Oh! If I could only talk I could tell you a thing or two …….  but if it helps I’m almost 50 years old; not that it matters as I don’t measure my existence by years but by my capacity to deliver what I was made to do. OK So I’ve got your attention, that’s good as normally I am just left in a cupboard hung up, feeling abandoned ……. until the next time. Currently I’m in the cupboard with the hot water tank, a lazy maid and some Samsonite luggage as there’s no garage or attic where we live. It’s warm when the water’s hot and quite dry, so I can’t complain.

My first memory I think comes from 1969, when my owner needed something like me; it’s a good feeling to be wanted. He had a large room in the Officers’ Mess Annexe of the Artillery Barracks in the German town of Lippstadt, on the edge of the Paderborner Plain.

You can see the building that was the Officers’ Mess in the top of this satellite photo; looks like a hotel now with sun umbrellas in the garden. The block on the right now labelled Radio Lippe Land e.V was our officers’ accommodation. At the bottom was Regimental Headquarters, now the Conrad Hansen Musikschule der stadt Lippstadt. But I digress!!

The barracks had housed a Luftwaffe battalion and the Mess itself was beautiful, but single officers’ accommodation was limited, hence the annexe within the main barracks. Sadly there were few electrical sockets and he saw a need for an extension cable of some sort. Ah! You’ve guessed it, I’m an electrical cable; three wires, green, red and blue (See Note) sheathed in a black outer casing. I used to be part of an enormous reel of cable that the army used for all sorts of things. Then one Saturday my owner soft-soaped the soldier in charge of the stores to cut some off; it was about 15 yards long (we didn’t ‘do’ metres in those days.) At one end he fitted a square pin extension block and at the other a German two pin plug. The smart record player, the radio and a couple of lights were all plugged in. Oh! And I am ¼ inch in diameter.

You might be surprised to read that I gave birth once! My owner needed about six feet of flex. He never told me why, just got a pair of pliers and cut it off! Didn’t hurt as I am inanimate but I healed up quite well, particular when the plug was refitted. By then we were back in England so my two end connections didn’t change. At one end I have a rubber coated square three pin plug, at the other a rubber coated socket. Both have become pretty grubby over the years but it’s been a long haul!

It’s hard to imagine today but outside lights at Christmas were a real novelty back in the 1980s …… and the best ones came from Germany ….. so a visit to a Christmas market in Hanover secured a large string that was rewired with a UK square plug  and that was plugged into me. In those days he didn’t have an outside socket and he relied on me, you see. But it was suffocating, being wrapped up in lots of plastic bags and duct tape to keep any rain out. Oh! The ignominy of it!

Wanda the bronze angel fish doing her thing, provided with power by me! (circa 2001)

I was also used to provide power to the pump that fed water up into Wanda; it came out of her mouth!! But when the outside socket was fitted, my job was done, and I went back to hanging around, for some time at the top of some cellar steps.

Occasionally I would have a car vacuum cleaner plugged in but the suction was never strong enough and invariably the domestic vacuum cleaner was used. Don’t ever do this on a driveway which has been surfaced with gravel. I have always thought of myself as a sort of DIY (Do It Yourself) extension cable; no pretences, me. But I remember he once was in B&Q (a DIY Store) and saw an extension cable in a proper reel, red I think it was. I could sense he coveted it, looking all neat and new, but he is loyal to me and walked away, shaking his head and muttering.

I am grateful for his love of sailing, you know. If he hadn’t learned about how to handle ropes (on board a yacht a rope is actually called anything but a rope – for example warps, sheets, halyards, guys etc,) I would not be in as good a shape as I am now. On board a sailing yacht a tangled rope is a disaster waiting to happen, so there was constant vigilance to ensure all ropes were tidy and coiled It’s best to coil the rope/cable into the left hand, as that movement of the wrist takes out any twists in the rope. Wire cables such as me are no different.

In my twilight years I am generally used to connect to a jig saw, a sander or a garden strimmer, as his drill is now a Dewalt cordless one. You might think this is progress but he uses it so little the battery is invariably dead and needs a charge!! Maybe he rues the day he got rid of the one that needed me; who knows?  I won’t mention the fact that he uses the garden table as his workbench and that it occasionally gets nicked, sawn and drilled into (so don’t tell anyone). I cringe when it happens but what can I do?

And my friend Wanda? Well, she’s come inside …… and seems content to look wistfully down the road to the sea …… some 150m away.

Sometimes one gets an idea and just needs to scribble …… inane really

Richard 21^st October 2017

 

Note: these days it would be yellow/green, brown and blue

Old (ie me!) on the left, new on the right

We had a drink in the Hotel Palacio in Estoril, Portugal, to celebrate an anniversary and learned that the bar had been a meeting place for British and German spies during the Second World War. Portugal had of course been neutral, as had neighbouring Spain, but that didn’t stop both Allies and Axis powers using these two countries for nefarious purposes!! The following day we caught the 30 minute train into Lisbon, and slowly climbed through the Alfama quarter to the site of Lisbon’s founding settlement, the Castel de São Jorge.

Castel de São Jorge

The placing of this Moorish castle was perfect and over a thousand years later you can look out over modern Lisbon. The Moors were ousted from Portugal in 1147 (compare with the last Muslim ruler sent into exile from Granada by the Spanish King Ferdinand in 1492). Down on the waterfront you can make out the Praça do Comérco and the statue of King Dom José on his horse. It was during his reign that Lisbon suffered its 1755 devastating earthquake which destroyed much of the city. What you see today is the result of 100 years of rebuilding.

Praça do Comérco

And it was during this lengthy rebuild that Napoleon’s troops rampaged through Spain and threatened Lisbon. The royal family, escorted by the English Royal Navy, fled to Brazil, leaving the British under the Duke of Wellington to resist the French invasion. History huh!! The monarch didn’t return for some 7 years, preferring to rule his empire (Angola, Mozambique, Goa and Brazil) from Rio de Janeiro. Modern Lisbon is littered with statues of kings and explorers – the most dramatic of which is the Monument to the Discoveries (1415 – 1543) overlooking the Tagus River.

Gradual exploration from Lisbon down the west coast of Africa, firstly by Diago Cao in 1483 and then by Bartolomeu Dias, paved the way for Vasco da Gama to cross the Indian Ocean in 1498 and land in India. The Portuguese had a monopoly of what became known as the Spice Trade, ensuring great riches for Lisbon. Ten years later they captured Goa and established a colony. Two years after that Pedro Alvares Cabral reached Brazil and established a Portuguese presence at Recife. (See PC 34).

I saw a review of the book ‘Night Train to Lisbon’ by Pascal Mercier many years ago, liked what I read and bought a Kindle version. It’s the story of a Swiss Classics teacher, Raimund Gregorious, who, on his way to his stale academic job in Bern, prevents a Portuguese woman jumping to her death from a bridge. Nosing around in his favourite bookshop after work, he is drawn to a book by Amadeu de Prada, a Portuguese doctor who explores the philosophical issue of going back over one’s life and asking the ‘What If I had made a different choice?’ sort of question. (Compare with the film ‘Sliding Doors’ with Gwyneth Paltrow). The fact that Gregorious can’t read Portuguese doesn’t seem to put him off!!

Very quickly Gregorious senses he may not be living his own life to the full and determines on a whim, or maybe with the image of the mysterious Portuguese woman in his mind (!), to go to Portugal to investigate the life of Amadeu de Prada, who had lived through the right-wing dictatorship of Salazar (1926 – 1968). He catches the overnight train to Lisbon that very evening. I got stuck with this book, restarted it several times, and eventually gave up. But then the story was made into a film in 2013, staring Jeremy Irons as Gregorious, and I loved it!!

Today you can take the night train from Bern but it’s more a ‘day & night’ train and takes 27 hours; it’s over 1600 kms! To get to Lisbon I flew TAP Portugal from Gatwick. I’d been to the city back in 1987 on business and to southern Portugal on a yoga retreat in 2016. My parents had enjoyed holidaying in the Algarve and on Madeira and my maternal grand-father not only loved Portugal but also loved imbibing the famous Mateus Rose, the height of sophistication in the 1960s!!

So the tale plays out in this city, going backwards and forwards from the modern day to those of the dictatorship. If one hasn’t lived under a totalitarian dictatorship as Salazar’s was, it’s hard to really understand what life was like. In the story, Gregorious looks at the difficulties faced by Prada, exploring themes such as loneliness, love, loyalty, friendship and mortality. I’m not quite sure if the classic’s teacher from Bern found what he was looking for, identifying what could have been alternative paths in his own life, but I am reminded of Robert Frost’s poem ‘The Road Not Taken’:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood …….. And, sorry, I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long stood …….. And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

……. and I  …….

I took the one less travelled by ……and that has made all the difference.

We all have choices in life, to take this path or that direction, but whatever choice you make …… that is in my view the right one.

Maybe in time we’ll wander around the back streets of Lisbon at our leisure, trying to understand its unspoken history simmering beneath the surface. And of course get to know some of the places from the story, like Rua Augusta that runs north from Praça do Comérco and is often called ‘the most beautiful street in the world’.

The Portuguese monarchy ended in 1908 with the assassination of the king and, after a serious of weak governments covering almost twenty years, Antonio Salazar created a dictatorship which ran from 1926-1968. During this period the country was virtually a recluse in the world community, industry and commerce dominated by a few very wealthy families. His successor carried on for another six years, but the political mood had changed and the Carnation revolution of 1974 ushered in modern democracy.

More scribbles from Lisbon in the future, no doubt.

Richard 8^th October 2017

PS You can’t go to Portugal and not eat Pastel de Nata.

These sweet custard tarts were originally created by the Catholic monks at the Jerónimos Monastery in Santa Maria de Belém, a western suburb of Lisbon, in the C18th. Starching the nuns’ habits required numerous egg whites and making custard tarts was a good way of using the surplus egg yolks. Boy – are they yummy!

 

 

In the aftermath of the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 the spoils of war were, no doubt, extraordinary and various. One of them was a collection of yachts based in the Baltic city of Kiel, the centre for Hitler’s enormous U Boat fleet. The base itself had suffered extensive bombing and its huge concrete submarine pens lay crumpled and blasted, but the British Army established a sailing club on the western side of Kieler fjord, where these windfall yachts were moored.

The British Kiel Yacht Club (BKYC) 1969

Wind the clock forward to 1969 and the British Kiel Yacht Club still had a small number of these ‘windfall yachts’ as they were known; some 30 sq ms, a couple of 50 sq ms and one 100 sq m classic wooden yacht called Kranich, built in 1936. (For explanation of sq m ‘square metre’ see note). In addition they had a fleet of modern GRP ones that were used to teach the rudiments of sailing to British Army personnel; these were without engines!

Some ex-German ‘windfall’ yachts

I hadn’t sailed much as a child, one simple sailing holiday with my father when I was 10, but in 1968 sailed around The Solent a bit in a little 19ft yacht called Barbican …… and on a very wet yacht in Cyprus …..  and rather liked it. You might say I took to sailing like a, er, duck to water? So when my Regiment was posted to northern Germany, the obvious place to indulge the interest was in The Baltic. To refresh your knowledge of geography, The Baltic is the name of the shallow sea that is almost enclosed by European countries – Sweden, Finland, The Baltic States, Poland and Germany, and flows out through the low lying islands of Denmark, through the Kattegat and into the North Sea. It’s got a low saline content due to its mix of salt water inflowing from the North Sea and outflowing fresh water draining from a land mass four times larger than the sea itself.

Two shipping channels run between the large islands of Funen and Zealand and between Zealand and the western coast of Sweden. Otherwise the Danish waters are quite shallow, making for short sharp seas when it’s windy and always interesting navigation. Channels are marked by upturned broom sticks; some had one bundle of sticks lashed to the pole, others two and sometimes three. So typically Danish!!

Before going off to university, I was in Germany for 9 months in 1969, and took part in Kieler Woche, the country’s equivalent of Cowes Week, the sailing festival on the Isle of Wight in UK. I sailed on a long keeled yacht called Uomie, named as it was taken in payment of a debt!! We did well during the week and particularly coming first in our class in the Fehmarn Light Race. The skipper gave each of the five crew members a little silver schnapps cup.

After university I rejoined my Germany-based regiment ….. and naturally went back to sailing in the Baltic. The first time was actually racing from Cowes on the Isle of Wight to Skagen, right on the tip of Denmark. (See note) We then passaged south to Malmö in Sweden for a regatta. Teaching soldiers the benefits of teamwork through using the forces of nature, ‘adventurous training’ as it was euphemistically called, was considered a good thing!! The attraction was obvious; hundreds of little islands, narrow channels threading their way between them, charming villages and towns with enchanting names like Aerøskøbing, Middlefart, Juelsminde, Kerteminde, Lohals and Faaborg.

The Lohals marina was not there in 1973!

In my 5 years in Germany I must have developed a reputation for often being away from barracks sailing. Once, during a leadership course for junior NCOs, the Regimental second-in-command, Major John Harman, was explaining some aspects of the vital cooperation needed between the artillery and infantry. I won’t bore you with the details but at some point he asked, by way of confirmation that they had understood: “And where would you expect to find Golf 31 (my radio call sign) Captain Yates during this particular phase of the battle?” A wag at the back of the classroom shouted: ‘Sailing in the Baltic sir!’

In my room in the Officers’ Mess, I hung up on a wall four Danish maps sellotaped together so I could plot the course of each trip; after a couple of years it looked as though a drunken spider had walked into some red paint and then all over the map! Apart from trips up the Als Sund north from Sønderberg, drifting in and out of islands around Lohals on Langeland, and finding enough crabs for supper in a rotten rowing boat just alongside where we had tied up in Aerøskøbing, one major trip involved sailing St Barbara II, a 42ft Rebel, up to the Norwegian capital Oslo, when the engine had been taken out for its annual overhaul. This meant that we had to charge the battery, needed for navigational lights if nothing else, every time we went into a harbour. Going into a crowded marina without an engine was a tricky and anxious time and occasionally we gratefully took a proffered tow.

The Oslo crew on St Barbara II

On one trip sailing a ‘windfall’ yacht, we had just tied up alongside the village quay in Juelsminde and were getting down to the serious business of having a drink. People get attracted to yachts and boats in harbours as the poles of magnets to each other and we often had rubberneckers peering down on us. One particular old chap came wandering down the harbour wall and stopped; “Guten abend. Wie Gehts?” he greeted us. Then he proceeded to switch to Pidgin English. “Zis iz a lovely yacht, ja! Sehr schön. You took zem from us after ze war ja?” and with that, shaking his head as to what might have been, he shuffled off back into the village.

Generally the islands between the mainland of Denmark, Jutland, and the island of Zealand, on which Copenhagen is situated, provided ample enough cruising grounds, but one year I actually sailed into Langeline Harbour in Copenhagen, before continuing south through the Stege Bugt to Stubbekøbing. In Denmark’s capital city, down in the harbour, lies the delightful statue of ‘The Little Mermaid’, sitting on her rock since 1913. Her head is of the ballerina Ellen Price, but as she didn’t want to pose naked the sculptor persuaded his wife Eline Eriksen to pose for him.

The memories of sailing in these delightful waters will stay with me forever; although I have few still photographs, I have many hours of Super 8 Cinefilm, transposed to VHS Video and then to CDs as technology made one means obsolete! And so will the Danish sense of humour. Did you know that a ferry service runs between the Swedish city of Gothenburg and the Danish town of Frederikshavn on Jutland? Well, there is one and it’s rumoured that the skipper doesn’t need a chart, he simply follows the line of empty green Carlsberg bottles thrown over the side by Swedish passengers pleased to get away from the ruinously expensive alcohol of their home country!

 

Richard 24th September 2017

Note: The Skagen School of artists exists because the daylight at this particular place on Denmark is very special.

Note: For those technically minded, these ‘square metre’ yachts are measured by a difficult formula. R Metres = (L + 2d + √s – F) ÷ 2.37 where L is the waterline length, d the difference between skin and chain girth (?), s the sail area and F the freeboard

Some sounds are very evocative and some words engage the imagination. My regular readers will know that Celina’s brother and family are firmly established in Estoril in Portugal and when her sister moves there in October, the focus of the family will shift from Rio de Janeiro to Estoril. We were there in July to soak up some sun …….. and at exactly 12 noon, a siren sounded over the town of Cascais, some 3 kilometres from Estoril.

Firstly the sound is evocative, as it ties my memory to the old Air Raid siren sounded in England before an imminent air raid during the Second World War; there was a slightly different sound at the ‘All Clear’. And before you think I actually heard them, I was born after the end of the war, so the memory is from watching films set in and around that time!! But was Cascais about to be attacked? No, of course not, this was a signal to indicate the hour, a single note noise. It probably started back in the late 1800s or early 1900s, used throughout the industrialised world to signal the start of work; there was probably one for the lunch break and one at the end of the day – indeed if you look up siren in a dictionary, it says “Factory siren or hooter …… a siren or steam whistle used as a signal for work to begin …. or finish.” The sound was produced by revolving perforated metal discs over a jet of compressed air or steam.

And in this week, the start of the new Academic Year in the United Kingdom, it has similarities to the school bell that signalled the start and finish of lessons.

If you have been watching the world news recently you may have heard, during the report of North Korea’s missile test flight across mainland Japan, an Air Raid Siren. Here is a siren being used in anger, as it were. Such a strange and mournful sound, rising and falling, a wail, a warning to the civilian population that they should head for some form of shelter. The converse of course is equally true, a signal for Civil Defence Forces to head for their work stations to help in the aftermath of whatever unfolds.

Normally the only sirens one hears on the streets are those of ambulances, fire engines, of those of a police car on its way to stop criminal activity or indeed at the end of the shift, to get through the heavy traffic and back to base (sorry, a bit cynical huh?). In The USA the sound for a police car is a perfect 4^th, for an ambulance a perfect 5^th and for a fire engine it’s a perfect 2^nd. However, being musically almost tone deaf none of this means much to me!

At school I was taught Latin, initially by a chap who was the Mayor of Wells as well as a teacher. Inattention or mispronouncing a word got a clip around the ear with a wooden ruler. Later we ploughed through some syllabus but it’s all forgotten, apart from remembering the Dog Latin:

‘Caesar adsum jam forte, Brutus aderat, Caesar sic in omnibus, Brutus sic in at.’

which, when read aloud, sounds like:

‘Caesar had some jam for tea, Brutus had a rat, Caesar (was) sick in omnibus, Brutus             (was) sick in hat.’

I was useless. We probably read bits of Homer and other Greek writers but the whole library of Greek Mythology, that body of teachings and myths concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world etc was, and remains to this day, a complete mystery. Ulysses? The Odyssey? Jason and the Argonauts? Nah! But for some reason the word ‘siren’ stirs my imagination.

 

HJ Draper’s Ulysses and the Sirens

In Greek Mythology sirens were dangerous creatures who lured sailors with their enchanting music and voices towards the rocks of their island. They were incidentally all female, the daughters of the river god Achelous while their mother may have been Terpsichore, Melpomene, Steropre, or Chthon. These names may mean something to you but to me, it’s all Greek! In fact, how do you pronounce ‘Chthon’?

Ulysses escaped the danger of their songs by stopping his crew’s ears with wax so they were deaf to the sirens’ calls. Ulysses himself wanted to hear their song so had himself tied to the mast of his ship so he couldn’t steer his ship off its course. The classical painter Herbert James Draper was one who attempted to portray this struggle between good and evil, for the sirens were undoubtedly evil.

And who could not remember the 1994 film ‘Sirens’? Set in 1930’s Australia it tells the story of Tony, played by Hugh Grant, an Anglican priest newly arrived in Australia from the United Kingdom. He is asked to visit the notorious artist Norman Lindsay (Sam Neil), out of the church’s concern about a blasphemous painting of the crucifix that the artist plans to exhibit. Estella, (Tara Fitzgerald) the priest’s wife, accompanies him on the visit to the artist’s bucolic compound in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, where incidentally the film was made. There they meet Lindsay’s wife, Rose, two models (one Elle Macpherson), and the maid, all of whom pose for Lindsay.

As the story unfolds, both Tony and Estella find themselves observing the young women bathing naked in a nearby pool and instead of turning instantly away, each pauses to watch, betraying an underlying sensual interest in the lifestyle they outwardly deplore.

 

Portia de Rossi, Elle Macpherson and Kate Fisher as the sirens

If you never saw the film, maybe that’s enough to whet your appetite to watch it now? The film uses the word ‘Siren’ to describe Lindsay’s three models, and also the message they portrayed – a siren call of their lives and surroundings, enticing and tempting others.

Just some scribbles as always!

Richard 9^th September 2017

PS     A hooter, in addition to being a siren-like device, is also the slang for someone’s nose, generally those of the larger variety!

PPS Those of you old enough may remember a garment called a siren suit, consisting of one piece, the ‘jacket’ part of the trousers, so easy to put on in an emergency, much trumpeted by Sir Winston Churchill. His of course was ‘pinstripe’!!

 

 ‘It must be someone’s fault’; ‘I’ll make them pay’; ‘Take responsibility you fuckers’.

We live in a society where increasingly the hue and cry is ‘It’s their fault’ … ‘Sue them’, and all sorts of accusations in between. But how companies actually respond to their customers has always been fairly crucial; no more so than today. Get it wrong and you shoot yourself in the foot. Many of you will remember Jerry Ratner who had started out as a retailer in the jeweller business. In an after-dinner speech in 1991 he recalled being asked how he could sell his jewellery so cheaply; “Because it’s total crap.” he replied ….. wiping £500m from the company’s value. But at the very basic level, all we really want is someone to acknowledge our issue, take some responsibility, make a gesture.

The airlines come in for a lot of stick and some of it’s justified. Our very own British Airways never seems to handle a crisis well; they have yet to learn that customers want to be told something, even if it’s ‘we have no information’, because we assume they know!! Other airlines are no better. When we flew to Brazil via the Antipodes in January we found ourselves on a LATAM flight from Auckland to Santiago, with no vegetarian meal for Celina. The ‘special request’ wasn’t rectified when we flew on to Rio two days later. So on our return to the UK I asked via the travel agent for some explanation from the airline; eventually the travel agent said that LATAM are not obliged to provide options such as vegetarian food ….. so the travel agent sent us some chocolates …… and that made us feel good about them but not about LATAM who for the sake of a voucher or somesuch could have redeemed themselves.

We went with some chums to a local restaurant, The Ginger Pig, some months ago and had a very pleasant evening. It wasn’t crowded and we chatted to the duty manager Rob as we paid the bill and got our coats. I put mine on and was distracted by the conversation ….. until Celina yells anxiously: “You are on fire! Turn around!” Closer inspection suggested that I had backed up against a window sill on which there was a lit candle. The jacket came off, we stamped on it to put out the flames and went home with our ears ringing with apologies etc from the staff.

I expected an emailed apology but nothing happened, so I dropped them a note asking what they were going to do to get my jacket repaired. Without admitting any liability they offered a voucher for £25 – for a meal in the restaurant – so cost to them?£5? They didn’t get it, I thought; one telephone call to the local Trading Standards and they would get a visit, but I didn’t want to do that to a place which is local and where the food’s really good!! So I emailed: “A fortnight has gone by and I await your thoughts on offering to have my jacket repaired as opposed to a voucher towards a meal. I am normally quite patient but there is no more information so you just need to make a better decision!”

The flames took out both outer and inner layers

I collected £25 from the Ginger Pig a few days later and my jacket is now patched. Result!

Moving away from London broke the regularity with which Stewart, who lives in Wimbledon, and I had lunch, to ‘chew the fat’ and catch up. Suffice to say we got together in July at Brew on Northcote Road, Battersea. We had a light lunch of fishcakes, poached egg, Hollandaise Sauce and spinach; Yum! You might think. And it was, but later that night, back in our respective homes, we both suffered the unmentionables.

I texted Stewart the following morning to say my night had been a bit troubled, and he admitted being quite ill; he recovered two days later. Brew went into the predictable: ‘It can’t have been us. We’ve checked batches of food and temperatures and ……. and …… etc etc’. When we pointed out that we hadn’t seen each for months until we met at Brew, that we live 60 miles apart, and so the obvious conclusion was that we picked up something at Brew, they still didn’t buy it and actually didn’t apologise. We eventually got our money back in the form of two vouchers, to be spent in …… Brew!! Er! Maybe not!

An altogether more satisfying exchange took place with Jessica Mason, founder of a bedding company called Piglet In Bed (www.pigletinbed.com). A feature in The Sunday Times a couple of months ago focused on bed linen, inter alia on her company and I thought I would order a duvet cover.

 “God, you have to be quick when you read something in the Sunday Times!” I emailed. “I was admiring your ‘blush’ duvet cover, thought over a cup of tea in the late afternoon I’ll order one ….. and find they have sold out. Congratulations on your success but when will you get some more in?

“Six to eight weeks” came back a speedy response.

Six weeks passed and Jessica told me they were in. I ordered one and it duly arrived via Parcel Force.

Piglet in bed

 “My duvet cover and pillow cases came today. Great colour and we look forward to using them this evening. My only comment concerns the button holes. Lovely choice of buttons but actually the holes are not good. One or two are badly made and hardly wide enough to push a button through. I know I will not button and unbutton them every day but given the cost of the duvet cover they let it down badly.” I offered by way of feedback.

Quick to respond, Jessica emailed: “I am glad your bedding reached you safely. This is the first batch we have sold with this new button …… and I see your point about the holes being too small. Thanks for letting me know about this; we’re working to find a solution. Meanwhile I would like to offer a complimentary set in one of the other colours, with our previous buttons. Please get in touch ……..”

Well, I took her up on her generous offer, the second cover arrived and I reflected on how my impression of the company went through the roof. Everyone should buy something from Piglet In Bed – please!!

Satisfaction comes in all shapes and sizes!!

Richard 26^th August 2017

PS I know some of you feel that we have a bit of a fetish for pigs. ‘Tis true! For me it started in 1989, buying two of the famous Oslo artist Mona Storkaas’ ceramic animals in that city; one a seagull and one a ……pig! Then I got a piggy money box …….. and the collection has grown! So we felt at home buying a duvet cover from Pigletinbed – but when I first read this, I sort-of read ‘Pigs Tin Bed’ which in the What3words locator would put you west of Cromer in Norfolk, UK at a Bed & Breakfast called …. The Pigs!!

Mona Storkaas’ lovely pig mounted on driftwood

My last scribbles described some of the highlights of my ten week ‘Creative Writing’ course and some of you emailed asking for the piece about Nelson, David and Freddie Starr. You were kindly appreciative, so I thought I shouldn’t hide another three little gems that came about either in class or as homework.

We were asked to write about shopping. Such a vast topic but for someone who hasn’t even been to Blue Water, one of those out-of-town shopping acreages, I decided to keep it simple. See if you agree?

For my fresh eggs I normally go to Dean & Perry’s market stall which is erected at the top end of pedestrianized George Street here in Central Hove. The eggs come from chickens in Peacehaven and are really lovely. Dean’s a tall chap and he has to stoop a little to fit under the canvas awning. Having picked up four egg cartons from the side of his stall, I come into view in front. It’s become such a regular occurrence that the whole shop goes somethings like:

“Hellllloooooo! How are you? Just your usual? ….. How many have we got?  …. Remind me, it’s the £1.09s, isn’t it?….. So that’ll be £4.36 ….

“Good morning Doris! How are you?……. Sorry! Be with you in a minute.

“…….So is that everything? These strawberries are the first of the season. No! We had the Spanish ones but these are from the Netherlands.

“Smell good an’ all” says Jim standing beside the stall from where he’s been talking to Dean about the football when there aren’t any customers….

“I don’t want to smell ‘em, Jim, I want to know how they taste .”

“Sorry Doris, two secs! ….. “

“So two dozen eggs and a punnet of strawberries £7.35 call it £7 Thanks for that …. three pounds change then ….. See you next week ……

“Now, Doris what did you want? Yes, the beetroot are cooked, real sweet, I can tell, had some for my tea yesterday.”

I wander back down the street, smiling. Such a pleasure!

In one of the first classes, we had ten minutes to write about a memory of school, for here for sure was something that everyone had experienced, some more recently than others. It did seem a very long time ago but eventually this flowed from somewhere:

Anywhere but here!

I sit at my usual desk. There are twenty of us, all boys, struggling to make sense of Mr Parrish’s mathematical calculations on the board. He has a large nose, a beak, and he’s not confident. It’s a two hour double maths period. On my left is Ray and on my right Ian. Chalk dust lingers on the hot room. The sun streams in through the large windows.

Anywhere but here!

In the distance I can hear the sound of Mr Gough mowing with his tractor, preparing the cricket pitch for this afternoon’s match. I loathe cricket so I’ll skive off somehow.

Anywhere but here!

Do I really want to know how to do differential calculus? Will any knowledge of it help in the future? I take my slide rule and apply myself; I have to!

Anywhere but here!

Mr Parrish’s voice interrupts. He sets homework, reminds us to hand in the answer to his problem and leaves in a flurry of black master’s cloak and chalk dust.

You may guess I wasn’t a fan of school!!

One week the homework was to write about a happy time in your childhood. Thought it strange that as soon as Heather had asked us to write about this, she mentioned that past students sometimes had had a real problem as their childhood had been unhappy! Made me wonder why she had chosen such a potentially volatile memory bank. Yet one has to assume that somewhere in this generalised memory of ‘childhood’ there might be the odd nugget of happiness, even if you’ve labelled the whole as ‘unhappy’. So here is one!

 I never used a Rolodex but understand how they operate. I look at my imaginary one, flip through it ‘A’ to ‘Z’ and realise that finding happy childhood eexperiences are as rare as finding pissholes in a large snow field! Surely somewhere …….

 So it is that I recall, aged maybe 6, walking down Marlborough Buildings in the Georgian city of Bath, the city of my birth, to Victoria Park at the bottom of the hill. It’s midsummer and the tall trees are in full leaf, reaching across the traffic-free road to touch gently in the middle. My heart lifts as I see the ice-cream van in its normal spot. On Sundays it comes in the morning, on weekdays only for the afternoon.

 I put my hand into the dirty pocket of my grey shorts and am reassured by the touch of my threepenny piece, along with a piece of string and my penknife; enough for my favourite ice-cream! There’s a small queue, some adults, some children – all wanting to taste something cool and sweet on a sunny morning; shouldn’t be long.

 My turn!  I get the coin out of my pocket, reach up on tiptoe as high as I can and put it on the aluminium shelf. It’s Giovanni, who I know from past conversations was interned during the war because he was an Italian living in England. He doesn’t know my name but I’m not bothered. “A vanilla block and wafer please?” He reaches into the ‘fridge, picks up a block, adds two wafers and hands it to me. “Thank you” I mutter hurriedly as I feel myself salivating.

 I turn away, carefully unwrap one side of the block, place a wafer on top of the ice-cream, turn it over and remove the remaining paper, replacing it with the other wafer. At last! Holding my ice-cream carefully between thumb and forefinger, I lift it to my open mouth. I smell it, inhale the dusty wafer crumbs, and take my first bite. Now I am happy.

As I said in PC 102, I loved the challenge of having to write something, then, there. Now I just need to get motivated to take it to the next level. Hey! Ho!

Richard 12^th August 2017

They were probably sitting up in bed, my daughter Jade and son-in-law Sam, their sons asleep, peace having descended and racking their brains as to what to buy me for my big decade birthday last year. “Why don’t we pay for your Dad to do a Creative Writing course?” Sam might have said. Funny how I get sensitive to being called ‘Dad’, preferring Pa or Papa! If I had been a fly on the wall I might have heard ‘he needs to improve’ or ‘it might help him’ or ‘he obviously enjoys writing his PCs so this might make them better’. Time moved on and they saw something they liked more; but it had been mentioned to me and the seed sown, so I investigated the course at the City College/MET in Brighton and signed up.

Not really much idea what to expect apart from the sales pitch, which mentioned ‘writing autobiography, poetry and fiction’, and ‘exploring techniques for sparking imagination and tapping into inner creativity’. It sounded interesting I thought. The course started towards the end of April and as instructed I had collected my security pass a couple of days earlier; strange to go and study and have to have a pass but times have changed.

By the time we were ten minutes into the first class the last person had turned up. It’s in my DNA to be punctual, to be there at least 5 minutes before the start, but obviously my DNA is not shared by others!! We were a disparate bunch, genuinely reflecting the diversity of this City, three men, eleven women; I am not good at guessing ages but most 25-45 with one or two older than that. I wondered at some point during those first few minutes whether this class was for me and as the weeks progressed others must have thought the same.

Three dropped out: then there were 11

We filled out a form, indicating what we wanted from the course. Then we started, two hours with quite a lot of student participation, a little whiteboard guidance. We talked about characterisation, writing dialogue, believable plots and connecting people and events; we wrote a child’s simple bedtime story and we practised in class and with our homework. In the warm glow of the satisfaction at having completed each and every class, and having gained a great deal from them all, some things stand out:

One evening we were divided into groups of three and asked to tell the other two of a moment in your past you feared for your life. Then the group would choose one, and in class each member of that group would recount that experience as if it was their own, the others trying to guess whose actual tale it was. Got it? Well, I was grouped with Sophie and Steve; both had more tattoos than the owner of my local tattoo parlour, not to mention enough piercing for them both to leak if they stood on their heads and for Steve some green dye in his hair. We compared our experiences in the corridor, away from flapping ears. Steve told of his drunken stepfather throwing a supper plate at him as a child, shattering across his forehead; I told of being on a yacht in a race across the North Sea when we were hit by a 60 knot line squall which knocked the boat horizontal and the sea poured in: Sophie told of being at a Tattoo Convention in Kathmandu, Nepal at the time of the earthquake in 2015. We choose hers, but left out the bit about it being a Tattoo convention as it would have been visually obvious I have no interest in body art! Fun to recount someone else’s stories as if they are your own.

And then there were 8!

One topic was poetry, a form of expression I don’t enjoy either reading or listening to. The homework was to write a 40 line poem. “Forty lines!” the voice inside my head yelled at me as I reached for a clean sheet of paper and made my first half-hearted attempt; seemed like an impossible task. I eventually produced a basic effort on sailing; the fifth verse for example went like this:

“Sail’s flapping, pull in the sheet,

Yank the winch, clear the cleat.”

Childish huh!

This challenge, of having to do something then, there, in class, in 10 minutes, in 100 words, that was fun! There was nowhere to hide; I wanted to produce something and not respond that I simply found this really too hard and “No, I don’t have anything!” which we occasionally heard.

For homework one week, I had to get someone to give me the names of two famous people and a newspaper headline; from these I was to concoct a story. Thanks Jon for suggesting David Beckham, Nelson Mandela and ‘Freddie Starr ate my hamster”

With a bit of research I produced something which worked; email me if you want to read it.

One of the tasks I found most enjoyable was to rewrite a fairy-tale “with a twist”! Such fun …….. and maybe, just maybe, I’ll work it up into a short story and send it off somewhere.

And then there were 5! Life interrupts; Claudia was unwell, James’ partner had a baby, Francesca was often seduced by an offer from chums of a picnic on the beach in the warmth of the evening, with a glass of bubbly. Difficult huh?

We were given a colour reproduction of an Impressionist painting. Mine was Édouard Manet’s ‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère’. In class, for this was the last one, we had to write about the picture. Then write about the picture from the point to view of someone in the picture; then from artist’s point of view. And finally create a story connected somehow with the picture. An interesting and challenging exercise.

At the end there were 4; Rachel, who had a delightfully creative and imaginative mind but hated the sound of her own voice, her friend Lydia who contributed lots although was very self-conscious about her efforts, Melanie who was very focused and who clearly will publish sometime ….. and me.

And what of Heather, our teacher? I spent some time on the teaching staff of the Royal School of Artillery and know that preparation beats chaos, confidence wins hands down but then I was simply imparting facts. Encouraging people to write creatively requires a completely different set of skills, trying to tease out ideas, challenging people to think laterally. Although Heather always seemed to have lost her password so she couldn’t log on and register our presence, I actually warmed to her over the weeks – people who write or try to teach writing must have a certain Je ne sais quoi huh?

Richard 29^th July 2017

You get those magazine articles about how so-and-so knew so-and-so and how amazing it was that they had discovered that one of their great grandmothers had had tea with the queen and that the other had had a relative who just happened to be pouring that very tea ……. or some such!! Makes you smile ……. and then life moves on; really too inconsequential to think more about. Or is it?

Planet Earth

Do you know how many babies are born in a single hour on Planet Earth? In round terms 15,000! An average of fifteen thousand an hour, 360,000 in a single day. Seems a lot huh! If you’re interested in such things you might start to wonder whether there is any predictability about when babies are born. There was a large statistical evaluation carried out concerning 6 million French babies born between January 1968 and December 1974. What it found was that there are two different rhythms at play in frequencies; a weekly one and an annual one. The lowest number of births occurred on a Sunday and the largest number on a Tuesday, whilst the month of May was the most popular with the lowest number of births in the months of September and October. This latest figure surprised me as I had always thought lots of sexual activity took place in the Northern Hemisphere winter months of January and February, so there should have been a peak in the autumn. Mind you I have no idea whether the converse is true in the Southern Hemisphere. You can of course prove anything by statistics!

Did you know that a statistical analysis of birth distribution in lunar months shows that more babies are born between the last quarter and the new moon, and fewer in the first quarter of new moon. All those concerned with birthing, midwives, nurses in labour wards, busy doulas and experienced childbirth educators, all believe in the power of the full moon plus changes to barometric pressure from cold-warm fronts to move things along. And why not? Our bodies are, after all, some 65% fluid and we are aware of how the earth’s waters are affected by the lunar pull. If you have every stood on Portland Bill on the English Channel or on the deck of a yacht between the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Alderney ……… and watched the sea being forced by some unseen hand in one direction, in the latter case possible causing the yacht to go backwards relative to the seabed …… ……..  so why should we be immune to this lunar pull?

Back in February this year, the full moon was on Saturday 11^th and the start of the last quarter the following Friday, the 17^th. If you were born around this time, your ‘Star’ sign would be Aquarius and this year you would be a Rooster, according to the Chinese Zodiac which started on 28th January. Aquarians have “a desire to deal with the problems and hopes of all mankind; they are very concerned with the life of the community rather than any particular individual. They need to be in the spotlight and will do anything to attract public attention no matter how freaky or perverse.”  As a Rooster you would be the epitome of fidelity and punctuality, and the human representative of confidence and intelligence! And if you want to buy some jewellery for an Aquarian, choose an Amethyst.

You might think by now that I have completely lost the plot, more than usual some might even think, but all this has been leading up to the main event, a simple record of connections. On 17^th February in London, sometime in the afternoon, Douglas Henry William Yates was born. Douglas is the first son of my nephew Hugh and his wife Hannah (see PC 41); Douglas was one of some 3800 babies born in the UK that day but no doubt to Hugh & Hannah the only one!!

All family babies are a celebration and his birth was exactly that. However, my clock was ticking. My mother-in-law had a bet that her second grandson would also be born on the same day. Celina’s brother and sister-in-law met Hugh & Hannah at our wedding in August last year but had just moved from Rio de Janeiro to Estoril in Portugal; both women were pregnant! Now in Portugal about 520 babies are born each day and completely coincidentally Camila went into labour earlier in the day. That evening, on the 17^th February 2017, on the first day of the last lunar quarter, at around 2325 Joaquim Vasconcellos Rocha Miranda, Camila’s second son was born.

I have known Hannah for many many years but Camila only since 2012, when she was pregnant with her first son. That they met in August last year was not so remarkable but both being pregnant was, surely? I can’t honestly remember when the mythical ‘due date’ was in either case but to have them racing towards the finish line together, living in two different countries but connected loosely by my marriage, was worth a bet huh?

This is a nice story, isn’t it? (and we need nice stories!)

Richard 15^th July 2017

Milestone – “A stone set up on a road to indicate the miles to and from a given place; an event, a stage in life.” (A Roman mile being 1000 paces by one of its soldiers)  (Not sure there are ‘kilometre stones’?)

I never ever imagined I would reach this personal milestone, because actually there wasn’t one, a goal that is! What there was, way back in 2013, was a need to scribble something about what I was doing and to communicate that to those close to me, having given up on the traditional postcard with the ‘Wish you were here!’ message.* So my postcard (PC) series was born, emailed occasionally to a growing address list. Most people probably read the first few as they were mainly about Brazil, a country few in the UK knew much about. My first trip had been with Celina, who became my wife last year, in April 2012. Coincidentally my maternal great grandfather Richard Corbett had been born in Recife in north east Brazil in 1850.

Lagoa with Sugar Loaf in the distance, Rio de Janeiro

These musings developed as I found that I enjoyed trying, not always successfully, to describe where I was, what was going on in my head, or simply to make some observations about my life. In 2016 they morphed into a blog available on WordPress at postcardscribbles.co.uk, thanks to the suggestion and assistance of my son-in-law Sam. And here we are, PC 100, a hundred PCs of about a thousand words each, so in total about 10,000 words. Although that’s a definition of a novel, I have not written one, because that has a beginning, a plot, and an end. And who wants to read a novel of 100 chapters?

For those of you who have been with me since the start, you will have read about marriages (PCs 41 & 77) and deaths (PCs 22 & 60) and you will read about births in PC 101; ‘Hatches, Matches and Dispatches’ my parents’ generation would have called them. You will have travelled with me to the USA, Canada, France, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and of course to Brazil. Since I started my PCs this country has gone into a serious recession, had its president charged with impeachment, hosted both the football World Cup and the Olympic Games and suffered both too little and too much rain. Given that it’s some 2400 miles both north to south and east to west, visiting parts of Brazil is quite a project. I sense we have seen more of this wonderful Latin American country than many of the inhabitants, going north to Recife, south to Paraty, Cananéia and Santa Catarina, west to the Pantanal, Foz de Iguaçu and São Paulo, whilst based in Rio de Janeiro.

The view from the Top of the World Highway, Alaska

My maternal ancestors, the Nation family, moved from Somerset in the late 1700s to India, on to New Zealand in 1860, and to the UK via San Francisco and Nevada in 1898. Great grandfather George’s trips to Alaska and Canada in the early part of the last century gave us a focus for a trip that we might not otherwise have made, following in his footsteps right up to Eagle City, some 130 miles south of the Arctic Circle (PCs 43, 44 &45).

Whilst I don’t write to get feedback, some people comment. It’s a little like throwing food onto the surface of a limpid pond. Some fish always bite, but others, living in the murky depths, you won’t see until a particular morsel tempts them to the surface. They feed, and then sink back for a year or so!!  One or two topics have created more comments than others; the most have been made about PCs on Loo Paper (PC 47) and The Loo (PC 54) and on Alcohol (PCs 15 & 16). I am really not sure what a sociologist would make of this? At other times it’s as if I have posted something into a black hole, silence is the only thing that comes back.

I’ve scribbled about Christmas and about Easter and about Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, about Cutlery & Etiquette, about speaking and seeing, eating and talking, and I’m fascinated by the coincidences that are all around us.

 The remains of the fire and sea ravaged West Pier here in Brighton

And I’ve made quite a few faux pas – such as using current when it should have been currant, and being told by Colin it must have been a shocking experience! Very droll! When proof reading you can get word-blind and words like bare and bear get misplaced contextually and I readily admit to being uncertain initially whether it’s perserverance or perseverance?! And of course someone said they weren’t going to read any more as they were too boring, introspective and personal ….. and after 6 months self-imposed purdah came back.

I hope that my scribbles are at least vaguely interesting and occasionally informative? People call it my ‘blog’: “A regularly updated website or webpage, typically run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.” Well, sort of, huh? Updated only because the thoughts are current and not that they are dependent on the previous ones. I am trying to collate the first 100 with the intention of publishing them in a magazine format. I hope that some of my regular readers will want a copy.

So have a cup of coffee, and enjoy

And now I had better get on with PC 101 about these new births.

Richard 2^nd July 2017

Note: * Technology moves quickly! Four days ago I got a postcard from my daughter and family, enjoying a week in sun-drenched Italy. The postcard was made up of photographs they had taken around the pool, the manuscript message personal and apt, the ‘stamp’ a picture of one of my grandsons enjoying an ice-cream – all courtesy of ‘TouchNote’. So clever!

 

 

 

 

Through the window, across the road I can see the end of the largest Christian Orthodox Coptic church in the south of England. In the early evening sunlight, in the dappled shade provided by the elm tree, it looks idyllic.

 

But my view is deceiving. Zoom in and it’s seen from Room 16 at the Montefiore Hospital on Davigdor Road in central Hove. This morning seems a long time ago. Theresa at the reception desk was on duty until 2100 last night and here she is at 0655 ……. after I give her my name she checks my date of birth (dob) ……. and then asks if I’m with Mr Cass (my spinal surgeon) …… and then checks the dob again.

“This can’t be right” she mutters under her breath but loud enough to hear …. I can see her confusion as she looks at me, my face belying my actual age!!

“It’s the hot yoga!” I say and she understands completely as she occasionally goes to the same studio and is also an aficionado. Up to Room 16. To get this far I had to have a meeting with Mr Cass on Monday, see my GP on Tuesday, get checked at the hospital the same day for MRSA etc, asked again about dob and next of kin, sign here, agree this;  you will no doubt be familiar with this world in some way.

You will have gathered by now the long story roughly alluded to in PC 95 had come to a head. The NHS system advised a ‘watchful and waiting’ treatment; I wanted an MRI to find why I couldn’t walk without a stick. So I had to jump the NHS as this had gone on too long and I was in too much pain. You hear that after people get unexpectedly upgraded to business or even first class on an airplane, they vow never to ‘turn left’ again …. although we do know some people who take this a rub-your-nose-in-it further with a “Oh! You fly ‘Commercial’ do you?” So into the Montefiore, a private Spire hospital for a Lumbar Microdiscectomy at L4/L5.

“There’ll be a vanity bag in the bathroom with shampoo, shower gel etc but if you need anything you only have to ask.” Ah!

After a room visit by the anesthetist, I wait; it’s 0815. Then the assistant anesthetist arrives. “Can you walk?” Up to the second floor in the lift, walk past Theatre 1 and Theatre 2, theatre reception etc; it’s so far it’s like walking from the air bridge to passport control in an airport when you arrive. You may remember that the ‘space blanket’ that was all the rage in the ’70s (a NASA benefit) that’s now ubiquitous in camping stores and in mountain rescue vehicles? Then they developed a self-heating glove ……. well, in the pre-operating room I was covered with a self -heating blanket …… wow, now that’s cool! (Sorry couldn’t resist)

We talk about this and that …. “you might feel a small prick ” …….. “Can I put this oxygen mask over your nose?” and ……… the mind just doesn’t go blank, you lose conscientious very quickly. (I write this and am reminded of that film Lucy with Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman about how we only use 10% of our brain power …. when we are awake!)

I awake in Room 16 a couple of hours later; my lower legs are encased in tight anti-dvt stockings and a wrap-around pack of air pockets, fitted up to a pump which inflates/deflates the pockets every 45 seconds. The pump is noisy but my lower leg muscles get a massage! The bed is one where, with a few inadvertent touches of the control panel, you could completely disappear as the foot end comes up at the same time as the head end, and you’re bent in the middle  ….. and the panic button is for some reason just out of reach.

Gary comes in to explain the physiotherapy support programme and some immediate do’s and don’ts. Gary is the chap whose head I almost knocked off when, on my first private visit to the Radius Clinic in April, he did his initial assessment. After the history take he asked me to lie down on the couch.

“Raise your left leg.” he commanded, leaning over the table, and my body. Yoga is well known for developing joint flexibility, and being ex-army I instinctively had to lift it quickly and er sharply; nothing wishy washy here!! Caught Gary on the temple huh! He remembers!

So now this is post-op and he wants me to understand how to stand up without ripping the stitches in my back. After a few moments I’m on my pins for the first time since the anesthetist’s assistant asked me to lie on the trolley this morning; Gary’s standing beside me holding the two milk-bottle like things into which stuff occasionally dribbles from the operational area. I’ve written ‘stuff’ because I am sure no further inspection or description is necessary.

“Ok. Now we are going to walk to the (en-suite!) bathroom. Do you want a hand?”

Male pride? Male stupidity? Male stubbornness? No way! “Let me try on my own.” (I should have recalled the fact that a chum, in a similar situation after a hip operation, stepped boldly forward …….. fell flat on his face, had severe delayed concussion weeks later ……. and hasn’t really been 100% right since then!) Well I didn’t fall but a quick look at Gary’s face suggested he had thought I would. So, the ‘soft shoe shuffle’ so beloved of literationalists and get to the bathroom, do what was necessary with a modicum of decency but actually more like the dance of the still-connected draining bottles ….. and reverse the process back into bed.

Time compresses. My delayed ‘mid-morning snack’ arrived at 1300, my lunch at 1430 and my mid-afternoon tea & cake (very yummy!) at 1600 ……. and I am expected to eat dinner at 1800. Spoilt you might think and rightly so!

My nurse for the day made a fascinating comment during some banter before going for surgery. The Montefiore Hospital also shares it facilities and surgeons with the NHS in an attempt to reduce the latter’s backlog. He has observed that over the years those coming in as patients under their company health insurance cover, or ‘self-paying’ as I was, are more organised, plan the post-op support needed at home, have a more self-sufficient frame of mind and are more thoughtful than those the State is funding, who just don’t appear to think about anything they can do … expecting the State to do all their thinking for them. We need a national course in self-education, self-reliance, a weaning off, taking responsibility where possible for their own health, welfare, etc.  Rant over!

So Saturday late morning I am discharged with some painkillers and notes from the physiotherapist. “Don’t sit down for more than 15 minutes at a time. Walk as much as you can.”

There you have it, pain free after three months. Thank God I had a choice.

Richard 16^th/17^th June 2017

PS Montefiore? Obviously the ‘mountain of flowers’ but a name taken by Sephardic Jews from Morocco and Italy who excelled as diplomats and bankers.