April 27 - Paris

Before you start this, consider the medium via which you are viewing it. If you are trying to read it on a phone, you may find it difficult. The text will be tiny and the photos difficult to view. I am writing this on a 22” screen. It is designed to be printed off on A4 paper and read away from a computer, with a tea or a coffee - and time to spare. If you’re in a hurry, don’t bother trying to read this on the go. It will be a waste of your time. You’ll miss things.

We shouldn’t stand still, should we? By this, I mean in our approach to life. In the 80s, management guru Peter Drucker was asked who, as CEO of a large company, he would select for promotion to senior management. He replied that he’d choose the manager that made mistakes. His thinking was to favour the manager trying new things as opposed to managers that stuck to what was tried and tested - and therefore safe and stagnant. As the Japanese taught us then, competitors will be changing, adapting, innovating. Standing still is not an option. Try new things. Embrace what works. Discard what doesn’t. Improvement comes at a cost.

With that in mind, these letters are moving to a more graphic, photo-journalistic style. In short, more pics to illustrate the words. Not just photos, perhaps cartoons too. The idea being to add depth to the words. For those of you who knew me in Portugal, this is adopting the approach I used for the Lisbon Casuals’ newsletters. The Lisbon Casuals was - and probably still is, a sport club of about 200 people, primarily ex-pats, with a few Portuguese. There were MDs of large organisations, people running their own businesses, British Council and British Embassy staff, as well as teachers, gardeners and farmers; an eclectic bunch with sport as a common love. I wrote the newsletters for a year. It was a fun time that is about to be revived with a new slant in the format of these letters.

While these letters purport to be about ‘Life in Lincs’, in reviewing them, I see that they are much more. Most of my life is pretty much as yours. Day-to-day stuff: shopping, ironing, tidying the house, gardening, cooking, going to the docs, watching TV, the bland everyday things that are unavoidable; the way our days drift by. But, there is always more, the extra bits - the sugar that clings to the side of your mouth when eating a jam doughnut, giving you more than the simple pleasure from demolishing the doughnut but also the hidden hits of sugar echoes. For instance, April and May were full to overflowing; little of it in Lincs. This letter is about that sugar. It focuses on Easter in Paris. The other things that have happened - and there have been many, will be covered in more letters soon to follow. For now - Paris.

I went to Paris at Easter with two of the Young Cousins. These are the children of my cousins who now live in Oz. 60 years ago, my cousins and I  played together as children in India. Then, Mum & Dad brought my sister and me to England in ’54. Four of the other 20 or so cousins settled in Oz once they were married.

Desirée is my cousin Lorraine’s middle child and for her 40^th birthday, husband Rob as any loving husband would, took her on a 7 week world tour. They asked my sister and me to join them for a long weekend in Paris. Mimi couldn’t get the time off but I went. We were joined by Des’s friend from Oz, Chantal who now lives in London.

The time in Paris flew by. It was four days of wandering about, soaking in the atmosphere, shouting “Haw Hee Haw!” at passers-by, which they surely found most amusing. As usual, I took photos - 700. You can pretty much bet the farm that a glut of photos will result from any trip - 350 from the Lake District in Nov 2012, 300 from York - March 2013, 150 from a day in Christchurch last weekend… You get the picture (K-tissh, Boom! I’m here all week). As far as I’m concerned, you can’t have too many photos. Once you’ve got the camera and the memory card, digital photos cost nothing. Surely it is better to take spare shots that to fret about the shoulda woulda coulda moments that got away? Realistically, with all of these pics, after an initial glance and perhaps some editing in Photoshop, a few will go to Flickr, my newest fad, while most will sit on this hard drive, ignored and abandoned - probably for evermore.

Flickr is a web site that hosts photo collections. Sign up and you get one terabyte of space to show your photos for free. With a bit of online form-filling in Settings - Flickr creates a URL so that anyone can view your photos. My URL is  https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjjda Membership is only necessary if you want to display photos. Visitors can look at the site without charge. I recommend it. There are some talented photographers there. You’ll be spoiled.

At this stage can I mention that I have no idea why this white background has appeared. If anyone can tell me, I'd be most grateful. It disappears later on. Again, no idea why.

Those of you with whom I have shared spiritual discussions will know that I have great faith in the cunning of the Universe. It puts things right by means that I can only wonder at in retrospect.

Back to Paris - late on the Thurs that we arrived, we called in at a shop that sold river tours. Unfortunately, due to today’s careless reliance on technology, their computer was down. Having no manual backup routines they were not able to sell us four river trips; nor any to the other customers also waiting. Slipshod planning - common in businesses with little or no idea of Internal Control.

No great loss. We strolled down to the river where there were several big boats, all with ticket offices. We approached one that beckoned as it bobbed seductively. It was 7:45 in the evening.

“When does the next boat leave?”                “8:00.” 

“Can we have four ticket please?”                “No. It’s sold out.” 

 “When is the next boat?”                             “8:30.”

“Is there space on that?”                              “Loads.”

So we went on the 8:30 boat. As we were about to discover, our good fortune was to rely on two happy accidents; firstly, that we missed out on tickets at the shop we had tried earlier and then, that the 8:00 p.m. boat was full. The Universe was looking after us, as you will see.

As the evening chilled slightly, sitting on the open upper deck, we set off at a gentle chugg at 8:30 cossetted by our guide with fascinating facts on the bridges, history and buildings of the Seine’s districts through which we were passing. Did you know, the more arches a bridge has, the older it is? As the engineers got better at bridge building, they needed less arches. (You’re welcome.)

After 10 minutes or so, we turned and headed back along the other bank. The Eiffel Tower appeared on the horizon. Dusk was falling and the tower lit up. An impressive sight by any standards - a soft, yet powerful glow against a backdrop of a darkening sky; a sight to inspire poetry in the coldest of souls.

 Then, to our surprise, at 21:00, it started to twinkle. How about that? 20,000 white bulbs twinkling on and off gave us a fabulous display for the next five minutes! Apparently, this happens on the hour, every hour after dusk. I have a ten second video of it but it’s too big to send by email (53 Mb). If I can find out how to compress it enough to attach to a mail, it will be circulated. Had we got the 8:00 p.m. boat, we’d have been too early for the show. It would have been too light.

The next day unveiled a wonderful old café near our hotel - Maxim, in the Latin Quarter.  Note the hotel’s name - “Maxim”. That comes up again. I describe the café as ‘wonderful’ as it was choc-a-bloc with memorabilia from the 50s, a step through a portal into yesteryear.

In my eagerness to tell this pointless story, I’ve jumped ahead so let’s wind back to the start of the day.  In our opening explorations, we found a small orchestra busking on the tube,

a model shoot of a scruffy, bandy bloke with great hair who thought he was Wolverine

and a gorgeous woman with disturbingly mad eyes that warned “Don’t make me angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry.”

On the Champs Elysées, Lamborghinis were offered for a test drive,

and finally, rather surprisingly, there was a bridge with locks attached to the safety fence.

This is a tradition of which I was previously unaware. For people of a romantic disposition, you and the person of your dreams get a small padlock, write your initials on it in blood (or a felt tip pen if you are less than sure about the blood thing), lock it to the fence then throw the keys into the Seine, declaring your love for eternity. As actions speak louder than words, this seems a bit close to a hidden contract but I can see how a tender moment can lead to a heady rush catching the unwary victim off-guard. The previously-mentioned boat ride followed all of this. That was Day 1, brimful of memories.

The next day found us taking an early stroll around a street market near the hotel. Shops were raising their shutters and stalls were just setting up. Civilised people were shaking hands as is the French way as the shy start grew into a steady bustle. The photos that follow, are just a few from this scene. The middle photo is of a cheese shop next to a wine shop. In France! What are the chances? One-stop shopping.

It was another day of fine weather and after the street market and a fair amount of time in a chocolate shop, we took off for Montmartre. As the previous day, this stroll was full of surprises; another model shoot,

a chap playing a harp,

then, just around the corner, a rock band on the steps at the side of the church,

and of course, the church itself - spectacular in its own right.

The band was a trio called Les Presteej. Good singers, they harmonised well and made a melodious if somewhat disrespectful sound on the steps at the side of the church. I got one of their CDs. While I liked their music, I was in France and hadn’t thought it through. The CD is  in French. Nice sound but I can’t understand a word. As they say in Spalding - C’est la vie.

Montmartre is known for its street artists. You may know that Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec plied his trade there and it crossed my mind that it might be memorable to have a portrait done by one of the current up-and-coming hopefuls. I found No. 2 Maxim - also our hotel’s name, remember? On seeing his caricature of a previous sitter, I went for it and sat for around 15-20 minutes. As you sit there trying to be as still as poss., it crosses your mind that this might turn out to be a disaster. However, passers-by gave me encouragement in that they looked over his shoulder at the work-in-process, smiled and gave me the thumbs up, international sign language for “He saw you coming.”

It was a kind interpretation in that it made me look like a 20 year-old ladyboy with a Brad Pitt jawline that has never been an attribute. When I was 20, Mary and Lesley Daniels, two of the most beautiful girls I have known, were talking about me at their house, in front of me as if I wasn’t there. They concluded I was ‘pretty rather than handsome’. So, 45 year on, haven’t lost it then? This is the artist - No. 2 Maxim, the portrait and the sitter. As for its accuracy, on my return from Paris, I showed it to my sister without any explanation and she said “Who’s that then?” I put it down to the fact that she hasn’t seen me in the hat.

That was Paris, I hope you’ve enjoyed the greater use of pictures to show you what I experienced. There is still a lot to tell about the last couple of months so more Letters should be expected. With the current fad for Selfies, I sign-off with a pic.

Feb 20 - Docs, Tweets, Black Holes & Pics

Well, here we are in Feb and Life continues to stimulate, bamboozle and entertain. It’s been a little over a month since the last letter but so much has happened. Last Tuesday for example, I spent the day in hospital. For those of you who care, let me stress, it was nothing serious just gazing at the walls mainly. I had a silly little problem with my left eye - a shadow had been there for a few days, obstructing vision. This was too specialised for my GP so he sent me to a hospital in Boston (15 miles away), as it has an eye clinic. This was to their A&E with a letter that they would use to refer me to the clinic. He should have just phoned the clinic direct. That’s what the A&E doc did.

As I was checking into A&E, answering the usual standard questions; name, d-o-b etc., there was a mum and her 12 year old daughter at the next window. By the nature of these queuing arrangements, nothing is private so I was able to overhear their interview without even having to lean over. It seems the little girl had taken some paracetamols.

“How many tablets did you take?”

“11, no…  12.”

Mum woke up - “Hang on! You told me it was 8!”

“Yes, then I took four more after that.” was the matter of fact reply.

This world has grown too sophisticated for me. I don’t understand how a child can know about overdoses or even consider trying one - let alone be so blasé about it. My childhood toggled between who might be available to kick a ball around with and what was for dinner. Anyway, as we sat in the waiting room awaiting further attention, she seemed fine, playing with her phone during which time mum popped out every now and then to take mobile phone calls. No whoop-whoop klaxons, no people running about like ants, antennae gesticulating wildly, in fact there was no great rush to deal with her so I’m guessing that 12 paracetamols is not worth a crash cart and a stomach pump.

After nearly two hours, I was called and did all the usual standard sight chart tests and was told by a very kind doc that he would call the eye clinic and get me seen that day. He added how surprised he was that my doctor didn’t know he should have done that in the first place, saving me a wasted A&E visit - and of course, their time too; a little left and right hand disconnect in the NHS.

The clinic nurses added their own sight tests and then an hour later, I saw a doc who asked the usual questions again. I suppose this is necessary so as not to make a mistake about who you are or what medication you may be taking. So I described my meds which I expected her to recognise as bog-standard blood pressure and diabetes treatments.

Have you ever see Grey’s Anatomy and other hospital dramas where as they are elbow deep in a patient’s chest or head, and yet having a casual chat about their own lives? I get frustrated by this as I think they should be paying more attention, especially if they’re fiddling with your heart or your brain, however, I dismiss it as a scriptwriter’s device and unrepresentative of real life. How mistaken I was. This is how they work.

With my face held in a frame so that she could peer into each eye to establish the cause of my problem, the ongoing conversation with her nurse showed that the consultant was more interested in the fate of a mutual friend who had just been dismissed. My eye seemed secondary.

She diagnosed a burst blood vessel behind the eye and she then proceeded to give me dire warnings about blood pressure and diabetes. I reminded her that the meds I had listed earlier should have told her I already had diabetes - “Oh, yes.” We closed that sessions with me being sent off for a scan of the back of the eye to ensure no complications arising from the burst blood vessel.

Scan complete, another hour later the consultant assured me of no deeper problems and that I should get my blood pressure checked by my surgery and a blood test conducted as that might signify diabetes. I saw no point in mentioning for a third time that this had been diagnosed eight years ago and we’d talked about it twice already. It must just have been a busy day.

Do you watch Horizon? I record their programmes and watch them in small bites. Their content is complex and yet explained in lay terms and simple English by professors of this and that. However, as the minutiae is a steady stream of complex concepts, I have to stop the recording and wind back (several times) to keep on top of the idea being touted and the general thread. Black holes for instance, are apparently not the demons that was once portrayed. There is just the one in each galaxy and it is in the middle. So the chance of being swallowed by a Black Hole is minimal, though, to be fair, no one knows what one is or what happens when you enter it. A big surprise was that they make nearby stars orbit them like planets orbit stars. And there was me thinking stars didn’t move. Ah well, live and learn.

Other Horizon programmes have included human intelligence, what leads to one’s personality, weight control, diet, longevity, hacking and fracking. While everything is explained in simple terms, today’s available knowledge is mind-boggling. I never realised how much science is going on in the world - quietly, without fanfare. Thank Heavens for remote controls, pause and rewind.

One thing that scientists seem to accept without much argument is that there is no such thing as a ‘fact’, largely because as science is always moving forward, what is a fact today is disproved, challenged, revised, mutated or extended tomorrow.

Science does this all the time. In my lifetime, as a child - fat was good for you, then as an adult - bad for you, then good again, in moderation. Eggs, with all their cholesterol - same thing. Then - protein is good for you - but too much protein is bad for you. Salt and sugar, same thing, touted as bad by the Broad Brush Brigade - but animals in the wild seek out salt licks as they need salt to stay alive - and sugar occurs naturally in most foods. Before Galileo and Copernicus, the Sun went around the Earth. All the scientists said so, admittedly in many cases, because when it started to look like this was not the case, the Catholic Church insisted via threats that they persist with the geocentric fiction as it suited their politics. So, at present, the fact is - facts are transient.

Add to this the Rashomon effect - which is from a film of that name. In the film, based on a story In The Grove, a bandit kills a samurai and rapes his wife. This is witnessed by a woodcutter. In court, all four characters give their account of events, the samurai’s story being told via a medium, yet all tell different stories. Literature has now embraced this as a recognised format where you can tell a story from the point of view of multiple characters, all saying what they believe is true and factual - and yet contradicting each other. So much for facts.

Today is March 10^th and I heard a laugh-out-loud funny exchange on the radio this afternoon. It was about the tweet by 20 year-old Gemma Worrall that is trending. She tweeted “If Barraco Barner is our president, why is he getting involved with Russia? Scary.” There were two women debating this unfortunate tweet on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 programme. One was a teacher defending the girl and young people in general. The other was a business leader who was not at all impressed with today’s educational standards.

On the one hand, it is admirable that a 20 year-old beautician has any awareness at all of World Affairs. On the other, it is a worry that (i) she thinks Obama is our president, (ii) she doesn’t know how to spell his name, and (iii) she can’t see that this might be the start of WWIII (as predicted by Nostradamus - but that is another story). Back to the argument on the radio. The teacher defended the girl by saying that “many of our young people are not registered to vote”. I don’t see what this has to do with anything but she felt the need to stress it a couple of times. It seemed to be the main pillar of her stance and as such was a massively-irrelevant smokescreen.

The business leader came back with a number of arguments criticising the tweet and what it signifies, and, i.e. the parlous state of education in this country and how inadequate general knowledge is. The girl not knowing Barack Obama is not OUR president - then, by extension, what the political system is in this country - illustrated that. This dammed teachers and the education system for letting kids leave school unprepared for life as an adult. As I reflect I have to ask - when was it ever otherwise? How many of us knew our arse from our elbow when we left school?

The teacher got vexed about the fact that the business leader had insulted the girl several times (personally, I don’t see how this could have been avoided), and tried to anticipate her rebuttal by saying “I suppose you’re going to insult her some more.” Own goal. The business leader said “No, I’m going to insult you.” and proceeded to do just that - most eloquently. It was a delight to witness.

There is a debating trick used by some people which rests on the fact that criticising anyone is off limits. Excessive politeness has to be shown by all parties. Many accept this blindly (don’t know why). If you reject this though, the world is your oyster and you can kneecap opponents easily. Point out the flaws in an argument in simple language and by implication, show your opponent to be a dimwit. The business leader did just that, criticising the teacher and the teaching profession at large - not unfairly as the girl has a stack of GCSEs (allegedly) and yet still comes out with this gem. She also attacked the easy acceptance by society, that young people have no obligation to have any basic General Knowledge and should not be expected to take the trouble to think before they speak.

The teacher lost hands down as the business leader was more eloquent and confident enough to state harsh truths calmly, without emotive language, in a public forum. She added that there is little real knowledge today as the unseemly dependence on Google has made what passes as knowledge - shallow and transitory. Until today, it has never occurred to me that our young voters might not know the political system in this country or who the major world leaders are. I didn’t get the vote till 21 but I’m pretty sure that at 20 I knew the difference between Harold Wilson and Richard Nixon. If they have the vote at 18, is it really asking too much to expect adults to know how the electoral system works in this country?

The poor girl, apart from announcing very publicly her grasp of world affairs, world leaders and spelling, is now getting cyber-bullied, thereby announcing her lack of understanding of the purpose of Twitter. The only point to Twitter that I can see is, to provide a vehicle for anonymous death threats as soon as someone opens their mouth and puts their foot in it. Long may this last.

Talking of World Wars, did you see ’37 Days’? This was about the run up to the Great War. While I knew it was started by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, I never knew why that was so key. If you missed it, I recommend a viewing via iPlayer. Apart from good acting and great scripting, it was a gripping unfolding of world-shattering history with all its nuances, that they never taught us at school. Well, maybe they did. I might have been looking out of the window.

I believe I have mentioned Spalding Photographic Society previously. It is a camera club where I go once a week to learn the technical aspects of photography from photographers whose knowledge is reflected in their photographs and competition judges or speakers with letters after their names.

These competitions are judged by experienced people from other clubs, usually with proven experience and a wealth of photographic qualifications achieved not just by sitting exams but also by getting photos published and winning competitions themselves. Our competition entries are assessed and then given marks out of 20. Judges go to some lengths to tell you why they like a photo or describe as kindly as possible, its shortcomings. I take copious notes on their comments and now have several pages on good practices, or common mistakes and what it takes to eliminate them.

As it took me a while to learn the presentation criteria for entries, I only entered my first ever competition last week. This is in the PDI format where Projected Digital Images are shown via a projector. The other format is Print. This too, has constraints, principally to do with size and the way a print is mounted. I have yet to master that side but PDIs are easy so I started there. The main reason for entering the comp was not to win it, although that would be nice - but to get an experienced judge’s comments about the good and bad technical attributes of my photos.

We all take photos of which we are proud but when you see the good stuff, it is another dimension. Little things that the professional does that we might not notice, all add to the general enjoyment of a pic. It this that I want to learn. I have just upgraded Photoshop Elements 9 to Elements 12 and am about to start learning the new features. Elements will remove spots from faces, make people thinner or fatter, change skies, change the colour of a flower, brighten or darken anything - even create objects that don’t exist but can be made to look realistic. When done with care and subtlety it can improve a photo indiscernibly. That’s what I’m aiming for. Brightening eyes & teeth, softening, sharpening, straightening buildings, painting over cracks, removing tourists who wander into a picture to add nothing but a distraction from the main point of interest and maintaining the photo’s balance. A few of my entries are below. More on this in the next letter, Judging is on the 19^th.

 

 

 

Stephen got me a book at Christmas about Grumpy Old Men. Should I read anything into this? (Boom Boom!) Does my first-born have a particular image of his dad? What did I do to warrant this? At any rate, it is a well-written book, entertaining and amusing; a by-product of the TV series that was so successful a few years back. In reading it however, it occurs to me that there is a corollary. Old men, while naturally grumpy, also have plenty for which we should be grateful and therefore should also remark on.

In examining my own life, I see a full and charmed one. The main thing it has brought is a fruit-basket of experiences, along with a love of English that allows me to recognise, analyse and assess a situation - then, after due consideration, complain about it to anyone who will listen. This is the one aspect for which I am truly grateful.