Dad's Birthday - Nov 14th

‘You can take the boy out of Basildon but you can’t take the Basildon out of the boy.’ As we go through life, we change. That’s the way it works. On balance, our lives are richer, sometimes materially, more often although unnoticed, spiritually too. We learn, love, win, lose, and get through life, rarely as we expect. We grow too, with few exceptions, yes, OK, around the waist – fair cop, but what I was alluding to was - intellectually and spiritually.

Looking around the friends that are still in my life – i.e. you, I see people who are so much more than when we first met. So many of us were callow youths and silly girls (and here I don’t just mean the women), chasing the next thing to make us laugh. Now we are senior citizens, seasoned by life, kids, tears and joys. So many ups and downs have visited us, leaving us with skinned knees and bloodied noses, yet we survived and are for the most part - happy.

Now in our autumn, we have time to reflect.

 

Whether we do or not, depends on our need for introspection. You tell me. Do you ever take time to look at your life, the way you live? Are you satisfied with it? Does any part need changing? Or do you just hurry through, jostled by the pressures of a 21^st century lifestyle? I look forward to any thoughts you may care to share.

I reflect continually, especially when with schoolmates. In my visits to Basildon, I have lunch with friends from Woodlands and our Junior school, Manor. Without fail, we talk about Basildon in the 50s and 60s and recount – possibly less than reliably – incidents from that time.

Similarly, I meet friends from my days at Ford Tractor or Warley and Trafford House or from the years of travelling around Europe as an auditor, then launching systems, then the time in Portugal. I return to the nest for a week of lunches and dinners with people I first met in the womb that was Basildon.

I mention all this in illustration of my opening sentence, Basildon has been the hub of my life and for that I am grateful. While it is the butt of jokes around the theme of The Only Way Is Essex, I love the place. It carries a wealth of fond memories.

It shaped the way I speak and as Scott Walker once sang – “No Regrets”. It is what it is, which I have noticed, now that I’m surrounded by the Lincolnshire accent, is more Essex than ever and I fear I am turning into Dick Van Dyke muttering “Gor Blimey Maaaa-ry Poppins!” possibly in an attempt to retain my identity.

 

A working class existence in Basildon taught me many life lessons. Yes, I got turned over now and again but that also taught me about people.

 When I return to Essex, the pace of life is now too fast. I am a country boy used to a snail’s pace. (“Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail - Lewis Carroll). While I couldn’t live there again, Basildon is my spiritual home and I value that; the experiences it gave me, a happy childhood and the lifetime friends. Wherever you are in the world today, for 99% of the recipients of this letter, apart from a few cousins in Oz, this means you.

Now to the news, a great source of entertainment. Isn’t it great to see two UKIP members in parliament? Of course I’m not a supporter - don’t be daft. It’s the party of short-sighted bigotry; the political wing of the National Front, like Sinn Féin was to the IRA. Nonetheless, a joy to see them elected as it has rocked the boat - the closed shop of privileged entitlement that is our a two-party system. At last the tide is turning. The voice of public opinion is making itself heard. Guided by that element of the press that sells papers by scaring people, it’s what people think they want. Best not look in the mirror though.

How many of us are properly English? Nearly none. Certainly not me but probably not you either. Due to a history of invasion, most of today’s Brits have ancestors that are Scottish, Irish, French, Italian (Roman), Huns and Goths and Scandinavians. If you read any history of England you will see that if there are any pure English left, they’ll live in Cornwall or West Wales, maybe Ireland if they had a boat - driven to these outlying regions by bloodthirsty invaders.

I don’t really understand the anti-immigration argument. The National Health Service can’t operate without its contingent of foreign doctors and nurses. Plus the world is now multiracial, Nowhere is pure anything anymore. Look at the German Football team. If you were going to get purity of blood stock anywhere you’d expect it there. Instead you get Mezut Ozil, Sami Khedira and Kevin Prince-Boateng. Hardly Hitler Youth is it?

As for the benefits of a multiracial system, the Notting Hill Carnival has been bringing fun and gaiety to all creeds and colours for years. There was no disowning of Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Dame Kelly Holmes when they won their golds. Curry is the favourite English food and has been for years. Like the French, we eat horse willingly and happily. OK, unbeknownst to us, admittedly, but it had become a favoured flavour in mince, burgers and lasagnes. Talking of which, lasagnes, pizzas, kebabs, burgers, wallies, Spag Bol, Big Macs, Chinese, Indian, Thai food… all introduced to the masses by the people they don’t want here.

We like to holiday all over the world and spend summers and winters in Spain and Turkey taking advantage of their health services and cheap wine. We don’t mind being immigrants, just don’t want any over here unless they’re going to look after us when we’re ill, fix our plumbing on the cheap or as in Lincs, pick the vegetables at an unearthly hour so they can be fresh on our table.

All academic of course, with international air travel being as easy as it is and Internet access that allows conversations to everywhere, the world is a tiny place. Bleating about immigration is unrealistic. It’s like King Canute forbidding the tide to come in. Cherry-picking seems to be the answer. We need sports stars, doctors and nurses, veg pickers and grads in IT, medicine and engineering. Our home-grown talent can't fill the demand. What a headache. Glad I’m not PM.

Too serious, back to UKIP. Look at the pathetic Tory argument “A vote for UKIP will put the Glenn Miller Band into Downing Street.” They’re not saying why you should vote Tory (perhaps they can’t think of an argument?), instead they prefer to focus on why you shouldn’t vote UKIP; a manifestation of the usual negativity that we have come to expect from politicians.

Cameron is a poor orator isn’t he? They really shouldn’t let him speak in public. With his tight-lipped earnestness, rather than let his argument do it for him, he tries too hard to convince. Look at Obama, Salmond, Farage, all relaxed and eloquent, speaking spontaneously, making it up as they go along. You can’t believe a word these slippery eels say but they are good speakers, delivering with confidence. Cameron, dull, unconfident - and getting chubby.

Looks like the Lib Dems will be finished at the next election. 2 or 3 seats? What d’you think? Soon be down there with the Greens. Caring about people and the world we live in is a lost cause.

I see Mark Reckless lived up to his name, celebrating his election victory with an orange juice. That man is pure Rock ‘n’ Roll. More importantly, Why was the Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry asked to resign? I understand that her action of tweeting a photo of the English flag displayed from a house window in Rochester, was interpreted as a sneer at UKIP voters. If that’s right, why was she asked to resign? Why wasn’t she sacked? When the Labour Party, the party of the working class, looks down on you, you realise you have become sub-working class, i.e. a chav.

Enough of politics, Camera Club... We have a competition coming up; Four on a Theme. You can put in two entries. These are my two sets of four. I’ll be tinkering with them in Photoshop.

These are the untouched photos. The first set is entitled “Life in Lincs”.

 

It’s the area in and around my village; a ploughed field, the windmill in the next village, the snow scene is my garden in the first winter here and a bit of ditch clearing in Jan when poor old Somerset was underwater. The second set are photos of Paris when I was there at Easter and is entitled “That Parisienne Vibe”.

 Saw Remember Me last night. It’s a new ghost story on BBC1, Sunday nights starring Michael Palin. Don’t watch it. I didn’t want to go to bed afterwards. Kin scary.

I missed the first series of The Fall with Scully as a senior detective in Belfast. Years after the X-Files and she’s still hot isn’t she? Confident and feminine, not afraid to look like a glamorous woman in a man’s world (the police). As I missed that first series, I recorded all six episodes in the rerun which was shown as a trailer to the second series, then watched them back to back. Now we’re into series 2. It’s recommended, if only to fantasise over Scully.

Some of you watching The Missing have spoken highly of it. I’m recording it and will probably have a marathon session, all episodes, one after the other as we approach the end.

Babylon, Homeland, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Big Bang Theory, Have I Got More News For You… I watch all these and more to end any day. When I was at work, some nights my head was spinning with work problems and I would dream of spreadsheets and snowstorms of paper, macro code and numbers. Now I make sure that whatever I spend my day on, I end it with my mind in neutral. As everything is recorded, I watch it when I want, not when it’s on live. Generally, I watch pap. Some of it engaging, some of it funny. If I watch Horizon or some such intense and informative documentary about space, the mind or human behaviour, that is early in the evening. For the last couple of hours of any day, I relax the mind - and I sleep like a babe.

I also do a bit of reading just before dropping off. Currently reading about Highbury. Did you know Spurs had shares in Arsenal about 100 years ago? Sold them, then, when they wanted to stop Arsenal entering the Football league, regretted the selling of those shares. Don’t think it was meant to be a comedy but how I laughed!

I’ve been writing the Lottery Winner story more lately. Written thirty pages so far, setting up the background to various threads. You’ve got a lottery winner who doesn’t care much for money so after getting himself set for life which only take a few of his 157 million, he sets about giving the rest away – by unusual and imaginative means.

He looks after those who choose to be homeless, rehabilitates criminals, puts square pegs in square holes, hires people to hack and to spy on the great and the good, bent coppers and politicians, and anyone who annoys him. They are then exposed via a few journalists whose careers he looks after. He buys farms in depressed regions, and uses their animals and produce to feed the community who are largely the poor and unemployed – and organises various other acts of philanthropy. In a separate thread, he gets involved in criminal gangs, setting them up to kill and steal from each other.

He practices vigilante justice as he has a dim view of the law, seeing it as riddled with loopholes for the benefit of lawyers rather than to serve justice. In short, it’s a piece of self indulgence. It’s what I would do if I won silly money on Euro millions. As the chances of that are negligible, I’m living my fantasy by writing it in a story. As you see, I’m keen on vigilante justice. We’ve had Robin Hood, Zorro, Batman, Superman etc. Is it really that bad? Yes, you’re going to make a mistake every now and then and kill someone mistakenly. Whoops! These things happen. Millions dies in tsunamis, earthquakes, mudslides, train crashes, air crashes - all dying pointlessly. What’s a few more in the pursuit of natural justice?

There are mad scientists, a bloke that believes he’s a vampire, a dainty killer from MI5, and of course some villains whose fate it is to be overcome. No sex, no swearing. Just like my life today.

Oct 1st 2014

Sorry it’s been a while but life has been full of ‘nothing much’ again. This is handy as it gives me time to dwell on what really matters. As a younger man, I was in a headlong rush to do everything, try every new experience, sip every drop of nectar that was offered. My leaving gift from Portugal from Caroline, my girlfriend at that time, was a crystal butterfly. She knew me well. I flitted. If you knew me then, you’d have known a shallow, ego-centric person with little time for anything not hedonistic or requiring in-depth application of self. While I’m not proud of that, I had a good time so – Swings and Roundabouts, eh? Was it really so bad to live Life so fully?

Now, limited by health and age, those sugar rushes are less appealing and things of a lesser magnitude that I’d have previously missed, have grown in importance. This was captured wonderfully by a line from Mr. Pink the PE teacher in Doctor Who. Wise before his years, he said, “I don’t want to see more things - but to see the things that are already there, more clearly”. It is easy to be in too much of a rush to move on to the next high. If you can’t see the wisdom in this, I can’t explain it. Nonetheless, give it some thought and you too may experience an epiphany.

Do you watch Doctor Who? I love it! The storylines are no longer for kids. They haven’t been for years. They’re far too complex and require abstract thought – an ability to see what’s below the surface as well as the obvious, plus, the dialogue is clever and lyrical. So, not for kids or people who watch ITV.

Clara had just betrayed the Doctor by trying to blackmail him. She threatened to throw away all the keys to the TARDIS. As they were special keys that could only be destroyed by the lava of a volcano, she got him to take her to the edge of a volcano and then demanded that he went back in time to fix a big problem. He wouldn’t so she threw the keys into the volcano achieveing nothing but a lose-lose outcome. By destroying them, it meant he could never enter the TARDIS again. She did this because the man she loved had died and she wanted the Doctor to make it right with some time travel. Sadly, her approach was to demand this - with menaces. She didn’t simply ask it as a favour from a friend.

He outwitted her (you’ll have to see the episode to find out how), then helped her anyway. Ashamed, she asked why he was helping her after she had betrayed him, to which he looked her straight in the eye and replied -  “Do you think I care for you so little, that betraying me would make any difference?” Wow! What writing!

Talking of clever words, I heard in a song on the radio … “Where’s the ‘good’ in goodbye, where’s the ‘nice’ in nice try, where’s the ‘us’ in trust gone, where’s the ‘soul’ in soldier on?” This was by the Script from their album ‘No Sound Without Silence’ –a clever thought in itself. How do people come up with these lines? As an aspiring writer, I am hopelessly envious of this much lyrical talent and originality all around me.

You all know me pretty well so will know that I speak to anyone – in the street, in a shop, in a queue etc. In the queue in Morrison’s last week, I was waiting for the couple ahead to pay and was vaguely aware of a young lad behind me unloading his dad’s trolley onto the conveyor behind my shopping. He was using one hand, which I casually dismissed as a young guy, being cool and unhurried. In this exercise though, he dropped one of the tins.

In such moments to ease embarrassment, it is my way to quip merrily “How’re those juggling lessons going?”  Don’t know why but this time, I didn’t. Just as well. When I looked, the kid only had one hand. Phew! Got away with that one. It was lucky I didn’t offer to give him a hand. We must consider the possibility of Guardian Angels being more than a fanciful notion. Note to self, Listen to your mum. Don’t talk to strangers.

The end of September brought the annual golf tour, this time to Ayr on the West coast of Scotland. The local Wetherspoons – the West Kirk brought a surprise - a converted church, an ingenious accommodation of a trend where the two pound pint is the new object of worship.

 

Ayr is a small unimposing town where people go about their business muttering in Jock tones that are beyond incomprehensible. I nearly got a slap from a young girl having a ciggie outside a nightclub. We were looking for a hostelry more suited to our age than theirs and asked directions. She was clearly trying to be helpful with animated dialogue that was beyond my capacity for understanding although I think I detected “See you Jimmy” and “Stitch that!” By way of a response I had to confess sheepishly “I didn’t understand a wuurr-rd.” She gave up but her mate frustrated at my denseness, wanted to punch my lights out. I believe this is a normal greeting for stupid, deaf Sassenachs when we venture North of the Border to display our natural talent for being dense. I think I could have placated her if I’d had a deep-fried Mars Bar about my person but I had come out in a hurry so was unarmed.

In other conversations in that week following their failed Independence Vote, the “YES” brigade were clearly angry about their betrayal by the “NO” voters with much nebulous accusations of them “Having let down our youngsters.”

It seems to me to be an admission of failure in an argument when the losing party resorts to emotive language. When you can no longer present an argument which lets the audience form its own opinion(s) but have to tell them what their conclusion is to be by stating it as if it were a fact, that’s a scheming politician’s approach. You can see this at every Prime Minister’s Question Time. Labour will tell you that the Tories are incompetent - and vice versa. Neither party will show you why the other is at fault by presenting an argument free of emotive language to let the listener decide on its merits.

PMQs are just kids in the playground having tantrums; a totally worthless exercise other than to show how the Mother of Parliaments has descended into nothing more than an arena for childish squabbles deserving contempt and ridicule. Surely these Muppets can see that we are laughing at them? Perhaps not - as it continues in the same vein, week in week out, with each speaker puffing grandly and pretentiously in (predictable) ignorance of the derision they attract like a magnet strutting through a sea of iron filings.

But, back to the Jocks… The complainants didn’t explain why the youngsters had been let down by the older voters who were more experienced in life, economics and lying politicians, it was enough for this vague assertion to be presented as if it were true.

The fact that the older voters could see that the intensely-disliked Salmond NEVER ONCE explained what Plan B was for how he would organise a National Bank that could support a currency that was not Sterling, or that the country’s income could not sustain its wonderfully generous socialist policies without its subsidy from the rest of Britain, or that taxes would go up once they were independent; all realities to be ignored in favour of rampant patriotism.

Naturally, the Jocks were angry. But then have you ever know one that is anything else? It seems it is their duty to be angry. In explaining the word ‘oxymoron’ it is usual to give examples via phrases such as ‘Honest Politician’. ‘Caring Psychopath’ wouldn’t be far behind  - and ‘Contented Scot’ would serve equally well.

Apart from my scrape with the young ladies, Ayr was generally a peaceful place. This is a sunset that greeted me on the way to another pub that the guys had chosen to investigate.

Those of you who have seen me in that last few years will know that I have the shakes (Essential Tremors). They only trouble me when I am at rest and are absent when walking around a golf course or doing anything that requires the tensioning of muscles. It is also particularly prevalent when I am anxious about anything - at which time I am like the Duracell Bunny.

A few weeks back, a consultant examined me and concluded that this is Parkinson’s. Before you fret and get alarmed, it is at an early stage and shouldn’t bother me for some years, in which time, there may be advances in medical science so perhaps it’s not as bad as our imaginations would have us believe. Before we worry unduly, let’s wait till it becomes a problem. For now, it is little more than annoying, especially when drinking tea. What a messy business that can turn out to be! Most blokes are proud to say “I need both hands to hold it” - but not when talking about a tea cup.

There is a drug that minimises the shakes but it comes with a side-effect which is to exaggerate compulsions. If drinking or gambling is a problem, this drug will make that worse. Luckily, since the diabetes, I drink nearly nothing and gambling has never been of interest. There are other compulsions and the consultant listed some worth considering, hoarding being the one that caught my attention.

I still have a lot of Mum & Dad’s things laying around. Mum’s been gone for eight years and Dad for 22. The intrinsic value of these souvenirs is of no significance but their sentimental value is a powerful draw. Or is it? Am I being sentimental or just lazy about clearing things out? How do you decide if something is retained out of sentimental memory or through being a magpie in a previous life? At any rate, when I got home from that visit to the consultant, armed with a self-awareness of this tendency, I set about my study with a vengeance.

You will have seen in previous Letters that the tidying of this study of is a job that (a) will take ages and (b) never really gets started; now it has. In the first two days I ditched five bags of paper, which included calendars. Years of travel around Europe between 1980 and 2000 saw me buy calendars in the major European capital cities to frame their pictures and capture their art, views and culture. Additionally, there were more old bank statements and various jokes from before the days of emails when these were passed around on photocopies. Luckily, my PC played up at the same time so went for repair for a couple of weeks. Being thus deprived of electronic temptation, it allowed me the time to devote to study tidying. The reward is - I can now reach bookcases without having to move things first.

Most importantly, in rummaging through old files, I discovered songs I had written at various stages of my life - plus lots and lots of poetry from the early 90s when I was churning it out like ticker tape. That creative vein faded by the mid-90s but for a few years it was a natural part of me. Surprisingly, while it was clearly my poetry because of the style and the handwriting, I was seeing much of it for the first time and I remembered fondly the people for whom it had been written. It was a wonderful trip down Memory Lane to a very happy and emotional time of my life. Poetry comes from joy, sadness and experience of life. You don’t live life by sitting on a rock watching the tide go in and out. You have to get  your feet wet – and take the consequences.

My poetry and songs are now filed safely, as are the poems that were written to me by one friend in particular. In the year we were together we wrote each other enough of our thoughts in rhyme to fill a book. I have now created a file and organised it thoroughly. Although, in the true spirit of this room, while only weeks have passed since this renaissance, I now have no idea where it is.

I went to Cologne last week to visit Marie-Paule, a friend I worked with in Portugal. She showed me around Cologne and also Hasselt, her home town in Belgium.

 

As you see, the travel continues, as does the tendency to photograph anything and everything. I’ll be in Essex again in Dec and seeing some of you, which means I’ll be here in Lincs for Nov. Give me a call if you fancy a chat - or send me an email. Time and an inclination to ramble on without direction or purpose, are in plentiful supply. Ever the flitting butterfly, B.
 

Sept 7, 2014

It occurs to me that due to the rambling nature of my thoughts, increasingly, these letters have become less and less about life in Lincs. Some of that is down to the fact that life here is quiet. It’s hard to make ‘nothing going on’ into something interesting. Also, as I travel a fair bit, you’ll hear about those experiences rather than life here - plus, I am constantly engaged by the minutiae of life - politics, the news, documentaries, music - which means you’ll hear about that too.

Some of you comment on the bits of these letters that catch your eye and for that I am grateful. Feedback is always appreciated, whatever direction it takes. A few write back to tell me about your own lives, which is nice for me as I want to know what moves you; what twists and turns visit your life. By the very fact that we have been friends for quite a while now, you shouldn’t be surprised that you are important to me and I want to know what’s happening to you - especially if we haven’t spoken recently.

With that in mind, this letter is about life in Lincs. Let’s start with our roads. They’re not big. We have one motorway, the A1(M) which goes North to South and luckily, the other way too. Most A roads are single carriageway which occasionally feature a bit of dual carriageway every now and then allowing you to get past one or two trucks - so you can queue again behind the ones in front of them. We like to celebrate small victories.

The B roads are Lincolnshire County Council’s traffic calming devices. Straight as you like it’s possible to get up some speed - but they undulate. Consequently, if you do more than 40 you’ll bang your head on the roof before long. We don’t need speed bumps, surprise undulations in the road surface do the job. Speed is for strangers who don’t know the cost of shock absorbers.

In reality, speeding is rare. It does happen but queueing behind a convoy of trucks and tractors interspersed with cars - tends to encourage patience. A few impatient souls will try overtaking five or six cars at a time and where this is successful without a head-on, it just means they queue jump a bit to get in the same queue further up - and life goes on. Realisation will dawn eventually.

With so many farms in this county, there are a lot of tractors using our roads. Slow as they are, oddly-enough, tractor drivers are considerate souls. When there is a straight bit and no traffic in the other lane, they drift to the left, straddling the white line to give you a view of the road ahead. It’s up to you whether you overtake or sit tight. When a bend or a line of traffic approaches, they move back to fill the lane. By blocking your view they are telling you there is nowhere to go. As you see, pace of life is also influenced by driving habits.

It is a simpler life here. I went into Spalding today and found the market place had been taken over by a music festival labelled ‘Music In The Market Place’.

The stage had also been helpfully identified. To add to the air of fiesta, balloons had been deployed. We know how to push the boat out. You soon saw why it had been called Music In The Market Place as a woman was singing and playing a guitar - in the market place, justifying the thought that had gone into the title.

Deckchairs had been laid out for an audience who sat watching, intrigued, applauding politely in the right places - yet offering no clue as to how they would vote at the end. Acts seem to get their fifteen minutes of fame, and the two I saw were deserving of it  being good musicians and singers. Tomorrow the market place will revert to its traditional offerings; handbags and gladrags, fruit & veg, antiques and several forms of cheese. As you see, there’s a bit more to life here than you might surmise.

Being a fruit and veg growing area, there are a lot of Eastern European pickers hereabouts, mainly Poles. When I was a kid, my Uncle Ted (Tadeuzs Balski) a friend of Mum & Dad’s, who I called ‘Uncle’ as he was a generation above, was my footballing mentor. He encouraged me to kick a ball with both feet, taught me how to do keepie uppies and the overhead kick that was not to be seen in British football till Dennis Law brought it back to the U.K. from Italy some eight years later. Uncle Ted was Polish. Following the invasion, he fled Poland to volunteer as a motor cycle despatch rider in the British Army and settled here after the war.

A mate of mine from the Internal Audit days - JR, had a Polish girlfriend called Gina; a lovely lady, a GP who was well mannered, intelligent and articulate. So, I have known two Polish people, both of whom I liked. The love of my life, Aleksandra Mijovic, was a Yugoslav, a Serbo-Croat, studying for two degrees; Business Admin and English Literature. Her dad was a consultant in banking systems who was involved with introducing the VISA credit card process to Sweden (where we met). I met her family and friends in Belgrade and Stockholm, finding them to be civilised people; all-in-all, no complaints.

The few others that I’ve spoken to in and around Spalding, including my dentist, have been quietly-spoken, well-behaved and polite. Consequently, you will not be surprised, from my experience of Eastern Europeans I do not share the Daily Mail’s xenophobic hysteria. Which reminds me… What do you call a person walking to work at 06:30 in the morning? Ans: an immigrant. They’ve got a job - which requires them to be out and about at 06:30 in the morning in all weathers, and - they’re walking to work. How many Brits walk anywhere? Ask any of your cabbie mates. The majority of their fares are people on benefits heading to or from the pub.

Back then in the late 50s, Uncle Ted introduced us to European cuisine such as Salami, Wiener Schnitzel and Pickled Dill Cucumbers - or Wallies as they are better known. Even today, I buy these cucumbers as an adjunct to various meals. Plus we eat them in Big Macs as part of its glorious taste explosion.

All of this is to lead you to my newest fad, Russian Roulette Shopping. With such a large Polish community, we have dedicated Polish food shops featuring quite a bit of their favourite foods - biscuits, cold meats, spices and sauces. A smaller selection is also on the shelves in Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s.

In restaurants, I like to try new things. For the ten years I was on the road with Internal Audit and launching systems with Ford of Europe Accounting, courtesy of Ford, I ate in restaurants around Western Europe from Finland to Italy. It gave me the chance to try local favourites. Gravad Lax, caviar, oysters, Reindeer and Bear steaks (sorry Santa - and fans of Paddington), Squids in ink, Alligator and Turtle being amongst the most memorable. At an Indian, Thai or Chinese, I’ll usually choose something untried - a Chef’s Speciality rather than an old favourite. This is where the Russian Roulette Shopping comes in.

Today in Morrison, this sense of adventure led me to try Almette Zzoolami - from the refrigerated aisles. I have no idea what it is.

 

The name offered no clue but I bought it anyway. I suspect it is a soft cheese in the style of Boursin but this is by no means a given. I’ll let you know shortly.

I like strong tastes and adventures in food, often garnishing meals with a splash or two of Tabasco. My mate JR, mentioned earlier, has a more conservative palate and was of the view that having bought a bottle of tabasco, what with it being the Devil’s condiment and all, you’d use so little that you wouldn’t need to buy another bottle again in your lifetime. He was baffled as to how they stayed in business.

In a previous letter, I mentioned flying with the famous footballer Eusébio. As lunch came round, he reached into his Gucci bag, pulled out a bottle of tabasco and emptied it onto his BA chicken, possibly a bit more freely than most people might be inclined. Each to their own.

So - Almette Zzoolami, let’s see what that turns out to be. More experiments in Polish food to follow. I’ve already tried some of their biscuits which were a cheery, cherry version of Jaffa Cakes - fabulous.

In past letters I have mentioned the fields around these parts. This was the sight that greeted me on my way to the golf club today. I’ve never seen hay stacked in this Close Encounters style before, although, it must be normal as we’ve seen it on the backs of lorries in bales like these, just not in fields. At the height of last year’s floods, on my way to the doc’s in the next village, I witnessed dredging of the ditches. A chap with a JCB was digging out the weed growth in the ditches that separate our roads from our fields.

 

I witnessed this while the Somerset Levels were under water so was pleased to witness local efforts to keep local ditches and dykes clear.

 

JCBs are fine for ditches but something else is needed for rivers and dykes. The golf club has a couple of holes that follow the River Glen. Waiting on the 2^nd tee one day, I watched a couple of boats clearing the weed from the surface and the depths. One was a Proud Mary contraption, with the paddle wheel on the back. He reversed through the weed, then scraped it off the paddles every now and then. The other was a motor boat and a chap with a rake. I hope he got paid more, he seemed to have the tougher job.

This is the Glen, running alongside our course. When you wait on the 2^nd and 4^th tees for the match ahead to get out of range, it provides a welcome diversion but beware its two faces. Having seduced you with its beauty and serenity, when it’s your turn to drive, it becomes a ball magnet. The Delilah that is Nature, eh?

Most of this area is land reclaimed from the sea over a hundred years ago. Spalding was a port once, as was Wisbech, plus I have Holbeach 15 minutes away. The “beach” in their names suggesting previous proximity to the sea. A number of villages in these part have “Seas End” as a suffix to their name - another indication that the sea was once closer. Moulton Seas End is just two miles from me and (now), a lot more than that from the coast.

All those years back, the land was reclaimed by Dutch engineers. It will come as no surprise that my local council is called South Holland District Council. Dutch engineers used their experiences from the Low Countries to design a system of drainage dykes (canals), with raised sides. Now, we have largely flat land, rich, fertile, good for farming - that was once the North Sea or at best marshland. My only complaint is that it has brought the French nearer.

Aug 2014

The summer saw my patio turn into a blaze of colour. Having brought a lot of pots with me from Keysland, I eventually found a few days to put something in them. With winter approaching, today being another sunny day in Paradise, will see many of these transferred to the beds to see if they can survive our winter. I say ‘our winter’ as I’ve noticed that this area is 3º to 5º Celsius colder than you Southern Softies get in Essex (writes Grizzly Adams, Bear-wrestler and Mountain Man).

 Jan 2013

 

Well, that’s more or less life here in Lincs, slow yet varied, simple while also full of surprises like ditch dredging and Music In The Market Place. BTW, the Almette Zzoolami turned out to be a soft cheese that was a bit milder than Boursin, with more gentle chive notes than in-yer-face garlic & herbs - barely poisonous so further excursions into Russian Roulette Shopping will follow.

John King (school friend since we were eight) and Margaret came to visit me and were pleasantly surprised by the sedate pace of life versus the hurly-burly that is Essex. Pete Childs also came for a weekend of golf and to take a look at Spalding. If any of you have a desire to sample this quiet lifestyle, give me a call. We should be able to arrange a few days of (effectively), sleepwalking.

July 21

When things go wrong, do you ask yourself - “What does it matter”? This is a question I posed some time ago, with a mixed reaction from this audience. I ask it again now as it refers to my last letter where I made a typo after a rant about poor English at the BBC. While my mistake was a typo from Autocorrect where I talked about the six ‘house’ a day that Neil Sedaka practiced piano instead of the six ‘hours’, my rant was directed at the low standard of grammar and spelling in news presenters who get paid a lot to speak English for a living, prompting an expectation of good education.

I see a typo as being in the same vein as a slip of the tongue, however, bad grammar is just poor education, ignorance in people with whom you’d have credited intelligence.

Some of you remarked on my mistake. Thank you for that. I like to clean up this letter before I put it on the Internet, though, those of you who know me well, will know that my slip would have been of no consequence to me. I felt no embarrassment. I’m a pensioner doing this for fun. Don’t expect me to live up to the standards to which I hold so-called ‘professionals’ who get paid handsomely - more than most of you, from your licence fee for presenting insipid, politically-correct articles in clumsy and incorrect English. A couple of years ago Carrie Gracie received £92,000 p.a. for presenting BBC news a few mornings a week. This, by her own statement in an interview published in the Radio Times. I like Carrie Gracie and have no criticism of her. I mention this so you have an idea of what BBC presenters command.

It is normal for dull, unimaginative, predictable types lost for an argument, to trot out the tired old gambit “How would you like it if…” That debating style is laughable. It is for children. You’re a mug if you try to reply to such a hypothetical question because the answer cannot be verified. It’s a wholly pointless exercise relying on you being willing to go on the back foot; a kindergarten debating device. As a result, applying a person’s argument to their own behaviour is pointless. It’s nothing more than an attempt to score points - while not making a point.

When I’m on a rant, thoughts swarm like bees and my fingers fly over this keyboard. The result: typos in droves. I read and reread my work a dozen times before publishing to you - and change what mistakes I notice, as well as polishing the prose. But in these letters, I use YOU as my proof-readers before publishing them on the Internet in my Reflections Blog.

So when you find errors, please tell me about them but don’t expect me to be sheepish or cowed if they employ the practice I am criticising. This doesn’t matter to me. I will be devastated at having made grammatical errors in my rush to publish, like typing “your” when I meant “you’re” but typos esp. when created by the impish Autocorrect, that claims it is helping while secretly tripping you up, well… I don’t really care that much. Why would I? What does it matter?

Those of you with whom I have had a serious discussion will know the things I care about; decency, honour, integrity, cheating in football, genocide in the Sudan… Consistency between my behaviour and my views is just not amongst them. If I could go back in time and change a mistake, I wouldn’t. I don’t have a need to be right. Mistakes are welcome as they bring life experience. You may have noticed in a later paragraph, I admitted to having made mistakes and doubted that I had made my last. Regarding the ‘house/hours’ mistake, no one said, “Well done, Bren. Good Call.”

As tradition has it, this letter includes commentary on what I have seen on TV, mostly in the way of music and drama. I recorded The Beach Boys at Knebworth. While the music was a wonderful step back into the 60s, oh how sad to see the genius that was Brian Wilson sitting at his piano looking like a bemused Rain Man and Dennis Wilson, clearly out of his mind on the drugs that brought about his demise just three years later.

Still it was an hour I wouldn’t have missed. Al Jardine, Mike Love and Carl Wilson held it together with Carl surprising at how well he still sang even if he did look like a Weeble.

If you had kids in the 70s you’ll remember these. Trousers are a mistake for anyone whose belly extends beyond their nose. Demis Roussos had the right idea. Wear a dress with a hat - to deflect the admirer’s gaze away from the tum.

 Let’s get back to the Beach Boys, their harmonies were as tight as ever and it was a happy walk down memory lane. In this reread, I see that this letter recounts a few such trips. Recent weeks have brought a lot of people from the past into my current life. But before I get to that…

Despite the best attentions of Norton, I have woken each morning to find aggressive adware on my PC. Mainly gambling sites like BET365 and William Hill - and a software company trying to get me to download Win 7 drivers. Took this up with Norton who didn’t know about it at first but after a week or so, now block these unwanted ads.

I leave my PC on overnight with no applications running - just sitting at this desktop pic from Walsingham.

The monitor goes to sleep but just lately, when I wake it in the morning, the Internet Browser has already been started by a bit of advertising. Thought it was Firefox at first so I changed my browser back to Internet Explorer but the same thing happened there too. Luckily, Norton now blocks these intruders.

(It did for a while but they came back so I dumped Norton and now use AVG. That seems to have fixed it.)

While I resent people like William Hill and BET365 starting up screens without asking me, on my PRIVATE computer, this advertising is wasted on me. I don’t gamble. It’s a mug’s game. As a teenager let loose to find your way in the world, you soon work out that the bookie is the only winner. Yes, I’ve been to the dogs and the race track - probably three or four times in my life but I see that as entertainment. It’s not gambling, it’s paying to be amused for a few hours. Knowing nothing about form, I pick combatants based on name. I’m told the prefix ‘Lucky’ is a good indicator of ability. God Knows how Arkle and Nijinsky got on without ‘Lucky’ in front of their names - just lucky I guess. My ‘bet’ is to pay for the two minutes of fun that the race lasts. If I win - bonus. Usually, I’m just paying.

I do have a 50p bet with Peter Childs any time we play golf together. This could be considered a wager, but if you’ve seen Pete putt you’ll know it’s not really a gamble.

Apart from these occasional bits of fun, I will bet, I just don’t gamble. I bet on things where I already know the answer; e.g. the oldest man in the Bible (Methuselah), Snow White’s Dwarves - Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Doc, The Seven Wonders of the (Ancient) World, the planets of our solar system (with extra points for naming them in order); that sort of trivia. So, if we ever bet, chances are I’ll already know the answer. (Won’t stop me taking your money though).

And now, as mentioned earlier, it’s time to talk about Old Friends featuring in my life today. Last week, I went to see Ruth and Paul Underhill who now live in Sheringham. Paul’s a member of the golf club there so I got in a round as well as a raft of photos of his course.

The photo above is not an actual sight. It is several photos joined together by Photoshop. As I took them, I turned through 90 degrees. What you see appears to be all in front of you. In fact, the right half is dead ahead. The left half of the pic - is all to your left.

I first met Paul and Ruth In Portugal as I worked with Paul in the  Ford Lisbon offices. Having been there for a year already, they took me under their wing and introduced me to life in Portugal giving me guidance on local restaurants, shopping conventions etc. Ruth also came with me to give me a woman’s view of the flats that estate agents were offering. Every country has its own ways and their guidance back in 1993 smoothed the intro to life in a strange country. Thank You.

For my visit to them, Paul very kindly worked out an itinerary for me. We met at Creake Abbey for lunch and then looked around the craft shops and the ruins,

 

following that up with a visit to Sheringham station where they run an old steam train for tourists and locals. It is a delightful snapshot of yesteryear -  a colourful set up with old luggage on the platform and advertising from the 50s. The Kodak one being particularly apposite.

 

Just before that, Viv and Mike Buggie came over from Oz and a Ford Tractor reunion resulted at the Benfleet Con Club. Seeing people you knew forty years ago and are still in touch with is a gift that few enjoy. About thirty or so of us turned up, revisited bygone times and three hours flew by in a couple of secs.

I for one am grateful that so many people from my early life at school and work, are still in my life today and that our friendships, natures and characters are unchanged. Waistlines and hair, now that’s a different matter.

At the start of August, my oldest friends Lynn and Paul and Gabrielle and Pete came to visit me with my sister for a couple of days. On their arrival, we lunched at the golf club and the next day visited an old mansion near Skegness.

I first saw Gunby House last year when exploring National Trust properties in this area. At that time, they were having an Edwardian Day with people dressed appropriately.

In that visit, I discovered what a Hobby Horse was. I understood the phrase of course and can be accused of climbing on one myself when I rant about cheating in football, but hadn’t considered its origin. The second photo explains it better.

 Yes, that’s my reflection in the photo and yes, I am cringing. A selfie only counts when it’s meant.

 

This little chap - the Lincoln Imp

- is the equivalent of The Spirit of Ecstasy on a Rolls Royce or the springing jaguar on the grille of a Jag. It’s on the upside down ? that is the steering column, just under the handlebars.

At this latest visit, the weather smiled on us again and the gardens were as impressive as I recalled. This is the house.

Not being a socialist, I am all for privileged people living like this. The world is an unfair place. I accepted that a long time ago. People kill each other the world over, often out of tradition, others struggle to feed their families (everywhere), babies die for no reason as well as at the hands of their parents and people have illnesses that they don’t deserve. We live in relative comfort with some crises but not as much as we see if we look around. It’s not fair. That’s life. So when the cards you’re dealt feature aces, be grateful. By all means, be like Anthony Wedgewood-Benn and try to help those less fortunate than you, but if you’re going to complain about an uneven distribution of wealth, tread carefully. From some perspectives, it might as easily apply to you.

In previous mails I have commented on how Horizon and similar documentaries provide insights into today’s science. Add to that my fascination with psychology and you’ll understand that I had to record the programme on ‘How We Make Decisions’.

Most of us would like to believe that we are thoughtful and logical creatures. Imagine my surprise when I saw that behavioural scientists laugh at this idea. There are two systems for evaluating choices, cunningly named - System 1 and System 2.

System 1 is the knee-jerk intuitive process. If asked “What is two plus two?” you will reflexively answer “Four”. But if asked “What is 17 times 22?” you will have to be more deliberate in your thinking. This is System 2 - giving the question more thought. It turns out that we employ the intuitive System 1 more frequently than we would like to admit, because it is quicker and less demanding. Add to that our unrecognised tunnel vision when we are concentrating on a line of thought, we unwittingly exclude factors that may have been useful in reaching a conclusion.

Probably the most worrying influences are the Biases (scientists’ terminology), we employ subconsciously when coming to a decision. Some of the ones I recall are -  Present Bias, where we focus on the here and now and despite our ability for abstract thought, neglect or minimise consideration of future consequences.

Then there is Confirmation Bias where we give consideration to factors that confirm our own opinions and disregard that which contradicts them.

Add to that Cognitive Bias which leads us to believe what we want to believe and the Halo Effect where we like or dislike things associated with what we like and dislike. What you are seeing here is that more intuitive influences come to bear than we’d like to believe of ourselves (if we accept that ‘Intuition’ is background, subconscious, thought processes of which we are unaware).

I’ve given you just four biases here but there are 150 known ones (150!) at the moment and more being discovered all the time. They illustrated how common these influences are with tests on an unsuspecting public. All in all, it was an intriguing hour which, due to the impressive arguments being proffered, took two hours to watch - with the aid of Pause and Rewind.

In summary, we are not the logical Mr. Spocks that we would like to believe. Before we leave this though, I ‘d like to ask, if you think as many would, that you are a deliberate thinker who reaches conclusions by logical analysis, how will you know when you have all the relevant facts to enable you to reach a reliable conclusion? I’m sure you’ll make sure you have all that you think is available but how do you know if you have all that is necessary? Life is a beautiful mystery.

The news continues to amuse. Bernie Ecclestone gets out of a bribery charge by paying to have the charges dropped. How civilised that Germany offers a way to buy your way out of a bribery charge.

Lord Rennard is back in the Liberals. Four women party members accused him of sexual harassment but the powers that be couldn’t find a top party official guilty - coincidentally one credited with getting them into power for the first time in living memory. Though they couldn’t find him guilty, they banned him anyway - but now have changed their minds. We are assured he won’t be allowed near the pencil and fag packet when they draw up their next election strategy.

Alex Salmond is allowing 16 year-olds to vote in the upcoming Independence decision. Why? Could it be that they are naïve and impressionable so will guarantee a few more Yes votes without thinking through the consequences of not enough income to fund their policies? Free tuition, free prescriptions, no armed forces costs, no civil service costs, no NHS costs, no DVLA… I look forward to dumping all of this currently-zero cost burden onto their new independent economy.

I heard an interesting phrase in connection with this debate - The Law of Unforeseen Consequences. Didn’t know it was a law but it certainly is an irrefutable aspect of life. If Ebola Virus was a product of chemical (germ) warfare, who’d have foreseen it coming from its trials in Africa to bite UK citizens? (see my letter from a few months back.) But of course, we’ve already seen that with AIDS - which also started in Africa.

This Ice Bucket Challenge is engaging isn’t it? I wonder two things about this popular initiative promoting awareness of ALS. The first is - how successful that has been, is anyone measuring it? And secondly, how soon will other lesser-known afflictions be getting similar publicity? 

It’d be interesting to see a news article asking supporters what ALS is. Knowing the technical name is of no consequence. It’s like people who know the Latin name for plants. Other than the insecure people trying to impress with obscure knowledge, who cares? Only other insecure people. Knowing how it affects people by muscular atrophy, what are its symptoms and how many people are affected by it - now that does matter. If the challenge encourages a better grasp of this, then it’ll have been worthwhile. And when the dust settles, ask the same questions of other lesser-known afflictions.

Essentially, the current fad is just about the need to be part of the herd. A few loud people start a trend and in today’s world of Twitter and Facebook the herd follows, reminiscent of that scene in Life of Brian where reluctantly, he stands on his mother balcony addressing the crowd eager to hear his words, trying to convince them he is not a leader to be followed - and says “You are all individuals”. In unison they respond “We are all individuals.” Comedy Gold.

Incidentally, I have had two close cousins die of related, muscular atrophy afflictions. I miss them so I am all for improving awareness of ALS and similar illnesses. I’m sure it will raise a bit of money for this worthy cause and that’s a good thing, but has anyone considered ‘At what cost?’ When other worthy causes follow this initiative and start new challenges, how much money will have been diverted from Oxfam, Children In Need and Cancer Research or will this be additional spend? The Law of Unforeseen Consequences raises its head once more.

What intrigues me is - why does the challenge have to be so unpleasant? Who wants a load of iced water dumped on their heads? What clown thought “Let’s raise money for something worthwhile by causing people extreme discomfort.” Haven’t they heard of the carrot versus the stick? Perhaps the next challenge will be Take A Kick In the Nuts For Peanut Allergy or Get A Poke In The Eye With A Sharp Stick for The Partially-sighted?

Personally, I wish the challenges could be more relevant and pleasure-orientated, e.g. A Lovers’ Walk For Migraine, where you have a tiny Thai woman stroll up and down your back by way of massage and then promise to ‘Love you Long Time’. That’ll distract your headache. I can think of a few of you who would take that challenge - and not just the men. Perhaps Watch Cartoons for Cataracts or Enjoy a Blue Film for Impotence. There’s plenty of scope.

I see inarticulate people are still favouring “Absolutely!” often employing the now overworked and grammatically-incorrect multiple exclamation marks. Where did this need for excessive enthusiasm come from? Well, America of course. I listened to two female experts commenting on today’s papers. I should mention at this stage that I am slow to wake. So, most mornings, after coming round slowly with a cup of tea, I lay on my living room carpet in front of the TV stretching my back and doing a few stomach exercises. I persevere with this as it has improved my walking. Don’t know how, don’t care - but the improvement is perceptible so I stretch most days.

In this 20-30 mins, I can’t see the TV - I’m not that flexible, but I listen to the news and I this morning I heard some woman whose comments had been well-presented to that point, perforate the next five minutes with a torrent of “Absolutely!”s.

It seems to me that when a person says “Absolutely!” they are trying too hard to convince. It’s pathetic. When the answer only warrants  “Yes”, “I agree”, “That’s right” or a simple nod, exclaiming “Absolutely!” like a banshee is annoying. Please stop it. Please encourage others to stop it. We are not excitable Americans. We have dignity - or so one would hope.

Awash with dignity and indignation, I sign-off for now with a “Ciao!” Italian, yes. Quietly-stylish, possibly. Pretentious, of course - but definitely not - Absolutely.