I know it’s February already but other topics got priority for my scribbles! Even taking a succinct look at what I want for 2023 (see PC 318) resulted in the need to have a second postcard. Could of course go on and on!!

If two individuals are having a conversation about the price of eggs, or Aunt Jemima’s pancakes, or why they should lose weight, or simply catching up with the relevant or irrelevant gossip, and a mobile, ‘cell’ if you’re American, rings, I want its owner not to say “Sorry! I have to take this”, sometimes not even looking down to see who’s calling them. If you are talking to someone, it’s nice to have their full attention and vica versa. It may be convenient for the person calling to make the call, but may not be for those having a chat. Yet there seems to be a compulsion to answer it and I want it to stop for it’s such bad manners and downright rude.

I want us to repeat to ourselves, every day, that there are no guarantees in life and the time we are given is precious; we need to make the most of every day. A cliché? So what!

We all hate plastic and it’s become the environmental bogyman! But the plastic has become stronger and you can no longer rip it. I want this to change!

I had to cut this plastic bag of potatoes with some scissors!

I know that many other countries are grappling with the same issues as the United Kingdom, different in some nationalistic ways but the real nub the same. One particular one, put briefly: how do you provide affordable health and social care for a population where the proportion of those needing care is growing and that cost has to be paid for by the working population which is shrinking. I want the current government to scope a solution.

The NHS in the United Kingdom is a money pit that suffers from a hugely inefficient bureaucracy. Currently it’s struggling to cope with huge numbers of Covid and winter influenza cases and something needs to change. Too many vested interests have resisted change and more public money is poured after public money, for no identifiable difference. There are lots of good suggestions floating around and not one of them says throw more money at it. If I need to see a health specialist, a dermatologist for instance, I need to go through my GP to get a referral. Why? Why can’t I ring a dermatologist?  

During the pandemic all doctor’s appointments went online; many have stayed on line. But if you can’t get a GP appointment and are so minded to present yourself at A&E for your in-growing toenail or other minor ailment, the ‘cost’ of the A&E appointment is about £360 whereas your GP’s about £40. Makes no sense!

The shadow health secretary has suggested working to phase out smoking, highlighting the damage to individuals’ and the nation’s health and the costs incurred as a result. I could say the same about drinking; on a conservative estimate some 50% of the paramedic’s call-outs are to someone where alcohol is the cause. I want the message to be starker, more understood. I want us all to take more personal responsibility for what we do and how we do it. Recently during a strike by paramedics, attendance at A&E was down 60%. There must have been a proportion of these who didn’t bother to go the following day, having solved the issues themselves?   

I take some medications as a result of having a heart bypass ten years ago. Do I need to take them for ever? So often GPs simply add a new medication for a patient and never review the whole list. Some 80 year olds are apparently taking over 8 different medications. This could be costly for the NHS and I want someone to do a review.

          We sadly too often read of a case where, for whatever reason, a man, and it’s usually a man, has had enough of his family; he decides that the only way to gain personal satisfaction is to kill them, and then commit suicide. Even in this moment of madness, I want him to spare his children. (Note 1)

In the United Kingdom the maximum length of our Parliament is five years. So the political party spends 18 months trying to implement its election campaign commitments, soft peddling for a year or so before thinking how it’s going to win the next general election. I want a new apolitical body to help define some form of National Strategy that has a 10 – 20 year view.

I want us all to accept others for whom and what they are, but we seem to have got our knickers in a complete twist when it comes to gender identity and sexual orientation. I understand that for a small section of our society these are weighty matters and deserve attention, discussion, advice and debate, but when teachers are asked to ‘identify’ with a personal pronoun, I am afraid I roll my eyes skywards. And on the subject of acceptance, we have a number of religions on the planet and there is a degree of ‘If you don’t agree with our beliefs, you must be against us.’ No! I am not; I just want you to accept I am not.

I remember, many years ago, reading of the planned renovation of a tall brick/stone tower that had steps to the top, giving those who made the climb a wonderful view of the surrounding countryside. The grant making the renovation possible required that it had access for wheelchair users. This would have meant the installation of a lift and there wasn’t room in the tower for a lift-shaft. So the renovation didn’t go ahead and the tower was closed, depriving the huge majority the experience to climb up. I want more common sense please!

Mind you, if the predictions about extinction (see PC 318) are to be believed future generations will not have to worry about these ‘wants’ or anything else for that matter!

Richard 10^th February 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Last weekend we had another case. George Pattison, 39, murdered his forty-five year old wife, Epsom College’s head teacher Emma, and their daughter Lettie (7) and then committed suicide. He spared the Labrador puppy ….. but not his daughter.

We continue …. (see PC 319) ……

In my first postcard about The Atacama I mentioned San Pedro being known locally as the ‘Clay Town’. A few kilometres to the south east lies the little town of Toconao, known as the ‘Brick Town’. Unlike San Pedro’s red clay rendering, the houses here are faced with bricks and stone from a nearby quarry.

Toconao church; its door is made from cactus wood

Such is the height of the extinct volcanoes that make up the Andes range, running some 8900kms from the southern tip of Chile to the Caribbean Sea, on the Atacama plateau they are always there, on the horizon, out of the corner of your eye. (Note 1)   

One lagoon worth visiting is Tebinquinche, for it had enough water for a swim, although the salt content was so high floating was the only option! The local tourism organisation had built a changing and showering block, both essential with the heat and the need to rid oneself of the covering of salt.

We were joined on this outing by a German couple and another from France. The elderly German was conspicuous as he was 2.02m (6ft 8”) tall and naturally had played basketball!! I asked the Frenchman Pierre where he came from and he said Lyon. After the normal pleasantries I said I had recently watched the film ‘Resistance’ on British television, about Marcel Mangel (aka Marceau) and how he aided the escape of hundreds of Jewish children out of the sadistic clutches of Klaus Barbie during the Nazi occupation of Lyon. Interestingly his wife immediately said that no one talked about that time, reflecting the difficulties any population has living under foreign occupation, how whole families were torn apart by shifting loyalties and how the repercussions echo down the decades to this day.

An overcast sky meant the ‘Stars & Fire’ tour was cancelled so we missed the opportunity to lie on our backs at midnight and gaze into the heavens. By reputation the skies in the deserts of the world are wonderful. Naturally volcanoes have hot springs and geysers. Andrea and Andreas, our Berlin friends from our first excursion, went out to one, the early hotel departure time dictated by when the geysers normally gush. When they arrived it was about 0615 and -8C, but fortunately soon warmed up!

Our third venture into the dry landscape was to Rainbow Valley (Valle del Arcoiris), lying in the Rio Grande basin about 90kms from San Pedro. Our Trekana guide this time was an ebullient Argentinian called Nicholas, who had married and settled in San Pedro. Joel, who runs a leather fashion-ware company in Boulder, Colorado and his wife Elke who has an online leather bags business (www.byelke.com) were our companions.

The Rainbow Valley landscape was extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. We went from: “Wow!”

……to “blimey!”

….. to an unspoken: “I really can’t believe this!”

The valley obviously owes its name to the various colours of the rock formations – red, beige, green, white, yellow and blue, overlaid with white salt and under a deep blue sky. We have all seen the results of a copper roof oxidising over some years, the roof developing a blue/green patina. Here it was in nature!

On the day of our flight back to Santiago, we had breakfast overlooking the Valle de Luna, before driving down into it for a 45 minute walk. It’s not often you can have some fruit, yogurt and coffee with this sort of view:

Our companions on this trip were eight Chileans up from Conceptión, just south of Santiago, for a long weekend; four of them were surgeons. Leonardo was married to a surgeon but was actually a real estate/property developer and thinking of emigrating to New Zealand. Being British my thoughts go east and around the world to ‘Down Under’. If you’re Chilean you simply look west! 

Conspiracy theorists and other nutters have often claimed that the moon landing of 1969 was faked! Well, they could easily have been somewhere here in Luna Valle, such was its dramatic mixture of craters and cliffs and dunes and aridness.

And how do you get to the Atacama? Unless you’re rich enough to fly your private jet into Calama, us mortals fly via Chile’s capital Santiago. We bookended our Atacama trip with two nights in the Ismail 312 hotel, just on the north side of Barrio Lastarria. Our first night was disturbed by a loud party across the river and shortened by the airlines requiring one to be at the airport three hours before our departure time! Drifting around Barrio Lastarria before our flight back to Rio, we recognised the restaurant that Franco took us to in February 2017 on our first trip to Santiago (PC 89)

The more I travel, the more I need to understand what makes a country tick, at least understand how they got to be what they are today and their place on the world’s stage. So having established that copper is Chile’s major export, it was interesting on this trip to learn that Lithium is being extracted from deep beneath the salt flats of The Atacama. Lithium (Li) is the least dense metal and the least dense solid element and has been used to treat depression and mania for centuries. More recently it’s become the star of modern battery development, so important in the burgeoning Electric Car industry. And by the way, it’s unlikely you’ve eaten Chilean cherries recently, as almost 9/10^th of the country’s total production, for instance some 352,000 tonnes in 2021, is exported to China.

As far as Chile is concerned, its small population of 19.5 million gives it a GDP per capita US$24,474. Compare this with its continental neighbour Brazil, with its population of 214 million and GDP per capita US$15,553, some 60% of that of Chile. (Note 2 & 3)

So pleased we now have some experience of The Atacama; a beautiful, wild, unearthly and fascinating place. I urge you to go and see it!

Richard 3^rd February 2023

Rio de Janeiro

www.postcardscribbles .co.uk

Note 1 The highest mountain, Aconcagua and 6961m high, lies in the Mendoza Province of Argentina, just to the north east of Chile’s capital Santiago.

Note 2 The United Kingdom has a population 67 million and GDP per capita US$44,920.

Note 3 Chile is ranked 58, Brazil 82 and the UK 26 in a comparative list of the GDP per capita of 190 countries.

Chile has always been an intriguing country, so long and so thin, stretching for over 4270kms from its border with Bolivia in the north to its tip on the bottom of the Americas and, on average, only 177kms east to west. For its entire length the mountain range of The Andes defines its geography and ecosystems. But the geo-political entirety of the country only came together in the 1880s, when Chile triumphed in the War of the Pacific and annexed Peru’s southern shoreline and Bolivia’s entire Pacific coast, so land-locking the latter country. At the same time, its troops conquered the indigenous Mapuche people and their land south of Santiago was subsumed into modern Chile.

Down south, the region known as Patagonia is shared with Argentina, the Chilean side characterised by glacial fjords and temperate rainforest whilst it’s the Argentinian side of the Andes that has arid steppes and deserts. North of the squeezed middle with the cities of Santiago (See PC 89 Franco’s Santiago 2017) and Valparaiso lies one of the driest places on earth, the Atacama desert and to its north east lies the tourist town of San Pedro de Atacama.

Main Street, San Pedro

Distinguished by the reddish colour of its clay buildings, it’s …. “a town set on a high plateau in the Andes mountains of north-eastern Chile. Its dramatic surrounding landscape incorporates desert, salt flats, volcanoes, geysers and hot springs. The Valle de la Luna nearby is a lunar-like depression.”

Enough of a basic geography lesson, or reminder (?) Why, you might ask, is this postcard seemingly from Latin America? As Covid travel restrictions eased, in November last year we planned to return to Rio de Janeiro and thought about ‘doing the Atacama and Patagonia’, such is the success of Chile’s tourism advertising; these two, plus Easter Island, have become the go-to destinations. 

Luckily one of my Godsons is married to the co-founder of a UK travel agent who specialises in Latin America (www.latinroutes.co.uk). The first draft suggestions from Latin Routes covered both the Atacama and Patagonia. Scrutiny of the journey from the Atacama to Patagonia revealed an early start, two interconnecting flights and, after arriving in Punta Arenas Airport late in the day, a six hour trip in a 4×4 to the lodge. This would not have been a holiday so Patagonia will have to wait for another time!

San Pedro in the centre, mountain lakes bottom right and Rainbow Valley due north

I hadn’t realised how much one might be affected by a change of altitude. Rio de Janeiro is, obviously, at sea level (doh!) and Santiago at 570m. We arrived in northern Chile and drove into San Pedro de Atacama, which lies at 2450m. Someone mentioned we might feel its effects but I can only describe it as walking across a swinging rope bridge, not quite sure where my next step would be and whether my legs were moving independently! On our first excursion we ended up at the mountain lakes of Miscanti and Miniques at 4150 metres.

Fortunately I was wearing a T shirt from the Dutch ‘Iceman’ Wim Hof with ‘Breathe …. Motherf***kers’ emblazoned across the chest! You needed to consciously breathe full breathes and take short steps.

For our first excursion our Trekana guide Mauricio had met us at our Noi Casa hotel and we joined Andrea and Andreas from Berlin and another couple from Madrid. We were staying in the same hotel as Andrea & Andreas and got to know them; we hope to keep in touch. We drove out to the large salt flats of Laguana Chaxa, the ‘Salar de Atacamas’, lying some 30 minutes south of San Pedro in the Los Flamencos National Reserve.

Actually ‘large’ is an inadequate word, as they extend some 150kms south, are 65kms wide and over a kilometre and a half deep. ‘Deep’ as in salt minerals; the surface water is only about 3 feet deep. (Note 2) The attraction here is the three species of flamingos, the Chilean, the Andean and the James’.

From there we went up into the mountains (see map), to those charming lakes of Miscanti and Miniques. It freezes hard up here in the winter but we were lucky with some sun, before a shower of rain. (Note 3)

We drove back towards San Pedro de Atacama and stopped for a picnic lunch at the junction of an old Inca trail and the Tropic of Capricorn (Note 4). Just a line on a map, this latitude of the ‘Tropic of Capricorn’, but walking out down the dusty Inca trail, away from everyone else, lovely to let one’s mind imagine the traffic this path had experienced thousands of years ago; footprints, sandal impressions, the hoof  tracks of donkeys and llamas, but now simply dust.

The Tropic of Capricorn crossing an ancient Inca trail moving off northwards

Part Two to follow next week.

Richard 27th January 2023

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS As an aside, some of you will have read my postcards from our trip to the north of South Island New Zealand in 2020 (PCs 169 and 170), when I wanted to visit the sand spit where, in August 1877, a seventeen year old girl, who later became my great grandmother, was shipwrecked and rescued some days later. I needed a travel agent with very local knowledge of the area, so went onto Google Earth, zoomed into the town of Nelson and located a travel agent on Trafalgar Street, World Travellers. Then it was a simple task to ask by email whether they could do the international stuff in addition to the local detail. The result was absolutely perfect.

Note 1 Chile is the most prominent example of an elongated type of territorial morphology; other examples include Norway and Vietnam.

Note 2 Compare with the Pantanal, (see PC 17 and 20 2014) the world’s biggest wetland, some 800kms north to south, 500kms east to west, with a height difference of some one metre over its whole length. The Pantanal lies east over The Andes from The Atacama, straddling the borders of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Oddly they are at about the same latitude, one of the driest places on earth and one of the wettest; separated by the great mountain range of the Andes!

Note 3.Despite it being summer in the southern hemisphere, the months of January and February mark the Altiplanic winter here, with occasional heavy rain storms. Bizarre huh?

Note 4 Simon Reeve, a British author and travel documentary maker, made a fascinating journey along the Tropic of Cancer and along the Tropic of Capricorn. Among his other programmes is one entitled The Americas; the part about Chile is intriguing.

Let me first acknowledge that I am aware Christmas 2022 is over, even for Orthodox Christians, otherwise you might think I am showing the early stages of dementia. Well I thought Christmas was over until we went through Terminal 5 at London’s Heathrow Airport last Wednesday morning, 11^th January, for our flight to Rio de Janeiro. Catching an opportunity to have a pee before going to the gate, I popped into the nearest loo, to be serenaded by “On The First Day of Christmas my true love sent to me …”. Fortunately this wasn’t in ‘Arrivals’, when it might have given those travellers coming to the UK for the first time the wrong impression of this great country!

   We’re now some days into 2023 and in previous years I have often wished people ….. “all of what you need and some of what you want” for the new year. The other morning, walking back in the dark from Rahmi the newsagent, I thought about what I might want this year. Of course the word ‘want’ and ‘Christmas’ bring to mind the song ‘All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth’, first recorded in 1948 by American bandleader Spike Jones and by others since, including Alvin &The Chipmunks and a group called the Platters; well, for those of us of a certain age. There’s another Christmas song that starts ‘All I want ….. ‘, ‘All I want for Christmas is you’ and the latest recording’s by Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber in 2009.

So what would be my idealistic wants of 2023?

We are beginning to accept, somewhat reluctantly, that societies need to do something to reduce the impact of climate change, whether man-made or simply in the cycles that define the universe. The mild climate of the United Kingdom is likely to experience more extremes, hot, cold, dry and wet. In the latter case there’s going to be more rain in shorter bursts. Already last year Shoreham, a harbour a few miles west of here, had more that 200% of its expected November rainfall. (Note 1) I want the Green council who run Brighton & Hove to ensure all the drainage systems in the city are cleared of debris and fit for purpose. Currently they are not and flooding occurs; it will only get worse.

And on that subject of our changing climate, I watched David Attenborough’s ‘Extinction: The Facts’, a 2020 documentary, on the flight out to Brazil. I want its message, that one million out of the eight million species on this planet, are at risk of extinction, to be part of mainstream education worldwide. In the west we recoil at the use of wild animals for traditional medicine in some parts of the world. I hope that education will convince current users that, for instance, the scales of the pangolin, made from keratin, the same material that makes up fingernails, hair and horn, have no proven medicinal value. Closer to home, you remember when driving, particularly in the summer, the windscreen became covered in squashed bugs and any attempt with some screen-clean often seemed to make it worse? The bugs have disappeared and that is extremely worrying given the vital role each species plays in natures’ food chain, from the smallest microbe to the largest mammal.  

In the United Kingdom we are in the middle of wide-scale industrial unrest, covering most of our public services. The Union movement have rightly been agitating for better pay and conditions for their members; after all, that’s their role! I have never belonged to a union, but so often it seems they resist change, fight modernisation and are not really, in their heart-of-hearts, interested in the success of the company or organisation their members are working in. I want them to have a rethink, to stop saying ‘No!’ and to start making positive suggestions.

We had a strike by the Refuse Collection service in Brighton & Hove for weeks last year; people continued to throw out stuff, then simply on top of the overflowing bins. I want individuals to be more aware of what they discard, how they discard it and if they’ve had a delivery contained in large boxes, for those boxes to be flattened and put in the biggest recycling bin they can find, even if it means walking a hundred metres. I want the council to ensure such a basic collection service is guaranteed.

In the newspaper recently was a review of a book called “Sensational – A New Story of Our Senses” by Ashley Ward. James McConnachie found it ‘a serious and thoughtful book’ with some trivia woven into good solid scientific information, like how decibels are named after their inventor Alexander Graham Bell. But I want to know why ‘when dogs defecate they line up in a roughly north-south direction’? My lovely Labrador Tom is no longer of this world otherwise I’d be out with a compass to check out this claim. But if it’s true, I want to know why?

The Prime Minister here has recently suggested all school children should study Mathematics until 18, in line with some other forward-thinking countries. One newspaper gave some examples from Mathematics examination questions; all I can say it was a long time ago since I passed A level Maths!! But a great idea of Rishi Sunak, our current Prime Minister! I want something even more basic than the ability to understand percentages and statistics. What I really want is a promise from the Department of Education that all our children leave school being able to read and write properly. It’s disgraceful that in 2023 some will not and their lives will be hugely disadvantaged by that deficiency. For those within our prisons who can’t, reaching a certain standard of proficiency could be a condition of early release.

More thoughts to come ……

Richard 20^th January 2023

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Somewhere on the Ghan railway line from Adelaide to Darwin in Australia had 200% monthly rainfall in five days sometime in 2022!

Earlier this month I was moved to write, again, to The Times. (see PC 292 Dear Sir (1) July 2022 for the first collection)

January 2023

“Sir ….. I read with interest the French post office’s ideas for future first-class letters, writing on their website your ‘letter’, which is then printed off in the appropriate local post office, put in an envelope and delivered.

Wedded as I am to cursive script, I have a different 2023 solution. I write my bread-and-butter Thank You letters as normal, photograph them with my mobile phone, and send them free via WhatsApp. This is an instant first class solution, although my local postie Steve might disagree!”

So for this week’s postcard I have reprinted some of my previous efforts to get published nationally! Where necessary I have added a little explanation if the relevance isn’t clear or the passage of time causes me to add my own comment!

9^th November 2020

“Sir …… At the abbreviated (Covid-constrained) Remembrance Sunday service yesterday, the Bishop of London, as part of her prayers, remembered those who had given their lives for their country. It struck me that this should have been changed to ‘our country’?”

Now I am in conflict! They died fighting for the United Kingdom but they might well have come from Commonwealth countries so maybe it’s correct?

Much newsprint was naturally given to the international fight against Covid.

21^st April 2020

“Sir ……. In yesterday’s edition you showed a bar chart indicating Covid 19 patient outcomes but it failed to have bar for the 70-74 age group. At 73, should I be worried by its omission?

14^th April 2020

“Sir ….. Ben Macintyre, in yesterday’s article ‘Virus reawakens class conflict ….’, highlights the divisions in global society but suggests that these divisions exposed by the disease are reinforced by race. His ’35 per cent of our critically ill people were from a BAME background, despite making up only 14% of the population’ stands as a fact and nothing more. You surely can’t draw any conclusion without knowing much more?

Time Zones often cause confusion!

13^th February 2020

“Sir ……..In an article about Sinn Fein’s Irish poll success (Times 11th Feb 2020) there was a little embedded box about changes to the EU Times Zones. It rightly stated that an EU Commission has proposed an end to the biannual changing of the clocks ……. but you confused the story by saying that the EU switches back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on the last Sunday of October. Currently the EU (less Portugal and Ireland) is on Central European Time (CET), adds an hour for Central European Summer Time and then reverts back to CET and not GMT. Here in the UK we move from GMT to British Summer Time and back to GMT. Clear as mud huh!”

19^th August 2019

“Sir …. A recent letter from HMRC was addressed to me as Mr RC Yates, but the salutation read “Dear Sir/Madam”. Maybe they had recognised that I live in the city of Brighton & Hove and were covering my future options!”

6^th October 2018

“Sir ……. Elizabeth Smith’s letter, ‘Useful First Words’ 4th October, mentioned a report that the first word the Queen Mother had learnt to spell was ptarmigan. It reminded me of the story from an Alaskan village called ‘Chicken’. The settlement, started during the Gold Rush years, grew to such an extent that it warranted a name. Everyone agreed it should be called after the local bird, the ptarmigan. When no one offered to spell it correctly, they opted for ‘Chicken’ instead!” (See PCs 44 and 45 about our trip to Alaska in 2015)

16^th May 2019

“Sir …… Helen Rumbelow’s piece on the osteopath Nick Potter, Times 2 15 May 19, was fascinating. His main assertion seems to be that pain in simply in the brain. I concur! If I stub my toe, my toe hurts. If I bend down to rub it and hit my head, it’s only my head that hurts! Mind you, being male, I can only concentrate on one thing at once.”

21^st September 2018

“Sir …… As a nation with as deep and rich naval heritage as ours, surely we can get the nomenclature right. The article in today’s Times concerning the death of an Australian on a Mexican billionaire’s yacht referred to the boat’s back and not its stern. And while we are at it, the pointy bit in the front is the bow.”

In a similar vein, two years earlier on 27th June 2016

“Sir …….. I do wish you would take more care with your descriptions of photographs. Back in May this year you captioned a photograph indicating that Putney was downriver of Tower Bridge, whereas of course by convention it is upriver. Today you show the yachts before the start of the Round The World Clipper Race up river of Tower Bridge, facing upriver, and yet the caption says “Approaching Tower Bridge” – backwards?”

17^th January 2018

“Sir ……. After Tom Whipple’s negative piece in Friday’s Times about Bikram/hot yoga being no better for you than ordinary yoga, now Kevin Mahler in today’s Times believes that everyone doing it farts all the time! So now it’s smelly and “frequently practised naked”! Really! What a load of rubbish and unbecoming of the standard expected of The Times. Why can’t they accept that millions of people around the world embrace yoga, in its many forms, on a daily basis and here in the UK the more we can encourage people to do some form of exercise, any form of exercise, the better?

Whilst I appreciate Mahler tried ordinary yoga, maybe they should both take a 90 minute hot yoga session, and then pass judgement”

 24^th November 2017

“Sir ……. Carol Midgley can’t see what’s wrong with spooning jam straight from the pot onto toast (Times 2 22 Nov). Then goes on to compound her problem by suggesting it’s better than ‘putting a disgusting butter-smeared knife into the jam’. No one wants butter in the jam or vice versa. The simple solution is to put the butter onto one’s plate with a ‘butter knife’ and the jam onto one’s plate with a spoon. Then you can lather your toast anyway you wish.”

Richard 13^th January 2023

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

When was the last time you used a bus? I am not asking about the one that takes you, in some airports, from the terminal to your aeroplane, or waiting, if you’re lucky, for you to deplane, but a public one? If you live in the country, I suspect not recently, as in not this decade; the paucity of a good timetable and routes means if you want to return the same day, you drive your car. Growing up in Balcombe, some 18 miles north of here, the only way to get into Haywards Heath, the nearest town about 5 miles away, was on a single-decker bus; unless you walked just under a mile to the railway station and caught a train. The bus took you past the Ouse Valley Viaduct and over a small hump-backed bridge that spanned the river. Sitting in the back gave you a lift!

Here in Brighton & Hove we have a good reliable bus service that uses both diesel and electric buses to cover the whole city. In addition there is a frequent service from the city west, via Littlehampton, Bognor Regis and Chichester, to Portsmouth, provided by Stagecoach and its Coastliner 700 buses.

From home in Albany Villas we can simply walk up the road and have the option of two bus stops, each on a different route, giving us four buses to choose from; spoilt for choice one might say! So most week days we travel into Brighton’s Churchill Square and walk the few hundred metres to the Yoga-In-The-Lanes Studio in Middle Street. Those who travel by bus are an interesting cross section of the city’s inhabitants, although not equally representative!  

I notice some individuals queue for a few minutes before the bus comes along but seem surprised they have to pay, so fumble in their pocket or bag for a bus pass or card. It’s always interesting how the passengers on the lower deck accommodate the differing needs of the wheel chair users, the walking sticks of those needing support and the mums with push chairs. One young mother has twins and her double buggy takes up a great deal of room. Most passengers are lost in their own world, interacting with some form of social media, staring straight ahead to avoid eye contact, or using their phone to talk to someone. I love eavesdropping on anyone’s conversation but if they’re not using English I just get irritated!

And what do you do when someone plonks their feet, encased in their shoes, on the seat? Despite the sign asking them not to!

One chap had his whole leg on the seat and his facial expression suggested no one should challenge him, irrespective of whether his designer trainers have poo on them! Nice huh! And little dogs I understand, as they are often in a small pouch (pooch in a pouch?), but a Labrador??

There remains a lot of ‘Covid’ about, laid on top of the normal winter influenza viruses and you might think individuals would take some responsibility for their own health and be aware of those around them. A week or so before Christmas a non-mask-wearing woman came onto the bus with lots of shopping in plastic bags and, wheezing and sighing loudly, squeezed herself into a seat. Five minutes later she sneezed and tried to restrict the spread of the mucous by putting her hand over her nose! Well, that’s OK because we all sneeze sometimes – having a handkerchief or not is another matter. I later observed her, I assume completely subconsciously, grab a vertical handrail with the hand she had sneezed into ………. (and here I should insert one of those little emoji things).

There are few masks in evidence even though it’s flu season and why wouldn’t you wear one? Maybe I am being ridiculous? We have lived with everyone else’s germs for millennia and generally our immune system copes well, but on my birthday last October I baulked at blowing out the candles on my birthday cake!! Don’t think about it too long, but you can understand the dilemma?

The route takes us through Palmeira Square, where we looked at an apartment to buy back in 2012, before we found our gorgeous one here in Amber House, and along Western Road. There’s a new sculpture of bronze-looking fish by the bus stop in Norfolk Square.

It was created by local artist Steve Geliot and is made of three 180 year-old cast iron dolphins which used to form part of the Victoria Fountain in Old Steine in central Brighton. The fountain was renovated in 1990 and the dolphins removed; obviously they didn’t fit the new design brief! They had been stored in Stanmer Park in Brighton ever since.

Further along the bus stop is named ‘Waitrose’, as it’s outside a branch of the supermarket chain, although every other stop is named after a local road or square. After Clarence Square and the announcement we should alight here for the ‘Brighton i360’, we arrive in Churchill Square, a mishmash of architectural styles dominated on the north side by a 1960’s modern building and on the south side by a shopping centre. 

Some of the buses on the route are electric and have USB charging points everywhere; these are extremely popular! And the city has an ‘ultra-low emissions zone’ to encourage more environmentally friendly means of transport. Mentioning electric-powered buses reminds me of a great BBC series on television – “The Secret Genius of Modern Life” where Professor Hannah Fry uncovers the secrets behind some of the technologies we have come to rely on. She investigates the Fitbit, Alexa, trainers and electric cars. Did you know that Thomas Edison drove an electric car? It is still drivable today.

          But being a child at heart, I was completely taken in by her simplistic demonstration of how to build a basic electric motor! So, if you’re interested:

Take a power source, say an ordinary battery

Attach some bent paper clips to each end with some masking tape

Take a piece of copper wire and wind it around something circular, say a biro. If the wire has some insulation, strip that back using some sandpaper or wire-stripper.

If you don’t have any little magnets (?) go down to your hardware store and buy some. Place the magnets on the battery under the coiled wire and Hey! Ho! It’ll turn!

This is the first postcard of 2023; there will be more!

Richard 6^th January 2023

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

So here we are, again, a day before the end of a year, when traditionally we look back and review. We then look forward and plan, pretend to make lists of things to give up or take up but most people know instinctively that by the end of January many of those ideas will have been diluted by other events that interfere. Some of those events we will have control over, many we will not, so we just have to make the most of the hand we are dealt!

A few days ago it was the Christian Festival of Christmas, the 25^th of December. Some Christians don’t celebrate Christmas, for instance Jehovah’s Witnesses which dropped its observance in 1928. If you are an Orthodox Christian, it’ll be in eight days’ time, on 7^th January 2023, the date on which, according to the Julian calendar, Jesus Christ was born. The Julian Calendar, named after Julius Caesar, was replaced in 1582 by the Gregorian Calendar, which reduced the average length of the year from 356.25 to 356.2425 days. It’s obvious these little things matter in the grand scope of our universe.

This year the Ukrainians celebrated Christmas Day on the 25^th as the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill blotted his copybook saying all Russians killed in the fighting will be cleansed of their sins. A good example of how God is often asked to support both sides in a conflict.

The remains of an Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Regular readers of these scribbles will know that I love the coincidences (note 1)  in life that stop me in my insignificant tracks and make me think ‘Wow! Did that just happen or is there someone pulling the strings?’ Well, on the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere, there were another two. Firstly, I had just added a little more interest to my PC 314 23^rd December, by going onto Google Maps and identifying a hospital in Derby that Melanie and Jim might have gone to, and chose The Royal Derby Hospital. Later that evening, a day of industrial action by Ambulance drivers across England and Wales, a BBC News reporter gave her piece from in front of one of the twelve hundred English NHS hospitals – they chose The Royal Derby! ‘Warms the cockles of me heart’ or so some might say!

The red blob marks Biloxi on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico

Later on, reading John Grisham’s latest, ‘The Boys from Biloxi’ which is, as always, a rollicking read, I am brought to an abrupt stop when I read one of the local corrupt police chief’s deputies is called Ruby Kilgore. On its own an unusual surname perhaps, compared with Smith or Jones, but the coincidence is that 24 hours before I had finished Peter James’ latest novel featuring the Brighton & Hove detective Roy Grace, ‘Picture You Dead’. The main criminal was an art collector and his enforcer was an American from one of the Southern States called Robert Kilgore!

We said goodbye to Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, who had been our Queen for over seventy years, a most wonderful example of duty, commitment and service to the Nation. Since then the Duke & Duchess of Sussex have rarely been out of the UK news, the nub of the issue neatly summed up by Times’ columnist Melanie Philips:

“In the great tsunami of grievances unleashed by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the latest one to wash over us is a meta-grievance, a grievance about grievances. They are now complaining that the family hasn’t acknowledged their complaints, apologised and sought reconciliation. Let’s get our heads around this. They have shown gross disrespect to the late Queen and reportedly upset her while nearing the end of her life. They have accused the royal household of racism, cruelty and indifference with no evidence to back up such claims and with numerous examples of demonstrable falsehoods or distortions. They have monetised their royal brand while disdaining and trashing its obligations. They have produced an interminable spiteful scream of jealousy, narcissism and rage with the intention to hurt and destroy. Yet now they expect the royal family to apologise to them?”

She has a certain turn of phrase, does Ms Philips, and personally think here she’s spot on.

I don’t think our Queen’s death on 8^th September was exactly unexpected, given that she was 96 and had lived a full life. Other names that jump out of the Obituary lists for 2022 are people like Meat Loaf (75 – I’ll Do Anything for Love), Olivia Newton-John (74 – Grease), Dennis Waterman (74 – The Sweeney), Hilary Mantel (70 – Wolf Hall), Robbie Coltrane (72 – Cracker), Mikhail Gorbachev (91- Glasnost), Ivana Trump (73 ex-wife of ex-US President), Sidney Poitier (95 – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner), Madelaine Albright (85 – US Secretary of State and Kinder Transport survivor), David Trimble (78 – Northern Ireland politician and Nobel Prize winner), Christine McVie (79 – Fleetwood Mac vocalist), Bamber Gascoigne (87 – Host of University Challenge for 25 years) ,Jerry Lee Lewis (87 – Honky Tonk pianist), Pelé (82 – Football’s greatest hero) and Vivienne Westwood (81 – Grand Dame of Fashion)  – the comments in brackets just a memory-jog! 

Sunday will be 1st January 2023, New Year’s Day, unless you are Chinese, whose New Lunar Year (the Year of The Rabbit) will fall on the 22^nd January (Note 2). In Cantonese you could say “Gong hei fat choy” and in Mandarin “Xīnnián hăo”. If you’re Jewish you’d probably say ‘Rosh Hashanah’ and an Arab ‘sunuh jadidah saeiduh’.

But here in the editorial offices of Post Card Scribbles, it’s definitely:

“Happy New Year”.

Richard 30^th December 2022

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Celina and I both tested positive for Covid over the Christmas period; the festivities got cancelled. My Christmas ribbon on our internal front door could have been taken to read: “Keep Out! The Plague!”

PPS In my last PC, 23^rd December A story, I mentioned Amanda the Shepherdess.  Recently a lexicographer estimated the average peasant in C19th used about 250 words. In a letter to The Times, Alison Brackenbury suggested her Victorian shepherd ancestor used about 250 words ‘just about sheep’.

Note 1 Coincidence: ‘A remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.’

Note 2 It falls on the second new moon after the Winter Solstice 21^st December

It’s a very familiar sight in the United Kingdom, a group of friends sitting around a table in a warm pub in the evening, the atmosphere enhanced by a blazing log fire, the table strewn with open packets of crisps, Pork Scratchings and peanuts …. and a small pool of spilt beer.

And so it is in the Lamb & Flag in Folding Under Sheet in the Derbyshire Peak District, five individuals who had known each other since school, and that was not yesterday, chewing the fat and moaning about this and that: this year the rising costs of everyday items and how, for instance, a packet of crisps that used to have 30g of crisps now has 25g and the price hasn’t changed.

One of the gathering, a tall woman called Amanda, pushes her chair back and excuses herself, saying she needs to check on her flock of sheep high up on the hills. She’s a very successful shepherdess and lives in a farm tucked away between two rocky outcrops. 

“The cost of rearing sheep has become ridiculous” she says “and there are ruthless people looking to rustle both sheep and cattle (Note 1). And the sad fact is when I take my sheep to the abattoir I hardly cover my costs.”  As a parting comment she says she’s also going to take the opportunity of the clear cold weather and see the alignment of the moon and Uranus.

“Your anus?” exclaims Pete, slightly hard of hearing, “you need to be careful up there with ‘em sheep-shaggers about.”

Amanda raises her hand in the air as if to say: “Whatever, Pete!” and leaves.

Then Jim takes the opportunity to bow out as he has to take his very pregnant girlfriend to Derby the following day.

“You’re going to go by rail, Jim?” asks Pete

“No, the rail strikes announced this week make it too uncertain to risk getting stuck (Note 2); we’ll drive as we have to be there by tomorrow evening -the following day is Melanie’s due date. I am concerned as the Royal Derby Hospital has not been able to confirm she’s going to get a bed.”

“Do Melanie’s parents know she’s pregnant?”

“No! They don’t have a very close relationship but I’m sure they’ll find out; word gets about!”

The following morning as they prepare for their journey, Jim realises their electric car hasn’t enough charge for the 55 mile journey so, while Melanie huffs and puffs about her incompetent partner, he plugs it in and makes a thermos of soup.

A few hours later they arrive in Derby but find the Littleover Lodge Hotel, where they had been hoping to stay, was shut, with a large sign on the front door saying “Closed due to staff shortages.” (Note 3) Melanie rolls her eyes to heaven: “Why didn’t you book us a room? It’s not that difficult on-line and you know the town’s going to be full as there’s some important football fixture.”

By now it’s starting to drizzle, that fine rain that is very wet and the evening gloom is depressing. Eventually in desperation they find a B&B hotel in Mickleover which has no vacancies but they persuade the chap behind the desk to let them camp in the large garage, for a small personal consideration. A couple of camp beds and some blankets are found and they organise themselves, between a couple of dusty diesel cars forced off the road by the price of diesel. The receptionist says he would have offered some dinner but there’s no turkey as bird flu has decimated the national flocks. Deliveroo saves the evening with some Tandori chicken for Jim and some fish ‘n chips for Melanie.

Sometime after midnight Melanie feels her waters breaking.

“Can you call an ambulance, Jim, I need to get to hospital?”

After an hour two paramedics arrive and say there is no way they are taking Melanie to hospital (Note 4) and the senior one, Benedicte, starts organising for the baby to be delivered in the back of the ambulance, which is now parked up in the garage, out of the drizzle and cold. After a period in labour, eventually the baby arrives safely. Benedicte finds a blue blanket from a drawer in the ambulance and wraps the little mite snuggly with it.

“It’s a good thing he’s arrived today as two days ago we were on strike!”

There’s a knock on the garage door. “Pleased I’ve found you!” says Amanda who has just arrived bearing a little lamb as a gift. “I somehow knew you’d be here, must be some mystic power we shepherds have!” She turned to Jim and asked: “So, what are you going to call your boy?”

“Haven’t thought about a name yet” he exclaims.

“Jesus!” cries his long-suffering girlfriend and her voice echoes around the garage and out into the world beyond.

Richard 23rd December 2022

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Cattle and sheep rustling in the UK is on the rise (valued at some £2.3 million in 2021) as the cost of living crisis calls for cheap (stolen!) meat.

Note 2 The current leader of the Rail Union is Mike Lynch, a surname which conjures up other images. His predecessor was a Bob Crow, again a surname which has sinister overtones. Just observing!

Note 3 In post-Brexit Britain some 4% of the working population are unemployed and that’s normal, but there are huge numbers of job vacancies, particularly in the hospitality and health care industries. Apparently many older people working before the Covid pandemic have not returned to the workforce.

Note 4 Caused by bed-blocking in hospitals. Some 13,000 patients are well enough to go home but there is not enough care and support at home, so they stay in hospital, blocking those in A&E from moving to a ward. The knock-on effect is that those in need of being seen by a medic are stopped from entering A&E, so the ambulances are being used as a safe place and then the response times for those outside, like Melanie, get longer and longer! Britain in the C21st!

It was an interesting exercise in PC 311, starting each paragraph with ‘I am lucky ….’ and seeing what appeared on the screen. It reminded me of another lovely example of letting the brain run, typing in ‘I remember …..’ and then see what, without too much thought or effort, appears. The trick is to start again as soon as you realised you’ve paused to think. Go on! Try it?

I am lucky; back in March 2009 I went to my first hot yoga class in Balham, South London. Seventy two strangers packed into a hot room, sweat everywhere, breathing and stretching and challenging. Gradually the practice of this sequence became an important part of my daily routine. So important that Celina and I moved to the city of Brighton & Hove as here there are two local studios offering this type of hot yoga. Almost fourteen years later I am lucky enough to complete 5 sessions a week. If you have never tried yoga, particularly hot yoga, give it ago; don’t if you really detest sweating!

I am lucky enough to have met, through the practising of hot yoga, Celina. We started chatting in the corridor outside the studio, waiting for the previous class to clear the room, and after a year and a bit decided to have supper one evening in London (Note 1). Thirteen months later we, together, moved into an apartment in Hove. I could easily have been on my own somewhere, so count my blessings and my luck that I have her in my life. I am also lucky she comes from Brazil and not somewhere like Walton-on-Thames. Regular readers will remember a great grandfather Richard Corbett of mine was born in Recife, in the north east of the country. I mentioned that the two numbers of my current age add up to thirteen, an unlucky number for those who are superstitious. In Celina’s case they add up to ten.

I am lucky to have had three fascinating careers that paid me for my efforts and now, my fourth career, where I do stuff but don’t normally get paid (Note 2). Now when someone asks what I do, I respond: “I do yoga, paint and write and look after my young love.” So much better than: “Oh! I’m retired.” which closes the conversation before it’s got started!

I am lucky I spent twenty years in Her Majesty’s Service. Sure it had its ups and downs, its excitement and its boredom, its opportunities and its constraints, its adventures and its challenges, but it was all about trying to get the best from others, to develop and encourage others to do well, to carry out whatever operation confronted us. And it instilled in me an attitude and values by which I live today.

I am lucky I was once made redundant after working for an aerospace company for six years, as the role I was fulfilling was no longer needed, or so the company thought. OK! At the time I probably was gutted, but in retrospect it was a lucky break. Everyone reacts in different ways but in the final analysis you have to take a good look at yourself; some honest personal introspection, however difficult, is essential to achieve some real fulfilment in life.

In PC 311 ‘I am Lucky’ I recalled that the inflation rate when I got my first mortgage to buy my first house was 14%. The house itself cost £29,500, an arm and a leg at the time. I have been lucky since: having spent 25 years living in South London I benefitted hugely from the explosion in its property values.

I am lucky technology doesn’t stand still and my generation, and yours, benefits from that. In ‘A Short Conversation with my Step Father’ (PC 96 May 2017) I looked at some of the developments he would have embraced and others he might have poo pooed. He probably would have been unhappy not being able to tinker with the engine of his car, being a Mechanical Engineer by profession. Frankly I feel extremely lucky that the reliability of car engines, drive trains etc is now so so good that it’s unlikely the engine will blow up, as did my Sunbeam Alpine’s on the M3 Motorway back whenever!

I am lucky that I have lived through a period when air travel became normal, both short haul and long haul, as experiencing the smells, sights and sounds of other countries, other climates and other peoples is, I believe, life enhancing. Recently Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of His Majesty’s Opposition here in the UK, admitted in an interview that his mother had only been on an aeroplane once, when she had flown from London to Manchester, for her honeymoon.

One outcome of my first marriage was my lovely daughter, Jade. I am lucky she has found her niche in the teaching profession, has three fine healthy sons …. and a great husband. I am lucky that through Celina I have gained another lovely extended family, living in both Brazil and Portugal.   

Those who have read the stories of AA Milne concerning a bear called Pooh will know that his friends’ characteristics reflect those found in us humans! I think I am lucky to be very much more ‘Tigger’ than ‘Eeyore’.

And finally I am extremely lucky to have been able to sail extensively, travelled widely and still have my health to pursue my current interests.

Richard 16^th December 2022

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 She suggested we went for a drink, a sort of ‘first base’ in the dating game! I explained I didn’t drink alcohol any more so suggested we had supper somewhere; second base in the dating game! Lucky huh!

Note 2 An ex-client commissioned me to paint something for his wife, which had to include a pear tree, a single pear and the crooked spire of Chesterfield Parish Church of St Mary and All Saints. Lucky to be paid for doing something I love.

Susie is looking quite gaunt when I pop into The Hope Café, with an hour or so to gather my thoughts about this week’s PC and before I meet Sami, who had texted me to say he’s got some news! Never sure whether to engage with people obviously lost in their own thoughts, but I’ve known Susie for a couple of years so give her a querulous look when I order my double espresso. She looks down and then mutters:

“It’s one of my cousins. He was crossing the road in Clapham when an e-scooter knocked into him.”

“I thought they aren’t allowed on the roads.”

“Most aren’t, although there is a trial going on to help decide how this new form of transport can be regulated. (See Note 1) This one was being ridden illegally.”

“How is he?”

“Oh! Richard. It’s awful. He hit the kerb with his head and was knocked unconscious. They called an ambulance which took him to St George’s Hospital in Tooting but it’s not looking good. When they got to A&E it was some two hours after the accident and he was rushed into ICU.”

“God! In ICU! I am so sorry Susie.”

“The doctors think he had a bleed on his brain and are not sure how to reduce the swelling. My aunt and uncle are there and have been told to be prepared for the worst possible outcome.”

I left Susie with her worries and concerned thoughts about her cousin and find a table. The café has charging points as a way of encouraging more people to WFC (Work From Café – see PC 282 Back in The Hope May 2022) and plug in my laptop. My thoughts begin to flow, at last, and I’m in mid-sentence when Sami taps me on the shoulder. I hadn’t seen him come in and think he looks very well.

“Hello Richard! How’re you doing?” he asks, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

Sami, who you may recall was made bankrupt through the faults in the Post Office Horizon computer system, brings me up to date. Apparently those who were made bankrupt have been offered three options: take all the interim payments they have received but risk a company called Moore Recovery taking action against them, begin costly litigation themselves or accept 51% of their claim. These poor sub-postmasters, poor not in a monetary sense necessarily but poor as in put-upon by the power of the government and the Post Office, won a landmark case against the Post Office in the High Court and were awarded £55 million. Wow! Wonderful you might think; £100k each. But after legal fees were deducted they ended up with some £20,000. The current Public Inquiry was due to hold a special hearing on compensation this week.

If I understand this scandal correctly, the Post Office introduced a new computer system and it was very quickly recognised there were faults in it. Faults which caused sub-postmasters accounting errors. Over 12 years hundreds suffered. Surely the Government or its Post Office should foot the legal bills of the claimants?

We are in the midst of industrial action by Post Office/Royal Mail workers, complaining about pay and conditions (who isn’t!?). In the run up to Christmas, the busiest time for card and letter delivery, their action will not garner public sympathy and will exacerbate the decline in letter writing. In fact I now write my bread-and-butter ‘Thank You’s longhand, as always, and, rather than consigning them to an unreliable postal service, photograph them and send them via email or WhatsApp! Very C21st!

After some twenty minutes or so, Sami looks down at his watch and then towards the Hope Café door. “I have a surprise for you.”

“Ah! Her she is!” he exclaims and gets up to greet a gorgeous looking woman. “Richard, meet Lisa!” I get up, shake her hand and we all sit down.  Susie comes over and takes the drinks order.

Lisa lives in Folding Over Sheet up in the Derbyshire Peak District and is a writer. She’d come down to Hove for a few days, to see Sami whom she had met during his tour of the Indian Mutiny sites. (See PC309 November 2022). I haven’t seen Sami so animated in a while and sense this relationship is just what he needs.

“So why were you doing this tour Lisa?”

“Such a mixture of reasons. Firstly some of my ancestors had served in the East India Company, one as the Secretary at the Residence in Lucknow and I was interested to see its ruins, to put the family stories in context. Secondly India is an enormous country and this tour not only covered some interesting cities but also gave me a sense of the countryside and the rural way of life, all within two weeks. Being a writer I am always looking for ideas to weave into future stories.”

I needed to leave them to get on with other things but I hope to meet up for supper somewhere, sometime.

Richard 9th December 2022

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Here in the UK, trials are taking place in four transport areas where, if you have a driving licence, you can rent an e-scooter and use it on the roads. You can only use an e-scooter outside of these areas on private land. The public desire to use e-scooters is way ahead of the current transport laws, so HMG is playing catch-up. Meanwhile thousands of individuals are buying and using them illegally. In Wednesday’s Times a news item on e-scooters reported that a 12 year old boy had died on Tuesday as his (illegal) e-scooter had collided with a bus and in the London Boroughs of Bromley and Newham two other children had died in the last year. “I didn’t know it was not legal” is not a defence likely to find favour for Giovanna Drago, who is suing Barnet Council in London for £30,000 over a pothole which caused her to crash her e-scooter, breaking her leg.