Sanders Blog

Sunday, 24th January, 2021

A wet morning which had clouds backlit by a rising, red sun. I’m watching England Test cricket in Sri Lanka while starting my Blog.

Looks like we are going to be under house arrest for quite some time to come. We always thought that the nonsense talked about schools reopening by Half Term was exactly that – nonsense. Now the speculation is whether they will reopen after Easter – circa April 12th. I think that is still very debatable. The talk about so many millions who have been vaccinated is equally duplicitous. Very very few have been vaccinated and won’t be until they’ve had their second jab. Everything else is spin.

House arrest drives one back on to one’s own resources. For me, and Ruth’s going to hate this, it forces me to reflect on my history. Ten years ago today, we were drawing up plans to leave our temporary, new-build property in Yorkshire for a new-build property in Surrey we were purchasing. We had sold our Yorkshire home, spent 6 months in Greece and then 6 months in a rented apartment in Salendine Nook, Huddersfield.

At the same time as moving south, we were going back to Greece for six months and planning our journey. I sometimes wonder how we coped with the stress. Not only was I booking ferries but hotels en route. Ten years ago today, I was preparing to book this hotel in Alsace, France and another in Moderna, Italy. Oh to be doing that again this morning. Still, time for the gym!

…. Actually, I wrote too soon. The sky has cleared and strong sun has enticed us out for a walk. It was a reasonably warm and enjoyable hour’s long walk which really raises the spirits. Lots of other people out this afternoon doing exactly the same thing.

Monday, 25th January, 2021

Beautiful morning of clear, blue sky and strong sunshine. Well, we got away without any snow which is wonderful. The sky last night was clear as a bell with beautiful moon and huge, sparkling stars. This morning there was a light frost on the cars but not on the grass so we feel very lucky.

I ordered a webcam for my new computer yesterday. Ordered from Amazon at 2.00 pm on a Sunday and due to be delivered for free by 9.00 pm on Monday. Who needs the High Street anymore? I have no idea what I will use it for because I know no one who is on Zoom at the moment but I’m sure it will come in handy particularly if we want to contact the Doctors’ Surgery.

Something else which has come up this morning involves my INR testing at home. I test myself at home and email the result in to the Hospital. They email back with an official date for the next test. While things are going well, there may be up to 8 weeks between reporting results. In the past – 6 or 7 years ago – I used to have to drive to the hospital, sit in a crowded waiting room for half an hour, have an armful of blood removed and then wait 4 or 5 days before my result arrived by post. Now I test every week and report when I’m told to. In this way, I am in control of my INR which has to remain between 2.0 – 3.0. Last Monday, it was 2.5. Perfect.

In order to do this, I bought a quite expensive – £500.00/€563.00 – machine to test at home. The test strips cost about £80.00/€90.00 for 24 so that costs £160.00/€180.00 per year. It is worth it to avoid the crowds and the travel but it is all getting so much harder. I can order the test strips on prescription but, really, I only have to test every few weeks. I like to micro-manage my condition for safety and, therefore buy one box myself.

I order from Coaguchek, the manufacturers who, in turn, are owned by Roche Diagnostics which is Swiss. Today, it is much harder to order, the price has gone up hugely plus I now have to pay VAT as a purchaser from a ‘Third Country’. At the same time, Pauline has been told she can’t have a medication she has been prescribed for years and has to have an inferior one produced here. Brexit just gets so much better!

We went out for an hour or so walk in the lovely sunshine. I had hoped to have seen our friendly, fat rabbit but he/she was not to be seen and I suddenly realised why. This little chap was also looking for him.

At 2.00 pm, a lady turned up at our house to provide us with our 8th swab test kit. We perform our own throat & nose test. Put it in a test tube and seal it in a bag. Meanwhile, the lady retreats to her car outside. We speak on the phone as she asks us questions about our social contacts over the past month. I find those questions very easy to answer. She returns to our door to collect the tests and we get paid £25.00/€28.15 each. It’s a great system. I’ll be sorry when it ends in December.

Tuesday, 26th January, 2021

A damp start to the day. We are up at 6.00 am for our Sainsbury‘s delivery. As this pandemic and accompanying restrictions continue, we have refined our shopping while trying to retain the quality and variety of produce we buy.

We have stopped going to shops completely at the moment in the light of the new, more contagious strains of the virus. All shopping is done remotely. We don’t pay for deliveries. Sainsbury‘s are the easiest and most accommodating. Tesco is almost impossible to book.

For that reason, we are doing click-&-collect where we drive into their carpark and load the order into our boot. We are doing the same at Asda. In this way, we are able to maintain our choice of product and quality largely uninterrupted. So, this morning was a Sainsbury‘s delivery. Tomorrow is an Asda click-&-collect followed by another on Thursday at Tesco. It amuses me because 60 years ago Mum would phone through our main, Grocery order from Taylors Groceries which was 200 yards up the High Street but she was so hemmed in with children that she chose to have it delivered. The difference is just one of technology she couldn’t have dreamed of.

This morning I was listening to a Tech entrepreneur being interviewed about the impetus the pandemic had given to moving education on line, remote learning. Twenty years ago, I was desperately trying to persuade staff, parents and pupils that on-line learning/working was the way forward. The limiting factors were the resistance of Staff who lacked much IT experience, the reluctance of parents who hadn’t got Broadband and laptops/computers at home. Tablets didn’t exist then. There was little reluctance on the part of the kids.

Now, it is the order of the day. Part of me wishes to be back there leading the troops but most of me says, Let them get on with it. My time is better spent elsewhere.

Thirty years ago, I was teaching kids to build websites using Macromedia Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash. It was quite cutting edge at the time. I have built websites in the same way for years. Today, I am trying out a more modern, WYSIWYG site designer/builder called NicePage which still allows one to intervene in the Html.

Wednesday, 27th January, 2021

Up at 6.00 am on a milder morning. Grey and damp but 9C/48F. Drive down to Asda carpark and park in a Disabled Bay.

The Disabled Bays have been taken over by Click & Collect for the pandemic. They are also fortunate that their store designs seem to build in covered walkways along the front of the store so customers can queue in the dry. We received a confirmation email of our order over night and we then just click the button to tell them we’ve arrived and a worker comes out to our car with the goods. They leave; we get out of our car and load stuff in to the boot and drive away. Quite slick, easy and safe. We’ll do that again.

Twelve years ago today, we were on the last day of our last Ofsted inspection which damned us with faint praise by delivering the verdict of Satisfactory. Within 10 weeks we had retired and I had been diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation. Momentous times for us. In retrospect, they felt even more momentous than current times.

It is International Holocaust Remembrance Day and it is especially good to see the Jewish community use this occasion to draw attention to the existential crisis for the Uighur community at the hands of the Chinese. It appears to be equally catastrophic and Western governments appear to similarly appease the Chinese by continuing to trade with a country who are committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. It is History that gives us this perspective. It is History that should teach us how to deal with them.

Thursday, 28th January, 2021

Up at 6.00 am. Over freshly squeezed orange juice and a large cup of Yorkshire tea my routine is to download the newspapers, check emails, check our bank account and unstack the dishwasher before making a large cup of freshly ground and brewed coffee with a frothy, cappuccino head sprinkled with chocolate.

Today, we had to be at Tesco by 7.00 am for our click & collect so I only got part way through my routine before we had to leave. I did manage to get to checking the bank account and was delighted to find that the insurance money had been put back in. We paid it out 12 months ago and I have been struggling since May, when we were supposed to go to Tenerife for a month but were stopped by the pandemic.

After hours of work, scores of emails and phone calls, of the insurance company denying liability to the legal group employing Spanish lawyers, the whole thing came full circle to the point where it should have been settled 10 months ago. It would have saved our Bank so much cash and me so much nervous energy and effort. However, almost a year on we have recouped the more than £5,000.00/€5,642.00 outlay and can move on.

After returning home and unpacking, Pauline starts on jam making. First more Lemon Curd and then Blackberry which has been a great hit in our house this year. We are surrounded by woods fringed with blackberry bushes and there was an abundance of huge, sweet blackberries very early in August. We got scratched to pieces but the harvest was worth it.

I’m continuing to learn a new piece of web design software, organising our cloud storage and reading/writing Blogs. This picture above taken on a polaroid camera 40 years ago on our first Greek holiday together spilled out of the cloud. Lovely memory!

Feels like Spring today. The sun is out, The temperature is a balmy 12C/54F. I’ve got 90 mins in the gym coming up followed by roast cod loin for my meal. Before that, I have the critical job of chief jam taster from the Setting Test plates. I can tell you now that both jams are incredibly delicious and may well have to be locked away from me.

Friday, 29th January, 2021

After strong rain last night, we’ve woken to a lovely, dry and sunny morning. It feels warm again at 12C/54F. We are going nowhere. I’ve spent my morning trying to get to grips with this new, web design software. I’m still using Dreamweaver at the moment so the impetus to learn is not really strong enough. I am trying to set some imperatives in my head to force me on. I know when it is really needed, I will not let go until I’ve cracked it. 

I regularly check my social media accounts for contacts from friends. I follow ex-colleagues, ex-pupils, former student-days friends, old Greek friends, relatives and then politicians, Historians, political journalists, etc..

It is very much my way of dealing with the world. I like social contact at one remove. It has almost always been that way. I like people very much and I very interested in their lives but it has to be on my terms. I love communicating and exchanging ideas and I don’t mind joining in with those who disagree with me but I don’t pretend about my beliefs if it offends them. They can take it or leave it. I think this has become accentuated with age.

This morning an old friend – Friend? Well, someone I lived in Digs with at College 50 years ago. – Dr. John Ridley,  originally from Whitley Bay, but for the past 50 years from Catterick, North Yorkshire – posted a lovely joke on Faceache. It came from Barry Cryer and was his wife’s favourite. I thought you might like it.

A man says to his doctor, “I think my wife is going deaf, but I don’t want to mention it. It’ll be tactless and insensitive. Is there any way of checking, without her knowing?”

The doctor replies, “Choose a moment when she has her back to you. Say something in a normal voice and, if she doesn’t answer, move a little closer and say it again. Then you’ll get an idea about her hearing.”

So, when he comes home from work, his wife is standing with her back to him in the kitchen. He asks, “What’s for dinner, love?” but gets no answer. He moves in a little closer. “What’s for dinner, love?” he repeats. Again, no response. He moves even closer. “What’s for dinner, love?” Nothing.

By now, he’s right behind her. He says again, “What’s for dinner, love?”

She turns round and shouts, “For the fourth time – chicken!”

My wife understood that immediately because I’m always accusing her of being deaf. She even went to the Doctor to have a Hearing Test and was told it is perfect. I couldn’t understand it.

Five years ago today, we were enjoying an almost month long run of hot sunshine and temperatures in the upper 20Cs. We were also within weeks of moving down to West Sussex and our new house. How the world has changed since then.

Saturday, 30th January, 2021

It gets lighter every morning. Even today as the rain comes down lightly from leaden skies. Time and the passage of time is fascinating and exciting. That’s what grips me about History. In just 8 weeks the clocks go forward and new life begins. Who knows, we might even have been vaccinated by then.

This day in 1965 was also a Saturday. It was the day on which Winston Churchill’s coffin was carried up the steps into St. Paul’s Cathedral. I can see the black & white picture in my head now. I watched it on television. We didn’t have a television but Saturday afternoon/early evening was the time that Bob and I got to watch one round the corner with Nana & Grandad. I guess that I must have watched it there. It was Mum & Dad’s one concession to modernity. Television was the invention of the devil. It distracted people from the serious things in life like Homework! It was safe to allow us a discrete few hours with our Grandparents watching ‘rubbish’.

I was 13 years old and Bob was 12. Saturday afternoons were special. We would walk round to our Grandparents’ house and would be treated to freshly baked Victoria Sponge Cake that had risen so high it was almost impossible to get into mouths. Don’t worry, we managed it! If there was no sponge cake, Grandad would have bought jam doughnuts – my favourite. This was a little snatch of heaven. We would watch Saturday sport including Grandad’s favourite – Wrestling on ATV. We watched the football results while Grandad checked his Littlewoods Pools predictions. Then the pattern was continued every week: Dr Who, Dixon of Dock Green, Laramie followed by a reluctant walk home to bed.

Over the next few months of 1965, Bob would be 13, I would be 14 and dad would die in hospital of a heart attack at the age of 49. It was a life changing year.

Sunday, 17th January, 2021

We are starting week 4 of our tightened diet, no alcohol and increased exercise. We have not fallen. The greater prize remains in sight provided we stay alive. Wrote to my brother, Bob, to tell him about my prostate cancer test and how fortunate I felt about the result. I felt rather awkward as he is still early in his uncomfortable diagnosis. Didn’t want to sound too celebratory even though I did rather feel it.

Pleasant, sunny and relatively mild day in which Pauline made stock out in the garden for the local cats and dogs to drool over and, later, griddled swordfish steaks out in the late evening sun as seagulls circled overhead. In between doing those jobs, she did some washing and made pots of Lemon Curd jam. I didn’t know but proper Lemon Curd is largely fresh butter mixed with freshly squeezed lemons. Consequently, it has a very short shelf life which is why Pauline only makes three jars at a time. If you like Lemon Curd and you’ve only eaten shop bought jam, Pauline’s would blow your socks off. It is like a totally different animal.

This is where the problem lies. Pauline is constantly active and, consequently, stick thin. I spent my time reading the Sunday Times, writing emails and letters to friends and researching an urgently needed new computer Everything was done sitting down. As a result, it is incumbent on me to spend a 90 mins session in the gym while I watch a football match on Sky. The match – Sheffield Utd. v Tottenham – was not great and the exercise hurt. It was wonderful when I finished and had along, hot power shower. Amazing how reviving that can be. I used to love 20 mins in the jacuzzi after gym work at the health Club. That may have to be the next thing.

The next big (little)thing in my computer choice may turn out to look like this. It will not be a tower but a small, flat box on the desktop. It almost reminds me of the PCs I had 30 years ago where the monitor stood proudly on top of the case. If anyone out there knows of any reason I should not go this way, I would be grateful for the advice.

Monday, 18th January, 2021

It is Christmas morning in the Sanders household and quite chilly it is outside. No I haven’t got the date wrong. I have just ordered my new computer system. Quite exciting although it wasn’t easy. Because of the pandemic, manufacturing in all areas is in deficit. A number of the pieces that were my first preference were not in stock and not currently being renewed.

When I finally decided on a reasonable package, and loaded it all in to my on-line basket, put in my credit card and pressed ‘BUY’, a message popped up: Credit Card not validated. Text messages from my credit card company asking me to contact them to discuss suspected fraud arrived. Long, Please Wait phone call to the Fraud Department. All verified and cleared. Go back in to pay again but … website timed out! Have I paid for it or not? Long, Please Wait phone call to HP UK. Eventually answered by wonderful young (30 yrs) lad who longs to be retired. I explained how delightful it is. He sighs, confirms my order hasn’t been paid for and takes payment over the phone. I am told it will arrive tomorrow.

Can’t believe how cheap this system is. I was paying three times as much ten years ago. Twenty years ago, I paid £3,500 for a huge, colour laser printer. It feels lovely. We have gone out for a bracing, one hour, Christmas walk. It’s these moments that I’m tempted to open a bottle of Rioja but … I won’t. It will stay behind me for better times.

Tuesday, 19th January, 2021

A damp but mild day. The temperature has remained 11C/52F overnight although it is a little breezy. Up at 6.00 am and Sainsbury‘s delivered at 6.30 am. I’d hardly finished my freshly squeezed orange juice. Life is shockingly fast paced. It is still largely dark when the doorbell rings although light sky is beginning to appear in the east which seems appropriate.

Ordered my new computer setup yesterday at 1.00 pm. It is being delivered this morning. Great service from HP (Hewlett Packard). What it does mean, however, is that I will have a lot of work and disruption of my systems for the rest of the day.

One of the things that happens with computer systems is that we build layer upon layer of software incrementally just as we add hardware gradually as we need it as well. The software and hardware is not there in its own right but to fulfil a function. It becomes a taken-for-granted facility. I can’t afford a long period of disruption while I try and remember how I performed regular tasks.

I’ve done this so many times over the past 40 years that I know how terrible my memory is in these processes. I now take photos on my phone of every piece of my PC that I will need to replicate on the new machine. I will probably set it up on the kitchen table and not disturb my current system until I have got everything up and working.

Highlights of the day after Sainsbury’s delivery and the arrival of my new PC include a worker coming to sort out our back gate which is malfunctioning and a delivery of fresh swordfish which has suddenly become available. It’s getting so exciting that I’m going to hide in the gym for an hour or two.

Wednesday, 20th January, 2021

Up early on a dark and breezy morning. Looks like it rained over night. We won’t be going out at all today other than to walk across the garden to the gym. I’ve got a day of work installing software on my new computer and learning new routines. I’m looking forward to it but it is also a stress I haven’t felt for a while.

When I’m stressed and determined to sort a problem urgently, the house is thrown in to turmoil. Yesterday, because of space, the new computer boxes had to be unpacked in the kitchen. Because I still needed to keep my work processes going, I will not replace the old PC system until I am completely confident that I’ve got the new one fully replacing it.

Today, Pauline has been thrown out of the Office to make way for my two systems to work in tandem. She does have her own office cum ironing room cum dressing room upstairs but, for now, she is being moved in to the kitchen and on to the dining table.

Currently it is chaos and there are cables everywhere. My current PC is hooked up to a Mono Laser Printer on one side and a Colour Laser Printer on the other via a switchable printer sharer. It is hooked up to a Label Printer and to a Flat Bed Scanner. Obviously, it is also hooked up to the BT Hub.

Also on the desk I’ve got a Hive Hub and a Gigabit Switch plus a wi-fi extender out to the gym so I can run my Sky Q-Box. It’s a lot to get right and it is the reason buying a new set up is rather stressful. Pauline should be allowed back in by Friday.

Thursday, 21st January, 2021

Gorgeous sunny day although only about 10C/50F in the shade. I wasn’t thinking of spending too much time outside today anyway. Emails to our legal rep and to a friend in sunny Rochdale and then rebuilding our Office with the old machine gone and the new one being set up for all services. This is more complex than you might think and it took me all morning.

Printers, printer sharers, scanners, hubs all hooked up as the old system is slowly and methodically dismantled and moved out into the back garden. In the old days, all peripherals had to be installed with their dedicated drivers and software before they can be used. Today, they really are plug & play through 64 bit Windows 10 Professional. Then, before I could do anything else, Pauline insisted on completely cleaning the area. It had 5 years of dust behind our L-shaped desk as we unplugged and threaded cables through the desktop cut outs. All surfaces were vacuumed, wiped and steam cleaned before I was allowed anywhere near it again. For the rest of the day, Pauline kept remarking, Doesn’t it smell wonderfully fresh in here? Of course, I am obsessed with tidiness and Pauline with cleanliness. Perfect match!

My copy of Dreamweaver 8 has become corrupted and it is almost impossible to buy. If you know of anyone who could give/sell me a copy, I would be happy to hear of it. It just remained for me to take my old PC apart in the garden and set about the hard drives with a lump hammer. Looking far the worse for wear, it has gone in the boot of the car to go off to the tip tomorrow.

Friday, 22nd January, 2021

Gorgeous morning in every respect. The sky is blue and the sun is shining. We went off to the Recycle Site to dispose of the old computer. It was so busy that we decided to go back later. On to the beach to enjoy a few rays.

We walked for a while in splendid isolation. The beach was almost deserted and the Marina was little different.

Home by mid-morning and, as we drank coffee, received a phone call from the legal firm my bank had appointed to try and get back £4000.00/€4,500.00 from a Tenerife villa rental last May which we couldn’t take up. Both services are provided by our bank’s Black Account. They use Direct Line to provide us with ‘free’ annual travel cover and Simpson Millar to provide us with ‘free’ Legal Cover. We had already successfully claimed about £1,500.00/€1,700.00 before we asked the insurance company to pay back the rest.

They prevaricated for months and then said they thought it was legally recoverable and asked the legal arm to pursue it. All this time, I am doing lots of paperwork to both teams proving the worthiness of our claim. Lots of people, we know, give up at this stage. The bank’s website encourages this with encouragingly big, clickable buttons to Cancel Claim. We persisted. Today, we were rewarded with the news that our bank’s insurers had accepted the advice of our bank’s legal team that the project was not cost effective and they are going to immediately refund all our money.

If only we had got somewhere to spend our money. Even the efficacy of the vaccine is sounding a little less certain and airlines are not expecting flying to recover much at all this year. We have flights and hotel in Athens rolled over to the end of August. I am desperate to use them but I will not be taking big risks. European tourist destinations are going to see another bleak season this summer.

Pleased to say that I found an old copy of Macromedia Dreamweaver in an old, school file and it installed easily. This has saved me about £480.00 per year which is what Adobe (who bought Macromedia) now charge to rent the software. I’ve accepted MS Office Pro rental at £90.00/€102.00 per year because of the greatly enhanced cloud storage it brings but almost £500.00 year for software I use only once a month for a few hours is going too far. My old copy will do me for the next decade.

Saturday, 23rd January, 2021

Another cool start to a morning. We were up at 6.00 am. Sainsburys delivered at 6.30 am. and, by 8.30 am we were out walking wearing Fleeces and woolly hats. We did an hour’s walk which encompassed taking ‘Returns’ to the Post Office from a mail order.

Really enjoyed the walk. Everywhere was deserted for a Saturday morning. Anyone we do meet is desperate to distance but also communicated at least, Good Morning. Walked past the bush with the same robin singing away and noticed this lovely camellia flowering beautifully in the garden.

This picture is taken from the Post Office door and shows our normally bustling village square totally deserted. Pauline was the only person in the Post Office. The whole experience is quite disconcerting.

The North of England – Yorkshire and Lancashire where we have spent so many years of our lives – is currently experiencing snow. We swore when we left ten years ago that we never wanted to see snow ever again having battled it for the best part of 40 years across the Pennines. Today, Pauline has griddled fish outside in the garden under a lovely, clear and sunny sky. This is the sort of service I expect! Completed four weeks of no-alcohol today. I last drank wine on Boxing Day. I have absolutely no idea why I’m doing it. I love wine. However, I told myself I would so I am.

Sunday, 10th January, 2021

The coldest night of the season so far has left us with a frost which has lingered. We’ve had the heating on upstairs and down. Watched the political programmes. Keir Starmer on Marr was depressingly bad. Can’t face any more of that today. We went out for a long walk although Pauline was complaining about the cold on her face.

Soon, the energy kicked in and we were both roasting hot, over dressed and sweating. We have developed a regular route that is an easy way to fill just over an hour without getting muddy so we took that today. Amazing how many people passed us in cars as we walked. Almost looked busier than a work day.

I have no idea what the Lock Down is supposed to be this time. So many are going to work and so many are going to school that the atmosphere is very busy. This Tory government are playing with fire at all our expenses. You have to hope that it all comes back to bite them and that mini-Trump gets his come-uppance just like Trump is doing. All these populist Nationalists will see their day end badly and we must punish them for their crimes.

At home, it’s FA Cup weekend and, at this stage at least, I can’t really get in to that. Perhaps I’m not a football purist. I am only really attracted by big confrontations of fairly equal sides. We will be downloading something from Sky Cinema / Netflix / Film on 4, etc. Last night we watched a mildly interesting recent film called Greed featuring Steve Coogan and David Mitchell and loosely based on the career of Philip Green. It wasn’t good but it was enough to amuse us for a couple of hours. That’s not a real justification but the best I can do.

I notice that The Skiathan has finally given up the ghost. Brexit has done for him. Exiled from his island, he no longer has enough to fill his pages. Now, because of Brexit, he would either have to emigrate fully or just holiday there on a short break like so many others. Makes you wonder why he was a Brexiteer.

Monday, 11th January, 2021

A grey, sombre day. We have to stay in because we are having our central heating serviced sometime between 10.00 am – 3.00 pm which virtually destroys the day.

Last night we were in China in the 1920s. We were watching a film based on the Somerset Maugham novel, The Painted Veil. It is essentially a love story (ugh!) but set in the middle of a cholera epidemic in small Chinese enclave which featured a dilapidated old convent building where the Mother Superior – Diana Rigg in what must have been her last performance – was ‘saving’ the children of the town through indoctrination allied to social care and education.

A young and ambitious epidemiologist volunteered to go out from London to replace the previous doctor who had died of cholera in trying to combat the epidemic. He was forcing his new, young, bride to accompany him. Without going through the tedium of the Love Regained theme, the underlying action centred on the inventive, young scientist identifying the water source of the infection and constructing a Heath-Robinson, bamboo construction to deliver an alternative and healthy drinking water for the town. Essentially, he was bringing Colonial can-do of the 1st World to the 3rd World Chinese peasants. Of course, the young scientist caught cholera and died. Even I could have told him that was going to happen.

My Masters thesis integrated an analysis of Historian, R.H.Tawney’s travels in a peasant, and largely pre-industrial China of exactly this period. He was enchanted by its agrarian, peasant, craft society and believed it was what England could return to. This chimed with the Arts & Crafts movement of William Morris, Ruskin and Pugin which had so informed Tawney’s early life. Disease epidemic and savage poverty didn’t feature largely in his account which focussed more on sunshine and socialism. I read his account 43 years ago in the blistering heat of a Greek island beach. Happy days!

Well the boiler service threw up a problem just in time. There is a fault on the Pressure Gauge and we still have 10 weeks of our full warranty left so it will be replaced without cost. We are going to have to take out a service plan for future years.

Tuesday, 12th January, 2021

Up at 6.00 am on a dark, damp but very warm morning. It had remained 9C/48F over night which is only very warm in relative terms but we’re not complaining. Sainsbury‘s were delivering at 7.00 am. It’s a fantastic service and costs only £1.00/€1.12. Next week’s is free so, overall, it is negligible. Of course Brexit has hit our salad order. We’ve had to accept less enjoyable substitutes but that’s what they all voted for – wartime rations! We will also do a Tesco Click & Collect later in the week. We don’t have to go in to the store. The collection point is outside in the fresh air of the carpark which is fine. We will have fresh fish delivered to our door later in the week as well so I don’t think we’re going to starve.

We are taking legal action in Spain for recovery of villa rental of just over €5000.00/£4,480.00 for loss of use because of the pandemic. Our bank account gives us travel insurance and legal cover. The travel insurance arm told me the monies should be recoverable through legal action. The law firm’s Spanish office has told me that it could cost the full value of the claim to take the action to court. I predicted this from the outset. It looks like it will go back to the insurance arm for settlement. We paid it out 12 months ago. Whatever, I will not give it up.

I do 90 mins in the gym every day. I usually start around 2.00 pm. What worries me is that I don’t appear to be getting any fitter. I am completely wiped out by the end and only revive after a long, hot and powerful shower. I would have expected this to get easier and the recovery quicker but that is not the case. Nothing seems to change. If anything, I get more tired and take longer to recover. Is it my age? Still waiting for my second PSA test result to appear in the notes on my surgery’s website. It’s nagging at me a little.

Wednesday, 13th January, 2021

The first Lock Down was greeted by wonderful weather throughout March and April. This latest one is being played out against a dull, damp and fairly unsympathetic backdrop. At times like this, I retreat into my head and other occasions. Yesterday we heard from a dear friend from Sifnos and it reminded me to visit a local Facebook page where I found these photos.

Sifnos is famous for its Keramica or pottery and one product that appeared to be largely confined to the island is its distinctive chimney pots. Above is one example. Below are a few more.

As our house was being designed and built, we decided that a huge, tiled floor area would be better heated by underfloor cables. There was a British company called Warmup who had an Athens office. We bought materials from UK because it was so much cheaper and the Athens office came to the island to supervise installation. It worked excellently although there were only a few weeks at the beginning and the end of our stays that we needed it.

We had considered doing some times in the winter and shipped a log burning stove over from Halifax to the island and had it installed. We soon discovered that, although a number of islanders had open fires for the Winter, the island had almost no reserves of burnable wood. Why hadn’t we noticed that over the 20 years before? Wood has to be brought from the mainland. You only have to experience a cold, winter day in Greece to know it feels much more savage than almost anything we experience here.

We wanted to have underfloor heating installed here but our builders wouldn’t allow it because of their 5 year warranty. They had a formula and wanted to stick to it. We were offered personalisation choices but only within the builders playbook. Having said that, we have smart controlled, dual zone central heating which is wonderfully sensitive and easily controlled. We have smart controlled heating in the garage/gym as well.

I’ve just received a text message from my doctor to say that the result of my second PSA test is reassuring and within reasonable levels for my age range. If I was drinking, I would be opening a bottle of red wine right now. As it is, I’m drinking a cup of fresh coffee.

Thursday, 14th January, 2021

Up early after about 6 hrs sleep because a worker was attending our house at 9.00 am. He was replacing a double glazed, floor-to- ceiling window in our garden area while we are still under warranty. It was just becoming light at 6.30 am and the temperature had not fallen below 10C/50F over night. Eventually, we received a text to say he wouldn’t appear until early afternoon. When he did, he heaved a big sigh of relief and said nothing needed replacing but the drain holes needed cleaning out and the sealant replacing. He was present for 30 minutes and he skipped back to his van and a long lunch break. I know we paid a lot for this house but it almost feels wrong to be claiming for repairs after 5 years of use.

We’ll forget out discomfort because there are more important things to think about. Something strange has happened to Pauline’s OneDrive automatic backup process and I’m getting it in the neck. She is compiling a book of recipes and has been working hard for hours in the evening. Her material is placed on her desktop and it is automatically uploaded to her Cloud Storage – Ms OneDrive. It means she has a Local and a Cloud copy.

Suddenly, over night, OneDrive seemed to decide to reverse the process and download all her old, disorganised material over the top of her newly organised local material. I’ve had to spend a large part of the day investigating that. I won’t bore you any more with the solution but I think I’ve found it and we can move on.

Did a big exercise routine in the gym this afternoon to counterbalance the morning spent at my computer. Actually, I worked out in 1989 East Berlin as I watched Atomic Blonde which revolves around a spy who has to find a list of double agents who are being smuggled into the West on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It was during this year that brought Dr Angela Merkel out of scientific research in east Germany and into politics. I like the challenge of mental espionage and it certainly takes me out of the exercise-pain zone although I’m not sure this was the best example of the genre.

Friday, 15th January, 2021

Can you believe that it’s the middle of January already? Even so, we are trying to make use of every single minute. We were up at 6.00 am and had breakfasted and received our Sainsbury’s delivery by 7.00 am. It’s going to be a long day. Hard to believe that it is 12 years since we were getting up at 6.00 am every work day and out on the road by 7.00 am. It’s 10.30 am and it has felt quite a long day already.

We have had a visit from the heating engineer who has removed the old (5yrs) Hot Water Expansion Chamber (No further explanation required.) and fitted a new one. Fortunately, this is a free service. In 3 months time, it would have cost us a fortune apparently.

Costing us money now is a problem as a direct result of the Brextremists’ actions. Of course, most Little Englanders will be blithely unaware of the change at all because they have no desire to communicate with foreigners. When we were sending Christmas cards to Greek friends, we had to download Customs Declaration Forms to be stuck on the back of the envelopes. Postage for each card was £1.70/€1.91 in addition.

Today, the postman delivered this. We believe it is a letter or card from Europe which now attracts additional postage fees. We have to drive down to the Sorting Office to pay our £2.00/€2.25 excess fee to release the letter. This is the sort of country we have become.

Saturday, 16th January, 2021

Up a bit later today. After 7.00 am and it has completely thrown us out for the morning. After Breakfast, we drive out to the Postal Sorting Office. It is only a couple of miles away. We have come to pick the letter that requires £2.00/€2.25 excess fee to release. It is something of an anti-climax. Not from Greece but Rochdale. An elderly former colleague of ours who lost his wife six months ago has sent us a second Christmas card and newsletter but wrongly addressed and without a stamp. It comes on the day that we hear that another, elderly ex-colleague of ours who lost his wife a year ago has had a breakdown and is struggling to hold on to reality. Life can be savage!

We drove back via the beach because Pauline loves to be in contact with the sea. The tide was on its way in and there were a few seagulls on the water and the odd crow on the beach but, otherwise, we were alone.

The dreaded form arrived this morning. I filled it in on-line in about 10 minutes rather than go through the rigmarole of sending it off. I am now on-licence for life. Every 3 years, I have to prove my worthiness. Bring back Ofsted!

Sunday, 3rd January, 2021

It’s Sunday but who would know it? Actually all the houses around here, who vainly believed it was Christmas recently, are outside taking down their lights. At last, Pauline and I can celebrate. Normality is resumed!

Well, almost… Normally, as I wrote last week, we would be committing ourselves to an aggregate of about 3 months of travelling costing anything between £10 – 15,000.00/€11.3 – 17,000.00 of spending. Not this year … yet. Like so many people, we are storing up our money. Normality means facing reality. The beginning of the year is a time for renewing policies and getting servicing done. This year it is exacerbated by the fact that our House 5-Year Warranty runs out. Everything including the white goods will need cover.

For the past 5 years, everything apart from Contents has been covered by the builders including Emergency Cover. This is Pauline’s domain. She researches, discusses with me then purchases this sort of contract and I am happy to have my minions do that for me. We have the burglar alarm and the boiler to be serviced this month and Pauline will deal with that. Pauline arranged the renewal of our driving licences and passports. She will renew our annual travel insurance and European Green Card. I have to keep my mind ‘free’ for higher things and there a lot of football matches on again today.

Interesting developments reported this weekend of expats who had flown back to UK for Christmas with relations being denied seats on the flights from Heathrow back to their homes in Spain. We would really be struggling in our Greek house. The cost and effort of getting there merited a six month stay. Now, we would only be allowed 3 months and have to return to UK. We could go back after that for another 3 months but really couldn’t justify it so we would have to pay a caretaker to look after the property and maintain the grounds for 9 months of the year. This would include going in once a week to turn over the water pump so it didn’t seize up. The only option would be to sell.

Monday, 4th January, 2021

One of the amazingly widespread illusions held by many holidaymakers who spend a couple of weeks on a Greek island is that the hot sunshine prevails all year round. Greek Tourist agencies would love that to be the case. It is the reason why the Canary Islands and Cyprus are so popular but above is the reality. Cold, damp, often grey and very quiet. Of course, it is exacerbated by the pandemic and restrictions on movement but even in March, as we battled through the driving hail, living conditions were very bleak.

This morning, it is not much better here. Damp, cool and gloomy, I am going to go to the gym. Before that, I’ve tried to buy a new computer only to find most parts out of stock. I video conferenced the sales girl at Hewlett Packard to be told that they were desperately embarrassed to be out of stock as the pandemic was seriously affecting production. I was quoted a date of mid-March for new products. It is all a bit depressing. Thought Brexit would have sorted this out!

Had to email my little sister this morning. I last saw her in 2018 although she only lives 5 miles/ 8 km away from me. I don’t want to cramp her style. We last met purely by chance in Tesco carpark in West Durrington. We were born in a small, East Midlands village and we met, purely by chance, 60 years later in a carpark in West Sussex. I love coincidences like that. Anyway, I needed a new Emergency Contact for my new passport and she has kindly offered to be that. If my body is sent home in a bin bag from some foreign field, she will put it in Recycle.

Tuesday, 5th January, 2021

We are just completing our 10th day of our new diet/exercise regime. No alcohol or complex carbohydrates, smaller portions and religious adherence to our exercise circuit every day. We are both feeling much better after over indulgence leading up to Christmas/Boxing Day. I am actually helped by Lock Down coming in to place because I can use that isolation to focus on my project. We’re really enjoying the gym in these dark, damp, depressing days. The latest distraction from the pain of running is a film that really suits me.

I do like well written spy thrillers particularly if they set in a realistic, historical context. Quite by accident, I found one on Netflix. Red Sparrow is set in modern-day Russia and is keeping me guessing until I am in the final third of the narrative. It is based on based on Jason Matthews’ 2013 book of the same title. I think I am, very belatedly, becoming addicted to Fiction

Of course, as well as physical projects, we also need mental/intellectual ones. Today I’ve been updating our data backup facilities. We both have large amounts of data we back up in various areas of cloud and hard memory every day. Our Broadband supplier is BT and they are fantastic both for price and service. However, the huge, 1 terabyte cloud facility they provide us with is so difficult to access in any useful way that we have given up. We have cloud facility from Norton–Symantec but not much and the most accessible is cloud space from Microsoft – OneDrive.

I was intending to buy a new desktop setup with a Home Cloud Solid State Drive which I could access from anywhere with anything across the web. It would only cost circa £150.00/€166.00. However, a new computer setup will have to wait until lockdown is over and new products are built again. A home cloud drive will also have to wait for that. Today, I’ve chosen to rent more space from OneDrive at a cost of £50.00/€55.40 per year.

I can’t spend my days watching sport and films so I’ve decided to revive my Ancestry membership. It is a long time since I did anything. Last time I was on it, I was building Pauline’s Family Tree.

When I logged in and paid my subs for the month, I accessed my original copy of the Family Tree and most people had green leaves topping their name plates indicating additional contacts worth following up for each of them. That will be one of my projects for the next few weeks.

Wednesday, 6th January, 2021

Cold, wet, dark and uninviting outside. We’re staying in apart from when we walk across the garden to the gym. This morning I am continuing to work on ensuring all my/our data is securely backed up and easily retrieved from computer, laptop, iPad or smartphone. It is important to have this stuff easily available wherever we are in the country/world which is the real value of ‘cloud’ storage.

While I was checking the automatic backup process, some 40 year old photos popped up. Older readers will immediately recognise that they were taken on the now mainly defunct Polaroid camera process which was popular then because of its instant results. These were in contrast with others which were set off in the post and returned weeks later. This was the first camera of our married life.

Looking like a cross between The Hairy Monster – aka Bearded like the Pard – stroking our cat, Gemima – aka Mammoth Task – in the kitchen of our first house. It was a renovated Coaching House in Meltham, West Yorkshire. Pauline had done a lot of this work before I had arrived on the scene. She had bought the property for £4,500.00/ €5000.00 and done a large part of the work with an local Authority improvement grant.

On the left is our black and white bedroom replete with its state of the art, black & white television. I notice that I took this photo because of the avalanche of snow sitting outside the bedroom window. It was at this window that the cats rattled the latch to be let in long after we had gone to bed.

By the time we had got together, Pauline had two sister cats – Flossie and Gemima – who she had adopted as baby kittens. It was a very romantic time. We had only just been married for a couple of years.

For her Christmas present after 3 years of marriage I really pushed the boat out and bought Pauline a MICROWAVE. I remember that it was massive and I could hardly lift it. I also remember that it was a Philips and we had it for about 15 years. I think it cost £270.00/€300.00 in 40 years ago which was quite a lot. Look how beautiful Pauline was. She’s hardly changed a bit since then.

Thursday, 7th January, 2021

Beautiful, bright and sunny morning with a hint of frost. We will be able to go for a walk in the sunshine this afternoon and to griddle Swordfish in the garden later. It is particularly important to cook swordfish outside because it leaves an intense – almost unpleasant – acrid aroma lingering for days and we would much rather bequeath that to our neighbours than harbour it ourselves.

We don’t just love good food and eating it but we love kitchens and kitchen gadgets. Pauline makes lots of jam which we eat mainly with yoghurt. Unfortunately, having sealed the jars successfully, she can never re-open them. I have bought her umpteen jar openers which have worked patchily but she complains they destroy the lids she wants to use again.

I found the gadget above which is brilliant. It is battery operated and has plastic arms which close on the jar and hold it firmly while the lid is progressively clamped and turned by more plastic arms. The result is a quiet ‘pop’ as the seal is broken but the lid is undamaged. I can’t wait for the next jar that needs opening.

Ecclesiastical Epiphany yesterday and this was the scene on Sifnos. The normal experience in Greece is that a priest throws a crucifix into the sea and brave young men dive into the icy water to be the first to bring it up off the sea bed. That has been banned because of Covid restrictions. This character is a potter. He is called Adonis and we used to call him the Poseur because he was given to marching bare chested up and down the beach picking pretty, young tourist women up. In recent years he has become increasingly, overtly religious and yesterday he had himself filmed walking through the port carrying a homemade cross which he proceeded to throw in to the sea and then wade in to retrieve it.

It was all a bit Monty Python. The cross was wooden and didn’t sink. The middle aged potter didn’t dive into the freezing briny but waded into the harbour to pick up the floating cross in a less than mystical demonstration. For him it may have been a religious epiphany but for the rest of us it is an epiphany of the zealotry of religion. In American politics all Trumps supporters are suddenly standing back and declaring they thought he was mad all along and they never really supported him. Increasingly humankind is standing back from this lunatic religiosity and embracing alternative understandings of what it means to be human. The churches are withering on the vine. The sooner the better for both.

Friday, 7th January, 2021

Quite a sharp frost this morning. We were out about 8.30 am. Because the car is now out on the drive since we have redeployed the garage, it has some ice on the windscreen which I have to spray clean before we set off for Halfords for … de-icer. Then I have to go to the surgery for my second PSA blood test. Soon, I will get the thumbs up or the thumbs down depending on Caesar’s mood.

Home for coffee and then we drove down to the beach which was remarkably popular. There were people and dogs all over the place. I’m not keen on dogs but they looked amusing charging through the water as the tide went out.

We park on the Littlehampton Marina Parade and then walk for half an hour towards Worthing so that we complete an hour by the time we get back to the car. We are both clad in a number of layers to keep warm and are really glowing as we finish our walk.

To get to the beach from our house, we have had to drive 2-3 miles. Most people have done that this morning. When we got home, I found an article on the BBC site about a couple of young women who had driven 5 miles to a reservoir to do their daily walk. When they parked in the carpark, some policemen got out of their car and arrested them for travelling out of their area. They issued them with fixed-penalty notices which will carry a £200.00 fine each.

When I read the article I found this had taken place at Foremark Reservoir in Derbyshire. I spent the first year of my life in Foremark although I haven’t any memory of it.

Friday, 7th January, 2021

Lovely morning. After Breakfast, Pauline started making bread. She has a lot of wholemeal flour she needs to use up. The bread will go in the freezer for future use. We’re not eating it at the moment. I’m two weeks in to my no-alcohol already. Only another 22 to go. Oh God!

Talking about God, I had a fascinating if spiky email exchange with one of my sisters this morning. I had asked her for a memory of our past. She was telling me that she eschewed history and preferred to live in the present. It is something I can’t even begin to understand. People who don’t take account of their past would be constantly repeating their mistakes. Every time they burned themselves on a flame, it would come as a complete shock. Flames burn? Well, I didn’t know that. In the next breath she was telling me that she would be worshipping her God tomorrow.

Leaving aside the fantasy of deity, all religion is based on faith in a past. For people like me, the bible is a complete fiction. For believers, the bible is an historical account of god made man? I will never forget a documentary I once watched about a man who had lost a part of his brain that dealt with memory. He had been a classical conductor but could no longer do it. He had to be institutionalised and his wife visited him every day. When she arrived, he didn’t recognise and had to be told who she was and he did the same every few moments, greeting her with the same phrase, Until this moment, I didn’t know who you were. He had no history even lasting minutes. It destroyed his life.

We pantheists don’t need a god to legitimise our lives. Look at this winter scene above. This saturnalian scene speaks for itself. It’s beginning to feel as if Spring is not so far away.

Took these photos this morning as we did an hour’s walk around our local area. It was absolutely delightful communing with Nature. We even saw our friendly rabbit. Got back to the good news that our 7th Covid test had come back negative. Phew!

Sunday, 27th December, 2020

So our 69th Christmas is over and we move on. Our Wedding Anniversary is on Wednesday and New Year’s Eve on Thursday but we started our diet this morning. No more alcohol. No more carbohydrate. Much smaller portions of everything and lots more exercise. It looks like it will be at least March before we are freed by vaccination so this project will fill the gap. We won’t book anything until the position is clearer.

In the past, the end of year would signal moves to book up for the next. Until ten years ago, we would be booking a P&O car ferry from King George Dock in Hull to Zeebrugge in Belgium for the Friday night that we finished school in July with a return at the beginning of September. The sailing was at 7.00 pm and arrived next morning around 12 hrs later. We droved off across Europe well slept and breakfasted ready for 18hrs behind the wheel to Ancona.

For young people as we then were, this was quite a romantic introduction to Europe. We actually looked forward to it. Today we learned that P&O was ceasing this long established route altogether. All round, European travel will never be the same.

Monday, 28th December, 2020

A miserably dull and cool morning. I have spent it writing to every single member of Labour’s Shadow Cabinet – and there are 96 of them – about the upcoming Brexit vote. Even though they can’t change it, I want Labour to not be complicit. They must be free to oppose and criticise from a position of strength not guilt by association.

I have done this many times before and it was very time consuming. Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet was made up of unreconstructed digital luddites who refused to list anything but an email which they never read. One or two refused even that. You can’t run a modern country without modern tools. I was able to write my message and access every one of the 96’s Twitter accounts at a click of a mouse.

We are having our 7th Covid Test this afternoon. The previous 6 have all proved negative for infection but have provided positive reassurance plus £400.00 towards our Tesco bill. We will continue until next October even though we should have been vaccinated long before that.

May be by then we will have visited beautiful Bergamo. Never been there but the town was featured recently on TV in terms of its reaction to the pandemic. We both thought quite independently that it looked the most wonderful place and the people seemed delightful. Both impressions may be completely wrong but I’d like to find out for myself. It is just 37 miles from Milano and 70 miles from Verona. We really enjoyed Milano but have never visited Verona. A stay in Bergamo with a visit to Verona sounds like a lovely aspiration on a dark, cold and dank day.

Tuesday, 29th December, 2020

Much brighter this morning with an orange sky radiating from a long, low sun. We were expecting a frost at least but it is quite mild.

My job is vacuuming the house this morning followed by a hard workout in the gym. First, though, I have correspondence to keep up with. My friend from Boston, Massachusetts has written to me and so has a friend from Sifnos. I have to phone the surgery and make arrangement for a second PSA test because my first one produced a worryingly high result. I am a little reluctant to visit a centre for the unhealthy but this certainly merits the risk.

Otherwise, not going out is the old staying in. My elderly sister, Ruth, is much more adventurous than me. She is responsible for this lot:

Have they been feeding these children too well? Contrast with last week’s photo from 11 years ago. Isn’t it amazing and an heuristic demonstration of the passage of time. These kids, like bean sprouts, have thickened and shot up. Ruth looks even more beautiful than usual and Kevan …. never changes.

Plans changed as the sun came out and we decided to go out for a walk. We were out for about 70 mins and covered about 5 miles/8km. I dress for comfort and activity. Pauline always looks like she is on a fashion shoot. She even strikes a good pose!

As we walked, the most beautiful bird song trilled out. I searched the tree tops to find it and suddenly realised that it was much lower and just above my head in a bush. We stood as the robin looked at us directly and sang away so strongly. Eventually, we left him singing and walked on. As we did, I suddenly realised that I should have taken a photograph. Instant regret! I’ll get it on the way back in half an hour. What’s the likelihood of him still being there? Even before we turned the corner on our way back home, we could hear him singing and, amazingly, he hadn’t moved at all. What absolute joy in that little creature!

Wednesday, 30th December, 2020

Bright, sunny but with a light frost this morning. Exactly 42 years ago, the Pennine moors were heavily blanketed in snow. It was our wedding day. The council gritter teams were on strike and the roads were barely passable.

All our friends and family made a huge effort and we didn’t get married alone. It was a wonderful day and I have been the most fortunate man for 42 years. Not everything has been straight forward, as you might imagine, but never have I doubted Pauline’s complete and utter support. There have been so many times when I have needed it and, sometimes, desperately. She has always been there.

Some years after our wedding and on an anniversary when we had exhausted the need for presents, I bought a £3.00 little book of quotations to give her on the day. Grow Old With Me it was entitled and she has done. The little book has been on her dressing table at the side of every bed we have slept in for the past 30+ years. Please let us grow even older!

It is so lovely this morning that we are going for a walk on the beach, arm in arm and in love. Sorry!

Thursday, 31st December, 2020

Walking but not arm in arm this morning. At 7.00 am on a cool morning, Pauline was shopping in Sainsburys and I was walking to Rustington and back. It’s not a long walk. I do it in about 45 mins but I was really glowing when I got back to the car. Home for coffee and Pauline orders an industrial blower heater to quickly raise the temperature in the gym when we need to. It already has a wall-mounted oil filled ladder radiator which provides a slow, low, background heat but these upcoming days we may need a booster. She found a good one in Screwfix, orders it on-line and, within 30 mins, we have collected it.

What we didn’t realise is that we had to construct it ourselves. I have to say that £50.00/€56.00 for the privilege of being allowed to build my own heater does not recommend itself to me. especially when it involved 16 bolts with 16 nuts and 32 washers. Still the partnership managed it reasonably quickly.

From Screwfix, we drove home via the beach. Pauline is getting an appetite for posing on the beach. It was a gorgeous day!

We’re not doing anything to see in the new year but then we never do. The only difference this year is that we are not drinking so the champagne will remain in the wine cooler. Midnight will be celebrated with a glass of sparkling water and a kiss. It might be wishful thinking but, unless we’ve been freed by vaccination and are off on our travels, I’m hoping I can maintain my discipline through to the end of June. After that, all bets are off!

I put a photo of Pauline on Facebook and Twitter as we celebrated our Wedding Anniversary with a walk on the beach. I was amazed to find 60 friends and relatives wished us well including from our doctor in Yorkshire of 20 years ago. That was lovely and we received e-cards from Ruth and Richard which was very kind.

Friday, 1st January, 2021

Well we have started the New Year with the British Exceptionalists crowing about leaving Europe as the establishment quietly admits that they have hyped up the availability of vaccine to get us out of this pandemic. Suddenly, as the new year opens, Chief medical officer Chris Whitty warns coronavirus vaccine shortages will last for months. Imprisonment circles us at every turn. Cut off from Europe and … cut off from Europe. What’s worse, we have to live and listen to this gang of sheisters!

It is cold outside. Nobody is about. The world is closed. I am reduced to watching old Test Match series on Sky TV and building Office chairs. If you follow the Blog, you will know that I have recently made a foolish decision in purchasing totally inappropriate replacements. Yesterday, the replacements for the replacements arrived unexpectedly. As with so much now, we had to construct them. It’s not a particularly difficult job for two people in love but it shouldn’t have to be at all.

It took us at least an hour with an allen key and some frustrating bolts but we got there. Sitting is much more cushioned now.

On this day last year, I was optimistic for the future, setting resolutions which started with booking foreign travel. Well that went well. I’ve spent the rest of the year fighting to get my money back. There is still a legal case in a Spanish court waiting for resolution and a flight and hotel suite in Athens waiting to be taken up. If we live until the end of the summer, may be we will see slightly better times.

Saturday, 2nd January, 2021

A monotone day – not cold but not inviting either. The furthest I have gone outside today is across the patio to the gym. I put in a really hard session and absolutely knackered myself for the rest of the day. Fortunately, I was then free to cope with five, Premier League matches spread from 12.30 pm to 10.00 pm. Actually, I just use the commentary as aural wallpaper as I read the newspapers and write to friends.

Is grey, cool monotone generally our experience at this time of year? This above was East Preston Beach on this day 4 years ago.

This was our road across the Pennines from Yorkshire to Lancashire 11 years ago – beautiful but stark and rather cruel. This is the sort of place my brother, Bob, would be happy. It is an environment for aesthetes and masochists. I’m not sure which one fits him! Personally, I am glad to be in the softer South.

Sunday, 20th December, 2020

Hands up those who have managed 12 full years of a diary. That’s 625 weeks. That’s 4368 days’ records. No, I thought not. Actually, mine was a bit sketchy in the first few weeks but retirement has definitely given it full rein. As a digital autobiography, it has proved incredibly useful. I will be 70 in this Blog Year and seriously hope to post a Year 26 Blog notice. I mean, 83 is nothing nowadays, is it?

It is amazing what can happen in a life over 12 years. I draw strength from what has gone before and really look forward to what is to come. I will let you know at the age of 82 whether it has been as good or, perhaps, even better.

Monday, 21st December, 2020

The shortest day of the year and it has opened dark and damp. We were up at 5.45 am on a day when we will be doing quite a lot of driving. The enveloping chaos on the EU/UK borders – something which prefigures the outlook for post-Brexit Britain – will lead to panic buying in the last days up to Christmas.

Because of the Covid danger, Pauline and I go shopping at unearthly hours to avoid others. This morning was Sainsbury’s at 6.00 am followed by Asda at 7.00 am. Back home for coffee. Pauline is making Rabbit & Pork Pâté with Lemon & Thyme for our Christmas feast. The rabbit is French which makes all the difference.

Pauline has so much culinary skill and even more enthusiasm that she produces so many lovely dishes. We virtually never buy pre-prepared food of any sort. For weeks, Pauline has been making Christmas cakes, Christmas puddings, Vanilla Ice cream, etc..

She has been researching our fish medley Starter which will be King Scallops, Monkfish and Langoustines with a Gratin crust. I am salivating as I type. Main course will be Citrus Glazed Goose with Chestnut and Pork Meat Stuffing accompanied by honey-glazed roast parsnips and carrots. Pudding will be Homemade Christmas Pudding with Homemade Vanilla Ice cream.

The biggest challenge will be not eating rather than binging on this lovely stuff. We’ve already put weight on through eating too much and certainly drinking too much. As ever, we are going to punish ourselves in the New Year. We are in Tier 2 but it doesn’t look as if we will be travelling abroad until at least June. This gives us 5 months of purgatory to pay for the future enjoyment. We can make a big difference in 5 months. Anyway, we are setting off for Tier 4 Surrey this lunchtime to deliver Christmas cakes, Christmas puddings and one or two other cooked treats to Pauline’s family. We won’t be having any contact with anybody en route and, when we get there, we will drop the presents at the door and stand well back before beating a hasty retreat to sunny Sussex.

Our little village of Angmering popped up on Countryfile last night. It looked a nice place to live. I am not a big lover of villages but it is possible to live here and still remain anonymous.

The village is expanding rapidly as town dwellers desperately want to escape to a safer environment. Locals cannot afford to remain but have to move out to buy a house. We are comfortable in a village which has fantastic connections to all the things we want to do. My only regret is that it takes over an hour to drive to the tunnel but, currently, that is an asset!

Tuesday, 22nd December, 2020

What a depressing day. Dark, wet, cool. I took a long phone call from my old friend and mentor while I was a youth in my home village of Repton, Derbyshire. It was the first year anniversary of his wife, Sue’s death. They were married and inseparable for 50 years. They lived an isolated life bound tightly together on a remote, Welsh farm.

Dave indulged his passion for the Great Outdoors and for manual labour while Sue enjoyed horse riding and looking after 16 donkeys, a clutch of geese and some hens. I can only imagine how the loss of one’s partner like that feels and I don’t want to experience it although it will come to us all one day.

For all his resilience, Dave is struggling to come to terms with his new situation. The horse and donkeys have gone to new homes, the geese are still there but the hens have stopped laying. Dave is busy all day maintaining the property but Covid has stopped his sons helping out. I resolve to phone him more often. I know how much the younger me owed him. I have also emailed my friend in Massachusetts who also knows and respects Dave so that he can lend a hand in cheering him up as well.

On Saturday morning, we applied for new passports. Yesterday, we received texts to say our requests had been noted and today, less than 3 days since our application, we received texts and emails informing us that our new and old passports were in the mail. Have you ever known a government service like that? In a pandemic? Unbelievable! The only thing we can think is that the current situation is putting others off applying and the service is looking for customers.

The UK (shambles) government are so committed to increasing home production of fruit and vegetables that they have annexed Spanish farms to grow them on. Just open up the carrots to see.

Wednesday, 23rd December, 2020

Whilst everything else decays and falls off, my eyesight has steadily improved over the years. I rarely wear my distance glasses which were always on my face in my youth. Sometimes I find I’ve driven miles before realising that I hadn’t been wearing them. With age, people require longer arms or adopt glasses to read small print. I do wear reading glasses but, increasingly, can usually manage without them when pushed.

Well, I’m likely to find out soon. I spend most of my time with my half moons balanced on the end of my nose. I have three pairs – one chipped, one mangled and one which snapped this morning. With possible shut down of shops in the New Year, I may have to resort to on-line purchase. The problem is my prescription is almost out of date and I don’t understand it. I’m thinking of driving to Barnard castle to calibrate it.

We were at Sainsburys for 6.00 am to buy plastic, freezer storage boxes for Pauline’s latest project – Don’t ask! She is organising the copious amounts of herbs we have harvested this year. We had to be at Waitrose for 9.00 am to collect the goose. When we arrived, the queue snaked all round the outside of the building. Pauline walked straight to the front and was waved through because she was only picking up an order by appointment. The others were looking to browse/shop and numbers in store were being strictly controlled.

Home for coffee and the clouds parted; the sun came out; the temperature rose to 14C/57F and the world looked better. We are actually going out for a walk this afternoon. Haven’t done that for a few days now.

Thursday, 24th December, 2020

Gorgeous day! We pottered around until mid morning. Pauline prepared the goose for tomorrow and I did my customary, anal-retentive activity of going through the Christmas Cards, ticking off those who had reciprocated and putting red marks against those that haven’t. Actually, very few have failed to contact us this year apart from my eldest sister, Ruth, who has obviously written me off. Quite surprised, really. Haven’t heard from her at all. I’ve even had a lovely card from my fellow reclusive brother, Mike so something’s gone wrong in Bolton. Is Tier 57 not allowed to write to people?

It seemed a shame to miss the sunshine so we went for a walk on the beach. There were a few others out there doing exactly the same.

I began my Blog on Christmas Day, 2008. Tomorrow, will see the true beginning of Year 13. It has reached the stage when my, obsessive compulsive character will not allow me to stop. I cannot end a day without recording it. As another year begins and many of us resolve to keep a diary, I thought I would draw your attention to some of the great exponents. Of course, they can’t compare with me but, as also-rans, they are worthy of note.

1. The most famous of all English diarists, Samuel Pepys, began his diary in 1660, just before he secured a position as Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board, and brought it to an end nine years later because he believed (mistakenly) that his eyesight was deteriorating so badly that he risked blindness.
   
2. Virginia Woolf kept a diary that ran from 1915 to her death in 1941 which is eminently emulatable although she ended her life by drowning herself in the River Ouse at which I draw the line.
   
3. Tony Benn kept a diary and refused to go to bed without recording the events of his day. Latterly, it was an audio diary that he recorded on tape. I relate to him completely although I didn’t quite have the interesting daily events to record.

Friday, 25th December, 2020

The Blog wishes you all a happy day as it starts its 13th year. Let’s hope we all see 14. I woke up thinking, I don’t have to drive up to Surrey today. Because we are not going up to Surrey, we had a leisurely breakfast and then I did my Boxing Day routine of ‘Bringing the Christmas Address List up to date’ and printing out the address labels for 2021 so that Pauline’s alright if I die. I’m sure most of you do exactly the same thing. I’ve even left Ruth’s address on there in spite of the fact that she hasn’t contacted me. I live in hope.

We are free for the day. By 10.00 am, we were nipping down to the Marina. Actually, there were plenty of people about. We walked down to the Jetty in the sea and were surprised to see a boat returning from a night’s fishing.

Got Pauline to pose for me on the Jetty but it was so cold in the cutting sea breeze that we couldn’t stay out long.

We drove home for coffee followed by a bottle of champagne and pottering through the day. Pauline was cooking Forcemeat stuffing and Bread Sauce. This was a tradition in the Sanders household. We loved bread sauce with Turkey and game. An onion stuck with cloves is simmered in milk and, when the flavours have been absorbed, white bread crumbs are folded in. Pauline adds butter and double cream which makes the whole thing wonderful. It is magical and evocative for me. I haven’t eaten it for the past 40 years because our hosts aren’t keen on it. This year, oh, this year! We are indulging ourselves.

Saturday, 26th December, 2020

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!!!!

Ruth has sent me an E-Card. I always knew she would. She’s lovely really. I don’t care what the rest of the family say about her. Funnily enough, it arrived just as I was sending a picture of her Penthouse Apartment to my friend in Massachusetts. I love these weird connections. I start a conversation on Facebook or Twitter and, suddenly, two, totally unconnected people from my past who have never met and never will take over that conversation and develop an on-line relationship which I can stand back and watch.

Never has this been more noticeable than the past few years as the Class/Education/North-South divide has been exposed in this crazy, Brexit debate. I’ve had University friends debating with past work colleagues and family members. Recently, a girl I haven’t seen for fifty years was debating with a cousin who lives in France. They didn’t need me at all. I love being the observer.

When it comes to food, I’d love to be the observer but I find it so difficult not to be a participant. We spend all our days eating fish and salad and, suddenly, thrown into a rich meal of roast goose, stuffing, bread sauce, roasted root vegetables feels all too much. Our bodies aren’t acclimatised. Our Christmas meal was wonderful and we both enjoyed it but the autopsy found that we both felt it was all unnecessary. The Goose was lovely but not spectacular. An £80.00/€90.00 5kg bird actually only does 4 generous portions and the carcass does not produce a pleasant stock. It was pleasing to change from Turkey but next year, we will spend that money on a wonderful fish – probably Turbot or John Dory which we don’t usually splash out on.

The fish medley gratin was fabulous and the Christmas pudding with homemade ice-cream was gorgeous but it was all too rich. Our stomachs can’t cope with cheese and cream as they used to. Maybe next year will be a minimalist Christmas.

You would be hard pushed to say that this photograph above was taken 11 years ago until you look at the one below taken on the same day in 2009.

Who is that one in the red hat? I want him on my side! I suspect Ruth would happily go back to 2009 although I’m not sure I would.

Sunday, 13th December, 2020

Quarantine Day 9 (again)

A depressingly grey, breezy and cool morning not improved by the smirking, Tory faces populating our television studios telling us not to be worried about a No Deal Brexit with one breath while telling us to prepare for hardship to come in the next. The trouble is, the barmy, British Brexiteers want to believe the former and close their eyes to the latter. A hard rain’s gonna fall!

On such a depressing day, I am choosing to return to the archives in search of better memories. Around this time 11 years ago, we were retired and looking to move South. We had set off for Surrey to look at what we considered a ‘posh’ and expensive apartment which would be a good Lock-Up-&-Go for the 6 months we were not in Greece. They were just finished being built and there was an apartment left but our house in Yorkshire took too long to sell and we lost the Surrey one.

Fortunately, after we had sold our house in the North, we found a duplex apartment built on the site of a former Convent. Although it was perfectly adequate for our temporary needs, we couldn’t have understood its real value. The property we lost has risen and fallen in value over the past 11 years and is now on sale at barely 15% above the price at which we were prepared to buy. The property we did buy and owned for a little over 4 years, almost doubled in value when we sold. Since then, other owners have really struggled to sell and have accepted prices nearer to the one we originally paid. It is not often that fate works for one but, on this occasion, it did massively.

We are imagining the next few months. We will be successfully vaccinated by … say March. We will need a month for that to take effect. By April, we can drive abroad and stay in a hotel. The first place we will go is the hotel in Coquelles which immediately refunded our booking as the pandemic struck.

We don’t forget good, honest service and will go out of our way to reward it. We will use this hotel where we book a suite as a base from which to visit friends and places in Nord Pas de Calais. My Grammar School friend, John Whetton in Arras will be on the list.

The phone rang at 6.30 this evening. It was a lady called Audrey wanting to speak to John. Pauline answered but quickly realised it wasn’t me she wanted. It was a wrong number. She engaged the lady in conversation and found out she was 94 years old. Pauline asked her what number she really wanted and she read back our number exactly from her phone book. Where are you? Pauline asked and, instead of replying generally, Audrey gave out her precise address which is about 10 mins drive from us. Pauline told her, We are in Angmering. but said it wasn’t safe to give out her address to total strangers. She said, You’re right I suppose but you could come round for a chat if you like. Just phone to make sure I’m in. I’m very active you know. We are going to take a Christmas card round for her tomorrow and we will call in as soon as it’s safe.

Monday, 14th December, 2020

Quarantine Day 10 (again)

Actually, I freely admit to breaking Quarantine rules this morning. I drove Pauline to Waitrose where she bought a little Stollen cake and took it round with a Christmas card to our new, best friend, Audrey who phoned by mistake yesterday. It turns out that she has a lovely, big, seaside bungalow in a gated development. She told Pauline yesterday on the phone that she was becoming forgetful and, true to her word, this morning she couldn’t really remember speaking to Pauline yesterday afternoon at all. However, she was pleased and grateful to receive a gift and card. She invited Pauline in but she declined because of Covid which made the old lady laugh and we left.

If you are my age, you will remember these things. The one on the right is my Corona Typewriter. I have no idea how much it cost in 1975 but it wasn’t significant. If you wanted to buy one now, it would cost you £250.00/€276.00 but I don’t think you could get an ink ribbon for it. In 1975, I was doing a much-belated Degree course and this typewriter was my essential tool. I was also living in a dive of a flat in a (very recently) former brothel with a coal fire to heat it. I was teaching by day and studying by night. I was also, as ever, dieting!

This morning, I received a letter which I wrote in the hovel of a flat in 1977. Watching the episode of The Crown last night which featured Heath’s 3-Day Week and National Power Cuts, I was immediately transported back to that flat and listening in the darkness to Chopin Nocturnes on a battery driven Cassette Player by the glow of the fire. We really knew how to live in those days.

The rest of this letter, which I haven’t included, went on to talk about my study of the poetry of W.H.Auden. I was doing my final year study for my B.A. in Twentieth Century Poetry from Thomas Hardy, Auden, Eliot, Pound and Rainer Maria Rilke through W.B.Yeats and Dylan Thomas to Larkin and Hughes. If I’d wanted to plan my own course, this would have been it.

As my wife said to me this morning when she read the letter from my 26 year old self, You’re still weird now. If I’d known you were that weird then, I would have thought twice. So, thanks to Chris & Kev. I’d hoped to bury that!

Tuesday, 15th December, 2020

Quarantine Over (again)

We went out early to Sainsburys so Pauline could source ingredients for a Pickle that se is making. I went on my run for the first time in a while and it felt good.

After coffee at home, we decided to use our new, won freedom by nipping down to the beach for a walk. The tide was crashing right up the beach and on to the esplanade where people were walking.

There is something special about being able to just nip out to the beach without effort and to walk with the sight and sound of crashing waves and foaming water at our side. We both returned home feeling enlivened by the outing.

Wednesday, 16th December, 2020

Lovely morning although a little breezy. Sunny and bright. I’m going out for a PSA blood test. Pauline is receiving a ‘snagger’ to fit a cowl over an air vent which is noisy in the loft during strong winds.

We have now each had 6 negative Covid-19 tests and been paid £350.00/€390.00 for the privilege. We will have another 10 tests each over the next 10 months which will be reassuring and profitable. We each received our £100.00/€111.00 this morning which is better than a poke in the eye but could, possibly, more usefully directed if the cost of that process wasn’t prohibitive.

While I was out at the surgery – the 2nd surgery because the main one was solely occupied in providing Covid-19 inoculations. They will do 1000 jabs in 3 days this week. – Pauline was filling in idle time completing 3 Christmas cakes and completing production of her homemade pickle. I don’t like her to get bored without me. By the way, the cake decorations are 53 years old. Pauline bought them as a 16 yr old school girl doing Home Economics. We both like that sort of circularity.

Thursday, 17th December, 2020

Gorgeously sunny and reasonably mild morning. Actually, there was a cloud burst of torrential rain around 4.30 am and I got up half an hour later because I couldn’t get back to sleep. I couldn’t face the continual scenes of Worklife-Past which suddenly began to play across my mind. I was back in school, walking the interminable corridors I inhabited for so many years. When I made a cup of tea at 5.00 am, the sky was light and the sun was coming up. It seemed a bit early. Ten years ago today, we were in Yorkshire and coping with heavy snow. At least life is easier here. It’s the second half of December and I’m cutting the lawns this afternoon.

Tesco shopping for Pauline. Walking for me. Back home by 9.00 am and then out again after coffee. We drove down to the Local Tip to dump the original computer chairs. I am being forced to sit on the first pair of new replacements. The second pair of new replacements are supposed to be delivered on Christmas Eve. I bet they won’t be.

The Establishment was complaining about The Crown on Netflix so it sounded worth watching. I am about as anti-monarchy as one can get without committing murder but this dramatisation of the historical background to my life affected me in a way I didn’t predict. Of course, the whole premise on which their position is founded remains just as untenable but I found myself genuinely sympathising with the psychotic characters the family ‘business’ threw up. The complete and utter loneliness of The Queen Mother, The Queen and Prince Charles is shocking. The aimless, lack of purpose of Philip, Margaret and Diana is painful and destructive. And for what?

Pauline’s got to repaint a section of the ceiling this afternoon. I was opening a bottle of red wine with a ‘plunger action’ cork screw. The cork went straight down into the bottle followed by Rioja fountaining up in my face, on the kitchen floor and over kitchen cupboards. As I was wiping everything down, I suddenly spotted a wide pattern of spray stains across the ceiling. It wouldn’t sponge off so Pauline is tasked with restoration today. We have a 5 litre tub of paint set aside for the walls and ceiling. The slightest mark that appears gets touched up immediately.

There are some compensations that come with Christmas. I’m allowed to drink sherry without being seen as a maiden aunt. It’s a bit of a stretch, I know, but who drinks sherry these days? I love ice cold, bone dry, Manzanilla sherry. I only ever seem to drink it on special occasions. Pauline has bought me two different Bodega’s offerings to contrast and compare. Well, someone should do it. Why not me?

Friday, 18th December, 2020

Up at 6.00 am on a dark and damp morning. The temperature says 11C/52F but it feels distinctly cooler in the breeze. I drive Pauline to Sainsburys and then set off on my walk. It is not pleasant. The roads have taken on a lot of rain over night and large, kerbside puddles with cars wizzing past make me nervous. I don’t fancy a soaking. the air is damp and uninviting. Still, I work up a sweat by the time it’s over. Pauline and I arrive simultaneously and drive home for coffee.

We have an appointment with 3 fresh salmon at Tesco at 9.00 am so we are out of the house quite quickly. One of the things about the poor management of this government over the entire period of the pandemic is that decision making has been late and indecisive and communication has been muddled and duplicitous. As a result, the population have found it difficult to plan their lives. I couldn’t care less about Christmas but the freeing of restrictions will be paid for with a very heavy price of infection and death. Two weeks ago, the infection rate was down to 14,000 per day which is bad enough in itself but, yesterday, it was more than 35,000 within 3 days of relaxation. Everything has consequences often unforeseen.

Turkey farmers, sprout producers, Christmas Pudding manufacturers, Stilton Cheese producers will have brought their production lines to a climax just as we are slimming down or cancelling our celebrations completely. Prices are already being cut hard. I’ve given up buying Stilton altogether. It’s just too rich for me nowadays but Pauline collected 6 full sides of fresh, Scottish salmon at half the normal price. Today it was just £5.50/€6.10 per Kilo. Let’s hope it doesn’t impact on future production.

I don’t know if I’ve told you but I’m not a fan of Brexit and it will have so many unexpected downsides that the Brextremists wouldn’t even have considered. One would have thought that everybody had taken the problems of integrated supply lines in the manufacturing industries and the food import/export lines in to account, would have considered integrated defence and the Schengen Information Systems as important for future development but I wonder how many considered the Website Domain extension – .Eu?

My web domain is www.jrsanders.eu. I only use it as a shell link base at the moment but I am intending to redesign and update it. I am a committed European. My website is European. From the end of December, this will not be viable. We lose the .eu extension. My webhost has offered me a work-around which involves registering my domain with their Belgian office and continuing as if nothing has happened. If only the rest of our arrangements could be sorted out as easily.

Saturday, 19th December, 2020

A lovely, bright and sunny start to the day although we weren’t intending to go out at all. After breakfast, we were due to renew our passports. They expire today along with the past decade. Unfortunately, our renewal will not identify us as Europeans which we are.

We went on line and had to do just three things:

• Record our old passport details.
• Take a passport photograph.
• Pay a £75.00/€83.00 each.

Everything went well until we submitted our photographs. I had complied with every stipulation:

• Use a plain, light-coloured background
• Keep even lighting and no shadows
• With a plain expression and face in full view
• No headwear
• Eyes fully visible

The website rejected my photos because they said the lighting was not bright enough, the colouring was not natural enough and my eyes were not open enough. How can one show disdain with open eyes?

We tried three times with rejection each time and were so annoyed that we went out immediately and had it done at the Post Office as the Christmas post crowds built up behind us. The process to 15 mins and cost us an extra £16.50/€18.25 each. It was a cheap price to pay for such efficiency and what lovely people!

Sunday, 6th December, 2020

Quarantine Day 2 (again)

This time, for the first time for many years, we will have to apply for a Green Card to drive in Europe. This is the sort of thing the mad Brexiteers were desperate for. It makes one despair! However, we intend to be vaccinated as soon as we can and to restart our travels this Summer. We will fly to Athens in late August for a pre-booked (roll over booking from this year) flight and hotel. If it looks possible, we may do a Portsmouth -Santander trip and rent a villa for a few weeks in Murcia for the Summer months. We may do a month in November and again in February 2022 in the Canaries. Our minds are open to all of these possibilities predicated on the vaccine keeping us safe. For now, we are quarantined (sort of).

Monday, 7th December, 2020

Quarantine Day 3 (again)

A dismal day that opened with quite a sign of frost and soon turned wet. We are not going out other than, possibly, to the local post box. Today is completing Christmas cards. I’ve printed out about 40 newsletters. Pauline has written about 60 cards. I have printed and she has labelled about 60 envelopes with addresses. Most have now got stamps on them but the International ones are still to be dealt with.

This year will involve kitchen scales and the Post Office website where we are paying for and printing out our own address/stamp labels for international postage. It’s great fun!

Pauline has been toiling away for hours on the kitchen table with cards, envelopes, labels and stamps all coming together.

BT has just contacted me to say that my full-fibre broadband contract is up for renewal and they can offer me an upgrade from 350mbs to 900mbs for £10.00/€11.00 extra per month. What is there to consider?

Our wine buying trip to France on Friday was intended to save us 50% of the price we might pay in UK. Sometimes, people doubt such too-goo-to-be-true claims. This morning, I thought I would make a fairly idle check. I bought 60 bottles of Rioja which Tesco sells at £8.50/€9.40. It would have cost me £510.00/€564.00. Actually, I paid £2.99/€3.30 amounting to a total of ££179.40/€198.00. These savings are ridiculous saving but nice. Unfortunately, we will never see them again…unless we move abroad.

Tuesday, 8th December, 2020

Quarantine Day 4 (again)

Our lives are graduated by deaths. They are inescapable. If you are a regular, you will know that I am obsessed with time and its passing. My Blog is essentially my attempt to control and direct this obsession. More than 57 years ago on Friday, November 22nd, 1963, John Kennedy was shot dead in his car. I was 12 years old. I didn’t have a radio or television so that I first learned about it at 9.00 am on the Saturday morning as I got on the Grammar School coach in Wetmore Park, Burton upon Trent to go to play a rugby match in Birmingham. Another lad whispered to me, Have you heard that Kennedy’s been shot? Even at that young age, the news hit me like a brick in the face. For my generation, Kennedy represented the modern world in to which I was travelling. It felt like a hope had died. I have never forgotten the image of that precise moment with its smell of adolescent boys mingling with sports liniment and leather boot dubbin.

On the 16th of August, 1977, Elvis Presley died at the age of 42 of drug abuse at home. My generation had already rejected him just as we rejected our parent’s culture but it did feel like a real moment in time. I was living alone in a grubby little flat in a former brothel in a grimy, post-industrial, northern town. A year later, I would be preparing to get married and live in the first house we would own together.

On Sunday, 31 August 1997, having flown home from Athens the day before, we woke up tired to the news that Princess Diana had died in a car accident in Paris. Pauline immediately suggested that it wouldn’t have been an accident and that feeling has persisted over the years. Diana was making waves in the British establishment, very welcome waves that were rocking the monarchy. We weren’t bothered about her per se but the movement she was creating we had longed for.

On this day, 4o years ago, John Lennon died in the street. The Beatles had been the backdrop to my teenage years. Their ubiquity had almost begun to irk. One had almost become inured to the sound of their presence in every public space. They had been expropriated by alternative performers and played out in supermarkets, shopping malls, lifts and anywhere else that someone thought the silence needed to be filled by musak.

Lennon had ceased to mean a lot to me but I had come within inches of dying myself just 6 months before. In June, 1980, we were driving to school when a lunatic, coming the other way, went out of control on the bend and drove straight through our new car. Ambulance men thought I was dead. I was hospitalised for two weeks with brain bruising and off work for the best part of a year. It changed my life. Unlike Lennon’s, however, my life started again.

Wednesday, 9th December, 2020

Quarantine Day 5 (again)

Up at 6.00 am on a dark and dank morning. Tesco’s Delivery are expected between 6.30am – 7.30 am. They arrive, helpfully and comfortably after orange juice and tea, at 7.30 am. We don’t usually have our shopping delivered so, on this occasion, I took advantage and ordered lots of heavy, bottled water

A year ago, my broadband download speed from fibre-to-the-cabinet was 33mps. For the past few months, I have had fibre-to-the-door and a download speed of 330mps. Yesterday, that download speed was ratchetted up to nearly 900mps. This is an incredible magnification and means we are almost up to the Gigabit delivery we have been hoping for. I could happily work from home now but I won’t. Aaaaaahhhhh!

Even so, our Office/Study is one of the most used rooms in the house. Five years after the furniture was fitted, the chairs are showing deterioration. We have two new ones arriving today.

I will order a new Desktop computer from HP in January and then look to replace our two laser printers with a wireless one soon after. I want us to be able to print from two computers and two iPads wirelessly which will make life so much easier.

Thursday, 10th December, 2020

Quarantine Day 6 (again)

A dark morning with a brooding sky but relatively mild not dropping below 8C/47F over night. I’m feeling fat. it’s going to be a long, hard session in the gym this morning.

Just in case you didn’t receive our Christmas card and the Poison Dwarf may have missed it, here is a copy. We’ve chosen a robin this year just to make a change.

We tended not to include a copy of our newsletter to regular Blog readers because it is basically a review of the year which is chronicled in greater detail across the Blog. However, it is so well crafted that I include a copy here.

I think I was drawn in by the similarity with the dining chairs which are so comfortable. Well, the Hospice Shop will benefit from my foolishness and we have already ordered two new ones.

Friday, 11th December, 2020

Quarantine Day 7 (again)

A mild but gloomy morning. We have an early, wet fish delivery. It comes from a local supplier based on the mouth of the River Arun as it runs in to the sea. It is delivered direct to our door in boxes packed with ice. Today it was fresh, King Scallops, Fresh Monkfish and frozen, raw King Prawns. The quality is, as usual, fantastic.

Pauline’s Dream

Pauline’s dream is to eat big, fat scallops. She will do on Christmas day for her Starter. This Christmas will be our first alone for 40 years. We have always shared it and one of our company has a serious allergy to shellfish. This year, we are taking the opportunity to indulge our choices. We will have a

Scallop, Monkfish & King Prawn Gratin – First Course

Every year we eat turkey. I’m sure most of you do too. This year, we are free to break out and we have ordered a Goose. Pauline has been enjoying researching cooking recipes and these are the accompaniments we have chosen:

Roast Goose – Main Course

• Herbs (rosemary, sage, bay and thyme)
• Spice like cinnamon sticks, fresh ginger, star anise
• An orange & lemon, halved
• A few crushed garlic cloves
• Aromatic veg like carrots, onions, celery/celeriac, fennel, parsnips

Succulent, Aromatic Goose accompanied by Rioja

Homemade Christmas Pudding & Homemade Vanilla Ice-cream – Sweet

Life has been made a little easier today by the announcement that our quarantine has been reduced to 10 days which means we are free after the weekend.

Saturday, 12th December, 2020

Quarantine Day 8 (again)

All the way from Acton, Massachusetts

I don’t do Christmas but I do like getting post. I run like a an over enthusiastic puppy to collect it every time I hear the postman. Today, I received a card from my old friend, Jonathan, who has lived in USA for at least 45 years. It is probably nearly 50 years since we met. I always intended to go over but things got in the way. Well, this morning, I walked down High Street, Acton, Massachusetts and found Jonathan’s house.

Unfortunately, I was only on Google Earth but it was an enjoyable experience and helps me to ‘place’ my old friends in time and space.

By the way, the new, computer chairs we ordered and which I was so looking forward to using turned out to be absolutely rubbish. Hard, un-cushioned seating with thin, unforgiving arms, they looked and felt ‘cheap’ which I don’t think they were at £125.00 each.

L-R : Old chair, New chair, Dining chair

I think I was drawn in by the similarity with the dining chairs which are so comfortable. Well, the Hospice Shop will benefit from my foolishness and we have already ordered two new ones.

I’ve let Pauline choose and order these so that the blame is deflected away from me. Meanwhile, my penance is to sit on very hard chairs until the new ones arrive. I can feel it cutting off the blood supply as I type.

Sunday, 29th November, 2020

Lovely bright, mild day. Sunday, political programmes, newspapers. The Tories are revolting! No, the Tories are revolting against the lockdown conditions. If you ever thought Trump was an aberration, make no mistake. He was just Toryism writ large. A few decades ago, Thatcherism saw unemployment as a price worth paying. Now Death is a price worth paying as long as it isn’t their own. This strain of right wing, populist thuggery is so depressing and we must eradicate it. Trump’s been dumped. Next must be the Tories.

It’s still November but Christmas has come to our street. This morning, neighbours all around were holding ladders for each other as their lights went up. This evening they are being tried out.

Any sort of Brexit is a disaster as the people in the Sunderland Nissan plant who voted for it are suddenly realising, as the fishermen in their droves who voted for it are suddenly realising and the farming community who voted for it in the belief that the EC subsidies would be maintained and markets would be enhanced are suddenly realising. Even more surprised are those brainless holiday home owners who liked to spend half the year abroad and half at home in UK as we used to do. Suddenly, they are screaming, We woz robbed. when they learn that they can only spend 90 days in any 6 month period. We only wanted to keep out the immigrants, they said as they temporarily emigrated to their European home. At the risk of sounding Biblical, You reap what you sow.

We are hoping to get across the Channel this week for a final shopping trip. We’ve booked the Tunnel crossing and just hope the French still let us in. I will keep you updated.

Monday, 30th November, 2020

Cool and little bit misty this morning. The view on Sifnos this morning is even less inviting. Given the lower quality of home building, heating and insulation on the island, it will certainly feel damp and cool.

I was amused yesterday to read that Greeks, who are experiencing quite a difficult second wave of Covid infection having done rather well in the first phase, attribute the second wave of the pandemic to the opening of tourism in summer practically without restrictions. People on Sifnos are saying just what the right wingers in England are saying about the control conditions imposed on them by central government. They observe that there is no infection on the island but they are being controlled just as much as Athens and Thessaloniki and where infection is rife. Like the right wingers here, they don’t seem to combine the two ideas and realise the movement of people could change that position completely.

Of course, France is under lockdown with limitations on citizen’s movement from their homes other than for specific reasons. They and we when we travel have to complete a form stating the legitimate purpose for our movement.

We have ordered £550.00/€615.00 worth of wine but have to travel to pick it up. We have been instructed by the company to tick Box 2 which says we are permitted to run errands to purchase basic commodities available in a business allowed to provide that service. Who knows whether it will work. Last time we went, we filled in the same form but no one asked us for it.

Tuesday, 1st December, 2020

Happy December 2020 to you all. Special best wishes to Bob. Tomorrow sees the end of the second lockdown. We are expecting just one more in the New Year after Christmas jollities are over. Of course, we are volunteering for an extra lockdown by attempting to drive to France on Friday. 3  – 4 hours shopping will result in a ‘nominal’ quarantine of 2 weeks. Actually, we will take another test on Thursday for the ONS programme we are in although it will be at least 6 days before the result returns. 

We are a little unsure what the French Border Force will say to our application to enter but we will take it as it comes. It will be a nice day out to Folkestone otherwise although we are going rather early in the morning and it is forecast to rain. 

News from my brother has prompted me to seek an urgent prostate test. Pauline & I walked down to the surgery with a written request for my doctor. 

What a beautiful day for a walk. The sun was strong in our eyes, the birds were singing as if Spring had begun and there was no time like the present. All around us the world was bursting with optimism. I must admit, I still feel optimistic about life. This afternoon, Easyjet contacted me about a flight to Athens we have rolled over for late August 2021 and my heart leapt with anticipation. Our Octogenarian neighbours across the road say they will be spending Christmas at home without family just as we will but they are looking forward to flying back to Australia sometime in the new year. We look forward.

Wednesday, 2nd December, 2020

Busy and quite cool morning. Up at 6.00 am. How dark it is. Out by 6.45 am and still dark, cold – 5C/41F – and uninviting. Did my 5 mile walk as the sun rose with a pleasing pink light.

My hands and nose were cold but my body was sweating by the time I got back to the car. As soon as we’d arrived home, I received a phone call from my doctor, not much more than 18 hrs after writing to her, offering a consultation prior to a prostate test. Very impressive.

Skinny Liz sent an email round the family yesterday with a photograph that engendered fear & dread. It was of the the figures that Mum would trot out every Christmas and feature in a straw-topped Manger on display in the Lounge which we children were, generally, excluded from. As a confirmed and hardened atheist, for me this display is merely sentimental in value. It also represents one of those intangible links between brothers and sisters.

For me, the figures still strongly evoke authority, coercion, narrow mindedness allied to blind faith which I felt dominated my life at home. Ever since I was able to reason for myself, I have rejected what these figures represent. Having said that, the fact that they are over 80 years old (Even older than Ruth) and were taken by Liz in boxes with London stamps on them and wrapped in copies of The Guardian dated 1975 makes them interesting and moving. I’d love to know who was reading The Guardian in our house then.

Thursday, 3rd December, 2020

Very strange morning – cool with heavy rain in the darkness as we got up at 6.30 am in readiness for a workman to arrive and build some heavy, wooden furniture in our garden. Rather him than me as his frozen, wet hands sparked up an electric drill in a downpour.

We’ve got the next Covi-19 test today. We need the money. I also had a phone call from my doctor offering me an immediate Prostate Specific Antigen or PSA test in the next few days. This is such a fantastic service. She told me that I would automatically be referred to my local hospital for follow up.

We’ve got this age old dilemma of cards or not cards this Christmas. I know Ruth will be saving postage again but we can’t quite bring ourselves to do it yet. We drove out to buy an armful of stamps. We were out for about 5 mins and came home to find a Parcelforce card on the mat to say they had been unable to deliver a parcel. The postman had left it 6 mins ago. We got in the car, shot round the area and found his van. He’s a lovely man. He handed over the parcel which had an Ebay inscription on it. Had I ordered something from Ebay by mistake?

It was a sizeable box which we opened immediately we got it home. like small children at Christmas. And that’s what it was, a Christmas present from our lovely, Huddersfield friends, Margaret & Tony. A hamper of goodies from our favourite farm shop just half a mile from where we used to live a decade ago. What joy!

Friday, 4th December, 2020

Oh, what a day! Up at 4.00 am to pitch black rain and not warm. Driving out at 5.00 am to Folkestone. Lovely, quiet roads. I really enjoy night time driving. The drive should take us 90 mins or so. We also build in a 30 mins contingency so estimate 2 hrs. Although it looks as if we are closer to the Channel Tunnel to a Geographical illiterate like me, actually, we have to drive North to get South East. On that basis, we should have driven in to the Tunnel check-in by 7.00 am at the latest.

Experienced Blog readers will know that I have no idea where I am going even in my locality never mind on a longish journey like this whereas Pauline loves navigation and route planning. In many ways, although we’ve driven this route from Surrey and Sussex for a decade, Pauline would rather try a new way each time just to test herself.

Driving North on the A24 – A272 – A23 – M23 – M25 – M26 all went well. On to the M20 and it all started to go pear shaped. We were informed that a lorry had jack-knifed and gone through the central reservation around Leeds Castle area. We were diverted on to the A20. That’s no big problem because it runs parallel but it was busy. With so much traffic pushed on to a smaller road, just one, unattended roadworks caused miles of tailback costing us lots of time. Not only did we miss our check-in time but our Departure time as well.

As we inched our way through Kent, we began to see SNOW. We had pledged to never see that stuff again. We were plagued with it in the North! The further we inched, the thicker the standing snow got. Ploughs had been despatched to clear the road but it was banked up at the sides. Through the roadwork blockage and we were on our way at speed with a totally empty road ahead. When we arrived, we were allocated the next train with just time for a cup of coffee and the toilet. We reflected that we would never wee there again as Europeans. (Ah!hhhh!)

The train was on time but very quiet and we drove off into sunshine. Straight to Calais Wine Store with no sightings of Asylum Seekers other than those poor souls huddled together at a soup caravan. The wine store was totally empty. We were the only customers. They had paid our travel through the Tunnel. If we had booked it ourselves, it would have cost £250.00/€278.00 day return. In return for our travel, we pledged to spend a minimum of £500.00/€556.00 on wine. In doing so, we would save around £520.00 on UK prices for the same wines. This is and has been for years a great deal. This is, almost certainly, our last visit and we bitterly resent that.

A quick drive on to Auchan for some food. You can’t beat a French chicken, some cheeses and then Pauline likes to browse the Utensiles de Cuisine (Kitchen Tools) section before we leave.

As we are about to leave, a massive hailstorm hits the area but we have no time to wait. A run to the car and we drive back to the Terminal Tunnel sous La Manche. We were waved straight through on to the next, available train. The French asked us for none of the official ‘permission’ papers. The UK force reminded us we had to quarantine and then waved us through. We were back in Folkestone by 13.55 (UK time).

As soon as we landed, we found that the M20 motorway was still completely blocked all lanes driving West. Pauline perked up immediately. Here was a real life challenge. She decided that we would take the local, A259 coast road home. What a brilliant idea that was although the sat. nav. didn’t like it.

We drove through Hythe, Dymchurch, Romney Marshes, Rye, Hastings, Bexhill, Pevensea, Polegate, Lewes, Shoreham by Sea, Worthing and home. We were back home by around 5.30 pm – later than expected but safely and having really enjoyed our journey.

Saturday, 5th December, 2020

Quarantine Day 1 (again)

We didn’t get up until 9.00 am! Can’t remember how many years it has been since we did that – probably after a drive back from Greece some 6 years ago. First thing Pauline did was book a Sainsbury’s delivery slot for Wednesday. Interestingly, we picked 6.30 am – 7.00 am and it was ‘free’. I wonder why? Many other slots were only charged at a £1.00/€1.12 but we like ‘Free’! 

The day will be filled by many jobs but, particularly, Christmas card signing and addresses + stamps printed and affixed. They will be posted on Monday. I have to complete my Newsletter to accompany the cards. After only 4 hrs sleep on Thursday night and 6 hours of driving after so little across this past 12 months, we are both rather tired and not inclined to do much at all. We are already on episode 3 of Series 2 of The Crown. We may watch some more tonight.

We have just taken our last trip abroad as European citizens. It is something we will never forgive or forget. However, our current passports were issued on 19th October, 2010 and we now have to apply for new ones. On that day, we were both only 59 years old and we went to the Registry Office to register the death of Pauline’s Mum after 96 years of tenacious life. We also had to put out the money for her milkman in the brown envelope she had pre-prepared. It was the momentous end of an era. We will be almost 80 yrs old when we next have to get new passports. We are determined to do it and will work to make them European again.

Sunday, 22nd November, 2020

I limped down to breakfast this morning. My right foot was paining me. It is the result of an old, war wound. Well, two years old anyway.

Wherever I go, I damage my feet. I walked into the shower on a Greek ferry going down the Adriatic, caught the underside of my foot on the door strip and slice a chunk out which continued to bleed for hours. Poor Pauline spent most of her evening trying to staunch it with towels. Of course, anti coagulation medication didn’t help. When we arrived in our Greek house and bleary-eyed after a long drive, I got up and walked into the kitchen table immediately breaking my big toe. That is just one trip. I’m always doing it.

Two years ago this month, we were staying in this villa in southern Tenerife. Once again, cool, poised John fell and hurt his foot and ankle. It immediately swelled up and turned a fiery colour. I don’t know if there was any bone damage involved but the tendons felt torn and the bruising was horrible. I forced myself to keep using it so as not to spoil the holiday for Pauline but I have paid for it ever since. I suspect, at my age, I always will. I’m going out to punish it now on the treadmill.

Monday, 23rd November, 2020

Up at 6.00 am on a dark and quite chilly morning to do our Sainsbury’s shop because we will have to be at home tomorrow. We called in at Aldi on the way back for a load of Christmas chocolates for our latest ‘Food Bank’ offering. Last week it was Toiletries but, usually, it is tins of food. Someone from our Development tweeted yesterday that her husband, who drives for a Food Bank in his spare time, had just emptied their fridge and delivered it to a family of 6 who hadn’t eaten since Friday. One’s heart misses a beat to read such things and one’s mind questions, If they haven’t afforded to eat, what have they done about heating?

Back in the comfort of our home, Pauline set about making chicken stock in the garden and I indulged myself investigating a new Desktop computer. I bought my last one just as we were moving in to this house which is almost 5 years ago. That usually is the good, working life of a PC. The current one is fine but has developed a startup annoyance which could be resolved by upgrading the Bios although that is not without its risks. Computers are so cheap now. I was paying £3000.00+/€3,380.00+ for a Desktop 20 years ago. This new one will cost me just £1500.00/€1,690.00 and the improvement is immense.

For quite a long time now, I have been a fan of (HP) Hewlett Packard. I’ve used them for the last 10 years and their reliability, on-line support and general customer service is excellent.

Two new elements particularly attract me. HHD is being replaced by SSD for the first time for me. My first computer was run on ‘floppy disk based software’. All subsequent computers over the past 30 years have featured Hard Disk Drives. HDDs fragment data due to the rotating nature of its operation. In application, this means that computers with HDD boot slower than those with SSD. File transfers are slower as well. Solid State Drives have no moving parts and all data is stored in integrated circuits. What makes it particularly attractive is its dramatically reduced access time.

The monitor is highly adjustable both up and down and tilting. What I’m particularly looking forward to is the incorporated automatically pop-up webcam and microphones which will allow video conferencing more comfortably than with my iPad. This will have to be my Christmas present. Oh, I do love Christmas!

Tuesday, 24th November, 2020

Mild all night and continued in to this morning. We are having a large -10 kgs – fresh fish delivery this morning. Our supplier has moved from being almost slightly reluctant to very, very keen for our order. The core of their business has always been supplying high end restaurants and hotels. Suddenly, they have found their market disappearing. Gradually, they have seen a new market in people like us.

We’ve also got the ‘snagging’ plumber arriving to replace a couple of sink waste pop-ups. I’m feeling so optimistic today that I might clean the car. The latest news is that we might fit a final shopping trip to France in before Christmas. We are living a life of near quarantine as it is so ‘almost’ meeting that demand on return will not be a problem.

The Retail’s desperate Christmas advertising feels rather hollow and, particularly down here, snow looks like a Dickensian anomaly.

Wednesday, 25th November, 2020

Delivery vans and drivers are everywhere and all the time at the moment. I suspect the mould is broken and this process will not significantly decline after the pandemic. Late last night and without warning a delivery driver, who is clearly working very long hours, rang our bell and propped a huge box up at the door. Since the additional hard standing has been installed in our back garden, we have been gradually increasing outdoor storage. The box contained a ….. box. It is to store garden furniture cushions.

Of course, the downside of these deliveries is that things come flat-packed. First thing this morning the screwdriver has been put on charge and, later, the box will be built. All of this process has been to declutter the garage and make space for the gym. I will put the screwdriver back on charge this evening in readiness for the rustic, outdoor cooking table that is being delivered tomorrow.

The one thing that is beginning to dawn on me is that pandemic isolation has encouraged home development which will just come to fruition as vaccines will free us to travel again. If we are vaccinated successfully by Easter, we intend to spend the Summer driving in Europe, taking up our already booked and paid-for stay in an Athens hotel and our already booked and paid-for flights to Greece. We can also think about Winter in the sun again. It is looking increasingly fortunate that we didn’t send our passport off for renewal and that we may get a quick French shopping trip in before Christmas.

When we lived in Yorkshire and worked in Lancashire, driving over the Pennines in this season rewarded us with theatrically dramatic skies. We are finding that the Sussex coastline is just as rewarding at the moment.

Thursday, 26th November, 2020

We had our Flu jabs a few weeks ago and, as usual, I reacted with a bruised arm and a mild bout of Flu while Pauline had nothing. Yesterday, I began to feel a little lethargic and developed a sore throat. It is worse today and my ears are really uncomfortable when I swallow. I’m streaming and sneezing. In fact, I think I’m dying.

Even so, like the martyr to the cause I am, we were up at 6.00 am for Tesco and I was doing my 5 mile walk at 7.00 am. Shattered but self-satisfied, I arrived back at the car before Pauline. We were going to build our new Garden Storage Chest which we were stopped from doing by rain yesterday. I girded my loins, made sure the screwdriver was fully charged and then did what Pauline told me. I couldn’t believe how easy it was even including installing the hydraulic arm lifts. We were finished in 20 mins. and locking it up in the garden. Dream job. Later today, the cooking table will be delivered and tomorrow we will need to find time for that.

Did you know that there are more Food Banks in England than MacDonalds? I certainly didn’t. Louise Casey informed me tonight. She said she had been touring the Country’s Food Banks to understand the actual situation. She told stories of Mothers who hadn’t eaten for days in order to feed their children, of a Mother who was so hungry she tore open the packaging to a cake and stuffed the whole thing straight into her mouth before she even got out of the building. These are stories to make one so angry and to move one to tears. It had that effect on me. It makes the small contributions we provide seem wholly inadequate.

It puts our position in sharp relief. Often pensions become less valuable over time. This can be because of inflation. Ours is protected against that. Often it can be vis à vis workers from one’s profession who get above inflation pay rises. Pauline & I are just coming up to 12 years of Retirement and the Teaching Profession has not increased its pay position since the 2008 financial crash. Equally, inflation has been so low that our capital has held its value. I am expecting that to change in the next few years but we have had a good run.

Friday, 27th November, 2020

I have always planned my life line, always looked forward to the future, to the next stage and, generally, let the past drop away into a discrete box filed: MY FAILURES – EXPERIENCE TO DRAW ON. On the Time-Life continuum, of course, there is the NOW. I have never been able to live in the NOW. I was always planning for the FUTURE and drawing on the PAST. This approach has borne fruit in that planning, working, saving, investing, speculating has provided me/us with a very comfortable and rewarding retirement but I still struggle with the present.

Can you enjoy a sunset? I can look at one and go through the expected motions of saying, That’s nice but all the time thinking …. but there’s no point or future value in it. If it doesn’t move me forward, doesn’t contribute to the next 5-year plan, it doesn’t have real value. When we talk about the lunacies of the government or the iniquities of the immigration system, Pauline’s brother-in-law always sings, Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think. This is a solidly ‘Live for the Moment’ sentiment from which my mind instinctively recoils.

The one occasion that I can release myself from the Past – Future continuum is in music. Wonderful music reduces me to tears often embarrassingly so and I have no idea where that emotion comes from or why. I had the bizarre experience a couple of days ago in our home gym of sitting, pedalling furiously on the bike while watching a modern version of La Bohème from the Opera Australia in the Sydney Opera House of finding tears not sweat streaming down my face as I bathed in the beauty of the music and its sentiment. I was in the moment until I realised what was happening. Then, of course, I began to concentrate on cycling time, distance covered, calories burned, future health.

I suffered a small bleed behind at the back of my one useful eye about 18 months ago. I have been monitored by the Diabetic Eye Screening service every 3 months ever since. I went again this morning. The photography showed clearly that there had no deterioration which is wonderful news going forward. Must be all that crying has lubricated it.

Friday, 27th November, 2020

A lovely, mild morning. We just remained in double figures over night and only reached 13C/55F all day but, without a breeze, it felt lovely. Early trip to Asda and then down to Littlehampton Marina for a walk in the sunshine. Of course, by the time we got there it had clouded over and, by the time we got home it was sunny again. Still, it was lovely to walk around the quay.

Few people were around. A couple of Jet Skis were in the water but, with the cafes and restaurants closed, there was not a lot to draw people.

The rest of the day is a bit of gym work, newspapers, football and then another episode of The Crown. It’s not the sort of thing we would normally watch but, when I heard how annoyed the establishment was with it, I had to see some. It’s only on Netflix so I took out one month’s subscription for it. Then I found out that there are 4 Series of 10 hourly episodes. Can we / Do we want to watch 40 hours of docu-soap in just 30 days? Well, we have done the first 3 episodes of Series 1 and we are already gripped. After all, we were born in 1951 and this really is our history. I will probably have to buy a second month to finish it.