Month: October 2007

The appearance of a flyer on my front doormat on the first of October made me realise how very much Christmas has become degraded. A local restaurant was advertising Christmas lunches and dinners at reasonable rates, presumably to kick off about now, I haven’t checked because it is not Christmas yet. Christmas for the elderly is not the same as it was when they were able to prepare a spread for anything up to fifteen people. For a start they had control, but in a way that induced anticipation, pleasure and the prospect of enjoyment for the whole family.

But I want to go further back than that, I want to go back to my childhood, and that of my children, both of which were so terribly different to the childhood and Christmases of today. Christmas really didn’t start until the beginning of December, didn’t reach its full enriched colour and excitement until a few days before Christmas. It was at this point that the paper chains were made at the kitchen table out of packets of strips of coloured paper, stuck together with a wet sponge, lists of presents were made and secrets exchanged. It must be remembered that small children would be taken shopping at about four o’clock, on the last Saturday before Christmas. It was relatively dark until one reached the shops on the High Road, and Christmas descended on you in a blaze of colour and light. This would have been the first foray to find Christmas presents. There would have to be another foray with another member of the family to help choose a present for the one who was taking the child on that Saturday – no secrets no fun. These trips, of course, had to include a visit to see Santa at one of the two grottos on offer. The adults thought the present was rubbish, and inevitably not worth the money, but to the child it had a significance that was worth the money. These trips involved a tremendous amount of trooping from shop to shop, breathing on the windows, watching demonstrations of new toys, and trains going through tunnels, under bridges stopping and starting. There was an unspoken understanding between adult and child of what was possible and what was beyond the budget for all of them. So the trip generally started at Woolworths and worked up, and something was bought for every member of the family, bar the one conducting.

For the young children Christmas was an encapsulation; it was a bubble in which everything was coloured by the coming event and all the preparations that went before. All the time, in conversations with other children, with the decoration of the school rooms, the end of term party, the excitement and anticipation steadily grew, culminating at some absurd hour in the morning when the child crawled to the end of the bed and lifted its stocking in the dark, and tried to envisage what each lump inside the stocking held. He or she knew that the big lump wrapped in Christmas paper was a piece of coal, I believed that strangely if that had been missing the child would have been disappointed because that was an extra parcel from Santa, which made it special, and unwrapping was as much part of the fun as the receipt of the gift from Santa. A lot of the contents of the stocking were predictable and traditional but there were always lovely surprises of little intrinsic worth, but a tremendous amount of pleasure to the child, especially the ones that still believed in Santa, which gave the presents an aura they would not have otherwise have had. To maintain the fiction the adults hung their stockings across the kitchen fireplace, and they received things that would give the children amusement on Christmas morning, when the recipient feigned horror.

Now it’s time for Scrooge and his traditional complaint. I think it is difficult to find a shop with trains running round, or young students demonstrating new toys, and everything laid out from tiny replicas to dolls’ prams, cycles, scooters and all the other dreams that would not materialise on Christmas morning, but which on the shopping expeditions fostered a vague hope. Catalogues, the Internet. and all the other sources today, where commercialisation has taken a shortcut to wealth, is at the expense of the dreams of the child. Some people call me an old .., and you can fill that in as you like, and your vocabulary permits, but I really do find it sad that such incredible pleasure for so many days, that cost nothing and was available to all, rich and poor, like many of the other traditions and folklore, has been overridden by progress, Christmas is now extended over so many weeks, even months, that repetition leads to boring familiarity and devaluation.

Irony In High Places Stormont is our seat of Devolved Government in Northern Ireland. It is there our elected representatives determine what is good for us. There are some, with an extreme Republican brief, who wish to and are allowed to conduct their affairs in Irish, to the annoyance of the majority which either has no Irish or a smattering. On Thursday 4th October, there was a news item on lunchtime TV about a furore concerning a female MLA who gave a dissertation in Irish on the floor of the House. Later she was asked by a TV reporter why she did so, and I was amused to find that she justified her actions in English. Her priorities suddenly became clear, what she had to say about herself was clearly more newsworthy than what was reported earlier as a recording of the proceedings which she made in Irish. I’m not too sure whether she is making a fool of herself or of the electorate.

Personal Security. I’ve heard of a person who had her driving licence stolen from her handbag, and after a lapse of time she found that her joint accounts, in different banks, had been raided on more than one occasion, and sizeable sums removed. It would seem that the information obtained from a driving licence somehow then led to her pin numbers on more than one of her accounts.

A member of my family who uses eBay and other Internet shopping, pointed out that first of all, sending a cheque gave a lot of information about your bank, your account number and your signature. In consequence she now deals mostly in cash, and uses a security system ‘paypal’ on the Internet which vets financial transactions for the individual.

Inheritance Tax, I have written about this on several occasions because we, the elderly, are initially affected, but the rest of the family become affected as a knock-on effect from this insidious tax. David Cameron in his urge to achieve popularity and in consequence votes, is suggesting that he proposes to put a threshold of inheritance tax at £1 million. I know one or two people who are recognised as being millionaires, and that it is not really difficult today to reach that figure when an ordinary five bedroom house can go for nearly a million. One must assume that he has reason for thinking there are sufficient people in this category to warrant this level of threshold. My first reaction is that it is pure electioneering, with people so relieved by the switch that they don’t assess all the parameters that this will encompass. How many millionaires do you know intimately who are likely to be of an age that this will affect? It would seem that the pendulum has nearly swung off the scale, while with Labour, the reverse was proposed, that the seven-year period of this being free of taxation, was to be modified or rescinded. I think we’ll have quite a bit of this political tennis over the next few weeks, to the extent that the two parties will cancel one another out and we’ll go back to people voting for parties rather than ideas.

Dieting. If you are of a sensitive nature, skip the next couple of sentences. I first heard about dieting when I was a child and I heard the adults in my family discussing the latest diet product for reducing weight. Apparently one could buy some form of alleged medicine, which, while the patient was not aware of it, contained the eggs of the tapeworm, the sure-fire way of losing weight if not your life. Since then various members of the family since the end of World War II right up to today, including myself, have at times done their best to lose weight. Christmas is always a killer to any resolutions one might make. You have just about got yourself down to where you want to be, by whatever means, Christmas comes along, and you might just as well not have bothered. I’m writing this because I am in the throes of losing weight in order to relieve the pressure on arthritic hip joints. I have discovered, as a result of listening to my daughter, that home-made bread, in one of these bread-making machines is less likely to put very much weight on compared with commercial loafs and buns, which contain so many additives today that tend to put weight on. There are so many diet products on the market, advertised on television, some cheap some costing a fortune, and none guaranteed. Self-will, with a reduction in portions rather than the change of diet, and eschewing additives, seems to me my only solution, and it does work, however slowly. One disadvantage though is I married a good cook who doesn’t need to slim and likes her food. As somebody once said to me ‘God help your wit’ – it is like pushing a pea up a uphill with your nose.

When I retired we thought I would fix up a towing van but it was beyond it. we went looking for a replacement, and finally decided on a motor-home, telephoned the character who had tendered for the repair of the caravan. I told him what I proposed but he said what I needed was what he could build for me, provided I bought the basic vehicle and designed the layout. I had proposed to buy one with the big overhang but he said they were susceptible to damage from shop sun-canopies, Wanting all the prequisites of a luxury machine, Sophie and I spent hours standing or sitting on bits of newspaper, checking we could get it all in .  Apart from the stress of driving the basic van from its depot to our house on a winter evening, in the dark, at the rush hour, everything was great. We soon found its merits and its problems. Shopping meant tying everything down before we could move, and having to park on the outskirts of town because of the height barriers at every car park. But on arrival at a site there was no jacking, just open the long door, turn the front seats round and make the tea.

We met some extraordinary people all over Europe. There were the scroungers who visited just when they thought the bottles would be out, ostensibly to welcome us to the site, There were others who insisted on telling us their life story, blow by blow and strong hints, just short of outright rudeness, couldn’t shift them. There was the lady in Vienna, incredibly endowed, who stood beside the swimming pool slowly and deliberately rubbing some form of unguent into her bare, pendulous bosom while her head was rotating like a lighthouse to see the effect it was having on the assemblage.

Above all though was the man we met on our way to Graz having just left Vienna. He was a ‘lu-lu’! We had just turned off the motorway and were heading for the mountains, but unfortunately, two lorries preceded us and, as is their wont, they drove nose to tail, so it was a case of pass one, pass all, or stay put. For several kilometres the road precluded even a peep and then there was a long straight stretch and I started to pass. In the distance a white sports car appeared but he had ages to slow down so I kept going, passed the lorries with room to spare, and then we could relax with an open road and scenery to drool over, but nonetheless the on-coming car had to flash us, I assume he owned the road. About half an hour later I saw a white car right up against the back of the van and it appeared to have no notion of passing, and then, without warning, it swung out, shot in front of us and braked so suddenly that if my reactions or my concentration had been in the slightest impaired we would have been into it. In truth, the sudden halt was so fierce that the fridge door flew open and the contents came up the van to find us. I remonstrated but he took off. We cleaned up, took off ourselves only to find him round the next bend going slowly. We came up behind him and he did the same thing again, but I was ready this time. There were more instances but to shorten the story, twice he got out of the car and shouted abuse at us in English because we had caused him to slow down on his way earlier, his was the sports car I had seen. On the second occasion he then stepped up to the window I had open beside me and before I could gather his intent, he had the keys out of the lock and said he was going to the police to report me. We were stunned. Not only were they the keys for the engine, the back door and the water tank; the house and alarm keys were also on the ring,

I must admit it took a minute for me to gain my composure, because by now he had disappeared. We were in the middle of nowhere, ostensibly without keys. When the pulse rate had died down and the adrenaline had subsided, Soph got our spare set of keys and it then took us an hour to find the police station, the area was so remote. We told our tale and it took another two hours to get out of there and on our way once more. We did not go to Graz, we were too worried he would be waiting to break into the van if we parked it, instead we went to Salzberg, but we had to go right across to the Rhine before we could find someone to replace our keys.

I told this tale to Ted, Sophie’s brother, and he said there was an elderly woman living near him, in Cheshire, who had been driving too slowly to please another driver and he had stopped in front of her too, and taken her keys, but he had thrown them into a nearby garden. I think any comment on both occurrences would be hyperbole of the highest order.

Criticism often says more about the critic than the person or idea being criticised

Every now and again it doesn’t do any harm to examine the reasons for what one does, in other words being self-critical. This then caused me to think of criticism in the round, and one of its attributes is that it is judgemental. I therefore wondered if I had a right to be judgemental about politics, about politicians and their reasons for the way they conduct themselves. I’m not really a political animal, and I’m certainly no politician, but I generally preface my comments with a get out clause, like, ‘it is my belief’, or other phrases to provide a context within which I write. When I listen to political speeches, or read the utterances of politicians, I wonder whether some of them are as self critical as they should be. For example this business of leaking purely to find out how acceptable future legislation is likely to be, can be a search for criticism, and thereby to legislate in such a way as to avoid criticism while achieving the same objective, – or, of course, abandoning the project altogether.

I’m sure at some point you have met a ‘know-all’, someone who is so assured of their own tastes, their own knowledge and their own position, they will correct someone’s statement, almost as a knee-jerk reaction, whether justified or not, and character assignation has become second nature. Most of the time, and especially in the matter of taste, the critic is making a personal statement, not just a criticism. The strange thing is that the criticism doesn’t have to be spoken, it can be done purely with the eyes raised to the heavens, with an oblique tilt of the head, or the raise of a hand like a defence. Done a few times it is amusing, on a regular basis it becomes a bore, and depending upon the person subjected to it, it can be quite damaging.

When I was 17, working for an august Company in Westminster, I was allowed to dictate my own letters. Fifteen years later, having run large contracts, including running an amateur in-office newspaper, I entered local government at which point I was put under the control of somebody only one step ahead of me in authority. In that job I had to write letters, but I had to get them approved by this other person, who made a point of invariably changing some part of the syntax, rather than the contents. I suppose this is a form of criticism, but really I think the man had a need to justify his position, which in turn showed a lack of self-confidence. As criticism, according to the thesaurus, can be interpretation, what I have written here in this paragraph is interpretation, and could be totally wrong, my letters might have needed the syntax changed, perhaps, I was too big headed.

In all of my career, apart from my first month in the navy, I think that the elementary school I went to in London, held a few teachers who were more speciously critical than anyone else I came across, and demonstrated it on the seat of my pants, or palms of my hands. As an adult I believe they were bored, frustrated and disappointed with life, and we were handy. In the Navy, in those first days, the old retirees who had been brought back to fill the ranks were reliving the treatment they had had metered out to them in the late 20s, ‘when men were really men’.. They simply couldn’t be pleased. It was unbridled criticism taken to its vicious limit – it wasn’t pure chance two men were in jail for trying to stab the same Chief Petty Officer, on different occasions.

All the same, it’s really quite amusing to sit with a pint in a pub, and criticise to your heart’s content about everything.

The puppet masters who have been working George Bush, have surpassed themselves, they have actually got him believing he is a world leader, to the extent that he has chaired a summit of some 16 nations to discuss the subject, global warming, that he is wriggling to avoid tackling. The problem is the people who put him in office, with their large subscriptions for his campaign, have interests which are contrary to those best suited to saving the world. He’s not alone in this of course, irrespective of the carbon emission per capita, the bigger nations are loath to sign up, with the problem that presents. Across the world we have large nations, with impoverished residents, who are doing their damnedest to avoid being drawn into the debate on CO2.

There are a number of aspects concerning this subject which are not made clear. To the best of my knowledge there has been no statement of what is an acceptable level, in tons per capita, or the CO2 we are striving for.. That alone would be a useful yardstick. There was an American politician, as well as some here, who was urging us all, not only the USA, to change to these energy-saving light bulbs within a few years, I think it was ten. When they first came onto the market I bought four and put them into one of those hanging brackets – the modern-day chandelier. They didn’t fit, they looked hideous, they were dust traps, because the tubes were pointing upwards, and overall I don’t really think that they gave off the amount of light they were credited with. So taking this American’s idea, without a total redesign of the nature of these lamps, with the different sizes and shapes that would be required to accommodate them into the average domestic fitting, one of two things is going to happen. If they don’t change the design either the individual will not buy them, or he will be placed in a situation where he has to change the light fittings throughout his house. The second situation, one which I believe will never come to pass, is that they will require to redesign the lamps so that they fulfil the placement for the fittings currently in houses across the land, and representing taste stretching across not decades but at least a century. What I believe and is obvious, is that when one takes into account all the light fittings across the world, the manufacture and supply of new systems, coupled with the removal and disposal of the old fitting and the installation of the new ones, with all the redecoration that will involve, I believe the Carbon emission saved by the new bulbs would be dwarfed by that generated, even if the customers of the electricity companies ever did ultimately accede.

I wish that our politicians would stop haranguing us for their own ends, to appear to care, to appear with it, and sit down and think of the parameters that are involved in the implementation of what they’re proposing. It is no wonder that the populace as a whole, are apathetic and have totally lost faith in most of the people who purport to rule them.

What follows here is not new and probably echoes your views, but because those in responsibility are shying away like they did with the Iraq question, even with such a small audience as I have, 200 readers per day, I feel I must reiterate.

Greed is not necessarily about money or possessions, In family circles it can be about the pecking order, love, and can be forged by jealousy. On the wider stage it is about self-aggrandisement, pride, reputation, approval, and of course wealth, and this greed is never more demonstrated than in politics. With regard to the problems in Burma, the Junta is fearful of losing its status and all that goes with it. India’s politicians are fearful of losing their oil source and consequently are sitting on the side lines, with their own status intact. Russia and China, with governments not in the democratic mould, are bound to either do nothing, or even obstruct any censure, because they are seen by the rest of the world as being in almost the same category as the Junta. With such vast power being wielded, and the failure of the UN to control insurgency, hope for the solution many of us see as appropriate and just, is small.