Overcast today with occasional drizzle. Playing a mix of music. BUT have been to the gym for the first time following the weird hy-temp week. My ‘Personal Trainer’ (be in awe, OK?) is on holiday so I could strut my stuff alone, work the machinery and pause long enough to calmly survey the other poor souls labouring away.

Wore the elegant grey T-shirt with the golden St.Catharine’s Cambs logo embroidered on it. This is a new world for me and I am trying to understand the subtle messages. Firstly there are different ‘tribes’. There’s the ‘muscle-bound mob’. Heave on the weights; pile on the muscle; swagger; get tattooed (if that’s how one spells it); sweat (this is VERY IMPORTANT). Esp. the women. Ugh. Then there’s the ‘No-brainer’. Take to a machine and dementedly, mindlessly push, step, lift - whatever. Eyes unfocused, shoulders sweating, towel and obligitary drink-bottle to hand. For ages. There is also the ‘last gasp’ brigade. ‘If I don’t do this - huff, puff - I’ll die’ Grim. Bleak. Sweaty. Depressed. The men come as singletons.The women tend to come in pairs. The men wear kit that was cheap when they bought it and has been washed to a limp nadir. The women wear kit that is fresh - but not new. But there surely ain’t no dishy birds in the gym. But there are one or two who look like really nice people I’d love to talk to - but one mustn’t. We all exist in our private bubbles. No human contact. Sad or what? This bunch of people - and we don’t talk to each other. We turn our eyes away and pretend the other person doesn’t exist. Cripes.

Well my comments about our Empire lit the blue touch-paper alright. Thank you for commenting. Open debate is important. How can humankind learn so little? But meanwhile I can observe a civilisation sleepwalking into oblivion. Which one? Ours.

Today is not the day for me to expand on that. But, personally, apart from the gym stuff I’ve had a good day and coped with some BIG issues. That’s it - over and done with. Perhaps I’ll stop waking up at 3 in the morning for a while.

My last thought is somewhat threadbare. Treat others as you would like others to treat you. Why does this seem to be impossible? I’ve been treated really badly by a few people this week. It’s enough to make one feel cynical.

My love to you all - Dad

Well the early responses to my blog surely raised my eyebrows so here’s my early response.

Firstly, dearest Trouty my love to you - as always. Note: Keep this secret from Henry or patricide might result. And yes, I guess it must be genetic. (Gloom, gloom). Oh, but! There’s some good genetic stuff too, isn’t there??? Take care, love. [Note to foreigners: I was born in Liverpool and the term ‘love’ is a widely used term of gentle affection and friendliness not an expression of unrequited lust]

Well, Omally my friend, music is a curiously powerful medium. It certainly has the power to move me to tears and I so miss my past when I sang and played and really threw my heart into the total beauty of the medium. If C & W doesn’t do it for you, I’m sure something else must. As to the Goon Show, no I have no recorded medium of any of it. But when I was in a Sanatorium in the 1960’s and the Goon Show was real, for a time with my room mate I was responsible for the Hospital Radio and we used to subject those bedridden headphone wearers to selected snippets of the Goons. It never occurred to me that they might suffer mentally thereafter for the rest of their lives!! I suppose I have, though. Insightful of you to think of it.

Which leaves me with Stu and lordhutton. Your perceptions are quite wrong, you know. Except that clearly you don’t know so it was stupid of me to say that. You were not alive then and have no first hand knowledge of how things were. What was the source of your inaccurate belief that British people behaved in the way that your comments suggest? You perception is so far away from reality. But MY question is who has poisoned your minds? I know why - but who? Please tell me so that I can disabuse you of a horridly incorrect understanding of history.

Sorry about that, folks. But someone has to attempt to put right perverted views which have been quite reasonably accepted by very nice people.

Have I another Dad idea? One way and another I have had a really lousy day. I won’t bore you with the detail. But from time to time we all have a really bad day. So - Step 1 - Recognise that you are having a rotten day. Step 2 - Take time out to take control of your emotions. Tune out for a bit. Step 3 - Realise that this is a now thing not a forever thing. Step 4 - Choose a positive thing you can do next or do tomorrow. Because you can survive a really bad time and come out smiling.

If I don’t, Herself will give me a right telling off. Go in peace - Dad

Blustery day today but generally OK. Playing C & W and trying to cheer up. Have a heap of stuff to do having missed a week (see below) but have no wish to get on with it. In short, I’ve got the hump!

Last week was fun. Herself took the week off to watch the Commonwealth Games. She adores all sorts of sport and has also been keeping on about cricket in India. I must be a sore trial to her. Once you’ve seen one lot of people run round the track / throw the object / hurl themselves into a sandpit / smash the bar off the poles - you seen it. Why see it again? Ditto playing rounders-for-grown-ups but with a bigger flat bat. And if you have to wear armour to play it, then there’s something fundamentally wrong. I don’t mind physical violence as in rugby which I used to play, but cricket uses a projectile which is cheating.

Which leads me to wonder why people are so moronic and complain about / apologise for the British Empire? When we managed sundry territories we did it with a very light rein. We brought the rule of law. We built schools and hospitals. We built roads and railways. We put down mad idiots who sought to abuse / kill the real, decent people in the territories for which we were responsible. We hung the trouble-makers. So that’s all good.

Now see what thieving, brutal, bloody chaos has succeded our principled management. I have no idea why our so-called government of the time abandoned our responsibilities to the nice, normal, ordinary people in so many places. We lost our will. Our decent and caring nation bought into the perverted revisionism of a socialist few. Who lost? The people we had protected and supported at some cost in money and lives. Yeuch!! WE abandoned so many decent people who have been seriously abused ever since. Honestly, tell me one African State where the ordinary people have better lives now than they had when we took care of them. Remind me of the thousands dead, mutilated, dispossessed, left uneducated and uncared for because we turned our back on them. Mugabe, anyone? Smith was right. Under British care Rhodesia would still be a wonderful place for both settlers and locally born.

Anyway, I spent last week with a temperature of 101 for 5 days, sundry aches, ‘orribly sweaty but no sign of a cold or flu. And I felt like rubbish. So what was all that about? That’s why I didn’t get much done. This week was the blood test. I HATE needles and have 3 or 4 tests a year but Norah is a wizard with a needle so - as I well know - it could be a great deal worse. But I have a problem. Books / tv / sundry sources talk about ‘needle tracks’ identifying people who take drugs. Norah (and everyone else I ever went to) zeroes in on my right arm above my elbow - and despite all the punctures I can’t see any ‘tracks’, whatever they are. Does ’stuff’ make ‘tracks’ going in but blood makes no tracks coming out? The things I don’t know.

Anyway it’s off to the Doc again next week to see what kind of peal he will ring over me in response to the blood test. Bet it’s bad news.

So you can see why I’m fed up. Never mind.

I want to rejuvenate our garden, front and back. Because I’ve been unable to keep it up (quiet at the back there!) it’s got away and declined. But I have to ‘get someone in’ because I can’t do it myself. First challenge - find someone at a price I can afford with whom I am in charity, as the phrase goes. And that’s another good story. I’ve spoken to a few people but have been looking at the problem through blinkers. The dam burst yesterday and I thought - ‘Of course! Rip that out - change that - forget that!!’

So many problems - personal or life related - are irresolvable because we keep looking at them through the same prism all the time. So instead of falling into good old Route One every time - break out. As the phrase has it ‘think outside the box’. Don’t know how to? Take charge of your own thinking and simply start from a different place. You can do this. Shake off the mental shackles. It’s amazing how different things look if you see them from there - not here.

Sorry if that’s not too clear - but try to see what I mean. Just chewing on it could help you. And my best wishes to you all, my special friends - Dad

Remembered kindness

Looking back, through memory’s glass
Kindness, help, a supporting hand
Lifting me across life’s way
Smoothing rough pain
Restoring tranquillity

At every one of life’s stages
Kindness and understanding
Appeared, unannounced, for me
Sunlight through pain
Bitterly endured just then

From child to adult, came to pass
Bleak moments, bitter events, and
Challenges piercing each day
From which I gain
Strength and more ability

Prized names lost from my life’s pages
Hidden now, not withstanding
The role they played that helped me see
What I must gain
From pain endured, no matter when

Men and women, colleagues too,
Lifting my burden as and when
They could. With a smile.
To so many I owe my thanks
Lost, alas, in the mist of my memories

Yes it does scan. Alt. verses.

Dad

Poets have a huge problem. No-one wants to publish their work. So it’s self-publish or gloom.

YOWZAH!!!

I’ve had another poem accepted for publication in an Anthology due out in April.

YOWZAH!!!

I hope you understand my personal sensitivity that leads to my very low key blog about this matter.

YOWZAH!!!

Lost-for-words

Cold today and overcast but without the wicked wind we had yesterday. Playing the pirate jazz CD I got - some really superb stuff on it. Have been feeling distincly Eyeore-ish of late and the jazz cheers me up. (If troubled by this reference pls. see Winnie-the-Pooh)

Delighted to read that because of a huge spike in wholesale gas prices yesterday an Amber Warning has gone out to heavy users and things might get tight. Laugh a minute. My gas / electric supplier has hiked prices twice this year already. And I received my Council Tax notice for 2006 / 2007. Surreal. Since I’m a poor old pensioner on a fixed income and interest rates are so low this financial rape and pillage is gettting way beyond a joke. This x’ing gov’t will crucify us all. The papers are full of rabid socialist politicians pressing everyone to save more for your pension/old age. BUT if you are stupid enough to do so, that same socialist mind-frame will take as much money off you as they can whilst the profligate non-savers get ‘means tested credits’. Hang on, I paid my taxes, NIC etc. - let’s have a level playing field here. I deserve a bung too.

Talking of Rikki my ‘personal trainer’ (pretentious or what?), this gym business is somewhat costly. I’ve been going there wearing an old, threadbare track-suit I’ve had for years and looking like a tramp. Well, Herself decided to tidy the kitchen now she’s not at work and on the notice board, beneath a receipt for logs dated Dec. 2003 found £30 in tokens for JJB Sports. (And, no, I don’t know where they came from, either). So off we went to make me respectable. What’s respectable about sweating? So here I sits in my new Nike kit which is v. comfortable. But it cost more than £30.

Saw the Doc last week and we had a good chat. I took in a big box of luxury chocs for the surgery staff who are kind, friendly, patient - and wonderful. I also created an ‘Official Certificate’ saying it was the best GP’s surgery in Britain and they were all super. And Doc was the best Doc I ever met. They were so pleased it was worth every moment. Doc asked if I could do another copy so he can hang it in his downstairs lavatory so friends fall about whilst - doing whatever they’re doing. He’s Irish and loves F1 and cars so we talked about his new £50,000 Porche and the prospects for the Bahrain F1. Fortunately he was up at Dublin Uni whereas I was up at Cambridge so he feels I have an edge. Silly man. Dublin is a fine Uni.

The serious news is a new blood test in 2 weeks from now and another meeting in 3 weeks when the result is in. I don’t know what he’s worrying about - but I’m going to be a bit tense for a while. He saved my life once - literally - so whatever he wants to do is OK by me.

That’s about it for now.

People are very complex and we all have a variety of pressures on us. But if you want to look at the absolute basics, most people roughly fit into one of three categories - Doers, Thinkers or Carers. Imagine one of each sitting at a table when you present them with a problem. The Doer starts - ‘Right, we need to do this - and that.’ The Thinker says ‘Has anyone a pad and pen? I need to figure this out.’ The Carer says ‘Anyone want a coffee?’ An effective Team needs some of all three. The balance depends on the kind of challenge faced by the Team.

The problems? The Doer rushes at ‘action’ without weighing up the choices. As Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said, ‘If I wanted to chop down a cherry tree, I’d start by sharpening my axe.’ The Thinker never finishes and is always looking for the perfect solution. As the old saying goes - ‘Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.’ A handy solution delivered in time beats a perfect solution that is too late. The Carer is invaluable but needs to be focussed on the outcomes needed - or we all sit there and drink coffee.

Just a thought. Go in peace, my friends. And thanks Julianna - keep me in the picture, OK?

Dad

I’m indebted to Omally for his kind enquiry about my extended absence. Thanks v. much for your kind mail.

Well there’s been rather too much going on. So this is an abridged version of Dad’s recent history. Firstly what about Herself? Well, as you know her Dad is seriously ill and Mum is not well either. So she’s been worrying about that and popping over to Kent to see them. Mind you, that includes seeing her Sister and nipping over to France for a day shopping and returning with nice bottles and food we love but can’t get here without going to London (aarrgh!!) and paying a fortune. Why can’t one buy rillette here, for example? Weird.

Next, she’s somewhat tense, you might say, about her suspected brain tumour. Scan due in late April. Hmm.

Her teeny-tiny dolls house gardens are selling briskly and she loves making them. Her web site is doing OK and if you haven’t bought something from in-miniature.com I might come looking for you. Go on, even if you don’t buy - please look. I admire her tremendously. There was also a Craft Fair recently for which she had to make lots of stuff. That went well and people love her basket of free chocs for the kids. One each only!!

Following sundry discussions she quit her part-time job at the Solicitors. I used to teach management stuff - and the firm where she worked was a client of mine at one time. They clearly learned nothing. Was that my fault? I think not. BUT I want her to have her own financial independence and not feel beholden to me for ‘pocket money’. Now that’s not too easy.

As for me, my ‘Personal Trainer’ Rikki is sorting me out. I feel much better for that. I can’t afford him for much longer but the plan worked. Small problem - my Doc says ‘Lose weight or else’ my exercise regime has not changed my weight by even one pound over 4 months. I eat twice a day. Fresh fruit for breakfast and one dish only for supper. If you know what the xxxxxxx I’m supposed to do next, pls. advise.

Apart from other problems I had a wisdom tooth out yesterday and feel like rubbish today. It leaves a literally bloody great hole in my mouth. (More tincture, I hear you cry) What is The Tincture? Something my beloved Dad told me about. 50 / 50 brandy and port. V. good for the stomach and as a general tonic. Drink 3 and you fall down. I’m on my - - wozzit? Hmm? Well, some, anyway.

What a pathetic blog. Please forgive me - but thank you again, Omally, for your concern. You warmed my heart.

Dad