Sunday, 6th August, 2023
I don’t know how much longer I’ve got but I’ll have to go soon before this obsession gets out of hand. What were you doing at 5.30 am, Dear Reader? I was listening to a 1960s Reith Lecture by Bertrand Russell on Radio 4. The subject was Authority & the Individual. It is what the whole of my intellectual life has been centred on. My mother introduced me to Bertrand Russell, Mathematician, Philosopher, founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. As we emerged from the war years, Russell was considered the leading intellectual of the 1950s -60s. Political Philosophy fascinates me. It gripped me this morning and, for once, I didn’t fall back asleep.
I am obsessed with people and places. I am obsessed with failure and success. More than anything else as I get older, I am obsessed with time – observing, chronicling, recording time. I have been writing my Blog for 14.7 yrs. I wonder how many more I can achieve. We have been in West Sussex for 7 years now but I started recording this path on our walk to illustrate the growth and changes in Nature and Climate just 3 yrs ago. This year, the grass is lush and green – so lush even I could eat it.
However, talking about eating, blackberries in the hedgerows around here are as advanced as I can remember them. We have only just started August but the birds have almost had enough already. I must admit I’m not a great fan but Pauline can’t resist them.
Monday, 7th August, 2023
Blue sky and sunshine this morning. Must admit, it isn’t quite doing it for me . Last week, I was recording the fact that so many of my Year were celebrating Wedding Anniversaries last weekend. Another two from my cohort contacted me to report their 50 years. Unfortunately, I was reading an article from Leeds University asking: Does the Past matter? I’ve often viewed the past as a bereavement rather than a foundation for the future which I know is perverse but that’s the kind of ‘fun guy’ I am. I constantly want to retouch, taste, see, the past to reassure myself that it wasn’t illusion. Do we all see our lives flash before us occasionally and then sink back into the mists of time? I suspect we do but does it hurt with a long, low ache?
What certainly wasn’t an illusion this morning was a fraud on one of Pauline’s credit cards. We have four cards but only regularly use two of them. The others are back-ups. We never pay for anything if it can be put on a credit card but all are paid off automatically each month. Borrowing money in retirement is bonkers. This morning, she was checking a credit card account and found a £500.00 charge made by Manor Lettings Agent Ltd, of East Ham, London – the place where dreams come home … to haunt you!
Pauline phoned the bank’s Fraud Department who cancelled the card and re-issued her with a new one. They refunded the £500.00 immediately and will follow it up to reclaim. I phoned the Lettings agent to be told that they had had a number of such complaints and they were grateful to us for putting it in the hands of Bank Fraud investigators. The more worrying question is: How did it happen? Presumably, someone not only got hold of the card number but the PIN number as well.
The one good thing about this event is the reassuring way our Bank dealt with it immediately in our favour. No longer do we need to make a case. The refund was instant which gives one confidence in a digital world. I wouldn’t know what to do with actual cash if you threw it at me in handfuls. I can’t remember the last time I saw a paper/plastic note. I don’t even physically handle credit cards. Everything is done via my smartphone so easily. I even paid the deposit for a new car with it recently. Everything is collected within a single, digital wallet which also provides immediate financial records. Fingerprint access makes theft virtually impossible …. unless they cut my finger off!
As I walked out across the garden to the Gym this evening, it felt like AUTUMN. I was in my shorts and tee shirt and felt cold! The first week of August! This is unacceptable. We are not in Wales, after all. Yesterday, my wife was talking about driving to Anglesey. Can you imagine it? What hell would we find there?
Tuesday, 8th August, 2023
The day is warm – humid even – but overcast. Did an early walk and now I’m shattered. Need a friend. Kevin was there right on cue. He is ill like only men can be ill. He has a cold. I have prescribed red wine … at 11.30 am. It always works for me.
Nothing like a good glass of Rioja to cure a cold. Non-drinkers/White Ribboners take note! Hamilton Street will fall apart. There are worse things in this world than alcohol. Mind you, beer is down there with the worst! A good Rioja, on the other hand, relaxes the mind and frees the sinuses to enjoy the aroma of Spanish grapes. Actually, sex helps but I won’t mention that. Oh, I have!
We fly to Athens in about 10 days for 10 days. The weather is set to be warm. It will hover around 35C/95F each day and not fall below 24C/75F at night. We will do a long, early morning walk before getting back to the Hotel for Breakfast and then have a leisurely swim in the rooftop pool before setting off to travel the city. I have driven through Athens city centre many times but I wouldn’t choose it.
This time, we will purchase public transport travel passes. A 5-Day pass for tram/trolley bus/bus/Metro/train unlimited travel costs just €8.20 per person. I will buy two of those and relax as someone else drives me around.
I have written many times before about my desire to record and save records and my wife’s propensity for recording all financial transactions, earnings, tax bills, purchases, etc. from the day we got married in record books and, subsequently, on an accounts software package. She updates it daily even now. Even so, she berates me for wanting to store all our pay slips back to the early 1970s. They are filed in box files in my Office along with records of many other things like house purchase/sales documents, investment records/ tax records, etc..
For 50 years, I have been a figure of fun. Don’t need horrible cows to tell me that! However, small vignettes of light have helped me deal with that reputation. My Mother-in-Law recorded all her outgoings in notebooks and on post-it notes. Going through my Mother’s papers, I found she had saved all the financial records of her Honeymoon in 1949 in the Cotswolds including the Hotels and meals, etc.. Perhaps it was our families which were strange.
Well, no. My friend, JohnR celebrated 45 years of marriage last weekend and sent me his Honeymoon record along with the news that he records all expenditure across time. You see, someone IS out of kilter but … it’s not me.
With a new and virulent strain of Covid currently sweeping the country, we’ve just booked our booster jab for mid-September. It will come just before my Radiotherapy month. I have another Oncology meeting in late December. Dying or Living, I will go up to Yorkshire-Lancashire early next year.
Wednesday, 9th August, 2023
An absolutely beautiful, warm and sunny morning. A morning to celebrate being alive and yet I feel rather trapped. In the immediate term, I am trapped at home by a number of deliveries this morning. A new tumble dryer will be arriving and the 7 yr old one taken away. That is a matter of life & death for my housekeeper.
The Fishmonger will deliver the month’s fresh fish – 2 x sides of Salmon, packs of frozen Tilapia, huge bags of King Prawns, 3 kgs of fresh Tuna, 2 x bags of frozen Squid Tubes. My chef will prepare all of this into portion sizes, bag and freeze.
Outside, under the blue sky illuminating the back garden with its Mediterranean light, silver planes travelling from Heathrow and Gatwick glint brilliantly as they soar en route to the Mediterranean reality. Excited travellers will step out into the intense sunshine and searing heat that hits them like a wall. But I am anchored firmly to the ground, the ground of my own reality, observing from afar. If I get rid of this cancer, I am going to travel until I drop!
A huge, Polish study of a quarter of a million people suggests that the 10,000 paces generally prescribed for improved fitness is far more than are really necessary. In fact, just 4,000 paces helped a person start to reduce their risk of dying from any cause. Just an extra 1,000 steps a day was associated with a 15% reduction in the risk of dying from any cause. I have walked 20,000 every day of the last 3 years apart from the months over Christmas last year when I was ill.
What I don’t understand is why I keep getting mail from Prostate Cancer charities. How do they know? Why do I keep getting mail from Funeral Services? What do THEY know? This morning’s offering almost made me embrace death.
In the meantime, politics will be hotting up as the Summer draws to a close. Yesterday, a newspaper/website/blog that I follow, The London Economic, published the results of a large and very recent poll of 13,000 voters and found that the current small boats/migrant barge/anti-asylum rhetoric of this increasingly far right Tory government had only served to solidify opposition to another Tory win.
In fact, it suggested that the Tories would be reduced to just 90 seats against Labour’s 461. That would all but guarantee Labour in power for the next decade and mean I would see the return to Europe in a second term by which time I would be 83, Dear Reader. I wonder how old you will be.
Wonderful Dinner in the garden tonight. Lovely and warm – 23C/72F – and windless. My brilliant chef cooked Kolokithia Keftedes (courgette fritters) and Tilapia with cheese & parsley crust. Just to die for! I am absolutely exhausted. I’ve done 5 hard hours gardening for my community plus a 2hr walk. Feeling a bit wobbly and my heart hurts. This should not be happening in old age. It is the stuff of boring boys!
Thursday, 10th August, 2023
A glorious, warm and sunny morning. I’m driving to Surrey later but I’ve got to get a walk in first. Over breakfast, I completed a survey sent to me by the Prostate Cancer Research organisation.
I found it quite shocking. The questions were based on two areas one of which came from patients. I thought I was the only boringly sad and lonely wimp who had ever suffered with prostate cancer. Sadness and loneliness are not things men admit to readily. I am not scared or embarrassed to admit my weaknesses. I do not subscribe to the stiff upper lip approach to manhood. I am feeling incredibly sad and incredibly lonely as a result of my hormone treatment and I now know that lots of men have gone through that in the past. It featured strongly in the survey questions.
I am furious that I am having to run to stand still at the moment. I now know that it is a common feature that the fittest of men have suffered serious weight gain during treatment and many have given in to fatigue. At least I am fighting that. But I’m drinking too much again. I tell myself that it numbs the pain but I know it’s a lie. Actually, it accentuates my emotions and makes me reckless. It also encourages weight gain. I’m a boring old fool. I know that …. but I am still alive and many are not. This morning, I saw my Mother on her death bed. It is still hard to erase that memory.
Kevin invited me to join College students from my Year for a lunch in Ripon in November. Unfortunately, it coincides with my radiotherapy treatments and I can’t go. If I’m feeling sad like this, I suspect I would be very poor company.
Today we spent lunch in lovely company with M&K back from Florida and P&C. M put on the most lovely lunch which included smoked salmon which I love, Parma Ham which I love, baked Camembert which I love, cheese straws which I love and a wonderful bottle of red wine just for me. I felt rather too well treated and had to get my chauffeur to drive me home. Actually, I could get used to that.
Still had a 90 mins walk to do when I got home. Had messages from John-R who is sailing in the lakes, Julie who is restarting her diet in North Yorkshire and Kevin who is in Leeds packing to go back out to Spain for the 4th time this year already.
Friday, 10th August, 2023
We didn’t have a honeymoon. We were too busy paying mortgages and buying cars. Although we got married in 1978, we didn’t have a foreign holiday until 1981. Before that, I had survived a really bad car accident and had almost a year off work. In August 1981, we flew to Athens for the first time. Actually, we were going on holiday for 3 weeks (never the conventional 2 weeks) on Zakynthos (Zante). In those days, there were no flights to Zante. We had to fly to Athens, get a bus to across the Peloponnese to Kylini and then a ferry to Zante port. It took the best part of 12 hours from door to door. We were exhausted.
The accommodation was very basic but we were young and ready for adventure. Can’t believe how naïve I was. I expected heat but certainly hadn’t experienced 32C/90F before and it came as something of a shock – almost claustrophobic.
As a measure of my naivety, I had insisted on taking with me a huge and heavy radio cassette player because I am a news junkie and I was determined to listen to BBC R4 as well as playing Chopin in more romantic moments. I hadn’t realised that you couldn’t pick up UK Long Wave on a Greek island. All I got was the Short Wave babble of Greek ‘pop’ songs.
We immediately fell in love with Greece and began a life long affair. The next year we went to Naxos in June and Milos in August. I couldn’t get enough of it. We went to Athens every single year, sometimes multiple times each year and sometimes for weeks at a time. We have only missed the pandemic year which, annoyingly, spoils a good record. When we were 30, a hot, concrete villa without air conditioning on an island with little or no tourism infrastructure like Zakynthos was a dream.
I remember, on Zakynthos, as fit, young things we rented bikes and cycled everywhere under a baking sun. There were only a handful of hotels and very few Tavernas. More than 40 years on it is like Benidorm on steroids … so I’m told.
Eventually, we graduated to scooters & motorbikes on Naxos, Milos, Andros & Corfu before we settled on Sifnos and moved up to open-topped Jeeps.
Now, we wouldn’t even consider it. Have no inclination to rough it. Only 5* will do and our hotel in Athens will do nicely. Really looking forward to going back and listening to Greek TV, reading Greek place names & signs, menus and shop windows. I certainly read Greek better than I speak it.
Although I will continue to visit Athens every year, I quite fancy plaguing M&K in Florida particularly now their new pool installation is nearly complete.
Saturday, 11th August, 2023
Lovely morning. Something went wrong and I didn’t wake until 7.30 am. The day has gone! Even shaving was an effort. Decided, I’ve got to have a new shaver. Looked up when I bought this last one and it was only 2 years ago. This is the price you pay for the such virility!
Quite fancy this one but I suspect it will be off the menu if my Valet has anything to do with it. So, I’ve ordered one of these and it will be delivered by 10.00 pm this evening. All mail-order should be like this. It WILL be when the drone delivery service comes into operation.
My Housekeeper’s focus now is on preparing clothes for travel. I have to admit that I’d just throw a few pairs of shorts and tee shirts into a bag along with my shaver and toothbrush BUT, apparently it all has to be done scientifically and according to the weather.
This is what is forecast for the first few days as far as I can get at the moment. Not icy cold or very wet. In fact quite hot and very sunny. I have to pack clothes for the daytime and 35C/95F (You’ll sweat a lot, John!) which can be challenging for a man suffering menopausal hot flushes. By the way, I’ve discovered that fresh coffee triggers them in me. I have to pack clothes for eating out (You’re not going out looking scruffy!) when it doesn’t fall below 23C/74F and the mosquitoes are biting.