Homo sapiens

What we do is pretty much of little consequence. Our time is spent on errands, on trips to support our lifestyle such as going shopping or walking the dog, with the world around we have little time. We are seeped in our own contrivance of what life is about, much of it centred on our own needs and many of those needs inflated by our ego.
When last did we explore our surroundings for there own sake. And even when we did, could we rid ourselves of our own image in what we saw.
Mankind has been so busy constructing things to make easy his life and the style in which he wanted to live that his gaze is continually engrossed in his own small compass and rarely takes in the actual world around him.
I knew someone who was captivated by the insect world. His mind was for ever shifting down into the environment of the insect world and their habitat.

Translating the image at your feet, under which a tiny complex world existed, oblivious of your own trials and tribulations, this world had it own structure and preference. It exists with rules and obligations much like our own, a hierarchy with individuals being developed, through the genius of evolution to perform tasks in support of the colony, much as we are. The need to survive, much as our need to survive has developed instincts and tactics in foraging for food and building accommodation which we accomplish but more in harmony.

The seas and the rivers, the bogs and the woodland under each stone there lives life. The oxygen and the nitrates support organisms which were here before us and in their ability to adapt will probably be here when we have gone.
Perhaps when we finally annihilate our own species, the rest of the world will heave a sigh of relief and wonder how this species of dinosaur had existed so long !!

A new location

Can it be that at the moment we improved our method of locomotion, we destroyed our ability to be civil to each other.

Being in close proximity means we are bound to respect those around us if for no other reason than we meet each other so often and it would be tiring to be at odds.
Perhaps we are at our best when we can not run away and climb aboard a vehicle, a plane or a ship and relieve our need to be civilised by being amongst strangers.

One of the characteristics of the Colonial is his 'abandon'. His larger than life persona which allows him to expand from the timidity of his child-hood background by take risks amongst a sea of foreigners.

Moving into a new untried environment one is no longer at the whim of the sarcastic, "know your place" jibe. Your history remains behind you, no longer disconcerting, no longer reminding you of your place and limitations, the uplands are clear and free, for possibly the first time, of boundaries.

Of course unless you are a wandering vagabond your new surroundings soon begin to resemble the one you left behind with all of mankind's pettiness. We bury ourselves in conformity and loose a great opportunity to become 'our own man', free from the constriction of other people's expectation.
Characteristics which make up and describe the tribe. "Smug" "brash" "disciplined" "romantic" are, depending where you were born, a trait which is as much a definition of you as the birthright in your passport. The problem is that in their native setting these characteristics mark you out as only one of many. In a new foreign country they make you interesting and, if you have the sense, you water the image to become that elegant flower which, no doubt, deep down you are !!

Duped again

Listening to the news I heard a Syrian man complaining about having to wear a wrist band so he could be recognised when he went for his 'free meal'. The terms he used were dehumanised, stigmatised, and of course that catch all abused.
Looking at the mayhem in his own country Syria it is difficult to understand where his resentment came from, unless he had been programmed to say what he said.

We are all programmed from birth of course but the political programming starts in our teens and continues throughout our lives. 

One of the issues which we in this country were influenced to reject was the question of whether everyone should be required to carry an Identity Card. The question around the issue of identification was the scope of the information the authorities wished to hold on each person. 

Eventually the people in this country fought against ID cards, it was deemed too totalitarian.
Of course this was a back in 2006 and pre-dates the rise of ISIS, the turbulence in the Middle East and the attacks in the West. 

Perhaps the time for ID cards has now arrived and wrist band would be a thing of the past. 

It would answer the question of who is here and give the authorities the opportunity to check on us but there lies the snag. Instinctively we often reject the power of the state. We do not trust the bureaucrats to play fair with our information. Councils and quasi governmental organisations routinely sell our information on to private enterprise were it is used as a marketing tool. 

Unless we have a sea change in our view on our civil liberties, the need to carry a Dompas, as it was called in South Africa, when we set out from home is still some way a way.  

Conversely, in some ways it would be no great deal since we would feel undressed without our wallet when we go out. If I collect my parcel from the Post Office I have to take some method of recognition otherwise they won't release the parcel. Is there merely some sort of psychological hurdle which has been inculcated in me, which requires dis-inculcating,  it would be pretty painless to re-educate me. But if the authorities began to over classify people through the information held in their records then we are all at risk. The true reason for the Dompas in South Africa was a method of not only identifying a section of the demographic but controlling and  hindering their movement, particularly at night.

As always power in the wrong hands is destructive and gathering more power into the hands of the State trades a tremendous amount of good will and optimism on the part of the electorate which, history tells us, in the end, we are usually duped !!!

Guided, but by whom

Ever wondered where you would have been if you had not followed the road you did.
We all follow roads or tracks out from our childhood onto the path through the life you chose to live. But did we or was the path chosen by our birth and the constraint of our parents and the influences under which our parents suffered.

So much of what we did was part of a package with our name on it. The early years, the school the first job and the subsequent things such as marriage, the person we married and the children we raised were in so many ways, predetermined. Not the specifics but in general, we search in a way we are programmed to search looking for the values impregnated in us, is it any wonder we profile in the way we do.
As I sit with time to think or look around for things to do, One has to wonder at the helter skelter ride which describes the lives of many people. What is it that possesses individuals to throw off their individuality and conform in the way they do.
Some people have the gift of getting to a destination without a plan or a map. The occurrences which happened along the way are largely, chance events with little to link them up and could as easily have escaped notice.
Sitting in a chair with the clock ticking the absurdity of the way we became sucked in and responsible for so much which lays outside our direct control but for which we built our considerable egos by kidded ourselves that, what was demanded of us, is what we were programmed to do. The hours and the worry, the heart ache and sometimes the sense of achievement. Perhaps it was the latter, a need to impress on others our self contrived worth, a worth which was far from the opportunity value we had whilst we suckled on our mothers knee. 

Stressed to breaking point

What a schizophrenic society we are. 

There was a story yesterday regarding a company who had been made to stop putting 'wrist bands' on asylum seekers as a form of recognition when they turn up for a free meal. It was thought demeaning for them !! Within an hour I was listening to a charity asking people to wear a 'wrist band' to denote support for cancer support. In the one we were denigrating whilst in the other we wished to become distinguished.
Tesco has been brought to book regarding its bullying practices towards it suppliers.  They have withheld payment for months, they have insisted on discounts which reduced the supplier to supplying at virtually cost price and driving the supplier to the proverbial and financial wall. It is suggested that farmers have committed suicide at the unfair trading approach by these pasty faced commercial tyrants. 

This was common knowledge for years but it has taken Tesco's financial tinkering of their  books, manipulating their profitability which hurt the "high minded" financial market who demanded an enquiry. No enquiry into the 'heavy hand' on suppliers until the financial boys felt the heat and then anything and everything was possible. Tesco have only been asked to apologise since the law that would allow the authorities to fine Tesco was brought in after the inquiry started and for some strange reason can't be used !!!
A little boy died because the medical system let him down. Part of our ever vigilant accounting practice regarding reducing the operating cost of the NHS has been the outsourcing of the telephone service connecting the public with medical assistance. From being able to contact a properly trained medical person you now reach a "call centre" where the operator has an interrogation sheet which is designed to get to a prognoses of what is wrong. Somehow these question sheets are supposed to do away with the need for years of training and subtle analysis and in the little boys case, his lack of a temperature was a signal that he was ok. Apparently with sepsis, which is what he had, the temperature does not rise and he died for lack of medical attention. I suppose a cost accountant would be able to come up with a convincing statistical reason for interfacing the public with relatively untrained people but tell that to the Mother who's son died needlessly.
Faith schools who demand the Niqab (covered from head to toe) to pupils who are refused the right to wear a crucifix not only confuse the ordinary man and women in the street. It makes for insecurity when common sense is relegated by Minority preference and practice, it introduces the minefield of PC into our lives, lives which are stressed enough as it is.

Exercise

How difficult can it be to 'exercise' in front of the TV ? Surely a static exercise bike it is the answer.  Not having to go out in the cold, avoiding the trials of traffic and pot holes or the uneven surface and the jarring that pounding the streets brings if you want to jog.
And so I bought one of these exercise bikes after Christmas. Delivery comes as does most shopping these days packaged up in the back of a white van, delivered to the door. 

Not having seen the item but believing the blurb on the Internet and having completing the appropriate boxes for the financial transaction, a few days later the "thing" arrives. 

Usually, as with any purchase, there is the initial high. The packaging is torn open, and the "must have that" moment is briefly remembered, unfortunately the "need" having now subsided, the questions begin to surface. Where will I keep it and when will I use it.
If and when you get carried away, as I do ordering books, the fervour of 'placing the order' produces a blizzard of deliveries but as the parcels drop through the letter box you scratch your head and ask, "did I order this"?
If it's a book there's nothing more challenging than to open it and start on page one but when it arrives with a booklet telling you how many nuts and bolts are enclosed, 'fear for your sanity'.
I'm not one to read the instructions on anything ( I fact being instructed by anyone has been my Achilles heel ). Surely it should be self evident, simple common sense to proceed as you see it, it can't after all be all that complicated and we should have enough intelligence to do the job !!
Eventually, after a struggle you survey your handy work.  "Oh no", where does that bolt go, is it really necessary ?
Anyway it's up and running and I twiddle away quite happily for five or ten minutes but then the boredom sets in. 

I have a friend who has become obsessed with competing in the Triathlon. He buys all the latest gear from expensive carbon framed bikes to exercise programs which measure his progress and keep him within the limit of energy expenditure appropriate to his level of fitness. 

Such a contrast from the simplicity of our day.  A second hand steel framed bike, no gears (fixed wheel) a water bottle that never contained liquid, (we got our liquid at the pub either a pint or a mug of tea), no sense of the need to limit our Kilowatt output we simply pounded on until we fell off with fatigue. 

Of course it's far more scientific and sensible these days but is it as much fun ?

Risk but who's risk

The BBC is a wonderful place to be.
What do I mean. Well at the turn of a knob you enter Alice's sometimes strange hinterland of characters and their beliefs and whilst it would be unfair of me to describe some as Mad as a Hatter at least you have the full Monty of opinion, left and left of left, right and beyond, all argued with enthusiasm and candour but usually diametrically opposite.    Is there a "right view" well obviously not in so much as 'right and wrong' seem to have such a wide basis, depending on a multitude of factors.

They were initially discussing Refugee camps and then turned to the "rights" of the Refugee and finally the big question "do we have any basis for our contention that being British is a definable identity.

The huge Somali refugee camp in Kenya has been open for years and grows with its own inhabitants taking on the functions of normality by marrying and having children who themselves grow into first generation refugees,  a state within a state. It seems, far away from the war zone the people accepted their lot and there were few signs of bottled up resentment which we are told will radicalise future generations.
I suppose if you look across the world the rural environment has maintained itself not by being the answer to all things which is often the mistaken Valhalla of city life, but by being constant and predictable.
The answer to the question of the 'mass migrant movement' into Europe depended on whether you had an sufficient optimism, that people will, as the Beatles song goes "work it out" and the conundrums and Gordian knots of our limited imagination, which instinctively fears change, will produce a solution of sorts. The other side of course demand to know why we should be put to the sword as it were. "Fight them on the beaches" comes to mind and in those far off days there was never any question of not fighting for 'our way of life'. One might even ruminate that all those  young men who died on the many battlefield must be turning in their lonely grave to think we are contemplating giving it all up due to flagrant criticism of our past and a craven willingness to offer apology.

Finally the question of what British means and whether the questionnaire which new seekers into this promised land have to complete has any substance, never mind reason. One of the questions was "what was the name of the first curry house in Britain" a give a way if ever there was one if you wished to point your stick at a specific demographic. A fact that the, dare one say 'indigenous white person' would be flummoxed to answer is beside the point and it reminded me of the test the Afrikaner devised to decide on which side of the mystical ethnic line you were on. " The pencil test" If a pencil held firmly in the hair of the applicant they failed to rise to the top of the class and were degraded with that strange description "non White".

Perhaps a controversial point. Of the participants, only one was a women and it was she who claimed the liberal mantel of let them, in they are after all human beings. I'm sure she would be the first to look to the authorities when things go wrong as over the New Year celebrations in Germany where a number of outrageous rapes were carried out by young men clearly far away from their cultural restraints and who, seeing so much freedom decided to have some !
Women on the whole are not on the front line when wars spring up and whilst they become collateral damage they are not asked to defend the cultural norms which this women seemed so willing even enthusiastic to risk.

Rescuing a friend

I like to think of my home as an oasis, a place where the water is sweet and the lodging secure. Like a Bedouin tent in the desert, the lamp shines brightly across the miles of inhospitable sand and friendship is offered even amongst the inhospitable natives who reside here.
One of the great discoveries I made was the difference that culture and formality makes to a nation and how a genuine interest and an open door epitomises the link we make to everyone.
'An Englishman's home is his castle' and one normally finds the entrance guarded.
In some countries an invitation to spend the night is common and the welcome is part of a psychological acknowledgement that we all contribute to each other's health and welfare, especially if the people likely to offer are themselves part of a minority within the country. 

Perhaps it's a feeling of insecurity which makes increasing the numbers under the roof more secure or perhaps the sound of a common language makes the conversation more precious. What ever the reason we are not good in this country at offering space within the home since in my own experience there has been an instinctive reluctance to play the role of 'mine host'.

It doesn't seem to matter how far you have travelled or how late it is there is no, "would you like to sleep here tonight" which was the standard response in South Africa. 



I'm sure there is no ulterior motive it's simply that it never occurs to people here. Perhaps a hangover from the times when we never ventured far and lived our lives within a small compass, everyone's home was within walking distance. Or perhaps we are a grudging lot unable to feel charitable when the margins in our own life are narrow. Perhaps it also leads to a narrowing of perspective and we judge everything in terms of self interest.
For myself my door is always open and I would feel it a privilege to come out at whatever hour to rescue a friend !!!

Helping where we can

So politics is purely theatre and the winners are Thespians who put on a good show.
What a sad commentary on the current state of our nation.
In my youth and particularly in my Fathers youth, the rank and file voter, specifically what we used to call the "working class", that mass of people who have little to protect in terms of personal wealth and are fragile in their reliance on the State, on the whole have had firm and informed views on their political allegiance. 

Today politics is not, in most homes, on the breakfast agenda. Instead there is something of a revulsion towards politicians and politics and, because it is not part of everyday (any day) attention, the people are easily convinced by a newspaper headline or a sound bite on the television. 
The substance of modern 'belief'  is paper thin and an understanding of the larger issues or their future impact is lost in an ongoing creative marketing effort to obscure the facts. 
Of course that term, 'the facts' in politics has a quantitative/qualitative ring to it and given the subject matter "the human condition", it opens a Pandora's Box on how you judge the facts.
Take Ian Duncan Smiths 'bedroom tax' where people living in a council house, with an extra bedroom, must downsize or pay a penalty. In terms of freeing up the Councils stock of housing for larger families, when the incumbent, their own family having move away don't need such a large house. The difficulty is that there aren't smaller properties to move into and so the person is stuck but has to pay the penalty which given they are barely making ends meet is very hard.
A shocking case unfolded recently when a women committed suicide after struggling to pay her way for a year. The real tragedy was that she killed herself on the day and on the spot where her son had killed himself a year previously, it was his death which had triggered the bureaucrats to say that now she had to vacate the house !
The issue of leaving the vicissitudes of life to chance and being optimistic about the future is ok but for many, unrealistic and here, the weight of a government department to even-out the disparities in society is no bad thing.
If you believe this then there is no Thatcherite double speak that can dissuade you in the value you place in the strength of the "collective" be it government or workers representation. 
Many individuals within the society at large are too fragile, misinformed or under-educated and whilst we may claim they are no responsibility of ours, a wider humanistic view (never mind the religious connotation) would say that is just what we are here for, to understand and lay claim to helping where we can.

Cycling

When I was a lad, Sunday morning, come rain or shine, the alarm would go off early and after a glance outside I would pull on my cycling gear (not today's lycra) and wheel my 'iron steed' outside for a days cycling. The roads were empty descending into Shipley and up the short climb onto Manningham Lane to join others of the cycling club on our day out in the Dales.
Looking back I was blessed. Not only by the close proximity of the Dales but the fact that the motor car was still out of reach for the majority of the people and we had the joy of the open road for much of our day.

The Yorkshire Dales, are a hilly, drystone walled uplands landscape of heather and gorse. The interlinking road connecting the villages, each a separate and detached community, twisted and turned through the countryside nothing but the swish of our tyres to disturb the wildlife. 

The joy of feeling fit and happy as we chatted to each other riding two abreast, twenty or so riders snaking along the deserted roads. The hill were sort after, a trial of strength. The names of the climbs like a battle field of old, were a challenge as we got out of the saddle to grind our way up the twisting accent. Breath and sinew were being tested as, head down we swayed from side to side pressing down on the peddle to keep up momentum. Lifting the gaze from its fixed position a few feet in front of the wheel we looked up to see how far we had still to go. Just around one last corner and the land flattened  out leaving the valley far below, we had made it and those that did felt the inevitable superiority towards those who walked the last part.
Poetry has been written describing the substance of the light and air, the sound of the Curlew, the sight of a Falcon plummeting out of the sky in pursuit of a rabbit but these were our personal  digest as we sat about eating our sandwiches. We were lucky to be alive and well  in one of natures more sublime settings.
Now-a-days it's an 'exercise bike' in the lounge and the boredom of morning TV clacking away in the corner. No chirping mates to chat to, no 20 mile undulating road to the next village to focus attention on, only the wallpaper to aim at.

How far we have fallen in our terrestrial journey !!!

Training to be "The Good Wife"

It's interesting how the basis for living our lives is at such variance to other traditions and religious contrivance.

As Europeans we have an individualistic concept of ourselves growing as men and women to follow paths which take in the instincts of the moment and the attendant opportunity which flows from a chance meeting. We are annoyed at being slaves to convention and have no truck with playing a role which is laid down by our elders.

In other societies the role is reversed and the individual is subsumed by tradition and culture to the point that we in the west shake our heads and cry abuse.

The Mohammedan tradition of veiling their women and excluding them from interaction with other men has a sensible side to it in that not only the men are protecting their exclusivity over the particular woman or wife but the women has laid claim to the man in that within her society she lays claim to his wealth.

A description of the wiles to which a Mohammedan girl will go to preserve her "value" in the market for finding a husband, and the training to that end by the mother, produces a remarkable self assured product which underneath the demure acceptance of the man's position, holds to herself the controlling factors within the marriage and home. Here tradition and custom set the rules to which the man must adhere or face disgrace within his fellow community of men. So you have a balance which is not always clear from the outside but within the society is set in stone.

To our eyes we see subservience and patriarchal dominance but within the fabric of the relationship there is a hierarchy of duties which provide a demarcation line and award strength to both parties.

In our "anything goes" culture we skirmish like ferrets  in a sack seeking surety like we seek riches in a Friday night lottery dip. It's a game of chance, which is no bad thing so long as we know the game we are playing !

From whence we come

Words like 'pathos' spring out at one as I continue to read and enjoy the Dinesen book "Out of Africa". How superior to the romanticised film version is the book with its detailed accounts of the immigrant farmer  and her handling of the day to day events on the farm and her incisive reasoning regarding the principle players in life on the farm.

She touches on the historical aspects of the Arab trade in African people up and down the East African coast. She reasons the that their half brother, the Somali has the skills but lacks their ancient finesse. That the Masai have one ideal, to be separate, aloof from everyone, a warrior nation to match the tradition of the accent Spartans. And then there's the Kikuyu, the sheep, surrounded by the dogs who wished to trade them, patient with no claws or teeth, no power no earthly protector, their destiny in 'other's' hands which could only be accommodated through an immense gift for patient resignation. 

They would not die under the yoke like the Masai or storm against fate like the Somali when they feel cheated or slighted. They were the "goods" in the commerce, the profit and the prestige of their tormentors lay in them themselves, they were the central figures in the chase and the commerce and in this gave them "value" in this sense of themselves.
And so unfurls this microcosm of society, the rich parts that tribal nations play in the conundrum we call life. The traditions are formed not through some sort of natural evolution but through an evolution forced upon them by historical temper and temperament.
In nearly every instance in mankind's evolution trade and commerce brought about a recognition of the nation state or, where no state existed by the tribal state which itself reflected the people who made up the tribe. How these different temperaments are born, what hones them into a recognisable character is as much to do with climate and opportunity as it is any sort of superior genetics but once founded the tradition begets instinct and instinct is the cunning which defines value which is at the root of commerce.
Buy the book and read its pages, slowly, without prejudice. Soak up the complex,  but  deep simplicity of people unspoilt by the jangle of modern life, who survive, when we fall about if and when the power fails !!

Still sane

Putting emotional pressure on white people has been the flavour of the year, as it was last year and the year before.
The latest to break our airwaves this morning is. "How can it be that not one black actor has been nominated for an Oscar" ? To which I might suggest that this year perhaps they were not good enough ? Oh no say the black actor fraternity, its 'prejudice', clear and simple !


In an age where groups as diverse as the Disabled, the Trans Gender, and the Gay, from Muslims to Jews, are represented on the Internet as a pressure group, each demanding exclusivity, noisily berating the British Majority which for the moment is still represented by a 'white man and white woman', and each bearing the historical 'ill will' of their predecessors, as  "colonisers  who drew the demarcation lines of their conquests on the map with pencil and ruler which took no account of the people their decisions most effected and who are now queuing up for reparations.
Where this will all end up is anyone's guess since you no sooner become accustomed to one group with a claim when another is formed and we are re-educated to discover a new form of social dismemberment which needs addressing. It's like the medical terms of some mental aberration which even the most disadvantaged trot out to describe why they feel themselves different and need our help. Children are no longer naughty but suffer instead from some deep seated malaise recently discovered but now clarified under which  a whole subsection of society clamour for relief.
The term "man up" is positively antediluvian and intently frowned upon in many circles. Growing numbers of people treat the complexity of life and the living thereof as an opportunity to display their oddness and their suffering as a badge, to be shown like an LPD cop on a crime bust. To be off colour, a little down-in-the-dumps needs a trip to the Therapist, instead of a realisation that normally we all have good and bad days and so long as you can recognise the difference, you are still sane !

The Magic of Africa

Re-reading Isak Dinesen's "Out of Africa" one is struck by her respect for the natives who lived on her farm. These were not the urbanised African but the untouched rural person who's was ingrained into the land and the timeless travesty which life, dependent on the laws and vagrancies of nature, bring to a person.

Living alone she had time to study and reflect on the substance of their lives and the many superstitions which controlled their actions. Her conclusions developed in her, a deep sagacity which those who have lived in the African city and seen the urbanised African man and woman have no sense or understanding, let alone an affinity.

Our laws and judicial upbringing have made us evaluate the actions of others in a graduated conceptually modified system of judgement in which victim and perpetrator each carry blame.
The rural native sees no such philosophical contrivance. Judgement is simply a matter of "someone must pay". Loss is not exclusively an emotional thing it is a financial burden and it weighs heavily on the poorest. The righting of a loss has more to do with restoring the economic balance which the loss has upset and her description of the hours of rumination and deliberation by the elders of the clan who worked on, or squatted close, to her farm would go on for days and if unresolved an injustice would smoulder for ever. "A loss has been brought upon the community and must be made up for somewhere, by somebody. The native will not give thought or time to weighing up guilt or desert but will devote himself in endless speculation to the method by which the crime or disaster can be weighed up in sheep and goats, time has no relevance as he leads you into a sacred maze of sophistry". "The old men listened attentively, the small black eyes in their dry and wrinkled faces glittered, their thin lips moved gently as if they were repeating my words, they were pleased to hear, for once, an excellent principle, put into speech".

The underlying difference in our cultures makes rationally based understanding so very difficult.

The names which the Native attached to a person particularly a white person was symbolic of how they defined your value or status and these names were more important than your birth-name in describing you within the district amongst the indigenous native community.

How often have we taken the trouble to investigate their culture and the importance it holds for them. How often we equate our own set of values which seem to diminish our standing as we find fresh ways to reward ourselves with the quick fix of easy money.

The book has a timeless quality. What do we mean by this. Well in part it is the nature of the seasons and their effect on nature, the animals and the crops and the adaptation mankind makes to cope. It is the time aspect which shorn of the hurried existence of city life takes on a new meaning where symbolism plays a role in making sense of our place in the events which we have so little control. And finally it's the space and the silence which drum a different message into our brains, a message which reveals how puny we are in the scope of things in general.

Read the book and hear the change of pitch as the sun sets and the cicadas tune up their distinctive orchestra, or the rains rumbling in across the veld take hold of everything in a cycle of rebirth and opportunity. The roar of the lion or the trumpet of elephants, the scream of a kill or the sound of conversation and laughter in the village. The smell of dry earth and the impossible contest between life and death are images which flow out from the pages written by a European who fell in love with the country and its people. If you have been lucky enough to have spent time there you will understand the magic of Africa.

Only a 7

Grammar and spelling were never my strongest subjects. 

Battling what I put down to a life long struggle to process words in their correct order, mixing my sense of right with left ( which I am told is not dyslexia ) and grammar which I was taught only the barest minimum at the Secondary Modern School I attended in the 50s.

 It would appear my "Random Thoughts" is riddled with grammatical bloomers poor syntax and especially spelling errors which glare through the page quite often. 

This was not a matter of someone being critical because the 'mechanics' of English Grammar and especially the spelling mistakes were an insurmountable barrier to his general enjoyment of the blog but it jarred his deep rooted sense of what he had been taught regarding written English. It relegated the blog as a piece of creative writing down a notch or two. 

I suppose the mental arrangement goes "if he couldn't get 'that' right what else was wrong with the message". It's like a mole on a pretty girls face no matter how hard you try your attention is drawn to it and her beauty diminished. 

Of course it asks the question, should you only be satisfied with perfection. The landscape which is painted by the amateur is not a Turner but it is clearly a landscape. Should our individual effort in something for which we profess no specific skill, other than that it is 'original', meet the standards of the Encyclopaedia Britannica or should we just plough on regardless since it's the message, hidden in the jumble of words, not the words themselves, which is important.

"Make the effort my boy". He is quite right, it is a matter of effort. Colloquial speech which creeps into the written format is ugly, (unless used in a culturally descriptive sense). Similarly when we listen to a strong dialect, the person can mistakenly be taken for being unintelligent when in fact his intelligence is perfectly intact but his communicative skills (outside his cultural area)  make part of what he has to say unintelligible and it becomes unattractive.
I promise to do better, is now attached to every blog but I'm not so sure there won't be many more 'bloomers' in the future.

I can only hope those who do, will keep reading and those who don't, will have missed nothing anyway. (My first grammatical gaff) !!!

Brr Brr (Ring Tone)

Does the lack of receiving  "x" number of calls on your mobile phone say anything about you ?
Well I suppose firstly, it could indicate you don't have many friends !
Or it could mean your circle of friends don't have phones !
The mobile phone is a relatively new phenomena and those of us who remember the Phone Box with the three pennies in the slot and a button to press when the connection was made will understand how we used to go about our lives without the constant interruption of others. We were genuinely in our own zone, unapproachable, lost to virtually everyone as we walked the streets purposefully engaged in our own world.
Today the phone is never off. We are committed to being available no matter where, no matter when and to all and sundry. The phone and its ability to transform introspection into a chat about something and nothing, perhaps only to say "I am here" is in some ways quite destructive. Couples sitting at a table in the restaurant not talking to each other but on the phone texting someone else has to be such a sad reflection on modern society, "sad" that is if you think it's important for people to make the effort to talk to each other, not so sad if you think there is no point in maintaining a pretence and need to escape a poor coupling.
Of course the smart phone is an Aladdin's Cave, or a Rabbits Hole in which to disappear when seated on your own but it always strikes me that the immediate world around, in the restaurant, or where ever you are, is immeasurably more interesting than a predefined interrogation of news and events which are happening way outside your field of vision or capacity to effect.
This visible world around us which was, up until fairly recently, all we had to captivate our imagination or make sense of in relation to others, has stood the test of time and I am not sure that the modern telecommunication method of abstracting yourself from your real surroundings is anything more than a comparative to the also modern trend of the short term self induced hallucination brought by drugs or alcohol, as an escape.
Perhaps the sensible alternative, an actual 'real time' reality experience is maybe too much effort. Perhaps also dangerous since we are then forced to reveal ourselves in the full light of day as the saying goes.

Parental influence

I was thinking of my Dad after  I had composed the Betwixed and Between response to a claim that I don't like women.
We owe so much to our parents both the good and the bad and we would do well to reflect more often on them as we make our ponderous way through this life. We have such a composite part of our character tied up in theirs and our memory of both our Mother and Father should be consecrated, defined as special.
The inherent good my Dad showed to everyone he knew and his ability to see the best in everyone came from a hard but defined upbringing. My Grandmother was a women who knew her own mind, honed on living a life of relative hardship she and was not afraid of speaking it.
It clearly gave my Dad, growing up under her wing, the right incubation to recognise right from wrong from an early stage without the need to intellectualise it, "do onto others what you would have done to yourself"
He always had a calming, sensible influence on people who knew him and was the first to consider the other persons position in an attempt to understand any conflict. His smile was one of warmth and friendship and I think he would have been unable to contrive harm or speak ill of others.
This is not to say he did not have strong political opinions and was very involved, intellectually, with the politics of his day. He hated the divisions in society and felt the birthright which gave a selected few a ticket to ride was wrong. He was very well read and used his education to evolve opinions that took in his fellow man and refined and developed a humanity  tinged with humility which many valued.
As always, we need the maturity of our own experience to see the strength in others and as a young person his refusal to be more forceful was in my mind a sign of weakness but given his torrid upbringing and having lived his creative years through the 'Depression' with the stultifying effect it must have had on his own opportunity, one can only marvel at the fact that he always kept his equanimity in tact.
The fifties and sixties were as chalk to cheese to his formative and productive years and yet he developed a consistent set of values on which to build his life, to be who he was, to who ever he came into contact with for them to know they had met someone of substance.

The influence of my Mother was of a different dimension to that of my Dad. 

Having given her hell at childbirth she never held it against me !!

Her love was boundless and in some ways embarrassing to a young lad growing up and determined to do things his own way. Over protective but countered by my Dads insistence that risk taking was part of the growing process. He must have born the brunt of much accusation as I lay in a short term coma having gone through the windscreen of a car head first but all was forgiven as I regained consciousness.

Mums presence was the basic stock in the household ferment. Always there when arriving from school or play she survived the inevitable indifference that a growing boy shows to his parents, they were purely islands of security in between episodes of glamour and excitement. 

Mums love and commitment covered the whole family in its concern and protection. I, other than once, can not remember a bad word passing between my Mom and Dad. There were no rows, no fights, no animosity. The only occasion I witnessed any disharmony was when my Grandmother (on Dad side) came with us on a caravan holiday and friction between the women broke my Dads unflappable nature and they had a spectacular verbal fight which to this day I remember as if it were yesterday.

Mom outlived Dad but was inconsolable when he died. Her prop demolished in one foul blow, her communication gone she had nowhere to turn and the world was a bare pitiless place in which to pass her final unhappy years.

The classic question

It's funny reading about the economic prognosis regarding the plunge in share prices and the realignment of China from a predominantly export, investment led economy to one more attuned to supplying an internal domestic market and the ramifications this has on the rest of the world. Is this the start of another seismic event such as the banking crisis of 2008 or will it be more benign and settled by accommodation within the global economy. 

What is funny is that at some stage I will not be around to see !! 

CNNs daily hyper screaming show, based on the New York Stock Exchange will be out of sight and my trip into M&S to buy trousers will be lost for ever in the year end accounts.

The world without me will go on as if I hadn't been an active participant, as if my blogs and the debates, the heat and the frustration were spent for nothing. Of course in the general scheme of things this is true. But in the enclosed pressure system which is 'me', the highs and the lows that make up my week, are the treasure I leave behind as a memory for a few close friends. 

It was Thomas Paine who said " The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark", and "to argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason and who's philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead or endeavouring to convert an atheist by scripture". 

He also said" Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another and it becomes my duty to 'guarantee', as well as to 'possess", or "What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly.

This stepping off the ship in full voyage and watching the ship steam away with its lights twinkling and the band still playing, and Número uno missing as if he had not existed, is a bitter pill to swallow. 

The environment in which we live and breathe , so interesting and sensible as we search for understanding through the mysteries of the quantum world or, the tracts of an ancient prophet/philosopher such as the Buddha. But it is all "Impermanent", it has no meaning other than a 'comfort blanket, to keep us psychological lay warm. 
"To be or not to be that is the question" ? Shakespeare  summed it up as always "whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune  or to take alms against a sea of trouble and by opposing end them. To die, to sleep no more and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache  and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die. To sleep.

And so the soliloquy rolls on with all the gift of the Bards genius to grasp that human intercourse which conflicts us all as we seek meaning in this life.
I find it fascinating, not at all depressing. A wonderful example of man's indomitable spirit to press on regardless because of a lack of any sensible alternative !!

Betwixt and between

Your comment the other day that "I don't like women" is not true. I can be as fascinated by women as the next man, its just the fact that, like the next man I don't really understand them.

Apart from physiological differences men and women resemble each other to the extent that we are lured into the belief that were are the same. But of course we are not.

Culturally we are raised in a different way and this, predicts the way we think and act. 

Different societies have different norms. In the West we apply "sugar and spice and all things nice" to girls as they grow up into women whilst the boys are relegated to "puppy dogs tails" and a strong dose of "don't cry"

In 'societies' willingness  to put the girl on a  pedestal we damage both sexes. 

It's only the inherent  'good disposition' that men accrue (😛) by being formally made the "underdog" as they advance through the formative stages of forming their personalities within the family, that we must defer to their "weaknesses" since we are told they are in some way (not defined) fragile.

The surety of their special place in the hierarchy of the human social structure, their "princess stage" lives with many of them throughout their lives and makes them, unless one is prepared to continue the myth, a challenge to live with.

They are fascinating but different and it's the length one is prepared to go to worship at the artificial contrivance, as well as understand the drive that sex has in the relationship which makes the merry go round of cohabitation the often, not so merry, business it can become.

Men like women are always trying to square the circle when it comes to understanding and complying with the 'others' definition of the "good life". 

Our drives are different, our objectives often different and whilst we use that infamous term "compromise" to achieve a subjective harmony there can be growing resentment in both camps at the lack of understanding "my" needs.

Fundamentally I remain open on the proposition that a good, 'give and take' relationship between men and women can be achieved, (much more than just a friendship). But not only 'give and take', it's more, an ability that when a proposition to do something is mooted, the question of the other persons "rooted proclivity" has to be evaluated and the question asked,"Is my position on this matter important or is it becoming a reason, (in its self), to oppose, based on the understanding of the instinctive roles we play, which spring from our upbringing".

No I would say I am "intrigued  by women", mesmerised by the difference and a little at sea without them.

The truth can hurt

We all need a nemesis in our lives, someone something to contend with, to conflict our thoughts and beliefs, to disrupt our surety.
I have been reading Philip Roth's auto biography in which he writes the first half from the position of himself seen through his own rose-tinted spectacles and then, in the second part of the book he criticises the picture he has created by asking questions of the underlaying factors that brought into being the man so carefully constructed from the fiction which we all carry about regarding ourselves.
The imaginative construct (analysis from another or the other point of view) is so revealing. As  a process we could all benefit from it.
Our imagination taints everything. We construct a reason-based story about our lives of why we did what we did. We give it our best shot to define our movements. We construct an alibi to rid ourselves of the unpleasant fact of being at times, unpleasant.
Riding the wave of creative fiction we make our lives palatable, not just to others but more importantly, to ourselves.   It's not a question of highlighting the missed opportunities but of a deceit as to why we did what we did, (or didn't do), especially the issue of our interaction with people. We constructed walls to keep them out rather than doors to let them in. We were not whole-heartedly open, a defence against being hurt by ridicule from those not mature enough to begin this  trail of self examination, asking the question of others "was I really that bad"?
Roth is unerringly determined to find answers, not so much to change who he is but to put the record straight. 
It would do all of us some good to look into our own persona, before we depart and become, merely a memory

Lotto Fever

It's after 8.00pm and the results are out. Will I have won the 60 million pounds or has it gone elsewhere. With odds at 50 million to 1 is it worth the effort of checking, it's all too silly to even think that Lady Luck would shine on your patch. 
Luck that concept by which thousands, millions of people throughout their lives place such emphasis. The gambler who try's to double his opportunity by increasing his stake to negate the previous failure. The person who wildly assumes that because someone must win then the involvement in the game brings them closer to winning. 
Perceptions are at the root of our failure to confront the fact that at 50 million to 1 your chance of kissing a frog which then turns into a princess is only slighter more unlikely. Of course being the frog yourself and finding the princesses flocking to your side after winning 60 million is a far better bet.
This fantasising of immediate riches and the mental games we play, spending and giving the money, sets in perspective the values we have and how money distorts value. 
Of course to be able to give someone who is battling sufficient to dig them out of their financial hole is a tremendous idea especially since we know people who are maimed by the weight of debt given the pressure of interest on interest on interest, and can never emerge into the daylight. It's interesting that one of the main tenets of Islam is the ban on charging or receiving interest, perhaps it was an antidote to the Middle Eastern market place and the business of the Jewish money lenders.
The queues in Tesco's and Sainsbury's to buy a Lottery ticket at £2 each were long, as the punters began to panic in the lead up to the draw. 50 million to 1 wasn't in their mindset since they must have reasoned that this ticket they were buying, not the one the chap in front had just bought, was the winner. It's not a question of optimism perhaps more a question of pessimism. Pessimism with the way their empty lives are running without a huge wad of notes to back up what ever they do, lives which have become so devalued that we need 60 million to make good.

Fact from fiction

Writing is both imaginary as well as factual. Writing is about yourself but much of it is based on the fiction of storytelling which is a disconnect from the real life story but still relies on the real life component, you, to tell it and you tell it with the real life you so mixed in with the fiction such that it's difficult to tell where the one starts and the other leaves off.
A good story has to grow with a life of its own, the moment of your writing, the creation of a character and their story as it unfurls is what makes it real and the biographical aspect which is the source of the ingredients you add to the dish is not the finished product by any means.
Creativity is to walk the walk with your character, to envisage how their day and the issues that arise in it can seem real.  They have an ingredient which everyone recognises as real and possible. The genius of a writer is to create a complex "who done it" without it being a crime story, simply a life story as it unfurls with the scrapes and escapes which we all get into and which makes our lives hopefully rich and liveable. 
To believe the story you have to believe in the character and to believe in the character they have to have a component that most people can relate to. 
Your knowledge is based on the people in your own life, they with all their warts and disfigurement,  they contain the texture of what you know about real people, not the idealised person you might wish to imagine they were. 
If I were to write a story about Swansea and set it amongst the wet, tiered, bleak housing which makes up parts of the town and add the unrelenting grey wet sky which presses down on the spirit each day as the wind loosens the refuse bags of their rubbish, strewing the paper and discarded bits of flotsam which make up our lives, onto the street further depressing the landscape. Its then that I can introduce the first of my fictional/factional characters, perhaps as they step out of the door, up the steps to wrestle with the gate which still needs fixing. The character begins to walk and eventually talk, first to themselves and then to someone they know standing on the corner, sheltering from the rain. Both conversations are rich in opportunity. The internal one relates to what happened last night when you were out in the town and here lies the crux of the story the second is based on the reality of carrying on, regardless of the great secret which burdens the teller.
And so a story unfolds carrying the reader with its plausibility and the potentially unspoken crisis. There is one in all of us and we want to read about others which are similar but oblique to our own, comforted to know we are not alone.
There can be only so many story lines but the writers tapestry is emblazoned by the craftsman-ship of the weave and the colour which make it stand out.
I have to emphasise that I have never tried to write fiction although perhaps my imagination and a wide pallet of experience from across the world would provide the seed corn for a story or two.
My guru has become Philip Roth and his fund of personal experience. Growing up as a Jew and assimilating his objective persona with the subjective baggage of his tribe. His tussle with who he was to become through the indoctrination of his upbringing and the realisation that not every-thing could be contained in it. His intellectual journey is too engrossing to feel limited by his birthright and whilst it provided a yardstick it was not the whole measure of the man.

The big question (Europe) and BREXIT

This is the year of the great debate "should we stay in the European Union".

The referendum which may take place as soon as June is probably as momentous a political decision as any we are asked to make.

Is there an inevitability about coming out. Loosening our bond with the EU because of its proclaimed aim of eventual Federalisation and the concomitant loss of National Identity and the inability to control ones own destiny. 

Is the EU not much more than the result of Globalisation and the control of everything passing to the financiers.

We have had the case for European Unity which in the 50s and the 60s meant a consolidation of values, values which in the past had been used as a reason for going to war. Inevitably the daily discourse between nations and having a conduit to funnel those discussions, (the EU),  meant that we see we had more in common with each other and that the jingoism which national leaders and their parliaments used to whip up a fabricated cause, was not in anyone's interest other than a small coterie of industrialists who saw money to be made.

Is the EU democratic ? It elects members to sit in its parliament but the organisation  seems to be governed by committees of bureaucrats who formulate the rules and then pass the new already formulated provisions through a complicated collective majority voting system which bypasses the national preference. In some ways the electorate are one further step away from democratic accountability (if there ever was such a thing) since in electing their own national parliament, a large percentage of voters falling on the wrong side of their preference, they have little or no say in the decisions which are handed down by the EU.   These decisions which in a National Parliament can be overturned by electing the Opposition at the next General Election, and who may see fit to abolish the law are powerless in the collective called the European Union.

The one thing I will say is that the blend of political opinion across the spectre of Europe has to my mind a wider, more humanitarian, society orientated taste than the class driven individualistic system we have in this country. There are many regulations which the man in the street benefits from which emanate from European legislation and which would never have reached the statute book left to the special interest groups which make up our parliament in Westminster. 

Would there be a loss of entry into the European market place. Would any losses be made up in the world wide markets which are beginning to flourish. This is unanswerable other than to say it's in our own hands. We can wrest back the industrial and design skills which we were once proud of.  We can reapply the finance which currently is used in the financial casino to investment in manufacturing, directed as a national priority. We are not a Polynesian Island and we do have the educational structors to provide the know how so long as the investment is there.

Of course we would face the tariff barriers which non EU countries face when selling into Europe and depending on the product these can be substantial. Of course we sell more to Europe than Europe buys from us so the disadvantage might be compensated for and of course, we would be free to look for markets elsewhere which currently we can not do without being constrained by the limits that are imposed on us by having to follow the EU rules and regulations.

Of course here we get to the pith of the matter since matters such as 'Health and Safety', 'Standards of Production', even 'Wages and Conditions' generally are the subject of EU Law and we are obliged to ensure our workforce and and workplace meet the standards won over the decades since our joining. One of the obstacles to the Global Monoliths treating everything in terms of the bottom line (the profit) and ignoring the human misery which comes from unregulated labour arrangements, (an example is the rise of China and cheap sweatshop manufacturing) has been the strength of the European belief in a balanced economy where the society is considered and not misused. The neocon Free Marketeers are queuing up for an opportunity to scrap the standards which protect us and for Market Forces to be free to find their level.

The world used to be our market place and perhaps because we have relinquished much of the productive capital and know how we are not in a fit position to tender our goods and services. Perhaps the cold douche of reality will stimulate this Island into putting things right or perhaps more likely it will put out the fires for ever and we can become a Theme Park and compete with Disney

Is Europe secure and definable any more. Europe has found difficulty in harmonising the countries who are members and this has led to financial strain which is still unresolved. 

Greece as an example is a financial basket case which predominantly Germany won't sanction the necessary restructuring to allow it to become viable again. A bankruptcy court would sever its previous debt and constrain its spending power but Germany, for political or ideological reasons says no and there is no arguing with the Bundesbank. There are other nations Spain, Italy, Ireland  in a similar position. Would we want to be under the thumb of Frau Merkel ?

 I know we don't have any battleships to remind her of our voice but to have a voice at all, is something.

Is the dream of the free movement of labour too much of a danger now with the huge influx of people from the Middle East with their cultural and religious differences that overtime produce immense strains on the indigenous (if still recognisable) population. Do our political class still make decisions based on labour quotas as has Mrs Merkel in the hope that the good nature of the local population will assimilate and, more to the point be assimilated by the new comers.

Will the social construct of a multiracial society stand the weight of time or will we all be at each other's throats, not as in the past, nation on nation but person to person, within the national state?

Going back to the beginning

 So much men pin their hearts upon !

When all is said and done we are a funny lot, planning and scheming, hoping, gambling with our time trying to make reason with our disappointments and not a little surprised when thing go right.

From morning till night we follow well trodden paths, rituals of behaviour, finding peace in the routine as if the repetitive act is an acknowledgement that we are on course to get through another day. 

Where did the joy of discovery go, when did the thrill of another relationship no matter how brief made us feel alive, when we're the uplands places to find and conquer, to tick off, an attainment to add to our ever growing experience.
We give in to conformity, uniformity, and the deformity of ourselves in so many ways in this passage through the one and only life we have.
Some, many are contented with the scraps they have managed to pick up. A little battered and bruised  but on the whole satisfied to have come through it with a commemoration, he/she was a good person who did no harm.
Is that enough ?  Would it be better that he was a terror who lived his/her life on the edge, always looking for new ways to experiment and find what it was that we were born for.
Now there is a question. We're we born to achieve or simply exist. We're we born to question or we're we born to accept our lot with the rest. Was there a reason for us being alive, a deep fundamental reason for doing what we did when we did it or we're we like the herd, just following the one ahead.
Society is constructed it didn't just come into being. It depended on our birth, we are expected to fill the role provided and therefore, within a narrow constricted space we were cajoled into mimicking others, like animals in a circus repeating the same tricks.
As we become less useful we are allowed off the treadmill to look around for the last time at the world and our place in it. We see ourselves, sometimes for the first time without the garment of work or provider, a garment which we had gathered around ourselves for all these years as if in a play, the cloak pronouncing who we were and what was expected of us. Shorn of the part, without the character to play we have to reinvent ourselves, in a sense go back to the beginning when without clothes we were what we were.

Osmosis

Life. Your own life. That mixture of hopes and dreams mixed up in events. 

The orthodoxy that one grows by osmosis, the assimilation of ideas and experiences which form your character and temper your mind to believe certain things  has a pleasing, almost Darwinian ring to it
Where you are born and to whom you are born is immensely important in this process of development but it casts you for a part you may not wished to play.

The surroundings and the feedback from those surroundings may have a positive or a negative effect. It may contort you into a struggle which is still being fought and for which there is probably no satisfactory answer. Square pegs into round holes comes to mind and a life spent trying to justify the fit. 

When you were very young and unharmed by opinion, your life had as many paths and many opportunities. Given the right tools you could have achieved almost anything. 

Place a violin in the hands of a three year old or set the child on an exercise regime to run under 10sec for the 100m and one can achieve a series of goals that would mark that person out for a measure of success in life. 

Let life unfurl in a laissez faire, non-interventionist role and the outcome is like roulette, a game of chance.
Is it then, in early childhood where we are failed, often by high minded experts and their attitude towards discipline which is kept off the agenda for fear of breaking little Jimmies the 'spirit'. 

This thing called "spirit" some would describe as an "effervescence" having no real meaning, other than the  romanticised concept of what a child's early years should be like. 

We see this spirit or at least one aspect of it, in the consequence of the refusal to 'dictate to a child a course of action you know is for the best'. The tantrum which many ill disciplined children display is the result of not providing guidelines, what is acceptable and non acceptable, and it could be argued the greater the guiding hand the better adjusted the child.

Are we nothing more than a fiction a story which could have been so much better told if the plot had been worked out beforehand.

One of the successes of the Jewish nation is the understanding that success comes through training and repartition. The rules that decide your path in a good Jewish household are tied up in religious dogma but the results rarely fail. The boy or girl is not free to experiment willy nilly, they have a responsibility to the tribe which is larger and more precious than to themselves alone. It is this 'hand holding' and 'guidance' which prevents the child getting lost in its own world. The spirit is not destroyed but moulded to a greater objective and the secret of success both as an individual and as a nation is the acceptance of objectives which lie outside ones own private experience or control.

Looking into the future

Well it's the start of a New Year and things just go rolling on. 

Time of course pays no reference to our quirk of placing so much importance on events which we note by the passage of time.

Birthdays, holidays, festivals, all are either looked forward to, or remembered, hopefully with pleasure as signposts during the year. Nostalgia plays its part, that sentimental yearning for a time gone by or a person missing in your life, made more acute by the festivities around you.

It's hard to gatherer ones resources and continue to plough on when there seems such little value in doing so but we do, through the routine we have suckered ourselves with, the breakfast ritual, the early morning walk, the call on the shop to pick up the newspaper and the milk. 

Without the drive of employment and the crack of the whip to guide you forward we become a bit rudderless in this the first stage of the new year and it's now that we are most vulnerable. Living in the Northern Hemisphere it's winter and the weather is at its least attractive, our spirits kept low by the dark and the rain. I often turn this on its head by marvelling how fortunate I am to have a secure roof over my head where I am warm and well fed. Looking out of the window as the rain beats against glass I feel like the pig who built his house of brick and was secure from the Wolf no matter what was going on outside. This sense of security is a foundation on which to build ones spirits and it becomes the linch pin for everything we do throughout the year. 

As we venture out we have the return journey to look forward to, the key in the door and the familiarity of a cup of hot tea. I was going to say,  and a tasty bacon sandwich but I will get into trouble from my Vegan friends.

Life goes on. Some are lucky to be choosing a summer cruise and a year full of events. They are the resourceful ones who look forward to, as much the planning, as the actual business of setting off. The brochures depict the places in bright technicolor and the Copywriter is an expert at creating  a scene to wet the appetite. 

Even a trip down to see old Jim has its anticipatory value although one must beware that Jim is, unlike yourself, getting old, maybe a little senile and the conversation drys up in the first half hour. The real unfortunates are the ones who haven't the resources to travel but then even here there is often a stoic understanding that within a small radius one has more than enough and for many who do get up and go somewhere, when asked, are sorely tried to describe much more than the hotel they stayed in !!

So we are where we are, treating each day as an opportunity to do something different, or better, as an opportunity to be at peace with oneself and just chill !!!

Sent from my iPad