Post 423. SOUTHAMPTON GENERAL HOSPITAL.

 PART OF A HUGE, FRIENDLY, MAZE.

.WHERE, REASSURINGLY ACCOMPANIED BY OUR SON, NEIL, I arrived last Wednesday to face my second CT scan since the discovery that I have a malignant growth on the bowel; this scan to pinpoint exactly where forthcoming radio therapy treatment should be directed.

So this is unapologetically personal, but may help the reader as yet unbothered by a serious health problem face what I am told could eventually beset every other one of us.
The first thing you have to come to terms with is that, friendly and Christian namey though it now is, your modern hospital is still the most invasive institution outside of suspicious Customs and Excise that you will ever encounter in your sheltered little life.

That thoroughgoing medico's maxim: "You've gotta strip 'em to see 'em" still pertains.
Clothed patients are partially disguised patients.
Which means you must be prepared to stand before young hospital professionals (and when you are my age all of them are young) in a state of undress that would get you arrested if you were to stand in front of them, similarly undressed, in the street.
Next you will have to deposit yourself, or be assisted, onto a paper covered couch for examination and/or treatment. If it is a CT scan you will be required to undertake this manoeuvre with your bladder filled to a required level - NB It does not help if you have to relieve yourself during the possibly lengthy wait before you meet your CT team.
But to start from the beginning:

Neil and I caught the 1030am Red Funnel ferry from the IoW.
Neil drove Pauline's new state-of-the-art Citroën C3 and, despite the 'help' of satnav, we arrived at Southampton General in good time for my 1230 initial appointment.

I was sensibly armed with a bottle of alleged Highland Spring water which I senselessly left in the car throughout an entire day in which every sensible voice advised me I should be quaffing copious amounts of water. Yeah, I know..
In the hospital we were issued with medically approved masks and directed from one reception desk to another until, many corridors. stairs, and a lift later, we arrived at our destination. 

The staff member who invited Neil to come in with me for my first appointment had a confident, humorous and painstaking approach: he clearly explained what was what and what was to come before asking whether we had any questions. At no stage was I made to feel rushed. It was a master class in the art of new patient reassurance. 
We were then passed on to the Channel Islands Liaison Team representative, a cheerful and charming lady who, quickly and without fuss, booked accommodation for my brief stay in Southampton when the radiotherapy treatment I shall undergo begins on the 6th of next month.
There was then only the CT scan left on my appointment list. Ah...yes...the CT scan...
After a further wait in reception  that would, I'm afraid. have tested my elderly bladder beyond breaking point had it been even partially full, I was handed a cup of liquid by a member of the CT team, asked to down it in no more than ten minutes, and told that a short while afterwards I would be called in for the scan.
Initially all went as planned: two young ladies of the team finally got me the right way round on the examination couch and the gentleman with the instruments, who had tried without success to elicit from my befuddled brain whether I did or did not have a full bladder, then checked for himself: I did not have a full enough bladder. It would have to be another drink and another wait.
Another drink and another full bladder question later I was back on the examination couch and, irksome though it obviously was, still not blessed with a full enough bladder.
The team debated and decided to adopt an alternative procedure.

For me the moment of acute embarrassment was nigh.

Anyone who may have seen the President of America's meeting with the Duchess of Cornwall recently, will have been made startlingly aware of an elderly man's propensity for flatulence.
I started out that day with a biscuit and a glass of water and the hope that I would get through it without discomforting myself. my companion, or anyone I met.

On a 'needs to know' (and if you don't need to know don't read this bit), a particularly unpleasant effect of bowel cancer can also be the tendency to break wind indiscriminately and wetly.
Well, I held out as long as I could on that examination couch: but I had been there a long time.
It made no pretence at subterfuge. It was a loud fart.
I remained supine, still, and silent.
And then, bless her, one of the team's young ladies said: "At least it was a dry one"

I have no idea whether I apologised or what I babbled when I was assisted down from that couch.
Neil had made a quick tour of the hospital and was back in the waiting room when I returned. I think I simply said; "All done."
With luck and a following breeze we just caught the 4.30pm ferry home.
I did not talk about the scan.

But I like to think that, as she was eyeing the rear of a departing President Joe Biden, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall may have murmured the words; "Well at least they were dry ones."
Oh, just in case you are facing a first time hospital experience, a final word of advice.
Forget your dignity, my friend, forget your dignity.

Final final word. I am twelve years older than Joe Biden, which could explain why, in the first published draft of this post, I somehow transformed the Duchess of Cornwall into H.M. Queen Elizabeth 2 (an elderly lady who has done me no harm).
I will apologise at the next garden party to which I am invited. 

      

Post 422. THERE Y'GO, RUSSIAN LEADERS

IT'S ALL UKRAINE NOW..

EVEN IF MILLIONS HAVE FLED.
It looks as though those who remain will resist you until the last man, woman and child has been butchered, the entire country flattened, and Russia has emerged as the same paranoid pariah it was in Stalin's day. I guess, as in Stalin's day, nobody dares question orders given by the top dog, but it beggar's belief that none of you are privately disquieted at his seeming determination to promote World War 3.
Think on: eventually many of you could join him in facing trial for war crimes.

In the meantime, most of the world is viewing the wiping out of Ukraine by its next door neighbour as a horrific, unjustified, act of war. Oh, the Chinese are sitting it out (there's a surprise) and the barbarism of the Russian army has been nullified in Russia by State propaganda (there's a surprise) so most Russians are without a clue where their leaders are leading them: welcome to the twenty first century.
The rest I leave to writers with a bigger, but never better, audience than mine.
TELEVISION.

Currently my box watching is taken up with BBC news (mercifully free of political propaganda) and reruns of old cop shows such as Wycliffe starring Jack Shepherd, and Rizzoli and Isles starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander. Blissful departures from real life. Have also been looking in at the latest series of Killing Eve and Grantchester and, in both cases, have found myself wondering why. Good acting, but they are not wearing well. So, to my last moan:
THIS IS NOT A HAITCH.

IT IS AN AITCH!
So headquarters isn't haitch queue, it's aitch queue. For chrissake get your pronunciation right.

I only mention it because we have just seen Trigger Point, an ITV series in which key members of the cast dismantle terrorist bombs along with their personal relationships and, irritatingly, this letter in their own language.
Incidentally, I am now avoiding any TV series featuring bomb makers. The nerves won't stand it. I even eye Amazon boxes with suspicion, and gawd alone knows how many of them arrive here every month.
Go carefully.
Beware of unattended parcels and unusual smears on door handles. 

Post 421. OUR ROZ WOULD HAVE BEEN 52

LAST SATURDAY

AND THE ENTIRE FAMILY CAME HERE.
First on board were Jac and Mike.

Mike immediately went to work with vengeance and a strimmer on Roz's overgrown wild flower plot and in a couple of hard working hours had the plot cut, raked, tidied of fallen tree, and ready for reseeeding. Our thanks again to him: he really is a good 'un.
The rest of the family then arrived and wildflower seed was liberally scattered.

Now the sun shines with cold determination and it looks as if even a rain dance will not bring the downpour needed to soak that seed in.
Ne'er mind. It was a grand day
Roz would have so enjoyed it.
Like the rest of us, she would have been horrified at developments elsewhere, too, and I believe would be in agreement with me when I conjecture:

SO YOU DEMOLISH AN ENTIRE COUNTRY.

WHAT THEN, MR. PUTIN?
Day trips for those of your brave, unquestioning, supporters prepared to risk nerve gas residue and the wrath of Ukrainian guerrillas?
Look what you are doing to the world, you silly born bastard!

 

Post 420. MY FATHER'S PREDICTION

AT NEWS OF THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMB.

THAT WILL BE THE END OF THE WORLD.
He suffered neither fools nor pessimists gladly, my father, but his prediction when we heard the news that scientists had split the atom to make a bomb was stark:
"Now they'll try to outdo each other until they produce something that wipes out entire countries. That will be the end of the world."
He died in the late nineteen fifties before quite so many mad bastards in power had joined the nuclear rat race. I so hoped at the time he would be wrong, but am too often reminded how seldom he was. Now the maddest mad bastard in power, Putin, is at it again.
The destruction of Ukraine is his doing. The buck stops at the top. перестань ты маньяк!
Or in plain English, if the translation is right: Stop it, you maniac!
Enough said. I may be more flippant next time. But not about this war.

 

Post 419. LOCKDOWN IS OVER

SO WE HAD A PUB LUNCH

IN A PACKED PUB.
Not the one above, which  I believe is in London, but at our popular carvery, the Sloop Inn, Wootton Bridge, of which I have been unable to reproduce a picture. It was our first such outing in over a year. Suffice to say the meal was excellent, the staff friendly, helpful and competent, and the atmosphere so relaxed that one could be forgiven for thinking every trace of Covid had long departed the planet. It hasn't, so I have to admit a slight unease as to how many in that vast gathering may have been carrying the virus: but, sod it, you only live once. And our late daughter, Roz, so loved that pub.

Then back to
TELEVISION.
RUSSIA/UKRAINE. Those desperately brave Ukrainians are fighting on, and tens of thousands of their women and children now seek refuge all over the world. I can't imagine how even our self-serving shower in power can ignore them.

THE COURIER. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Greville Wynne, a British businessman lured, at first  unwillingly, into the daft spy business by MI6 and an American CIA woman. Proof were it needed that espionage is just a lethal game played by social misfits.
OLD HENRY. In this western Old Henry (Tim Blake Nelson) gives shelter to a wounded stranger who he finds on his land. Henry is a farmer, a widower, and father of restless teenaged son, Wyatt (Gavin Lewis). Three killers, purporting to be lawmen, then arrive seeking the wounded man and the cash he had with him. Dealing with a downbeat dirt farmer will be an easy task. Or will it? Whether or not you believe the explanation for Old Henry's ultimate transformation, this film directed by Potsi Ponciroli is way ahead of your old-fashioned cowboy fare.

All for now.  

Post 418. THIS WILL BE BRIEF.

WE DO NOT NEED ANOTHER WAR.

SO STOP PLAYING SILLY BUGGERS: whoever you are..
It is not yet WW3 and it is not a repeat of the Falklands, so we do not need Boris Johnson trying out his  Winston Thatcher impersonation over this Ukraine business. The three self-satisfied faces in the above end of WW2 picture were clearly convinced that losing millions of lives through conflict was the price countries paid for lasting peace. At the time the picture was taken I believed it, too. But look where we are now.

One war after another since they so smugly sat for their victory celebration.

And at this moment that prize prick Putin is invading Ukraine on the pretext that he is guarding threatened Russians in the country.
Hitler came to a sticky end. So will he.
But it is not our war and to the best of my knowledge there is no archduke or obscure treaty that we can use as an excuse for becoming involved in it. By all means lend oblique support and make noises off, but don't take to the stage unless the power-crazed idiot decides he must step in to guard Russian billionaires in Britain.
Then kick the shit out of him.
That's all for now.  

Post 417. ANOTHER OF THOSE DAYS.

WHEN ALL WAS GOING WELL

THEN I LOST MY BLOG POST.
Yep, Saturday was another of those days when I lost it: a nigh on complete (not badly written if I do say so myself) blog post. It was there until Google inexplicably took me onto a new, blank, page and I found myself unable to retrieve anything that had gone before.
Christ I could do with the help of a teenage IT wizard sometimes!

So here I am today to celebrate St. Valentine's Day, the Exact Middle-of-the-Month Day, and a Den's Feeling Bloody-Minded Day. And I shall reiterate my list of moans rather than just carp on about Google.

I started with the premise that nobody in Britain is worth £125,000 a week for kicking a bloody football about, let alone a cat, and certainly not when there are paramedic staff earning no more than £16,000 a year. I went on to report - in retrospect probably unnecessarily - that I seldom watch The Vine Show on Channel 5 anymore: still look in if Yasmin Alibhai Brown or Owen Jones is a guest, but eschew any former UKIP little Englander or former hack now purporting to be 'a broadcaster,' particularly if he incessantly boasts about his 'penthouse flat in the stockbroker belt' yet seems devoid of the funds to buy a razor. I also wondered how many transmitters broadcasting to a couple of dozen streets from a garage in London there can possibly be.

On the positive side,I played Roy Orbison on the Steepletone and, in response to a recent disclosure by Yasmin A-B that she has undergone 'tests' in hospital, expressed the hope of Mo and I that it would turn out to be nothing too serious.We've never met her, but we like her. She says it the way it is. So do we.
I shall finish now with the item I was starting upon when I was so abruptly Googled.
An open email to radio presenter Alexander Armstrong (Classic FM).
Hi AA,
Would be most grateful if you could play The Scherzo from Litolff's Concerto Symphonique No.4. for me. It was the tuning up piece of an instrumentalist (reputed to be a concert pianist doing his national service) in the band of the Royal Signals circa 1948 and, as the band hut was but a very short distance from the hut where I was supposed to be training as a radio mechanic, probably explains why I eventually became a wireless operator.
E&M was no match for the maestro. Never did learn his name, either.
Love from us on the Isle of Wight.
PS. Could you also send me one of your nice fellows in a peaked hat, yellow uniform, and shiny boots and gaiters, please? Just to look the car over. I never see any of them on the road now and I used to so enjoy being saluted. Cheers

What? That's not you?  

Post 416. SOMETHING OTHER THAN ME.

THAT WILL BE TELEVISION.

AFTER A LIGHT MUSICAL STORY.

A little anecdote from one of my seven sisters-in-law, Jean Butler.
Some years ago Jean went to see Barry Douglas play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.2 (probably at Portsmouth Guildhall). She had always been saddened by the second movement and on this occasion, at a particularly moving moment, gave way to a huge sob.

When his highly successful performance came to an end maestro Douglas stood to rapturous applause and said something along the lines of: "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for being such a wonderful audience, and I would particularly like to thank the lady around row three who made her feelings felt so clearly..."
Jean went home still blushing but very very happy.
TELEVISION.

We watched Sue Perkins' Big American Road Trip (Channel 4), an excellent two-parter in which the comedian drove a campervan across Colorado and California: awesome scenery and a wealth of experienced van dwellers with fascinating background stories to tell.
We thoroughly enjoyed every loo-hole-digging moment of it, though the revelation by one traveller that you have to do all your posts on the net by video now, because nobody reads any more, was somewhat sobering news for an old keyboard blogger to absorb. Ah well.

To end on a really happy note:

SAVE THE CINEMA.(Sky)
We watched this unashamedly fictional retelling of a true story (great cast includes: Samantha Morton, Jonathan Pryce, Tom Felton, Adeel Akhtar, Erin Richards) and thought it was Brit/film stuff in the feel-good tradition of Hear My Song (1991) and The Full Monty (1997).

Whatever the reviews, we loved it.

All the best for next - the shortest - month. 

Post 415. FIRST CAME THE SOMEWHAT INVASIVE INTERVIEW.

THEN ENDOSCOPY (GASTROSCOPY AND COLONOSCOPY).

THEN CAME MRI  AND, A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER, CT.
Then, following another and again somewhat invasive interview, confirmation of what any health wise reader may have surmised: cancer has caught up with me. In the top and tail examinations the top was fine but the tail disclosed an unwelcome growth on the bowel that will, barring any change in arrangements, now be treated by radio therapy at a hospital in Southampton. My GP surgery has rung today to book me in for a blood test early in February, so nobody is letting the grass grow under their feet.
I am too sane to be a hero (most of the heroes I met in my army days were, at least slightly, unhinged), but from the outset of it all I realized that a small degree of fatalism had to be adopted. The majority of my old pals are long dead and gone and, at ninety one, I can't go on forever.
Come what may, though, I am blessed with the love and support of Mo and our family and have experienced only kindness and efficiency from the health professionals I have so far met.
And that's it for now.
Back before the month ends with something other than me.
Watch out for newly unfettered cyclists.         

Post 414. HARRY POTTER WAS BACK.

 STILL MAGIC.

AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
The first eleven pictured on the Harry Potter/Cast list to be found on Google turned up at Leavesden for this lovely reunion documentary. The twelfth picture is of the late, sadly missed, Alan Rickman (best anti-hero anywhere in fiction). 
Director of the first two films, The Philosopher's (Sorcerer's in America) Stone and The Chamber of Secrets, Chris Columbus, was there and was clearly much liked and respected by his, originally very young, team of actors.
Most of the youngsters - now adult and worldly - appeared in person to charm us again.
It was still magic. After twenty years.
Shame the author J.K. Rowling wasn't there.
When all is said and done, without her there would have been no Harry Potter.
And I don't care what any detractor says, I like her.
THAT'S IT FOR NOW.
Tomorrow I shall prepare for, and on Wednesday I shall undergo, a couple of somewhat invasive top and tail examinations at our local hospital

BACK, I HOPE, BEFORE THE MONTH IS OUT.   

Post 413. A FAST FAREWELL TO 2021

 A  CRAP YEAR.

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

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

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

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

AND TO HELL WITH THE BLOODY COVID!

        

Post 412. IF YOU READ THIS BLOG

HAPPY CHRISTMAS.

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

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

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

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

And presents even though we're stuck at home

And presents even though we're stuck at home

Look here! The Christmas cards is a comin'

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

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

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

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

WISHING YOU ALL A HAPPY AND COVID FREE CHRISTMAS  

 .             

Post 411. THIS TIME IT WAS MAUREEN.

TAKEN TO HOSPITAL

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

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

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

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

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

Stay safe, kindly non-macho reader.      

Post 410. STILL STAYING UPBEAT.

OR TRYING TO.

NOT MUCH IS MOVING.

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

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

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

It is ten to five in the evening GMT here.

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

Why am I even thinking about it?

BACK BEFORE THEY ARRIVE

 

  

    

Post 409. ANOTHER MONTH ENDED.

THE CLOCKS HAVE GONE BACK.

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

He does his best to stand in for Shadow.

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

Post 408. A CONTEMPLATIVE TIME AGAIN.

A TIME TO REALIZE

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

TELEVISION.

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

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

IF YOU KNOW YOU ARE

GOOD LUCK

And go carefully

Post 407. THIS IS THE DAWNING OF

THE AGE OF APOLOGY

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

This is the dawning of the age of apology

Age of apology

Apology

Apology

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

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

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

Anyway, winter's coming.

Good luck with your fuel company.

Post 406. EVER FIND YOURSELF ASKING

WHY

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

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

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

Ditto tabloid journalists.

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

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

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

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

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

 

Post 405. THE INVISIBLE MAN.

THERE'S A JOY TO BEING HIM.

BELIEVE ME.

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

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

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

TELEVISION.
Two fine old films:

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

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

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

     

  

 

 

Post 404. HERE COME THE OPPORTUNISTS.

OR, IN THE VERNACULAR.

THE GREEDY BASTARDS.

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

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

As for the PM:

"Our NHS," eh?

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

ROZ'S CHILDHOOD FRIEND WENDY.

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