Sunday, 17th April, 2022
Easter Sunday. As a life-long and committed atheist, it holds no meaning for me whatsoever other than to illustrate how easily others are misguided. I think that, if I ever believed in the resurrection, I lost that belief with the realisation that Santa Claus was a fiction. The two concepts are analagous and equally ridculous.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have a spiritual side. All humans do. Some choose to create a god to fill it. I choose music, emotion and ideas. My Grandfather was an Irish Catholic although, latterly, not very committed to his faith. He gave me a windup Gramophone and some old 78″ records that he loved. Most of it produced scratchy sound from recordings of the 1930s but I was captivated by a piece colloquially called Handel’s Largo.
I later learnt that it is the opening Aria to Handel’s opera, Xerxes (1738) but the intellectual discovery came long after the spiritual one. I played it over and over and over until it drove everyone mad. I loved it and it made me cry. I loved it because it made me cry. I am playing it as I type now and I am feeling the keys through a veil of tears. Long after my Grandfather has gone, the spirit he bequeathed remains.
If you know the book, My Left Foot or watched the film, you will know that Handel’s Largo represented hope and spirituality for a man with cerebral palsy. I can understand how he reached that position. You only have to play it two or three times on repeat and you will be hooked for life.
I am a stupid man. You don’t have to tell me. I know myself. I feel spirituality through loss of the past. I mourn times and people gone from my life. It diminishes me and my life greatly. Because of that, I can understand the need to create the expectation of resurrection, the hope that time can be retraced. My stupidity is that, the more I fail, the harder I try.
Although I am an atheist, I will take political support from wherever it is offered. I am always amused/appalled how un-Christian professed Christians can be. It is good to see the Archbishop of Canterbury speaking out against the unbelievably cruel idea of exporting refugees who have fled persecution and look to us for a better, safer life. As he says, sub-contracting out our national responsibilities to an African state with a dubious human rights record is wrong.
Looking forward to watching the next few episodes of my current favourite drama – Anatomy of a Scandal which is showing on Netflix. It is just my sort of thing – sex and politics! What more could you want for Easter Sunday. It is suggestive of the Cameron cabinet with flashbacks to the Bullingdon Club and a mop of blonde hair floating around. The dialogue may not be brilliant but it is entertaining.
I can tell you that Easter eggs have not sold well this year. The fresh produce shelves – fruit, vegetables, chicken, etc – were very sparse but we had to fight our way past a wall of Easter Eggs just to get in to Sainsburys yesterday.
Monday, 18th April, 2022
Summer continues. Lovely clear sky last night full of stars and a bright full moon. The morning has opened with clear blue sky and lovely sunshine. Almost makes putting out the bins a pleasure. All the exciting things on the list today include cleaning the car. Whoo-hoo! Driving to Surrey tomorrow. Done my INR and have to phone the Anti-Coag. Department in preparation for my operation three weeks on Wednesday.
Got to be positive and look forward. Planning the future. As soon as the operation is over and I can comfortably walk again, we will drive into France and explore. In late August we will go to Athens. I have already booked a week in a suite in the Electra Palace Hotel and flights with Easyjet. In spite of the past year, prices really haven’t increased a great deal. We will leave August 21st and return on the 28th. Gives us something to aim for.
Booked our Northern trip between October 16th – 21st. Staying at the Holiday Inn, Brighouse and arranging to meet lots of lovely, old and wrinkly friends. We can now plan the rest of our year – driving in France and, possibly, travelling to Florida. Let’s hope we live to do all that.
Tuesday, 19th April, 2022
Woke early – couldn’t sleep. Up at 5.30 am and out half an hour later. Just 6 miles this morning – a bright and reasonably mild one. I’ve got lawns to cut before we drive up to Surrey.
It might be ‘relatively’ mild but nothing like Sarasota County where we were only 3 weeks ago. Over coffee this morning, Sky news featured this huge beast this morning, stalking the properties of Sarasota. M says it is really heating up now. Could just do with that. However, duty calls and we are taking PW for her cataract operation at Ashford Hospital. These things are never easy and even worse when you’re 120 years old.
People and things can be so cruel at times for no reason. I’m sure they will sort themselves out but it can be depressing. As I walked outside waiting for PW and her cataract operation, I received a phone call to tell me that my hernia operation was cancelled. It was to be on Wednesday, May 11th and would now be …. Monday, May 9th. Panic stations! It turns out that PW’s blood pressure was far too high and her operation was postponed. I just hope I come through my first general anaesthetic since 1958.
Wednesday, 20th April, 2022
Up early on a gorgeous morning. We have a garden design man arriving at 8.00 am. He is going to quote for installing raised beds around two sides of the lawn in the back garden. It will be constructed with planed ‘sleepers’, lined and filled with aggregate for drainage and then topsoil. I’m hoping they will do it for around £5,000.00 but we’ll see.
Before our visitor arrived, I wanted to try out my latest toy – a rechargeable, cordless leaf blower for sweeping away lawn mowings without the effort of sweeping. It only arrived yesterday and I charged it up over night so nipped outside and tried it out as soon as I got up until Pauline shouted at me because it was not quite 7.00 am and she thought the neighbours might have been disturbed. I thought I might have been doing them a favour – save on alarm clocks. Certainly, it was advertised as ‘whisper quiet’ which it definitely is not as I found at 6.55 am in the back garden.
Been feeling unbelievably sad for a couple of days and I don’t know why. Life is so good. I want for nothing and yet I want for everything. Still doing my 10 miles a day and will do until my operation which is now just under 3 weeks away on Monday, May 9th. Got to keep pushing myself!
Thursday, 21st April, 2022
What a delightful day! Hot and sunny throughout. We reached 23C/73F in our back garden. Went out for an early walk and felt lucky to have the time to do so. Had to hurry back for a dentist appointment – my first for a year. My dentist is an absolutely beautiful Iranian woman with the most wonderful complexion. Just reminds us how old we are. Nothing has changed in my mouth. As part of her routine, she asked me how much alcohol I drank each week. I told her I wasn’t going to tell her. We agreed on a ‘fudge’.
Walked down to the beach at Rustington on the most gorgeous morning. Not too many people around and that made it even more delightful.
Back for Lunch in the garden sunshine. I met a couple who had used a garden designer and asked them for his contact. Received it this afternoon. His website has lots of interesting designs we could consider.
Once again, I have been absolutely humbled by the response of the NHS. My operation has been brought forward to Monday, May 9th. I have now had four separate apologies for ‘inconveniencing’ me. I don’t feel the slightest bit inconvenienced.
I have three other processes contingent on the operation – a Covid test, a Blood test and a halt to warfarin with the advice of the Anti-Coagulation Department. This has involved numerous phone calls to totally overworked staff. Each one has gone out of their way to apologise for the demands the process is making on me and to make the appropriate dates available for my tests. I feel incredibly embarrassed to be causing such a workload and humbled by their efforts on my behalf.
Friday, 22nd April, 2022
There are certain points in the year that prick our memories with tinges of pain. This coming weekend is one such. It is Greek Easter – Pashca (Πάσχα).
It is the time of red painted eggs, huge loaves of bread, white body-bags containing whole lamb carcasses, endless religious ceremonies, constant Easter bombardment on television, fireworks on the midnight beach, charcoal spit fires with whole, skewered carcasses of lambs slowly turning and roasting.
The other common facet of Orthodox Easter is the turbulent weather and it is forecast for this year as well.
Greek Easter is the equivalent of UK Christmas. We hope for snow and they hope for hot sun. It was one of those times that expat residents like us really felt our ‘outsiderness’. We knew that, for all the 40 years of involvement in the country and the island, we would always be outsiders.
Saturday, 23rd April, 2022
We are so lucky to live in such a lovely place. Couldn’t help thinking that as we walked down to the village in warm sunshine this morning.
Yes, I would love to be in Athens or Florida but this will do for the moment. We have lived in quite a few homes in lots of nice places but this is as good as any of them.
We were reflecting on past homes as we walked. Particularly, Slade House which we found in 1984. It was more than double the price of the house we were selling but it offered everything I wanted. It was private and set in just under an acre of land. It was more than big enough for us and had potential for development. The problem was …. how to afford it. We have always pushed ourselves to the limit in the belief that short term pain would mean long term gain. It has never let us down but we almost lost Slade House because we were …. £1,000.00 short. Seems unbelievable now but that was 38 years ago.
How did we secure the house that we stayed in for the next 16 years? Pauline’s Mum, who never had any money, had squirreled away £1000.00 in a Building Society savings account over the years and she just gave it to us. It represented everything she had but, to us, it made the difference between getting our dream house and not.
In the next month, our EE mobile contracts come up for renewal and, as ever, they bribe us to stay with ‘free’ brand new mobiles. I love Samsung Android phones and I will replace our two contracts and phones for two more, 18 month contracts and two Samsung Galaxy Ultra smartphones. To put that £1000.00 loan in to perspective across time, each of the smartphones would cost us £1,400.00 to buy on the open market.