Sunday, 1st December, 2024
Happy December, Dear Reader. I wonder how many more we’ve got ….. Anyway, let’s be positive and optimistic. The next month will be warm and sunny and the new year to come will bring prosperity and joy.
In that vein, the first day of December has opened dark, gloomy and damp-ish. It’s not raining but low cloud is distilling water on the land below including my garden. Still, going out for a walk after the rituals of the first day of a new month are completed.
I don’t need to repeat it for regular readers but the 1st of the month means data. I record our power usage for the previous month on my spreadsheet and compare it with the same month over the decades. It doesn’t really inform our usage but illustrates the different places we have lived. A separate spreadsheet records my Weight, Blood Pressure, INR, ect. That goes back to January 2009.
Today marks the beginning of Year 17 of the Blog. If you are a reader from the first day, hard luck. If you are a new reader, welcome to your new sedative. The Blog is backed up every Sunday morning now it has become an important historical record – for me. I try to refresh it’s design and to readjust it to my changing situation.
The snap shot on the right is from November 2011 when half my life was being lived in Greece. It was known as Hellas Blog – or Greek Blog for the uninitiated. Week 100 was just under 2 years into its development and I was already amazed that I had managed so long. I use WordPress to construct and maintain my story. It is a very flexible platform which allows radical changes in design while mainting the content over time. Unfortunately, a change of design which I make today translates into a change in design retrospectively as well.
Monday, 2nd December, 2024
Gorgeous morning down here. Warm and bright with strong, low sunshine. It makes driving difficult but it’s great to see the sun so I don’t complain. Had to taxi my Housekeeper to M&S this morning. Xmas presents to collect. It is quite busy in the upper clothes floors but the food hall is really bustling.
Directly across the road is the Pier. It has been closed for a few weeks for repair work underneath. They had to wait for low tides to get at the rusting metal struts. At the same time, they were replacing very old piping on the pier itself and redeveloping a swanky, new fish restaurant called Perch.
The views are wonderful when the skies are clear like this morning. You should have joined me, Dear Reader. In old age, these are days to be savoured and shared.
Haven’t been into town for a while. Today, having ventured out of my white, middle class enclave, it is obvious how multinational the population of the town is. Very few Black and Asian people although there are quite a significant number of Chinese/Japanese. Our town has many European and Eastern European immigrants – French, Italian & Spanish but also Polish, Lithuanian, Croation and Ukranian. We rarely see a dark face at all. It is such a shock when we go back to the North of England.
I have nothing against the colour of people’s skins, nothing against Asian people in my community whereas that did seem to be an strong theme underpinning the Brexit vote. We always argued that Brexit would increase Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi immigration as they were drawn in to replace fleeing Europeans. Dark skin immigrants with cultures far removed from our own would replace white faces with cultures largely in line with our own and so it has proved.
Of course, politicians who feel they can’t row back from the disastrous Brexit deal, have been drawn into the ridiculous argument called ‘Small Boats’. As the official data makes clear from the graph above, small boat, so called ‘illegal’ immigration counts for such a small proportion as to be not worth talking about. All assylum seekers amount to just 13% of immigrants and only a small proportion of them come on small boats. The British people are being taken for idiots and they are living up to expectations.
Tuesday, 3rd December, 2024
Well, if this is Winter, I want more of it. Now December and relatively mild although a bit overcast. Today is a day of memories and reunions. I don’t know if you have come across the sentimental poem by Thomas Hood from the 1840s called I Remember, I Remember:
I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday,—
The tree is living yet!
Yesterday I heard again from a lad who I haven’t seen or spoken to since 1967. Keith lived further down the village and his dad was a policemean. Keith, who is about 2 years older than me, went to the Secondary Modern school in Derbyshire while I went to the Grammar School in Staffordshire so our paths didn’t pass much after that.
Keith went on to become a policeman in Burton like his Dad. When he retired, he moved to the island of Kefalonia. He became an entertainer and has lived there for about 25 years. He clearly wants to touch base with his past. It is a natural, human instinct to want to review and revisit the people and places of one’s past. Most of us do it. I have that instinct in spades.
This morning a picture of the village of Apollonia on Sifnos appeared with their homely little Xmas tree. It rather sums up the island we lived on for so many years. The tree is standing outside Lakis Caffenion which has all the feeling of an old, original from an earlier time. Lakis is no longer there but his caffenion goes on its quiet, understated manner. It is near the bank and we would meet to discuss financial arrangements over coffee. I look forward to sipping coffee there again and I will.
I haven’t seen my little brother, Mike, for 5 years. He lives in Wolverhampton and is just 67 years old although he has been retired for quite a long time. I last saw him in Bolton at Ruth’s 70th birthday party as she celebrated her history and drew in people from her past. He told me he was reclusive and he has illustrated that quite well over the years. I get a card from him each year and that is about it even though I’ve invited him down here.
This morning, I received a card from him suggesting he may well be on his way down to the South Coast in the new year. I really hope he does because it would be nice to see him again and show him around the area where quite a few of his relatives have lived over the years.
I have been talking this morning to a dozen or more people who I reunited with after 50 years of absence. I am enjoying it. It feels right. I have more to reconnect with yet and I will. It is my mission and it will happen. Of course we all have fears of what our Past will think of our Present. Will they expect us to be as they remember us from the past? Will they be disappointed? In the end, it is the person not the appearance that matters. We are what we are no matter how old or wrinkly.
The poet, Philip Larkin, used the sentimentality of Thomas Hood’s poem to produce his own brand of cynicism in a poem also entitled I Remember, I Remember which he concludes with the line:
Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.
Philip Larkin: The Less Deceived – 1955
In the poem, Larkin returns to the place of his birth, expecting to experience a rush of nostalgia and familiarity. Instead, he finds himself feeling disconnected and alienated. The places he once knew no longer seem recognizable, and he realizes that his memories of the town are idealized and incomplete. This may well be what we find but my experience has generally been much more rewarding.
Wednesday, 4th December, 2024
Lovely morning and much warmer than expected after the most gloriously clear and sparkling sky last night. The stars really were coming out last night for me and you, Dear Reader. Yesterday, Julie from North Yorkshire reported that her Dishwasher had broken down. This morning heard from an old friend, Diane from Saddleworth, that she is moving after her husband’s untimely death and has a brand new dishwasher for sale. Two friends from different spheres of my experience. Might get them together. Diane is staying in Saddleworth so look forward to seeing her when we go up.
I wonder what you will be eating today. I am going to have home made Museli – rolled oats, raisins, chopped fruit and ice cold, fully-skimmed milk – and then griddled tuna with green beans and asparagus for supper. Sounds quite healthy doesn’t it? And it is. Married to a cook for more than 45 years has meant that I have been eating great home cooking most of my life.
Ready Meals and Take Aways have hardly featured in my life. I was introduced to fish & chips eaten out of newspaper at College and I did eat quite a bit of it in my first couple of years of teaching. Since then, meals have been freshly prepared each evening and I have even enjoyed cooking them myself. I don’t think I have ever bought a Ready Meal since the early 1970s. All our bread is home made. We rarely eat cakes & biscuits, I am not keen on crisps and bacon & ham has been banned for a long time.
I must admit that, at the end of a very hard week of work, Friday night would be Chinese night. We had a wonderful Chinese Take Away in our village and that would be a real treat to start the weekend. Funnily enough, even that would be tinged with guilt on Saturday morning waking up with that dry mouth of Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) which is a flavour enhancer often added to restaurant foods.
This morning, the Labour government announced a program of action against ultra processed foods and I was shocked to hear that we have some of the highest consumption of ultra-processed in the world alongside the USA. It is hard to understand why and it is undoubtedly the source of serious threats to life but particularly bowel cancer and heart disease.
I gave up smoking on the 15th November 1985 and I am really pleased I did. I think I would be dead now if I hadn’t. Of course, wine is my downfall and I am addressing that but at least I never had the taste for fizzy, sugary drinks which are even more dangerous. What disappoints me is that it took me too long to bring myself to healthy things like fish and salad.
This morning, we walked by the sea where three women were swimming under a watery sun and then shopped at the Fresh Fish outlet. We bought sides of salmon, halibut steaks and seabass fillets. This year, Christmas Dinner will not feature turkey but a seafood platter instead. Today we bought or ordered Langoustines, Scallops, and a Lobster to serve with a plate of home cured Gravadlax. Looking forward to it.
Thursday, 5th December, 2024
Heavy rain over a very warm night has given way to a dry but dark sky and soggy world beneath. It is the sort of day when one wakes up and thinks it would be nice to be somewhere else – Athens for example. Dreamed about it over night because the last thing I read before bed was an article about a multi-billion Euro development.
First stayed in Athens in July 1981 en route to a ferry from the Peloponnese to Zakynthos. We arrived at our hotel in extreme heat and in darkness. As we checked in to a cheap, C-class hotel for one night before moving on, arriving at our room with the key in the door, all the lights went out and the hotel was in complete darkness.
No mobile phones with lights on in those days, not even emergency lights in cheap, Greek hotels at the time. We fumbled to get into the room as thunder and lightning roared all around. What we didn’t realise was that Greek power boxes were located on the outside of the buildings and heavy rain always knocked out the power. We were shocked. Greeks just shrugged.
It wasn’t the best introduction to a city that I have grown to love over more than 40 years since then inspite of its problems. If you were to aggregate the weeks I’ve spent there over that time, it amounts to a couple of full years residence. I have walked in the buzzing heart of the market places, met fascinating, noisy, excited and interesting people. Eaten in the most wonderful streetside tavernas and in posh restaurants. I have stayed in the cheapest, roughest hotels and in some of the most upmarket ones as well.
Over the years, things have improved greatly but the transport system has always lagged behind rapidly increasing tourism. I’ve taken my life in my hands and driven across Athens every year without noticing much improvement. At last, modern Athens is developing a 21st Century transport system that will make London look old fashioned. A sign of the times that European membership has afforded Greece to spend £4.8bn on it’s city infrastructure while we struggle to fill parochial potholes.
What worries me about UK is its insularity. It’s fear of the foreigner, the other. It harks back to the mythical Golden Age which rose-tinted glasses make look so much better to some – particularly many elderly, Faragist /Reform Brexiteers. It never was golden and we will never go back to it. In his speech this morning, Keir Starmer talked about the tepid path of managed decline.
We have to move forward. Just a few minutes drive down the road is the genteel town of Arundel with its imposing castle.
A recent newspaper article featured it as the most relaxing place in the whole of Europe. If you are immobile, in your dotage, scared of travel, of foreigners and foreign language, near to end of life – go to Arundel and relax. I want to continue embracing the challenge of activity, learning, other cultures, other ideas, other expectations and demands. Don’t settle back, Dear Reader, and lower your sights. Look to the horizon because:
Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.Next, Please by Philip Larkin in The Whitsun Weddings – 1964
Death comes to us all in a huge and birdless silence and, before that, Dear Reader, we should take risks and make as much noise as possible.
Friday, 6th December, 2024
Gorgeous morning after a beautiful night sky … but not cold. Perfect, Winter weather. I hope the rest of the day goes to plan. This morning’s Oncology review can go one of two ways. It is 12 months since I completed my Radiotherapy treatment. My subsequent treatment plan sets 6 monthly P.S.A. & Testosterone tests plus 12 monthly, full body imaging scans. It felt very reassuring when I received it until I read of so many men who discovered metastic cancer long after the all-clear. Of course I want to know as soon as possible but then …. I don’t want to know, Dear Reader.
We have been in this current house for 8 years 9 months. We bought it ‘off-plan’ and then sat and waited for it to be finished. We returned from a month in Tenerife and came back hoping for good news. It was late and we came down from Surrey on this day 9 years ago to check progress. The garage hadn’t even been started by this time. We were desperate to move in. We got through Xmas and then went back to Tenerife for another month before eventually moving in in at the end of March 2016. Even so, where has all that time gone?
Well, all is well. Just had an Oncology review. My blood test showed ‘normal’ testosterone levels. My PSA was 0.2 which seems wonderful and my full-body CT scan showed no metastatic cancer escape. I pointed out that it was a first for any part of me to be described as normal. They told me that these checks would continue for the foreseeable future which is very reassuring. My cheeky neighbour, Dee, said she questioned the result of my testosterone level but didn’t say which way. Going out to the beach under blue skies and strong sunshine to exercise my new bill of health.
Celebrating with a walk by the sea was exactly the right thing to do. Quiet and sunny, it was a place to think and plan for the Future. It has been decided that we will book a month in the Canaries for November and get it fixed up soon. So, that is one of my jobs this afternoon after my Gym session.
Saturday, 7th December, 2024
The predicted storm hit us over night although it wasn’t as bad as expected. Dry but blustery this morning. We went out to the beach for a walk but it soon started raining and the wind was stronger there.
It wasn’t going to be pleasant walking. The sea was angry and the skies threatening. We stayed for a few minutes then drove home. It is going to be a day in the Gym.
I was looking forward to the Merseyside Derby this lunchtime but the Everton v Liverpool match has been called off because of the storm. The pier in Worthing has been closed for safety reasons and so many Xmas activities around here have been cancelled too.
In our house, two Xmas cakes are being marzipanned ready for icing. Normally, I get homemade sweets from the trimmings but not this time. Discipline maintained. Xmas card lists are being scrutinised (Who is dead? Who failed to write last time? Who can receive electronic greetings? etc.) ready for cards being written and addressed.
À propos of absolutely nothing, this chart appeared in a newspaper this morning. It refers back to the topic I was writing about on Wednesday. The difference between a Greek and Italian diet and that of UK is shameful. And we bleat on about farmers and farming. Large proportions of the British public don’t buy fresh farm produce let alone know how to cook it.