Sunday, 19th November, 2023
A new week. Everything changes but nothing changes. Plus ça change. Plus c’est la même chose. I haven’t changed.
A painful and uncomfortable day yesterday. I had to turn round it was so difficult. Don’t know why but it all felt as if it was deliberately engineered to cause pain. Made me review past times, ask myself what I had done wrong. I hate failure. I can’t accept it. I don’t want to be a bad person. My job is to make people happy.
I will never give up. I will always keep trying. I know I can be annoying but there will be a time when my tenacity will come through …. Non deficiere! Looking back over the mistakes, the misjudgements, the losses is how I assess life. Pauline and I talked it over last evening. Honesty is so important. We have almost agreed on our understanding of what happened and what I will do about it. It won’t be easy but it has to be faced.
After a sleepless night, I got up this morning knowing how to go forward. After Breakfast, I went down to the beach to clear my head and blow the thoughts away. It was incredibly warm. Battled down the coast road against a strong, onshore breeze.
Went into the Café on the Beach for a coffee but it was absolutely rammed and I couldn’t face the 30 mins queue for a table. Drove home to drink it in comfort. Have to spend home time in the Gym.. The targets have to be met. Non deficiere!
This Summer, it will be 10 years since we left our Greek home and left the wonderful, Cycladic island of Sifnos. If things go well for me, I am determined to return. It is in my DNA. Never leave the past behind. Always return to touch base!
Monday, 20th November, 2023
A horrible, horrible day. Dark, windy and very, very wet. Can you believe it, the window cleaner has turned up! I am hunkering down at home. The furthest I will stray is across the garden to the Gym. Can’t even face contacting friends today. I did receive a photo of a crash in Oldham last night which brought back all sorts of memories.
This was a car that crashed into an old, Nat.West building on the junction of Featherstall Road North and Middleton Road. It connected with me because I had gone into that bank in the past and we used it for kids doing Work Experience at one point. But just look at the dilapidation, and harshness of that wet, old street late at night in the North of England. Boarded up and crumbling, this building is a thing of the past. Like so much else, it has definitely seen better days.
At least it’s a warm day. I’m still living in shorts and tee shirt and have the fan on in the Office this morning. It is going to be a politics day. Such a delight to watch the Tories flounder through their final months of government, fighting like rats in a sack. The Times cartoon this morning shows a severely injured Sunak cobbling together the Plane of a Rwanda Policy with bits of wood while urging on his hapless Foreign Secretary, ironically named Cleverley, to pedal faster before they inevitably fall off the white cliffs off Dover.
Because I am so exciting, one of the things I am following today is the live broadcast of the Covid Inquiry. Today, it is Patrick Vallance whose diary notes include the observation that he considered Boris Johnson to be bi-polar, manic in his decision making rather like Cummings described him as a shopping trolley wildly veering all over the place. Johnson also had problems understanding and remembering the scientific concepts being explained to him.
Remember me when I am gone away,
Christina Rossetti, ‘Remember’ – 1861
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay …
I don’t know about you, Dear Reader, but I have quite a good memory although it is not always conventional. I find that I remember lines of poetry and sections from novels that I haven’t read since the late 1960s. I tended to remember things best using rhythm. This doesn’t work for everyone. I can have a string of numbers – a telephone number, for example – rattled off to me and I can hold it in my head because I have received it with a rhythm which replays through my memory. I have an online calendar but I can hold dates and events for quite a while without referring to it. My wife says I have selective memory because I choose what I want to forget. I think we all do, don’t we?
Tuesday, 21st November, 2023
An overcast and cool day. Didn’t sleep well last night. Rather turning in upon myself although I had to respond to Jill’s lovely message asking after my welfare and I had to contact Kevin because he was going in to hospital for a second operation to straighten out his other hand. Like me, he got tired of waiting in the post-pandemic backlog and paid about £5,000 for his first operation. This second one is through the NHS and, when I contacted him, he had already been waiting for 4 hrs in a admission room without news of his procedure. Money makes all the difference to the ‘hotel’ conditions of the process if not the medical procedure itself.
Of course, no one can hide from the world completely and I have made so many connections that I can’t really retreat for long at all. I received a copy of the East Lothian Courier this morning. Not my usual reading but interesting none the less. I employed this girl to run the school’s Learning Resource Centre and great she was at it. Her husband, Steve, was employed in the School Office and her two daughters were pupils in school.
Unfortunately, the family were born with wanderlust and, after a few years, they moved on to a church in Derbyshire, a posting in the Falklands, managing a holiday rental business in the south of France, managing a farm in south Australia and now all the way up to Scotland. I missed them because they were just good people.
Going to France next week for a few days Christmas shopping. Be nice to get out of here and not hurting. Got to find a VPN (virtual private network) software to allow me to receive stuff on my laptop as if I am back in UK. I’m a bit disenchanted with my current Express VPN. Considering going back to NordVPN again. Anyone who has gone to a foreign hotel without VPN coverage will know of the pitfalls.
Wednesday, 22nd November, 2023
Lovely, sunny but cold morning. First thing over breakfast I like to touch base with friends. Asked Kevin about his night after a difficult and very painful operation. Just to cheer him up, I listed all the benefits of being incapacitated for a couple of weeks: No washing for a fortnight. No housework. Total slave service. … Seemed to work.
This morning, I’ve driven Pauline to Southlands Hospital, Shoreham-by-Sea for an appointment at the Dermatology Clinic. Recently, she found her first ever wrinkle on her neck and panicked. Hope they sort her out. It’s costing me a fortune in face cream!
Doing some walking outside while she has her neck massaged. Maybe she’ll get her face cream on prescription. Am I sounding heartless? I’m not really. I’m secretly panicking too. I can’t be married to someone with wrinkles!!
… Well, that was a revelation. The consultant told Pauline that it wasn’t unusual for the odd wrinkle to appear after the age of 70. Who’d have thought it? Free Face Cream on prescription … for life. This is going to save me a fortune. It will subsidise my wine bill. Even better this morning, the carpark was packed but a car was vacating the best position leaving it for us and, as they drove out, they handed us their ticket which covered our appointment. Can life get any better?
Thursday, 23rd November, 2023
My first thought when I wake is my last thought when I go to sleep. It has been the same for decades. I suspect it will stay with me until I die.
In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
T. S. Elliot – Four Quartets
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon.
I was struck that these photographs of sunrise yesterday morning could just as easily have been ascribed to sunset in the evening. In my beginning is my end now the light falls.
I have been dogged by the domination of thought throughout my life. I live in my head a lot. My wife finds it very funny when I jump out of my skin as she walks, unannounced, into a room where I’m working. I find it embarrassing. It happens because I have to concentrate so intensely that I shut out the world completely. I lose sense of time. Often I forget to move at all and suddenly find I have cut off the blood supply and lost the feeling in my legs.
I have written before that we rarely now eat meat – perhaps once a week – and even more rarely buy processed food at all. Broke both those rules this morning when we went to our butchers and bought sausages to put in a dish of Cassoulet. Not just any old, supermarket sausages, of course. Our butcher makes wonderful sausages and we bought Gloucester Old Spot pork and Cumberland sausage. We could have had Venison and Lamb but pork is demanded for Cassoulet.
Got to clean the car ready for our French trip next week. I’ve been putting it off for weeks while I was driving to Brighton every day and feeling exhausted from the treatment. …..
….. It’s a beautiful, sunny and warm day and cleaning the car was actually quite enjoyable. It is about 9 months old and it’s only done about 4,500 miles. It is in its infancy and very easy to valet. I always do a leather treatment for the interior and sometimes use wheel and tyre treatments as well. All of these are supplied ‘free’ by Honda because they believe that examples of their cars being driven around in public looking good are the best advertisements. I have been buying and driving new Hondas for 40 years.
Friday, 24th November, 2023
Beautiful but chilly morning. Just to prove the point ….. In my beginning is my end … sunrise was glorious.
It is probably the same across the country. Julie reports bright but very cold on the North Yorkshire coast. JohnR says the same in Catterick and Kevin the same in Leeds. The one difference is that I’m the only one stupid enough to be walking round in shorts & tee shirt. Had to go down to the beachside to collect an order from the fishmongers.
I’ve had my haircut and beautiful I look, I have to admit. At least I don’t have to dye my hair. Going to France next week and it struck me that I go abroad more often than I visit places in UK. Haven’t been to London for quite a while.
In this week just over 10 years ago, we were staying in central London, shopping at Fortnum & Mason, Borough Market and snacking out at the Laduree on coffee and macarons. I must admit I’m not as comfortable in large cities as I am in the countryside but I love Covent Garden, the Opera House and the markets. London is an excitingly vibrant, multi-ethnic community with so much to offer. As long as you’ve got money, anything is possible.
The one thing it is hard to find is peace and solitude. Walking by the seashore down here in Sussex suits me better. OK, I might be boring but it is always best to admit the truth to oneself.
This afternoon, I have officiated in the final hour of a most beautiful creature. It has been enjoying a mild day of glorious sunshine, sipping the final flowers in the garden but, as the sun goes down and the temperature falls, he/she/it knows that all things come to an end. The struggle for life is at our core for all living things. A huge bumble bee took advantage of the open patio door and came into the warmth, to die. It was on its back and looked dead already. I lifted it with a tissue and it sprang back to life, righting itself and gripping the paper fiercely. Taking it out into the garden, I knew I was condemning it to certain death but there was no choice. Nature returning to nature.
In my beginning is my end now the light falls ……
Saturday, 25th November, 2023
Quite a cold night. We were down to 6C/43F at 4.00 am. Almost full moon and a sky full of stars last night. The weather is definitely changing. Winter is coming and warmth, friendliness and comfort is called for.
On this day, a couple of years ago, I received this from an old lady with limited digital skills. Bit shaky and out of focus, I know, but we have to make allowances for age. I remember thinking at the time, I could eat that! In fact, I have eaten dozens of those. Roast pheasant used to be a significant part of my diet.
Today, as I wrote a couple of days ago, meat like this doesn’t feature so much in our diet. Having said that, this morning, I am cooking a huge, Greek Beef Stifado. …. basically, beef stew with Mediterranean flavours. When it has had a day to mature, it will be portioned up and frozen for times when we need comfort food.
I think I’ve written before and you will have to forgive me for the repetition of an old man. When I was a child, we didn’t have a television. Not because we couldn’t afford one but because my parents were ideologically opposed to the idea. Much more important that the children concentrated on their school work, did their homework, didn’t get distracted by populist trash.
It wasn’t until I went home from College in the 1970s that I found a television had been installed and my Mother was already addicted to it. I do remember going to Grammar School where all the boys were discussing what they’d watched the night before and feeling totally left out. I think that’s why televisions and current affairs have been so important to me over the years. Our house has a television in every room apart from the bathrooms. Each of the 8 televisions is linked to Sky-Q so I can watch something in the Gym, pause it and carry on in the Office, pause it and carry on in the Lounge, pause it and finish it in the bedroom.
Today, I will be watching Spooks in the Gym while my Housekeeper will be watching Strictly Come Dancing in the Lounge. The day is so gorgeous and lonely that I had to go to the beach for the sunset. It was so beautiful, it made me weep. Think that we will have to leave this wonderful world! You should be here, Dear Reader, to share the utter joy and solitude of sunset on the Sussex coast.