Our own space

 

Subject: Our own space.

Do we get up out of bed because we have to. Do we promote our lives 'by being busy', making appointments to be somewhere else, rather than being in the comfort of ones own bed. Is it a Lutheran  prophecy that "the devil makes work for idle hands" and are we are to scared to loaf around and be idle since someone has decreed it unhealthy. 

Of course it is unhealthy lying in bed all day. The muscles atrophy and become weak, our internal organs such as the lungs deteriorate through lack of exercise, fat builds up in the heart and hampers us in all kinds of ways but still it's lovely to lie in bed reading or, as I do, writing a blog about why I shouldn't feel bad sitting in bed. 
The bedroom is our refuge, it always has been ever since we were tiny. It was our space away from the rest of the family. Undressing and being  naked was the domain of the bedroom and bathroom, both had doors and an unwritten code of entry. 
Marriage causes a major dislocation in this special appreciation of 'individual space '. The bedroom once the provider of a respite from the world outside is subsumed in the notion that the one you love is happy to share you and all your traits, warts and all, supposedly, in a union made in the eyes of God.  
As the shine wears off and the idiosyncratic nature of your partner becomes clearer, it  in some cases, leads to separate bedrooms, and we learn once more, the pleasure of our own privacy.
It's this elemental privacy which is important. Watching films on television where it's depicted that the greatest sin in marriage is keeping something from your partner , as if the two of you were the same as one. The instinctual separation of male and female interests according to taste is now a days an anathema to the modern school of thought which wishes to bring the gender differences into one unwholesome sameness. It's apparently unhealthy to stray far from the interests of ones partner, there has to be a sharing in everything, a tiptoeing, hand holding symbiosis in which, like two peas in a pod  you share your deepest, darkest secrets on the assumption that the other person is interested and that the gender 'neutral' obsession we have these days will kick in and intellectualising will win the day.
If boys are brought up as boys and girls as girls, (unfortunately another concept currently under threat),  and the overriding obsession that 'rights' trump everything, including gender alignment, and it is insisted we ignore the evidence before our eyes each and every day, another element of fake social engineering is thrust upon us and collectively we become the poorer for it.  Perhaps in the not too distant future, genetic engineering will come up with some hybrid which will make this so but up till now, vive la the difference say I.
Obviously the stiff righteousness of the Victorian norm has been superseded by a more egalitarian system of identifying individual rights and trying to meld some individual differences into one but the move to remove all the difference, differences which in essence provide the spark which galvanises everything, will be lost and is a bridge far too far.

Mission impossible

 

Subject: Mission impossible 

There. are moments when the heavenly forces combine and we are showered with gold. That was the moment when Ben Stokes, (Sir Ben Stokes) belted the ball to the boundary at Headingly and England won the Third Test.
Yesterday the collapse of England's opening batsmen was halted by a disciplined knock from Captain Joe Root. The opening batsmen had displayed a disreputable lack of fundamental batting technique, they looked like cats caught in the headlights as Australia's fast bowlers peppered them with bouncers. Instead of playing defensive batting they simply struggled to know what to do and it was embarrassing to watch. With Roots arrival the ship steadied and as he and Ben Stokes began to play proper test cricket the second innings total of 359 seemed not completely impossible. England have never chased and reached such a second innings total and after the capitulation for 67 all out in the first innings England looked woefully inadequate against a  good pace bowling attack.

Roots contribution was short lived on the 4th day and it was left to Stokes to salvage the game. The odds were against him. 150 runs to win and whilst Barstow remained there it seemed possible but then the dreaded English lurgy struck again. That lack of technique and discipline, allowing the bat to wander after a wide ball which he should have left alone. Bairstow was out with still a hundred and twenty left on the board and we were down to the tailenders, bowlers who could bat a bit but no one, other than Stokes who could be called a batsman. Eventually the last man walked out to the centre with still over 70 runs to get, impossible. 

Stokes who only recently had been left out of the team for brawling in the streets is one of those irascible people who, larger than life who wear their hearts on their sleeve and kick at the norms in life. Rumbustious would be a better description and in this situation with all the record books against him he proceeded to do it in style. Sixes followed sixes, fours followed fours and the 70 runs came tumbling down from 70 to 50, to 19 to 9 and then 2 how could it be possible, the omens would have their revenge, he would be out with only  1 run needed but no, with a magnificent flourish he hit the ball to the boundary and England, against all the odds had won the match.
Stokes deserves to be knighted, not a single member of that rapturous crowd would demure, only the shell shocked Aussies, who just couldn't believe their eyes.

Proroguing Parliament

Subject: Proroguing Parliament.

So this morning we wake up to hear the political establishment in disarray, screeching and tearing their hair out as Boris announces that Parliament will be prorogued i.e. suspended for a period of time prior to a new Queens Speech, which is the symbol of a new parliamentary session, a parliament resetting itself as the old parliament comes to an end. The hysteria amongst the opposition as it sees itself sidelined by the government is, to my mind, disingenuous because whilst proroguing makes the sittings impossible, given the importance of Brexit at the end of October, why did the parliamentarians go on leave this year and why are they prepared to go ahead with the Party Conferences when all hands and heads should be locked into the Palace of Westminster until a decision as to what to do is arrived at.
Democracy, the system of offering a vote to everyone in the land to elect a political representative who is supposed to carry all our political desires, is under threat as start people loose any semblance of respect when they see their representatives squabble like kids in the playground. I suppose it was inevitable once the mystique of the place was diminished by television, the facade was brought down and we were left with the sight of ordinary people doing their best, a best which was simply not good enough.
The arcane laws and procedures which symbolise parliament don't help the procedural time required If these representatives are locked out by government, especially if the claim of the Brexiters, "to bring back political control from Europe to Westminster"  makes the claim a sham as it locks the doors of the very constitutional  institution they are supposed to champion.
After wasting three years, wasting parliamentary time on claim and counterclaim with voting largely following party political lines, with party leaders sitting on the fence, with unprecedented moves across the chamber both from the government side to the opposition as well as a realignment within the opposition to other parties.
The comfort of parliamentary life has been blown apart. Over the last 10 to 20 years parliament has seen itself reconfigured to make it more female friendly. The hours of sitting has been reduced to align itself with family life, no more the all-night sittings to thrash out a particularly thorny problem, 'time to pick up the kids', has become more important than the nations business. Going on holidays when the country was on the verge of a cataclysmic change, was itself so short sighted as to be treasonable. 
We have become  so poorly served by parliament, from the scandal of MPs expenses to the cabals which have afflicted both major parties is it any wonder the rating of politicians particularly concerning their ethical substance, has fallen below that of the second-hand car salesmen.

Its what makes them so good

Subject: It's what makes them so good

We pride ourselves on being an inclusive nation, although some in the minority segments of the population would possibly disagree. To be inclusive is to search our inner conscience to bond with people who, on first sight we would find much to question. It's getting over that 'first impression', trying to find commonality, recognising that fundamentally we are all the same even if we think differently due to the cultural experience we grew up in. It's not a panacea for total immersion since culture does play an important part in how we react to something different and it also depends on how threatened we feel regarding our own cultural values.

All well and good but there are limits. Loving the Aussies when they have just drummed into us how poor at test cricket we have become is just one example of love thy neighbour has its limits and imagining Australia as a neighbour is pushing it a bit. Watching the English batsmen crumble under the pace attack of Josh Hazelwood and Pat Cummins one could only wonder what had become of technique, the age old skill learnt through the County apprenticeship to three day cricket where time at the crease was an advantage and one played the shot appropriate to the ball and not creating the shot in your mind before the ball was bowled. 

The white ball game as it is called, the 20/20 or 50/50 overs cricket so beloved by our impatient, 'want everything now' society, has destroyed the traditional game.  The craft of the batsmen who plied their game before the TV moguls redefined the game around the viewer and the needs of the Advertiser who was willing to pay big bucks to get an audience in front of the scree which they could then manipulate into a sale. The carefully crafted innings started with getting your eye in and slowly as you summed up what the bowler was doing your shots became more extravagant but always with the caveat that time was on your side.

Watching the English batsmen throw their bat at any ball, no matter how wide of the crease was like watching schoolboys play the game. 
Clearly the Aussie comes from different stock, his game is rooted in the old tradition, leaving the ball which doesn't threaten, and punishing those balls which are within the radius of the wicket but are deemed loose enough to score with. This is 3/5 day test cricket, a format we have forgotten and despite the hoo-ha of Joffrey Archer, our new West Indian bowler, we have to get back to the drawing board and relearn the game from first principles.
Is it the curse of the English to chase the new riches, the quick flashy buck of the money market rather than the slow slog of building a business from scratch. Is it the lure of the fast riches made on the sub continent in the razzmatazz which is the white ball game. Yes there was the ultra excitement of the last over against New Zealand in the 50/50 World Cup but that was vaudeville, not cricket and as with most of us I too was glued to the screen but it wasn't  cricket. The KiWi's who in all honesty deserved to win the contest have, at the root of their game, the same strategy to learning traditional stroke and adapting it to the game which the Aussies showed yesterday. It's no accident that the greatest players of rugby union are also traditionalist who learn their game on the pitches of New Zealand  before being drawn into the bright lights. It's what makes them so good.

Oncology

Subject: Oncology

Oncology. Is one of those words which in later life strikes fear at the dinner table as you reveal you have an appointment to see an oncologist later in the month. As with most of the medical industry the industry is divided into specialists, of which the treatment of cancer is the oncologist speciality. 
Cancer that word which stokes apprehension in most of us, the silent killer, the disease which unlike most other diseases, we can take some measures to protect ourselves, cancer creeps up from behind, unseen, an out of control mutation of cells set in amongst the normal mutations which have been a part of our growth since we were conceived. 
What causes the rogue mutation is unclear but the normal multiplication of cells, essential to life's process, is, like an unruly child in the playground, disruptive to all around, causing mayhem and eventually creating the complete breakdown of any sense of cell cohesion. 
Untreated cancer leads to death. Initially the patient knows nothing of his or her condition, the problem is often picked up by a random blood test for something else and it's this hidden aspect which makes cancer so feared and especially the treatment, which is often so radical that the cure seems is as bad as the disease itself. 
Embarking on a cure for something you can not feel, of which there are few if any symptoms, but knowing that the side effects of a cure are so dramatic they can change your life for the worse seems counter intuitive especially when there is no apparent substance to the medical prognosis. 
Death at a certain stage in our lives reveals itself in many forms and the inevitability of death only dawns as one grows older. Like a passage from Methuselah, it won't go on for ever no matter how rapped up we are in our own lives, our stay on earth is time limited.  
It's one of life's conundrums of course how narcissistic we are in our assumptions, how special we view ourselves when in reality our lives set against the totality of what is going on is but a tiny blip in time and our importance, minuscule in the cause of the thing we call evolution. 
Cancer rarely appears on the death certificate, death is usually described as a result of a major organ failure but cancer is often at the root of the cause of other organs ceasing to work, that delicate balance which goes on in our bodies each day, each second of each day, the trials of the immune systems fight with the germs and the viruses is a marvel of ingenuity which we take for granted. 
A fever, a headache, a cough, a pain, are all the outward indicators that the bodies immune system is at work finding a cure but the cure for cancer is beyond it, since in some ways, it is one and the same thing the elemental cell replacement system that has gone AWOL.
The oncologist has the unappealing job of trying to manage this breakdown of one of the fundamental aspects of life. They fight an up hill battle to stem the tide, like Canute, watching the tide roll in and willing it to stop is not enough. 
Years ago I was working in Leicester Hospital on the Oncology Ward and asked one of the nurses how they dealt with the strain of watching patients, patients who one had talked to the previous day but who had died in the night. There was nothing to reveal their plight and I wondered how the nurses could be so bright and supportive each day knowing that the outcome was often negative. "It's we the living who must carry on" was the answer, "we carry the hope for the ones we care for and provide the optimism, even amongst the dying". 

And so we are faced with a dilemma those of us diagnosed with cancer. To be optimistic and let the medical profession do what they think best, often only palliative until a cure or a new technology is developed to keep the scourge at bay. In the meantime our stoicism keeps reminding us that death, as unpleasant as it is is, unrelenting in its clear out, is natures way of providing the optimism that youth and new life brings with it, new hope, that fundamental aspect of the homosapien.

Who we are and what we stand for.

Subject: Who we are and what we stand for.

Lewis Carol could not have written a better script.

Alice (Joe Public) had landed down a rabbit hole we know as Brexit and faced with a party, in fact a parliament full of parties, the Mad Hatter, code named Boris, was whimsying  about the state of 'his' world in which reality is turned on its head, black becomes white and we lose any sense of what is real and what is unreal.
If one keeps repeating something which is 'make believe' it doesn't make it any more right and yet it seems a political assumption, that if we say what we feel 'should happen' then it will. It appears that this political rhetoric is a substitute for truth and that truth is a dangerous concept only, as we row back from it, it stands out like a lighthouse signalling its position for all to see. 
Johnson's thrust at the EU Commissioners regarding, for instance the Irish Backstop is to behave like a child, sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting la la la to substitute his own closed thinking from what could be called, the EUs closed thinking. If these matters regarding Brexit had been negotiable then they would have been negotiated but it's the irrevocable truth that there is no solution, given that the nature of the European Project relies on strict rules of membership and any country wishing to leave,  threatens the fabric of the remaining structure. 
Our reasons for leaving, free movement of labour and people, the European Courts interference in our own concept on legal matters, the ability to trade outside the EU, the fisheries question and the agricultural diktats which in themselves provide stability for the farming industry, doesn't fit well in our Anglo assumptions on free trade and market forces. 
Never having been occupied, never having heard the tramp of foreign boots on your streets has always made the EU Project much more a reality in countries over the Channel than here. We went along with it when Edward Heath bit his tongue and accepted the scorn of Charles de Gaulle, back in the 70s. Mrs Thatcher bullied the Commission into giving us some substantial rebates and Tony Blair was compliant in accepting the benefits of a large market but  it's largely within the Tory Party that the issue of sovereignty and the interference (sometimes for our own good) in the edicts issued by our own Parliament, edits often in favour of the shareholder class and rarely with the interests of the common people at its centre. These politicians have made it a lifetime desire to leave at any cost. David Cameron's decision to fight the right wing element in his party and put our remaining in the EU to a referendum which in reality he never dreamt he would loose. Unfortunately, being so out of touch with the country he governed, he never foresaw the deep divisions and unrest in the mind of the people left behind after the financial crash, people who would grasp at anything to blame for their dreadful economic position, blame anything but themselves for voting the man and his plutocrat cronies into power. No, rather blame the immigrant, rather follow the Daily Mail and the Express blaming Europe for our dreadful productivity, productivity born out of inadequate investment and a shocking approach to educating the sons and daughters of the people who, when given the chance, voted to leave.
"Off his head" said the Queen but unfortunately, we don't have that option any more. As Boris bumbles around the political elite in Europe, foremost in Germany where he is at the moment and then in the G7 which meets next week it appears he is much the laughing stock, the buffoon, the clown who in our darkest hour has come to represent our nation, who we are and what we stand for. So different from that other period in our history when we stood alone against the tyranny in Europe, that was also our 'darkest hour' but we had the leadership to sustain us.

Strolling away to their preferred tax haven

Subject: Strolling away to their preferred tax haven.

Society has grown intolerant of itself. People, individuals who make up society see in themselves the finished product and isolate their dreams and their compassion to a small circle of friends and family, forgetting the whole assembly we call humankind.

We see it all around us particularly in the political ideology of Jeremy Corbyn versus Boris Johnson. Today Corbyn has been giving a speech in which he talks tellingly of the people left behind in the recent Conservative push for a freer market economy and his plea to readdress the divide which has widened in society as it expresses itself in the cut back of social institutions created to provide a buffer from the reality of having little and yet able to gather in the village hall or the youth club, to know that at the end of life when we are at our most vulnerable a provision will be available.
But listening to Corbyn preach his socialist nirvana one is conscious of a dwindling audience, an audience who have grown cynical of others, even the next door neighbour. Our better senses blunted by the torrent of news which seems about the mishaps of others, not ourselves. We trawl the channels to watch shows depicting the down and out, the people thrown out by the county sheriff with his all powerful court order, people who are bewildered and vulnerable but who have been chosen by the landlord to be evicted. I'm not saying the landlords are always wrong in wanting to evict and one is aware of unscrupulous tenants who not only exploit their rights but who refuse to pay the rent knowing that the municipality will provide a safety net if and when they are forced out but there is a growing trend to see the tenant as a commodity, even worse, an opportunity. As the viewing population is hardened to the real life stories, becoming effectively a voyeur to the pain and suffering of a certain cohort in society which from a distance and can only wonder at how transient their lives are.. Hardened to believe that everyone can be a winner, if only they try and that losers have only themselves to blame there is no social conversation which seeks to find answers and ameliorate the collective opinion.
Boris and his pals will always have a sound bite to hand a promise of more goodies, words spreading out like confetti on the wind, a moments banter proclaimed as social policy.

As we spread our wings, only to find we can not fly and start to hurtle onto the rocks below, we look back to the cliff edge to see the likes of Boris and Rees-Mogg, hand in hand, strolling away towards  their preferred tax haven.

Bishops Stortford

  Bishops Stortford

English market towns have an ambiance of their own, a mix of old buildings and a slow pedestrian pace.
Sitting in the Cote Brasserie I look out on a street which has come together, not the dream of a  property developer but the slow combustion of over 150 years of individual aspiration. The hight and the frontage of the buildings are each different, they reflect the preference of the occupant/builder who was as varied as the business’s which grew within this small hamlet 30 miles from the capital city.
Bishops Stortford, population 40,000,  came into being as a ford across the river Stort. A busy town it provided the stage coaches with a staging point on their way to Chelmsford an old garrison town dating back to Roman times.
Today the town is a dormitory Town straddling the A1/M11 motorway from the North, as well as providing a fast train service into London. It is still countrified in its proportions but in the last few years has suffered the blight of all small towns, the 'property developer', with deep pockets and a council who are prepared to tear up the established rule book in their quest for new rateable income. The squeeze the Tory government has put on municipalities in halving the grant from central government has meant not only cuts to services but a scramble to fill every available bit of space, every nook and cranny with houses or blocks of  flats some built on hallowed 'green sites', unheard of until Mr Cameron and Mr Osborn decided that they would leave, as their legacy, austerity,  the full impact of swaging cuts to virtually every service a civic authority could offer, and is still being felt across the country in all manner of ways.
Old people's homes bulldozed aside for upmarket flats, police numbers cut by a third just when the underbelly of society realised that doing time was ok. Youth centres closed for lack of funds, carers for the elderly given ever shorter periods with their frail customers, the elderly are now customers struggling to find recognition amongst all the other competing needs which the Council used to offer.  From school places to potholes in the road, from the availability to the drugs which might save a life to the unheard of  knifes in a street fight which takes it away.
Everything has a financial tag. On the one hand to allow our shaky  business's to prosper the state intercedes by providing in-work benefits to prop up the inadequacy of the minimum wage, whilst cutting the taxes of the rich who have become the super rich in this time of austerity. The 'social contract' instigated by the Attlee government in 1945 has been slowly shredded and in its place, a market economy beloved by Thatcher and each Tory government since. Taxes are an anathema to the modern Brit. The understanding that the finances to run a modern 'caring state' have to come through taxes but the concept of caring, as a societal responsibility is replaced by the individual liaise affair which opposes regulation or interference by government in economic affairs allowing only a market led 'free enterprise' system to operate, unfortunately to the exclusion of most of 'us'.
Bishops Stortford is a pleasant place to live and instead of returning in 1994 to my traditional roots in the North the clearly better off South was a good choice especially after leaving the shadowy prosperity of South Africa. The urban engine which is London provides work when there is non in the rest of the country and this in turn provides an optimism amongst the people who live here which a well paid job brings. Much of this is pending the outcome of Brexit but if an area is to survive it's this area with its commuter trains full taking the ants to their jobs in the 'big smoke'.

Its not the winning

  Its not the winning

 

Las.t night I watched a replay, on BBC iplayer of the women's professional triathlon event held in Tokyo. The triathlon as a series has become interesting to us in Britain since the Brownlee Brothers led the way, competing successfully in events across the world and culminating in the Olympics which Alister won in London. It was exciting  to see two home grown Bradfordian lads at the top of their sport, beating the worlds best. 

Television has propelled the sport, visiting many of the worlds most attractive cities to watch a competition more Olympian than most consisting as it does of three abilities, swimming, cycling and running, rather than just one athletic strength. It's this unifying strength, running, cycling and swimming which determines the best athlete. 

I have often wondered if tweeking the event to consider rewarding those good at swimming, who emerge from the water, often minutes in front of the next person, only to have their effort nullified by the cycling phase which, in the professional format allows the cyclist to band together and hunt down the person who gained a lead in the swim by what Is termed drafting, one person expending energy for a short stint at the front the others siting in the slipstream waiting their turn to put in the extra effort at the front. In this way an individual out in front usually the best swimmer, is soon caught and it, to my mind negates that skill. In the amateur format of the triathlon, it's not allowed to draft, the cyclist who approaches someone ahead has to pass and the one passed cannot fall into line with the cyclist who has just passed them, much like the individual time trial in cycle racing. 

I would award points for the swim, the cycle and the run, as well as for the overall winner or, as the amateurs do, outlaw drafting.

Anyway I digress. The race progressed with Jessica Learmonth from the UK the clear winner of the swimming leg but soon caught, mainly through the tremendous efforts of the returning champion Lorna Duffy who competes for Bermuda. 

The overall race is often decided by the running leg, the best runner usually  wins the race. The American, Gwen Jorgensen was unbeatable, world champion in 2013/14/15, a remarkable runner she emerged from the swim way down the field only to carve her way through the field as a superb runner and win the race. Unexpectedly she retired at the top of her career and was replaced with another runner from the USA, Katie Zaferes. 

Anyway as this years race progressed a crash took Zaferes out and it was left to Jessica Learmonth and Georgia Taylor-Brown, both from the UK to show their strength and finish the race, in what in the past we would have said was exemplary Olympian spirit, crossing the finishing line, hand in hand, an athletic expression of true camaraderie. 

But wait a minute, no, the rules don't allow it. You must contest for the line and for the win and they were both disqualified. 
Rules are what makes the world function.  Without rules people take short cuts and cheats win but when the spirit of the sport, which is exemplified in the triathlon by the friendship, especially in the women's events, a friendship which crosses national  boundaries, once the race is over and competitors become athletic friends.

Games such as golf and rugby have rules which are arcane, particularly to the uninitiated.  Games such as football have rules but often are openly flouted by the players which makes the game unwholesome to watch.  

Here in Tokyo we saw the rules (I believe unknowingly) broken,  not to win an advantage, in fact the very opposite, rather to exemplify the camaraderie which should be at the root of every sporting event.

 After all,  It's not the winning but the taking part that's important.

Things are a changing

 Things are a changing 

The world is in torment as we hear of clashes between protesters and law enforcement across the globe.

Hong Kong to Guatemala, much of the Middle East to the unreported Yellow Jackets in France (nearly 9 months and 4000 people, police and protesters injured) who continue each weekend dispite a news blackout. South America is a mess as major league power politics, stimulated in part by the continued US policy of Latin America interference, attempting to subdue any left wing government from Cuba to Venezuela but conniving with the right wing government of Brazil as the decimation of the rainforest increases under Jair Bolsonaro. From the trauma which is Syria to the potential nuclear destruction in and around Kashmir, from rioting in Russia to new sabre rattling between the two Korea's, the list of national instability goes on.
With the retrenchment of Americas role of global policeman and the upsurge of Russian self awareness to the economic disruption to world trade by the economic tit for tat going on between the US and China, the world is descending into a mess of conflicting claims and counter claims. And all this as we in the UK extricate ourselves from the market protection of the European Block.
The farcical gun boat drama playing out in the Straights of Hormuz where, gazing into our traditional role of enforcer boarded an Iranian ship carrying Iranian oil to Libya only to find those pesky Iranians boarding one of our tankers using small lightly armed, highly manoeuvrable boats whilst our own "fleet" (which now consists of a frigate) was left kicking its heels waiting for backup.
The power has shifted. America has become once again, self serving and protectionist putting its own interests above the global need. It had to happen as the Europeans in particular enjoyed a free ride under NATO whilst the Americans, who began to feel the economic pinch under the Chinese, questioned whether they should continue to afford it.
It's amazing really that since the end of the Cold War there has been, other than the rise of Muslim fundamentalism, a relatively peaceful international order but things are changing and without the potential bully boy to keep us in our place, a rag tag assembly of conflicting aims is percolating to the surface, scolding those who thought they were safe and encouraging those who have a grievance.

Foodies

 Foodies

I'm not a foodie, my needs in terms of food are simple, almost proletarian, plebeian in my habit of eating the same old dull things, time and again. The TV these days  is full of food shows, the internet is jam packed with recipes and videos showing us how to cook and yet I turn, again and again to the old tried and trusted favourites.
But occasionally one is transported into that world of taste and culinary extravaganza which shows what you may be missing.
Food is a necessity and with that in mind the quick sandwich, an egg, potato, peas and carrots are sufficient to fuel the engine for another day but perhaps there is another world, not necessarily the world of the vegan with concern for animals nor the world of the fitness freak or the health nut, with their lists of what you can and what you can't eat but that space around which the creative chef works their magic.

San Sebastián in the Basque Country is a place respected for its food and the integrity of the owners who sell the service of bringing that sensation to your brain when you take the first bite, a sensation you carry with you for the rest of your life.

There are at least two memories I carry with me regarding food. The first was a steak house, Walters Grill on the main road at Sea point in Cape Town, the second was in a top flight restaurant in London where a friend from South Africa took me for lunch back in the 90s.
The steak house was owned by two large Hollanders, it was 1963 and for a food impoverished Pommy who's knowledge of meat on his plate was a few ounces of overcooked beef, made palatable with lashings of gravy. Imagine the sight of a Walters Special, inch thick tender Rhodesian beef covering a bread board sized wooden board, cooked with a delicious sauce to die for. Starting  in the corner of the steak, a slither at a time, it literally melted in the mouth, another piece and another until slowly the meal became a mission, not a food stop but a gastronomic delight from beginning to end.
The second memory was with my friend Arie van der Zwan, in London, where, in totally different surroundings, in a five star restaurant I had a meal which was exquisite not only in the taste but in every aspect of the service. The detail and the perfection of 5 star cooking was for me a rarity, I would never contemplate spending so much on a meal but Arie, or at least his Anglo expense account, was treating me to, not only a gastronomic delight but great conversation, which flowed like the wine.
The trigger for all these memories has been a television trip to San Sebastián, to a steak house called Julian's, to a simple Tortilla restaurant  and finally to a remarkable space fiction place called .... where they produce tastes, rather than food. 1200 items prepared for one sitting of 20 tables each day and each different  and each unique.
Food of course is made more palatable with good company.
La Braseria in Wind street in Swansea is one of my favourites.  The atmosphere, Mediterranean Spanish, really transports you overseas to a warmer climate more mysterious than the wet streets outside  but the clincher is always the company.
My family who initially  I have to drag out, kicking and screaming, in the end, seem to enjoy themselves, come what may amongst the prawns, the bass, and the medium rare steaks and a £200 bottle of wine. The last bit is fantasy, the most I pay is £20 but maybe one day I will order a £200 bottle just to see what I am missing.

A Gordian knot

Sex was written about in the Bronte books as a hidden thing, something which with the contrived courtship and the so called unspoken chivalry, men of breeding were supposed to offer the gentler sex a flirtatious gavotte where etiquette was the subject matter which society agreed made the match, not raw desire.
Today we elevate desire above all else. The desire for a new car or a television ranks with the desire for a new woman or simply that woman who had just strolled into the pub tonight. It's a phenomena on which both sexes are engaged with equal fervour. The demure woman has been replaced by a person who believes that sex is not an act of procreation but for fun and getting as much fun is what life is all about. 
Women today are equally open eyed in their desire to experience the unique pleasure of carnal coupling. The act is enough to banish traditional values of reserving yourself for your wedding day and ensuring the out come was in line with the churches teaching.
And so, the assumed instinctive responsibility to afford to give the child, your undivided attention and the 'ware with all' to see its needs are met until it leaves the nest, are prorogued by the hormonal rush which lies at the base of our universal survival.  But unless these obligations are understood then that short hurried encounter on the back seat of a Ford Mondeo has the inevitable capacity for being ranked as the ultimate self serving declaration, "I don't give a damn".
There are of course many strong women who see the issue of having a baby a personal endeavour with the male sidelined as a bit actor in a play. Their desire is rooted in the 'mother thing' which men little understand. The desire to have a child can be shared by men and women but the emotional arithmetic is always skewed  towards the woman based as it is on a deep maternal sensibilities, which men can never quite understand.
Men can grow to love that new born child, especially as the child develops but the intricate sensibilities involved in carrying and conserving, acting essentially as a human resource to the embryo, come child, is so far away from what a man can be expected to understand and he is truly cast as a bit actor. 

In the inevitable tussle in later life as to primacy between the man and woman, the bar has been set too high for the male. As in so much else he has to accept the role of being a Sherpa, someone who carries the heavy weights but unfortunately, the bag never really contains his own stuff 
It's one of the conundrums of society which insists on monogamy as the construct between men and women. The attempt by society to see that the needs of the child are protected as far as they can be, at least in a fiscal sense, the man contributing to the costs of child raising by focusing on the one union. 

It can be a tension throughout life this inequality between husband and wife as soon as a child is born, the man's rights are properly subpoenaed to the female/child combo in a societal pact to protect mother and child. It places on the man the emotional straight jacket that he is constrained in the relationship to mind his Ps and Qs, or else. The trauma of loosing his children is his and his alone. We properly balk at separating a mother and child under almost any circumstances but happily commit men into the dreadful torment of being separated from his children at divorce and worse, place the access to the child at the whim of the mother who often has an axe to grind. 

Much of this stems from the unequal relationship to the child and men who rightly put such weight on their relationship with the child better understand just what a Gordian knot they are undertaking, but of course they never do.