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.

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.

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?

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 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.

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).

Channel 4 – 2 wrongs don’t make a right

I was skim-reading news online the other day and registered the following isolated words from a Twitter extract: “insane”, “government consultation”, “ignored”, “travesty”.

I didn’t have to read any more to fill in the gaps and deduce that someone thought it was insane that a government consultation had ignored responses and was pressing ahead with whatever they had always intended to do, which was a travesty of democracy. Why was this news? I’ve never met a government or local authority consultation that was worthy of the name.

Nothing to see here. Move along please.

But then I saw who had Tweeted, and I was torn. I’d never read anything this bloke had ever written that I agreed with. That would mean that this particular consultation was actually kosher. Oh dear. If I don’t sort this out before lunch I’ll get indigestion.

Write, write, and write again

One of my regulars (blog-readers, that is) recently sent me a fascinating article by Ludwig Siegele, Business Editor of the Economist, on “Foundation Models”. Initially, I thought this term was somehow a politically correct replacement for ‘Under Wear’, the word ‘Under’ being deemed either crude, or evocative of serfs being socially under their lord.

I read further and realised instead that Foundation Models are huge Artificial-Intelligence (as opposed to artificial butt-and-boob fillers) algorithms that are much more versatile than earlier forms of AI. According to Siegele, most of the algorithms can write “eerily good prose, analysing a text’s sentiments and explaining jokes.” Hmm, I wonder if he means ‘explaining’ jokes or ‘justifying’ them to the thou-must-not-offend-laugh-or-disagree-with-my-opinions woke brigade.

Golliwoggs, and all that jazz

You might think it a tad premature – I haven’t even applied for probate yet – but we (me, Sis and Bro) have decided to put Mum and Dad’s bungalow on the market. Yes, Dear Reader, at the age of somewhere between 49 and 79, I am an orphan.

If Carlsberg did funerals …

… it would probably have been the best funeral in the world. I would have opened with, “This was not just a funeral, it was an M&S funeral,” but M&S are in my bad books – more later.

I wasn’t going to blog about this – Mum’s funeral – bit personal, bit raw, but honestly, everyone told me it was a stonking occasion so I just had to share. OK maybe no one used the word ‘stonking’ but they would have agreed with me if I’d said it.

First of all, the weather co-operated. Secondly, half the family recovered from Covid just in time. The readings were from the Authorised Version of the Bible and the C of E Traditional Psalter. Pure poetry. More family made long journeys than I had anticipated. Family members presided, read, eulogised, pallbeared, processed and took honorary bows. I over-catered at the pre-funeral lunch and then again at the wake, which is fine; my worst nightmare is running out of food. The flowers were glorious. The open bar at the wake went down well – surprise, surprise. And I got my hair looking nice.

The Man in Black

I’m not a fan of ‘tribute’ acts. I prefer the real thing (the concept, not the 1970’s British soul group). I like the occasional Country Music song, but generally get bored with the migraine-inducing twangs of Tammy Wynette, incessant vibrato of Dolly Parton, or the brow-puckering, tear-jerking, gravelly audience-manipulation of Kenny Rogers.

So when Hubby said he wanted to go to a Johnny Cash tribute act in Milton Keynes yesterday evening, I suggested he take our neighbour and I’d dog-sit. I was sure I could get some gin-flavoured Purina for him. But I relented and off we went, storm Eunice? Eustace? Eunuch? well and truly past its worst but still playing havoc with my broadband connection so no point staying at home.

One helluva week

And it’s only Wednesday evening! 

I feel like I’ve attended a white-privilege awareness session, double-needlework with Miss Brown, the bitchiest teacher ever, and been stuck on a slow-moving train from Euston with drunken Watford fans crying incessantly about how they was robbed, which is a bit daft because, to be robbed, you should have something worthwhile to lose in the first place, and we are talking Watford here.

That aside, in between being berated, bitched-about and bawled-at, I’ve read, researched, written and re-organised so much, my brain is demanding a Bank Holiday.

Here we go again

I used to make boring New Year’s resolutions every year and religiously break them. Even more mind-numbing, I used to make and break the same ones, which included growing my nails, joining a gym, and giving up gin. The usual twaddle doomed to failure because: my nails are naturally weak and brittle; every time I go to a gym I do my back in and have to rest up for weeks; as for giving up gin … get real!

The past few years I’ve tried to think of more interesting resolutions that I might have a chance of keeping. Others have been suggested by friends, some of whom are no longer my friends as a consequence. Here’s a sample:

Sex and the City

This post is my raunchiest yet (for me, that’s not difficult) and written for the Girlies. So, Gents, if talk of fashion, make-up, bitching and sex is a real turn-off for you, look away now.

When SATC first hit our screens, I sniffily avoided it. I’d read the hype and decided it was nothing but cheap porn. What persuaded me to get off my prudish high horse and give it a try was the realisation that one of its pivotal characters was Carrie Bradshaw’s love-interest (one of her many, that is) Big, played by Chris Noth.

Be still my beating heart.

A Tale of Two Darkest Hours

On Sunday evening, replete with roast pheasant, accompanied by potato and butterbean cakes à la Clarissa Dickson Wright, and a fruity pinot to wash it all down, we settled by the wood burning stove to watch Darkest Hour, the 2017 film about Winston Churchill’s first few weeks as Prime Minister in 1940.

A sentence like the one wot I just wrote used to be benign, boring even, but now it’s full of triggers for today’s wokerati. One by one:

• Eating pheasant is alarming to extreme vegans (the vegans I know are reasonable and tolerant and I don’t include them in this post);

Einstein, Jesus, Irving and Beethoven

While writing my previous blog (“Inspired choices of music”), I had a feeling that I’d written something very similar before. I checked previous blogs – no nothing there. I searched all my documents saved on my laptop – including archives – and found an essay I had drafted in 1998 while living in the US. It was almost published in a prestigious magazine, nay TWO prestigious magazines, but the first rejected it after a monumental tussle between two editors, and I rejected the second when the editor said he liked the essay’s first half but not the second so could I re-write it. No one tells me what or how to write, so it remained unpublished and I forgot about it …

 … until I wrote ‘Inspired Choices’, the following bit in particular:

“You can analyse the pants off it in the most scholarly, imaginative way, but at the end of the day it boils down to your instinct. Your soul. A religious experience. A certain piece of music just does ‘it’. What’s ‘it’? Ask your soul,”…

Inspired choices of music

No I’m not thinking of Classic FM’s Top 100 or Desert Island Discs, but the most perfect, irreplaceable, hand-in-glove musical pieces ‘inserted’ in films, which re-imagine the former and elevate the latter. I’m not referring to music written specifically for a film, but classics lifted out of their original contexts and snuggled perfectly into an alien genre.

This occurred to me while attempting to play the piano the other day after six weeks in a sling. I shoulda stuck to “Chopsticks”, not tried something too ambitious, but Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” is what caught my eye while rummaging through my music stool. I tried to play it and failed.

The fourth plinth is the last straw

It’s just been announced that a sculpture depicting colonial defiance is one of the two winners that will next occupy Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth. 

According to the BBC News website, Samson Kambalu's Antelope restages a Baptist preacher, John Chilembwe, and a European missionary, John Chorley. Chilembwe is wearing a hat in defiance of the then-colonial rule that denied Africans the right to wear hats in front of white people. On the plinth, Chilembwe is larger than life, Chorley is much smaller next to him, “elevating the African’s story and revealing the hidden narratives of under-represented people in the British Empire”.

I for one am sitting on my hands and looking the other way. 

Things what I wish I'd wrote

The big news story yesterday was Health Secretary Matt Hancock being caught in a romantic, nay, seedy clinch with his special adviser. We can only imagine what she’s been advising him on. Actually. No. I’d rather not imagine anything. Only so much upset my NSAID-addled tummy can take.

Not unexpectedly, loads-a funnies immediately appeared on social media and in news reports. I suppose because if we didn’t laugh we’d cry, rage, spit, and assassinate the hypocrite who ordered the rest of us to keep apart and not to embrace or he’d slap us with a disproportionate fine. Dan Wootton for the Daily Mail put it best when he said:

 “At a time when you would hope his mind was on getting the UK out of a catastrophic pandemic and brutal lockdowns, Hancock was thinking of the latter half of his last name.” 

What day is it?

It’s fashionable these days to have a special day / week / month for, well, anything really. My LinkedIn feed is filled every day, all day, with a different notification of a day / week / month celebrating every sort of person, cause, thing under the sun.

International Women’s Day (March 8th) takes the shine off Mother’s Day (March 14th this year), but I can’t be arsed with either as March 4th is my Aunt’s birthday and March 8th is my Mum’s. On top of this there’s LGBTQ+XYZ History Month in February and Black History Month in October. 

When are we going to have a Straight White Male Month please?