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.

       

 

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.