Author: postcardscribblesblog

PC 457 Low Level Health Care in the United Kingdom

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(Following on from PC 456; I was talking to Lisa in the Hope Café)

“Earlier this year I recognised that my ‘gut health’ was in a poor state following three general anaesthetics in 14 months, so started taking a probiotic, Symprove, one recommended by a dietician/nutritionist called Caroline Laidlaw.”

“Surely you can just eat more fermented fruit and vegetables and drink Kombucha. Isn’t that the same?”

“Possibly!! According to the various health bibles, ‘you can support your gut health by eating a diverse, fibre-rich diet, managing stress, prioritising sleep, exercising regularly and staying hydrated, while also limiting processed foods, sugar and excessive alcohol.’ I wish! Anyway, I decided to follow Caroline’s advice and sense a big improvement. Sadly the ‘original’ flavoured liquid tasted like cat’s piss, so now I’ve opted for the Strawberry & Raspberry flavour.

“Cat’s piss? How would you know what that tastes like? Actually don’t answer that!”

“We use ‘piss’ in a variety of ways. There’s ‘weak beer’s the colour of piss’ and then ‘he’s pissed’, in informal English suggesting someone’s angry and annoyed, a contraction of ‘pissed off’. Confusingly ‘he’s pissed’ might also mean ‘he’s drunk’, probably because one’s subsequent actions may piss off those around you.” 

“Come on Richard. Forget about gut health for a moment, I need you to concentrate on GPs etcetera. Having done lots of research already I suspect that low level healthcare provision in the United Kingdom is not in a good shape.”

“Well, I looked at my own, Trinity Medical Centre, the one I am registered with in Hove.”

“Ah! I am just up the road with Charter. And ……”

“According to their website, they have eight doctors who are partners and eight who are salaried general practitioners, but not all the doctors spend five days a week in the practice, carrying out other roles within the NHS, committee work, training research etc.”

There’s a certain symmetry in having a medical centre in a decommissioned church!

“So, 16 doctors in total. The World Health Organization norm is one doctor for 1000 patients. Here in the UK the average is some 2250, an increase of 17% in ten years. ….”

“That’s a huge increase!”

“My doctor at Charter says they plan on some 8-12 minutes per patient ….. and you can only present one issue!”

“Trinity has, according to their website, about 24,000 registered patients. GP Surgeries are paid £136 per patient per year for the Practice’s operational costs, including heating, staff wages and administration. There are separate funds for specific patient care services such as specialist referrals or prescription drugs. Twenty-four thousand registered patients give them an income of £3,264,000. One of the doctors told me that unscrupulous practices just sign up as many individuals as possible, giving them more revenue and making that patient/doctor ratio unworkable.

“You know that one in seven GP Practices have closed since 2018? There are now 6,229 active practices in England, down 14 per cent on seven years ago. Just at a time when there are additional 5 million individuals registered”

“I had an interested comment from one of the GPs at Trinity. Some years ago, very few patients needing to see a doctor were in the 18-50 age bracket, so a practice could cope with a large number of registered individuals. Today everyone clamours to see a doctor – especially the ‘worried well’ and the anxious Millennials and Generation Z; and they want to be seen ….. now!”

“I assume that, when they can’t get an appointment, in frustration they head to the private practices, of which there are more and more.”

“Well I have certainly done that …….”

“I’ve got this note: The Royal College of General Practitioners’ plan ‘Fit For the Future’ urges new investment and retention measures, warning of a mass exodus of nearly 19000 GPs in the next five years.”

“That’s interesting; I have first-hand knowledge of this. I asked a couple of GPs, actually friends, actually a couple, how they were. “We are in the process of moving out of NHS general practice in the main due to the issues outlined in the RCGP’s ‘Fit for The Future’ plan. We as a bunch are highly resilient, committed and actively excited by the ability to change, to suit our patients’ needs, but the clunky system is no longer able to deliver this and we are fatigued. For a long time we’ve been squeezed financially and our newly qualified GPs don’t have job prospects. And those of us with experience have to work longer hours to earn the same pay, as our practices are aware they can employ someone willing to earn less because there is such demand. Morale is low! All a bit gloomy I’m afraid! But we are fine!” This really annoys me! On the one hand we have a high wastage rate of skilled individuals, on the other the Department of Health and Social Care saying: “GPs are front of centre of the Ten-Year Health Plan ……..  that’s why they will benefit from an increasing proportion of NHS funds, and we’ve already made great progress, including recruiting over 2,000 extra GPs in a year”.

“Wouldn’t it be better to try and reduce the wastage rate? I was told about 30% of trained doctors leave within five years. This seems such a waste of time, talent and experience.”

“My daughter says it’s the same, the wastage rate, in the teaching profession. Maybe it would be possible to work on some retention scheme ….. or improve the working conditions. No business would accept this loss of skill; they would start looking as to why it was happening and how to lessen the wastage.”

“Richard this has been really useful and I’ve probably got enough copy for my article. Thank you!”

“No problem. Before you go …… we were talking about cat’s piss ….. in Estoril, Portugal Celina feeds a black cat that lives on the street and has also made friends with Mirela Gatos (Note 1), a Romanian who looks after dozens of strays down on the promenade.

Celina and Mirela

“Ah! We always need examples of good deeds. Enjoy Singapore, Perth and New Zealand.”

“Thank you. We will.”

Richard 19th September 2025

Perth Australia

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS The provision of both good health care and education are the bedrocks of a mature society.

Note 1 ‘Gatos’ is Portuguese for Cat!

PC 456 How was Portugal?

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Managed to get a couple of hours in the Hope Café this week, in between returning from Portugal and flying to Singapore on Sunday evening. I had promised to meet Lisa, as she is gathering information for a piece she’s writing about Low Level Health Care in the United Kingdom. We agreed to meet on Tuesday, before my haircut with Monika at Amor on Palmeira Square.

Tuesday afternoons in the Hope Café are never very busy and, despite a manic diary for this week, I found myself slightly early for Lisa. With an espresso in hand, went and sat at one of the tables, my mind running over our recent three weeks in Estoril (See PC 454 Portugal’s Estoril). One of the joys of being with Cecilia and Toni is that every now and again the conversation uncovers a gem of a story. I shouldn’t be surprised, given that Cecilia has lived in Boston and Washington as well as in Rio de Janeiro and Toni’s parents were Brazilian diplomats so lived a peripatetic life. I think it was Toni who happened to say he knew someone whose mother had accumulated a great deal of money through a number of failed marriages. Then Cecilia remembered a Brazilian named Lily Safra whose story is one of a colourful and intriguing life, worthy of writing just the highlights!

Lily Safra was born in 1934 in Porte Alegre in Brazil, grew up in Rio and moved with her family to Montevideo, Urugay. Aged 17 she married Mario Cohen with whom she had three children, before divorcing some ten years later. So far, so normal, you might think. In 1965 she married Alfredo Monteverde, a Romanian Jewish immigrant, who ran the Ponto Frio household appliance distribution business, only for him to commit suicide four years later. Her late husband’s banker, a chap called Edmond Safra, a Sephardic Jew, helped her secure control over her late husband’s entire fortune. A brief romance with Safra ended as his family disapproved of Lily’s Ashkenazi Jewish faith, so in 1972 she married a businessman called Samuel Bendahan, separating after two weeks and divorcing a year later.

Four years later, in 1976, she and Edmond Safra, who had founded the Republic National Bank of New York, married. The couple divided their time between homes in New York, Monaco, Geneva and the Villa Leopolda on the French Riveria. A day after the couple gained Monegasque citizenship, on 3 December 1999, Edmond died in a fire in his apartment. The fire was started by a former US Green Beret, Ted Maher, whose plan was to rescue Safra and be forever in his debt; it went out of control! Maher was sentenced to ten years in goal but sawed his way out of his prison window and escaped to France. There’s a film here, isn’t there? (See PS)

Edmond and Lily Safra

In my last Estoril PC (PC 454) I included the view from the bathroom window around 0200 one morning, the street brightly lit with the sodium streetlight.

Note the little grey gate to the left of the tree

The other morning around 0320 I needed a pee …. and noticed a chap outside the gates of the house almost opposite. He had arrived on a smart electric scooter, parked it on the pavement and was interrogating his mobile phone. I realised he was actually texting or talking to someone ….. at 0322! A minute or so later the pedestrian gate swung open and he disappeared up the driveway – leaving his scooter, lights on, outside. I imagined a number of scenarios; a male escort arriving to party was dismissed as he would have taken the scooter inside; no Pizza delivery or Uber Eats as he wasn’t carrying anything; … so I suspected he was your local drug delivery chap ….. just dial a number, order your Cocaine or ecstasy and in no time it arrives.

The same chap the following afternoon

My colourful thoughts were dashed when I saw him the following afternoon, again trying to interact with someone inside the house, but his efforts were rebuffed by a chap at the gate and he was shooed away. Romance has its ups and downs and I don’t now think he is a drug delivery man.

The family apartment is on the northern slopes of Estoril. Outside a house in the square near the casino, the Estoril motor racing circuit is laid out in black blocks on the white pavement.

The circuit itself is some 6 kilometres further inland and last week they were hosting the Porsche Cup Brazil.

Sound carries and it becomes a tedious background noise, unchanging except for the gears. I imagine the drivers taking their cars around the circuit know what they’re doing and how to handle the vehicles. Sadly, the majority of Portuguese drivers demonstrate some of the worst aspects of driving, possibly summed up by their brain saying: ‘I am entitled to do what I want.’ Woe betides a pedestrian who gets in their way. Those who can’t elevate their skills to going around the racing track take to the streets in the early hours, both the car and the driver screaming with delight. Not a view shared by the light sleepers.

Just as I was thinking Lisa wasn’t going to show, she rushes in in a bit of a lather ……..

“Hi! Richard. Gosh! I am so sorry I’m late. Got involved in a meeting with the editor of The Argus, discussing current assignments and what we might like to look at. You know I want to get any views you have on the current GP system here?”

“Yes, and in preparation I asked a couple of doctors I know …… and I will come on to that but, a couple of afterthoughts from Portugal …..”

(To be continued)

Richard 12th September 2025

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Lily died in 2022 from pancreatic cancer aged 87, with a net worth of some $1.3 billion.

PC 455 A Nation State? Or the State of the Nation

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Writing in the summer months should be light-hearted, tackling subjects like the size of the marrows in the annual Village Fete, one’s recollections of, or lack of, attendance at one of the many festivals, either musical or book-related, or even, if you’re of a certain age or persuasion, at one of the many summer Scouts Camps. The 16th World Scout Jamboree Parade was held this year in the Portuguese city of Porto. Or, of course, of one’s memories of taking part in the 2025 Fastnet Race.

Recently two pieces in The Times prompted this postcard, inevitably a little more serious than posting a selfie on Instagram of you and your friends at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (1st – 25th August). One was the personal view of the United Kingdom by author Lionel Shriver who has moved abroad and the other The Sunday Times’ survey of 2,113 British adults (excluding Northern Ireland), carried out by More in Common between 22nd and 24th July.

It’s fashionable at the moment to be critical of Britain, not where it stands in the world, but of the mess that our society, you and me, us, are perceived to be in.

I remember reading Lionel Shriver’s 2003 book ‘We Need to Tak About Kevin’, a fictional story of a school massacre in the United States, written from the first-person perspective of the teenage killer’s mother. It was Shriver’s seventh novel, won the 2005 Orange prize and was made into a film in 2011. I have read a number of Shriver’s other novels; some I’ve liked and some I’ve found hard going.

Lionel Shriver’s piece started: “An American based in the UK for 36 years, in 2023 I absconded to Portugal (She’s aged 68). So how dismal does Britain look from a distance? I’m still emotionally and politically enmeshed in British affairs. But my personal fate is no longer joined at the hip with the increasingly distressing fate of the UK.” Nice huh! Diving straight in!

The easy target for anyone concerns the levels of immigration, legal and illegal, and the way the state meets its humanitarian obligations. The current Labour Government won last year’s General Election with a promise to ‘stop the small boats’; so far, they have failed miserably! This tide of humanity, mainly but not exclusively single men aged 18-30, has been washing up on the Kent shore for some years, increasing year-on-year; so far this year 28,000 have made the crossing. Every shade of the political spectrum claims to have an answer, but so far the stream continues unabated.

Shriver continues:

“Small boats and sky-high legal immigration will continue to wreak demographic havoc. This change is permanent. Millions of immigrants from clashing traditions will bring only more of their friends and families.”

If you look at the projected demographic changes in European countries and the shifting burden of increasing pension provision onto a smaller workforce, most show their populations in decline; apart from Britain, due to net immigration! The trick will be to assimilate these immigrants into our society and no one seems to be very creative in this respect. We haven’t insisted, for instance, on immigrants learning English within a few years, as a prerequisite of citizenship; in some towns there are enclaves of people who arrived in the latter half of the last century, still unable to speak the language. Across the North Sea, potential Danish immigrants have to have proof of a certain income level, proficiency in speaking Danish, passing a citizenship test and integrating into society. This policy, introduced last year, has slowed the flow of potential immigrants to a trickle.

From the Times survey for ‘More in Common’, when asked the main reasons people crossed the Channel in small boats to get to the UK, voters agreed the government needs to crack down on the UK’s black market for labour and welfare payments. According to the poll, 54 per cent believed the most likely reason people came was to access the UK’s welfare system. This was followed by claims it was easier to gain asylum in the UK than elsewhere (49 per cent) and because they were fleeing conflict in other countries (37 per cent).

In one focus group, Peter, a dockyard manager from Plymouth, described Britain as a “soft touch” because as “soon as [migrants] land on our shores, they’re entitled to healthcare, food and a roof over their head. There won’t be many countries in the European nation[s] that will offer them that. I think we need to harden our borders and take advice maybe from America or Australia, which I appreciate. Seems harsh, but the country is on its knees.” He speaks for the silent majority.

Shriver followed up with: “Supposedly, a leading “British value” is “fair play”. So let’s talk about fairness. Amid an ever-escalating housing shortage, itself powered by mass immigration, your government uses your money to provide a free water-taxi service to your shores and to put up low-skilled, overwhelmingly male foreign citizens in four-star hotels. No one’s putting locals in free hotels.”

This sort of popularist comment is swallowed by the unquestioning masses. It’s recognised, for instance, that successive governments have failed to ensure sufficient houses are built to meet national demand; the current immigration crisis has simply exacerbated an already bad situation. Until their asylum application is processed, it’s perceived that these immigrants might make our streets unsafe. But, as Fraser Nelson says: “It chimes with what a great many Brits now believe. Poll after poll finds the public convinced that crime is getting far worse. The reality is different; NHS hospital data shows knife assaults last year fell to a 25-year low, with the number treated for violent assault close to half what it was in 2000. Crime surveys agree. By such measures our streets have seldom, if ever, been safer.”

I am as concerned as Shriver is when she writes: “Ten million working-age inhabitants are on benefits. Almost half of universal credit recipients need neither work nor look for work, and over a million are foreign-born.” If I understand it correctly, you can apply for benefits online, with no face-to-face meeting. Self-diagnosis? Absolute nonsense. A quick way to reduce this ridiculous figure would be to have face-to-face reviews; those who genuinely need support can be identified from those who are gaming the system.

Fraser Nation gives a final perspective. ‘Perhaps the ultimate sign of national confidence is the migration figures: not so much the arrivals, but the departures. Last year, just 77,000 Brits emigrated, the lowest since records began. Among those who remain, I like to think, are some who share my deeply unpopular belief: that in spite of our problems, this is an amazing country. And that now, more than ever, there is no better place in the world to call home.’

Richard 5th September 2025

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Shriver makes the point that Portugal has an immigration backlog of over 400,000 cases.

PPS Jeremy Clackson’s column in last weekend’s Sunday Times was titled: ‘Britain is awful. But here’s why you shouldn’t leave.’  This made me smile: ‘Then there’s the problem of Europe’s unpredictability. One minute Portugal has the welcome mat out for Brits who wish to escape from the menace of Keir Starmer, but then they change their minds.’ 

PPPS The queue at Passport Control Lisbon Airport yesterday morning was enormous; 55 minutes? Almost Third World!!

PC 454 Portugal’s Estoril

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Estoril? Where’s that? Well, it’s west of Lisbon, just before you get to the Atlantic coast of Portugal.

According to Wikipedia, “Estoril is ‘a town in the civil parish of ‘Cascais e Estoril’, of the Portuguese Municipality of Cascais, on the Portuguese Riviera. It is a popular tourist destination with hotels, beaches and the Casino Estoril.

Estoril’s Casino

It has been home to numerous royal families and celebrities. It’s one of the most expensive places to live in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula; it is home to a sizeable foreign community.” (Note 1)

Estoril, enclosed by the candy-striped line

Why Estoril? I’ll explain. My connections with Brazil, itself a former Portuguese colony, go back to 1851; my great grandfather Richard Sydney Corbett was born in Recife, on its northeast coast (See PC 34 Recife Brazil February 2015). More recently, I got to know Celina in the Balham Hot Yoga studio in 2011 and made my first visit to Rio de Janeiro in April 2012. When her brother Carlos decided to uproot his family and move to Portugal in 2016, he chose to live in Estoril. Their cousin Toni did the same and their mother spends six months of the year here; Celina and I have made the most of having a home-from-home here in Portugal! I have mentioned Estoril and neighbouring Cascais before in some of my postcards.

With no convenient Hot Yoga studio, we get our daily exercise by a long before-breakfast walk to Cascais and back, the five-mile circuit including some of Estoril’s most expensive real estate. For instance, up on Rua Bélgica there’s a monster of a house, its street frontage running for some 100m:

……. from the air you can see it’s rectangular in shape. Rumour has it its worth upwards of €10 million

In this particular area of Estoril, high up on a hill overlooking the sea, the streets reflect the country’s imperial past; names such as Rua Angola, Rua Timor, Rua Cabo Verde and Rua Brasil. Towards the southern end of Rua Inglaterra (Note 2), last year there was a house that needed some TLC. You can see it on this screenshot from Google Maps.

This year the house is gone and is being replaced by four structures that look more like warehouses than dwellings, with concrete rooves. You get one view from Rua Inglaterra:

And another from Rua Dom Afonso Henriques

The men working on these building projects are generally from Portugal’s African ex-colonies and most arrive around 7 o’clock at Monte Estoril station on the train from some cheaper dormitory village near Lisbon. Other arrivals disappear into the staff entrances of the many hotels here in Estoril.

Connecting Rua India and Rua Ingleterra is Rua Mouzinho de Albuquerque.

I wondered who he was …… and found out! A general, Joaquim Augusto Mouzinho de Albuquerque (1855 – 1902) was Governor of Mozambique. Portuguese society saw him as the hope and symbol of Portuguese reaction to threats against its interests in Africa from European empires. For example, in 1890, The British required Portugal to give up all the land between its African colony of Angola in the west and Mozambique in the east and gave it an ultimatum. Portugal was no match for the British Empire and acquiesced; the land became the British colonies of Malawi and Rhodesia. (See PC 353 ‘…. Of Cabbages and Kings’ September 2023)

Following a common Portuguese tradition, he married his cousin, but they didn’t have children (Note 3). He allegedly committed suicide at the entrance to the Jardim das Laranjeiras in Lisbon on 8th January 1902 aged 46.

Walking through the streets I am pleased to see wonderful examples of craftsmanship evident in the stone walls that surround some of the mansions. I first noticed it in Iposeira in Rio de Janeiro:

Then saw a couple of examples here in Estoril. Here’s the best:

Although maybe the builders are simply trying to copy nature?

Of course doing things the traditional way is generally very expensive, the cost of labour the critical factor. But it’s very sad when, in this particular area of expensive houses, there’s a great example of naffness. The owner, who could probably afford the real thing, substitutes some hedge greenery with plastic … yes, real green plastic! Apparently they are Chinese.

Historically the water off some of Estoril’s beaches had high levels of iodine where older people bathed to heal joint pains and bone diseases; the seaweed grew on the rocky sea ledges. Currently there’s an invasion of foreign kelp and the council make huge daily efforts to remove it from the sand.

I am aware I see things that don’t register with others! One of our fellow passengers on Ms Roko in Croatia last year (See PCs 390, 391 & 393) commented:

“Were we on the same boat, did we go on the same tours, did we have meals together? All I do on holiday is relax and enjoy the sun. You seem to do that and observe life going on around you, listen to life going on around you, enough to write three fascinating ‘Tales of Croatia’ PCs.”

For instance, the daytime view across Avenide General Carmona is of another house; no surprises there!

The nighttime view, taken at 0215, is very different; worthy of note?

And if you own a large mansion and only occupy it occasionally …..

you need some guard dogs to roam freely, although these two aren’t very alert!

Maybe I should finish these musings about Estoril with the refrain from ‘Nights in Estoril’ by Christine McVie (Jul 1943 – Nov 2022), of Fleetwood Mac. It featured in their album ‘Time’.  

“I remember the nights in Estoril

A kiss and, oh, the never ending thrill

And I remember the coming storm

Oh, and you my love, how you kept me warm.”

Richard 29th August 2025

Estoril Portugal

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 There is a large contingent of Brazilians here, drawn by the common language.

Note 2 Maybe a nod to our 600-year-old alliance.

Note 3 Statistically 25% of children born from a marriage of first cousins have some defect, mainly mental.

PC 453 Travelling in August

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It’s Sod’s Law (Note 1) that it’s only after you leave for the airport for your flight, the airline texts you to say there’s a delay. Fortunately for us going to Lisbon last week, it was only an hour. My mother-in-law and Toni, returning to Portugal after a retreat in France in July, were told of a nine-hour delay in their TAP flight as they were in the taxi from their Parisian hotel to Orly Airport. Nothing one can do ….. just shrug ….. and resign oneself to a little more time to browse the airside shops ….. have another coffee ….. or debate whether paying for the use of an airport lounge is worth it …. if indeed there is space!

Having checked in, we accept the offer of a printed Boarding Pass, despite having downloaded it earlier; sometimes it’s just easier than searching for it in one’s smartphone – did I add it to my Wallet, takes a screenshot or is it still in my email? I am aware there’s been an international standardisation of the size of a passport, so why isn’t the boarding pass the same size?

A tall chap in Baggage Security asked whether I had any fruit in my backpack; given that his shift had started at 0300, he was remarkably alert! He’d smiled when he’d seen Francisquinha, who always travels with her front paws, ears and head out of my yellow backpack, but needed to delve down into all the stuff you pop in at the last minute. Actually in this case the chemical sensors had noticed the four Conference pears I was taking out to Portugal, to make an Upside-down Pear Cake for the family birthday. Establishing they were genuine, we repacked and went to get something to eat on the plane for lunch.

Regular readers may remember that, in my last visit to the Hope Café, Sami had quoted something from one of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series: “But Catherine’s journey had been more moving staircase than slippery slope; a slow downwards progression. Looking across at the people heading upwards and wondering if that was a better idea. But somehow knowing she’d have to reach the bottom before she could change direction.” At London Gatwick’s South Terminal, there seemed plenty of people on the Up escalator who looked as they weren’t sure where they wanted to be …. and vica versa! And mid-morning in August, it’s constant, this stream of potential airline passengers, going up, coming down, mingling, stopping, gapping, talking, confused and occasionally running in the direction of a departure gate as if they’ve remembered why they were there in the first place.

With more time to kill than usual, we explored some of the shops, wondering whether the prices were better than on the High Street or just hiked for those in urgent need to find something they realised they had forgotten to pack. The salesgirl in Superdry said they sold lots of the latter!

I got another espresso and we found a spare place to sit. On the bench next to us was a young man selling some App over his laptop. It’s hard not to lend half an ear ….. and when he’d finished I asked him about it. It was an app that allowed you to view the layout of a restaurant in 3D, so you could select a table – not too close to the kitchens, or loos, or main entrance perhaps. It cost you 10% of your bill – the restaurant kept 50%, the app developers 50%. Sounded interesting – if you eat out a lot in swanky expensive places!

But in some ways I was more interested in him, just buzzing with energy and life. He, a Spaniard living in Dubai, and his friend had just finished ‘A’ Levels at Wellington College (Note 2); they were flying to Sweden. Good to chat to young people with an obvious zest for life ….. when you know that, sadly, a huge proportion of young adults in the UK are on some form of benefits.

Despite the fact I’ve written over four hundred and fifty postcards, I still occasionally struggle with being grammatically correct, often ignoring a Microsoft prompt if I feel it sounds better! A great believer in grammar reflecting society’s trends! I have got better with spelling but not immune to an incorrect word getting through my editor’s reread ….. and reread! I love the comments my scribbles engender, even if they’re critical of my writing; never too late to learn so, please, keep them coming, even if they’re a little pedantic.

One of the joys of an August holiday is you get more time to read, if that’s your bailiwick; it’s certainly mine. I enjoy the novels of American Michael Connelly, such as his Lincoln Lawyer series or the thrillers featuring detective Harry Bosch. At the weekend I finished his latest, ‘Nightshade’. Being a bit of a pedant (!) I wrote to his website:

“There are some interesting differences in English and American English. For instance, we ‘go for a ride’ whereas you would say we are going for a ‘horseback ride’! And I don’t think we use the term ‘sailboat’, preferring dinghy, yacht and motorboat. As far as yachts are concerned, in ‘Nightshade’ there was reference to a ketch. Not sure whether the main character was deliberately unaware of nautical nomenclature (?) but by definition a ketch is a two-masted yacht, the smaller mast, called a Mizzen, stepped forward of the rudder. The other two-masted yacht is a yawl, where the smaller mast is stepped aft of the rudder, with its boom often overhanging the stern of the yacht. A single masted yacht can be referred to as a sloop. I read that Michael doesn’t read emails …… so do with this information what you want!”

His PA Jane replied saying she would pass on my email to Michael. I obviously hope the great man will reply personally!

Richard 22nd August 2025

Estoril Portugal

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Another term for Murphy’s Law, which states that if something can go wrong, it will.

Note 2 ‘A’ Levels and Alaska are this week’s common words

PC 452 Had to have a coffee!

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On a run, with our two weeks holiday in Hove (Note 1) coming to an end, I popped into The Hope Café on Tuesday afternoon in the off chance I would find Sami and maybe, Lisa, as I felt we hadn’t caught up completely last week (see PC 451 A Quick Hope Café Visit August 2025). It’s been a very busy fortnight; a quick trip to my daughter and family, a visit to the minus 86°C cold chamber in CryoBright (see PC 429 Behind The Glass March 2025), creating something in my art room, moving my ‘pond project’ forward, dyeing a hat and some cool hot yoga classes, as the studio’s heater had decided to have a holiday too! Fortunately, by last Friday, halfway through class, the engineer got it going; phew!

I sat at one of the familiar tables and await Sami’s arrival.

“Hi! Richard. How are you?”

“Had a busy couple of weeks and back to Portugal tomorrow, the 13th. It’s my mother-in-law’s birthday on Sunday so important we are there; I am making a cake and we’re taking the candles! You’re buzzing to tell me something …..”

“You watched that television series recently, ‘Slow Horses’? I know you did because we’ve talked about it. Well, I’ve started reading Mick Herron’s thrillers that inspired the series – and they’re brilliant too. And you know when you read a paragraph, a phrase, and you think that’s so good or so apt or so clever, you make a note somewhere?”

“I do all the time ……..”

“Well, how about this? Just brilliant! “There was a phrase: the slippery slope. …… But Catherine’s journey had been more moving staircase than slippery slope; a slow downwards progression; a bore rather than a shock. Looking across at the people heading upwards and wondering if that was a better idea. But somehow knowing she’d have to reach the bottom before she could change direction.” I really relate to that!”

“Isn’t that lovely! Unable to stop going to the end ……; clever! Sami, my main focus this week has been on jeans. I read ‘blue jeans’ and I immediately think of the greatest singer of all time, Neil Diamond and his ‘Forever in Blue Jeans’; that’s my personal opinion and others may have other ‘greatest singer of all time’? But the material, Denim (Note 2), features in other lyrics, ‘Lady in Blue Jeans’ (The Red & White Band) and ‘Venus in Blue Jeans’ by Jimmy Clanton from 1962. I am sure there are countless others.

I imagine everyone has a few pairs of jeans, some pristine, some battered and threadbare, some expensive for special occasions (Note 3) and a pair that was quite cheap. Before I started my postcards, in 2010 I joined my daughter and son-in-law on a narrow boat for a night and that we had unexpected heavy rain. I got soaked and hadn’t packed a spare pair of trousers. Sam’s mother and stepfather were coming for supper and asked whether we needed anything; a spare pair of trousers?

Sandie and Richard duly arrived with some pudding for supper and an orange Sainsbury’s plastic bag: “I found some jeans in the supermarket, Richard!” And they fitted really well. “How much do I owe you?” “Well, they were on a promotion, 25% off, and so they were £4.50!” The world is completely crazy, when you can buy a pair of jeans for the price of an expensive coffee. I felt sorry for the workers in the sweatshop factory where they were made; and they lasted as long as more expensive pairs.”

“Why are you telling me this Richard?” (Ed. We all know people who bang on about uninteresting stuff!)

“You saw the fuss in America about a jeans advertisement, featuring some model called Sydney Sweeney?”

“Actually this particular nugget of gossip passed me by. Pray tell …..”

“I was made aware of the story by the Times’ American columnist Gerald Baker who wrote: ‘A couple of weeks ago, American Eagle launched the campaign in which Sweeney offers a new way of selling one of America’s oldest clothing products: denim. Lying supine on a chaise longue, wearing only jeans and a jacket in the fabric that built a nation, she murmurs, in a voice that no artificial intelligence application programmed to produce a parody of sexy sultriness could possibly contrive: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality and even eye colour. My jeans are blue.” In short: a statement of a simple scientific truth followed by a homophonic pun. Not the greatest work of copywriting in the history of the advertising business, but not bad, as these things go.’”

“So why the drama …….?”

“Because the woke brigade, thankfully apparently a dying breed, considered it a ‘speech crime’. For some an endorsement of “eugenics”, for others the belief the phrase “good genes” had been “historically used to celebrate whiteness, thinness and attractiveness”.  I never knew, Sami; always taking things generally at face value and not creating some theory out of nothing! Baker went on to write: “The Sweeney advertisement, by contrast, is a sign of the times. Not some glorification of whiteness or the “genes” that produce it but a recognition by a company that it is safe to celebrate an appealing human being, whatever colour, gender, sexuality he or she is. American Eagle’s stock price went up 30% in the last two weeks!”

“Well I am pleased that ‘woke’ is becoming unfashionable; less ‘brigade’, more ‘platoon’!”

“Ah! Very good Sami.”

Lisa butts in: “Richard, I’m writing an article about the provision of health care at the lowest levels in the UK, at the General Practitioners’ level, in medical and wellness centres. Can I get your views when you’re back from Portugal?”

“Of course! But on a trivial level, I am always amused when a doctor ushers you into their consulting room with a “How are you?”, as you probably wouldn’t be there if you were ‘OK’!”

Richard 15th August 2025

Estoril, Portugal

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 This is a rather odd feeling, having a holiday at home, but that’s how it’s felt like.

Note 2 A contraction of its French origin – ‘sergé de Nîmes.

Note 3 Interesting that one can wear a pair of jeans for a ‘special occasion’ in 2025. Sixty years ago you wouldn’t have been allowed in certain restaurants wearing jeans!

PC 451 A Quick Hope Café Visit

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PC 451 A Quick Hope Café Visit

Back from two weeks in Portugal and then out again; it’s as if the two weeks here is like being on holiday, then Portugal becomes ‘home’. An odd sensation – but a nice one just the same. Managed to spend an hour on Monday afternoon in the Hope Café; the day when an unseasonal storm, Storm Floris, battered the northern half of Great Britain, with winds of 70 mph plus. Summer storms can pay havoc when the trees are in full leaf, as they offer more resistance to the wind and are prone to come crashing down!

Mo waves as she spies me at the counter; she looks a little sad, so I join her with my double espresso.

“You’re a bit down, Mo. Everything alright?

“It’s my mother, Richard. You remember she lives in a retirement home in Worthing? She’s 93 and she’s caught shingles. She didn’t have the vaccine some years ago and she suffering; so debilitating, a very painful rash.”

“It’s the same virus that causes Chickenpox, isn’t it? In Portugal they call it Herpes Zoster and it can reactivate in the body. Mario, a taxi driver we often use in Estoril, had it …… and then my sister-in-law, soon to be 44, also caught it. Fortunately, the antiviral treatment clears it up relatively quickly. Your poor mother.”

“Anyway, nothing we can do! You look well; how was Portugal?”

“Great! For me it’s a time to read a lot more, as well as walking and writing. Sounds idyllic huh!”

“Indeed, it does. Did you watch the football, the Women’s Euros 2025 at all?”

“I have a funny relationship with sport. I avidly watch the Six Nations Rugby fixtures, never normally watch football. Perversely I do follow the fortunes of our local Brighton & Hove Albion football team but more from my interest in its management and player development than the actual game! However, I am aware of the exponential rise in women’s football, of our national team The Lionesses, and how they were defending their Euros title. So, yes, I watched the final.”

“But you were in Portugal on 27th July and you wouldn’t have been able to follow the commentary as your knowledge of the language is crap! And anyway, Portugal would have been supporting Spain, so the pundits would have been biased. I watched it here but what did you do?”

 “I needed to find out how to watch an UK television channel abroad. I subscribe to Nord VPN (Virtual Private Network), so fooled the system by connecting to one of their hubs in Scotland. Then onto the BBC1 channel. The connection occasionally dropped out and I prayed that wasn’t when a goal was being scored! So, then it’s 1-1 after extra time and it’s the penalty shootout. The first English ball went into the back of the net but was disallowed as the striker slipped; must be a new rule! You understand I watched the game as its important for all sorts of reasons but have no knowledge of the players’ names or even some of the rules. Then someone called Chloe Kelly comes to the penalty spot, knowing that if she’s successful, it’s game over and England have won. Just as she steps back to take the kick, a banner headline comes across my iPad: “England have won Euros 2025”. I guess the broadcast I was watching had a time delay of a second or three!! Technology huh!”

“Ah! But well done them. I remember, Richard, you’ve sailed a lot, so you must have been interested in the coverage of Cowes Week, The Admiral’s Cup competition and the Fastnet Race?”

“Absolutely! Raced in Cowes Week many years ago but never competed in The Fastnet Race; my father did, in 1935 in a yacht called Amy.”

‘Amy’ Fastnet 1935

“Wow! And this year was its 100th run. Forgive my ignorance but what exactly is The Fastnet?”

“They leave Cowes, head down the English Channel, round the Bishop’s Rock lighthouse and head to the Fastnet Rock on the southern tip of Eire. Originally they headed back to Plymouth but for the last two races they’ve finished in Cherbourg in France. It’s about 690 miles long and used to take the winners over 5 days.”

“And this year?”

“The trimaran SVR Lazartigue was first over the finish line in 1day and 17 hours. It’s more like flying than sailing; averaging 15 knots with some runs at over 30 knots! The technology is amazing!

SVR Lazartigue rounding the Fastnet Rock and its lighthouse

Ordinary monohulled yachts took longer! ‘Black Jack’ took line honours in 2 days and 12 hours.”

“No regrets about not taking part?”

“No! But I did race from Tenerife to Bermuda one year and that was another story! (See PC 161 The Atlantic Sept 2019) Mo; must go and catch up with Sami, so see you when you’re back from France huh!”

I get another coffee and join Sami. Sami doesn’t waste time.

“I think you were having a go at those who decide the easy way to control their weight is by having these injections ……”

“Yes  …….”

“Well, in my scrap book I found this delightful cartoon – and cartoons that hit the spot are so clever.”

“Actually, the debate continues. NICE (Note 1) says that those coming off weight-loss drugs will, without the right support, simply put the weight back on.”

“OK! Incidentally your rabbit amuses me! I see that she got her passport stamped again when you came back from Portugal!”

“Yes. Although the Border Force lady asked her to look at her so she could compare her passport photograph! She can be very coy so she had to compose herself before she did”

“As I said, she amuses me!”

Richard 8th August 2025

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Happy Birthday to my first cousin Caroline in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island and to my brother-in-law Carlos in Estoril, Portugal.

Note 1 The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

PC 450 How many milestones are there?

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I uploaded my first electronic postcard to my Facebook page in May 2013; the second and third followed, but it was not until PC 17 that I started publishing them at fortnightly intervals on WordPress. If you are still happy to glance at, speed read, or absorb more slowly with a cup of tea, coffee or something stronger, my now-weekly musings, thank you and congratulations for your perseverance. For those of you who hadn’t realised it, the fortnightly postcard, now labelled a blog perhaps, became a weekly offering in 2020, to counteract the loneliness some experienced during the two COVID-enforced lockdowns. And like a lot of habits people started during Covid, they’ve continued, these scribbles of mine, posted on a Friday, regularly as clockwork.  

The beach at Bahia

That first postcard was about Bahia; the State of Bahia is north of Rio de Janeiro and its capital is Salvador. We spent a week on its coast, a tropical paradise of enduring calmness. The first ‘milestone’, PC 50, posted on 21st September 2015, was entitled ‘One Person’s Party can be Another Person’s Nightmare’; the polar opposite of Bahia, it concerned a party next door to Celina’s parents’ house in Iposeria, São Conrado, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. The music’s noise level made the windows in her house rattle and, after silently enduring it for a while, for speech was impossible, we decamped to the Sheraton Hotel.

Francisquinha (PCs 172 and 217) looked over my shoulder; ‘Tell them about my passport! Tell them about my passport!’ she demanded; she repeats herself when she’s animated.

The 100th PC was posted in July 2017 and PC 150 in April 2019. The latter concerned two local enterprises, Dean’s ‘Fruit & Veg stall’ at the top of pedestrianised George Street and D Jones’ ‘Watchmaker & Jewellers’ around the corner in Blatchington Road, here in Hove. PC 300 was posted on 16th of September 2022, just after the State Funeral of the late Queen, Elisabeth II and PC 350 (1st September 2023) covered the coronation of the new King, Charles. After PC 400 (16th August 2024) I added PC 400a, a catalogue of those first 400.

PC 401 ‘The Hope Café via WhatsApp’ was posted on WordPress, on Facebook and on LinkedIn on 23rd August 2024. Conversations with Sami and Mo covered the Paris Olympics, DSD (Note 1), my middle grandson moving to Secondary School and my step-granddaughter moving to Dubai to teach. PC 403 ‘Idle Thoughts about This and That’ (September 2024) mentioned that I had had to apply for a new passport, so thought I could apply for one for Francisquinha. Both arrived back in the same envelope, although hers is slightly bigger than mine!

‘Is that my passport?’ She asked. ‘Wow! ….. I must be important.’ Then she showed me a photo of her in a suite in the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore in 2019.

Celina and I are lucky enough to be able to travel, so it seemed right that Ms Francisquinha had her own passport, photograph and all. What’s been interesting is the reaction of the various passport control officials, when she presents it for a stamp. Obviously, these Government Civil Servants, wherever we’ve arrived, have an important role to play, making sure everyone has the correct documentation; a sense of humour is not part of the job description. In Portugal she is generally viewed very suspiciously, despite her putting on her most charming face. ‘Blood, sweat and tears’ are needed for a stamp to be added. Whereas in Brazil, they’ve laughed and drawn colleagues’ attention to her passport.

Generally, when we arrive back in London Gatwick, Celina and I head for the E-Gates, avoiding the inevitable queue. However, on one occasion there was no queue whatsoever …… so I headed for one of the kiosks. Presenting my own passport, I showed Francisquinha’s to the female officer and asked whether she could stamp it. This was clearly considered so serious a matter that two armed policemen came over to see if there was a problem. The stamp came with a disclaimer: ‘On Request’! I often wonder what was going through her mind, this Border Force official, having to justify by writing ‘on request’ why she had stamped the passport of a fluffy grey rabbit.

We had a laugh, Francisquinha and I.

So, what are the stand-out memories you have of the last twelve months, from 3rd September 2024 to 1st August 2025?

It really doesn’t matter whether you voted for the 47th President of the United States or not, the world is trying to deal with, adapt to, and accept that the current incumbent of the Oval Office is like no other. One thing I thank him for is forcing the European members of NATO to recognise their defence is their responsibility and that they should pay more for it.

Giles Coran in his column in The Times, wondered why he had bothered during his life to eat sensibly, take exercise and watch his weight to stay healthy, as the news story of the last twelve months is undoubtably the exponential use of weight-loss injections like Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro. I can understand the attraction, but the jury is still out as to their effects on your body when you’re taking it, and the lasting effects on your vital organs. Personally, unless you’re morbidly obese, I do not think this is the way forward.

In the UK the Post Office and Blood Infection scandals dribble on; the longer they continue, the more Joe & Joanna Public will be disenchanted with politicians whatever their colour. I watched the funeral of the late Pope Francis and subsequent election of the new Pope, all the time thinking of the great book Conclave by Robert Harris.

And in 50 weeks’ time, when I post my 500th PC, I suspect the stand-out news story will be the speed of our climate change.

Richard 1st August 2025

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 DSD is an abbreviation for ‘Difference of Sexual Development’.

PC 449 Sexual and Racist Thoughtlessness

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PC 449 Sexual and Racist Thoughtlessness

If you are of a certain age, you will remember the saucy postcards picturing, oh! I don’t know, a dog tugging at the knickers of a large breasted woman, or this:

Or these ……

Was there anything harmful in these, produced in an era before television, a genre of comedy that appealed to all but the frigid? Barrack-room humour, pub male banter, it seemed part of the social fabric; just as comedians like Ken Dodd and Frankie Howard hammered the sexual jokes and innuendo to the point they became, to a degree, their trademark. I always pitied the mother-in-law! Sexual bluntness but at arm’s length; nothing personal. If we didn’t laugh out loud, we maybe sniggered silently, not wanting to be seen as outwardly coarse, but appreciating the creator’s skill.

Page 3’s Jakki Degg

The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper and part of the stable of Rupert Murdoch, from 1970 featured ‘topless glamour models’ on its third page. The Sun’s Page 3 became a defining aspect of the paper and a cultural phenomenon, with models like Katie Price aka Jordan gaining fame through it. ‘Page 3’ was discontinued in 2015 after criticism about how it was portraying women.

Whilst I am not a fan of some of the reality television shows that grace our screens, such as Love Island or Celebrity Big Brother, I do like creative programmes, such as MasterChef (Presented by Greg Wallace and John Torode), The Great British Bake Off (Presented by Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding, with judging by Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith) and Bake Off The Professionals (Presented by Liam Charles and Ellie Taylor, and judged by Benoit Blin and Cherish Finden), although you can identify a bit of a theme in these! I could add ‘The Great Pottery Throw Down’ (Presented by Siobhán McSweeney and judges Keith Brymer Jones and Rich Miller) all about using clay.

I mention these four because in some episodes, sometimes, someone will make what used to be called a smutty joke, some comment with sexual undertones. And everyone laughs, presenters and participants, and the comment is never challenged; presumably if it was it would be edited out. Challenging would have been viewed as prudish; no one wants to be called a prude. So the inference is that the programme makers believe these titillations add colour to the conversations, to the banter. “It’s what we do, its harmless fun …..” until it isn’t. How do you know when you might offend someone? I love sex, love reading about sex, watching its portray in films and am no prude for sure, but I have always failed to understand why there is this incessant underlying sexual inuendo present in programmes that have nothing to do with sex. I watch and cringe, think ‘is that comment really necessary?’ In baking, ‘buns’, ‘cream’ and ‘rising’ are good examples of cross-over words not leaving much to the imagination.

Greg Wallace and John Torode

Both presenters of Master Chef, Greg Wallace and John Torode, have had their contracts terminated in the last few weeks, the former as a result of a BBC investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct. Greg is now considered old school, the dinosaur who doesn’t understand that what was considered fun and OK, is now not OK; certainly not fun if you are the victim.

Interestingly Wallace has apparently claimed that he often does not wear underpants as his autism manifests itself in extremely sensitive skin. This obviously explained why he was wearing a sock on his cock when someone opened the door of his dressing room during the making of a MasterChef programme. Another female member of the production crew recalled that Wallace, in his dressing room, said he needed to change his trousers and simple dropped them in front of the woman. ‘Oh! Sorry, I never wear underwear!’

A great example of a reality television show that seemed to be squeaky clean was Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker, which was first broadcast in 2021. Talented woodworkers were set a ‘big project’ challenge, like making a bed, as well as skills tests, designed to demonstrate a particular expertise. Sadly it only ran for three series and there’s no news of it coming back. Perhaps too squeaky clean?

I must obviously question whether the audience love and laugh at the sexual inuendo, just part of the relaxing point of television – not paid to think! Whilst sexual jokes and suggestive scripts may be, some might argue, harmless, they are not if you are the victim or target.

As Wallace was being shown the door, there was an unsubstantiated allegation that John Torode, his co-presenter, had used ‘an extremely racist offensive term.’ Despite insisting he had no recollection of any of it, he too was gone.

Racism is a nasty and insidious aspect of human interaction. We have come a long way from the popular views of our grandparents or even great grandparents, where foreigners began at Dover, the British Empire was possible because of the superiority of the white race, and certain races had a bad reputation. We still have further to go.

At the weekend news came that one of England’s Lionesses football team, Jess Carter, has been the target of racist abuse during the current Euro 2025 football competition. I thought ‘monkey chants’ from the football terraces were becoming, thankfully, rarer, but in this case the perpetrators are using social media to broadcast their unwelcome and unwarranted bile.

Maro Itoje

Interestingly the England Rugby Union international Maro Itoje believes that rugby suffers less from racist than football does because “rugby fans, and people in rugby, are a little bit more educated than those in football. The strength of tribalism between football clubs is partly to blame; when an oppositional player who’s a person of colour does damage to their team, the fans want to throw abuse at them. Rugby is nowhere near as tribal.” Even today I sadly find some of my generation use what in the C21st are rightly considered racially offensive words. The further out in the sticks you live, the more likely to hear such things. It will take years for everyone, whatever their race, their skin colour and their religion to just accept that others may be different but that they have a right to exist….. in their own way.

Richard 25th July 2025

Estoril, Portugal

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PC 448 Books & Hope (2)

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Whilst I love the mug of Illy coffee I make in the morning with our Gaggia Espresso, I also love the interaction and social scene of The Hope Café; long may it last. And obviously I hope the additional draw of its co-location with a real book shop and reading room will increase the footfall for both enterprises.

The other morning I bumped into our neighbour Olga, on her way back to her apartment with her morning coffee in its disposable cup. She’s Ukrainian, a lawyer in the Worthing firm Mortimer Clarke and works from home some days. She loves the coffee from Gails, an expensive coffee shop and bakery founded in 2005 by Gail Mejia and Tom Molnar; there’s an outlet at the top of our road. (Note 1) We know it’s expensive as we buy our San Francisco sourdough bread there – £4.50 a loaf! Olga’s coffee is over £4 and I teased her that she could buy a small coffee machine like ours for under £200, equivalent to only 50 cups from Gails – probably paying for itself in less than six months.

However, we all have our peculiarities when it comes to ‘having a coffee’. Some of us make it in the comfort of our own home, wearing whatever takes our fancy; others, like Olga, prefer to go and grab a ‘take-away’ (Note 2), interacting with the barista and maybe others in the inevitable queue, while welcoming places like The Hope Café entice one to sit, and chat, and read, and savour the closeness of others. ‘Time to stand (sit!) and stare’.

If you want to know more about coffee, buy James Hoffmann’s The World Atlas of Coffee. You’ll find answers to questions like ‘Is it worth grinding your own beans?’, ‘Is coffee good/bad for you?’ and ‘What’s the difference between Arabica and Robusta beans?’. (Published in October 2025)

I went to the Hope Café in the morning towards the end of last week. Usually we have our 90-minute hot yoga class at 1000, but I had to let a new scar heal; ‘No yoga for two weeks!’ The scar on my left scapula was the visible sign of the removal of a Squamous cell carcinoma.

Squamous cells make up the middle and outer layers of the skin. Squamous cell carcinoma is a common type of skin cancer, not life-threatening but better removed than left to grow.

I had had a ‘melanoma in-situ mole’ removed 18 months ago, so am aware of the harm a life of sun-worshiping has had on my skin. As a teenager no one knew or cared about skin cancer, caused by too much sun. Now we know and care and can alter our habits accordingly. So, if in doubt about a spot on your skin, get it checked out as soon as possible.

My middle grandson, Reuben, had his 12th birthday last week and we sent a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ by WhatsApp to his mother, as we imagined he’s too young to have a mobile. Actually we found out that he has had one since the beginning of the year, mainly for parental needs; sensibly there’s a strict list of what he can/can’t access. His birthday reminded me that, at my first boarding school, one’s birthday was marked by a little knitted figure, rather like Golliwog. The boy celebrating his birthday was called out at breakfast and presented with a knitted Golliwog aka Robertson, which was placed in their jacket breast pocket, where it stayed all day. (Note 3)

The BBC Two unlikely hit ‘Couples Therapy’ is back for a second series, with Dr Orna Guralnik in her chair. The first series introduced me to ‘Afro-American generational trauma’, the belief that the psychological and emotional impact of historic events like slavery and systemic racism can be passed down through families over generations and it’s an emotional burden Afro-Americans carry today. Many older American black adults, according to research, view mental health conditions as a consequence of personal weakness and that the belief is an excuse.

I was reminded of this belief in generational trauma when Boris Kodjoe and his wife Jessica sat before Orna. Boris’ parents came from the USSR; Boris can’t believe why his wife isn’t sympathetic with his internal struggles, his generational trauma, and doesn’t understand him. The trouble seems to be that whenever she says she is and does, he moves the goalposts and there’s a different challenge. We are in the middle of this series, so it’ll be interesting to see how they resolve, with Orna’s guidance, this issue …. or not! 

Mo saw me and said she’d remembered the subject of my PC 421 ‘Not the Way to Go’, when she’d read a review of ‘Ghosting On Disappearance’ by Dominic Pettman. The dictionary definition of ‘Ghosting’, added in 2012, is ‘the action or ignoring or pretending not to know a person, especially that of suddenly ceasing to respond.’

“Oh!” I exclaimed, “I am constantly ghosted! When I send a WhatsApp message to someone asking a simple question like: ‘Are we on for coffee tomorrow?’, I see those two blue ticks lurking underneath the read but unanswered WhatsApp message and wonder why they haven’t replied. We’re either on or not!”

“Absolutely!” exclaimed Mo.

Richard 18th July 2025

Estoril Portugal

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 We are surrounded by independent cafes in Brighton & Hove. I adore some of the names: Trading Post Coffee Roastery, Café Coho, The Bystander Café, Small Batch Coffee Company, Milk no Sugar, the Flour Pot Bakery, Grocer & Grain, 17 Grams, Coffee at 33 and many more.

Note 2 Delightfully some people go and pick up their take-away still wearing ‘whatever takes your fancy’.

Note 3 Since 1910 Robertson’s marmalade jars had a golliwog on the label and brooches were collectable. For the last 40 years it’s no longer there, but you can still ask for a brooch! Seen now as racially insensitive. ‘Wog’ is an English slur against dark-skinned, brown-skinned people and as a racist epithet is comparable with spic and nigger. A lovable icon or racist symbol? (Wog being an abbreviation for Western Oriental Gentleman.)