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.

Pants round their ankles

Having ached a bit on Saturday evening owing to, so I thought, a day’s gardening, I tested positive for Covid on Easter Sunday morning. 

Talk about cocking everything up: I can’t visit my Mum; Hubby can’t visit his; my friend with whom I spent Thursday evening cancelled her Easter lunch with her neighbours; and friends with whom we lunched, also on Thursday, are running around like headless chickens. I feel like I swallowed a wasps’ nest, my cough is worse than any chain-smokers’, and I spend my days sleeping in bed, sleeping in the comfy armchair, or nodding off at my desk. However, my vitals (signs, not statistics) are all good so I think I’m getting off lightly. 

Unfortunately, a lot of people didn’t. Horrific stats, horrific suffering, horrific impact on loved ones and healthcare workers, horrific impact on our kids’ education, horrific mental health legacy, and so it goes on. We can’t afford to get distracted and allow the horror to return because we failed to plan for a sinister new variant. We need to stay alert, focused, prepared, not distracted or stuck down a rabbit hole. However, the country’s needs are once again playing second-fiddle to the wants of a few sanctimonious, hypocritical, own-agenda, traitorous rabbit arseholes who’d rather risk emboldening Putin with a PR coup than tolerate a democratically elected PM they despise. BoJo’s crimes, in their eyes, include getting Brexit done, going after the Northern Ireland Protocol, and caring more about saving lives at sea than being intimidated by a few Peloton-obsessed, workshy civil servants who obviously haven’t read the Rwanda policy, just the BBC take on it. Sigh. 

BoJo is also loathed because of reports he overruled the security services and got his Russian oligarch mate ennobled. Except he didn’t, did he. The Lords’ appointment chief just said so. 

Oh dear. BoJo haters been caught with their pants round their ankles.

Because I’m not fit to do much else this week, I’ve spent more time than usual reading newspapers – not exactly morale-boosting. Here’s a selection of headlines (paraphrased):

• Putin orders troops to seal civilians in steelworks and starve them to death
• Five-year-old was tortured then murdered by own family
• Cocaine gang exchanges cash in busy street while unsuspecting bystanders walk by
• 40% of households face fuel poverty
• Scholar banned from Twitter for quoting Shakespeare
• Prince Harry opens his mouth
• Labour moves for a fresh PartyGate probe

PartyGate! Down the rabbit hole the country went some months ago – I think my first blog about this was in January – and we still haven’t re-surfaced. One might expect opportunistic politicians, woke ‘civil servants’ (who are no longer civil or act like public servants so don’t deserve respect in my blog), and headline-chasing journalists to enjoy skulking where the sun don’t shine – in rabbit holes, not the other sort (oh, I dunno though) – but now the business community has joined the fray, bleating for their Brexit-revenge in group-think fashion rather than running their businesses. 

Yes, the great and the good on LinkedIn, setting themselves up (for a fall) as ‘Leadership Consultants’, ‘Ethics Advisers’ and ‘Risk Assessors’, have picked up the ‘lied to Parliament’ baton as proof that BoJo has no integrity, and integrity is a key characteristic of a good leader, so BoJo has to go. Sounds as if integrity is the only attribute, doesn’t it? Bugger ‘perspective’, ‘empathy’, ‘perspective’, ‘free-thinking’, ‘perspective’, ‘personable’, ‘perspective’ and so many more. Choose one that Boris hasn’t got and the others don’t matter.

The problem with such group-think is it puts off potential clients. I mean, it’s not exactly conducive to projecting a Unique Selling Point, is it; and it limits the way problems are analysed and solutions are developed. Overall, bigotry clouds judgment and compromises skillsets. Would you hire a leadership consultant who thought integrity was the only attribute? What about an ethics adviser who felt that not telling the whole truth about eating cake was a bigger crime than marching at a terrorist’s funeral à la Sinn Fein’s Miss-step O’Neill? Would you trust a risk assessor who advocates the (avoidable) creation of a power vacuum for a dubious gain that would in any event destabilise the country? 

Pants round their business ankles, indeed.

There are so many pants round ankles with PartyGate that it’s beginning to look a lot like a Carry On film – full of immaturity, crudeness, naivety, clichés, corn, has-beens, wannabees, closed minds, and open goals. The three most apt titles that spring to mind are: Carry On Regardless, Carry On Screaming and, all I can do is hope and pray, Carry On England.

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Monty Python strikes again

I’ve just read about the scandal at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, where over 200 babies and nine mothers died and others were left with appalling injuries and mental trauma. These statistics undoubtedly understate the true picture nationwide.

I’m not the first person to comment that these mummies, bairns and their families were victims of a Modern Midwifery Mantra that ‘natural childbirth is best’ i.e. you go against Mother Nature at your peril. However, it’s more than a mantra; it’s an obsession – an obsession with an unproven theory, a fad. Worse. It’s a moral crusade to teach the world that health professionals and their cronies know best, and the rest of us are ignorant if not morally bereft. They unquestionably believe that experiencing natural childbirth in all its glories (and goriness?) is best for bonding. Mums and dads don’t know that because they haven’t been on the courses, read the books, aren’t immersed in ‘the culture’ so they won’t understand. Never fear. Midwives are here to rescue the uninitiated. Show them the light. Hand them the Holy Grail.

The NHS almost killed me ...

... and I wasn’t even the patient.

Poor old Mum wasn’t well Friday afternoon so my sister, who was fortunately staying for the weekend, called 111. While this service has its detractors, we’ve been very impressed over the years, be it for an out-of-hours call-out, or an emergency prescription on a Sunday afternoon. Friday was no exception, and Mum ended the day with a solid diagnosis and a shed load of pills.

So far so good as far as the NHS is concerned.

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:

Little things mean a lot

There’s something relaxing, bordering on the therapeutic, watching a soufflé rise: whether it’s smug satisfaction at having made it; anticipation as to how scrummy it’ll taste; maybe respect for the science behind the phenomenon; or just childish wonderment at the tantalising transformation from slop huddled in a dish to the master of all that it surveys.

The cure-all that is Mother Nature

The other day, with Monday's vile headache threatening to return, I walked about 12 miles. I’d meant to walk about 10, but I got lost, several times. I'd picked up a recommended walk from the hotel website in North Yorks where Hubby and I had decamped for a few days’ R&R (that’s Rest and Relaxation, not Rum and whatever-mixer-starts-with-an-R).

The walk’s written instructions were accompanied by a small-scale map, with the route highlighted in yellow, obliterating key visual details. The text included Yoda-style wisdom (not) such as, “Continue up the hill through the forest”, where there were two possible uphill routes – one went northeast and one northwest. Another said, “Pass through a gap in the wall by the water trough”; there were several gaps and no water troughs.

Saluting those with disabilities

I haven’t blogged for the longest time, which helps to illustrate the main thrust of this post. (I’ve got so many pent-up blogging topics that posting might be a daily event for a while, so gird your loins.)

I’ve had a ‘disability’ for about five weeks now. My left arm is in a sling 24/7 after my shoulder operation mid-August and will stay there for another week, then two more weeks at least before I can drive then six or more months before everything can be considered to be back to normal.

Yes this is just a temporary disability, and it’s on the mild side. For those who face anything like this –or worse, permanently, physical, mental or emotional – I salute you. And to take part in the Paralympics or Invictus Games or whatever – superheroes every one of you.

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?

Talking about food, or maybe not

Probably a bit crass to blog about food right after I’ve blogged about hungry children, but I’ve had one of those weeks when everything else has gone wrong so why not my sensitivity and PR nous?

But before the food, the week.

Still feeling a bit crabby for firing off a, er, crabby email when I shouldn’t have done (another story), I was faced early Thursday morning with receipt of an (unrelated) email that made me think that if I didn’t resign from this particular organisation tout de suite (I should really say sofort as I’m learning German at the mo, not French) I’d be party to being negligent and reckless. Let me give you a hint: if a safety organisation said Do This, would you Do That instead, because it was much much cheaper? Course you wouldn’t, but this lot did and I wasn’t consulted first, so off went the resignation e-mail before I’d had my second strong coffee.

Want to feed children?

Had another letter published in the Bucks Herald this week:

Want to feed children? Local is the best way

I support our local MPs, Greg Smith and Rob Butler, for voting against the proposed food vouchers during the school holidays. 

Earlier this year, provision of such vouchers was far from universally successful, being slow to deliver, expensive to administer, and target recipients were missed more often than an English soccer penalty. As a more viable alternative, in many communities local foodbanks instantaneously materialised, and established foodbanks stepped up a notch. The result was that more kids were fed more quickly locally than nationally.

I'm not vain, honest

It was the constant fogging up of my glasses while wearing a mask, and not vanity, honest, that prompted me to visit my optician to switch to contact lenses.

I’d ruled them out over the years because I’d still need to wear reading glasses, and/or sun glasses, they’re planet-unfriendly – all that plastic(?) – and who wants to poke your fingers in your eyeballs when you’re hungover?

Boris is playing God

Maybe if one or more of my loved ones had succumbed to Covid-19 or were suffering with it in intensive care, I too would want a national lockdown. But they’re not, so I can think coolly, rationally and unemotionally, albeit after two strong coffees.

According to the Daily Mail (yeah, I know), the PM was told that if he didn’t lockdown us all then he would be forcing “doctors to choose between saving Covid sufferers and those with other illnesses.” 

So Boris has made the decision himself to favour Covid patients. 

Excuse me, but I would rather doctors take such decisions on a case-by-case basis, not politicians in a panicked pronouncement.

The Oldest Profession

I think I’ve just read an article penned by the most selfish person ever. In fact, I’m going to stick my neck out and say she’s so selfish she has a narcissistic personality disorder, defined as being self-involved and having a prolonged, inflated sense of self.

Take a bow Lottie Gross, who’s supposed to be a travel writer and whose piece of garbage spluttered from the Daily Mail online while I slurped my morning coffee. The journey she was on today, however, was not of the geographical variety, but the emotional and moral. She doesn’t want children, never has never will. Contraception has side-effects for her so she really really really must be sterilised. It’s not fair that no one will help her. Oh woe is me. 

From 9/11 to PC Andrew Harper

There is something to be said for the renowned stoicism of we Brits. Don’t talk about your feelings. Don’t show emotion. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again … penned and sung by Americans so maybe a more appropriate British cliché is to keep a stiff upper lip. Such a lip used to be considered a sign of strength and dignity. I believe it still is.

It has become fashionable to talk to anyone who will listen, and even to those of us who really don’t want to, about one’s mental health. The Cambridges and Sussexes are to blame. Is everyone trying to curry royal favour and get an invite to a Buck House garden party by opening up, being true to themselves, and “sharing”? If I hear one more footballer / actress / student / thief / yummy mummy / Influencer (whatever that is) or Royal claim “My mental health has suffered,” I swear that MY mental health will suffer.