Karcher Strimmer Update and Any Questions

I am back to normal this morning having slept very well last night. 

First job was to hoover the living room which I haven't done for a while and the area around the woodburner was beginning to annoy me with ash and also wood debris and dust from the woodbasket.  I did that first.  Then I sat at the table and fixed up the Karcher grass strimmer or Lawn Trimmer as they call it.  Having got into a state about it on Saturday I was able this morning to fix it all up in 10 minutes without problem.  All I had to do was fix the front handle to it which required quite a lot of force to get it round the pole and had defeated me on Saturday and there was nothing in the instructions to say that you needed a great deal of strength to fix it on.  I noticed that one woman of my age had also been foxed by it and had asked in a question on-line as to how she was supposed to do it and it looked like it might break. My thoughts entirely on Saturday.   Karcher instructions are not terribly helpful.  There is also a great deal about safety matters which seemed a trifle over the top.   

I also fixed the strimmer shield around the cutter which was easy.  That was three Philips screws and done, slotted into place in moments.  I then lengthened the cutter string.  Easily done.   I clicked the battery in place, already charged on Saturday, and put on hat and coat, gloves, goggles  and boots and went out to test.  I take common sense safety seriously but the eye protection, i.e. wearing goggles,  was not mentioned in all the two pages of safety information.  

Zoom, I was into business strimming along.  I am totally satisfied with it.  I came in and rang my brother as I was so excited and thanked him and his wife for the recommendation.  This is big brother who got me the ride-on mower.  So all is hunky dory as far as garden goes.  I also ordered some spare cutter line spools so that I don't suddenly find all the cutter string has been used and can't strim.  All I want now is some better weather.  It is cold and windy this morning so I only tested the strimmer  for 10 minutes because it is too horrible to be out in the wind for longer.  I have just been gathering twigs for kindling as there is plenty blowing down off the trees. 

The schools are now on Easter holiday so I won't be going out much but tomorrow I have a massage booked so will go to that. 

I missed getting my petrol yesterday because I was so exhausted so may go out for that in a minute when I get the papers. 

Simone was saying yesterday that she enjoyed reading my blog post yesterday, as did Linda, and Meike, and the beginning of me stockbroking.  I am never sure of what interests people or what they don't already know and it is nice to get feedback and questions.  If there are any questions or things you would like me to blog about please do not be too shy to ask me.   There are over a 150 page views per post so there must be some interested parties who would like to talk to me but never do.

Thank you. 

Sunday

I haven't got much to say today.  I slept badly which leaves me in a mess today.  Added to that changing the clocks and I am all over the place.  I don't generally mind the clock change but when you haven't slept a wink all night to boot it really throws you.  I can see the time is just after midday but it doesn't feel anything like that. I have one clock that doesn't change itself but I can't be bothered to change it.  The other clock, I only have two, changes itself as does my phone and my tv.   My watch can wait until I go out tomorrow. 

We had minus temperatures in the night and a sharp frost so my bedroom was cold as I like to have a window open.  Added to that the cats have started to come up to sleep with me on the bed.  Now I like a single bed and that is how I like it.  However, two cats on a single bed with me is not so good even though they know they are only allowed to sleep at the foot of the bed out of the way as far as is possible.  So that didn't help and eventually I put them off the bed but they hung around, didn't go far, one to the bathroom and one to another bedroom with no doors in between.  The bathroom one made a couple of attempts to come back on the bed.  I was cold so I shut the window.  Then I put socks on.   I did all the things I do to get to sleep but it just would not come. 

I have nights like that.  I did the alphabet backwards, prayers, and breathing.  Nothing worked.  I wasn't worrying about anything, sleep just wouldn't come. 

So today I am wiped out.  I had my porridge for breakfast although I was tempted not to and to just flop out in a chair with a cup of tea and a biscuit but I knew that would be the start of the slippery slope to bad habits again so I put the porridge on, had my cup of tomato juice, my linseeds, and then the porridge was done and then I flopped out.  I think it was only just after 7am.   I have managed to light the fire and fill the dishwasher.  The house was so cold.  I am too out of it to put the Karcher strimmer together although I have charged the battery.  I did that yesterday.  The instructions for fixing it all up are awful, I looked yesterday and it was to be my job today but that is out of the question.  

I listened to Simon King (Si of Hairy Bikers) on Desert Island Discs.  He was great but I didn't particularly like his choice of discs apart from the Chieftains.  I was a big Irish music fan at one time and went to see the Chieftains live at Great Yarmouth.  My mother asked who I was going to see and I said The Chieftains.  She was horrified.  I went alone because I didn't have anybody to go with.  Parked my Mini outside the Wellington Pier and loved every minute of the music.  I also liked the Bothy Band.  I didn't tell mum when I went to see them, I decided it was best to keep it to myself.   In the 1980s I went out with an Irish musician who played the fiddle. I loved him but I don't really know what happened;  he used to play the fiddle in the subway and gets loads of money from people walking into work in the mornings.   They used to throw him pound coins and he played for an hour everyday and got a enough to live on for a week doing that.  Then he just sort of disappeared.   I enjoyed those days.  I went out with several different men in the 1980s, worked in pubs and did all sorts even though midway through I started work training to be a stockbroker when I wrote to a new stockbroking office opening.  I was working full time in a pub at the time but I thought I had better get a more decent job so that was how I ended up stockbroking.  I wrote them a letter and asked if they needed any help and they rang me immediately and said can you start tomorrow.   I started off freelance doing the filing.  Then I got to answer the phone then they said I could train.  At that point I became an employee.  I kept a pub job all the time though but didn't tell them.  Then when I went to London for a bit of training I had to give it up. I sometimes stayed over in London in a hostel, my choice, I preferred it that way rather than a hotel, and other times I used to commute but Norwich to London is a long daily commute.  Sometimes I used to drive to Stansted and park there when you could park all day for £3 right outside the terminal when Stansted was more like a coach station than an airport.  I could get the train into central London from there for less than a tenner.  All those days have gone now.  I left my car in the short stay at Stansted a few years ago and when I got back they wanted £90 for the week.   

Then I finished training and exams and didn't have to go to London anymore.    

Bring Me The Horizon and I will escape

 Yesterday I felt in need of a complete "getting away from it all".  One or two family things keep coming up where little sister has to act like a big sister and keep the boys happy.  The latest is that our long term accountant may be folding and it causes a bit of stress in that three of us have our tax returns prepared there and a relationship of some years has ticked along nicely.  When you reach your 80s the last thing you want is upheaval of this nature, finding a new accountant etc. etc.  I have had alarming phone calls from two brothers and I have had to reassure that so far we don't know if the man is giving up for sure and secondly, even if he does, we will find somebody else.  There are any number of people offering Tax Return services.  Even my former lawn-cutting brother who has refused to speak to me since January rang me.  So one good thing is that at least we have picked up with each other again and bigger problems have overridden the smaller one of January.

So yesterday I thought a day off was in order.  I went to see Bring Me The Horizon Live in Sao Paulo, at the cinema.  This is a rock band and I was the only person booked to see them.  The whole screening to myself.  That for a start is a joy because I can do what I like, make a noise, scream, gesture, whatever I want.   (A woman came in after I had taken my seat and I spoke to her when she was fussing about a seat number very close to me and assuming she had come in and just bought her ticket I suggested she could more or less sit where she liked because as far as I was aware I was the only booking (until she came in of course).  She didn't answer this but said she could barely walk (this was truly obvious and her weight prevented her climbing the stairs easily) and she said that there were four in her group and they would be sitting two in front and two behind each other.  This led me to believe she hasn't been to the cinema in a while because now you cannot see the row in front of you because of the de luxe seating.   Anyway, the others arrived and I moved because in an empty auditorium there is no point in all sitting on top of each other.  They never paid any attention to me whatsoever nor smiled or nodded and apart from my brief words with the woman I may as well have not existed.   However I had plenty of room to move and move I did.  

The trailers went by and the film of the Concert started.  It was wild from the get-go.  All of a sudden there was a big kerfuffle as first the man stood up and shouted at the people he was with in the row in front of him.  Clearly they were in the wrong screening.  Still they paid no attention to the fact that I was there, made lots of noise, stood in front of the screen, talked loudly and then practically had to carry the big fat woman from her seat to the steps and then lead her down, only a short bit thankfully.  It was annoying the noise they made and the standing and talking loudly but they went.   (I was imagining them arriving wherever they wanted to be and upsetting lots of other people in another screening after a film had started but that is no doubt another story).

Anyway back to Bring Me The Horizon.  It was amazing and all adjectives cannot begin to cover how this concert was for me.  I escaped everyday life and I was totally immersed.  I wasn't there in Sao Paulo but I felt like I was.  The music was great and the visuals superb and as much a study of audience participation as well as music.  I thought of Dave and must tell him about this.  Some audience were saying how Bring Me The Horizon had saved them through grief and tragedy and taken them through it and I could see that which made me think of Dave.   I was totally blown away.  (How much we have moved on since live performances of bands in the 1970s when I was a regular gig goer.)   There were 50,000 people in the stadium and they all knew the words to the songs.  The lead of the group was amazing and kept it all together.  I think the young in this way are so great and would I rather see the young than Mick Jagger?  Yes.  It was the night for young people and I was happily taken away with them.  I even considered how important tattoos are to them all and felt not one iota of criticism for them.  It is how it is and it exuded love and belonging.   

Thank you to Bring Me The Horizon and thank you for making a film of the concert in such an amazing way and thank you to Odeon for showing it yesterday.  If I could go again I would but I have a feeling that there will not be another showing for me to see. 

I got my escape and a smile on my face that still hasn't gone away. 

This beat Project Hail Mary for me  by a million miles.  I am afraid that as much as everybody is raving about it, it did nothing for me.  I love Ryan Gosling but sorry, I hated the film.  I was thinking I might try it again but after Bring Me The Horizon I don't think I will bother. 

Cryptocurrency fanatics

 Yesterday I went to the Women's Institute meeting.  48 members attended and we were informed that we had all paid up our annual membership.  I was given a badge to wear at each meeting as I am now a full member.  The meeting started with the introduction of the afternoon's speaker, a lady who came to talk to us about pearls.  She certainly knew her stuff and had a well prepared slide show of the various types of pearls and how they are produced around the world.  Who thought there could be so much to say about pearls?  We had been asked to come along wearing pearls and I duly got out my plastic poppets from childhood and hung these around my neck.  There were many examples of pearls around the room, all of the fairly regular thing that we expect of pearls.  I believe I was the only one adorned with poppets.  I remained quiet about them as they seemed to be well accepted as three strings of pearls around my neck.  They used to fall to my knees as a child but now I gave them a nice three loops.  The lady had timed the speaking well but I found her rather flat and bland but knowledgeable.  She bought pearl products along with her to sell at the tea interval.  Several sales were made.   She then took an hour to pack it all away while we did the afternoon's business after the interval.  

The second part involves reports from the different groups, like the walking group, the book group etc.  I attended one meeting of the cookery group last month as they are a jolly bunch and I already know some of them from my creative group.  I will continue with that group for now.  After my experience of a book club some years ago I am not inclined to join a book group again and walking sounds too much for me as they drive miles before they start their walks, sometimes to the other end of the county.   We are having a summer outing to Kings Lynn. I found myself agreeing to go.  It was better than the first suggestion of a summer outing to Norwich.  The lady sitting next to me said she would not be going to Kings Lynn because her husband told her the pubs don't open until 5pm.  This was without so much as a laugh or a smile.  I replied that of course this is very important and tried to find positives about Kings Lynn in the form of the Hanseatic League etc.  She wasn't impressed.   WI members can be very unpredictable.   Actually I believe I could find a pub in Kings Lynn that opens before 5pm but that is beside the point.  

On arrival home I had tea which was chicken rolls.  I bought fresh rolls in the bakery and had cold chicken in the fridge.  I opened a bottle of rosé wine for a drink and watched a programme on a crypto scandal in Canada where a man who offered a crypto banking service  kept the real deposit money for himself.  All this was done on line and no money in the form of cryto currency appeared to exist at all while he made off with their real money.  He then disappeared for a long time and the website kept thinking about it when people asked to get their money out and then in the end disappeared out of existence altogether along with the Crypto King who then appeared to have died in India.  Was his death fake or real?   Crypto charts kept going up and up but it was not real.  Trust No One, the hunt for the Fake Crypto King.   Anyway nobody got their money back and many lost all their savings.  One man admitted that he had been greedy and led by greed and he lost everything.  When it is down to giving money via the internet to professional looking websites making out they are like a good bank to help you make money in a currency that doesn't have anything real and  you have never heard of the bank before except in a chat room they are best given a wide berth.   I see that Farage is being given the no no about accepting crypto currency political donations this morning and if nothing else this must be a reason enough to give a wide berth to this man.  I find his mouth spouts nothing but ill judged and illogical and unachievable promises.  Local elections are coming up and I hope that many will return to the Conservative Party. 

It is bad enough that I ordered a strimmer on Amazon yesterday, that is enough fear and gambling on-line for me in a day.  I am expecting delivery today.  

Antisemitism attack North London

 Antisemitism continues in Britain with the torching of four Jewish owned charity ambulances which were parked outside a synagogue in North London in the Jewish area in Golders Green, a short walk from Finchley.  This is a direct attack on Jews in Britain.  Three firebombers wearing hoods were caught on camera going to the ambulances with a can of accelerant.  Oxygen canisters exploded and windows were blown out of the synagogue.  It is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime and being investigated by the police counter-terrorism squad and the British Intelligence Service.  

This appears to the an Iranian linked incident in North London.  

An Iranian group has claimed responsibility for the Golders Green attack. 

There is a significant rise in antisemitism in Britain and it is clear that Jews in Britain are not safe.  It is not widely talked about but there are spies on the Jewish communities in Britain and the incidents are growing.  Fortunately no lives were lost this time.  Two were killed in an attack on a Manchester synagogue in October.   

There are still those who deny there is anything wrong with Britain and what a quiet and peaceful place it is.  It is anything but. 

The British Government at the behest of Wes Streeting, Health Minister,  has stepped in to buy replacement ambulances for the charity and to cover their work until the replacements are delivered.   Reading the words of Wes Streeting yesterday makes me believe he has a more profound understanding of the seriousness of antisemitism in Britain than Keir Starmer, our Prime Minister,  or the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan,  do.  

Eliot and Hardy and Saturday

 Dull and cold here this morning.  Yesterday was sunny but cold.  We have had frosts everyday for a few days.  Spring is here but the cold weather has not yet gone away. 

Yesterday I met my Saturday friend for coffee when she called me early to say she was ready for some normality again.  That is what we call our meetings, normality.   My Saturday friend, S, lost her husband to cancer in January and is in the process of slowly getting back to normal.  He suffered for a long time as I have mentioned before here spending several months between hospital, nursing homes and a hospice and never actually coming home again after he was hospitalised six months before.  It has obviously been a particularly difficult time for her.  In March her mother died too whch has heaped misery upon misery although her mother was 97.  S is attending the funeral this week in Essex and will be getting the train down to Chelmsford.  

So normality is what we do together.  We talk for a couple of hours and only about death, house sorting, red tape following death,  if she wants to.   I buy my papers and she does a big shop.  I hope she stays living here but as she is not local and only moved here with her husband a few years ago and now has no ties here I think it is likely she will return to Essex.  But time will tell. 

Her husband worked in the oil industry and regularly flew to Baku. So sometimes we have talked about my trip to Baku and she was able to tell her husband that I was going.    S taught languages to businessmen and speaks fluently in Spanish and French.  Her teaching was business language which makes her language skills and teaching quite different to school French.  There is a French lady who works in the café so they chat in French which I love to hear.  S did her language courses in City and Guilds in the 1960s and never went to university as was the way in those days, evening classes and City and Guilds examinations played a very important part of education for many.  

In the evening I watched two documentaries and part of a third.  The first was on T. S Eliot, the poet and writer, the second on Thomas Hardy, and the third, which I didn't finish because I was tired and went to bed, was  The Brothers Grimm.  All of these documentaries are available free on Prime. Whilst watching Eliot and Hardy it occurred to me that writers of that time in the  late 19th and early 20th centuries were writing in troubled times and apart from wars and hardship they were also very troubled men in their private lives.  This can also be attributed in part to the times in which they lived when the openness and freedom that we take for granted were not so free and open as today.  Things like divorce and sexual feelings were kept to oneself and often marriages lasted merely because one or other was too ashamed or felt rigidly tied by family values to not seek divorce. This was the case for Eliot where he did not believe in divorce.  

Thomas Hardy was awful to his wife Emma and she confined herself to the attic rooms of their house to keep out of his way.  She was sad, neglected and badly treated by him.   He belittled her and insulted her and yet when she died unexpectedly he was full of remorse and this released in him his best writing and two years of outpourings of poetry about his love for her.  Too late for poor Emma though.   His marital experiences fed into his books and Emma knew this and was insulted by it.  He later took another woman to the house whilst Emma was still his wife and rubbed salt into the wounds.  

Eliot was also troubled man and this fed into his works, The Wastelands and J. Alfred Prufrock and Four Quartets  and many others. He had a terrible first marriage to Valerie who was by all accounts quite mad but Eliot did not divorce her.  Eliot took a one year teaching post in America to escape and when he came back to England he never went back to her again.  She was eventually put into an asylum by her brother and died there and only then was Eliot free, but by then middle-aged.  His parents in America were also very disappointed that he decided to live in England and effectively become an Englishman.  This weighed heavily on him.  He met with the Bloomsbury Group by night and worked in Lloyds bank by day, but still found it difficult to off-load and be free and Virginia Woolf observed that nobody ever got close to Eliot.  He later found happiness in his final years when he married his secretary Vivienne who had had a crush on him since she was 14.   Throughout all these troubled times and war in London he still wrote plays and poems of the highest quality.  Vivienne was later to release Old Possum Book of Practical Cats  to the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and this became the highly successful Cats musical and some of the profits fed into Faber and Faber and helped many young writers in later years. (Eliot had joined Fabers in 1925 as an editor).  Vivienne said that Eliot would have loved the musical. 

 I was fortunate to go to a reading of Four Quartets a few years ago.  I wrote about it on my other blog at the time.  The reader who spoke from memory and knew every word, spoke the whole thing as if he was speaking to me alone.   This led to me being asked by a number of audience members if the reader knew me but he did not.  The reading was in a small chapel.   

It occurred to me  in lamenting that I can never find a good book to read today and today's authors seem to lean on the side of fairly lightweight stuff in the  contemporary writing that maybe times are too easy for us and we do not have the angst that these writers I describe went through.  Does a troubled life bring out the best in writers that feeds into their own work?  Of course I read only a very narrow section of fiction in that I don't read crime which is very popular these days and I don't read science fiction, also very popular. But an awful lot of what is published feels to me to be shallow and crass.  Perhaps that is a reflection of life today with social media, tattoos, microwaves, fast food, and frontless dresses feeding the minds of the writers. Storylines that are not deep and writers like Sally Rooney raved about and described as fantastic and exhilerating leave me unsatisfied at the end of a book.    

So many things written on X (Twitter) are now starting with "if this is true" or "if what you are saying is true".   It is really putting me off.   There is much fake news of great gravity written and so many join in because the space for it is open to all and people just seem to get bolder by the week.   Sorry that was a bit off topic but still a sign of the times. 

Parting with Books

 You may have noticed that when I said I was reading the Philosophy of Religion in bed this was because it is one of the only books I have left on my shelves.  

I have been slowly but surely relieving myself of my book collection and it has been much easier than I thought it would be. 

The reason I started this exercise is because I will eventually move into a smaller property, most likely to be an apartment, and I do not wish to have a lot of belongings left by that stage and I do not wish to be heaving a lot of heavy books with me.  I need to start moving items out and not leave it until the time comes when I move and have it all to do in a hurry. 

I used to love my book collection as much as anybody else loves books and I kept everything but about 20 years ago I stopped keeping fiction and off-loaded all my fiction collection, almost entirely paperbacks, so that was a good start to the current clearance. 

(I continue to read fiction of course but ever since then I have had a policy of handing paperbacks straight on to charity shops.   So there is no fiction to be dealt with in this cull). 

The two other collections I had were maps and art books.   The maps went first, about 5 years ago in fact.   I was clinging on to these and the first step was to sort them and where I had two or three maps of the same country I reduced to only one.  This was much easier than I thought and I bagged them up for the charity shops.  It was so easy and a realisation that I really never touch the maps at all and if I want to check a location I Google it so I happily took the next step and admitted to myself that apart from looking in the atlas occasionally I really don't miss the maps at all and so I did another cull.  I just kept the city maps.  And then the final step I parted with those as well.  The only maps I have left are street maps of Norwich, Great Yarmouth  and London.  All the rest have gone and I truly do not miss them.  I still have my father's school atlas, my school atlas and a paperback atlas I bought quite recently for up to date borders. 

Now the major step of my art books came along.  They are the catalogues of shows I have been to in London and mostly published by the Tate Publishing Company or Thames and Hudson.  I started with parting with just three to see how it felt.  I felt nothing.  This is how they originated: I would visit a show, buy the catalogue,  read it on the train on the way home,  file on the shelf.  Quite honestly I haven't looked at them for years.  So three went.  Then another three and so on and so forth.  I set a kind of target to deal with a minimum of three each week.  

I have had to go further afield with the deliveries to charity shops because charity shops have difficulty with reference books, they don't want to be over-loaded with them.  One shop manager was removing reference books from the shelves when I went in and she said they have difficulty shifting books and reference the most.

I looked up the values of some of the catalogues but none of them are worth much,  nowhere near what I thought they might be and anyway it is not about making money, and there is really no rarity in any of them.  They are not out of print and quite frankly nobody really wants them.  However, I persevered with local exit points like the church book stall for those books not containing obscenities, and the village as well as the charity shops. 

My taste in art has changed of late too and I do not feel drawn to contemporary art as I did when I was studying art 30 years ago so it is not the horror that I thought it might  be parting with my books.

I do still have a small collection of poetry books that I acquired last year when doing my Masters.  I am not quite ready to part with them yet but I am sure I can do so quite easily when the time comes.  The internet means I am never without a source of reference in any case.

When I see the empty shelves I feel happy about a job well done and another load off my mind. 

You Need An Inner Self

My e-visa for Azerbaijan arrived in my inbox this morning.  I have printed a copy off and it is also saved on my phone.   Modern life, visas on-line and emails.  Technology has its advantages.  Life has changed so much and many things are better and more convenient.  I would not wish to be without communications technology, all the good things.  I have just ordered some ink for my printer without moving from my chair.  It will be here tomorrow.  Such are the good parts of modern life.  

I went to the bakery first this morning and purchased fresh rolls and a chocolate brownie. Then the charity shop.  I purchased 6 paperbacks quickly before going to the dentist two minutes away.  The books were £1.50 each or two for £2.   I am desperate for a book to read in bed.  

I have been reading the philosophy of religion, a small book I had for one of the courses I did a few years ago, the only book I have not given away, yet, dipping in and out but I really like a novel for bed.  Religion is something we like to have to relieve us of fear is one philosophy, something to cling to and give us relief.  We give ourselves relief from stress by prayer and meditation, we share our stress with God.   Nobody can prove it but man does not live by bread alone and spirituality in whatever form it comes is something we all rely on, like it nor not.  If you talk to yourself you are probably more spiritual than you realise. Well that's what I have always thought, when I talk to myself I am connecting with my soul and hoping that perhaps there is more than just flesh and blood and I can see beyond evil around me and pray for strength.  The prayer may be raised to saints or God and if the prayer does not see God in a form that you can share in front of you it doesn't matter.  He maybe does but you do not wish to share it.   I have a way of imagining God on a hillside which goes back to the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus gave us the teachings of God.  It cannot be that Jesus did not exist and that these words did not exist and that someone did not hold the pen to write them down.   So spirituality is talking to your inner self, talking to someone you may want to share with who is not seen and it is absolutely private.  Nobody has to justify this or explain it.  It happens and it helps with strength to get through the day.  Many people who are grieving find this for the first time and it stays with them for ever.

Back to the books,  I am starting with Michael Palin's novel Truth.  I read a couple of pages just now and it seems ok.  I didn't know he had written a novel.  I like him as a person so I am hoping he can write as well as he can talk.

All was fine at the dentists. 

I have cut the grass and washed the car. 

I have the afternoon free. 

I should sleep well tonight.

Tuesday

 It has been a fine day here in the east from about noon onwards when the blue sky and sunshine arrived.  It was a bit late coming but arrive it did.

I have had a bit of a non sort of day as my plans for going out fell through when my friend had to call off meeting me due to illness.  So in the cold and grey of the morning I went to a garden centre and had a scone and tea and read the papers.  As usual I sat outside in the fresh air much to the amazement of the girl serving.  

I then came home and started a new jigsaw puzzle which I had treated myself to from the garden centre.  I also bought a hose coupling for my lawn mower, you attach hose to clean the deck, and some path cleaner.  Now that I am in charge of my own grass and path all these things come into my own hands.  As the sun wasn't yet shining when I got home I put off cutting the grass as it seemed too cold and dull to be outside.  I was feeling a bit dull anyway and not in the mood for anything much more than a jigsaw. 

I hope tomorrow will be better for me although I start the day with a visit to the dentist!  

I watched the Dynasty :The Murdochs family story on Netflix, not today, but a few days ago.  I watched all four episodes but found it rather boring after the second episode.  I split my viewing and couldn't face it all at once, it wasn't exactly gripping.    Family businesses whether they are big or small are rarely good news, my family can vouch for that.   

Watch and listen

 Yesterday was Al Quds Day.  I learned a new word, Quds.  This is multi cultural Britain with a Quds assembly on the South Bank in London praising a culture of murder and repression and death to Jews.  1000 police officers attended.  The banners praised Khamenei. They praised the tyranny,  they mourned the death of the butcher of Tehran.  They chanted death to the IDF.   

It is a little bit of Britain today in your lovely multicultured nation of all that it brings to this country.  Sick.  You like the food, right?  We let it flourish and we get next door neighbours who hate us, an eventual take over of our towns as well as our cities.  Every day is a sad day for Britain now.   Life goes on for sure, you can ignore it but it grows slowly but it grows big and faster in Parliament who pander to them and not to you. 

Reflect

Yesterday I met my friend for a coffee.  This was a good tonic for me and I felt happier after seeing her.   She is four years older than me which makes her closer to 80 and we Whats App'd in the evening that we both felt better after a chat for two hours.  Who would have thought we would be Whats Apping. I think of my mother a lot.   I speak to her in bed and tell her what is going on and ask for forgiveness for being such a terrible daughter in not understanding how hard getting old is.   Nothing can ever prepare you for the final years of life even though we all know it is coming.  Shrinking skin, tiredness, poor sleep and an uphill struggle against bureaucracy which is the same for all but seems harder for the old when you remember life as it once was when call centres didn't exist, security questions etc. etc. and everything seemed easier.  

Writing like I did yesterday is writing being free of the block of what others may have said or written before you.   You may see different angles.   Also Max Dowman is a young man you may like to see scoring Arsenal's winning goal yesterday which I was watching yesterday evening.  It lifted my soul.  Good things go on.

You never think of old age as happening to you do you but it does.  It creeps up slowly and then suddenly it is here with you.  

I think this is a crap post.  The choice is take it down or leave it.  I wanted to achieve something along the lines of calmness but I failed.   I'll leave it up anyway for you to read if you want to.   Thanks. 

Good May Not Come in the Baskets that You Wish For but it still Comes

Today I would like to remind readers that in Tehran they hang homosexuals from cranes in the city for all to see in public executions.   When isolating Iran for special measures and not to be touched because it is against international law please bear this fact in mind and if you were about to be tortured and your skin torn off and thrashed in 1930s Germany by the Nazis would international law have featured in your thoughts when praying for help to arrive?

Women of Iran have thanked the US for helping them more than the feminists have ever done.  Women are second class in very many ways in Iran. Please be reminded.  

Enemies of Iran are shot in the head by Revolutionaries.  Please be reminded of this too.  

Let us hope that changes to these facts will come.

In Venezuela the National Guard are linked to torture and killings. 

I thank President Trump on behalf of the people who are tortured and killed in these countries and I thank President Trump in the name of Israel who are let down and betrayed by the west in their lack of understanding of the night of 7th October 2023 and the barbaric, systematic, planned attacks on Jews by Hamas.  Hamas funded to millions of dollars by Iran.  

Houthis funded to millions of dollars by Iran.  

I thank President Trump for the presence of the US Navy in the Strait of Hormuz. 

Back in the UK it is frosty this morning and it was very cold in the night and I reached for the second duvet to cover the bed.  It was on the floor so not difficult to place on the bed in the early hours when the temperature had dropped considerably and the frost on the grass was of no surprise to me this morning. 

I would love to find a good novel to read but today's writers are not at a good level of literature that I wish to read.  Take that however you like but I do not find a good book to read very often and I no longer have a favourite author with Margaret Drabble, Margaret Forster, Olivia Manning,  Penelope Lively, Anita Brookner all long gone and of the boys the books of Sebastian Folkes I have read more than once and quite frankly I have had enough of World War I  and Ian McEwan knows not how to end a story.   The charity shops feed me with little worth reading in contemporary novels.  The last book from the station bookstall was The Wedding People by Alison Espach heralded as a best seller with millions sold mostly to people like me no doubt desperate for a read only to find a poorly written, shallow, muddled story that laboured its way along a rough and ready path of too many characters with nothing much of substance. 

I will go on my way now.

Getting Old

Yesterday's gales have dropped this morning although I could hear them overnight and now there  also appears to have been a lot of rain.  I am still mystified about why the storm did not merit a name.  I have never been keen on the naming of storms in any case and this seems to affirm the stupidity of it.   Let's just go back to saying the truth about weather, high winds expected and take care.

I went to the singing and lyric session yesterday which was a bit different because (a) we had a different tutor and (b) the organisers sent three from head office who don't usually attend. 

Looking at (a) and (b):

(a) Philip was a wonderful folk singer and was just as good as Kim who ran the first two classes.  So no grumbles with Philip.  He sang and we sang with him.  We didn't do any lyric writing this time though which was mainly because of lack of time because of  (b):

(b) I smelt a rat as soon as I saw the three organisers in attendance.  Something was afoot.  We were told that we would be doing one hour of singing and the second hour we would swap places to the tables which had been set out on the other side of the room and work on tablets.   What??? 

There was a questionnaire to complete (and had to be completed) which basically had a lot of questions about what courses would we like on Zoom.  Of course we were all upset because the main reason we attend these groups is for the social interaction and seeing people.  In fact the activity is secondary to the socialising.  

So we were not a happy bunch. The two ladies on either side of me suggested to me that I answer the questions heavily on the side of needing support and help rather than saying that I am happily independent because they had heard whisper that funding was to be reduced to groups of low dependence.  I am not happy leaning on the side of not being entirely truthful about things but I got the drift of what they were saying so on scales of 1 to 10 about my independence and wellbeing levels I opted for 5 where I would normally have given 9 or 10 scores as being highly independent.    

The questions re. Zoom courses and the tablets on tables for our use were there for us to be given help with technology and how to access the organisers website and how the future could be with on-line courses.  

The questionnaire did give a final question asking what were our thoughts on a future with Zoom on-line courses in place of what we have now.  Of course I let rip and explained that I attend because I enjoy the company of other people and the socialising is very important to me as well as the creative side of the activities which stimulate the mind and body (we often do activities involving dance).  (When we were going through the use of the tablets we were told that the lovely dance couple who come to us would be recording dance sessions for Zoom.  This was terrible news and left me feeling bereft on the way home that we could lose all this because of funding cuts and the doors would be shut).  

What more can I say?  It is about getting old and the harder it gets to keep the body and mind going and the feeling that does anybody really care.   I know that Labour want to get rid of us, we are in their way, and the sooner we disappear the better.  It is lapping at our feet.  Perhaps we should say we are asylum seekers who arrived on a boat and then we would get more help. 

(By the way, in case you are wondering, these events are not free but subsidised by a government grant for culture).  

Film Time

 Apart from writing 10 minute crazy blogs I have been doing other things.  

To start the week I went to see The Bride which is the new Frankinstein movie.  I loved it.  It is wacky, off the wall, crazy.  It is with "black humour" (and black humour always attracts me).  Frankinstein movies per se do not interest me.    This is not your usual Frankinstein movie and if that is what you want then you will be disappointed.  I saw people walk out and not come back.   Frankinstein is lonely, he calls himself that because Frankinstein made him, and so he is Frank through the film.  His bride is a very wacky Jessie Buckley who turns up everywhere right now, even Desert Island Discs a couple of weeks ago and I am expecting to bump into her in Waitrose any time soon (she now lives in Norfolk if this is not clear).   Anyway, Jessie can do anything and she makes a crazy bride with a bit of Mary Shelley and a bit of Ginger Rogers and Frank is played by Christian Bale and is laid back and quiet but he has his moments.   Recommendation is go and see it if you like wacky things and you are a bit wacky yourself.  If neither of these descriptions fit you then probably don't bother. 

The next day I went to the hairdressers and had a hour with Hannah and got grounded and wacky stuff with her too which is why we are friends as well as client and hairdresser.    I went home and as the day was nice and sunny I got the ride-on out, started it and flew around the grass in a crazy fashion and did it how I liked and yes, I enjoyed myself and I am going to love doing my own grass in lines and patterns of whatever I want. 

That brings me to yesterday and I went to see How to Make a Killing starring Glen Powell who also seems to turn up a lot these days.  This is also wacky but less so than The Bride and quite funny too although I was alone in laughing out loud.  I recommend this one.  It is cleverly done from start to finish with a beginning, a middle and an end and a clever way of storytelling.   Definitely a goer for the cinema goer. 

Today was bright and sunny until about half an hour ago and now at 8.30 am the sun has disappeared.  I am off to sing and write lyrics once more at our creative afternoon in the local town hall and have fun.

Later: 

11.30 am it is now gale force winds with extremely frightening gusts.  I have been outside to secure what I can. 

I will still go out to singing though., 

Not Your Britain

 It cannot be under-estimated that we are becoming a communist country.  The past is erased and Churchill replaced by a hedgehog.  Be aware that in a few years time we will have a country with no celebration of our own people, no celebration of being British, no celebration of anything that you took for granted growing up whatever that may be, doing what you wanted when you wanted where you wanted with a life of a drink after work, idle chat on a summer evening, a football match of pure football with a bonus for a goal and no fasting interruption for Lent,  putting the bins out, not putting the bins out, having a lie in on a Sunday, everyday ordinary things will be watched and listened to.  You will not be able to report anything that concerns you because that person may have been an asylum seeker, or son of who must be British because he was born here and his father is not in the equation.  he who came on a boat with an age of 24 but pretended to be 17 and stayed and joined with boat passengers that he met first in a camp and formed a gang with criminal intent upon arrival on our shores to fill gaps in our market of drugs and supplies and suppliers and to top up family at home with  benefit claims a free for all who arrive upon a boat. You cannot speak of him with his machete because he has rights that you do not have.   You will not be able to report him but he will be able to report you for talking about him and suggesting that he is dangerous. 

I may go on about things that you do not wish to hear but believe me this is  Britain;  this government will continue the work of Blair, and you will live under the Attorney General and the Prime Minister and the cabinet of civil rights lawyers who are there to protect those who come here with criminal and wrongful intent and you are nothing.  And for those who come in order to leave with more than they arrived with and failure as their intent, they will take the £40,000.

Decisions Alone

 It's good to be alone isn't it?  Or is it?   Would you know?  Maybe you have a life alone too.  You would also know.  

A life so private you can go for days without speaking to anyone. 

The space in your head becomes your universe.  Mine is doing that right now.  An empty room and a head full of words and ideas and activity but just me silently experiencing it. 

Each decision involves a silent conversation with myself.  What channel to watch on tv, what food to take for tea, what preparation shall I do, what spoon shall I use, what timing for it, what plan to make for now, what plan can wait until tomorrow, what important things to remember for the morning.   They all involve that silent conversation, that tossing around of ideas, those unspoken words that something can go outside to the rubbish bin because in doing so it will make space in the house for the next piece of rubbish and make the morning better, cleaner, easier to make the effort now;   something  else can be placed in the dishwasher, something else from the fridge readied in time for the hot food;  a plate warmed, a serving spoon made ready, a glass of water, a knife selected which has to be the right one, a fork, a position for them on the table.  

These things happen silently alone but they all involve small moments of decision and activity in the brain manifested in physical movements of the body.  A hand moved, a muscle flexed, a short walk across a room, a scratch, a door opened, a door closed. 

A shred of fear about a decision that will remain that, a fear alone that will not be shared.  If I am lucky it will solve itself in my head and not trouble me anymore.  If I am not so lucky it may multiply.  It may torment. 

Discussion out loud does not take place, it is not necessary to verbalise any of this, it is just me. 

Choke Points

Take note that Trump is right about Iran.     He is not silly or mad.   

Carney is a bit naive, China will buy him, it will buy Starmer.  Look at what happens to Sri Lanka, look at any Chinese trading partner and you will become in debt to them and going towards a basket case.  

Iran is evil to its own people.  All the revolutionaries, the Khameni people, are rich and they do it at the expense of their own people. 

Everything the revolutionaries do is evil, run by evil people.  Obama was never going to do anything, just fake threats "if you don't spend the money on your people we will attack" was all rubbish.  Nobody believed he would when he gave them money to invest in their people and not make nuclear bombs, everybody knew it was all a lie and I wrote it  about it at the time, a lie,  all one big lie by Iran because they knew Obama was faking it, probably all of us apart from Obama himself.  The money that Obama gave, the billions of dollars, all went to the Khameni revolutionaries, not the people, not to make a better life for the people.   Robbers and oppressors of their own people.    They build up Hezbollah and nobody challenges until US and Israel. 

 Iran is a puppet of China.  

US is the enemy of Khameni and he hates America.   Iran switches from GPS system to a Chinese system so that America cannot shut it off. 

The Israelis will help and with a massive military intellingence, the competent and the  local ally.  Helps US.  

Every little agreement Iran makes with China is a Chinese takeover of Iran; Iran makes itself useful to China, Iran sells most of its oil to China, cheap, and creates a big billion barrel oil reserve for China.  More half than China's energy imports go through the Malacca Strait, and China is dependent on that spot and the US Navy patrol it and if there was trouble they could block it.   Houthis can shut the Hormuz. 

Israel operates on a regional scale and its enemy is Iran and Iran is  to America as  Hezbollah is to Israel.  Israel take out Hezbollah,US  take out Iran.

China cannot produce all the oil it needs.  It is so big and has so many people.   

China do not want to lose their choke points. 

China builds pipelines, road, and it tries to avoid the US Navy.   

  It is not clear to people that China is the enemy.    

Iran has to be stopped. 

China does not come to Iran's side.  China does not help Cuba,  It will be Cuba taken out next.  Venezuela gone.  So look at China every time. 

Russia is a major supplier to China too.  It is not known how US could do anything about Russia.  

This stuff is all published.  China is the enemy. 

Israel is very careful, Israel will not bomb friendly countries in the Arab world.   Iran will bomb anybody.

 There is no such thing as international law.  It does not stop genocides.    International law stops nothing.  Bosnia ended within days when Clinton bombed (I am supporting Clinton)  and he stopped four years of war when it had not stopped before that because people kept saying we can't do anything because of  international law.   It does nothing but make morally righteous people.

Nobody reads my blog/I don't get prizes. 

Oh and Erdogan is probably the man who will take over Iran although nobody knows what the future holds yet.  

I went to see Othello this afternoon, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket production.    I liked it especially as it kept fully to Shakespeare text.   I wanted to speak like that when I came out.    I decided to write this post on my way home whilst sitting on the train.  I couldn't manage it in Shakespearean language though. 

I also made a decision that I am going to travel to London the day before my flight so I am not stuck four hours away if decisions have to be made. 

Evil British Killers

 When I was brushing my teeth this morning a smile came to my face that my taxes will no longer have to go towards keeping Ian Huntley in prison. He's dead.   May it be Levi Bellfield next.   Same prison.    Wayne Couzens is in the same one too.    

Saturday

After the ride-on mower lessons on Thursday (and the stress of learning how to work it)  I needed an ordinary day on Friday.  (I discovered that googling questions about ride-on mowers is a bit like consulting Dr Google on personal health problems - you get told the worst case scenarios if you describe even a low case scenario.    Fortunately my brother has been ringing me to check I am getting on ok and this morning I concluded it is much better to ask him and forget about googling, (I didn't admit to him I had been googling as I was feeling a bit like a wimp about the whole thing anyway and didn't want to tell him!))  Being a farmer he tends to think in terms of the 100 acre field and the proper way to turn, do the headlands etc. etc. and I am thinking about nothing more than how to get the machine out of the shed in reverse gear.

There have been a few other things going on this week which were a bit concerning but I decided to engage some positive thinking to see me through.  My brother R (brother referred to above) who was with me at the time was a bit sceptical about me engaging only positive thinking to solve a property problem but I know from my experience that it can work.  And it did.   I also have the concern about the holiday going ahead but in the grander scale of things it is nothing.  Of course it would be disappointing if it is called off but lots of other things come first in life before holidays, but see penultimate paragraph. 

So back to my ordinary day on Friday.  It was, naturally,  a trip to the cinema to see Mother's Pride which is a heart-warming story of good folk over-coming adversity and the rich guy and the good folk winning in the end.   Mother's Pride makes me think of a loaf of bread because it is a brand  here although I haven't seen it in the supermarket for a long time.  However, in the film Mother's Pride is the name given to a beer brewed by the struggling pub in its own micro-brewery run by Martin Clunes and his sons, a granddaughter and eventually many village friends.  I had to have the handkerchief out a few times.    It made for a nice afternoon out, it is a bit limp but it was not toxic or violent or anything,  on a  disappointingly grey, very chilly day.

While I was out I received an email from the travel company giving reassurance that Azerbaijan is safe at the moment for travellers and they are keeping an eye on it and will notifiy if anything changes.  In the meantime they said to get on with obtaining my visa.   It takes the pressure off me always checking and I will leave it to them. 

This morning it is again very cold and grey here.  I have been out for the newspaper and some eggs which I forgot when I shopped during the week.  I noticed that they were queuing for petrol at the Shell garage.  I don't know if it was my imagination or what but people seemed to be shopping in a bit of a manic way.  I grabbed a meat pie for midweek as my token gesture to having some supplies in hand.  I also bought a tin of sardines and as an after thought, a loaf of bread.  That was my manic panic. 

Thursday, busy

 I received my ride-on mower today so it has been a busy day.  This morning my brother took me through the steps to make it do its job and for me to master the controls.   I did some mowing after he left me and then had a sandwich for lunch.  It was quite stressful, the first day. 

I then needed to do some shopping and get my weekly petrol which was worrying me because of rumours I hear about petrol panic buying.  I buy a set amount of petrol each week for my small runabout car.  My tank is small and so I cannot hold a big quantity of fuel hence my weekly fuel stop.  I felt a bit nervous going to the garage wondering if the rumours I had heard were true.  I go to an old fashioned garage in a town centre and I get my kindling there as well as my petrol and I buy myself a weekly treat of a bar of chocolate.   

No need to have worried, all was well, no queues, nothing out of the ordinary.  I carried out my transaction as usual and made no comment about the scare-mongering I had heard and the lady was her usual self and we spoke about my chocolate.  A boy in front of me was buying bread and he decided he wanted to talk about the panic.  He said he did not want petrol.  I think the lady was not interested in the conversation either and she said something fairly non-committal and he left chuckling to himself as he had no takers for alarm conversation.    I have an acute dislike for trouble stirring and rumours.  If you have some information share it.  If you have nothing but hearsay then stay off the subject.  As far as I was concerned all was normal.  Remember I have not watched a news bulletin in years but from my phone and headlines and my local paper which carries two pages of international news of course I know what is going on and I do have my opinions. 

My soon to be  travel destination borders Iran so I am aware of keeping an eye on the British Foreign Office and advice and I am wondering about my insurance of course in case the holiday is cancelled because of troubles in the Middle East.   But official government channels will be all I will be watching for this information, not the BBC.   

I have liver and bacon for tea which I am looking forward to in a minute. 

I will photograph the mower another day but for now it is put away for the night. 

I travelled to the next town after filling up with petrol and did my shopping.  I came home, feeling exhausted and had some of the chocolate from the garage purchase and a cup of tea.  I did a half an hour of jigsaw puzzle to unwind. 

The film yesterday, the one in Morocco, was chilling but true and interesting and life in the raw of what can happen to ordinary people.  I remembered the desert driving when only local people know where they are without landmarks and signs and proper roads.  It is another world in the Sahara desert and a very frightening one at times.   It is a very hard film to watch.  Sirat

Back again

I sort of gave up blogging for a few days.  I read some things around and about,  mainly in comments, that upset me, and I didn't want to be part of blogging for a while.  When you blog everyday even missing a few days feels quite a big thing when in reality it was no more than 5 days of not posting.  In fact I did write posts each day but I never published them.  I felt better writing down how I felt even without posting.  That was enough to let me move forward each day.  

Today I feel better again, another step,  and the gap has done the trick and I can put it in the past and forget it.

It has been a good week weatherwise and today is another sunny day.  I went for massage and my Thai lady was good and she is noticing the difference in my muscles now so my five months of exercising is having results.  I am also noticing the difference myself on the receiving end of the deep tissue fingers of the masseuse.  I am no longer wincing and counting the seconds secretly in my head at the pressure on my quadriceps (quads) back and front leg nor shoulders pulled around and my arms taken above my head no longer causes discomfort.   

Today I am going to see a film, Sirat, and whatever it is like I don't care, all I want to see is Morocco and it is a Moroccan story, filmed mostly there.  That cheered me this morning to find a day time showing.  Hypnotic music I see is promised which should please me having been with my drummer friend Alal on my many Moroccan odysseys and taken to musical events with him.  I will report back on it.