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.,