Sunday, 27th October, 2024
Lovely, clear morning of blue sky and sunshine although not warm. For some, strange reason, Worthing held its Bonfire & Fireworks event last night. The funfare had been arriving on the sea front all week. The old pallets had been delivered by the lorry load for days and the weather was marshalled to be dry and clear.
The town was virtually cut off to normal traffic and all carparks commandeered for Bonfire visitors. It was obviously a triumph and the weather, which is normally wet on Bonfire night played ball. It took me back immediately to family bonfires as a child. We were fortunate enough to have a big garden and Mum & Dad put on a firework and bonfire display for the family along with a Firework Supper of Jacket Potatoes & Parkin or Ginger Bread. The fireworks were so different then – Sparklers, Catherine Wheels that stuck half way round, Roman Candles that were beautiful but tame, Jumping Jacks and Bangers that are illegal now and rockets that burnt and faded too quickly.
Down at the beach this morning, gloriously warm and sunny walking. If you are ever fed up, this is the place to come. It lifts spirits immediately.
While I was walking, three old ladies came out of a beach hut in their swimming costumes and proceeded to walk, shrieking with pleasure, straight into the sea. In the last few days of October!
Monday, 28th October, 2024
A very different day – warm but windy with cloud overhead. The tide was coming in and the sea reflected the colour of the sky combined with the sand churned up by the waves.
It wasn’t a morning for old ladies to be venturing out in bathing costumes. The red flag of Socialism had been raised with warnings that blue-rinse ladies swam at their own risk.
Fifteen years ago today we received acknowledgement that we had paid off our last ever mortgage. For years, we had deliberately stretched ourselves with ever larger borrowings against ever more valuable properties constantly shopping around for cheaper mortgages. Our final Lender was the ultimately failing Northern Rock. It ceased trading three years after we paid them off.
We have bought three properties since but with cash and it is a great feeling to be not in debt to anyone. We are into our 9th year here in this house but already my wife is agitating for the consideration of a move. She sights the general rule that you shouldn’t stay in a new build house for more than ten years. We had a 5 yr full Builder’s warranty and then have an additional 5 yrs under the NHBC warranty. Our builders – David Wilson – are still supporting us even though we are way out of our warranty because they sell themselves on quality and reliability as opposed to cheapness. That was a real consideration when we chose them over our previous builders – Taylor Wimpey. Personally, I am very happy here with lovely neighbours and facilities but change must constantly be on the agenda lest we fossilise.
Felt a bit sad and empty this afternoon. Chopin, of course, is the perfect companion at this time. It has been with me for more than 50 years. The Nocturnes cut through me like the knife of loss, the lost years.
Tuesday, 29th October, 2024
Love this warm weather as the month of October puts its coat on and prepares to leave the house. The trees are turning but still clinging on. Strong November winds will be needed to dislodge them.
Trying hard to distract myself with politics and purchases, walking and wonderful skies. Pauline has been relying on an Amazon Kindle now for over 20 years. When it came out in 2007, it was quite revolutionary for lots of reasons that many still don’t realise. If you are still stuck in the analogue mode of paperbacks, you don’t know what you are missing.
The Kindle allows you to review, select, store and carry round thousands of books to read at any time. It did/does this by storing books in the Cloud well before its time. It provided ‘free’ access to the internet anywhere there was a mobile signal. While we were all treating our computers and laptops as fragile and easily corrupted, the Kindle was made to carry around in a handbag, surviving all sorts of knocks. Quite brilliant in retrospect.
Twenty years on and after the introduction of the iPad, the Kindle goes on developing. This week will see the release of a much improved colour version. Guess who is having one.
Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange
The Tempest – Ariel’s Song
Warm and bright with big sea and big sky this morning. It is a scene for dreaming … what is out there for us on the horizon, in the future? How far is it to rim of the world? How long? What do you think, Dear Reader?
Wednesday, 30th October, 2024
A grey day. I want the sun. Warm walking this morning but the quiet sea was reflective of the mood. Dreaming of sunshine. Please don’t make me wait too long.
This morning, other than walking, has been taken up with medical affairs. I hate it. It makes me feel so old. I am old but I’m not old. I don’t want medication but I have to take prescription medication. I don’t want to see doctors but I need to seek their help. I want to live not just a long time but a healthy, long time. I always contrast then and now. The decade of the 1970s saw me never visit a doctor. Indeed for most of it, I didn’t have a doctor. Neither, regrettably, did I visit a dentist.
This morning has involved collection of repeat prescriptions ordered online. Booking blood tests online to coincide with a full-body CT scan leading to a Oncology review in December. The review will be a remote one unless the test results are really serious and urgent. This is the new, Labour Health Service. If I’ve got to seek help, I like it.
Our adopted place, Angmering, is a village between Littlehampton and Worthing in West Sussex on the edge of the South Downs National Park. As I have written recently, it is rapidly expanding but, as this photo from the Village Green, still maintains much of its charm. As we enter our 9th year here and think about our long term prospects, I for one would be happy to keep what we have. It will a lot of thought to consider uprooting again … unless it is to the Meditererranean sunshine.
The afternoon is given to the Labour budget – the first ever Budget delivered by a woman. It has been an historic event for many reasons but it was wonderful to watch. A budget for investment without so many of the Tories predicted taxes. No fuel duty tax. No extension to tax band maintenance which would lead to fiscal drift. No additional taxes on alcohol – all things that the Right Wing had tried to scare the electorate with. Instead, money for the NHS, Education, Transport, Social Housing and the Green Economy.
Thursday, 31st October, 2024
Routines of the day shopping, walking, talking, writing. Routines are where we live. The rhythms of our lives are places to hide, suspend thought and feeling:
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?Philip Larkin – Days – Whitsun Weddings
But there is something about routines which anaesthetise one against the sharp edges of the challenges of existence. We can put our minds into auto-pilot and not engage for a while. At times, we all need to step out of our routines to see the real context of our lives. Those who don’t like to stop and look back or pause to project forward never see themselves in the stark realism of the context of their lives.
Talking about looking back and historical context, the poem is from a book by Philip Larkin that I bought new in 1973 for 42p. Now, if you wanted to buy this specific edition on line it would cost you £44.00. That is how old I am.
I first accessed the internet in the early 1990s through a normal telephone line and dial-up modem. In the next decade, I had two ISDN lines spliced together to provide Broadband which was still very slow and cranky. For the past 20 years, I have had BT Broadband and, since moving here, that has been on superfast, gigabit full fibre supply.
For many years, I have had two mobile phones supplied with unlimited calls and data by EE Mobile. Their service has been unparalleled. I have seen no reason to change until BT bought out EE. This week I was contacted to be told that my accounts would move over from one to the other automatically if I didn’t do it myself but I was offered incentives to jump rather than be pushed. I did that this morning.
I don’t know why but I chose to keep my landline. I don’t know why but I do use it. It is one of those old-person routines I am finding hard to throw away. I never go anywhere without my mobile phone but we have six, wireless, digital handsets which are scattered around the house and are looking rather last decade’s technology.
The trouble is, my smartphone is my diary, my phone book, my address book, my To-Do list, my Photograph Album, my Calculator, my app acccess, my everything and I find it hard to speak into it and access it for information at the same time.
So, as I phoned BT this morning, I used my landline but had my smartphone available for my BT app and my EE app to access account information. To verify it was me, they sent me pin numbers via my smartphone text app while talking on my landline. This is the stage I’m at but, as I negotiated the switch, the Salesman asked if I really wanted to keep my landline or give it up and save £120.00 a year. I heard myself saying, For such a small saving, I’ll keep it. but my head was saying the opposite. After all, we have unlimited ‘free’ calls with both. For the next month, we are going to run an experiment at home. Whenever we need to phone someone, we will only use our smart phones and see how we get on. Then we will decide.
Friday, 1st November, 2024
Good bye to October 2024. You will never see it again other than in memory. I would like to welcome November but it is rather grey and downbeat. Bit depressing really. Warm though as I walked along the coastal path this morning.
My friend, Kevin, suffers from SAD Syndrome. He reacts to lack of sunlight with depression. Because of that, he likes to get away for regular weeks to Spain throughout the year. It is a quick, cheap hop from Leeds/Bradford to Alicante.
Kevin’s destination of choice is Benidorm. I must admit, it wouldn’t be mine. He enjoys Karaoke. I couldn’t imagine anything worse.
Of course, he leaves for Spain just as the country is reeling from natural disaster in Valencia. The flooding has already claimed over 200 lives including those of tourists.
We spent a week in Valencia about 5 years ago and absolutely loved it. We stayed in a lovely hotel on the edge of the dry river basin that has been developed as a park and a culture centre with Museum, Art Gallery, Concert Hall and Opera House alongside beautiful buildings and water features. Everybody there appears to lead such a healthy lifestyle – jogging, cycling, walking, kayaking – in the park which goes on literally for miles.
We learnt that the river bed was dry because the water of the River Turia had been diverted away from the town after a very serious flood in 1957 which claimed many lives. The town used that disaster to assert a new and vibrant life of Culture, of Arts & Science. Lovely people. Lovely Food. Lovely weather (quite often).
Saturday, 2nd November, 2024
A warm, dry, grey day which, we are told, will lead to a warm, dry, grey week ahead. I have lots of old-person things to get through in the next week including hospital appointments, eye examinations and other exciting stuff. I’m going to try again with a new pair of varifocal glasses and I’m going to have my new broadband installed around the house. I could do it myself but the service comes ‘free’. I know, Dear Reader, how will I cope with such a dramatic week?
There is an interesting news item that caught my imagination this weekend. It is a series on BBC R4 called The Gift about DNA Testing and some surprising results. It is called The Gift because DNA Testing Kits tend to be presents for the person who has everything.
You will know, Dear Reader, of my interest in Historical Research, Ancestry Research and People Research. DNA testing combines all three strands of research in one effortless activity. I have thought of buying one many times but been a little concerned about what it would reveal.
Of course, most reveal entirely mundane information about where your gene pool is most concentrated in the UK and across the world. Some Brexiteers would get a few shocks about their European origins but little more than that. So many people have now had DNA tests that there is a large database nationally and internationally of results to inform us of our gene pool.
The frightening bit that has always put me off is the medical history/projection area of our Life Plan. Do I want to know Genetic Conditions and Hereditary Diseases that I might have inherited? Do I want to know my Cancer risk: whether I am predisposed to get some types of cancer? When I was younger, I really didn’t want to blight my future with the knowledge of what might come. Now I’m older, I am quite keen to know what I may have to face. It would be helpful to prepare and try to mitigate anything I can.
In the case being reported this weekend, a fascinating story of wrong identity emerged. A lad who took the test found all the expected things of his family on the results but suddenly realised that his sister’s name was wrong. He was able to contact the woman who was claimed to be his real sister. She had also done a test and found something wrong. To cut a long story short, the two girls had been born in the same hospital at the same time and, somehow been mixed up in the ward. Now, 55 years later, these girls are being reunited with their real mothers.
I think I know what I’m buying for Christmas.