Sunday, 22nd December, 2024
Gorgeously sunny morning but with a bitingly cold wind. My phone says 7C feels like -3C and I think that’s just about right. Down at the beach, things were a little quieter than usual although there was a long queue at Sainsburys.
I actually wore a woolly hat for walking today. I looked ridiculous but I do anyway. I got it as a Christmas present years ago and have hardly used it but, since my radiotherapy, I find I feel the cold more quickly and the hat has been stored for days just like this. At least we weren’t in Yorkshire where the local news was of part of the M62 closed after snow overnight as high winds and flooding also hit Yorkshire. The snow was causing disruption on the motorway between Huddersfield and Saddleworth between junction 24 at Ainley Top and junction 22 at Rishworth Moor – exactly the stretch that we drove every day.
As we move towards the final week of the year, it is time to take stock, to balance the ledger of life so far and set goals for the New Year. I am nothing without assessment data of the past and targets for the future. This sort of discussion has been going on in our household for a few weeks. I mentioned before that house moving rears its head at times. We are both very happy in this house. It is comfortable with lovely neighbours in quiet street in a nice area. We do look at other developments which were built 20 years ago and they do look ‘tired’. We do wonder if that will be us if we stay.
Still, that is just one of the things being reviewed in the ledger. Health & Fitness are also being considered. It feels like we have that back on track although I am taking Pauline for a pre-operation meeting at the hospital tomorrow and it is a bit of a nervous time. I spoke about travel being a focus and that has to be largely sorted out in the next couple of weeks. I am working on it quite intensively.
Similarly, Financial Investments for the future have to be reviewed and, although it is going extremely well – too well by the looks of the unpaid tax demand I received yesterday – things can change very quickly. I am definitely going to continue investing our full ISA allownce – £40, 000 – again this year to shelter it from taxation. It may be ‘safe’ but safe is good if it will pay somewhere around double the inflation rate, tax free over the next couple of years.
Monday, 23rd December, 2024
A crisp and bright morning with a cut in the air. The last full week of 2025 is looking beautiful. This afternoon, I’m taking Pauline to meet the surgeon who will be operating on her in January so walking early. The air was surprisingly biting in the off shore breeze.
The backlit horizon pointed up the Rampion Wind Farm installation which is just about to be extended and energy brought ashore through Climping Beach. Only under a Labour government does the Future become reality.
I’m all for these off-shore farms which supply lots of power without disfuguring the landscape. The photograph today was taken on 10x zoom. The installation is almost invisible to the naked eye. It is how the power is brought ashore and distributed that will be the tricky part.
I became an adult in 1972. Well that’s when I was 21. It was quite a dark year in many ways. The Tories and Ted Heath were in power. It was the year I left College and started teaching. I was sent this fact sheet by one of my friends this morning. One stark fact hit me straight away.
In 1972, male life expectancy was 72 years.
In 2024, male life expectancy is 82 years.
If you think the past was a Golden Age, this fact alone should give you pause for thought. It’s so easy to forget these things. I’ve just done a quick data comparison.
I suppose it is over 50 years but there is a saluatory lesson here. World population has almost doubled while UK population has only increased by about 23%. Just not enough British girls prepared to have babies here.
Unquestionably, investment in property has been the best thing overall. In 1972, it would take 4.3 years of salary to buy the average house. Today it would take a whopping 11.2 years of average salary to buy an average priced house which is why the young ones are struggling to find somewhere to make babies.
I am a sucker for flowers. This morning there was a knock on the door and there was the lovely Sharon with a bunch of flowers for me. She said it was for everything I do for the street. Nobody ever needs to do that for me but it was lovely of her.
Tuesday, 24th December, 2024
A misty moisy morning and, I’m told, it is Christmas eve. I was sent a video greeting from lots of lads I haven’t seen much of for over 50 years last night. Pauline said, Don’t they look old. I thought, Is that how I look to others? Pauline was just back from a meeting with the Consultant in Woking Hospital who genuinely said to her that she had a high level of fitness and he really thought she was 50 until he checked her notes. You know that annoying way people seem to glide on air as they walk back to the car. Well, one of us did that last night … and it wasn’t me.
The walk is different every day. The mist this morning was reminiscent of days gone by. Smog in central London, low clouds over the Pennines, wet days on Sifnos.
As I walked, I had in my head pictures of books. The guest editor on BBC Radio 4 Today this morning was a children’s author who featured Dolly Parton. Her love of reading has led to her writing lots of children’s books and giving lots of money to found a programmme of providing books for kids across the world.
In Primary School, I devoured works of Fiction and loved being read to. When I was 7, I couldn’t wait for the end of the day when Miss Marlor read The Magic Faraway Tree to us. At night time, Mum would come up to say good night and read to us. She loved to do all the voices. I remember The Blackbird Patrol really well as she put on the voices of black slaves and pirate captains. I lived in and for these stories.
What puzzles me is that I haven’t read a work of Fiction for pleasure since I left Primary and moved to Grammar School. There I was given mainly Faction to read. In my first year, I was introduced to Winston Churchill’s My Early Life. I got quite interested in it. Later, I studied Dr. Samuel Johnson for the power of words and argument. I read The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. I was hooked.
Any work of Fiction I have read has been for ‘work’ – either teaching or studying or both. I had to teach James Joyce at A Level early on in my career. I didn’t know it at all but A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man knocked me for six. It was about me and my life. I was doing a Literature Degree at the time and studying 20th Century European Poetry. James Joyce was taunting me. I was continually rejecting religion in general and Catholicism in particular. James Joyce understood me. It didn’t speak to my students with quite the same intensity.
My Masters Degree involved reading around the Literature of the day and William Godwin’s novels were informed by his political radicalism so I read it with pencil in hand. He went on to publish important works of political philosophy. Godwin’s daughter, Mary, married Shelley and went on to write Frankenstein but also became a leading proclaimer of women’s rights. Once again, I was reading with a purpose rather than pure pleasure.
I’ve had a book on my shelves for a long time which I dip into but haven’t completed. It is the sort of thing I need in my life to keep me sane. The God Delusion describes my view of the world. It is about a fiction which is so destructive of world order. Behind so many conflicts – maybe all conflicts – a religion sits. It is hard to see how self-delusion can justify such horrors.
There is also a gulf in the more specific genres that men and women choose, with men tending to read history, biographies and memoir, while women are more likely to choose mystery, thriller and crime, romance and other fiction.
Deloitte Insights – 2024
Although I knew it was true for me, I didn’t really focus on this obvious piece of research about the gender divide in reading summed up by the above research. It rather explains why I have found the fiction of entertainment so difficult to enter until recent times. Now, I spend all my time sifting through the back catalogue of all my rented platforms for things to watch.
Wednesday, 25th December, 2024
Another Xmas Day – our 73rd. I long lost the excitement. In fact, I find it rather a sad time now. Absent friends, long gone times, etc.. There was a time when Breakfast would be toast with home-cooked slices of ham. And then the big drive up to Surrey with everything to do to produce a big meal. There was a time, much further back when we were all ‘forced’ to go to early mass before Breakfast. Presents weren’t opened until mid Morning. There was a time … there was a time when … The mists of time rise and fall and rise again.
This morning, the biggest thing I had to do was have a shave and get dressed. Drink freshly squeezed orange juice and a huge cup of freshly ground coffee – Taylors Rich Italian No. 4.
We really don’t need presents any more although we’ve had lovely flowers from neighbours and P&C and M&K had bought lots of treats for the garden and the house – many from Florida. They were good fun to unpack without having to go to mass first. We’d already had some presents from Margaret & Tony in Marsden and Little Viv in Oldham so our cup runneth over.
The kitchen is smelling sweetly with scent of flowers and a candle that we were given recently. Later today, it will waft the distinct smell of shellfish as Chef prepares Loster, Langoustines, Scallops and home-cured smoked salmon for our meal served with a green salad.
Before that, we are going out on a long walk on the beach in very warm weather. Could be busy. It might be warm but it’s still gloomy.
I decided against the Christmas Fun Run on Littlehampton Promenade. I don’t know why because it looks so exciting doesn’t it, Dear Reader.
Chef has produced a seafood platter of Scallops, Lobster, Langoustines and Home-cured Smoked Salmon all served with a Green Salad and a Mustard Mayonnaise & Dill Sauce. Of course, we toasted each other with a bottle of chilled Zerozecco. After a 7 mile walk by the sea and an hour in the Gym, I was ready for it. If you’re allergic to shellfish, Dear Reader, don’t lick this photo.
Thursday, 26th December, 2024
I must have been feeling sloppy last night because I watched Notting Hill …. again. What is wrong with me? I think I’m losing it. It was 1.00 am before we got to bed. Consequently, the unthinkable has happened this morning. Didn’t get up until 8.00 am.. Already I feel out of sorts with the day. So many things to get through, to achieve.
Alrerady had Whatsapp greetings from neighbours and friends. Out for an early walk and to Sainsbury’s. Apparently we need milk. On Boxing Day? I think my Housekeeper is losing it. Anyway, it is rather murky and damp out there but warm. Not very inviting. Got to get my exercise done because it is an afternoon of football to watch.
I’m having a fight with my self about a new coffee maker. I have a perfectly good one but there is a heavily advertised one I’ve had my eye on. This month, it is reduced from £750.00 to £649.00 and I’m even more tempted. But I don’t need one. It would be total self indulgence. Pauline doesn’t even drink coffee.
I really can’t justify it. I really can’t. Bet I do! Going walking to take it off my mind and think about travelling in 2025.
Got out there and the drizzle is quite unpleasant. Come home to do the full routine in the Gym. In the time I was out, I more or less crystalised in my head the travel plan for the year to come.
- May – a few days in France, Côte d’Opale
- June – a week in Greece, Thessaloniki
- July – a month driving down through France to Bordeaux
- August – a week in Greece, Athens
- November – a month in Tenerife, Adeje
There are still plenty of gaps for two visits to the North of England to visit the past. All things will come to pass, Dear Reader.
Friday, 27th December, 2024
Xmas is over for another year. I really haven’t missed it both because I’m not a christian but also because I don’t go out to work. I am not in need of spiritual delusion or a break from work. Time doesn’t miss a beat although I will acknowledge New Year’s Eve. Time advancing is important – essential to acknowledge and try to understand. It brings the bad and the good.
I don’t look forward to being 74 next year but I do welcome all the innovation that will inevitably come. New car technology. New coffee maker technology. New Health technology. New Power technology. New Internet technology. Artificial Intelligence. AI will be increasingly important as this decade advances.
This morning, Professor Geoffrey E. Hinton, who won the Nobel Prize for his work in developing machine learning technology using artificial neural networks, was interviewed on BBC R4 Today. It was a fascinating interview for people like me and ranged from discussion of Adam Smith to sexual exploitation.
You are probably well aware of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, Dear Reader. At the risk of patronising you, I remind you that he was a Scottish economist and moral philosopher in the 18th Century. He was writing at the birth of the Industrial Revolution and was concerned with the effect of Industry and Business on ordinary people. His central tenet involved The Invisible Hand which is based on the idea that people’s self-interest and freedom to produce and consume can lead to the best interests of society as a whole. The constant interplay of individual pressures on supply and demand causes prices to move naturally, and trade to flow. Now, it is beloved of the Right in politics who want smaller government and less regulation. Free markets are espoused. Nationalisation is decried.
Fast forward 250 years, from 1776 to 2024 and the newest worry of unfettered change is Artificial Intelligence. Professor Hinton’s view is that, although AI held out enormous benefits for the world, it also harboured enormous threats to its existence. In fact, he believes that AI unfettered is an existential threat to our survival beyond the next couple of decades and needs to be regulated. Hinton posited the belief that AI could do so much Medical Investigation so much more quickly and accurately than any human can that a single doctor would be able to monitor the health of thousands of patients at a time. This is as revolutionary as the Industrial Revolution of the past.
In reality, most of us encounter Artificial Intelligence in some way or another almost daily. From the moment you wake up to check your smartphone to watching another Netflix-recommended movie, AI has quickly made its way into our everyday lives. AI has been making its way into Education for the past 20 years. I was pioneering online education with lesson material, testing, assessment and reporting to parents through an intranet in 2004.
AI has increasingly organised the means of production with robots in factories and methods of delivery as Amazon warehouses illustrate. We use Alexa or Google Maps; we search for something on the net and then find every other application that we use recommending new coffee makers for weeks afterwards because of incorporated AI. My car has more incorporated AI than you would imagine like a camera blind spot function or intelligent cruise control. The ultimate will be totally self-drive cars
AI can understand and learn any intellectual task that a human being can. Soon, Super AI will surpass human intelligence and perform any task better than a human. That is why controls have to be built in to its development.
One of the current concerns seems to be the use of AI to create political havoc through lifelike avatars making online speeches to move elections in a chosen direction and sexual exploitation particularly of children by nudifying images of real people and then exploiting them for gain. To be blunt, AI like all other innovations can be turned to good or ill and will need some controls. The skill is to control without suffocating.
It is going to change the world. It is going to totally alter the need for workers. It may well usher in the Universal Basic Income. Hopefully, it will improve all our lives immeasurably. That is a thought for the coming year.
Saturday, 28th December, 2024
No fog. No dampness. No sun. Dull and overcast. It sounds like airports are being plagued by fog this morning from Manchester to Gatwick & Heathrow. Significant because M&K, back from Florida are now going to Chamonix for a week of Skiing. Let’s hope they get off without delay to Geneva. When you’re only going for a week, a delay can be really destructive. We wish them well.
We wish Kevin well also. He’s had his car removed from his drive over night in North Yorkshire. It’s a nightmare to wake up and find your right arm gone. As I told him, it’s a good job he’s got a bike. Well, you have to be sympathetic, don’t you. At first, I thought it was someone stranded after a Boxing Day party loking for an easy way home but this can’t have been too opportunistic. It is quite a sophisticated job to steal a car with an electronic ignition. Kevin insists it was locked and the keys were in the house. It would need a car key cloner to get in and start the engine.
I went on line and found lots on offer from under £100.00. This machine reads the radio signal from your car fob and can replicate it in a blank one. You need a bit of knowledge and practice but could soon be up and running. I’ve been aware of this for a year or two but haven’t really felt the need to do anything about it. My last three cars have had electronic ignition but I have never heard of a car being stolen down here around me.
There is an easy way to protect yourself which I learnt in 1962 in Grammar School. I must admit, Faraday didn’t really speak to me in those days but I still remember a lesson about the Faraday Cage. A Faraday Cage or Faraday Shield is an enclosure used to block electromagnetic fields. These simple, little pouches replicate the Faraday Cage and protect your key fobs in the house from being read outside and replicated. I’ve ordered two immediately from Amazon.
Walking by the beach this morning there were parents with excited children on flashy, new scooters, youngsters on new bikes slightly too big for them but for their legs to grow into. This chap had received a Christmas present on a different level altogether. Quite fancy one myself. Apparently, it’s called an e-foil. Going to look on Amazon.
It’s 2.00 pm. I’ve done my 7 miles for the day. I’m drinking a lovely cup of coffee from my soon-to-be-defunct coffee maker while Beethoven’s Pastorale Symphony is playing on my Alexa speaker. I’m going in the Gym soon to do a bit more work and watch my latest Spy Thriller on the Paramount+ platform. Almost everything is well with the world …. almost …
Of course, while we were out, Amazon delivered all our orders. It is so easy I order everything I can on Amazon and, with Prime membership, it comes ‘free’ next day. It is so reliable, I actually feel sorry for the delivery people who are usually in their own vehicles and working until late at night to complete their rounds. The standard final time is 10.00pm but they often deliver well after then. When do these people get to eat and sleep before setting out again on another list of impossible delivery committments?