now, so I'm off to a warm living room, at least until next year.
Take care. You're a special person.

Post 377. THERE ARE MORE OUT THAN IN.

AND MOST OF THEM CAME HERE.

TO THIS TIER ONE ISLAND.
They came in their unwanted hordes from near and far to get noisily drunk and show the Isle of Wight what irresponsible twits human beings can be. On Saturday 5th of December our police cells were jampacked with the useless bastards. More of them were in custody here than in any nearby south coast county. It was mayhem. So much for being the only Tier One designated area in the south east.
Since the type of policing that probably prevailed when we came here fifty two years ago is no longer acceptable, it is unlikely that the prime troublemakers were carefully selected, firmly chastised and, bruisedly convinced that future visits to these shores would be highly inadvisable, put on the earliest boat back to the mainland.
So I guess they'll keep returning now until our coronavirus figures go up high enough to force an amendment to the Tier One designation.
Don't imagine I have always welcomed them as summer visitors, either. Since I own neither a hotel nor or a guest house, I have only ever viewed visiting drivers as hazards on our dicey Island roads: much like those slow old locals who kid themselves they're 'safe' behind the wheel (and who were largely responsible for my decision to give up driving).
It's a mad world.
Enough of the grinch stuff.
CHRISTMAS IS UPON US.

Yep. Here we are again. Back to the world of 'Why did we ever take the decorations down?' 'How long have we got left to send a card to Timbuktu?' and, this year: 'How do we price this properly when we no longer have a village post office to take it to?'
Yes, that's our Britain in still-no-deal Brexit 2020.
Happy Christmas my dears.
Stay as safe as you possibly can.

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.