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.

My very own Silent Spring in summer

Hubby and I have just come home from a mini-break somewhere in Warwickshire. I didn’t enjoy some aspects of it as much as I thought I would. The reason for some disappointments – rudeness –was obvious, but others it took me until I got home to realise why.

We went ‘up-north’ as Hubby called it (he’s a ruddy geographer for crying our loud, but I reckon his Southern upbringing trumps that) for a special cycle event with his mates and dinner on the Saturday night.

Not knowing his cycling buddies, not knowing anything about cycling, not wanting to know anything about cycling, and not really being attracted to the county, I was wondering why I agreed to go … Because I’m a dutiful wife, that’s why! If I’m not defending his honour against the likes of Fearful Sharkey and his Snivelling Sycophants, or the Gobby Guardian and its Regurgitating Rabble, I’m by Hubby’s side, smiling sweetly (well...) and making polite (well...) conversation.

The incredible lightness of being

The title of the 1984 novel by Milan Kundera was actually The unbearable lightness of being, but I prefer my version, which I hope will be self-explanatory later. I’ve wanted to use such a title for one of my blogs for ages, and I’ve just found the excuse or hook, even if it’s a little contrived.

The story centres on two women, two men and a dog in the late 1960s and early 1970s, incorporating the1968 'Prague Spring' when Czechoslovakia was invaded by Russia … These guys just can’t break the habit! The central character is Tomáš, a womanizer who “considers sex and love to be distinct entities: he has sex with many women but loves only his wife, Tereza. He sees no contradiction between these two positions”, (per Wiki).

With rights come responsibilities

While I try not to repeat myself when I write, I am partial to a few mantras that seem so apt so often and are so irreplaceable that I trot them out with perhaps too much regularity.

Those who can, engage with the issues; those who can’t, resort to insults is one I use whenever anyone who ever had any objection to any development for any reason is dispensed with as a Nimby. It works for other topics too. Most recently I fired it off on LinkedIn and was confronted with an aggressive barrage of every criticism ever aimed at any person who ever deigned to hold non-lefty views. One moron culminated his diatribe with something like, “I don’t want you polluting my feed so I’ve blocked you. Ha!”

I wonder what his employer or clients would have to say about his lack of professionalism or even basic decency when they see how he responds to a polite (if pompous, I admit), mainstream comment. He’s done himself far more harm than he’s done me who, after a few glasses, imagines a potential lucrative new client telling him he’s a wazzock and has lost the contract. Ha!

Four Yorkshiremen of the Apocalypse

Who doesn’t love a good Monty Python sketch? And those pre-Python sketches can be even better. In case you haven’t guessed by now, I’m referring to the "Four Yorkshiremen" classic from the 1967 TV show At Last the 1948 Show, starring Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman. Click here to laugh at four monied Yorkshiremen reminiscing about their childhoods, each trying to ‘out-destitute’ the other and getting increasingly ridiculous.

I was reminded of this sketch the other evening while sharing a (one? surely not) bottle of red with my like-minded neighbour, whom I shall call N to spare her blushes. We were sitting in my garden, despairing at my dead lawn, dead shrubs, dead pots and how quickly the wine was evaporating. To wind me up, N said the forthcoming hosepipe bans were all the fault of the water companies (remind yourself of this blog to see why I think the water companies are given an unfair wrap these days). I countered with a story on the news this week about a chap who was complaining about the brown colour of his water that his local supplier was blaming on “unprecedented demand”, but that the water was still ok to drink. The chap carried on complaining, saying he first noticed the discolouration after filling the kids’ paddling pool.

It's not easy being rural

We’ve heard a lot about rising energy bills and price caps recently.

The energy price cap limits how high some people’s gas and electricity bills can go. It doesn’t apply to everyone, only to those who are on their supplier's basic energy tariff and not, for example, if you’re on a fixed-term energy tariff. Neither does it apply if you’re on a standard variable ‘green’ energy tariff – not exactly an incentive to go green, is it. 

The price cap is adjusted every six months and the last change was an increase in April 2022 to £2,000. The next review is due in October, when a further increase of £800 minimum is expected, landing the typical domestic customer with a likely bill of over £3,200 p.a. from October, and over £3,300 a year from January 2023. Ouch! Prices are rising sharply because demand for gas increased when Covid restrictions eased, and because the war in Ukraine has threatened supplies from Russia.