Sunday, 4th August, 2024
A pleasantly warm and sunny morning. In the garden, huge honey bees are urgently visiting every flower head before buzzing off to their Queen. We are going to be green beaned out soon they are so productive this year.
Last night Supper included the first of our carrots. We only grew them for fun and chose a Rainbow Carrot strain. Within a few minutes of being pulled from the bed, they were being roasted and dressed in honey and thyme. Absolutely delicious! The beetroot is ready for lifting which I’m looking forward to.
We are a long way off Harvest Festival but, as I observed the other day, there is a slight hint of early decay outside. Maybe it’s my perception influenced by a feeling of personal decline. I’ve been feeling a bit sad and listless recently and I know it can colour my judgement. I think I am a bit bored and in need of stimulation.
Boredom is bad for me because I tend to buy things to relieve it. I’ve noticed over the past weeks that I’ve been looking at new cars. Because I was ill last year, I’ve only done 7,000 miles in this one. I’ve been looking at buying a winter of sunshine in the Canaries because it is a while since we’ve been there. I caught myself looking at a new, bigger TV last week and solar panels for the roof this week. I need to go away to banish this nonsense.
When I lived inland, the sight and sound of sea gulls was a welcome hint of the coast, of the sea, of far-off places, of travel. Many will know the beautiful sight of gulls following the farmer’s plough as worms are brought to the surface just as they do with the trawler on the sea. When we first moved here on the coast, lots of seagulls were a constant reminder that we lived by the sea.
The charm has waned. Now, they are a bloody nuisance. They maraud overhead, they stain the cars, they mob people on the coastal paths and they wake me at 4.00 am as they squawk noisily near the windows. And they are a protected species which stops Local Authorities culling them. They are the Right Wing thugs of the bird world. I am going to suggest housing them on the Bibby Stockholm.
Told you I was bored. I’ve even actually cleaned the car …. at last. And now, I’ve ordered a smart alarm clock which integrates radio + data on command via wi-fi. Which intelligent man could turn such an offer down? This clock integrates the internet functions which will perform Alexa operations while I am in bed. What more could I want? …. Don’t answer that.
Monday, 5th August, 2024
Emergency dash this morning to the dentist. Yesterday, a piece of tooth enamel broke away from one of Pauline’s front teeth and she has been left with an unsightly brown stain. I’m amazed she got through the night. Anyway, Calm & Gentle will fix it for her on Wednesday just before she meets her friends in London on Thursday and before we fly to Athens.
We drove there in a very clean car and drove back with half the beach on the carpets. While we were there, we had a walk on the beach with the tide coming in. It was quiet today apart from the gently lapping waves on the breakwater.
Today is the 52nd Wedding Anniversary of my friend, Kevin. I remember it so well. I’m beginning to fall into that old person’s syndrome of acute long term memory but hazy short term recall. Is that dementia?
At least I can still remember what these are called. Always loved beetroot and ours are ready for pulling up now. Sort of thing you can leave in the ground until you want them. They look alright though and tasted lovely.
Tuesday, 6th August, 2024
Going to be a warm and sunny day after a rather grey start. I am moderately content at the moment because I have a new gadget to work out. My Amazon EchoSpot with Alexa was delivered yesterday. I have been configuring it. It is intended to replace our clock radio which is showing its age …. like so many of us … but it does many other things. It will read my calendar of events to me at 5.45 am and tell me what the weather is and will be throughout the day. It will read me my texts and emails … Who could ask for more.
I know most people will already know this but, for the youngsters out there, on this day in 1991 only 33 years ago Tim Berners-Lee launched the first ever webpage which was a clarion call to the world to join the World Wide Web. You remember it, don’t you Dear Reader? Now, nobody on the planet can manage without it. Some people still don’t realise they can’t live without it but, believe me, they can’t. Just 3 years after this event, in 1994, I was accessing the WWW for the first time on a crash, bang, wallop modem which allowed us on to it through a simple phone line. No graphics. Just text.
It feels like the web has been part of my life forever and a total shock that it is only since I was 41. Today, I cracked the installation of my new, smart speaker which draws everything I want instantly from the web when my voice commands it: radio, email, text, calendar, etc.. It has replaced my old, (25yrs old) analogue clock radio by my bedside.
I am quite sad, in a way, because it holds so many memories. It’s been in the bedroom for 25 years after all. But time marches on. We cannot resist it. Now my bedside essentials include a wireless charger for my smartphone and a wifi enabled smart speaker. Not sure what the tissues are for.
Wednesday, 7th August, 2024
Nice morning. Taking my wife for emergency cosmetic tooth surgery and then I have lawn mowing followed by Gym. And … relax.
Woke up to a new woman this morning. She announced the weather, the time and turned BBC Radio 4 on. Unfortunately, she also read today’s calendar events reminding me that it was Wednesday and my first job would be to strip the bed and give the sheets to the washerwoman … so no change there.
I have resisted using these virtual assistants like Alexa and Bixby not because I didn’t like the technology but because I thought they would make me lazy. At the age of 73, I have been forced to embrace them – Alexa in the bedroom and Bixby elsewhere. Alexa comes with Amazon products whereas Bixby is the rival, Samsung virtual assistant. We have Samsung smartphones and all our TVs are Samsung. They all incorporate Bixby command software so now I’m going to make myself use it.
Well, the Dentist went alright if you don’t count the £235.00 bill for a new, enamel coating. On the way back home, we had to call in and collect a new elctric kettle.
I have never known a household get through kettles like we do. We threw one away just over a year ago and bought another, variable temperature one which was top of the range (We were told.) and worked fine until a couple of weeks ago and then it didn’t.
Because we had to wait a couple of weeks until that one was available last year, we bought a bog-standard one to tide us over and that is still here as a back-up. Today we collected a Ninja Variable Temperature Kettle. What could go wrong? Anyway, I’ve registered it for its 2-year warranty.
I was writing a couple of days ago about long and short term memory. As we get older, we all feel a bit vulnerable about our own. An interesting thing happened yesterday when I was speaking to an old friend of over 50 years standing. He is 74 and we were discussing the Digs we were originally allocated when we first went to College in 1969. I was with two pleasant, older lads who were very tolerant of me and we ‘got on’. My friend literally couldn’t remember who he was in Digs with for two years in one of these Edwardian properties pictured above. It is quite amazing how the memoy works and what we block out.
Thursday, 8th August, 2024
Out early this morning to take my wife to our local Train Station. It is about 10 mins drive away and, as you can see, absolutely palatial.
Angmering to London Victoria takes just over an hour because there are plenty of stops en route. She is meeting her old, College friend. They were at College in Tottenham together 1970-73. Christine’s husband died of cancer about 4 years ago so it has been nice for them to meet up again although it was quite a task for me to locate her. When I put my mind to that sort of research, I usually get there in the end.
There are hundreds of people-locator sites but I eventually found her through her sons on Linkedin which was just a lucky hit. This photograph was taken a couple of years ago before my cancer. So much changes, doesn’t it Dear Reader.
Sorry, but my obsession with ‘time’ rears its head all the ‘time’. Things/people that have gone still exist in our heads, in our memories, in our hearts. In that sense they never go. Tomorrow we will be thinking about Viv Butterworth who died on that day in 2017. It is hard to believe it was 7 years ago and yet her husband, Richard, has been living with the emptiness every day.
You know, today I am home alone. I’m alright about it because I am fairly self-contained and I live inside my head a lot anyway but the house is utterly silent. It is a deafening silence which intrudes on my thoughts. I keep listening for the clattering in the kitchen; I sometimes hear it but it is not there. Lonliness can be a terrible thing and we know it can be quite debilitating, life shortening. Anyway, I’m going to make the most of it. My wife will be back this evening with very high expectations.
I’ve been having a conversation with a woman from Rochdale today. How ironic. I ddn’t realise that she was from Rochdale until we had been corresponding for an hour. She was telling me that immigrants are unwelcome. England is ‘full’ and should be kept for the English. I looked up the origin of her maiden name and it is from America and Canada not England. When I pointed that out, she disappeared. Strange. Perhaps she’s gone back to America already.
Friday, 9th August, 2024
A very warm but breezy night has given way to a lovely day. Looks like we will have a warm week ahead. It even rained overnight which has helped.
Yesterday, I mentioned the anniversary of the death of Vivienne Butterworth – 9/8/2017 – and I found this photograph this morning. There is no annotation on the back so I don’t know hold old she was here but we think it was about 1958 which would make her 15. She died 7 years ago today at the very young age of 74 but lives on in the memory.
Seeing faces from the past slowly floating across this week is a salutory reminder not to let the living be reduced to memory by separation. Real time is precious even if we find it hard to realise until it is too late.
We trawled through old photographs for this and found a photo of Pauline’s Dad who died when she was just 10 years old. As she looked at it, I saw the sadness in her face and it hurt me. There is nothing can be done. All we can do is shore up our sadnesses with memories.
Sorry, I will cheer up …. eventually … but I am always struck by the enormity of not siezing the now and regretting in the then.
Of course, we have to live in the ‘now’ and it often feels so mundane. We inject the past with the rosy tint of sentimentality. Today we need more toilet rolls. Must alert Sainsburys to stock up as we go out to shop. Also, I have to clear a present that some cat has left on our front path. Why don’t cats use toilets? Some recent research suggests tha cats have other human traits like memory, loss and sadness.
To finish what has been an energetic and tiring day, I received this photograph which spoke to me about my College days and compared sharply with this week’s events. I haven’t seen these two characters since June 1972 – 52 years ago. They were both nice people in themselves but both were isolated in their own minority status. One was gay and the other was a Hindu person of colour. They probably both felt socially awkward at some point in the 3 years but I was unaware of any specific discrimination. It is the sort of social isolation that the Far Right are currently raging against as they take their country back.
A Hindu girl in a CofE college was a brave move in 1969 and, although I didn’t know her well, I recognised that she was a strong character and well up to the struggle. Bob made his name in Drama which gave him a platform. I didn’t really know him at all. I’m not sure at that time I understood what it meant to be gay. My one real association with him was his kindness when he drove me from Ripon to Oldham for interview for my first teaching job. He sat around for 12 hours while I secured the job, bought him Lunch and then drove me back to College. Kind thing to do.
Saturday, 10th August, 2024
Lads Lunch in Leeds today. It’s surprising how alike they are in political views. How they view the world as I do. I am surprised.
Convention has it that, as we get older, we become more right-wing, more conservative. It is thought that, as we age, we have more to conserve. We have accrued wealth, a house and a way of life in which we feel comfortable and don’t want threatened. We might have lost the thrust of the drive for success in the employment market and, although we don’t feel ill to our fellow man (or woman), we need to maintain our social position.
Convention has it that education is a strong determinant of political choices. The higher educated you are, the more socially liberal you are. Those with Degrees are more likely to be Left-oriented, socially liberal. Those with post-graduate degrees are much more likely to be Left-oriented, socially liberal and that includes welcoming of other ethnicities, of social change in their communities and so on.
Those with education level below Degree are far more likely to vote to the Right, to vote to keep foreigners out because their own position is socially vulnerable and they feel threatened by the ‘other’. It is this vulnerability that people like Farage, Tommy Robinson, et al have been able to draw into their web of deceit and are appealed to by the colour comics like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express.
When you are bombarded with this sort of front page day in day out and you don’t have much brain power or critical analysis ability, you are bound to be swayed. I have a post graduate degree. I am a left-leaning, socially liberal, middle class member of society. This morning, I saw video clip of a man abusing an Asian bus driver. My first reaction was disgust but I cried when I found out he couldn’t afford the bus fare. Here I am, buying what I want and he couldn’t even afford the bus fare. There is something wrong and I understand his frustration even if I an’t condone his behaviour.