Sunny Day

 It is another beautiful day here in the east and I have my washing out in the sunshine.   I have not put my heating on yet and am conserving oil in my tank for the winter months. I light the woodburner in the evenings and am tucked up warm in bed with two duvets - my winter one and the summer one on top - at bedtime.  If it gets too hot on a warm night I can discard the summer one to the floor.   I am snug as a bug in a rug as they say. 

I am catching up on lots of documentaries on Netflix at the moment.  I have been unable to find a good drama to watch but there are plenty of documentaries.  Last night I was watching one on the music career of Eric Clapton.  He kind of developed his career during the time I was growing my non-music career in the late 1960s, early 1970s.  All names were familiar to me and many bands familiar.  Reminders of Duane Allman and Delaney and Bonnie were good stories that I had forgotten.  It got late and I did not finish the documentary as I had watched Aileen the Serial Killer beforehand.  She may have been a victim of rape in instance number one but it begged the question of why carry on prostituting yourself on the highway and end up carrying out six more murders when she had a girlfriend to live with and a happier life?   I felt by some she was misunderstood but the rape did not exonerate her from blame for at least seven murders.

Clapton became a drug addict when he was shunned by Pattie Boyd.  He turned to heroin.  He spent three years away from music.  Then got cured and alcohol became his new drug.   

The way to treat drug gangs and suppliers of drugs which have wrecked this world is to go in hard.  I see the police and military raids in Brazil. These are the drug gangs that originated in prisons in the 1970s.  They may be the wreckers of your sons and your daughters lives 1000s of miles away and if not yours, then the lives of others.   Drugs have been the scourge of our generation, so many suicides, OD's, families wrecked, lives ruined for the sake of a heroin fix, a cocaine fix, a ketamine fix, an ecstacy trip that might or might not  be fun (ask Leah Betts family if you have a good memory in East Anglia), a trip, a fight, a stabbing, contaminated and altered states, deaths, murders, crossfire, mistakes.  All results that have brought or bring misery.  Poverty cases when I worked in Childrens Services for seven years were drug fuelled domestic violence, cannabis and alcohol frequently in the houses of the poor and heroin in the houses where the children were taken into care, fostered and later adopted.    In Siberia deaths were many with homebrew that poisoned, as in Laos and Vietnam, watch out if you don't know where that jug of alcohol came from offered in front of you, cheap and cheerful and possibly about to give you a slow, painful death.   

Activities

It is going to be a lovely day today with clear blue sky and sunshine.  Tomorrow is going to be at least 15C and so we are back to better weather.  What a difference it makes.   

I am out today to the Creative Arts group and we are being entertained by two wonderful young dancers, more like acrobats cum ballet really. They are called the Vanhulle Dance Theatre.   We all love them and they come to our group annually.  The young girl is Belgian and her husband is English.  They choreographed a new routine last year and we helped with input in the form of words which were written down when they gave us a short extract from what they were developing at the time and asked for our help.   It was all in its infancy at the time but they have recently toured Europe including it in there show and now we are to see the finished product ourselves this afternoon.  I am looking forward to it.   The Creative Arts events are held throughout Norfolk during the month and all the activities they put on for our town are always over subscribed and full with waiting lists.  It is wonderful that activites like this are organised for those living outside the city and in the afternoons too.  

I am getting older now and rarely go out at night and am adjusting to going to earlier cinema showings so that I can get home before dark.  Night driving is no longer any fun with the LED headlights blinding me.  It is becoming a very serious problem and car manufacturers are still joyfully advertising their new cars with the LED spec.  Do they not see that these headlights are causing a big problem to drivers?

As we who live alone know, if we want to not be alone all day everyday we must get up and do things, join and organise activities for ourselves.  That is the way to be and to have a purpose in life after work finishes and we are in retirement.  

Yesterday morning I went to the tyre company and had my tyres checked for winter.  That was one way I saw and spoke to someone and of course helped to reassure myself for winter driving.  I have tried at least.   I followed that with shopping and buying ahead to get supplies in in case of bad weather.    I then came home and did an hour on the jigsaw.  I then spoke to my neighbour who was bringing my bin in for me.  We had a long chat because he is just back from Brazil where apart from a lovely wildlife holiday he also suffered a heart attack and cardiac arrest and got flown home on an emergency rescue flight.  He is making a good recovery and will look after my cats when I go away next year.  He was quite upbeat about the experience and said that mostly he cannot remember any of it anyway and he was well cared for in Brazil.  Judging by the speed of recovery he must have been and very lucky to have survived too.  The first heart attack happened in his hotel and the cardiac arrest was in the hospital. 

 After 4 O Clock  I closed the curtains and settled down and then a friend rang me who had missed me at the Lifelong Learning Group course that started last week.  I chatted to her for an hour about why I have left them behind, resigned from the committee and moved on.  This is one group that I no longer want to be part of at least for the time being.  I may go back to them one day.  I have enough going on without them and the masters degree course changed me to want more relaxation than forever going to history talks and adult education tutors etc.   

This feels like a good point to have reached in retirement now that I can actually make choices and have a life where there is enough going on to give me those choices and fluidity.   I don't want to be tied down and after two years of university I am enjoying freedom.  

Sunshine makes an enormous difference.  

Chapters of life

 I was listening to Angela Harding on Desert Island Discs a few weeks ago.  She is an artist, a very successful one.  She explained how growing up she had not been in a very happy household until her mother left and her and her sisters, I believe,  stayed with their father.  Mother moved well away from the family and they rarely saw her.  There was no other man involved, she just went.   They were all much happier after mother left.

This situation is fairly unusual I would say and it was very honest of Angela Harding to speak about it in a forthright, unemotional manner on radio.  She said that after her mother left she rarely saw her and in later life had only seen her once or twice.  Mother was happier without the husband and children and they were happier without her.  This, to me, is a very difficult and unusual situation.  

My father died when he was 52, well over 50 years ago, and I was a teenager.  I have often wondered over the years how different my life would have been if it had been mother who died then and father had lived.  I got on well with him, he was hard-working and kind and didn't have much free time but when he did take some time out if was always for us and we would go out as a family to the beach or cinema or a long drive followed by a picnic or fish and chips.  Mother was in charge of the house and chickens and vegetable growing and most things really and basically ruled and father just took it all in his stride in a very quiet way and got on with the farm and the haulage.   

After father died I left home almost straightaway at 17 going off to London and living in a hostel.  I didn't get on very well with my mother and that was the beginning of my adult life and I never lived at home again.    I have always felt guilty that I was not a good daughter at the time of his death  and she had no hesitation in reminding me of this and my failings as she saw them and rarely, if ever, gave me any support in what I was doing and would regularly talk me down.  I grew up with her knocking my confidence a lot  and I still secretly suffer from lack of confidence.  

If I had grown up with dad I feel that things would have been different as I remember him as a kind person and supportive of me and it was him who said I could stay on at school after 16 if I wanted to and he was happy either way.  As it happened he died very soon after saying this and I never took the option to stay at school after O levels, I left, I learned to type and then left home because I could now support myself. My mother gave me nothing and I set off with £7.10s.00p in my pocket which was my last week's pay as junior office worker in Norwich.    The hostel cost 5 guineas per week, bed, breakfast and evening meal.  (I got work immediately through the Alfred Marks bureau so wasn't without money).

We didn't really mourn father's death, mum was very stiff upper lip British and once he was gone he wasn't talked about and although mum and I would share memories sometimes it was always done in a very cold kind of way by mum without emotion.  He died at a time when it was quite taboo to talk about cancer and mum displayed that she felt shame that he had died from cancer and she would never talk about it.  When he was ill in his last six months she never told anybody that he had cancer.  She hastily arranged a private funeral and hurriedly got it all out of the way.

So this is where I come from and this is where I left home and went away and somehow I think life would have been different if it had been me, dad and the boys who were left.  I doubt very much, for example, that I would have left home in the way I did at 17.   Maybe one day I will come to terms with a lot of things but even at my mature age I am still working my way through it.   It takes a lifetime. 

The Bruce Springsteen biopic

 I went to see the Bruce Springsteen : Deliver Me From Nowhere film yesterday, its release day in Great Britain.

I enjoyed it and the time passed very quickly.  

It is probably a film that will disappoint those who go expecting two hours of Springsteen music, flashes of concerts and all good things of his success.  It is not a film about this part of his life although, of course, we are reminded of his great success and popularity and his music. 

I defy anyone who sees it to not sit watching and be taken back to their own childhood, to reflect on whether they had a dysfunctional childhood, to question and to feel a little bit sad here and there even if they conclude that their childhood was good.  I know I sat watching thinking of my childhood and how much later in life I am still affected by it, good and bad, and for many many people really bad demons  can manifest themselves in mental health issues.  This is how it is for Springsteen.

The demons for Springsteen came around regularly.  

The film title comes from the Nebraska album where the lyrics of the songs were him living out his thoughts around his parents and his troubled childhood, things tearing him apart and going through his head.  We see how he was basically a loner and liked to record on a deck straight on to tapes, alone, not in a studio, and the rawness of the end result was how he wanted it to be.  He had some persuading to do to convince his record company to allow this.  He shunned press and tours. 

As I went to an early showing I had my hour in the café with coffee after rather than before.  I chatted to an elderly gentleman, probably about my age in fact, waiting to go into the next showing. He said how much he liked Springsteen and had all his albums and had been a great fan in the day.  He asked if I enjoyed the film and I said very much.  I didn't want to put any colour on the film for the man before he went in so I left it at that but I had a feeling  as he left the café and went into the screening that he was probably going to come out disappointed that it was not two hours of Springsteen wall to wall music and fun.    Jeremy Allen White plays Springsteen and makes a good job of it.   Stephen Graham, known very much now for his part in Adolescence, plays Springsteen's father and gets it spot on.  

All in all, a good film and I will probably go see it again. 

Royalty

 I watched an old documentary on Princess Diana last night and it was very good.  Also one on King George VI with the stutter.  Both extremely enlightening documentaries and I learned a lot.   I was never a fan of Diana but since watching the documentary I can see a little bit more of her side of things that I had not known before.  Looking back at the engagement films that were shown on tv at the time of the announcement it is clear that Charles rarely, if ever, smiled and was really not interested in being engaged to Diana.  He even at one point answered a Press question on love very sarcastically and almost sneeringly saying "whatever that is" without so much as a smile.  He really appeared to mean it.  This was as he sat there with his new 19 year old fiancee on News bulletins going out to the world.   The match was a mistake from the start and it is a wedding that should never have happened.   Diana said that she did not want to go ahead with the wedding but in the end it was too late to stop it and she didn't know what to do so she went ahead.  She was young, had had a very troubled childhood with no great example set to her by her parents on how to behave. For instance, when Diana was a young child her parents divorced and her mother lost custody of all 4 of the children.  Diana was sent off to boarding school.   She also did not know how to behave as a member of the royal family which unfortunately led to her unpopularity with the Queen and others.   It was such an awful time for Diana as I now see it.  She was no saint but she had no proper guidance and no stability of a family in her own right apart from the Royals who knew what to do and never really helped Diana and, of course, a new husband who didn't really want her at all.  

George VI ended up a much loved King during wartime and I learned a lot about him too.  Both documentaries are on Netflix. 

The Charismatic

 Last night I watched the Jimmy Savile documentary.  It has been on Netflix for a long time and I have always given it a miss. Last night in the absence of anything I could find to watch I decided to give it a go.

I never liked Savile when I was a teenager, nor later, and hated it when he hosted Top of the Pops,  and my mother always considered he was a pervert and refused to have him on television in our house if she had anything to do with it.   I didn't know about perverts in the early days of Top of the Pops and later Jim 'll Fix It but my mother certainly felt very strongly about it and made it clear what she thought of him.  She died before it all came out but she would have just said 'told you so'.

It is a strange thing about people that some/many are taken in by certain individuals who have a charismatic influence, something about them that makes people go weak at knees and believe every word they say.    Epstein was another who charmed his way through the world, his world starting out as the world of investment houses to work his way up through the major investment houses and commerce, and even when he stole millions from Wexner, Wexner never pressed charges and kind of just buried it.  Epstein would charm his way into finance jobs, lie about universities and qualifications and somehow pull it off with his charm.  Then it followed that intelligent, high profile people all wanted to be seen with him at his parties and join him in massive weekends of rubbing shoulders with each other, being seen to be seen.  And all the time he was up to no good with under age girls and a total pervert.   Ghislaine Maxwell was bereft after her very flamboyant, crooked father mysteriously died and she got totally taken in by Epstein. She was also short of money.   Who would have thought it?  She must have some genes from her father that account for her willingness to join with Epstein.  It is almost beyond belief that she would join with him with the luring of young girls from high schools  to give massage to Epstein and not see that she was involved in something totally perverted and wrong.  Why did she not leave in total disgust?   But then Ghislaine needed money too and Epstein provided it.   Fergie was another but she did it for money, always needing Epstein to bail her out and send him begging emails, supporting him when he got out of jail the first time 'I love you still, can you lend me $50,000?' (I later note that even one of Peter Mandelson's emails to Epstein also said 'we still love you'  and 'press for early release').   Much of what Epstein did to curry favour was fueled by money that he gave to individuals who couldn't say no and in turn kept Epstein celebrity image intact.  Individuals who were sadly lacking in life and too much time doing nothing but wanted the high life like Andrew.  

Like dictators, Savile, Epstein, find people you can buy are useful.  Stalin called them useful idiots.  Savile's currency was to raise money for charity and become a visible saint who everybody wanted to be seen with.  

Another who charmed his way with falsehoods and lies all done with money is Singaporian Jho Low who defrauded the Malaysian investment fund by siphoning off millions for himself.  He is not being accused of being a pervert and I am not suggesting he has wronged children.  However, he did charm celebrities across Hollywood to attend his elaborate parties and pose as friends to give him the popular playboy image when all the time he was taking billions for himself from the Malaysian 1MDB fund which was intended for investment projects in Malaysia.  He was in a major fraud with the then Prime Minister.  Jho Low actually paid Hollywood stars to attend his parties and they were happy to take the money.  He escaped Singapore.  He is now being hidden by the Chinese in Shanghai under a false name and passport.  It is said that for the Chinese to be willing to help him then there is one hell of a lot of money involved. 

One sees these kind of charismatic people, taking people for a ride, throughout life at all levels.   People believing what is said, the gullible are always there like Ghislaine who was at a low point, just one example.  It happens in every locality in small ways that do not make the headlines like Savile, Epstein, Jho Low did, but fraudulent behaviour whether it be perverts or finance fraud or both or just good liars, there is always an audience, a willing crowd to pat the dog.  There are many who have a dark side which they seem to have the ability to hide for a very long time and fool many people.  I would like to say that eventually they all get caught out but I am not so sure that they do.  

Double Dutch I Suppose

I attended a new group yesterday, the WI in a nearby town.  It was suggested to me by a lady I met at the history of radio talk last month and so I went along.  It was fun and a very large group of ladies.  I have three goes at seeing if I like it before joining but I think I will join when the time comes.   Yesterday was a bit different because they were celebrating the 89th birthday of the WI and were in party mode.  I will see what it is like next time.

I am checking my blood pressure twice a day for the Indian doctor.  It is a beastly chore because once I am up I am in thick layers of clothes and snug and warm and then to take the blood pressure I have to peel off the layers to expose my arm and then I am cold and uncomfortable.  

The storm has done some damage here overnight and I can see I am shut in because a gate I have never touched has blown from its secure fastener and is now shutting me in at the corner of the house.  I have nobody to ask for help as I am surrounded by the elderly and myself, also the elderly.   I was going out but given the strength of the wind at the moment I think it best if I stay in and maybe have a look at the gate later. 

Later in the morning I fixed the gate on a temporary basis.  I think it is time to have it removed. A job for my man when the weather returns to normal.

It Matters When You Know Somebody Cares

 Went to the doctors again yesterday.  Met a lovely Indian doctor of mature years.  The previous day I also had a nice experience when the receptionist put me in for this appointment without having to go through the 8am phone call stress.  I didn't ask but she clearly could read that I was upset and she volunteered the appointment for me.  It worked out very well and I met a lovely Indian doctor.  He held my hand.  How often do you get a doctor in England who takes your hand?  I don't remember it ever happening.  He spoke so gently and he understood and I voluntarily without pressure spoke of my concerns.  He was everything that is missing from the doctors surgery these days, the human touch.  There was no clumsiness or fear of words that were spoken by me.  He put me at ease to be honest and he reassured me without any hint of judgment or patronisation in return. 

He said he had worked for the practice for 15 years but he is normally based in another surgery a few miles away and had come over for the week because they were short of doctors.  So I am unlikely to ever see him again but yesterday he worked wonders on my mental health which has been at a low ebb for a long time.   I slept well last night.

Relax Properly dear Bloggers

 Following such a lovely day yesterday today is rather miserable and after a bright start it is now raining quite heavily and has gone quite dark.   Yesterday was a beautifully warm day.

The use of relaxation is difficult for some who don't seem to know how to do it or possibly treat it as a sin to do so.  I relaxed yesterday and from around 5pm I watched three films.  Whilst viewing I like to pretty much do nothing and I now use sub-titles for all films and documentaries because I cannot always understand what is being said, particularly the American voices.  This is not because I am hard of hearing, it is just that diction and clear speech is not always what comes through the sound of these programmes. 

I do sometimes do codewords whilst watching if the dialogue is in English and then it is not so imperative to read the sub-titles.  But otherwise I just relax, sit back and enjoy.    

I don't crochet or embroider and I keep sewing to the sewing machine and garment mending or alterations.  I haven't done either of these things for some while as there hasn't been any necessity for such. 

Later Sunday

 Later the same day.  Alone all day.  Have done my exercises which I do each day now.  I am noticing a difference in agility and wellbeing.  I have doing them for a month now.  15 minutes each morning and sometimes repeated in the afternoon.  I follow a YouTube video which keeps the timing discipline going.  I know the exercises well but I need the timing so I keep watching the video along with me exercising. 

I have shopped and am turning more into a vegan as I have a number of health issues at present which I am hoping can be improved with a more vegan diet.  I am not going completely vegan but I am attempting to eat more vegetables and protein beans.

The day has been splendid with temperatures up to 16C and sunshine.  It is changing just now later in the afternoon and has clouded over.  But what a beautiful Autumn day.  I listened to Mary Greenwell on Desert Island Discs.  I thought of the Magnons. 

Sunday miscellany

 It is something of a small joy to be writing here again.  The morning routine is linseed, porridge, kefir and a cup of tea, wordle of the New York Times followed by Codeword on the Simple Puzzles site followed by More Wordle which is an alternative set up to the New York Times.  Those three things start the day.  I go back to Codeword after I have finished the More Wordle to time myself and test my memory.  The first go at Codeword can take anything from 2.5 minutes to about 14.  Usually one word will leap out at me but if this does not happen it can be a bit of longer journey to place the letters.  I go back to it after completion several times in fact in order to give my memory a good test against the clock.    

Now the breakfast routine includes a brief blog post.  It is fun to talk here to myself because nobody other than the London Borough of Brent has visited.  If I were to leave a comment on a blog then I would be easily traced as my profile is not hidden.  But I am not inclined to leave a comment anywhere for the time being.  I miss loyal people like Linda and Dave and Meike who were the regulars and the ones who didn't forget me. 

I continue with the films and went to see After the Hunt on Friday.  A failure of a film that should have been good.  Mark Kermode sums it up beautifully on his podcast of film reviews.  Julia Roberts will regret ever being part of this film I think.  Michael Stuhlbarg was outstanding as her husband although it was a relatively small part he played but I do love him since I saw him in Call Me By Your Name my favourite film of recent times.   After the Hunt failed in so many ways.  The music score was dreadful to the extent that I almost got up and asked the Odeon if there was a problem with some ticking clock in the audio room until finally it stopped after what seemed like gruelling hours of ticking at the opening of the film and was probably only 5 minutes.  It was like a student film gone wrong with "let's use a ticking clock to build up some tension'.  It happened again much later during the film.  It was dreadful.  The plot was muddled, the side we took  as viewer was muddled and lots of annoying things like unable to read text messages and see exactly what was what in written material shown by the camera to the audience but actually unclear.  Films with text messages  and pieces of significant written paper bits should blow them up so that the audience can read them otherwise don't bother to show them. 

Nothing has Changed

 One or two subjects in the news prompt me to say that China is the alternative to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the unofficial lender.   China has taken over Sri Lanka along with many other countries in financial trouble.  China also build the new capital of Egypt.

China leads me to other subjects that have come up recently along with Sri Lanka.  Also in the news feed are the dangers of taking what have been called the fat-busting drugs.  The latest on the dangers of the drug is that the intake to the system is altering the state of cells so much that false images are being thrown up in scans and xrays.  These drugs are new so side effects are emerging on the hoof so to speak.   It beats me as to why those who claim education and brains take drugs that clearly alter their insides apart from the losing weight side of things.  All drugs, prescription or otherwise, have side effects.   Why not take porridge for breakfast along with linseed, give up the large platefuls, the sweets, the excessive meals and try that way to lose weight, eat correctly and give the fat-busters a miss?

The world is run on greed for money.  I was watching a programme last night on the corruption inside Malaysia and the 1MDB fraud, the vast sums that were fruadulently taken from the fund which was for investment projects in Malaya.   One of the perpetrators is hidden by the Chinese in Shanghai.   You need to do big frauds to be protected by China and this was a big fraud.   The others just did away with those who were in the way.

Corruption in this world is as high as it ever was, historically the British were often involved in nefarious deals in the name of money, opium, greed, charity gone wrong, missionaries,  and so it goes on.  

I have had a page view showing up as the London Borough of Brent.  I wonder who lives in that area. Reveal thyself dear reader.  

Sparring is a current method of conversation.  People try to get a reaction. They do this:  be heard, be negative, shitty. Their conflict, violent conflict other than war. Gamesmanship.  'I can't be bothered with you' will always be my reply if it comes here.  Power games are made worse by the availability of the anonymous identity. Psychopathic parasite who is in it for his advantage.

Merit

 I got my dissertation mark yesterday, at least one month earlier than expected, and received a solid merit and some lovely feedback from marker 1 and marker 2.  It brought a smile to my face for the rest of the day and I felt I had achieved a lot from the standing start where I was at two years ago when I began the degree.  My collection of poems was well received and understood and the humour was not lost on the markers;  the markers not understanding the poems had been a fear of mine.  So all in all a good day and the illness went a bit to the back of my mind. 

However, the illness is still with me and the rash has not yet gone.  I have received messages this morning from two friends on the MA and one has been suffering from some of the same symptoms as me, some but not all.  However I still I found this  reassuring and perhaps I have had something that is "going about".    I am starting to putting two and two together about it and coming out with four instead of five. 

It is very scary being ill alone.

Britain to keep out

 This is a deeply troubling time because we have more than the economic gloom which we had in the 1970s.  We have a definite rise in anti-semitism and an almost total ignorance of history starting in  1917 with the defeat of the Ottomans Empire in WW1. 

Where Britain interfere there are always problems.  Even in Cyprus Britain can be seen to have encouraged and made worse the divisions on the island which exist today. 

To suggest that Britain intervene in the running of Gaza is total nonsense and defies belief.  

The Democrat Party in the United States have only one policy at present and that is to seek to find fault with President Trump.  They are nothing more than that. 

Day One

 This is day one of the new blog.  I have missed writing my blog but I have not missed the troll and have felt very free.   He can be anonymous some places, choose names that suit him on the day,  and in others, like on my blog where only Google accounts are allowed,  he uses a Google account name which gives nothing away, no profile,  (except to some of us that know him and his nasty notes that we cannot be bothered with). 

This is my third blog in 15 years.  

I have not missed being accused of being an anonymous commenter either which was hurtful and untrue.  I was unable to cope with the stress of these accusations and twisted comments along with the stress of writing the dissertation so the blog and blog following stopped.  It was a very good decision.  (Whether coming back is a good decision remains to be seen).

The break away from blogging has helped me to put blogging into some perspective.  I do not let it dominate my life anymore and the spell was broken.  That gap was important.   Thank goodness.  I have also understood that blog friends are not like my real friends in real life who I see and talk to face to face and with whom I have developed long term relationships over years and years of contact.  This realisation is my biggest breakthrough.   I don't know why it took me so long.  I am open and honest.  I always assumed that others are.  They are not.  A number of things happened during my last few months of the previous blog which caused me a lot of stress.   A lot of total surprise discoveries about people I thought I knew and liked.  Well two people anyway.  I had made a mistake.  I turned on Comment Moderation for a while but I don't like moderation and eventually I turned the whole blog off and deleted it for the sake of my own wellbeing.  

Writing my dissertation is now in the past but I still await the result.   Looking back on the writing of the dissertation now feels like looking back on someone else.  I can hardly believe that I really did it.  It involved the creative part which was writing a collection of 20 to 25 poems and then a critical commentary part.  I worked very hard and was pleased with the finished piece of work.  It is now being double marked and then moderated by an external examiner.  I don't know what they will think of my work but I was pleased with it.  I am reconciling myself to any outcome as there must be some element of subjectivity that comes into the marking and this is unavoidable with creative work.  Most days I forget all about it. 

Since writing the dissertation I have had a few medical issues which have caused me a lot of stress.  GPs see it everyday but the person who rarely goes to the doctors such as myself can find minor things getting out of all proportion and alarming.  There is no gentle touch from the doctors now, that is a thing of the past, long gone. 

Last night I settled to watch the England football match and it was a pleasant surprise to see the new England under Tuchel and to see the team moving around and playing proper football, not being the old pedestrian game as it was under Southgate.  

Last night grounded me properly to stop worrying about the doctors and the way they run their surgeries today, to forget about the past and accept that we now live in a different world.

Weaver died one year ago this month.  I miss her emails and her friendship which never wavered. Weaver was as close to a real live friend that I ever had in blogging.  The troll even tried to tear this apart too at one point which was laughable.

I still go to the cinema once or twice a week and see my Thai lady for massage once a month and sometimes more. She is currently in Thailand where her family has been badly affected by the floods and her family home and farm have been washed away and roads gone.  She sent me the photos of the region sent to her by one of her sisters.  It is devastating.   She was not sure how she was going to reach them but was going anyway because her mother has only weeks to live as in the final days of cancer to add to the family stress.  It is a sad time for this little Thai lady and she keeps in touch with me via Whats App.  She has not yet reached the farm.  (Later, she tells me she is now with her sisters and they have lost everything).

I don't know how often I will blog or if I will keep it up at all but I have enjoyed writing this morning.