This is the end

So sang Adele at the beginning of Skyfall, the theme to the Bond movie of the same name. But I’m going to up the culture stakes, leave Scotland and hop over to Paris with:

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done”.

I’m aware that it isn’t proportionate to compare my current predicament with that of Sydney Carton in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. For one thing,  Carton's cities are London and Paris. Mine are Littlecote and Weare. Nevertheless, I’m running with Dickens alongside Adele, for no other reason than, as I’ve said before, it’s my blo-og and I’ll write what I want to.

Not for much longer.

It, Robot

According to a recent article in the Economist, humanoid robots are getting close to reality. They can now fix you with a stare, cameras for eyes, trying to recognise faces and deciding who’s paying attention or making eye contact during conversations. 

By the way, I’m feeling a bit lazy today, so the informative, well-written bits in this blog are lifted almost verbatim from the Economist - ta very much hope you don't mind the plagiarism - and the flippant waffle is mine.

Roboticists (which sounds like a skin complaint) are trying to teach their robots manners, even though that would make them very unhuman: “Currently, it’s the worst ever party guest,” says one creator. “It butts in on every conversation and never shuts up.” 

The wind beneath my wings

Funny old blog this one. I had the urge to write and started several anecdotes to see which one appealed enough for me to elaborate further. I couldn’t choose between them so you’ve got the lot. Sorry.

The Living Years
I’m still sorting through Mum and Dad’s belongings, trying to decide what to keep, what to chuck and what to give to the hospice charity shop. Today I was tackling the last of their scrapbooks and photo albums. Most stuff I’m happy not to keep; a few items I’ve placed on the to-be-decided pile. I know I won’t look at most of it again, but I can’t yet bring myself to part with everything. One such item is a letter I wrote to Dad when I was five and he was away from home. Where he was isn’t important, neither was what I wrote (although the spelling, grammar and punctuation are impressive for such a wee bairn). It was the fact that he’d kept it, in his ‘special’ scrapbook. I never knew that. He died 14th March 2015, as undemonstrative as ever, apart from when he squeezed my arm on the 13th.

Enoch was right

In Mum and Dad’s library, I recently found Reflections, a book containing some of Enoch Powell’s speeches, interviews and essays. It was sandwiched between several books by or about Maggie on one side and Confessions of a Political Maverick by Austin Mitchell, a friend of Arthur Scargill’s, on the other. I’m wondering whether my Sis bought them this book as a joke. Can’t imagine why else they’d have a copy. Anyway, I commandeered Powell and Maggie while sorting stuff to go to the local hospice charity shop. Much to Hubby’s Horror, it was one box of books for the hospice, and one for me; one for the hospice, and two for me, etc.

A strange man grabbed my butt

‘Strange man’ as in I didn’t know him, rather than ‘strange’ as in weird. Somehow I don’t think that makes it any better.

A couple of weekends ago, I did something that was more stupid than strange. I paid good money to investigate ancient limestone caves in the Forest of Dean (that’s in Gloucestershire, for those who are geographically challenged and even fail to negotiate Milton Keynes’ roundabouts). They had been mined for iron and ochre (clay deposits containing ferric oxide) for centuries if not millennia. Small amounts of coal continue to be mined locally – don’t tell the eco-nuts or they’ll glue themselves to the mine shafts … actually, DO tell the eco-nuts and leave them there.

Beware racists in liberal clothing

I recently read the most racist, divisive, insulting execration that I have ever seen in a mainstream newspaper. I’m no fan of the Guardian, but I’ve always felt that its content was civilised and intriguing, not barbaric and upsetting. Even the Daily Mail would raise an eyebrow before publishing anything as racist as this ‘opinion piece’ (here), the villainous writer of which is someone called Pankaj Mishra. He needs a mega-dose of Christian love before being allowed near a keyboard again. (He doesn’t deserve the courtesy of my going to the trouble of finding out what his actual religion is.)

Another Guardian commentary here by Nesrine Malik appeared on Halloween, aptly enough, which was equally as eye-rolling but at least the language was more measured. In the interests of (comparative) brevity, I'll focus my ire on Mishra, although both writers are undermining the goal of social cohesion for the sake of a punitive, regressive ideology.

Ah yes, I remember it well

It’s Not Unusual (how many song titles can I cram into one blog?) to remember the first time you did something, saw something or felt something. Recently, I’ve been reminiscing about the first time I didn’t do, see or feel things. Not, as in, didn’t do this but instead did that; no, I mean didn’t do / see / feel anything at all.

Philosophers, and maybe psychologists, would have fun with the idea of doing / seeing / feeling / reminiscing about nothing. Nothing is nothing. Nothing is a strange concept ‘personified’ by, if I can anthropomorphise it, the time before the Big-Bang, which is an oxymoron because time didn’t exist before the Big Bang. Pre-Big-Bang itself didn’t exist. No existence, no time (almost rhymes with No Woman, No Cry).

Bonfire of the Profanities

You know when someone writes something outrageously horrid, and you start to fire off a stern riposte. Or maybe you’ve never done that – you’ve probably got a life – so you’ll just have to take my word for it. 

Where was I? Oh, yes, you’ve read something outrageously, stupidly horrid, and are typing away like fury when, suddenly, you think that what you’ve just read is too outrageously, stupidly, can’t-believe-anyone-would-think-like-that horrid, and they must be joking. You delete what you’ve just written, stand up to go make a cuppa but immediately sit back down and read it all again, just to be sure they weren’t being serious, because, well they couldn’t be, could they?

Arson and Ashes

The business is finished. The deed is done. The curtain has closed. 

Almost.

Mum is back home with Dad and her parents, not without a couple of rants from me of which they would have approved.

The Bud Jet

I was going to title this one The Budget, but then I decided I wanted ‘The’ to be read ‘Thu’ as in Thud but with a silent ‘d’, and all three syllables to have equal weight, i.e. Thu Bud Jet. That’s because it sounds heavy and clumsy and odd and unbelievable, like Kwarteng’s debut (deh bew?) budget à la Trussonomics and the reactions to it.

My War on Woke

My phone rang recently. It was one of my many gentlemen-friends (don’t tell Hubby) to whom I shall refer as ‘G’.

I really enjoy our phone conversations. They follow a familiar pattern. G asks if I have anything to add to the agenda of a forthcoming meeting, or if I can help him with the minutes of the previous meeting because he can’t read his handwriting, that sort of thing. After these committee-niceties, he changes the dynamic with a searching question, along the lines of:
• Can you see a way out of the cladding crisis?
• Do you think we should have another lockdown?
• Sunak or Truss?

Regarding the last one (yes, I know it was more topical a while ago but my blog-brain works in mysterious ways) I explained that I wasn’t wild about either of them but at least Truss was loyal to our democratically elected PM to the end, while Fishy Rishi Sunak was busy planning his own coronation (Ha!) when he should have been steering the economy through choppy waters.

That was the weekend of our discontent

Actually, it was Wednesday to Friday, but the “weekend” meter works better than the alternatives, and I just had to use this Shakespeare-inspired heading because:

a) It was our 37th wedding anniversary

b) We went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Richard III
d) The trip was not without its hitches

c) What with striking Stalinsts and brain-dead eco-terrorists bringing the country to its knees, we’re in for a 1970s’-style winter (of discontent).

The measure of weights

Not long ago, a post popped into my LinkedIn feed decrying the Government’s consultation on the privatisation of Channel 4 as a travesty of democracy, or some such hyperbole. I easily knocked that one on the head and moved on with my life.

Last weekend, another post appeared denigrating the Government’s consultation. on giving businesses and consumers more choice in selling and buying goods in imperial as well as metric units. According to the post’s author and various commentators, the consultation was a waste of time, a distraction from more pressing issues, and the questions were fiendishly biased. In fact, it sounded like the worst consultation ever. 

For facts’ sake!

Do you know how difficult it is to find the truth? It seems that for every fact, there’s another one that says the opposite. Even when a set of facts can be agreed upon, there’s probably 101 different interpretations and ensuing arguments that lead to 1,001 sundry conclusions.

As if that wasn’t infuriating enough, being presented with a limited selection of all available facts could sway a conclusion by a million miles either way. The Guardian is expert at such ‘economies with the truth’, but they’re not alone. Last month the Times reported that, “United Utilities, which serves northwest England, paid £296 million in dividends in the past year, the most paid by any water company.”

Yet another funeral

No. Not THAT one. I’m talking about the funeral yesterday of my uncle-in-law, Hubby’s dad’s brother, who was also his Godfather. 

We were at the wake after the service when a friend texted me to say that doctors were concerned for Lilibet’s health. I thought my sister might have more information for various reasons, so I texted her, to which she responded: “She’s at the departure gate waiting for the final call.” Gee thanks, Sis, for the aviation analogy!

Truss(t) in democracy

Just a quickie and apologies that I’m being rather prolific at the moment, but this topic is too time-critical to leave it until the weekend.

Am I pleased Truss won?  I’m more relieved that Fishy lost, actually. He was plotting to bring down Boris and planning his own election campaign when he should’ve been doing his job as Chancellor and managing the British economy. Truss on the other hand was loyal to Boris to the end and did her job, regardless of whether she did it brilliantly, putting her ambitions for the country ahead of her ambitions to be PM, as evidenced by her lack of preparedness when the leadership race kicked off.

My family and other dissolute, idle bear-baiters

Some years ago, Dad’s sister showed me how far she’d got with our family tree. She’d done brilliantly as it was all pre-Ancesty.com. She’d delved into church records, archived newspapers, and local record offices until she was permanently covered in dust. She got one branch back to 1745, when John Brooks (my maiden name is Brooks) married in a tiny village on the Somerset-Dorset border. I later found a local ‘census’ that revealed he was born in about 1715. 

Other than ‘John Brooks’, all names have been changed to respect the extended family’s privacy.

I took over the research and was having fun doing all the detective work and patting myself on the back because of the progress I was making, until a friend of mine said she was also doing her family tree and had found a possible connection to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s private physician, and another to one of the key figures in the Salem witch trials. 

Striking while the economy’s cool

This blog’s longer than my usual, so make sure you’re sitting comfortably before you begin.

I’ve gone on record since before I was weaned that it’s not right for workers to strike. My opposition is rooted in their impact on the general public – the health hazards of uncollected waste spring to mind. In particular, I remember the 1970s’ strikes and the Labour government awarding huge public-sector pay deals that helped to fuel inflation to over 25 per cent (the rocketing oil price was also a factor). Those hardest hit were already the poorest, and the average couple ended up taking home less money in real terms than they had before inflation took off, so the strikes were counter-productive.

The piano tuner, the monk and a ghost

(Sorry – the blog about strikes is still parked. I’m having difficulty justifying anyone’s right to strike, ever.)

Hubby went off to France yesterday afternoon for a week-long MAMIL-fest (Middle Aged Men In Lycra). There might be some MAFILs there as well. As long as they’re Middle Aged and not Young Females, I’m cool with that. Then again, whether they’re younger, prettier and slimmer than me or not, I reckon my nails are sharper and I can still emulate Norman-bites-your-legs-Hunter better than anyone. What if there’s a MATIL? (You really don’t need it spelled out.) Then Hubby has strict instructions to take notes for a future blog.

In a perfectly comfortable ‘been married a long time so don’t read anything into this’ kind of way, I was looking forward to a week on my own: a clean and tidy house; no meal-prep twice a day every day; no sport on the Telly; snore-less nights (not me; him!); a fully stocked wine fridge (well, at the beginning of the week); and oodles of time to catch up with various projects.

Individuals trump ‘society’

I was working on a blog about trade unions and strikes, but parked it when I read about nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel. She was shot dead while standing behind mum Cheryl, who was injured, in their terraced home in Kingsheath Avenue in the Dovecot area of Liverpool. Residents say that Kingsheath is a close-knit community where children play together on the street. They describe Olivia and Cheryl as quiet, respectable people.