Sunday, 9th February, 2025
A grey but brightening morning. Going out for a walk early because rain is forecast. A fairly ‘free’ day today. Newspapers to read and Political programmes to watch, friends to communicate with and exercise to do. You could describe it as ’empty’. I don’t like empty. My Housekeeper will be busy preparing to repaint areas of the house showing wear and tear. That is all beyond me so I am the supporting act.
I am very risk-averse. I am insured up to the hilt for every eventuality. I hardly ever claim but it makes life calmer and more assured (literally). The best car, travel and home insurance possible is a must in our household. Today, we have to reconsider House & Contents Insurance which we have been buying from the same company since we moved in here 9 years ago. Privilege have been our insurers and last year they charged us £355.00 for both Buildings & Contents cover. The renewal price this time is £535.00 which is quite a rise so research is required.
You never know who you are dealing with when comparing quotes but a quick check shows Privilege insurance policies are underwritten by UK Insurance Limited, who own the brands Privilege, Direct Line, Churchill and Green Flag. They often try to hike the cost and we find alternatives to use as a bargaining chip and they usually back down. Be interesting to see if they stick to this 50% increase. It’s certainly one of these things that winds you up and demands all sorts of time consuming things like calculating the surface area of your house, measuring how far the nearest tree is too it, how much the entire contents would take to replace, how many items costing over £1000.00 you need to insure separately, etc.. I suspect many people give up and plump for round figures. Not in this Office!
Bésame, bésame mucho
Como si fuera esta noche
La última vez
Bésame, bésame mucho
Que tengo miedo perderte
Perderte después
To soothe the savage, inflamed breast, music today is another Andrea Bocelli singing in Spanish: Bésame Mucho (Kiss me a lot.) I got addicted to this song before I translated it and the Spanish is so beautiful. I wish I’d persisted with it in Grammar School. I chose it over Russian at the time but dropped it for other things before I had really learnt enough.
Monday, 10th February, 2025
Another cool, grey and damp morning. I have an appointment with the Hygenist at the Dentists at 9.00 am so there is no time to waste. I hate the Hygenist with a passion – not the person but the process. I sometimes wonder why I volunteer to pay for it.
My poor next door neighbour has to go to work this morning knowing that Ofsted are in. She is a lecturer in English at the local College. All weekend she has been receiving emails from Senior Management reminding her what a wonderful institution she works in and with such a wonderfully understanding Management Team that she should impress that on Inspectors. Poor girl. I really do feel for her. I’ve offered to go in an and deliver a few lectures if she needs a break. You never lose it, you know.
When I go travelling, it is almost always conditioned by weather. I like the sun and warmth above all. Language, culture, sights are important but secondary. France, Italy, Greece, Spain provide so many of my requirements. I never think of Wales in that way. This morning I listened to an interview with Helle Thorning-Schmidt. She is the former Prime Minister of Denmark and the current wife of Neil Kinnock’s son, Stephen. She also sits on the advisory board of Meta/Facebook.
She talked about her new found love of Wales in general and Angelesey in particular. It reminded me that Mum & Dad loved Wales and took us across the Menai Bridge to Angelesey for a holiday. I was too young to remember much about it but I have always associated North Wales with two things – rain and old fashioned travel. Perhaps I am going to have to rethink, retrace and reassess. Might have to reacquaint myself with Angelsey.
I don’t think my acquaintance will merit learning Welsh but I fell heavily for a Welsh actress, Eve Myles and a Welsh drama, Keeping Faith, originally made for S4C in Welsh. About 5 years ago the drama gripped me and the accompanying songs composed by Amy Wadge have absolutely hung in my head ever since. Today’s music is Faith’s Song – perhaps the best and most insistent of them. I crumple under it.
Tuesday, 11th February, 2025
Birthdays are strange things, aren’t they. If you believe time moves in a straight line and I do then we all travel forwards from the Mother Ship to our final destination in a linear direction.
“They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Like roads in metres and kilometres, Lives are graduated in months and years. Along the road to our destination, we can take temporary detours but the final destination is always the same. All the lives we meet along the road are shed and we are all alone in death.
Thought you would like an uplifting theme for the morning and, to accompany it, an equally uplifting piece of music – Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in B Flat Minor – which to the initiated will be depressingly appropriate. It is wonderful music in its own right but we cannot divorce it from common association.
The difference is that Christians seem to believe they go upwards at death whereas all the evidence seems to point the other way: They give birth astride of a grave. Ascension in to heaven is literally an aspiration which has no basis in reality. Self delusion rules.
The real question is about timing and duration. Can we intervene to slow the time or extend the duration? Are there things we can do or are we kidding ourselves. We have to believe that we can or life is meaningless. I often think I am juggling plates of performance. Yesterday my teeth passed the test. This morning by INR was excellent. My weight is coming into line. My fitness is good. My blood pressure is good and my cholesterol levels are excellent.
I still look to improve my balance, suppleness, and muscle degeneration. I constantly try to keep my brain alert and my emotions in check. I look for ways to test my abilities all the time. Yesterday in an idle moment while I was recovering from my Gym workout, I did an IQ Test online. I really enjoyed it. It was largely centred around sequential patterns of number or space and they are things I’ve always been good at.
These two tests are really the easiest starters before the real work begins. Try them, Dear Reader. Answers tomorrow … if you’re still alive.
Wednesday, 12th February, 2025
Another grey morning. I am heartily sick of greyness. Turn on the light! Give me sunshine! Now! Look to the Future …. It’s going to be warm and sunny. In the mean time, we have to grind out the self improvement programme. The diet and exercise routine continue and the house renewal starts today. All the little scuff marks are being photographed and noted ready for repainting/touching up by my Housekeeper. She has to get her pleasure somewhere.
Place has rarely been important to me. I have an inner life that makes it less relevant than to some other people I know. I like where I live. I particularly like it in the sunshine and we do get a lot of it normally but people are more important really. The Telegraph ran a feature on the Home Counties this morning and I was surprised to find they included East & West Sussex but not Surrey. They say they consulted legal documents.
Worthing was included and the new, restaurant on the pier – Tern run by Michelin star chef, Jonny Stanford who originated in Manchester. I love the way geographical connections run through life’s story. Try as I might, I can never get them out of me.
For years, this was the time I would be planning, researching, booking the return to our home in Greece. I dug out a plan I did for our trip 15 years ago today. I was only 58 for one thing. I had been retired for almost a year. I was still living in cold Yorkshire.
I loved the journey almost as much as the 6 months away. I loved the drive and, in retirement, it was so much more relaxed allowing us to take more time and have a number hotel stops on the way. I have never regretted these experiences. They made me a better person.
You light the skies, up above me
A star, so bright, you blind me,
Don’t close your eyes
Don’t fade away, don’t fade away, oh
Music today may be quite surprising but it reminds me of that drive. It took many hours across many country’s borders where we didn’t have to show our passports because we were EU members. To wile away the time, I listened to and sang to a range of music from La Traviata to Take That‘s greatest hits. This morning, to fit in with the travel and place theme, I chose We Can Rule the World and I was singing along in the Office but, in my head, I was back on the road driving from Colmar in France to Modena in Italy – a day’s journey of about 6 long hours.
I’m sure you managed yesterday’s puzzles easily but, at the risk of appearing patronising, this is how the working went.
Thursday, 13th February, 2025
Another grey day which would be depressing if it wasn’t for the relativity of life. Two separate friends in North Yorkshire: one suffers from and is currently suffering from SAD Syndrome; the other has been diagnosed with breast cancer for the third time in the same breast. Puts my life into perspective.
One of the things I need at the moment is a new suit. I don’t wear them so often now. They were my school uniform once but every man needs a few good suits for the right occasion. I have been looking at Brook Taverner online. Never bought a suit online before. I had mine made to measure in little, specialist Tailor Shops. Will be interesting. Bet I have to have the arms shortened.
The research into House Insurance went well. My Housekeeper is proposing to switch insurers for a better policy but £150.00 cheaper. I’ll put that towards my new suit. We will move to Admiral who will allow us to be away for at least 60 consecutive days which is something we will need over the next 12 months.
Fifteen years ago, I was booking this hotel in Parma, Italy for our drive to Greece. The manager is called Elvis and the hotel is no great luxury but good enough for one night on the way. To be honest with you, almost anywhere is good in Italy. This morning I was acknowledging my neighbour across the road – Filippo from Parma, Italy. It’s a small world. Music today is from the wonderful Italian composer, Giacomo Puccini who was born in our favourite Italian city of Lucca. I know there are many more interesting pieces but why not play the classically populist card for once: Nessun Dorma or None Shall Sleep.
In the Gym today, I am going to start a new focus on Strength Excercises. I can’t drop my Cardio targets but I’ve got to integrate some strength work as well. There are lots of execises to choose from. I have a professional Rowing Machine so that will be one of them and I have some Dumbbells so I will do some Bicep Curls.
Ask anyone under the age of 40 and you are likely to find they don’t have a landline in their house. They have a mobile and use it exclusively. People over 40 tend to be in the graduated phase of mixing both landline and mobile phones. Those in their 80s tend to mainly use the old fashioned ways. We have two mobiles and a landline with 6 handsets around the house.
Discussing it the other day, we realised we hadn’t used the landline for ages other than to shout at cold-callers. We decided to do a month where we never attempted to use our landline. It turned out to be no problem. We have unlimited calls through both systems so they really were duplicating each other. Today, I cancelled my landline and saved myself the massive sum of £120.00 per year. This is at just the time when I have ordered some big button cordless landline phones for a relative with poor sight. Everyone needs something different.
Friday, 14th February, 2025
Happy Valentine’s Day …. again. Seems to come round every year. I am so romantic that I’m driving my wife to the Beautician’s to have her face renovated. Apparently, she is going to have it defoliated by using needles with electric pulses. It costs a fortune compared with a plastic, Bic Safety Razor. You can buy a pack of 5 for £0.99. I must tell her how to banish that stubble. Anyway, Happy Valentine’s Day to all my readers. Make the most of it. Doesn’t last long like all good things.
My music this morning is unashamedly down with the kids. It has to be a love song, of course. I actually quite like it: Ed Sheeran – Perfect. He is an interesting character with an interesting voice and it illustrates my ability to break out of my own conventions.
Another trip to the old sweet shop – Bah Humbug – today because we are driving up to Surrey on Sunday with a set of phones to be installed and C has managed to get through his first Kilo in quick time. Got to keep the old natives happy. In the meantime, I have been holding a long conversation on Whatsapp with my next door neighbour who is 50 metres away. She has just completed her Ofsted at College and is embracing the weekend early. She wasn’t even observed so she shouldn’t be worrying. Anyway, she’s so skinny that they call her ‘Stick’ because, when she turns to the side, she is invisible. I’ve offered her free access to my wine store if it would help.
I was thinking about suits the other day and how seldom I wear them now having been my uniform for every single working day of my life for almost 40 years. The sloppy old man of today – I live in teeshirt and shorts most of the year – sometimes misses the formality of those days. I actually have very few formal shirts in my wardrobes and even less dress shoes. If I’m going to have new suits, I’m going to need some new shirts as well. I used to get all my shirts from Charles Tyrwhitt where each one will cost me £75.00 now. I can’t afford that!
Going out now for a walk. It is 7C/45F but feels much colder than that. It is definitely not a shorts day for me although I saw a couple of lads out in them this morning. Youth don’t feel the cold. The good news is that the sun came out as I walked and it felt quite pleasant. The bad news is that I had an Inland Revenue letter on the mat when I got home informing me that I had even more outstanding tax to pay from my investments over the new tax year. I might have to move to Florida for awhile.
Saturday, 15th February, 2025
I helped to start up a Whatsapp group. We call it Old Friends 69/72 Bookends and it involves the 20 or so men from our Year in College or at least the surviving ones. We swap our daily life experiences with each other, laugh at our problems and commiserate with the difficulties of growing old. It’s a lads thing. Some of them meet once a year back in Ripon where we first met. Some of us have not met for more than 50 years.
Yesterday, Andy H., who lives in central London and used to work at the Tower of London, was walking out of a church where he had been listening to a concert by the London Symphony Orchestra when he looked up and there was Chris T. and his wife coming out of the same church concert. They were down from Leeds especially for the concert. This was their first meeting since 1972. It’s a small world. L.S.O. Free Fridays at St Lukes is where it all happens!
My music today is from an opera that I haven’t listened to for a few years now but loved in the past: Donizetti’s Lucia de Lammermoor. It is almost 200 years old but has stood the test of time. I hope to emulate it although not in its romantic tragic content. Don’t you always hope it will end differently and well?
I don’t know if I have told the story before but I was in Digs for the first two years in College. I was the guest with two other lads of a nice couple called Mr & Mrs Boyd. After two years, in 1971 I moved into a grotty, rented flat with three other students in the centre of our small, rural town in North Yorkshire. I didn’t see Mr & Mrs Boyd again until I was at a conference in London, delivering a paper on School Attendance of all things in the latter 1990s. I was late and had to get a tube connection.
As I rushed across the concourse down in the bowels of central London, I had to push through a queue of people waiting to get to the ticket machines. As I did so, someone shouted and I thought they were complaining about me being rude. I looked back and there were Mr & Mrs Boyd from NorthYorkshire. I hadn’t seen them for 25 years. Unfortunately, we hadn’t got time for a catch up which I now regret but, what are the chances?
I’ve been invited to join the UK’s largest ever health research programme, designed to help researchers to discover new ways to prevent, detect, and treat diseases. It is called Our Future Health and it involves answering questionnaires, providing blood samples, being measured and weighed and allowing researchers to one’s medical records. I can sense readers shrieking, I wouldn’t expose myself like that! but I am relaxed about it. I have nothing to hide (well, nothing I’m prepared to tell you about).
It will give me a DNA analysis and read out. They will advise me what my DNA suggests I can expect in the future. It’s like Tarot cards but informed by science. Actually, the sell it as: Joining Our Future Health is like leaving your body to science – while you’re still alive. That quite appeals to me and it is not very inconvenient. There are local testing stations being set up across the country and the rerst can be done on the web. I can manage that.
Before they test measure me, I’m going out for a walk so I can present the best specimen I can be. Later I will do my Gym session while watching the football. No point in sitting still.