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.

Cousin Teresa was being serious when we saw her in Sao Paulo back in February (see PC 91). She wanted to take her son to Europe, to ‘show him Europe’, and she had 15 days holiday. We had a similar conversation a couple of weeks later with a great friend in Rio de Janeiro who had the same idea! Same idea and same time-frame. I was reminded of that joke about American tourists ‘doing Europe’. As they got off the coach in a large city, one turned to the other and asked: “Where are we?” His companion consulted her itinerary and responds: “It’s Tuesday so it must be Brussels.”

We are so, so lucky, living in an age when travel is comparatively easy, reasonably affordable and moving from A to B quick. Did you realise, for instance, the cost of air travel has halved in the last thirty years? Those of you who read PC 44 will understand that to get to Alaska in 1900 George had to train to Liverpool, get a boat to New York, train to Winnipeg and then across Canada to Seattle, before taking the ferry to Skagway and his onwards journey overland to Dawson City. His total A – B was 6 weeks, which included 3 weeks to Seattle; we flew there in just under 10 hours!!

Certainly in the 19^th and maybe first half of the 20^th centuries tourism was only available to the rich; before then it was probably a strange concept!! The Grand Tour was an essential part of one’s education if you were wealthy, visiting the cultural hotspots of Europe’s capital cities before going to university. Now of course anybody who has some time and some money can do it. And if you live here in the UK, you can drive, fly, train, cycle across The Channel so easily and go often – lunch in Paris anyone?? But if you don’t ……

The Swiss Alps

When someone says ‘Europe’ I wonder what that means to them. Is it the buildings, the physical shape of history so visible in every country? Incidentally did you know that Warsaw was completely rebuilt after the Germans flattened it in 1944? Is it the smell of the place, like when get off an airplane in say Singapore and are greeted by the ‘smell’ of South East Asia? Is it the history of the place, so influential in the development of the world as we know it? Oh! I know the Chinese invented gunpowder and silk and chop sticks etc etc and having a European centric view is passé but if it hadn’t been for Columbus, Marco Polo, Vasco da Gama, Cook   …… and the Europeans who went out to conquer, settle, invade, subjugate …… what sort of world would we have today? Is it the culture, oozing out of every European pore? Or the geography …. from the Nordic fjords to the Mediterranean coasts, from the wild Atlantic through the Alps to the Black Sea and the border with Asia?

Nowadays if you want to ‘see’ Europe you could just as well go online and virtually visit anywhere. Open up Goggle Maps and have a virtual drive through the Brenner Pass. Rijks Museum? Not a problem …. http://www.rijksmuseum.nl would you do it ….. and off you go, exploring the works of Rembrandt and Van Dyke ……. from the comfort of your chair ….. and not costing a penny. But that’s cheating? Is it? Instant gratification without any cost – sounds like the C21st to me.

So the question is, where would you plan to go and what would you hope to see with a limited time budget – 15 days? Europe is small and extremely crowded, about the same size as, say, Australia …….

….. but the distances are more doable and transport easy.

Many years ago when family were visiting from New Zealand, having collected them from Heathrow Airport we drove into central London before going home. It was nighttime and suddenly there was Buckingham Palace, down The Mall into Trafalgar Square with a floodlit Nelson on top of his column, and at the end of Whitehall Big Ben, physically there, reaching up into the dark sky. You could see the excitement on the faces of both children and adults as they looked out of the car windows. Personally I remember the first time I went to the Louvre museum in Paris …… and stood before the Mona Lisa …… or in Sienna Cathedral staring at the wonderful sculpture by Michelangelo La Pietà ……. and went all goose-pimply because here it was, in front of me, not just some photograph from a glossy magazine.

Fifteen days huh. First time ever? Seven cities/countries – two days each? The must visit list could include London, Paris, Rome & Firenze, Berlin (I’ve never been as it was behind the Iron Curtain when I did my travels in Europe), Vienna (small and compact) and maybe Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum!). But what about the cradle of civilization, Greece, or the Scandinavian countries, or Britain’s oldest ally, Portugal? And if we are talking about the whole of Europe, the capital cities of the old Warsaw Pact countries, the beauty of Bucharest or Bratislava or Budapest must feature, surely? And what about the Baltic States? Or more ‘modern’ destinations like Prague and Barcelona, although they have become victims of their own success at drawing the tourists? If we’re still talking about Europe, then Istanbul must feature? And of course the trouble with a rushed crowded schedule is half the time is spent on a train, in a car, on an airplane, or just waiting at the airport for the latter, to get from A to B; packing, unpacking, packing!

So you get a flavour, a sense of the greatness of this area of the world, for that’s all you can do in fifteen days. Promises are no doubt also made, for it simply whets the appetite for a return trip, when time and money are more flexible.  But come you surely must, if only for fifteen days!

Richard 4^th June 2017

PS I remember the first time I went to Rio de Janeiro and, on the night-time drive in from the airport, saw the floodlit statue of Christ the Redeemer on top of Corcovado! Wow! No more photographs, there it was.

 

 

 

I am not a techie in any sense but am certainly not one of those 65-74 year olds who, according to a survey in today’s paper, have never used the internet; that much is obvious. However, when it comes to a technological problem, I only have a few responses in my kit bag.

The first is a general one, of which most of my readers will be familiar. It goes something like: “Aaggggggghhhhhhhh!” and maybe coloured a little by the addition of ‘f**k’. And when reading this you need to be reminded that this is effortlessly produced far back in the throat and announced into the open void at full volume. Not that technology normally responds to this; after a few minutes you try and rationalise it ……… and find a solution.

The other morning my iPad refused to stay ‘on’. That is, I switched it on and waited for the ‘screen saver’ to appear. As soon as it does, you can normally simply swipe the screen and enter your passcode. Nothing; wouldn’t swipe, simply went out. Blank! No problem, the old ‘soft reset’! Nothing! Maybe shaking it would help? Leave it 3 minutes ….. try again! Nothing! Throw it through the window?

“Why not try and Google it?”

The sage says do the soft reset for 45 seconds. Sure enough, back to normal. Why? No idea? Technology huh!

I am collating all my PCs on my Toshiba laptop, prior to possible publication of the first one hundred. I had about 30 minutes spare on Friday morning so I thought I could add to my collation. Turn on my laptop. Up comes the reassuring stuff then the “Don’t Turn off your computer, Windows Updating ….. 0%” You know these updates are necessary and didn’t need last weekend’s cyber hack to remind you, although they do have a very irritating habit of starting just when you want to do something for 5 minutes, now! So you watch the little figure progress …. 5% … 10% … 15% … 20% …21% …22% … 23% ….. the wretched worm endlessly circling like some demented hampster on its wheel. I went off for a pee, came back and it was still at 23%, the ‘don’t turn off, updating’ continuing to taunt me. And it stuck at 23%. So I unplugged it, knowing I could not turn it off any other way; let the battery run down. Sure enough, after a while, the 23% faded and the screen went blank. Leave for 5 minutes (Not sure why? Cool down? Seemed the right think to do but not being a techie ……! Oh! And I prayed as well. Even smiled at it, as in ‘I love you really!’) Switched back on ……. and after a few flashes of stuff, we got back to the ‘Windows updating …..’ ‘Aaaaggghhhhh’.

 I had used a local computer company before when I had a problem and phoned them.

“Bring it in.” I had some ridiculous notion that if I took it around then and there, they would drop everything else they were working on and fix it before the evening was over. It was raining, a somewhat rare event in the South East this year, so I put my laptop and charging cables into a bag and off I went. Southern Technology is up on Blatchington Road which runs at right angles to George Street; a mere 10 minute walk.

When someone has a first name which don’t translate well across cultures, you tend to remember it, especially as it  makes you laugh; that that is clearly understood and made the most of by its owner is a bonus! “Hi! Fattey” I called as I opened the shop door. Fattey is a lovely 30s something Iranian with a good sense of humour; he would need it I hear you think! He manages the business with Hassan, bearded and more hipster by appearance. The shop has a counter, situated as near to the door as possible so that there is maximum room for the computer peripherals (This generic word covers the chargers, storage devices, cables, bags, add-ons, plugs, boosters, dongles, software patches etc etc) that are for sale. Behind the counter are steps leading up to a sort of mezzanine floor where the repair work is carried out. You see piles of laptops, desk tops, data storage devices, soldering irons, cables and electrical sockets everywhere; in amongst these, reminders of human need, the odd coffee cup and discarded sandwich wrapper, its contents consumed long ago.

Hassan fills out the little work docket, Fattey shouts from the workshop it’s probably a software or hard disc problem, and I hand over my laptop. Hassan says they hope to be able to recover all the data and get it working well. “Is there anything really really important?” “Well. I don’t ‘game’ (Is that a way of saying I don’t play Auto Theft 6 or some such?) and I don’t use it for music or watching videos (I get a funny look from both of them, almost a ‘Well, what do you use it for?’ sort-of look) but all my digital photos are on it, and my Word files are very precious.”

I depart in the rain, praying that it is fixable and soon.

My little brain manages to produce some scribbles about once a fortnight and I was due to post my next postcard this weekend. It’s 90% written ……… but it’s stored on my laptop …… which remains in the workshop of Southern Technology. Unless I get a telephone call in the next hour, they will close for the weekend and I will be unable to post PC 97 as I had planned. So this little tale could well become PC 97 and the other one renumbered. I hope it doesn’t disappoint?

Richard 20^th May 2017

PS So there you have it; no telephone call, no laptop! Fortunately I have a little Notebook.

 

My step father, known by me throughout our thirty eight year relationship as Uncle Philip, died in November 1993. He came from a traditional Scottish family and his values were very much shaped by a strict upbringing, typical of the age, and coloured by wartime experience. Indeed the family motto was ‘Cura et Industria’ (Care and industry) and their crest showed a cornucopia of goodies – suggesting that through hard work comes abundance. He was careful with money and generous of spirit. Above all he was a skilled engineer, a mechanical one at that. He loved technology and things mechanical, always wanting to understand how something worked.

The other evening I imagined having a conversation with him, about life in May 2017! The thought came to my head as I used some grease from a green Duckham’s tin to ease the hinge of a metal gate to stop it squeaking. Uncle Philip had had this very tin ….. using the contents to fill a grease gun for the nipples on his car. I am not a mechanical engineer so I can’t tell you where exactly these said nipples were but ……! He had only two cars in the time I knew him, an old black Riley Pathfinder and then a Rover 3500. Both he cherished and serviced himself.

 

“You wouldn’t know how to service a car today, Uncle Philip” I said rather confrontationally.

“Oh! Why’s that?” he said, immediately bristling with indignation!

“You raise the bonnet and there’s a large cover – and very little else. All computer-controlled and very efficient. Not sure there is even a distributor or carburettor!! Do you remember how you used to check the spark gaps with a feeler gauge …… pick all the gravel out of the tread of the ‘Crossply’ tyres, to ensure they lasted longer?”

“So you’re saying I would not recognise how cars have developed in the last 30 years or so? What else would I be surprised at?”

(Ed: What follows are some of the things that pop in to my head. It’s only a start!)

“First and foremost, the development of the ‘internet’ – the world wide web (www)”

“And what, pray, is the Internet?”

“The Internet was originally a military back-up plan linking super computers across the United States in the 1960s. In the early 1990s CERN proposed a global web concept and by the middle of that decade the public began to grasp its potential. Today its tentacles reach into every aspect of human activity.”

“Such as?”

Communications! There has been such an exponential growth in their development that it’s hard to keep up, unless you’re under 25 and working for a technology company.”

“A what? A ‘technology’ company?”

“They are the new Masters of the Universe! In the latter years of your life you remember the development of the mobile telephone? Looked like a brick which you charged with a bigger brick.”

“Yes! You had a ‘Rabbit’ that only worked if you were within 100m of a rebroadcast mast.”

“Yep. Well remembered! That didn’t last long (20 months). But look at this, my ‘smart’ phone through which I can make telephone calls, either through a local mast or through the internet, and that’s free (!), ……. take photographs as it has a camera…

“Hang on! You have a camera in your phone? That sounds amazing? But how do you see the photographs. It was always so expensive to print them.”

“It’s all in the digital revolution. You can define anything with a series of ones and zeros as in ‘100110111100001001’ – and this has simply turned life upside down. So I can see them on my personal computer, which incidentally is smaller but more powerful than ever. If I want to I can load them onto a web-based site and print them off in an album, individually, however I want them.”

“A ‘web-based’ site? One of those thingamajigs on the internet?”

“Absolutely! I can use my smart phone as a clock/alarm/stopwatch …. I can use it to text people.”

“This phraseology is all so alien to me. Text?” he said, peering over his half-moon glasses.

“Instead of talking to people, I can write to them electronically, either in the form of ‘electronic mail’, shortened to email, which started becoming popular about 2 years after you left us, or, if it’s a short message, by typing it out on my ‘phone’ in the form of a text. The wide availability of hand-held devices, be they a telephone or small lightweight ‘Lap Top’ computer, has ensured the success of this new medium. This is all part of Social Media, a completely new industry with odd names like Face Book, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, that ensures no one talks face-to-face and encourages the rise of self-obsession. I joke!”

 

Digital Devices

“You’d also be surprised at the development of the devices for seeing video. You will remember how TV size was defined by the Cathode Ray Tube; they got so big the set was almost as deep as it was wide. Now an extremely slim TV monitor can be made with solid- state electronics and the development of pixel technology. A pixel is the smallest element of an image that can be individually processed in a digital display – be it a photograph or video system.” (see below for greater information!)

“You remember that drawer in the hall table where you kept your Ordinance Survey Maps? Actually these days you can get any map on your phone and the Global Positioning System GPS will even tell you exactly where you are, to an accuracy of 5 metres or so.”

“My brain is being overloaded. Quickly, before I fry. What else?”

“Cursive writing (see PCs 56 & 57) is slightly passé. Reading anything, be it a book or a newspaper, can be via an electronic device although, unless you’re travelling, most people seem to prefer the old-fashioned paper book. Learning is similarly available through the internet. And the internet has freed those chained to their office desk; they can work anywhere, provided they can get an internet connection. Your electronic ‘library’ for research purposes is, in the main, provided by a company called ‘Google’; so it’s part of our language ‘to google it’, meaning to go online to find the answer through the Google search engine.”

“Search Engine? Oh! Don’t bother!”

“And the most exciting developments are going to be, I think, in the area of nanotechnology and the use of Graphene. Meanwhile everyone still moans about the weather and politicians of every persuasion, no one has solved the 69 year-old Israel-Palestine problem, and extreme Islam is the butt of blame for most of the world’s woes.”

“The world’s a very different place it seems, but it was ever thus! My father would have said the same; different developments, different times. Thanks for bringing me up to date! Now I must go and tell St Peter all about it, although he probably knows as he seems to have eyes and ears everywhere!”

Richard 7^th May 2017

Pixels: A pixel can be turned on (ie illuminated) and off (darkened) on a computer monitor. Resolution depends on the number of pixels a monitor can show. They have developed from 640 x 480 pixels per inch (PPI), through 1073 x 768 PPI until today’s 1000 x 1000 PPI. Colour depends on how much memory has been assigned to each pixel. For instance, two-bit memory pixels can show 8 colours, whereas eight-bit pixels can show 256 colours.

When I was aged 8 we moved from the great Georgian city of Bath to a small village 15 miles north of here, in deepest Sussex. It was in an age when certain professions had defined status, an acknowledgment of the contribution they made to the community’s well-being. Teachers and doctors headed this list and their position in the village was well established and respected. Our local doctor, Doctor Hare, was an affable, middle aged chap with florid cheeks and a large laugh. If we wanted to see him professionally, we could make an appointment at his surgery or he would do a house call, complete with his black leather ‘Doctor’s bag’. My parents saw him socially at dinner parties and the like, and I held my 18^th birthday in the large garage attached to his house. His daughter Belinda was the first girl I kissed!!

Sorry, I digress!

Back then, getting an appointment with the lowest level in the medical service, in the UK called General Practitioners (GPs), was relatively straight forward. Today I reflect on how backwards we seem to have travelled. I have had a crippling leg/back muscle pain for weeks, relieved occasionally by physiotherapy and massage, by visits to heated rooms, by some attempts at ‘hand on’ healing and with the application of oils – and with the constant use of a painkiller. I needed to check in with my doctor; so yesterday I called the surgery after the 9 o’clock watershed – for people like me, not an emergency, or so I believed with my amateurish knowledge.

You should be aware that before the Easter weekend my GP’s surgery was located in a large, rambling, rather decrepit Victorian house, once the home to a well-to-do family I imagine. Doctors had the old dining room, the square front room, or upstairs one of the old bedrooms as their consultation rooms, whilst the peripheral support staff like nurses and therapists had to make do in smaller rooms or spilled out into hallways and cupboards. Glimpses of the paper filling system did not engender any confidence and it is a wonder they managed to make it work. No! Really! It looked a real mess but this is how a lot of GPs currently interface with their patients.

So I was enormously pleased to read last year that the idea was to move into a deconsecrated church about half a mile away. A developer had had the vision to draw up plans to enable two GP Surgeries and a pharmacy to move into what was Holy Trinity Church. With new consulting rooms, a conference room, treatment rooms and the like it’s a huge step in the right direction. Needless to say Hove Preservation Society objected – to putting a building originally erected to heal the Christian soul and now no longer used, with maintenance and vandalism issues, to the use of healing the physical body, maybe as well as the soul? Fortunately the plans went ahead and it’s opened a couple of days after Easter.

Tuesday – the day of the opening.

“We are experiencing some technological problems with our systems and unless it’s urgent please try tomorrow.”

Yesterday

“This is Trinity Medical Centre. We are experiencing high volume of call rates currently and you are held in a queue; if it is an emergency pleased dial 999 otherwise please hold (I put the telephone handset on ‘speaker’ so I can carry on doing other things) ……… We are experiencing high volume of call rates currently and you are held in a queue ……. We are experiencing high volume of call rates currently and you are held in a queue.”

For 10 minutes this went on until, eventually, I got as far as the options menu.

“This is Trinity Medical Centre. If you want to change an appointment please press 2, otherwise please continue to hold.”

Holding…..

“Hello. This is the Trinity Medical Centre, how can I help you.”

“I’d like to make an appointment with Doctor Mackinnon. I have been onto your website and I can’t book one.”

“If you ring tomorrow morning, I can book you an appointment with her in two weeks’ time.”

“Why can’t you book me that appointment now, rather than having me call tomorrow morning?

“Because that is not how it works”!

(and there is no point in getting frustrated because the person you are talking to didn’t decide these things, no matter how much you believe she (in this case and it could have been a male voice!) did)

“Does she have any free appointments tomorrow?”

“Yes she does, about 5, but you would have to come in tomorrow morning at 0830 to book one.”

“I can’t do it over the telephone?” (Like …. Open the appointments page in the computer, put my name in one of the free slots, and tell me when)

“No! You have to come in!”

“OK! So I will call tomorrow.”

Today

A repeat of the first section with which I will not bore you.

“Hello. Trinity Medical Centre. How can I help?”

“Can I book an appointment with Dr Mackinnon today?”

“I can book you an appointment in two weeks’ time.”

“But I was told she has 5 free appointment slots today.”

“I could offer you a telephone appointment.”

“What happened to those free appointment slots?”

“I could offer you a telephone consultation or an appointment in two weeks’ time.” (spoken in a tone which suggests this is ‘take it or leave it and don’t ask any more irritating questions’.)

“OK! I will take the one in two weeks.” (I need to see her for her to refer me for, Oh! I don’t know, an MRI scan, Ultra Sound, physiotherapy and I am sure she wouldn’t make that referral without seeing me.

So there you have it. A little snapshot on the difficulties today of making an appointment to see your doctor. I hadn’t thought about Dr Hare, or Belinda for that matter, for decades, but it seems that we haven’t made any progress from those halcyon days of 1950’s Britain.

Richard 20^th April 2017

PS I was even approached by a complete stranger in local George Street this morning. “Excuse me! But you clearly have some pain in your leg” – my hobbling along is obviously very pronounced (!) – “Can I help you though the power of prayer?” I was on my way to stock up with fresh eggs from Dean at his market stall and didn’t want to be distracted, so I mumbled a quick “No! Thank You” and shuffled on my way. Funny life innit!

 

 

Do you recall the first time you wore glasses? OK! If you are long-sighted it may be a treat in store, depending on your age; but if you are short sighted …… I must have been about 8 or 9 and I remember walking up the street from the opticians in the great Roman and Georgian city of Bath, where I was born. Clearly I must have needed some sight correction for a while, as it was like seeing buildings, people, traffic as if for the first time!!

This was how it was!

In the Army of the 1970s the threat from the Soviet Union was very real and we imagined any attack across the inner-German border would include nasty chemical agents. Consequently we spent part of the time on training wearing a respirator and chemical-resistant suits (not Pierre Cardin I assure you!). Having a gasmask on your face is quite incapacitating simply on its own, with vision restricted, breathing more difficult, so we all had to suffer a yearly test, in a way to remind us how wearing it kept us alive. We all trooped into a gas chamber and put on our respirators. Some CS Gas Pellets (see note) were dropped onto the floor and, after sufficient time for the gas to build up, one by one we took off our gasmask, shouted out our service number (in my case 24067711 – amazing how some numbers are instantly recalled), rank and name ….. before heading rapidly for the door ……. and most likely to vomit on the grass outside!! The frames of my normal glasses didn’t fit inside the respirator so I was issued with a pair of the type much loved by John Lennon.

and this is how it became!

Not sure why one keeps old spectacles but I seem to have a collection, of ones with small frames, a pair with large smoked glass lenses, some with ‘no frame’ (!), memories of sunglasses which had a coating making the world look rather blue, and those yellow ones now at the bottom of Sydney Harbour as the strong wind took them off on some ferry trip! Since 1970 have also used contact lenses. My regular readers will know that I spent a lot of my ‘Army’ life sailing. (See second note!) Mostly in keel boats but occasionally I was encouraged to jump into a dinghy ……. and if you wore glasses you soon couldn’t see once they had got covered in salt water. The problem is salt water and glass. It’s almost impossible to keep your specs clean ……. and when there is a lot of spray around, the handkerchief that is tucked into your pocket and which could be suitable soon becomes damp with salty water and simply smears the glass. In 1970, after a number of long offshore races and cruises to the Chanel islands, for example, I ventured into the fairly new technology of contact lenses.

I went to get fitted and came away with a pair that I cleaned and soaked overnight; they were to last one month. They are made of hard plastic. In additional to the little storage container, I was given what I can only describe as a miniature sink plunger, for that’s what it looked like; a little rubber tube about 2 cms long with an open cup at one end. The idea was you could place it over the lens in your eye and suction would help its removal. Needless to say I only used it once.

These new contact lenses were an absolute boon. Seeing and sailing became so much easier. The only trick was to make sure when you removed the lens it didn’t fly out …….. somewhere. Grubbing around on the wet and dirty floor of a yacht looking for a piece of clear plastic barely a centimetre in diameter was never easy. On one offshore race from Cowes on the Isle of Wight to Skagen on the northern tip of Denmark in 1972, we had some fairly inclement weather ie it was raining heavily and blowing a severe gale. I didn’t dare take my lenses out below decks and they stayed in for three days; my eyes felt that they had been rubbed by sandpaper when eventually oxygen got at them!

And once, in a hotel in Zurich, I was putting them in, leaning over the sink  …….. with the tap running. The left lens didn’t go it first time and dropped into the sink ……. and my attempt to turn the tap off before it disappeared down the drain was not successful. I didn’t have a spare so I had to unscrew the U Bend beneath the sink ……. and rinse it through in the bath, with the plug in I should hasten to add. You can imagine that no one had cleared out this particular U Bend in this particular hotel room since …… well, probably since the hotel was built. But in amongst the human detritus of decades that washed out was my left lens!!

An early pair!

Gradually technology improved contact lenses and along came ‘gas permeable’, both daily and weekly and monthly wear. I am short-sighted so as I get older my uncorrected eyes can read books, papers etc without glasses, although wearing contact lenses I additionally needed to have a pair of those half-moon ‘granny’ glasses. About twenty years ago I stumbled on another option. I think I was extremely hungover from some entertainment the night before and was on semi-automatic pilot in the morning when I attempted to put my contact lenses in. I put one into the wrong eye; I could still see, but not quite as well as normal. However I realized I could get this to work. In my left eye I correct to about 9 ft, so that that eye dominates; and my right eye I correct from 9 ft to infinity. Amazing how the brain can adapt and I have got so used to it it’s only when an object is at the cross-over distance I notice it.

So there you have it, see what I mean, illuminating scribbles about eyesight!!

Richard 10^th April 2017

PS This old joke fits well in a PC about eyes. “The science teacher asks: “Which human body part increases to ten times its size when stimulated?” A girl complained this was a very inappropriate question and said she was going to tell her parents. The teacher repeated the question and Billy answered by saying it was the pupil of the eye. After congratulating Billy, the teacher turned to the girl and commented:

“As for you, young lady, I have a couple of things to say: firstly, you have a dirty mind and secondly one day you are going to be very, very disappointed.””

Notes:

CS or tear gas is a riot control, de-capacitating agent, the defining component being 2-chlorobenzalononitrile. (The ‘CS’ simply refers to the surnames of the two scientists who first synthesized it in 1928!)

There was a trio of car bumper stickers:  ‘Fly Navy’ and ‘Sail Army’ and for the Royal Air Force ‘Crab Air’ as they had a reputation for going sideways!

 

I had imagined scribbling the other half of ‘Hot Yoga Thoughts’, to cover the floor series, very shortly after PC 84. In fact I got distracted by other adventures and thoughts, in fact eight PCs in all, so now I should finish this!

The Floor series ……..

Of course Bikram Choudhury, the man who put this Hot Yoga series together, has not exactly covered himself in glory. Having created a specific sequence of Hatha yoga positions to be practised in a hot room, it was rumoured he took advantage of one or two of the female students training to be its teachers. And he didn’t see the conflict between preaching a way of being a good human based on a spiritual tradition going back thousands of years, and using his position to abuse others ….. as well as raking in money for his aggrandizement. Bit like those TV evangelistic preachers on American television you might think? Nothing was proven until the beginning of 2016 when his lawyer won $600,000 for sexual harassment. At that moment ‘Bikram’ studios all over the world made a rapid exit, rebadging and reinventing themselves and whilst I acknowledge that Mr Choudhury’s sequence is extremely beneficial, I don’t have to like the man who created it, do I? Such a scumbag! And if you thought yoga is not for you, try the ‘yoga for beginners’ asana.

So …… onto your mat, quick sip of water, ‘savasana’, dead body or corpse pose. One teacher suggested you should feel like being in a coffin ……. then she said closed coffin and I didn’t like the sound of that! You’re meant to let go of all the thoughts in your mind, forget all the efforts of the last 60 minutes, just relax …. at last ….. peace. But my mind exclaims! What? I busted a gut to make a passable attempt at such-and-such pose and now I’m told to forget the recollection? “Just be in the moment”…. that sort of yoga thing ….. yes ….but what am I having for lunch, monkey mind asks?  …. I want to think of anything but lying like a dead body. But when I really really try, I visualize my prone body floating on warm water – and then I make the water extremely shallow and imagine that underneath me is golden sand – about 5 cms away. I relax – my body drops further …. completely!

For those of you aghast that I should be so flippant about this ancient art, I really must apologise; this is just the way it is ….. for me …. and I hope I don’t disappoint you?  And I am not some imitation of an Indian ascetic, spending their days at the top of some pole trying not to fart. An ascetic is characterized by ‘severe self-discipline and an abstention from all sorts of indulgence’ – what? No chocolate or sex huh? (note the order of these two indulgences!)

Of course Celina and I moved to Hove because there were two studios offering hot yoga locally. On the south coast the only other one was in Bournemouth – too far from London. And by the way, I hope you don’t think anyone who does yoga is a bit of a woof? In the western world I suspect more women do yoga than men – in fact our class ratio must be about 80:20 – but I challenge any man to do 90 minutes of hot yoga without ‘feeling it’!!

Now we’re off again. Knee to chest, other knee to chest, both knees to chest – back of the head on the floor – what? Not possible! This is known as wind removing pose ….. the right knee ‘massages’ the ascending colon, the left knee the descending colon, then when both knees are raised ……. the potential to fart is enormous.

Onto tummies, arms like the Sphinx, lift up into ‘Cobra pose’ ….. never felt less like a snake, legs together to suggest the one snake tail, thorax off the floor. Can’t breathe …. collapse . We then do one of many situps, firstly trying to touch one’s toes and then try and get the head to knee ….. in sync with the breath  ……  of course!

Savasana

We’ve all imagined ‘yogis’ in Lotus pose, sitting serenely with not a care in the world, but Bikram’s Locust pose is something else. Hands underneath your prone body, like playing beach volleyball, …… then raise your legs. Er? OK!

Another posture … the dialogue continues …… ‘arms out to the side, legs together blah blah blah …..  ‘lift off like a 747’ (sort of dates the dialogue doesn’t it?) ……. but it’s a bit like trying to levitate! And I am not very successful at either! Eventually we move on from the ‘back strengthening’ series of postures to ‘Fixed Firm pose’ – Oh! Go on then …..Supta-Vajrasana. You kneel on the floor and with your knees quite close together, put you bum on the ground and fold over backwards, until your shoulders are on the floor. Yum! Never thought I could do and it took a while – it’s all about relaxing. Most men find this difficult initially, especially those with knee injuries from playing football.

Savasana

Some of Bikram Choudhury’s claims are a little far-fetched. In the next posture, one where you kneel with arms up together, and bend forward until your hands touch the ground, he reckons it’s as relaxing as 8 hours sleep –  but it’s over in 60 seconds – yes! OK! Bikram claims lots of benefits for his postures but if this one was true the world would sort of do it once a day and no one would go to sleep!

Camel, a master posture, comes next (see my little drawing below), then Rabbit, where you tuck your head to your knees and raise your bum. The penultimate posture requires your legs out in front and stretching forward. I twisted my ankle badly in battle PT in the army so a little bone sticks out making this uncomfortable.

This little cartoon was drawn by me as Tom, my gorgeous black Labrador, had this relaxed way of sleeping, showing his bits, not a care in the world. The connection with some of the yoga poses named after animals was obvious!

‘Final spinal’, a posture where you sit on your buttocks and twist your spine, always reminds me of a good teacher, Krystina Sedlakova, as her Czech-accented English made the pronouncing of ‘final spinal’ a delight!

One teacher used to rattle off the ‘Bikram’ dialogue as though he was a commentator on some horserace, as in ‘and they’re coming to the first fence and it’s Blue Sky in the lead from Hang Back and the favourite, Golden Boy, in third …… and they’re all safely over and …..’ His went something like (and you have to invent the appropriate voice in your head): “And bend to the right, reaching up and over, straighten your left arm, and change, and bend over to the left, straightening your left arm and now, reaching back drop your head relax    Not very ‘Yogic’ you might think …. although occasionally in a class of yoga we do have a ‘faller’!!

The final breathing exercise ……. and we’re done. Hot, exhausted, stretched ‘inside and out’ …… as Bikram Choudhury says ….. ‘bones to skin’. Try it! It’s addictive! You could always start with the beginners’ pose I offered earlier on!

 

Richard 26th March 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you like writing, and I have to accept that for some people it’s not their bag of tricks, don’t you just love it when you dump all those relevant thoughts that have been running around inside your head, effortlessly and with delight, onto some medium or other – and for me this has become my iPad in preference to using pen and ink? And you sit back and scan what you’ve written, somewhat pleased with yourself (see note below), thinking you’ll add to it over a few days or weeks, maybe rephrase a little here or there. And then don’t you just hate it when you inadvertently delete it? And you don’t realise you’ve done so for a day or two, when you want to add that little bit …… but you can’t find it! And you tear your hair out wondering what happened, how could I be so stupid, how could I retrieve it, ……. and then you conclude you have to start again?

So here I am starting again …. but in the meantime Robert Crampton, writing in The Times, shared thoughts similar to those in my head with his readers, so maybe it’s good to pause occasionally! Crampton wrote: “At 52, I’ve passed the stage of thinking I’m immortal, but am yet to concern myself with the details of my dotage. Yes, the issue is lurking, not too far over the horizon, but not so close that I can take current advice remotely seriously. I’m far more bothered about not going bald (all tickety-boo so far, touch wood) and sustaining an erection (or securing swift, cheap, legal access to Viagra).” And this has occurred to him at 52? Good grief …… this is hardly middle-aged in my book. Of course the chance of my becoming bald is as likely as our discovering the moon really is made of Gorgonzola; and any comment on the latter would be too much information!

Life is endless, limitless, horizons go on forever …….. until you understand it isn’t and they don’t. Not sure exactly when this particular thought started bubbling to the surface of my brain, but maybe in the last few weeks of 2016, when I guess I was subconsciously reviewing the year …… and in my case a period of real highs and lows …… I found myself thinking about the finality of life and taking it rather personally! I have always taken a very positive view on my existence and tried, in every thing I’ve done, to inject that positivity into those within my compass, infect even! Well, I hope so! What triggered this rather morbid thought? Maybe a news item of an enormous future transport infrastructure project whose completion I might not witness or maybe a simple run-list of those of my friends whose lives have come to an end, often a little earlier than they or those they cared for had imagined.

But if I’m really honest with myself, it was probably the start of a new personal decade that had something to do with it …… that and the little spots on the back of your hand, age spots, liver spots, sun spots ….. they just appear gradually without much of a by-your-leave…. and then you realise you’ve got quite a few, and you remember them on your mother’s hands, those and the increasingly noticeable veins, darker in colour. Signs of ageing huh? No, not me, I’m indestructible, I’m going on for ever and …….. er! no you’re not, you might buck the bell shaped standard distribution and come out the far side of the actuarial life expectancy mid point …. but sooner or later…… Me? I’ve got too much still to do, still to enjoy, still to experience …… I want to travel on the HS2 (Britain’s High Speed rail link that may open around 2026 for phase one and phase two 2032). I want to keep up with developments that the increasingly rapid pace of change through the application of digital technology can produce, I want to ………

When I was younger I just got up and completed the three ‘s’s (s ………., shaved and shampoo’d (you can guess the first!) …… and went off to work. Now additionally I have to take some pills ……… pills for this and pills for that, ‘but at your age you should certainly take Q10, multivitamins galore and, if you can afford it, extract of Amazonian Frog and ……..” “Afford it?” The irony is you stop earning money and suddenly your bills go up because you’re advised to take supplements! I used to watch Michael Douglas films; now I tend to be drawn to Michael Mosely documentaries about statins or heathy eating or the history of pain relief.

Not a great ‘user’ of Facebook (probably a little passé already? OK! I get it) I do occasionally post a photo or three, and skim the postings of others of my ‘friends’. “Good grief! Haven’t seen him/her for twenty years; they look old.” But it’s just the process of ageing. I remember a film where an old lady told her granddaughter: “I have always thought of myself as 17, but the other day I looked in the bathroom mirror and this wrinkled old face looked back at me. Where did my life go? Make the most of it …… seize the day!” Surprisingly, a few weeks ago it was announced that life expectancy in Scotland had actually fallen, which is quite a shock after decades of increasing: “live to 100?” – maybe not! And of course there is virtually nothing that you or I can do about it. I say ‘virtually’ because we all believe if we eat healthily, exercise moderately, drink alcohol occasionally, and don’t smoke we’ll all live cancer-free and heart-attack free; and that is definitely not the case! Some of course never exercise, never eat healthily, smoke and drink to excess ….. and live to 100! Or George Michael who died of ‘natural causes’ according to the coroner at 53; a little liver damage, a little disease here and there, maybe, but 53! Eek!. Who said life was fair?

I wrote in PC 55 (Nov 2015) about male waistlines and the advance of ‘middle aged spread’. Well I think I can do the ‘spread’ quite well although I do not accept that the ‘middle age’ moniker is appropriate. Then there’s that delightful quote from Groucho Marx, his take on the adage ‘you’re only as old as you feel’: “You’re only as old as the woman you feel.” So in my case I’m ……..

Then you go away …… in our case off to SE Asia and beyond …… and all the personal introspection is erased by the visible  onslaught and audio excitement of somewhere different …….. change of scene, change of pace being that very invigorating drug that enlivens our lives. That, and love.

Now, why was I writing this? I forget ….

Richard 14th March 2017

PS Robert Crampton finished his article by saying, “in terms of happiness, 60-plus, I’ll settle for being above ground.” Nice turn of phrase huh. Except of course if you are Jewish, when you would hope to remain above ground in this life and the next.

Note: Being a real optimist, I scribble that I’m ‘pleased’ with what I’ve written. If I had simply said that I wasn’t pleased there would be no point in saying it, as it’s a negative …… and emotionally uplifting as a wet brown paper bag. Know what I mean?