Sunday, 22nd February, 2026

These days, I tend to go to bed before midnight but wake before 5.00 am. I have never slept particularly long. It has always seemed a waste of time. We only have so much time in our lives and to spend 30% of it comatose in darkness seems excessive although it has always fascinated me that all humans go into a darkened room and suspend consciousness every day. Throughout my working life, I never managed more than about 6 hrs a night which the NHS recommendations suggest isn’t enough although that has been challenged recently.

NHS Recommended Sleep Duration by Age 

• Newborns (0–3 months): 14–17 hours
• Infants (4–12 months): 12–16 hours (including naps)
• Toddlers (1–2 years): 11–14 hours (including naps)
• Preschool (3–5 years): 10–13 hours (including naps)
• School age (6–12 years): 9–12 hours
• Teenagers (13–18 years): 8–10 hours
• Adults (18+): 7–9 hours 

As a child, I was forced to spend a lot longer in bed than I would choose myself. Let loose, I found I was not an owl or a lark but bird of both. I love early mornings and I love late nights. It’s the middle bit that gets me.

We are told that we need sleep for optimal physical health, mental restoration, and cognitive function. Sleep is essential for immune system support, tissue repair, and hormone regulation. Chronic sleep deprivation increases risks for heart disease, diabetes.

You have gone through life in sleep,
Never woken to the nightmare.
I tell you, life would be unendurable
If you were wide awake.

 T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion

People do report going to sleep with a problem in their head and waking up with the solution and I have known that. Unfortunately, the unsolved problem can often delay sleep altogether. Older adults often sleep less or have more disrupted sleep due to aging but you only have to visit a Care Home and particularly one for Dementia and you will see residents asleep for long periods in chairs around the Lounge.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats

We should all be resisting the gradual drift into inaction and revery. Nodding by the fire is my nightmare. I regularly cite my friend, John Ridley, when I talk to people about this. He is constantly active and contributing to the world be it in terms of Education and Culture as well as personal travel. As he takes his next guided tour of Fountains Abbey I am so admiring of his energy and commitment.

Monday, 23rd February, 2026

Anyone who follows/observes the religious calendar will know that Lent has begun. In our childhood home, we were forced to give up sweets and biscuits for the period of 40 days. Looking back it feels absolutely archaic, medieval even. Like eating fish on Fridays which we also did, it was out of an age of ghosts and witches, of superstition and religiosity as rules of life. If these sort of things were espoused outside the wrapper of formal region, they would be considered certifiable.

Catholic Easter is April 5th this year. Orthodox Easter is a week later. The beginning of Lent here was last Wednesday – marked by Ash Wednesday – and you couldn’t get much more of a medieval ceremony that that. Palm leaves said to be paving the way of Jesus are burned in a crucible in the church and the ashes are smeared on celebrants foreheads accompanied by the words:

Repent, and believe in the Gospel.
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Well you would if you had no critical judgement, wouldn’t you. It was/is all part of the social control structure. It happened to me before I had freedom of control and underlined why I should reject such nonsense.

In Greece, today is Kathara Deftera, or Clean Monday – the beginning of Lent among Orthodox Christians. It is the day Greeks fly kites as symbols of the Resurrection and go on picnics outdoors. The holiday is also the unofficial start of spring for Greeks.

Lent is a period of cleansing, of self-flagellation, of repentance evidenced by self-denial. Greeks give up meat, dairy and olive oil as well as alcohol. Squid, Octopus and shellfish can be eaten. Wine and oil are permitted at weekends. (Phew!) Mind you, even though I love octopus salad, I couldn’t live on it for 40 days. You only have to begin to examine these traditions to realise they are utterly mad like believing the earth is flat, the moon is made of cheese or there is a god in the sky. They are all of a pre-enlightenment, pre-scientific, pre-industrialised age.

Once you free yourself of these shackles and live life, self discipline is important and more meaningful. I rarely eat meat other than chicken. I eat oceans of fish and fields of vegetables. I impose weeks of abstinence from alcohol on myself but I do it for a purpose at my own direction not because of some shayman with incense burners and bottles of holy water. I am responsible for and in charge of my own condition. And that is as it should be.

My spiritual celebration this morning was a walk on the beach in lovely mild weather. The rocks, the sand, the sea and the sky join forces to celebrate being alive. It is all I need … for now.

Tuesday, 24th February, 2026

A day that is so warm it is going to make us think of Spring and the fertility to come. A friend of mine in North Yorkshire is already germinating seeds for her harvests to come in the Summer. It is the time of ancient Lupercalia – Roman pastoral festival held annually to promote health, purification, and fertility. Centered on Palatine Hill, rituals involved animal sacrifice by the Luperci priests, who then ran through the city striking women with februa (goat-skin thongs) to bless them with fertility. A bit kinky, I know, but could be fun.

This woman’s as from death’s touch: a surviving
Barrenness: she abides; perfect,
But flung from the wheel of the living,
The past killed in her, the future plucked out.

Ted Hughes – Lupercalia – 1960

Elsewhere in Europe, peasants reportedly participated in sexual rites on freshly ploughed fields to stimulate plant growth. That sounds more like it. Anyway, you get the drift. Things come and go. Are in and out. Fade and are renewed with the seasons.

Nothing stays the same for ever. Life is constant flux. Sometimes it is abrupt and we struggle with the fracture. Sometimes it is so gradual that we hardly notice it. Like boiling a frog. If you throw one into boiling water, it screams and tries to leap out. If you place it in cold water and gradually bring the temperature up, the frog dies before it realises.

Ten yeas ago, we were within a month of moving in to this house and we had come down to check on progress of the build. My Housekeeper had chosen a continuous glass splashback surround for the kitchen and we were keen to monitor it. We had no furniture and were busily researching and ordering everything for every room.

Ten years on, it is a thriving hub of the house. Most things happen here. In fact, I was thinking last night that this house has 12 rooms and I rarely visit half of them.

These ten years have seen so much change. When we moved in, the builders had not installed fibre cabling even though I begged them and BT to do it. We still have the old BT sockets on the wall. We no longer have a landline either but the old sockets are still on the wall. The security – burglar alarm and smoke alarms have all been changed but we still have the old boxes on the wall. I must do something about that before we begin to look like a 20th century museum. You remember when piping snaked openly around walls before being hidden behind plasterboard? These are the equivalent tell-tale signs.

Wednesday, 25th February, 2026

Well, we’ve moved on through Spring to Summer in a day. It is absolutely wonderful with strong, hot sunshine. I was writing about Greek Spring on Monday. It is lovely to see a girl of Greek origin standing for Labour in the Manchester byelection tomorrow. Manchester councillor, Angeliki Stogia is the Labour Party candidate and we wish her well.

It is good to see the Labour family uniting to fight for equality and fairness. They have a strong challenge from the radical Greens and the racist Reform party. It is in all our interests to keep the racists out. Of course, Byelections are popular times for giving the current government a kicking. I’ve read social media suggestions that it would be a good time to attack the elites. You often get this sort of belief from people who have looked no further than populist leaflets.

If you want to kick the Elites, don’t vote Reform. Just get the facts. Do your research. Find out who you are really voting for.

Reform are flooded with privilege and failed Tory MPs. They are Brexiteers who have brought UK plc to its knees and now disown their crimes.

Just had the car valeted. £30.00 to get it looking shiny and new. It is 17 months old and has covered just 6,000 miles. At this rate, I may be forced to keep it for 3 years this time. Going out to do a long walk in the sunshine and pretend it really is summer.

Thursday, 26th February, 2026

The big news this morning – a change to rubbish collection and delivery of new bins from the Local Authority. It doesn’t get much bigger than that. Our existing collection schedule has General Waste and Garden Waste collected every week with Recycle every two weeks. Now, General Waste and Recycle will alternate but a new, Food Waste will go out weekly as well as Garden Waste. Hope you’re keeping up, Dear Reader. I will because I have updated my on-line calendar which Alexa reads to me. This really is the high life.

Actually, we feel very well served with lots of collections by fanatstic people. We already use a separate food waste bin fixed to our general waste bin so it really won’t trouble us at all. I know it’s going on all over the country so it will soon become part of the national culture.

I’ve got a wine delivery today. In the 1950s/60s the ‘Pop Man’ delivered to homes and adults very occasionally indulged in an expensive bottle of Riesling which they were teaching their palates to like. I have loved wine since student days. From early in the 1970s I was drinking wine bought from supermarkets with my evening meal. By the 1980s. I was travelling to France to buy wine and just stopped buying here at all.

When I could drive to France but before the Tunnel opened, I would drive to Hull Docks and take a P&O ferry overnight to Zeebrugge and then drive down to Calais, fill the car with 150 bottles of wine and take the return ferry over night to Hull. I would do that trip twice a year but in the 1990s I started driving to Greece and back so that would be an additional opportunity to stock up on Italian as well as French wine.

Brexit is what ruined the fun. Instead of unlimited purchases, I was restricted to 48 bottles of still wine (for 2 people) plus 18 bottles of sparkling wine. It remains an enjoyable experience but only marginally cheaper than buying in UK if you factor in the travel. I’ve got wine buying trips to France booked for March and May but I’m even buying from a UK Warehouse as well at the moment. So, 36 bottles of wine will arrive today to tide me over until we go abroad. Anyway, I don’t really drink now.

Friday, 27th February, 2026

A fairly miserable start to the day. Grey and damp both meteorologically and politically. The only crumb of comfort is that the Racist Party have been kept out and the Tories lost their Deposit. You do feel, however, that Andy Burnham would have made it. It is easy to pass it off as a mid-term byelection which traditionally are difficult for the incumbent government and cite cases like George Galloway winning in Rochdale to be swiftly replaced by the excellent Labour MP, Paul Waugh, at the General Election but that might be brushing problems under the carpet. May will be the deciding time.

Great line from the Green Party this morning: We threw the kitchen sink at it and elected .. a plumber. The Green candidate was a blonde who works as a plumber in the local area.

While she was celebrating her win with a bottle of vegan champagne today, I was unpacking and racking my wine delivery. It’s great fun unpacking these wines because you never know exactly what you are going to get. I’m just featuring 3 here of the 36 that arrived. From left to right, they are a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc and a Chilean Merlot. It’s exciting. I’ve drunk lots of wines from Chile before and they are lovely but I haven’t tried these and my normal choices are more traditional areas like Bordeaux, Tuscany and Veneto although recently, I have also been enjoying Rioja and Tempranillo from Spain.

I am going to Spain and France but I really want a visit to Bordeaux if only for a few days. I’ve still got about 15 days left out of this six months so it is possible and the flights are cheap and frequent. Going to have to stop talking about it and get booking.

Saturday, 28th February, 2026

February is dying. It is on its last legs. It will not leap again this year. Shouting at it to remain, stay with me, is to no effect at all. This morning, at 5.00 am, I was listening to a political podcast discussing the potential end of the monarchy in UK and Charles was referred to as an old, ill man. It shocked me. Charles is 77 just 2 years older than me. Am I an old man?

And then the death of Neil Sedaka was announced at the age of 86. Oh, that’s quite a good age my brain automatically reflected until I thought, that gives me 11 years! It is shocking. Then I asked myself, when would I actually say it was acceptable and reasonable to die. Of course the goal posts change completely with age. As they say, breaking up is hard to do. It’s the leaving that is so cruel.

The problem with time is it’s gradualism. The process is imperceptible although the effects are all too obvious. Rather like a plant growing. We don’t see the process in real time but the results are only too obvious as it buds and flowers. Do you know, it is 6 years since the outbreak of Covid and we ended our David Lloyd membership. It is 5 years since we all had our first Covid vaccination. I’ve still got my card as a memory.

In a month, it will be 17 years since we retired from Education. The memories may still be stark even though the corridors no longer exist. And when the memories disappear in the mists of time, I have my Blog.

Having done a walk through the fields of daffodils in lovely, warm sunshine this morning, I am now going to spend the afternoon in the Gym which is coming up to 6 years old. Unbelievable, Dear Reader. My Housekeepeer is continuing on her House Inspection and Maintenance Programme as we complete a decade here. Currently, there is very little to do. Next will be the waking up of the garden, patio cleaning and seed sowing.

This morning we received our 120th free copy of the village magazine which is really useful for contacting local trades people to help us. As the houses and resident population increase so do the number of workers to service them. It is all too easy if you’ve got the money. Bit shocked to hear this morning that the average monthly rental for a property across the country was £1000.00 and on the South Coast in Brighton you can expect to pay £2,200.00 per month. No wonder people can’t save for a deposit.

Sunday, 15th February, 2026

Well, it’s really going to be Gym work today. It is pouring down outside and has been for most of the night. And it’s dark and depressing but remarkably warm. Central heating is definitely becoming redundant.

We have a Dual Fuel contract with British Gas paid monthly and we are massively in credit. I checked this morning and we are £148.65 in credit on our Gas Account and £597.22 in credit on our Electricity Account so British Gas hold £745.87 in our account and it won’t be reviewed for another 6 months. I can, of course, demand that they refund it but it is quite nice to know that cushion is there if we experience a sudden very cold snap.

Not that it is looking very likely. Only two weeks until the start of Meteorological Spring. We are told that snow will hit the North of England this week. Here, it may be wet but not cold. I will take that. Actually, we have a quiet week according to our on-line calendar. We are driving up to sunny Surrey on Tuesday for a short visit and that is our commitment for the week ahead.

Just to cheer you up, I thought I would show you an article from today’s Sunday Times. You may remember the old fear which was propagated by Horror Movies of the 1950s & 60s that a person was buried in a coffin while still alive and the clawing away of the victim’s attempts to get out could be heard and seen on exhumation. Well, it appears that scientific research is suggesting that the brain goes on living some time after the body is declared officially dead.

Just when you thought it was safe to die quietly ….. Don’t have nightmares, Dear Reader. It will soon be Monday if you live through the night.

Monday, 16th February, 2026

Beautiful morning with clear blue sky and sunshine but not too warm today. I should be feeling good but I slept badly and have woken feeling rather empty and sad. In these circumstances, I turn to music and, as so often, to Bocelli with Il Mare Calmo Della Sera:

Even the setting of this recording is emotive – the open air amphitheatre of Teatro Del Silenzio in Tuscany in the warmth of a Summer’s evening, the darkness and the lights, the Italian language. What more could you want to hang your emotions on?

Well I drove down to our own Mare this morning but it wasn’t very Calmo. In fact the waves were crashing in huge, white plumes of spray on to the pebble beach as it roared back and forth. And then the children punctured the moment as children so often do. It is Half Term down here and the children come to play on the beach with no concept of the feelings of an adult. Lucky them.

I drove back to the calm of my Office and some more Bocelli. This time, A Te. Enough, enough. Must get on with life. Got to have my hair cut this morning and then the Gym.

Back to Amazon again today. I’m looking for a phone mount for the car. I’ve got used to using a Speed Camera app on longer journeys. It’s called RadarBot and it sounds an audible alarm when I get within half a mile of a fixed speed camera, reminds me of the speed limit and becomes increasingly insistent the closer I get to the camera. Its reliability rests on other users confirming the existence of cameras and reporting the location of any new ones. Having the phone mounted in front of me makes that easier.

Been out walking in the Park for an hour and come home glowing with warmth of exertion. Amazing how much better it makes one feel.

Tuesday, 17th February, 2026

Forcing ghosts back below the surface for a few hours, the day has started sharply. A wonderful morning of clear blue sky and strong sunshine. Perfect for a trip. I’m driving up to Surrey. I’m going to a Dementia Unit of a wonderfully luxurious Care Home to visit C. When I do things like this, it raises memories of happier times and inevitably invites comparisons that can be painful.

I received news from the North of England over Breakfast of my brother-in-law, Kevan, who has cancer and is now to be treated in Christie’s in Manchester with weekly chemotherapy for 3 months along with targeted drugs. He was just 83 a week ago. He is strongly supported by his family as his birthday dinner illustrates. Quite typically, he hides at the back on his own day. He is in a massive but essentially lonely fight which is really not the way to spend your 83rd year. Let’s hope he holds back the years.

The day is about other people and their own battles along the time line of life but it is a way to understand oneself through them. I have had a cancer which knocked my life of course albeit temporarily. You don’t know that at the time. You don’t know that as you drive to the hospital every morning, take off your clothes and lie on a table being irradiated for weeks on end. It feels like there is no tomorrow. And even when you have come through it, you feel as if it is constantly hanging over you.

We’ve driven up to Silvermere Care Home in Surrey. The fees are eye watering and £100,000.00 per year but the service is fantastic.

Silvemere was celebrating Chinese New Year today and they were singing songs of the 1960s and 70s. We knew them all so much that we thought they wouldn’t let us out.
The entertainer who sang and batted balloons around, engaging the residents and encouraging them to take part was lovely. He knew C and that he liked singing. He is from Mauritius and had that sunny, gentle, infectious temperament to perfectly fit in to the place.

And what about Dementia? Will I be one of the sufferers. I have to say that from this side of the line, losing my grip on real-time reality terrifies me. So you see, it is all about me, ultimately. Just as it is all about you, Dear Reader, lurking below the mists of time and memory.

Wednesday, 18th February, 2026

Back to Black. The sky outside is dark and wet. Actually, although the days are noticeably lengthening, it felt dark in the Kitchen this morning as well. I observed to myself only the other day when I was looking for something in my store and came across the box of spare light bulbs that I had forgotten was there.

I can’t remember the last time I had to replace a light bulb. In the 1980s, it could be every other month. Now, it could be 5 years. It is so long ago that not only could I not remember what bulb it was but I couldn’t even remember how to take the old one out to check it. I can tell you now it is pull not twist. Wish I’d made a note of that. Well, I have done in time for the next replacement around 2031. I’ll be 80!

Just been out to buy fish and goodness it is cold. Just 6C/43F but seems to pierce the bone. I’m sure I feel the cold more now. I don’t know if it is my age or the cancer treatment I received but I don’t like it. It makes me feel more vulnerable. That discussion this morning reminded us of an early morning drive over the Pennines in a blizzard. We had to be the first at school for opening arrangements which actually turned out to be closing for the next few days.

The car got stuck in a huge snow drift on Stanage Moor and, thinking I was fit and tough in my mid-30s, I got out of the car in my shirt sleeves to save my suit jacket from the snow storm, I proceeded to dig the car tyres clear to the point when I couldn’t feel my face never mind hands and feet. I was on the edge of hypothermia and hadn’t thawed out for hours afterwards.

On a day when the inflation rate has come down to 3% and is predicted to reach the Bank of England target of 2% by April thanks to the Labour government, the price of fish is still rising. This morning I bought 2Kg of Cod Loin at a cost of £84.00. I’m feeling quite good, though, that I have tax free investments paying 4.4% for the next 18 months so earning genuine advantage.

Thursday, 19th February, 2026

Another warm but grey morning. Must wish little Bob happy 74th birthday. It is that time of year when he catches up with me temporarily.

As I observe every time, it is hard to come to terms with someone else gettting older. It makes you reassess yourself.

Today I am going to book a Whole Body Health Check in the Covent Garden facility of Neko Health. It is a new organisation set up jointly by two Swedes – a former member of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the founder of Spotify whose £Billions is providing the finance.

They offer a quick and relatively cheap way to undergo an annual health check which involves whole body scan including skin for cancer alerts plus many peripheral tests around bloods and circulation. There is immediate feedback plus a detailed report follow up and the findings are compared over time for changes.

As they say, early detection is half the battle. It allows for early intervention and far better chance of prevention of serious conditions developing. I see it as dovetailing in with my NHS checks and, of course, my Doctor will receive a detailed report of the findings. It is only £300.00 for the first check and £250.00 for each subsequent year’s follow up. I will go to the Covent Garden Centre or the Marylebone Centre so it will take up a day or we may book a hotel over night and do some shopping.

If any Readers are interested, they also have Centres in London Spitalfields, Birmingham and Manchester with one coming in New York soon if you fancy a sight seeing trip as well.

Our high flying next door neighbours are having a break from many Business Trips and going to a pub in Hackney to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Could we feed the cats while they are out?

Friday, 20th February, 2026

Lovely, sunny morning. I didn’t sleep well so it was 7.00 am when I got up and I struggled. My body certainly doesn’t spring into life as easily and quickly these days. Still, the morning greeted me with optimism.

The Economy under Rachel Reeves is showing real signs of positive growth. Sweep away the Far Right attempts to attack her, the headlines this morning show real green shoots of recovery after the Tory debacle.

And then, of course, we had the most wonderfully iconic symbol of the demise of the monarchy which I’ve been waiting for all my life. As a republican I have longed for this moment. We are going to see President Starmer alongside Prime Minister Burnham before I die.

Walking through the village this morning, this tree just drew me to it. I hadn’t got a clue what it was although, perhaps I should have. It is Mimosa or Acacia dealbata. Native to Australia, it isn’t fully hardy in the UK other than in southern and coastal regions where winters are milder.

Saturday, 21st February, 2026

A grey, warm morning. A morning for thinking, talking, reminiscing, dreaming of what might have been. The mists of the past are swirling through my memory.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
and don’t have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin – This Be the Verse from High Windows

It was 17 years ago this coming week that I received a letter containing a cheque. I recorded that I didn’t remember ever crying at receiving a cheque before. It was from my Mother’s Last Will & Testament and was entitled: The Estate of Catherine Lily Bennett – DECEASED. That word struck home instantly and events were still raw in my mind.

Everything is constantly in flux and changes were coming thick and fast. A month later, we had retired and were preparing to set off for our Greek home. We were leaving our responsibilities behind and, although it freed us it also troubled us.

A year later, in 2010 I recorded that we were within six weeks of leaving Pauline’s Mum for six months. It was always assumed that, when she became unable to look after herself, she would move from the Anchor Housing ‘Residential’ home to the  Anchor Housing ‘Care’ home just further up the hill in Waterhead.

When we visited to look the place over, one of the first people we came across was Ellen Brierley who I knew well from Education circles in the town. She had been Oldham’s first ever Mayor and Education Chair Woman. She had been on the Governing Board of my school and always fought for teachers. At the age of 96, she had developed dementia and moved into the care home. She died shortly after that. The mists of time enveloped her for the last time but see, I raise her up temporarily here. We all continue to exist in other’s memories.

Sunday, 8th February, 2026

My records show that this week in 2009 – 17 years ago when I was just 57 years old and living in Yorkshire while working in Lancashire – we were suffering with incredibly heavy snow which shut the school for a week and even the M62 for a while. During this week I was diagnosed with a heart murmur (Atrial Fibrillation) which I had never heard of and, unbeknown to us, we were just 2 months away from Retirement.

Even so, we were preparing to spend Easter in our Greek island home and I was about to buy a revolutionary new digital Book Reader for my wife. It was her first of many Kindles and they are central to her reading all these years on. So many things have changed but that is one that hasn’t.

It was a time of turmoil in our lives. We had just gone through what turned out to be our last Ofsted. We had contracted a firm to replace every single window and external door in our 3-storey house over the coming month. Suddenly, my lovely Mother-in-Law was taken into hospital again after a fall.

All that going on in a few weeks of one’s life is a test and one that we came through strongly but I clearly recall the inner strength it demanded. Last week I was writing of the Past, Present, Future approach to the understanding of Life. I found this record of my times in 1968. I was still at school and playing Rugby in the Staffordshire Championships. This newspaper report above was in my Mother’s records. It was a time when I was aware I was suffering from a flutter in my heart beat but thought it was just over exertion. It could have killed me any time over the ensuing 40 years.

To think that, over the past 17 years, of the people who have died, of the houses I have sold and bought and of the total transformation in my life moving from North to South.You know, there are still people working in the latest iteration of my school who were there when we left. Yesterday, I was wishing a lad happy birthday who I appointed as an IT technician 20 years ago. Now, he is Leader of the Digital Curriculum Team with a group of teachers under him. He’s still only 44. If I can manage 17 more years, I will be 91. That’s not too much to ask. Is it?

Monday, 9th February, 2026

Lovely warm and sunny morning. Makes a change. Haven’t got to swim for our lives today, anyway. I’m expecting a phone consultation from the Urological Cancer Department who will outline the ongoing monitoring of my post-prostate cancer situation. I’m hoping that the NHS will take it up for a few more years. Otherwise, I will be turning to the Private Sector for biennial scans which I will feel uncomfortable about not least because the same NHS Consultant will charge me money. I am preparing my arguments in advance. There is no question we have to advocate for ourselves because no one else will.

I’ve been on statins for 20 years. I have suffered absolutely no side effects or none that I haven’t been able to attribute to other reasons. I get quite bad cramp occasionally. It is a statin symptom but it could easily be because of my Gym work. I feel the cold a bit more theses days – another symptom – but it could easily be because of my age or as a result of radiotherapy. I like to think they have kept me alive and that I didn’t fall in to the Right Wing trope of the anti-vaxxers and anti-medication nerds.

You know that 10 years ago this week, we had arrived back from two months in Tenerife and our new house was 4 weeks away to completion. We were charging round arranging for beds and sofas to be delivered. We were driving up to Housing Units in Failsworth to check out the dining furniture and Hilary was coming round to fit the new blinds. I was anticipating receiving my first State Pension in a couple of weeks. We were about to join David Lloyd Health Club.

Ten years on and under the constant daylight glare of the conservatory windows, the leather has faded, the table-top has been sanded and restained but I think it all still looks fine. Aging is a problem for us all. We just have to do it gracefully.

I’ve just found somewhere in Brighton that stocks these chairs so we’ll nip out to have a look tomorrow. We need 8 so that will be one consideration. I don’t think we can mix and match.

Just been out for a walk in the gorgeous, Spring weather. It raises the spirits and goodness knows I need it. What is happening to the Labour Government and how could it have got to this stage? All around me the world is wonderful although we are coming up to ¾ of a century in it. Ok, it is a bit faded but what do you expect after 75 years? If you want, I’ll buy you a new one. Only 25 years before we reach our century, Dear Reader. Come on! We can do it!!

Tuesday, 10th February, 2026

The old weather is back and it is raining AGAIN. Farming Today was featuring farmers complaining again but this time with some justification. They were reporting that every year for the past 5 years they had complained that it was an unusual year for weather underlining the fact that Climate Change was a new reality. Aberdeen in Scotland is generally believed to be one of the drier parts of the country but they have seen rain at some point every day for the past 28 and had received 180% of its monthly rainfall in the first week of February.

I think there are 160 flood warnings out this week with lots in Wales, of course, but all the usual suspects in UK – York with the Ouse, Chester with the Dee, Repton with the Trent but also across Europe. Cordoba in Spain is experiencing severe flooding causing huge damage to its olive groves and all the economic pain that will bring.

At least it is still warm for February and I am chauffeuring my House Keeper to her Hairdresser this morning. She is nervous because her regular hairdresser is away on holiday and she is being looked after by one of his many sub-hairdressers but that is quite beyond me. I have offered to do it myself for free but that was rejected as too exciting.

Now I’m driving down the coast road to Hove to a furniture shop to look at some Dining Chairs. Housing Units , it isn’t but you can’t have everything. At least we have the sea and the rain.

It was wet all the way. There’s something quite depressing particularly about seaside towns in wet weather. They are abandoned, deserted and down. Still, the Spring isn’t far away and a three quarters of a century anniversary.

Wednesday, 11th February, 2026

Sunny and warm. Out early to buy fish – 2 x sides of Salmon plus a kilo of Skate Cheeks. That’s a hell of a lot of Skate with carved up faces. I’ve never eaten them before so it will be an interesting first.

When I was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer three years ago, my PSA was 7.0 which indicated a tumour. After a year of treatment, it had plummeted to 0.2 and it has remained there for the past two years.

I took a phone call last night from the lovely, young doctor who was reviewing my oncology blood tests. The results are really reassuring and she was refreshingly chatty. I am not really aware of my accent. In fact kids in school always said I talked ‘posh’. It turns out the Doctor who saw me in West Sussex had originally come from Wigan and she had immediately detected a Northern edge on my voice. We discussed the benefits of moving South. Certainly my NHS treatment has been fantastic. I will now be monitored twice a year for the rest of my life.

I am digitally literate. I use the web and apps all the time. I am happy to use chatbots online instead of live humans but sometimes …. I’m not. I have contracts with EE/BT and have had for a long time. They have been voted Best Digital Provider every year for a decade and they are not shy in advertising it. It always makes me laugh because the service they provide me – Broadband and Mobile – is absolutely excellent but their website and app is appalling.

Today, I was forced to speak to a human being in order to get what I wanted. It worked. I have ordered 2 Samsung S25 Ultra smartphones. Each one would cost £1,349.00 to buy. So I have phones to the value of £2,698.00 for free. I have traded my old ones – S24 Ultras – in for a price of £840.00 and my monthly contract has been reduced by £50.00. I managed to negotiate this with a real operator whereas I couldn’t through the web/app. Just to sweeten to the 2 year contract we will also each receive a ‘free’ Samsung Smartwatch which would cost 2 x £200.00 to buy on the open market.

Thursday, 12th February, 2026

Another warm, dry morning but without the sun. I greet every morning with a large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a large cup of Yorkshire Tea followed by a large Cappuccino whatever the weather. You will notice that the consistencies there are large and liquid and that is my Breakfast done. The rules of the house dictate that I then unstack the dishwasher ready for the day. This job is rather more painful this morning after my accident last night.

I stupidly broke a glass when I hit the tap with it and it smashed into shards of razor-sharp glass cutting all around the top of my thumb. Because I take blood thinners, it refused to stop bleeding and my Nurse had to take over.

Nurse is prepared for all eventualities and had a liquid bandage spray called New Skin. It is fantastic and seals all the area staunching the flow of blood within minutes. Looks like my very young thumb is varnished and very old but don’t be deceived, Dear Reader. Varnish can be removed. Amazing how many jobs need a thumb, though, when it’s damaged.

My Memory Box reminded me this morning that it was 13 years ago that I was building a website to advertise our Greek house for sale. I launched it in the April before we returned to Greece. When you do things like this without professional help, you immediately feel the weight of legal responsibility. I remember having to do the room measurements 5 times just to make sure there was no come-back after sale.

Found this collection of old Sifnos photos below and found it really moving. To think I knew some of these people and the hardship they had endured, the utterly basic conditions that they went through to get to the present. Maybe we just accept what’s before us at the time. Some of the ferries have long been retired but were a part of my past.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/TSAqkNL6fmE?feature=oembedOld Sifnos …. ah, the memories.

The man who posted this used to cook for us down in Faros (Lighthouse) harbour and the food was wonderful. Oh, I remember it well. Might be approaching three quarters of a century but I haven’t lost it yet.

Friday, 13th February, 2026

Friday the 13th. I’m determined it won’t be unlucky for me, Dear Reader. Over the past two days, delivery men have brought two, new phones plus 2 x covers and screen protectors.

This morning, I have started on the process of copying from the old to the new. It never goes as smoothly as one would like and many accounts have to be reset afterwards. Still, 4 hours later most work is done and we are ready to go forward.

Went out for a walk on the promenade in watery sunshine. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t complete my exercise routine today. Having achieved all my technical goals, I opened a bottle of red wine and relaxed.

Saturday, 14th February, 2026

Having survived Friday 13th, we wish all our readers a Happy Valentine’s Day. It’s going to be special. England are playing Scotland in the Calcutta Cup at Twickenham this afternoon. It doesn’t get much more romantic than that.

It is a beautiful and sunny day. Quite warm in the sun. My main romantic gesture of the day is to tidy out the garden sheds. You have to hand it to me. I know how to get a girl interested.

You know how we take things for granted – and I’m not still on romance here – and when something suddenly changes, we are really thrown. Our use of technology has been disrupted by the introduction of new phones. Right from the start at 6.30 am, I was hit when I started to shave. My shaver is controlled by an app called Philips Groom Tribe on my phone. It monitors the time and my shaving action each morning and reports back. It controls the cleaning pod process and tells me when I need a refill. I know, it’s over the top. It took me ages just to reconnect the shaver with my phone by bluetooth this morning.

Everything across phone, iPad and PC has to interface and synchronise otherwise things become nightmarish. When I delete an email from my phone, I need to see it delete from the others at the same time. Those relationships all have to be re-established. Quite appropriate for Valentine’s. Had to set up all over again my Biometric Security (face & finger print) which controls not only the phone itself but banking and investment apps and many more.

I have traded my old phones in for an excellent price of £840 but now I have to wipe them completely clean of all traces of me and return them to Factory Settings, put them in prepaid packs and take them to the Post Office. In the end, I begin to wonder if it was all worth it. I have also been offered two Samsung Smartwatches free of charge but I have to prove that I’ve bought their phones first and uploaded the invoices to the website. I may even give them away in the end because we’ve both got our own anyway but I’ve ordered them already.

I won’t now get called up to play so I’m going in the Gym to watch the Rugby. If you hear me roaring, you’ll know we’ve scored. And I’m still not talking about Valentine’s.

Sunday, 1st February, 2026

I would like to wish you happy new month but the rain continues in biblical quantities as it washes the debris of January away. Of course, it is important to maintain optimism. Life continues and water is essential to it. Hopefully, we will have a good supply for the Summer to come. There are just 4 weeks until Spring officially arrives.

In a rapidly challenging world, it is hard to maintain optimism at times. The old order is being shaken everywhere one looks. Humanity is being attacked in so many spheres, Europe, the Middle East, China and America. It is easy to forget that the Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza and Russians are still killing Ukranians in Europe. China is still subjugating the Uyghurs. The religious state machinery in Iran is killing its own people on an industrial scale. The American government is hauling its own citizens off the streets, shooting its own citizens on the streets if they protest, trying to convince its electorate that black is actually white.

The question is, what the ordinary citizen can do about it particularly if the electoral route is increasingly being challenged by the easy answers of populist parties. There are many ways we can resist and fight back but they all speak to change in climate through persuasion. I write in my Blog but also on social media and I lobby politicians daily. It is so much easier to do nowadays through email, whatsapp, twitter, etc.

Music and satire are other forms of resistance, fightback and attempt to shift the political weather. I don’t know if you have seen this family before but I really like their attempts to address political situations in Britain and the rest of world. They are an interesting group.

The parents met at Cambridge University and have clearly created bright and interesting kids with a talent for music. What they are doing is saying the political world is not something that just happens to us. It is a world we must address and try to influence. It is an intelligent response of thoughtful, caring people which I appreciate. This song has been set to the flower power song, San Francisco of Scott Mckenzie who himself was born Philip Wallach Blondheim of Scandanavian ancestors illustrating the interrelationship of the people of the world. Ultimately, national boundaries mean nothing. We all live and die under one sky.

Talking about the sky, my sky, our sky, the rain has gone, the sky has cleared, the sun has come out and all is well with my world long enough to go for a 90 mins walk through the park. Joy of joys, Dear Reader.

Monday, 2nd February, 2026

Big week amid the gloomy skies. My test results (bloods & scans) will be available and I will attend a Review with the Oncology Department at Worthing Hospital. I am fairly confident but I don’t know why. These things don’t really have any early and obvious signs and I have always worried since ending my cancer treatment that it was likely to return. I just hope it is not yet. Birthday 75 is rapidly approaching, Dear Reader, and I just want 25 years more. After that, every additional year will be up for negotiation with the devil.

You will remember Goethe’s drama where Faust is unsatisfied with his life as a scholar and becomes depressed. After an attempt to take his own life, he calls on the Devil for further knowledge and magic powers with which to indulge all the pleasure and knowledge of the world. In response, the Devil’s representative, Mephistopheles, appears. He makes a bargain with Faust: Mephistopheles will serve Faust with his magic powers for a set number of years, but at the end of the term, the Devil will claim Faust’s soul, and Faust will be eternally enslaved. That will be me.

In 1985, I met a Professor and Head of the Department of History at Huddersfield University. He had been featured in my local newspaper, the Huddersfield Examiner, talking about a new area of study he was intending to lead and support. It was a Masters Degree in The History of Ideas. It was going to be a Research Degree and would be open to mature students who could give up three or four years of their evenings and had an interest in the politics of ideas and the idea of politics.

I had spent five years doing an Honours Degree in English Literature and majoring in Modern European Poetry through the Open University. It had consumed my spare time although I was working full time as a teacher. I had funded it myself and it lifted the despair of a difficult time. It restored a sense of self-esteem that I had lost by failing to get to University in the first place.

The Masters Degree was much more demanding of my time but rewarding in so many ways not least to test myself. I must admit, I always knew I could do it if I conquered my own laziness. I was awarded the Masters in 1989 by which time my Teaching career was massively demanding. I was offered the chance to go on to PhD but it would have taken 5 more years part time research. I had spent 4 years of all my spare time reading, researching writing in the libraries at the university and around Manchester and I couldn’t see myself doing the rest. I stopped.

I have written about all this before but I rehearse it here because I have made a joyful discovery – a new podcast led by Professor David Runciman formerly Professor of Politics at Cambridge University. It is a podcast set firmly in The History of Ideas. It is called Past Present Future which, as you will know if you are a regular reader of the Blog, is my obsession. I may have to wake up early in the morning deliberately just to listen each day.

Managed a walk outside again today. Not warm in the breeze. Not sunny in the sky but just feeling alive in the air was reward enough. I managed to bring some sunshine to my wife’s life today. I can’t say that too often. She collects things everywhere we go. She has mementoes all over the place that remind her of a previous experience. For weeks now she has been mourning the loss of an old, scatchy, leather pouch which she uses to hold tissues in her bag. She bought it in Corfu in 1982. It was our second Greek trip. We hired a motorbike and toured the island. It was incredibly hot.

This was her memento of that time. She has carried it with her every day for 44 years. Suddenly, it was gone and no amount of searching would regain it. Until today. I went out to the car with a floodlight torch and, after 10 minutes going slowly around every crevice, there it was and joy was unbounded.

Tuesday, 3rd February, 2026

Another dreary, dark and damp start to the day illuminated only by my monthly check on the NS&I Premium Bond ‘prizes’/earnings. At the risk of repeating myself monthly, I had a spare pot of cash that I wanted to invest with two conditions: it had to be easy access and I wanted the earnings to be tax-free. Having used our full ISA allowance for the year, the one place both of those conditions could be met was in Government Bonds.

I have had £18,000.00 in Premium Bonds for 5 months now and have ‘won’ £375.00 or an average of £75.00 per month. It puts me on line for earnings of £900.00 over the year which is the equivalent to 5.0% tax-free earnings. I had set my baseline as 4% or £60.00 per month so I am up and I still have that tantalising prospect of winning one of the many much larger awards – from £25,000.00 – £1 million. I’ve just read that 3 people in Grt. Manchester each won £100,000.00 this month. I’m moving back!

While I worry about my Oncology Review on Friday for a cancer that is now the most common to be suffered in the country, my Brother in Law, Kevan, is suffering so much worse with both liver and bowel cancer. It is a heavy burden to carry and we wish him well. A quiet and unassuming man, he must be very scared at this time. It is a lonely place to be. Apparently almost half of us will, at some time in our lives, visit that place.

When you stop to think about it, everywhere at every time is a lonely place to be. It is the nature of existence. Some cope with it by kidding themselves there is a higher being looking over them, giving them purpose. I try to mitigate it by fuelling my head with thoughts, challenging my mind to constantly test the world through ideas and concepts, through philosophy.

I was first really introduced to Philosophy as a Discipline while at Teacher Training College. It was at a time when Education of adults was on the cusp of change and a Lecturer who I admired invited me to take a Philosophy course prior to being invited onto a new Degree course which had been around for about 5 years generally but my College was just preparing to adopt. The B.Ed Degree or PGCE became a requirement shortly afterwards and my cohort were offered voluntary but automatic conversion to the Degree status in the past 5 years rather as Oxbridge graduates can pay to have their Bachelors Degree upgraded to a Masters without the pain and suffering that I had to go through.

My History of Ideas podcast this morning centres on the philosophy of Aristotle. He was a polymath student of Plato but his central philosphical tenet was

belief in the primacy of the individual in the realm of existence is a philosophical, moral, and political doctrine that posits the individual human being as the fundamental unit of reality, value, and rights. It asserts that the individual exists independently of and takes precedence over any collective entity, such as the state, society, or community. 

I wonder who said, There is no such thing as Society. Margaret Thatcher, if you’ve forgotten. Karl Marx would beg to disagree. Of course, both stances can exist at the same time. The podcast this morning propounded the view that Philosphy attempts to understand the world from an individual’s standpoint by describing it whereas Politics takes that understanding and acts on it for social change.

Wednesday, 4th February, 2026

A much better day today – in fact, glorious sunshine from blue sky and reasonably mild at 10C/50F. Had to go out early to the surgery for an INR Blood Test as a cross check to my own which I submit to the Hospital Department every 6 weeks or so. Took the opportunity of walking on the beach before the tide came in.

Must just wish little James Happy 25th Birthday today. Made his card out of one I bought in Age UK which is where he will end up in another 75 or so years. Anyway, we wish him an enjoyable and successful day.

There is something so cleansing and rejuvenating about being on the beach, breathing in that delicious air, smelling the elemental salty ozone of the sea. Scientifically, all life began in the ocean, making the sea our ultimate birthplace. Darwin, had previously hypothesized that all life could have originated from a primordial slime as we crawled inexorably off the ocean floor and on to the land. 

A stir in the broth, a tremor in the ooze,
Where life, in its infancy, began to choose.
From chemical chaos, a membrane took hold,
A fragile beginning, courageous and bold.
No shape, no form, a quivering of gray,
Driven by forces that carved out a way.

Driving home I feel my spirits lifted and myself more optimistic which will help me face Friday’s disclosure. There was a sense of irony in the announcement of government action to identify cancers and treat them much more quickly so that in the next 5 years 75% of sufferers will be treated and potentially cured leading to a return to normal life. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have been an early recipient of that process which the Health Service down here has offered me. I am trying to be optimistic about Friday’s status report.

I wonder what it would be like to be 25 today. Would I swap my life? I can tell you that my wife would in a second. Would I? No, the answer is that I wouldn’t. I feel comfortable in my skin enjoying my wrinkles and my aches and pains. Every single day of my life I do a couple of hours of physical exercise and I really feel the effects of it when I get out of bed in the morning. My legs ache, my back takes time to straighten and my whole body says, Have I got to do this all over again? And then I commit to a new day and it just evolves around me. May it do so for many more days to come.

Thursday, 5th February, 2026

Yesterday was beautiful but turned wet in the evening and has opened dark and wet this morning. The only upside is that it is warm out there 10C/50F. No central heating needed here and only 3 weeks until the official start of Spring so, hopefully, things are looking up. You wouldn’t think that though if you listened to UK farmers.

I remember being shocked in the early 1980s hearing Thatcher say she was always awake early and listening to BBC R4′ Farming Today at 5.45 am. I was shocked because I wouldn’t have thought she and I had anything in common but I did exactly the same thing as her because I wake early and it is absolutely amazing what you can learn about life and our country through agriculture. If, like me, you have listened to a programme about Farming 6 days a week for 40 years, you would not be surprised to find that farmers are unhappy.

Farmers are always unhappy. Nothing is perfect ever for them. It is too wet or it is too dry. It is too hot or it is too cold. Their crops are rarely as abundant as the previous one so their earnings are down or it is a very abundant crop which creates a glut and the crop loses its value so their earnings are down. They were getting subsidies from the EU but many of them voted for Brexit. Their subsidies stopped but the UK government couldn’t afford to maintain them.

Tax policies have been incredibly generous to landowners and no prizes which favoured those. The Tories saw farmland prices soar as wealth people avoided paying tax by buying up huge swathes of land often claiming even more savings by planting forests. Then, of course, inheritance tax can be offset to the tune of £3 million for a couple. How many of us would like the chance to pay inheritance tax with a joint holding of over £3 million?

A cost of living crisis has seen food price inflation make life in the lower echelons of society really a struggle. The cost of fresh food is high although the farmers say they don’t benefit from it. Major supermarkets buy in bulk and squeeze the suppliers.This morning, the Head of Gousto, a supplier of meal advice and the fresh produce to produce those meals was interviewed on Farming Today. He shocked me by saying that price point at which he could entice customers in was £3.25 per person per meal. Who could survive on a meal of that cost?

I haven’t eaten a ‘ready meal’ almost since I got married although we did go through a period when we had a fantastic Chinese takeaway in our village of Helme in West Yorkshire and Friday night became Chinese night. Funnily enough, I would be sent out to collect it and I would regularly meet our Director of Education for Oldham doing exactly the same thing. We considered it our dirty, little secret which we paid for the next morning when we woke with very dry mouths as a result of all the monosodium glutamate which they used as a flavour enhancer. Now fresh fish and fresh vegetables are our staples and are not cheap. It would be hard to assemble a main evening meal under £30.00 for 2 people and that is without wine.

Friday, 6th February, 2026

A grey, grey, day compensated for by being mild and dry. At 12C/54F, it feels quite pleasant. Still, I’ve spent the first hour of the morning in my Office, sorting out my investments as I do at the beginning of every month. My tax payments have been quite erratic recently. One month I was advised they’d been increasing. The next month I got a huge repayment because of overpayment in the past. This month I hope will see stability at least until April when Pay/Pensions increase and Annual Interest is incorporated.

I’ve also been completing the monthly ONS Health Insight Survey which I’ve been doing for years. It asks me about Doctor Surgery services, Pharmacy services, Hospital services and Dental services. I have to say that all are excellent here in spite of the boom in house building and the consequently expanding demands on all of these services. I do feel very lucky to have such a wonderful medical support as I get older and inevitably have more call on them.

Today, it is my second, annual Oncology Review. It will be based on a blood test for Prostate Specific Antigen and for Hormone levels plus a full body MRI scan. I am preparing my personal shield for the bad news while leaving a bottle of champage in the wine cooler to chill for celebrations of the good news. Should I open the box or take the money. You decide. Wish me luck, Dear Reader.

Pleased to say that all has gone well. I’m sitting in my Office and toasting the Spring to come with a glass of Champagne. Just had my Oncology Review after blood tests and MRI scan. All is clear and well. Life can continue …. for now.

Saturday, 7th February, 2026

Life never stands still, Dear Reader, although looking outside this morning you would be forgiven for believing otherwise. It’s raining AGAIN. However, when I got up this morning, I immediately had a problem to fix. None of the TVs would receive anything. Had to rapidly search for an alternative source of Radio 4 over Breakfast. Alexa, Play BBC Radio4.

The Sky Q Box network that I’ve been using since I came down here is coming towards the end of its life. Before that, it was satellite dishes, then internet-fed Q Boxes with large hard drives. Now it is moving on to a purely Streaming Service without facility to record and save programmes in the old fashioned way. It is only possible to make an online list to download in the future.

My Q-Boxes had temporarily stopped communicating with my BT Hub and although I knew how to fix it, I didn’t want to be charging round room to room while enjoying my orange juice. It’s not a great start to the day.

When I examined the current position with my Q-Box service which costs me around £120.00 per month to view all channels across 5 TVs, I found that they had stopped selling it a few months ago and will stop supporting it in 3 years time. I will be forced to move on to steaming only. The Satellite Dish can be removed and the Q-Boxes junked but like so much progress, we will take a bit of time adjusting.

I was told that ‘young people’ don’t view like we do. They mainly access content through apps and don’t need hard drives to reserve their entertainment. I have to grow ‘young’ and just face it. At least the new, streaming delivery is mediated through small ‘Pucks’ as they call them and I can have 6 of them to serve an extra bedroom so I will only need Freeview in one room.

I often think younger generations bleat on about their hard life as if it isn’t hard for every preceding one. I am beginning to realise, that the Boomers have definitely had the best of things. I was listening to a Newsagents Podcast this morning and the more I listened, the angrier I became. Young person after young person who had taken out a student loan at the age of 17 – before they could legally go in a pub and could definitely not have fully understood the implications of their loan – left University with a debt of just under £50,000.00 and ten years on after paying 9% of their salaries found themselves owing around £75,000.00. This caused by an unacceptable annual increase of RPI +3%.

All this comes at a time when they should be buying a house, settling down and having children. I went on later to listen to BBC MoneyBox in which a girl talked about her joy at obtaining a £250.000 mortgage having first saved £38,000.00 as a deposit. You just have to imagine what salary she needed to be in that position. I must try to be more understanding in future.

Sunday, 25th January, 2026

On this bright and sunny Sunday, I missed church and worshipped at the altar of political discussion. I was watching Trevor Philips show on Sky as he quoted some of my favourite lines from the Irish poet, William Butler Yates writing during the First World War:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

The Second Coming – William Butler Yeats

You don’t need too interrogate those lines too closely to understand their relevance to our current world. It feels as if everything one has taken for granted in life is ceasing to hold true.

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

― Vladimir Lenin

This morning, we have Trump (A Draft Dodger himself) rowing back on his ill informed comments on Allied troops contribution in Afghanistan. We have America going full-Fascist with ICE militias intimidating the citizens of Democrat towns, hauling them off the streets and, with impunity, shooting dead those who resist. We’ve had a Nato member threatening to invade another Nato country and take possession of it. We’ve had an American president threaten to impose tarrifs on his ‘allies’ who refuse to bend to his will.

Netanyahu in Israel is continuing to kill Palestinians in spite of a supposed ‘peace’. Putin in Russia is continuing to kill Ukranians in spite of current ‘peace talks’. And Trump is proposing to Head a Board of Peace which includes all these right wing warmongers as an alternative challenge to the United Nations.

At home, we have had Andy Burnham bidding to re-enter Parliament and to challenge the Labour Leader. We are witnessing the rise of an extreme Right Wing, Racist Party in the minds of the dispossed who see it as some way to kick the established order. Scottish Nationalism and Welsh Nationalism are on the rise. There is a groundswell in the country to reassess the Brexit debacle which has left us poorer and more isolated as we predicted. It is either the best time to be in politics or the worst time to be in politics as Keir Starmer is finding.

If you want a bit of tranquility, you couldn’t find a better place than the South Coast. I know they are quite common but I just loved the sight of this scallop shell swept up on to the sea wall and now basking in the sunshine. That’s what we should all be doing, Dear Reader, basking in the sunshine away from the world of turmoil.

There is no respite. We are just hearing at Lunchtime today, that the Mayor of Greater Manchester has been denied the chance to re-enter Parliament and challenge the Prime Minister. They think it is a way to keep the show on the road. It may be the match that lights the blue touch paper. This week should tell us.

Monday, 26th January, 2026

Dull Monday. At least it is warm and dry. I am cleaning up my databases of photographs on my computer. They are all saved in the Cloud so available on Desktop, Laptop, iPad and smartphone from anywhere I am. They are invaluable records but they can take over if you’re not careful.

I’ve always enjoyed photograhy both for itself and as an historical record. I’ve had a string of cameras from a Box Brownie in the 1950s/60s, a Polaroid Instant and a Ricoh SLR camera in the 1980s to a Digital SLR Canon in the 1990s/2000. The cameras chart the History and record the History similtaneously. I am particularly suited to it because I only have sight in my right eye although I do have a struggle with myself between recording or just enjoying the moment.

Incidentally, I wrote recently of having to visit a Consultant at theSussex Eye Hospital. I had been referred by the Diabetic Eye Screening Service where my eyes are checked twice a year. They thought I had a detached retina. I have always worried that my sight would deteriorate and stop me driving and that eye sight tests for older drivers is current in Government at the moment. The letter I received this morning from my Consultant put all those fears to bed. He reported that I had no detached retina and that I had 6/6 vision in my healthy eye which is the equivalent of the American 20/20 vision. I can read the whole chart at the opticians although I struggle a bit with the bottom line.

Anyway, this morning I found these old Polaroid shots from 1980 but they are so much more than photographs. They remind me of the early days of my marriage when we were decorating our first house. My wife wanted wallpaper everywhere and not just any old wallpaper. She had seen this Osborne & Little William Morris Willow pattern in a magazine and was desperate to have it at £50.00 a roll (in 1980!!). It was in a design magazine and also featured the ‘latest’ colour television from Philips. So, the deal was that she got her wallpaper and I got the TV. Goodness knows how I watched it at that size.

On the right, the polaroid featured the one and only Nissan (Datsun Cherry) car I have ever bought. It was brand new and only lasted about a year. It was bought to replace the mini which had been destroyed in our big accident. We picked it up and immediately drove back to Old Nathans farmhouse parking it proudly on the drive. We were both still recovering from time in hospital and recuperating at Old Nathans. The car was badly built and the wing mirror fell off as we drove it to a Honda showroom to buy something better.

You see (and I can.), there is life in cameras and photographic records. They revive the past and on a grey, empty day there aint no sunshine when your gone.

Tuesday, 27th January, 2026

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion 

Unless you’re down with the kids like me, you won’t get this reference but don’t worry. We can’t all be eternally young. It rained torrentially all night and continued until mid morning. It is raining all over the country and all over Europe.

On the Greek island where we lived, it has been positively biblical in its quantity. They will be rejoicing because it will refill the aquifers and supply the island with much needed resources for the coming summer.

Of course, in the Mediterranean it changes as quickly as it arrives. The residents may be still bailing out but the world has moved on and beauty has returned.

I’ve been continuing to trawl through my Polaroid memories. I’d forgotten that I used to be James Bond. It has all come as a bit of a shock. These photos come from 1980 when I was only 29 yrs old. What were you doing in 1978, Dear Reader? What ever it was, I hope you’ve stopped. It’s not good for you.

A sign of the times, I’ve just received a couple of new, Office Chairs. I spend so much time in there that the current ones are fraying a bit at the edges. As you will know, Dear Reader, we can’t afford frayed edges at our age. This will be our third set over the past decade. I should be nearly 80 yrs old by the time I need some more. Anyway, they need to be constructed this afternoon with the gas struts inserted and the leather seats and backs built around the mechanism. I have done it so many times now it is almost instictive.

Wednesday, 28th January, 2026

Lovely, sunny day although I will not really get out in it. In fact, it is a bit of concern that I am not getting enough sunshine on my skin at the moment. Exercise has been largely in the Gym. Yesterday, I was so tired after 3 hours workout in the Gym, I couldn’t face the chairs. This morning, I’ve unpacked one and laid out all the parts.

This is the plan and I’ve got two of them to construct. It is not my favourite activity, I must admit although I am better at it and more methodical now. In my youth, I always went at it like so many things as a bull in a china shop. Typical Aries. It often ended up broken rather than built. Unfortunately, I’ve got two of these to complete this morning. Then I have to book a slot at the tip to get rid of the old ones and the packaging.

I’m a writer and researcher not a builder, mechanic or scientist. I was listening to an interesting article on Radio 4 this morning about a group of UK scientists who had found signs of Dementia Onset were much earlier than formerly thought. They believe that the conventional signs of memory loss are preceded up to a decade earlier through language and writing. Dementia is often described as a condition of memory loss, but this is only part of the story. In its earliest stages, dementia can affect attention, perception and language before memory problems become obvious.

They focussed on Terry Pratchett’s writing because the author famously suffered and died of Dementia and because they believe Language offers a unique window into cognitive change. The words we choose, the variety of our vocabulary and the way we structure description are tightly linked to brain function. Even small shifts in language use may reflect underlying neurological change. Across Pratchett’s later novels, there was a clear and statistically significant decline in the diversity of adjectives he used.  It was a subtle, progressive change detectable only through detailed linguistic analysis.

My relationship with language has been a joy to me throughout my life. Having a wide vocabulary has given me a real sense of power and understanding. The further I went with my own education, the more developed my vocabulary became. I realised that understanding and concepualisation is intimately tied up with language and vocabulary. You know, it is impossible to understand a concept without the vocabulary to describe it.

My word power appears to have strengthened with age. Partly it is confidence that counts. As I get older, I am less worried about making and admitting mistakes. Who cares. I have nothing to prove. Also, I have Google at my fingertips. Something fascinating to me has happened in recent years. I do some writing and pluck a word out of the air because it seems appropriate. I look at the word having used it and think, I’m not even sure what that word means. I look it up on Google and find it means exactly what I needed it to mean. I think we all have a much bigger store of words than we realise but you have to use them to avoid losing them.

Perhaps you should keep a Blog, Dear Reader? They are all the rage. I’d read it. Maybe a podcast. Now, I’d definitely listen to that.

Chairs installed and they feel younger and firmer. That’s what we need, younger and firmer! They look good too so that is a bonus.The old ones are in the back of the car with the packaging from today and the tip is booked for 9.30 am.. And I’ve actually exposed my body to the sunshine. Been outside for a long walk this afternoon down through the park and the skeleton Silver Birches reflected in the lake. Felt good. Walking encourages conversation.

Thursday, 29th January, 2026

It is 7.00 am on a dull, lowering morning. It feels cold out there and only measures 7C/45F. I have an appointment at Phlebotomy at 8.20 am. It is prior to a Review with Oncology next week. I had my full body scan almost two months ago and have not had my review brought forward so I’m hoping that bodes well. The blood tests this morning check PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) and Hormone levels.

I can tell you at least one of them is back to normal and I’m fairly confident that the other will be alright as well. I will report next Friday. Everything for the rest of the year depends on a good result. Twelve weeks in Europe, and a week in the North of England are what we are working towards. I can’t find room for medical emergencies at this stage.

Met a lovely girl this morning in the Plebotomy Office. She told me she was Brazilian and had come to UK by mistake. Her sister won a competition when they were living in the Amazon Rain Forest. The prize was a trip for two to London. She came over with her sister. It was in their University holidays. They visited Brighton while they were here and found the University was somewhere they could complete their studies. She did exactly that and meanwhile fell in love with an English boy. She never went home. She has two kids and her 85 year old parents visited last year all the way from the Amazon Rain Forest where they still live. Oh, and she took two phials of blood from my left arm. I was in there for less than 5 minutes.

I went on to the Fish Outlet down at the beach. I bought 2 kilos of Cod Loin – quite expensive at the moment at £35.00 per kilo. That does 4 meals for two people. Still it is wonderful quality and will be served wrapped in Pancetta and roasted with asparagus.

Exercise will definitely be in the Gym today. I have been gradually ratchetting up each week over the past month the amount I do by 10 mins per day. So, from today, I have to achieve 2 hrs 20 mins each day. I will increase again for the next 2 weeks until I have achieved 2 hrs 30 mins per day. That will be enough. The job then will be to maintain it at that level through the rest of the Winter. I am watching a compulsive espionage drama involving the Whitehouse going through a cross between a Kennedy, Clinton and Trump Presidency.

Scandal is an American political thriller broadcast over 124 episodes in 7 Series on Disney+. It is centred around Washington DC and the Whitehouse and involves a ‘political fixer’ who used to work for the President and had an affair with him. There are times when I think it is a little bit light weight and then I am suddenly brought up short when I hear echoes of Trump’s first Presidency. Even the heroes are corrupt and the philosophy underlines that it is almost essential to break the rules to gain and maintain one’s grasp on the levers of power. In that sense, it could be considered quite depressing. I find the relationships compelling.

Friday, 30th January, 2026

A nice, bright sunny morning of 10C/50F. Yesterday, I took the old computer chairs to the local Recycling Tip. There is something about that process that appeals to me. Out with the old and in with the new and I feel the house breathing more comfortably. Today, having established that the new set of cooking pans are right, a number of the perfectly serviceable but superfluous to purpose older pans and roasting trays are going to Age UK along with a bag of the constant flux of my wife’s clothes.

Someone will find use for high quality cookware being sold off very cheaply. I understand these things are no longer secondhand but pre-loved and it is ‘a thing’. It is part of the reaction to my throw away culture. As we move towards 75, it is a charity worth supporting, Dear Reader. They’ll be leaving US there for sale soon. They appeared delighted with the pans.

I read a very sad post on our village’s Facebook page yesterday. It was a working couple who had been renting a house for quite a number of years but were being made homeless because their Landlord was wanting to sell the property. They were struggling to find a one bedroom flat at a rent they could afford. There is something wrong when two, working adults cannot afford a home in the area that they work. It made me sad as they pleaded they were good, reliable people. It made me feel how lucky I am to never feel that insecurity.

If you are a regular reader, you may know that I have an undimished antogonism towards organised religion – well, religion in all its forms but I am comfortable in seeing others delude themselves if that is what they need to get by. What I am not prepared to accept is the influence of organised religion – Church of England, Roman Catholicism, etc – on the state and on society. The Church of England is still formally part of the apparatus of the British state through the monarchy and the House of Lords. The claim throughout my life has always been that we are a Christian country. In reality, we haven’t been for a long time but now it is factually demonstrable and disestablishment of the church would recognise that.

Since 2018 the United Kingdom has been classified as a secularised, post-Christian society that is predominantly irreligious. Surveys since 2018 have indicated that a large majority of Britons do not believe in God, an afterlife, or regularly attend religious service. A 2020 YouGov poll found that just 27% of Britions believed in a “a god”. Churches are empty and falling down. The Catholic and Protestant organisations have been rocked with scandals which their hierarchies have sort to cover up to maintain some semblance of reputation.

Politics is a powerful influencer. Last year we were told by the Bible Society that there was a new, revival in faith and church attendance led by Gen.Z – those born between 1997 -20012 so now aged 14-29. This was hailed as the future proofing of organised religion and maintaining church buildings and clergy stipends along with political integrity. Media outlets including the BBC just parroted this belief as if it was fact. I must admit I was shocked and doubted it from the outset. It felt like wishful thinking then and now we know it was.

The National Centre for Social Research – an independent research organisation of 50 years experience – produced its annual British Social Attitudes Survey results which categorically refuted the Bible Society assertions. The long term trend of the decline in religious belief and affiliation continues at pace.

I have rarely been able to understand the need to create salvation through myth. If our intelligence tells us that it is not testable, verifiable or believable without suspending all, human scrutiny then it is not worth what is claimed for it. This is the only eternity that I recognise and need – the world in which I live and die.

Saturday, 31st January, 2026

Seeing January out with a beautifully sunny day and blue sky. It’s 10C/50F which apparently is about average for the time of year down here. Actually going outside for a walk again today to soak up the sunshine and the Vitamin D crucial for bone, teeth, and muscle health.

I was chatting over the net to my dear old friend, John, yesterday. We shared digs for a couple of years in the early 70s. I have to say that we didn’t have too much in common back then. He was/is Northern, religious, quiet and thoughtful – gentle even. Back in 1969 I got drunk for the one and only time of my life under the influence of my other digs mate, Nigel, and John was there to hold my head over the toilet while I was sick. It was my first bottle of red wine but not my last. I blame Nigel for many things.

John is an all round good person who puts me to shame. He pushed himself to achieve the Doctorate that I should have but wasn’t prepared to commit my time to. He spends a restless Retirement – speaking and raising money for good causes like this One World Welfare Mission in Pakistan. He plays in a Folk Group called The Dales Folk and has done for years.

He takes parties of tourists around his beloved Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal near his home in North Yorkshire. And just to prove he is not entirely paraochial, he travels regularly to South Korea, of all places, to visit his son who teaches out there. After 50 years, we met again for coffee in Ripon and it was a lovely reunion where I saw him in a different light through my more mature eyes. I’m looking forward to catching up with him again this year.

I must admit Folk Music was never for me. People tried to get me down to the Folk Music sessions in a local pub. Unfortunately neither the environment or the music was my sort of thing. I really don’t do pubs. I probably haven’t been in more pubs than I can count on the fingers of two hands over the past 50 years. I find them uncomfortable and not very friendly places. This music is what does it for me with a glass of red wine and some olives but then it would be a boring world if we all liked the same.

Sunday, 18th January, 2026

It’s slow Sunday again. You know the hoardes are walking smartly down the street to church …. err, No. A handful of lonely, old ladies in thick coats sniffle in a cold and echoing church inhaling the acrid smoke of a few candles which flicker in the darkness and hardly raise the temperature to bearable. Church is definitely going.

Church Going (1954) – Philip Larkin

When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

………

Only in separation – marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for which was built
This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

In these sorts of days I centre my time on Sunday Newspaper reading, Blog writing, Gym workout and afternoon football which I share with friends in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Great match yesterday as Man.Utd. played like Man.Utd. for the first time in years. On a high, how did I celebrate?

I helped my Housekeeper work out how to clean the ovens. They are new in the last few months and have catalytic, self-clean linings. The AEG handbook describes how to set the cleaning programme off but it was clearly written by a Swedish-German who has used Google Translate to turn it into English.

I must admit it’s the sort of technical challenge I welcome. It’s a great way to spend Saturday evening. Eventually, I got there and the oven spent an hour burning off all the grime from Roast Chicken. No chemicals are needed and it was left gleaming and brand new. Modern technological advances make life more complicated but so much better.

In 1949, my Mother refused to move in to my Dad’s house before he ripped out the black lead cooking range from the 1890s and replaced it with a ‘modern’ gas cooker and grill. How the hell she cooked for a family of 9 on even that ‘incredibly modern’ gas cooker goodness knows. She produced cakes and pastries virtually every day in that oven. Bacon and egg with toast every morning to send us off to school and work with energy. In retrospect, it was heroic.

Just perked the afternoon up by booking a couple of visits to France – one in March and one in May. They will be mainly wine buying but with the chance of visiting my old school friend in Arras as well. I don’t know if it is booking early or a sign of the times but the Return Shuttle costs were half that of last year. In March they cost me just £59.00 each way for the car and passengers and just £65.00 in May. It was almost exactly double that last year.

Monday, 19th January, 2026

A mild, damp and grey morning. It is annual service day forthe security system – the Burglar Alarm and CCTV cameras. Don’t you just love Technology, Dear Reader? No? Oh, you really are missing out. Sitting in a Greek Taverna and watching your garden grow back home. Walking round a Spanish Supermercado while checking a delivery man at your door. Laying in bed in the Canaries and checking the security lighting in my hallway. I can do that from Laptop, iPad and smartphone. At home I can do it in BIG from my TVs. Just love it!

Talking about gadgets, I’ve being looking at the recent upgrade of this TV Projector over the weekend.

I have politics, Netflix and Music playing out wherever I am in the house and garden. This gadget would mean not needing so many TV sets but is portable and just needs a wall for projection. It doesn’t even need cable connectivity because it has a rechargeable battery and connects via wifi. It allows one to project everything any TV can but across the internet. The internet is the greatest improvement in life since the Industrial Revolution and arguably greater.

Trying to get a Gym session in before the Service men arrive. Why is it always men? I can watch Keir Starmer’s address to the nation over while exercising. This is the most dangerous of times. Trump is dangerously self-obsessed and could spark conflict at any time. He makes Putin and Xi look almost rational and predictable .

On a lighter note: for some time now, we haven’t really needed to shop for food. We just have to go down to the beach and collect it for free. A Container Ship in the channel shed its load of containers which subsequently spilled their contents and gradually flooded our South Coast beaches first with bananas, then with onions and last week with ‘frozen’ chips. Every time it happens, the Local Authority has to send out rmies of workers to clean it all up. The containers themselves present a huge job in recovery. Some shipping line is going to get a massive bill.

Tuesday, 20th January, 2026

Love sunny morning and quite mild. My memory box says that it is fifteen years ago this week that we were driving down from Surrey to check on our new-build duplex apartment and organise our finances because it was the first property that we would buy with our own cash. We found a property that still wasn’t finished and we only had time to move our furniture in before we set off on our drive to Greece at the beginning of April.

At least it served a purpose while we still had two properties and our £250,000 almost doubled when we sold 5 years later when the word Duplex was out and Mews Cottage was in. What is really interesting and shocking to us is that the same properties are now selling for less than ours did 10 years ago. There is a move away from these types of properties towards separate houses – a move which was encouraged by the pandemic.

Housekeeper is worrying about the dangers of a mega Chinese Embassy in central London and the risks of spying compromising security and I am worrying about tarrif wars destabilising the world economy and our retirements in the mix. Suddenly, Housekeeper’s spirits are lifted when her long awaited Kitchen Equipment arrives all the way from Switzerland via a Wolverhampton Industrial Estate.

She has gone for some of the most expensive from Kuhn Rikon who I had never heard of because she doesn’t expect to do it again and these pans come with a Lifetime Guarantee. I should be quite old by the time that is up. Anyway, she is happy and that’s what matters.

Now, the Gym awaits. I don’t know why I’m doing it. I caught myself on the CCTV yesterday while it was being serviced and I walk like an OLD MAN! I’ve got get a grip on myself, Dear Reader. Really! What made it worse was the Service was done by the most lovely lad called Joe. He lives in Bognor Regis and had started last year as an apprentice. He is just 19 years old. He told me he went abroad for the first time last Summer with his girlfriend to Paris. I told him I wanted to see wedding plans by the time he returns next January. Can you imagine being that young? When he left, I told my wife I wanted to adopt him and she phoned his employers to put in the request. Unfortunately, we weren’t the first.

Wednesday, 21st January, 2026

Torrential rain all night and it continues this morning. I’m going to get soaked just walking across the garden to the Gym. And, even at 7.30 am, it’s dark! I was thinking how the mornings were already noticeably starting to get lighter earlier but this has reversed it. I should have gone abroad but I was mindful of the 90 day rule for Schengen.

Ten years ago this month we were well into the second month of our stay on Tenerife having spent the whole of the previous November. It was calm, relaxing and self-indulgent and that is what I don’t need at the moment.

I can’t live without my computer wherever I am in the world. I have a Desktop and a Laptop both with the same software so I can transition seamlessly beteen the two. The Laptop travels with me abroad. Of course, I can’t take my Laser Printer or my Scanner but I cope. Essential software includes:

• Microsoft Office 365 – Word, Excel Spreadsheet, Access Database, Outlook Email, etc.
• Macomedia Dreamweaver (Web Design), Fireworks (Graphic Design), Flash (Motion Design)
• Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop
• MS Money (Accounting)

Really, a computer is only as good as its software and the list above costs much more than the computer to buy. One of the annoying things is the software developers answer to piracy has been to make software ‘rentable’ rather than a one-off hard copy purchase. MS Office 365, for example, now costs me £105.00 per year. That’s why I am still using older verions of hard copies of most of the other software.

Five years ago today, I purchased my current Desktop Computer. We used to have a rule that a computer had a working life of 3 years. This one has been and continues to be fantastic. HP (Hewlett Packard) have developed an online management system that makes them confident enough to sell a 5 Year Onsite Support Warranty for just £26.40 because they know it won’t be needed. It hasn’t been. The Computer is working as well as it did when I bought it.

But this is all part of the way I view Retirement. It is a case of constantly trying to keep the plates spinning. The plates are personal health, financial health, property health all being kept up to speed. The first two seem to be going well currently but I am having to address the fact that our home is approaching 10 years old now so a review is being carried out by my Housekeeper/Site Manager of wear and tear defects that need restoration. Today, I am contacting a Sussex Firm called SnagDoctor to repair a number of surface defects. We have a small chip in a wood laminate floor, a discolouration stain on the surface of a Hall stand and a kitchen worksurface joint that is looking a bit less than perfect.

Thursday, 22nd January, 2026

Another dark and dreary day. It’s an expanded shopping day. Sainsburys, Dunelm, Tesco and we have to throw away a lot of delivery cardboard and the old bin at the Tip. The house breathed a sigh of relief. The difference between Tesco and Sainsburys clientele is really marked. It is an uncomfortable distinction.

While I was driving, I received a phone call from the oncologist with a date to talk about my annual review. It will be an uncertain time but I am optimistic.

Optimism is one of my saving graces. There are experiences in life that we either dismiss and move on or bank and pledge to find a solution to in the future. Almost all my failed experiences in life have stayed with me and I am resolved to find solutions to them. I must admit I have one which is probably unresolvable.

My family has always been a problem. My father died before he could be significant to me. My Mother was a nighmare. She was exceptionally controlling. At the time, I put it down to the death of my father and her need to assert control over her large family without a man in the home. There may have been something in that but it went far beyond that and into self centred domination.

Much of this was met with resistance from me which was characterised as teenage angst and I blamed myself but, in later life I discovered that my brothers and sisters had clearer perceptions of it than me. My Mother was never satisfied with me. She saw me as a failure. I was worth so much more. I had let her down. My brothers and sisters were so much more successful. Why couldn’t I be like them?

That is what she wanted me to think. That is what our conversations implied. I phoned her twice a week in adulthood. My individualism, my morality, my professionalism were never enough. My brothers and sisters were paragons set against my own achievements. She tried to direct my education/career to control my girlfriends/wife and I isolated myself from my over-achieving siblings from an early stage.

When we did meet up at her death, I was amazed to find their experience was not so dissimilar to my own. I found that they felt she had played us all off against each other, leading us all to feel we had failed in comparison. It was her game of life. It fixed us for life on the losing side. It was rather like the Catholicism she espoused and inculcated. We were taught that we carried original sin from birth, a stigmata that we could never resolve, never throw off. I must admit, I have never thrown it off and I have always blamed her for that. I have carried my failure and guilt. At least in late adulthood, I was able to tell her that even though she didn’t want to hear it. Like James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, she got to hear my Non Serviam to her chagrin.

I couldn’t care less about the Beckhams or their familial problems but it did strike a chord with me. My family was never poor. It was never unsure about its home, sustenance or warmth. We were as Middle Class as they come. We were always cared for. We were always secure. These are things I will always be thankful for but I am so sorry that I have been left with such a feeling of failure, of unworthiness, of disappointment in my life. I am so sorry that she made that happen.

Friday, 23rd January, 2026

Friday again. Dark and wet again. Another week draws to a close. Actually, as we come to the ten year anniversary of the completion of our house, we have been conducting a review. The plates are still spinning and we either move or deal with the signs of wear & tear. Actually, we have been doing it for quite a while. The ‘white goods’ have been replaced – Washing machine, Tumble Dryer, Dishwasher, Wine Cooler, Ovens. Areas of paintwork that inevitably get scratched just in the processes of living have been touched up or repainted completely by my Housekeeper.

There are some things that are less easy and catch my eye all the time to the point where I was going to have a full and costly refurbishment. The wood laminate Hall flooring has a couple of areas of damage probably from small, sharp stones brought in on trainers. One of the kitchen worksurface angle joints has slightly separated and started to wear away at the edges. Both of these could be replaced with a completely new Hall floor and a completely new kitchen worksurface but it would be very disruptive. Not least, the kitchen backsplash is not tile but continuous bonded glass which the worksurface goes under. Removal of one may mean removal of both.

For the sake of four, small defects, it would cost a few thousand pounds. Housekeeper, in a moment of inspiration, Googled ‘Surface Repairers’ and came up with three in our area who do exactly what we need. I contacted SnagDoctor with photographs and was told they were easy problems to solve at a cost of just £300.00. He is arriving at 8.00 am this morning.

Jumping ahead for the sake of the narrative. The snag doctor turns out to be something of a magician. The repairs are way beyond my expectations. For just £300.00 the results are incredible and with minimal disruption. I have his number on speed dial for future reference when Life inevitably knocks into Reality.

While the house is being repaired, I am playing with Artificial Intelligence software. I have asked it to create a logo for my Blog Site. It is a way to test drive a number of different AI clients.

I am using Microsoft CoPilot, Chat GTP and Google Gemini. I defined the Title, the colours and described its function. The AI agent did the rest. I’m not completely happy with any of them and I would go back for amendments but the MS Copilot offering which comes with my MS Office 365 is my favourite. What do you think, Dear Reader. Answers on a postcard.

Early afternoon and the worker has gone. The sun is out and the sky is blue. I’ve done my full Gym workout and the rest of the day is my own. What shall I do?

I went down to the beach. We were told it would be an exceptionally high tide over the next few days. It was certainly crashing on the shingle. There is something about the meeting of land, sea and sky that is so huge, global and scary as well as challenging, optimistic and promising.

Saturday, 24th January, 2026

Gloriously sunny morning with clear blue sky but rather an edge on the air. On the South Coast, it is only 9C/48F. In Hernando County, Florida which is 5 hrs behind us so the middle of the night as I write, it is going to reach 26C/79F. It is where little Mandy will be celebrating her 61st birthday. Quite astonishing.

I can see myself failing at hopscotch with her in Scouthead back in 1978 – a chubby, little blob. I can see her home from university with all her life ahead. Now she spreads her time between Florida and Surrey. Flying back and forth. Enjoying retirement, playing golf and coping with her husband.

All my life, I have been political even though it has taken different forms. I suppose rejection of my parents’ beliefs was an important step and was wrapped in religion and morality but inherently political for all that. It is important to admit that I am not actively political in a physical way. I did not/do not go on demonstrations, accost MPs in the constituency offices or stand on street corners making speeches. I am actively passive. I do it through words.

I am what is pejoratively referred to as a keyboard warrior. People like me are becoming more not less important to the political debate. Social Media – Facebook, Twitter (X), Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok, etc are filled with people like me. We are the guardians of the polity. These days, we are more. We inform the Mainstream Media – press, radio, tv, etc. We inform the new media like podcasts which is where so much of political debate is accessed these days.

https://www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/episodes/7DrwMZf

I would like to convert you, Dear Reader, by one, simple demonstration. If you never listen to anything else in the rest of your life, I implore you to listen to this. It is a podcast by The Newsagents member, Lewis Goodall formerly of Sky News, BBC Newsnight and LBC. It does involve you signing up to a Global Player account but it is free and you never know, you might use it again. If you can and while you are listening, bear these two things in mind:

• The idea of citizens carrying identity cards or having digital identities is current.
• One of Farage’s lieutenants said recently that all immigrants and communists should either be deported or thrown into jail.

Relate those facts to what this podcast records is happening across democratic America. Then breathe and think. I listened to it at 5.00 am this morning but you can save it for a more civilised time. Spoiler Alert: It could Activate you!

If it does or even if it just awakens some stirrings of interest, there are so many other podcasts that you can reach down from the shelf of Global Player. Here are just a few I listen to. You never know, Dear Reader, it could just change your life or persuade you to change the world.

Sunday, 11th January, 2026

Bloody Sunday! Don’t you just hate them. Silent as the grave. Dull and grey but mild. Boring. Let’s get on with the world again even though it’s a nightmare at the moment.

The world is on fire. The old order is being challenged like it hasn’t been since World War 2. Instability is the order of the day and it doesn’t feel comfortable. I have lived my life, we have lived our lives, Dear Reader, under a long period of peace. Yes, we have seen off the Cold War, the ‘Troubles in Ireland’, al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and they were significant in localised ways but Global Geopolitics have never been so fractious in my lifetime.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The Second Coming – William Butler Yeats

The lines above were written by the Irish poet in the immediate aftermath of World War 1 and at the start of Irish War of Independence. His world was much smaller then. Today, the same feeling prevails but it is difficult to be optimistic about any part of the World.

• Iran and Israel compete for dominance of the Middle East with Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and Yemen in the mix.
• Expansionist Russia currently seeks to regain Ukraine but has its sights set on the whole Baltic region and extends that in to EU Europe and out via Denmark to Greenland.
• China claims sovereignty over Tibet, Taiwan and Hong Kong based on historical precedence. It’s interest in Greenland is strategic.
• Geopolitics in South Asia is undergoing a sharp turn. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh tensions are constantly inflamed. Currently, Geopolitics in South Asia are undergoing a sharp turn. Bangladesh has increasingly viewed India as an adversary while leaning towards Pakistan, the very nation from which India helped liberate it in 1971.
• USA expands into South America, threatening Venezuela and into North America threatening Canada and into Europe threatening Denmark and Greenland. In The Middle East, it threatens Iran, Syria and Gaza.

I’m thinking of turning our Garage-cum-Gym into a drone-free bomb shelter. At least it’s got a year’s supply of red wine. I’m going out there to hide now anyway. Unfortunately, the Drama I am watching is centred on an America in the grips of its own self- aggrandisment. Art and Life are intimately intertwined, Dear Reader. Happy Sunday!

Monday, 12th January, 2026

A (relatively) warm, grey morning. Alexa defined my day at 6.00 am by announcing,

John, Today your calendar has one event. Black Bin to put out.

I have to admit, my heart sank a little. Does putting out the bin urge you to get up in the half light on a Monday morning, Dear Reader? It is only my determination and/or stupidity that forced me out into the day.

You have to see all things in perspective. When I was working, I longed for such days to be free to indulge myself. Now, it almost seems like a reproach for being old. I began to think about perspectives in life as I shaved. It is the pin pricks of time that help us see the relevance of the Now. Two, specific ones came to mind as I brushed my teeth. Yes, Dear Reader, I still have teeth. All the better to …. But then you know the children’s fable.

I have picked 1891 – just 60 years before I was born – and 1973 when I was 22 years old. There are many others but these two points explain to me at least who I am. I was born into a fairly insular, East Midlands village of Repton where my Grandfather and Father ran the family firm of Builders – Sanders & Son. I was the product of a strange union between an Atheist and a Roman Catholic; between a village boy and a city of London girl; between a fairly dour and unassuming architect and a pretentiously snobby, articulate artist.

Mum had quickly bought into the prestige of being in a long established village family of entrepreneurs with its extensive antecedents in the Methodist Chapel, Parish Council and Parochial entertainment. It was almost as if she felt grounded, established and complete. It was a union of which D.H.Lawrence would feel vindicated.

So, my first point of perspective is in my discovery of the Mill that brought my ancestors to Repton village when they bought and took over the mill in the mid-19^th century. By 1958, it was in ruins and deserted. It has always hidden in my memory but only made sense when I discovered the true extent of my family’s involvement in and contribution to the locality of my birth. I was amazed to find that my Great Grandparent’s gravestone was in the village graveyard at St Wystan’s church. My parents never mentioned them.

Richard, who had started a Carpentry & Coffin-making business and his wife, Anne, both lived to 70 years old, dying in 1891 & 1898 when my Grandfather took over the business and expanded the firm into a Building and Construction one. He built the house where I was born and referred to in this book – Repton Remembered as Nos. 81 and 83 in Repton Square.

So I was produced by a fairly monosyllabic East Midlander completely grounded in his locality and an articulate and Arty Southerner looking for establishment, acknowledgement and belonging. I have a lot of my father’s doggedness, determination and grit but even more of my Mother’s articulacy, creativity and self-awareness. Like my father, I eschewed Religion. Like my Mother I always wanted to express myself. Unlike my father, I was desperate to leave the confines of village life and move to the South of my mother.

I know this is a long – too long – post and that you will have left me long ago, Dear Reader, but for my sanity I will press on. From the first half you will easily see why the second has such relevance. In 1973, I met James Joyce and A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. It was me! He was describing ME! I couldn’t believe it. I don’t read books. I never read books other than for study or for teaching. I was teaching Advanced Level English Literature for the first time and what should be prescribed for me but This.

I was feeling quite vulnerable, empty and lost at the time. I was beginning to write – poetry mainly – but this book describes Stephen Dedalus, a boy growing up in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, as he gradually decides to cast off all his social, familial, and religious constraints to live a life devoted to the art of writing. I had cast off my family, my pretence at religion, my social connections and was living in a hovel in a faded Northern mill town. My father was dead as was his. His mother despairs of him and his rejection of the Catholic faith just as mine did.

One of the defining characteristics of the novel’s rising action is the pattern of following a triumph or epiphany at the end of each chapter by a deflation of that success at the beginning of the next, and this structure models the way in which Stephen’s perspective adapts over time. Of course, Stephen’s surname was not chosen acidentally. Dedalus is Daedalus – the cocky boy who flew too close to the sun and crashed and burned. The story of my life I fear.

Tuesday, 13th January, 2026

A dark morning of heavy rain. It’s going to be an indoors day. I will be in the Gym for a couple of hours but first I’ve got jobs to do. Chef is busy in her domain making soup in the kitchen and I have some Office jobs. First I have to contact my new best friend, Clarisse from St Omer in France where she did an M.A. in Cinematography. Who is Clarisse and how did I meet her?

Well, we bought our kitchen bin from Simple Human. As bins go, it is quite pleasant and cost about £120.00. We bought one 4 years ago and the 2 year warranty was just up when the mechanism broke. I ordered another one and, guess what, after just over 2 years, the bin is not working. I could have rented the bin from them at £1.00 per week and still broken even. The problem is, I recently bought 2 more years supply of their bin bags to fit so I am going to have to buy another one. I thought Simple Human should help me with that so I wrote to them.

Goodness knows why but Clarisse works for their Customer Support Department. She wrote back to me asking for a video of the bin working. The above clip is a love letter to Clarisse. I tried to impress her with my expertise. You see how sad and bored I am.

I’m listening to Chopin again. Never a good sign, Dear Reader. It makes me moody and sad. This Nocturne OP.9 reflects the scene outside and will fill the void that is a wet Tuesday in January.

I’m doing really exciting things now. Contacting the Bowel Screening Programme to request new tests which cease automatically by age 74. They are due in May and I’m 75 in April. I will probably have to pay for a colonoscopy next year at the 3 year anniversary of my last one although I will put the squeeze on my Doctor for an NHS one.

I don’t know what you think about new cars at the moment. I want one every other week never mind every year. My current car, a Honda Self charge Hybrid, is 15 months old and has done a huge 5,000 miles. I had intended to buy a Plug-in Hybrid next time but the current climate is suggesting I should wait. I love my Honda. It is delightful to drive but in an idle moment I have found myself casting round for an alternative. I’m quite taken with the Mercedes GLC all electric.

What I have found is that there are a number of major car manufacturers who are on the brink of collapse and at the head of this group is Nissan which would prove a major headache for UK plc. They tried to get Honda to take them over but Honda found the business wasn’t viable and pulled back. It looks like the writing is on the wall.

To show you how bored I am today, I leave you with a mug shot. I never drink from mugs. We don’t have any in the house by command. I know I am odd but I love cups and saucers. I went through my whole teaching career using a cup and saucer while all around me had their mugs. I found this one quite funny though. You have to give it a minute before you ear it.

Wednesday, 14th January, 2026

The sun is up. The sky is blue. I’ve got a new bin coming too. My new girlfriend, Clarisse, was so impressed with my film that she is sending me a replacement bin immediately. That’s £120.00 saved. What a lovely girl! Actually, she told me the bin had a 10 yr Warranty so I can keep replacing them every two years forever. All it takes is a little bit of effort and a hint of friendliness

I’ve had to order some new ear buds for my iPad and phone. I lost my current ones I think in the airport. I’ve been trying to get on with headphones but they are just too clumsy and uncomfortable. I like the lightness and noise cancelling of in-the-ear buds so Amazon are sending me some today which is nice of them.

My wife copes with Chopin played at high volume from the Office but I need to keep it from people in hotels or on planes and blue tooth earbuds are the best for me. I’ve got 8 flights booked for this year already and passing the time by watching downloads from Netflix is proving really helpful. Earbuds will allow me to do that.

Had to go down to the fish supplier near the beach this morning and everywhere felt like Spring – warm, sunny, windless and joyful. I paid with my phone a bill of £220.00. I don’t even think about it anymore. I never carry cash or cards. I do everything digitally through my phone. High speed broadband is available everywhere now. Even the Fishermen’s shed has it and can process a digital payment.

I, for one, am disappointed that the Digital Identity Card is not going to be universally rolled out as announced today. It will come and it won’t be long. Life is becoming too complicated without it.

Thursday, 15th January, 2026

It is warm but dark and wet – very wet – this morning. You wouldn’t want to go out unless you had to. Unfortunately, I do. I have an appointment at the Sussex Eye Hospital.

I said before that I was born with the sight in my left eye so thoroughly impaired that I can’t see anything but strong light sources. I can’t see people, or anything other than hazy shapes. I certainly couldn’t read or write or watch TV, etc with just that eye. It meant that all through my youth there was a fear that my predeliction to play Rugby and fight a lot would result in my ‘good’ eye being damaged and I would be blind.

I’ve stopped playing Rugby and fight a lot less but I still worry as soon as I get grit in my eye because it temporarily impairs my vision and shows me what it would be like if things went wrong. I had a real panic about 25 years ago when I got up one morning, opened my newspaper (That takes you back.) and I couldn’t read the text. I was sent for an eye test which revealed that a blood vessel had burst in the back of my eye. Fortunately it self repaired over a few hours but I have been monitored twice a year since then.

My check in December was absolutely clear. Excellent eye sight in the chart reading test and no sign of Diabetic Rhetinopathy. However, having happily skipped out of the Hospital, I was disappointed to receive a letter informing me that, on closer analysis of the negatives, a change at the back of the eye had been identified and I would need to attend an Opthalmic Consultant’s clinic for further assessment. That’s where I’m going with some trepidation today. Wish me luck, Dear Reader.

At least they won’t be calling me up for the military as our next fighting force is prepared for World War III. A one-eyed geriatric? No chance.

Well, I am currently sipping a glass of champagne having come home from the Eye Hospital. It is a brand new facility that I was grateful to be seen in. I was met by a Chinese Nurse who put me through a full sight test. With my right eye, I could read every line of the chart. With my left eye, I could not see the chart at all or the Nurse. I had drops put in my eyes. About ten minutes later, I was seen by a lovely chap from Napoli. He scanned my eyes while we discussed my route through Italy to Greece and food we both liked from the country.

I was passed on to the Consultant – a lovely, tiny Vietnamese man – who I took to immediately. He told me that I had been referred to him because the Diabetic Retinopathy Clinic were worried about my left eye. I immediately relaxed because that has been useless to me since birth. They thought I had a detached retina which I only know about because boxers suffer from it. It turns out that I haven’t. All is as it should be. No cataracts either.

What a lovely day. I thought I would share it with you, Dear Reader. I am so relieved. I can see clearly now even though it’s still raining.

Friday, 16th January, 2026

Lovely warm and sunny morning. Woke up thinking how lucky I was after the wonderful news about my eyes yesterday and about the delightful people who I’d met in providing the service. Only one member of NHS staff was native English and that was the Receptionist. Every one of the Medical Staff was foreign. They could not have been more pleasant and, although initially a little reticent, the moment I showed an interest in where they were from, they talked enthusiastically about their homeland. Our Health Service would collapse without them so a Reform vote could be a very dangerous thing. They would prefer us to go for an insurance-based payment system anyway.

I have a mobile contract with EE giving me 2 smartphones and 2 mobile numbers each with unlimited calls, texts and data including European roaming. The 2 yr contract currently costs me 2 x £85.00 = £170.00 per month for the 2. The smartphones are ‘free’ with the monthly payment. Over 24 months they have cost me £4,080.00 but when I get to the end of the contract they are my property and I am entitled to 2 new phones on my contract.

I have 2 Samsung S24 Ultra mobiles and I will be given an upgrade to the next model – Samsung S25 Ultra. It won’t be massively different to look at. The corners are rounded off which I prefer but the chip inside is much quicker in processing everything and the main camera goes from 8MP to 50MP Ultra Wide Camera, 200MP Wide-angle Camera and 50MP/10MP Telephoto Camera. Readers of the Blog will know that it has moved on from all (too much) text to quite a lot of (too much?) illustration. The phone camera is important to me almost as much as the ability to make and receive calls.

For months, EE have been bombarding me with suggestions of ‘free’ early upgrades. What they don’t say but what I know is that they are afraid I will leave them in February when my contract is up. They also don’t say although I know it, if I upgrade early, I have to send my current smartphones back to them in exchange. They think I’m mad. The 2 new phones would cost me 2 x £1350.00 = £2,700.00 if I had to buy them but now I can sell the old ones for around 2 x £500.00 = £1000.00 to offset my monthly bill reducing it by £41.60 a month over the life of the contract.

Things do change so much over time. Since my last mobile contract, I have got rid of my landline. I was interested to read that BT are upgrading all landlines to internet based over the next few months. I haven’t missed my line at all. I used to live with my iPad in my hand. I still have one but now it is my phone I live with in my hand. I am communicating with friends all day even though they are mainly still in the North of England.

My photo Memory Box threw up pictures from a snowy North of England on this day last year, a house in Surrey where M&K had almost destroyed two Christmas Cakes before flying back to Florida 3years ago and M with P&C in Florida just 4 years ago.

Clarisse has been true to me because she’s that type of girl. The new bin has arrived and is accompanied by a 10 year warranty. Just realised, I will be almost 85 before I have to buy another one. I’ll make a note on my on-line calendar.

Saturday, 17th January, 2026

Lovely, bright and warm morning. It’s one when Alexa has announced that I have no commitments. What am I going to do. Well, I’ve been talking to my old friend and Digs-mate, John Ridley about South Korea where he spends lots of time. Did you know that South Korea has the world’s lowest birth rate other than the Vatican City and I think that’s debatable. I keep telling myself that I should go out there and meet him but I can’t quite get up enough enthusiasm – for the country not my friend.

I am booking a couple of short trips to France – one in March and another in May. They will be mainly wine-buying trips but we can hope to fit in a few places to walk in the Spring sunshine as well. I want to get our identities established on the new, Schengen Visa for non-members. It involves face and finger print scan just like the American ESTA. When I go the first time, I will be still 74 but by the second visit, I will have reached ¾ century.

I becoming more and more obsessed with age and achieving all the things I have to do before it’s too late. I look back at my younger self and think of all the things I could and should have done better. It was a different time as all the signs illustrate but it is still close enough to try to understand.

At least United have rediscovered some old, original spirit this afternoon. Well worth waiting for.

Sunday, 4th January, 2026

A cold start to the day after a clear and starry, moonlit night which fell to -3C/27F. Strangely, very few signs of frost and the low, strong sun is already streaming through the windows.

Well, you read it here first only yesterday. The world is already at war. The post WW2 rules-based order has broken down in spectacular fashion. The Americans have invaded a foreign, country and kidnapped its Head of State without even seeking United Nations agreement. Even Bush in Iraq and Libya didn’t do that.

Overnight all newspapers recognise the significance of this action at their own level. Regime Change will be both publicly decried by the Russians and Chinese but they will also see it as tacit legitimation of their imperialistic ambitions in reclaiming Eastern European countries like Ukraine and Taiwan which China has always believed belonged to them. If Trump believes he can get away with it, his next targets are Cuba and Greenland which will force Europe’s hand.

So many of these instabilities in the old order will force Europe to choose and so force UK to choose. War anywhere can quickly spark World War. If you are under 40 years of age, prepare your excuses now if you wish to dodge the Draft. It may well be coming sooner than you think.

In the light of Global Instability, everything else I think or write will seem utterly trivial but then Life must go on. I won’t be called up. I won’t be asked to contribute even though my world and yours, Dear Reader, may well be rocked before we die. All I can do is read, think, write, talk, lobby people in Government. Other than that, I have to enjoy my life and pursue my dreams and goals.

At the beginning of December, I published the latest tally of my experimental investment of £18,000.00 in Premium Bonds. I was rather pleased with myself in reporting that in the first three months I had won five prizes.

January has not let me down even if it was reported rather late. I have won 6 prizes now. Only £50.00 this month but it brings earnings up to £300.00 so far and puts my interest rate on course for 9.4% over the year if you factor in 40% tax rate.

A girl I haven’t seen for more than 50 years posted a picture, a haunt, a memory of my past. Appropriately, it is now closed, rennovated and repurposed. Even the trees are skeletons in a Winter world but it remains beautiful in memory and reality.

And yet we, mere mortals have moved on, mellowed but deteriorated. Memory plays tricks on one’s mind. When you are 20, you feel adult and ready to make a contribution to the world. In retrospect, as this second photo of some of my contemporaries shockingly illustrates, we were still just children mascarading as adults. So much life has passed under the bridge.

However, as I wrote yesterday, these members of the Boomer Generation missed the last world war and will miss the next world war other than as observers. Actually, it will not be a war of tanks and boots on the ground but one of Cyber invasion and Drone attack. I could volunteer for that.

Monday, 5th January, 2026

A cold night and we have quite a hard frost this morning with ice glistening on the pavements. Fortunately, the morning also brought strong sunshine and all the signs of Winter were burnt off almost immediately. My cousin from her house in Bellon in the Charente sent a winter photo

A friend from Greater Manchester posted this morning shot although, I know where I would rather be cold. Actually, I bought Easyjet return flights for Tenerife in November last night and they cost me £150.00 less than this year because I booked early in the ‘Sale’. So, I’ve now got 8 flights booked for 2006 so far and looking round for the next.

Of course I could have been here this week if I hadn’t sold the house. It is the brightness of the light and colours which make it attractive and the fact is is 15C warmer than here.

There was a time when making fresh coffee was a fairly simple and cheap procedure. It certainly isn’t now. A cheap percolator jug, some ground coffee and hot water was all that was needed. The ubiquity of Coffee shops on our High Streets has given us a desire for equally good coffee and modern machines and that has meant technology.

I’m on about my fifth fresh coffee maker and it is by far the best but it is also by far the most demanding of the user. Different Hoppers for different beans. Multiple settings for the grinder and the brewing head in terms of coarsenes of the grind and intensity of the brew have to be learnt and saved. The machine allows me to make and save individualised settings for multiple users. Then there are about 10 different hot and cold coffees to choose from and coffee is fed in between layers of milk to exactly the users preference.

The milk dispenser has to be comprehensively cleaned each day and the water container has to have a new filter unit fitted 6 times a year. And then there is the descaling. I’ve just completed it and it took about an hour of multiple processes. It takes over my life. The coffee is great but how much time have I got? I had to go to the Dentist this morning to have my teeth descaled as well. That’s even worse.

Tuesday, 6th January, 2026

Another cold night but no frost this morning and the sky is deliciously blue and sunny. My friends in Yorkshire seem to be confined to the house this morning. They can watch the outdoors on Sky TV.

First on the list of jobs this morning is to renew my travel insurance. Although I get it ‘free’ through my bank account, I have to pay for additions like special, medical circumstances and now, an age-related extension. Getting older has all sorts of humiliations. You really don’t want to read headlines like this on a Monday morning.

If you read the Blog yesterday, you will see that I reported on the National (Premium) Bonds experiment. I said it had failed me this month. Actually, if you go back to yesterday, you will see I actually won again but it was reported late. Hope springs eternal.

I listen to a radio 4 programme called More or Less which is about popular statistics. I have always liked Maths and Statistics. The programme interrogates and re-evalutes the sorts of figures that public figures and particularly politicians bandy about. This morning, it was looking again at Life Expectancy.

Popular belief is that Life Expectancy can be tracked in an ever rising line on the graph only dented by major events like World War and Pandemic. Many things are predicated on that belief like Retirement Age and Pension payment, Insurance Cover and Driving Qualification, etc..

Actually, from 2011, increases in life expectancy slowed after decades of steady improvement, prompting much debate about the causes. Then, in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was a more significant turning point, causing a sharp fall in life expectancy, the magnitude of which has not been seen since World War II. In the UK (2022-2024), life expectancy at birth is around 83.0 years for females and 79.1 years for males. 

It is likely that this is a blip in the long term trend but we cannot be sure and, if we can’t afford medical advances because we have to divert money to Defence, then it may take a long time to restart the climb.

If you want a reason to be cheerful, optimism can be found for my age group in these statistics from the ONS. If you have already staggered to the age of 74, your chances are better than for someone who is only starting out on the climb.

Wednesday, 7th January, 2026

Gorgeous morning. Dentist appointment at 8.30 am Just a routine check-up today but I’m spending too much time there. Three trips recently. Still, at least I’ve still got teeth and my dentist is a gorgeous, Persian Pricess called Fariba ( a Persian name that means ‘enticing’) so I can’t complain.

The dentist surgery is near the beach so it was a good excuse to have a walk at 8.00 am this morning. So clean and reviving – the air, the smell, the light and the sound of birds wheeling and screeching.

Back home, I’m going in the Gym for a long session. Actually, I’m really looking forward to it. I’m watching an American political thriller called Scandal which centres around a former Whitehouse ‘fixer’ who now operates with a team as a private company dedicated to making problems ‘go away’. I’m loving it and I hardly realise the pain of exercise I am so absorbed by the drama. It is exactly my sort of thing. This drama will get me through the entire winter. There are 7 Series comprising 124 Episodes.

I hope you’re following the Trump advance, Dear Reader. If you are, you will realise that I wasn’t exaggerating when I talked about World War 3 and planning for Conscription across Europe. If Europe allows the current incumbent of the Whitehouse to blunder round the world uncontrolled, first NATO will fall – one of Putin’s great dreams – and then China, Russia and America will divide the World and claim their own fiefdoms. Imperialism is on the march.

And just in case you didn’t believe me, after we heard about a Russian Oil Tanker trying to evade sanctions by going along off the UK coast and heavily laden US military aircraft landing in UK yesterday, this morning we have heard that American troops are boarding the Russian vessel which Russia is calling an act of war. Better look out your tin helmet and prepare your nuclear bunker!

Thursday, 8th January, 2026

A mild but grey morning. It’s one or the other at the moment – cold and bright or mild and grey. I look forward to combining the best of both worlds again soon. Unfortunately, I will be 75 before returning to the sunshine. My only consolation is that my Best Man, Kevin, is 75 today.

I took the chance to inform him that another Leeds resident died last night. Terry Yorath played for Leeds United for a decade but has died aged …. 75.

It all suggests that we should use every waking moment well as we get older. Don’t slow down. Speed up! I have to say, I have never been a long sleeper. I have been both a night owl and a lark. All through my working life, I went to bed at midnight and got up at 6.00 am. That pattern has changed a bit with retirement.

I try to go to bed just after 11.00 pm. but still wake up at 5.45 am. I try to remain active to encourage sleep but I am not sleeping well. This morning, after a full Gym session yesterday which exhausted me but last night’s sleep was fitful, my head is full of thoughts and I end up listening to a podcast which feeds more ideas.

Went down to the beach again this morning and it couldn’t be more different to yesterday. Damp, misty and dull. But still lovely. Evocative and emotional. A place to lose yourself in. Eternity.

Friday, 9th January, 2026

Mild but dark and damp. Depressingly uninviting. Actually, I have no need to go out at all today other than walking across the garden to the Gym. My calendar is empty for the next four days.

This day ten years ago, I was only 64 and I was flying Gatwick – Tenerife South for a month’s stay at the Blue Los Gigantes Hotel. I was the last of three months that we’d been there before moving in to our new house in April 2016.

The hotel was comfortable with two or three pools, a Gym and Spa, three Restaurants and a nice, big room to retreat to. It was after this stay, however, that we decided we didn’t want ‘managing’ any more how ever luxurious it was. We like to be in full control of our lives. Since then, we have always rented properties to do our own thing with the exception of short stays of a week or less.

Like every January, I have started off alcohol-free. In fact, last time I started on September 1st 2024 and got all the way to June 2025 before I drank again. I was almost ready to be accepted into Methodism when I panicked and let go. This time it will go on until June 2026 when I fly to Thessaloniki although a trip to France in the Spring will be a big test. Generally, if I decide to do something or really want something, I achieve it. And so it will be this time, I assure you.

Part of my ‘addiction’ is the process, the routine. So, I keep the routine but remove the alcohol instead. The table is laid just the same for Supper with the same wine glasses and a bottle of wine but it is guilt-free. What a saint I am, Dear Reader!

Saturday, 10th January, 2026

I’ve always been an emotional man and I ended yesterday feeling sad. Don’t know why but I find the sea a soothing consolation and that’s where I went this morning. It was a gorgeous place to be with strong sunshine and lots of beach revealed as the sea retreated to France.

Warm and bright, the Mediterranean colours were to drink in. Nourishment for the soul. Actually, I don’t have a soul – I had mine removed – but you know what I mean.

For years I have been flying out of Gatwick and Heathrow. If I was going for a week or less, I would drive and park. For longer, I would take a taxi, stay in an airport hotel before the flight. Recently, I found it was cheaper to drive and park than to take a return taxi ride. It is certainly more convenient for me. I prefer to travel under my own steam.

I have driven a Hybrid for some years now so this article in The Telegraph today gave me pause for thought. I was aware that long periods of idleness were bad for the battery. I even got my neighbour to drive mine every week when I left it at home. This woman’s £120,000 plug-in hybrid Land Rover – a rugged, all terrain vehicle – was parked for a fortnight in a cold carpark hit by frosts and she came back to find it totally immobilised. The battery was completely flat and the car management system which is, of course, electronic, was completely wiped out. It is something to think about.

Sunday, 28th December, 2025

Out in the garden last night at the end of December it was warm and bright. I was being over looked by this lunar – tic who was hanging around.

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain   
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain   
Of being young; that it can’t come again,   
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

Philip Larkin – Sad Steps

In poetry, a crescent moon is often used as a metaphor for a new beginning. For Larkin, it was a new beginning that can’t come again. Don’t you just love him? The harsh, dark realism of his thoughts.

Having spent Christmas Eve with young people – kids with their whole lives ahead of them, Kids who wore their dreams on their sleeves for all to wonder at, Larkin’s words are an honest dagger to the heart for those of us who are so old we can only manufacture small lights of hope ahead. We can look to viewing new places and touching old friends but all the while bounded by the sadness that is time.

Last night I completed watching a potentially harrowing film on Netflix call Goodbye June. I know you will think I am mad but it had to be done. June – the Mother played by Helen Mirren – was in her final days as she died of cancer. Her family were in constant attendance and brought all the emotional baggage of family relations with them. The whole process was wonderfully redeemed by the way this family rallied around June in her final hours with admirable strength. She passed away as they performed the Nativity for her in the hospital room. There was something incredibly uplifting about it. I still cried.

… a reminder of the strength and pain   
Of being young; that it can’t come again,   
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

Does meeting on the dark side of the moon involve living or dying? For me it is living long and dying late. Going out for a walk through the woods.

It is a grey, chilly Winter’s day. Even the birds are conserving their energy today. Ivy climbs vigorously up the trunks of dormant trees and dead leaves rustle in the undergrowth.

Nature will regenerate as the Spring warms up but there are signs of the present past as I walk down the tree-lined path. Who tied these ribbons of memory? Are they for memories of love or death or longing? And do you care, Dear Reader?

Monday, 29th December, 2025

Oh, it’s coming, Dear Reader, 2026 is almost here. Going to be a very big year, a momentous year. I can just feel it. WooHoo!

Crisp – cold even – morning with a gorgeously, inviting sky. I woke at 3.33 am and struggled to get back to sleep. Why do I always wake up on these mystical numbers? By the time, Radio 4 Today programme came on at 6.00 am, I was falling asleep. Unfortunately, the programme was gripping for that time in the morning.

Each day over Christmas, they invite someone with a particular specialism to be a Guest Editor for the day. This morning, it was Mustafa Suleyman. He is a leading light in the advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Of course, AI is all the rage at the moment. It is hard to turn on a news programme without hearing it mentioned. It is hard to read a serious newspaper (I exclude the Daily Fail & the Daily Sexpress colour comics) without at least one item on AI being included.

AI has been with us for years but is going to be absolutely revolutionary in the 21^st Century akin to the Industrial Revolution of the 19^th Century. Then, thousands of workers left the fields where they worked in Agriculture and moved to create towns where they worked in Manufacture. The dislocation engendered dire conditions which it took decades to ameliorate and it spawned the Labour Movement.

More than 30 years ago, I was using Artificial Intelligence in its infancy with Authorware. I had a problem to solve and that is the best way to adopt and adapt new technology. I was trying to create computer-based individualised learning programmes which could be delivered to large numbers of students by small numbers of ‘teachers’. In fact, they didn’t need to be fully qualified teachers but could just be Learning Support workers who were cheaper to employ.

It involved providing teaching content integrated with testing and assessment followed by tailored extension according to previous achievement. It was all to be put through the Intranet that I had designed and launched for staff and students. I learnt fast because I needed to.

Today in Education, you will find students using AI to write their essays for them and that immediately throws up the problem. How do you push out AI across our world without it being used to force for bad. It should not be a tool to help people cheat. What will those whose jobs are lost to AI do to earn a living? Here are just a few:

• Interpreters and translators
• Proof readers
• Statistical assistants
• Telephone operators
• Sales representatives
• Legal Assistants
• Diagnostic Healthcare

Anything where the centre of the work is rote learning and replication, logical development is ideal for AI and those jobs will no longer be done by humans. Just as in the last revolution, Ford replaced thousands of workers making cars with each worker doing one task on a production line to build a car and then moved on to replacing most workers with robots so it will be for AI.

What Artificial Intelligence can’t do is be human and the speaker this morning helped me understand the difference. He boiled it down to the ability of humans to feel pain and sadness, to emapthise with others feeling those things which AI can’t do. So, for example, the job of Diagnostic Healthcare can be done by AI machine – x-raying a body to look for cancer and then looking unerringly through the scans to find it without getting tired, bored or distracted. Whereas, the human sympathy and empathy of Healthcare will still need human input.

As a retired old Blogger, my use for AI is much less urgent. So many people want words because they find them so difficult. I don’t. In fact my hackles rise when AI suggests improvements to my writing. I particularly want help with graphics. Above are three versions of the same photo. The one on left is the original. In the middle one, ChatGTP added Santa Hats and on the right Baby Piglets were the presents. The problem is that it is all so effortless.

Tuesday, 30th December, 2025

I’ve just received a video clip from a skinny, old man who is skiing in France before returning to Florida. Looks like he’s got plenty of snow.

On this day, 47 years ago, our guests were struggling across the country and across the Pennines during a gritter strike in thick snow. It is our Wedding Anniversary today and I have helped my wife celebrate by ordering her a new set of pans to replace those bought 30 years ago. What more could a girl want? Well, it seems quite a lot.

It is a gorgeous day outside but quite cold. Started the morning with Porridge. Chef is cooking Scallops Gratin for Supper and Langoustines with Focaccia and a bottle of Champagne. Went down to the Marina for a walk. The light was glorious.

We have been discussing how to mark our 50^th anniversary in 2028. It has been tentatively decided that an Australian trip would be a good idea. Been meaning to go for years so we will make a real go of it – Fly First Class Flight. Stay for at least a month. No expenses spared. It will be once in a life time.

Always wanted to see Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and Bondi Beach so that is the plan …. assuming we are still alive. Might even meet up with an old school friend of mine. Lots to look forward to, Dear Reader, down under.

Wednesday, 31st December, 2025

And so another year is on its death bed. I remember the feverish anticipation of the new millenium, the excitement and the fear. I was still in my 40s. I was starting out on the project of building a house on a Greek Island. At the same time, there was all the build up to the Millenium Bug and how it could destroy computers and the internet. Hard to believe 25 years have passed. In that same time ahead, we will be 99, Dear Reader. Hard to believe it’s going to happen.

Crystal clear morning with a touch of frost. We did go down to 2C/36F and the cars have a dusting of cold. Walking outside will mean Fleeces today because it is not going to get much warmer throughout. Going out to collect the new kitchen pans. Ordered them from ProCook yesterday and they have been delivered to a collection point nearby this morning. Fantastic service.

I’ve been having a bit of a culture binge over Christmas. Last night I completed the Peter Schaffer Mozart Biopic on Sky Atlantic. Contrary to my expectations, the almost 3hrs of drama held me from start to finish. I had forgotten how much I loved the music of Mozart and to see it in dramatic context of his life made it even more delicious. Particularly, I thought it captured the contradistinction of man and art.

The utter genius of the boy who wote his first opera aged 10 yrs, who could just pick up a music score and hear the whole arrangement in his head, who could play so many of the instruments himself that he wrote for, who could dash off the wonder that is Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovani or Cosi Fan Tuti and then his final, glorious but unfinished Requiem and then to run along side the drunken, drug-taking, whoring, Roué who parted from his utterly supportive wife as he sort new pleasures. All this and he died aged 35 yrs at the height of his creative powers.

You may know of the famous sculpter, Eric Gill whose work was aclaimed worldwide but who suddenly fell from grace when his diaries revealed that he had sexually abused his young daughters over a lengthy period of their childhood. It revisited the debate about the separation or interrelationship of art and reality, creator and creation.

In a sense, it is there in the life of Mozart but it is definitely there in the life of one of my heroes, Philip Larkin. Hero is not the right word. I don’t think I would like Larkin at all if we had met. As atheists, he and I agree on his view of the bleak hopelessness of life.

Key themes in his poetry are:

• Monotony and Boredom of Life
• Futility of Love and Relationships
• Loss of Faith and Meaning
• A focus on unhappiness, failure, and limitation
• Inevitability of Death and Extinction

What is shocking is what you realise about him in his letters and personal life. You find his out and out Racism, Misogyny, bigotry and, frankly, a degree of Fascism. His father was strongly pro-Nazi in the 1930s. Larkin himself was an isolated, insulated man with parochial tastes and used his women casually.

Does this change my view of his poetry. I must admit it has given me pause for thought in the past but, ultimately, works of art can only be appreciated as free-standing pieces and Larkin’s poetry speaks to me so strongly that I am constantly saying to myself, Why didn’t I think of that? I wish I’d written that.

Over the past few days, I have been binge listening to the Poet Laureate, the Huddersfield poet, Simon Armitage, revisiting a number of Larkin’s poems on BBC Radio Sounds. Whether you know him or not, it’s well worth a listen.

Thursday, 1st January, 2026

It’s come. Happy New Year, Dear Reader. Happy 2026. I told you, it’s going to be an exciting year of risk and danger but plenty of enjoyment as a reward.

As a regular reader you will know that I have a Memory Box which throws up what happened across the years on any given day. On the last day of 2006, I was watching the old year die behind the hills of this bleak, Pennine road. At the time, I thought it was romantic. Now it just looks empty.

Twenty years on, I walked down the beach road last night and, in spite of the lights, it was cold and equally bleak. Almost no lights out at sea as I stared into the inky blackness. Maybe a bit warmer than the Pennine Moors. To the right is the endlessly undulating sea. To the left is the newly developed and brightly lit enchanted parkland path leading to old and fading civilisation.

Of course, light and darkness are emotional states. Light in the darkness symbolises hope, enlightenment, knowledge, and goodness overcoming times of struggle, confusion, or profound sadness.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.   
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.   
Till then I see what’s really always there:   
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,   
Making all thought impossible but how   
And where and when I shall myself die.  

Aubade – Philip Larkin

For Larkin, Light can offer only fleeting comfort while darkness signifies loneliness or the ultimate void, existential terror and despair. Don’t you just have to love his optimism! He’s right though. He articulates completely what so many of us think.

Friday, 2nd January, 2026

And so it goes, just like you said it should be …. Coming to the week’s end and well on into January and 2026. Soon, it will feel completely normal, taken for granted, and we will be anticipating 2027. Bring on the fireworks!

I have rather over indulged myself recently like so many others. Now I have to pay for it by reigning in my instincts. The diet has been readdressed and the exercised routine tightened. Home made Museli and Home made Soups are the order of these days. More concentration in the Gym rather than walking outside is another readjustment.

I’ve decided to indulge myself in a non-calorific way instead. I’ve been listening to the wonderful, Elgar Cello Concerto – self reflective and elegiac. Written in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, it was not a success until the mid 1960s and long after his death. It was Jacqueline du Pré who brought it to public attention and it is now one of the most played classical pieces.

Talking about over indulgence, I was brought up short by a poverty report discussed in the Manchester Evening News this morning telling me that Deprivation levels are higher than ever in Oldham today. Ashton Road and the Eldon Street Estate, parts of Hathershaw, St. Mary’s, Coldhurst, Holts, and Glodwick are some of the most deprived wards in the whole UK. Many of them have occupied that position since I first went there to teach in 1972. Nothing has changed their reputations for more than 50 years. Objectively, no doubt, they are better off but Relatively not.

It is unbelievable that nothing dramatic has happened to improve the lot of Gtr. Manchester inhabitants in general and Oldhamers in particular over half a century. When I walked through Manchester and down Oxford Road to the Business School in the early 1970s, it was impossible to get there without seeing lots of beggars. It always struck me as ironic the contrast between the affluence the central tenet of the Business School raison d’etre and the utter hopelessness of those outside on the street.

And after 50 years when we have Never had it so Good, where Things can only get Better and where we are enthusiastically going to Level Up, little has improved. You only have to look at the quality of the infrastructure, the old, damp and cold housing, the lack of meaningful jobs, the poverty of ambition and absence of inspiration to see we have failed.

What also strikes me is how inurred my life is from these things. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone begging other than in Greece. It was a regular feature of Huddersfield and Manchester. Here it isn’t. There must be poverty as everywhere but it is not so dominant or obvious. Supermarkets still collect for foodbanks and adverts are placed for people wanting to rent a small home and I shudder at the thought but it isn’t a central feature. I so hope this Labour Government are given the chance to make that difference over the next 10 years.

Saturday, 3rd January, 2026

We had a clear, moonlit sky last night and a frost this morning but it was soon burnt off by strong sunshine. I slept rather fitfully and woke to listen to a podcast about predictions for the year ahead. The News Agents were predicting the resurrection of the Labour Government with much better economic news and the rise of Starmer on the back of it. They were also predicting World instability and discussing the chances of the reintroduction of Conscription. It all chimed into my dreams and waking thoughts.

Somewhere around 1958, I was exploring my world and wandered in to one of our outhouses in the garden. It was what we called the Boot House which was supposed to do what it said on the tin – somewhere to store muddy boots out of the house. Another was an outside toilet and another was a Coal House for coal and firewood. These outhouses were still used but were really relics of another age when houses had open fires and outdoor toilets as a standard. The house had been built by my Great Grandfather’s firm over a 100 years ago.

Actually, this row of outhouses had been built over the Water Well and in my early life the kitchen still contained a hand pump for bringing water up. Although we did have taps and running water installed through lead pipes, Mum insisted on using the well water hand-pumped up to wash the girls’ hair in because the water was so soft.

Just putting down these words shocks me and makes me realise how far we have come over my lifetime. It was provoked by a dream I had in the early hours of the morning. I was around 7 years old, my father had introduced me to gardening by buying me a garden tool set and a packet of turnip seeds to try out for my birthday. I went into the Boot House and uncovered this trunk. Inside there was a sinister looking thing which I now know was a gasmask. There was an army cap, a damp and mouldy suit, shoes and some curling old papers. I think there was also a stick that I now find was known as a swagger stick that officers carried. That trunk had been stored in there for almost a decade.

It was confusing and exciting. I asked my parents and they didn’t seem too keen to talk about it but knew they had to. I learnt that it was my father’s Demob Trunk and I was amazed to hear that, although he had been a Captain in the Royal Engineers serving in Palestine for most of the war, he had left the army as a Major. Major Eric Sanders returned from directing squaddies building bridges in Palestine to directing craftsmen to build houses in the east Midlands

Of course, after the war, Rationing continued until July 1954 when I was 3 years old and Conscription didn’t end until 1960 having taken a number of Dad’s apprentices who didn’t return until 1963. Shocking to realise how close I was to it all and I think this dream could have been provoked by the current view that World War III is almost unavoidable with Europe having to commit huge resources to resisting Russian and Chinese and American Imperialism.

The idea of UK Conscription being part of the planning is seriously being discussed in dark corners of the Government and Civil Service at the moment. Anyone – male or female – aged under 40 yrs old could well be called up. Ironically, the Millennial and Generation Z cohorts are the generations most rapidly losing faith in democracy. It appears many would prefer a strong, autocrat because their elected leaders don’t seem to be performing for them.

Our cohort may have been born on the fringes of war and may die on the fringes of war again without ever having to fight.

Sunday, 21st December, 2025

Today is the shortest day of the year and tonight is the longest night. Everything gets better from here, Dear Reader. Dust off your bikini. The Summer is coming!

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse ….

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a lustre of midday to objects below.

What a lot of nonsense. Outside it is blue sky with strong sun. The grass is growing and the birds are signalling signs of Spring. There are daffodils forcing their heads up to the sky and trees budding with sweet, new green tips.

We are well past the middle of December and 2025 is dying fast. Our neighbours are setting off on the 27th for an 11 week cruise of the Caribbean. Four other neighbour households are arranging a joint holiday on Skiathos. I have booked up 4 different trips abroad amounting to 10 weeks abroad so far. In the new year, I will be looking to organise a few days away in France – the first of at least three of those trips – and, currently, we are considering some city breaks of perhaps 4 days each in Prague and Seville.

I know very little about modern Prague but it has long been a place of significance in my head. The Prague Spring of 1968 when Alexander Dubček was elected leader of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and began a process of cultural and economic liberalisation which encouraged mass protest against Soviet domination. It was short lived and was crushed by Soviet tanks in August 1968 but it was a start of what Putin is fighting to regain now in Ukraine – an Empire. It was the time that I was beginning to take an interest in politics and world affairs with real thought for the first time. It would be interesting to visit in Spring 2026.

I know virtually nothing about Seville other than their oranges form the basis of our marmalade. Actually, I’m not even keen on that. It feels like the stuff of our parents rather than a ‘hip’ young person like me. My housekeeper’s choice of romatic destination, I had to look it up on the web. It is the capital and largest city of Andalusia, you know. It wasn’t until 1979 that Spain held its first democratic municipal elections after the end of Franco’s dictatorship. Incredible.

The most amazing thing I have found is the difference in prices between the two destinations. Easyjet flights to Seville are at least double the price for Prague. A Suite for 4 nights in a 4*/5* hotel is at least three times more expensive in Seville than in Prague although the Czech hotels look better quality. It’s going to be a fun year topped off by a week in Oldham, Dear Reader. What more could you want?

Monday, 22nd December, 2025

Wonderfully warm and sunny morning. Have to do some shopping. Thought early this morning would be the best option. If it was, I wouldn’t like to repeat it tomorrow. The roads were really busy. The carparks were horribly busy. The supermarkets were intolerably busy. Even under that pressure, people were polite and relaxed which is typical down here. It would be different in Surrey or Manchester.

I don’t do God and I don’t do Christmas. I know. I am boring. I do giving but don’t like/cope with receiving. I bought a tin of the sickliest, most appalling chocolates for my neighbour, Filippo’s kids to make them thoroughly sick on Christmas day which I consider obligatory and that is as far as I’ve gone.

I’m not keen on Marks & Spencer and we rarely shop there but we’ve been 4 times in the past month. The one redeeming feature of it is that it is opposite the beach and pier. It gives me a chance to walk, look and photograph.

“But the sun brightened—
It brightened, and Crow returned charred black ….”

Today, I made a new friend on the promenade. She didn’t say a lot but I knew what she was thinking. I thought the same.

A few years ago I heard Bob Mortimer tell a story on Would I Lie to You about being a guest of someone called Chris Rea who cracked an egg into his bath. I can’t remember why but nor had I heard of Chris Rea. I had to look him up and found he was a musician who was associated with the song, ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ which I thought I’d heard somewhere.
Anyway, I was shocked to read today that Chris Rea died this morning at the tender age of 74. There’s too much of this dying!

Certainly this Christmas we will remember people we have lost. We will remember Phyllis who died this year but we will also remember my Mother-in-Law, Jane who is so much missed. Here she is in all her cheekiness at Christmas time in Yorkshire in 2008.

Tuesday, 23rd December, 2025

Warm but grey this morning. Since returning from Tenerife three weeks ago, we really haven’t felt traditional December weather at all. The newspapers have been full of confident predictions of snow across the country. They haven’t happened and are not predicted by the Met. Office to happpen in the near future.

Having been a Climate Change denier for a long time, in recent years I have had to face the facts and accept its central tenets. Even so, it doesn’t really bother me. Warmer times will suit me fine although I know some, old ladies will struggle with it.

It certainly is quite a remarkable trend over my lifetime which I have amplified by moving to the South Coast. Having left the land of ice and snow for the coast of sea and sunshine I appreciate it even more in older age.

Sixteen years ago, I had been retired for almost a year but was still living in Yorkshire. The winter of 2009 was a harsh one yet, even then, not as bad as the 1950s & 60s.

In this week 16 years ago, I was driving through scenes like this on the A62 from Yorkshire to Lancashire. They are beautiful but once you’ve observed that, what else is there to admire about freezing cold and icey roads, putting your life at risk and salt attacking your car. Why would you volunteer for it when you could live in the sunshine?

In those days, it was either to wait for the digger to clear the A62 Moors Road or take your life in your hands in a white-out on M62 highest stretch of motorway in England.

It was our last Christmas in Quarry Court and our last Christmas with my lovely Mother-in-Law. We struggled over the Pennines to get her and struggled to take her back. The garden was out of bounds.

In our garden down here today, Geraniums are still flowering as is the Fuscia Janey named after Mum-in-Law and we are picking fresh Rosemary and Parsley for our meal. In the end, one has to acknowledge the evidence.

Filippo, our lovely neighbour from Parma, came over this morning with a bottle of wine from his homeland. He and his wife are both medical scientists who mainly work from home. They are a delightful couple who have two, young children we hardly ever see never mind hear. Within an hour, we were tasting it as an accompaniment to the most wonderful smoked salmon I have ever eaten. We bought a side of smoked salmon from our fresh fish suppliers and we are so pleased with it.

Wednesday, 24th December, 2025

Up early this morning. Driving up to Surrey. Hoping to beat the mania that is the M25 on Christmas Eve. It is madness and I wouldn’t be doing it out of choice but I know my duty. By midday, I will be trying to park in Woking multi storey carpark. Can you imagine it? Wish me well, Dear reader. See you on the other side.

Well, the drive up was wonderful, very quiet and easy. We arrived by 10.30 am. Cup of coffee and off to the Dementia Facility. Picked up C and on to Woking Crematorium where we had a short ceremony to place Phyllis’ ashes urn in a memorial stone. It was a nice but cold memorial.

On to the Theatre. That was the start of eating too much. Tables booked at the restaurant where we shared pizzas. Then in to the auditorium where we watched a clever version of Snow White with Rob Rinder and Leslie Joseph as leads. It was cleverly presented and even I enjoyed it although it lasted two hours.

On to Supper at the Maybury Inn just a few hundred yards from where we used to live a decade ago. We had a fairly average two course meal with wine which cost £375.00. It was the sort of poor quality meal that confirms me in not eating out very often.

I had a Fritto Misto starter followed by Surf & Turf – Roast Pork with Scallops – main course. I’m afraid it was only just passable ‘Pub Food’ and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Thursday, 25th December, 2025

A very happy Christmas to all readers of the Blog. It is starting off with stark, blue skies and bright sunshine but cold. For many, maybe most people, this is a time of happiness and celebration. It is my 74th Christmas and I woke up feeling sad. I was listening to an analysis of Edward Elgar at 5.00 am and that set the mood music and then I thought of missing people from my life. Alright, I am strange but it is who I am.

I first met Edward Elgar, the man responsible for Land of Hope & Glory, Pomp & Circumstance and The Dream of Gerontius, when I was at a low ebb in 1973 and delivering a course for Dutch teachers who were studying English Language and Culture. It was delivered at my old college in Ripon and we played them what was then considered to be quintessentially English music in the form of Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

I’ve always considered him an Edwardian gentleman with whom I had little in common but, when you get down to it, he was just a man as I am. He had his loves and fears, his likes and dislikes and he had the need to express himself, to communicate with the world as I do. He chose music, I choose words. This morning I learnt a lot more about him. Like me, he was brought up a Roman Catholic but, unlike me, that informed his life.

He wrote the Enigma Variations at the turn of the century and 15 years before the start of World War. It is split into 14 variations. Each one is based on a person in his life. The first is to his wife, Alice. Another is on a girlfriend of his and another on his best friend and fellow musician and so on. This one called Nimrod, legendary biblical figure from Genesis, known as a mighty hunter, was playing this morning, playing so sadly that the memories flooded back and made me weep silently.

Went down to the beach to forget. Walking on the Beach this morning was absolutely delightful. Saw a few birds and one said she was 74. I really find it hard to believe.

It is cold out there today – 9C/48F – and I am going to spend a couple of hours in the Gym. I’ve had my sun quota for the day. It will give me an excuse to watch my latest favourite Spy thriller –Deep State – on Disney+. Let’s get on to our 75th Christmas, Dear Reader. I’ve just been watching famous obituaries for 2025. It comes to us all. Happy Christmas!

Friday, 26th December, 2025

Boxing Day – another anachronism we should sweep away and then the world can go back to work and leave the Retired in peace. The boys are driving up to Manchester this morning for the match at Old Trafford this evening. After Newcastle go 3 up and the Theatre of Dreams becomes a nightmare, they have to drive all the way back to Surrey to be ready for work on Saturday morning.

I, on the other hand, will be watching from the comfort of my sofa. Might even put the central heating on. It was so cold last night – 0C/32F – that I put it on downstairs for an hour before getting up this morning. It isn’t going well for England in the cricket and I don’t hold out great hopes for United at the moment.

I am watching so much Drama at the moment that I can hardly keep up with the plots. Yesterday, I wrote that I was watching Deep State – on Disney+ in the Gym. Last night I watched two very contrasting items. I have no idea why I get drawn into it other than I am an incurable romantic but I watched Love Actually on Land TV for the umpteenth time. I really like Emma Thompson and Keira Knightley and I really want to be Prime Minister. That would solve everything!

At the end of the evening, we started watching a much more challenging but gripping Drama Directed by Kate Winslet who is also one of the daughters of Helen Mirren who is dying of cancer and her husband, Timothy Spall.

I managed just 30 mins last night but was spellbound by the siblings all falling out about what should happen to their Mother as the cancer spread and becomes terminal – imminently terminal. It is so realistic and yet so shocking. I have seen it and felt it and it feels so real. Escapism this is not.

In one guise or not, this happens to us all in our lifetimes. We all have Mothers and they all die usually before us. It is how you and they deal with it that counts. I’ve got another 45 mins to come tonight. That should be fun.

What I’m really looking forward to is the return of The Night Manager – an espionage Thriller based on the characters created by John le Carré. It starts on Thursday to kick off the New Year. All this sedentary activity has to be balanced out by walking and that’s where I’m going now into the crisp sunshine of the end of the year.

I would warn you, Dear Readers, to beware. There is a Cake fiend on the loose. He thrives on it and may be dangerous. The hats may be interchangeable but the cake is definitely his. My old friends from the Dementia Ward – Peter, Tash, Chris & Kevin – seem to have escaped again and sent this photo to greet me this morning.

I am well out of it. A bit of Bubbly and smoked salmon sandwiches for Lunch will get me through the day although I will have to supplement my walk with a bit of self-flagellation in the Gym later.

Saturday, 27th December, 2025

A crystal clear morning of piercing sunshine from a clear blue sky. Certainly one to clear the head and focus the mind. I’ve got the inevitable supermarket trip and then some Office work before going out to enjoy a walk. Christmas is past, thank goodness, and I produced a final, emotional memory for M & P.

Pauline’s last Christmas with her Mum was a wonderful one and then 12 years on, instead of cooking for them on the day as usual, during Covid restrictions we drove up to The Surrey Home for the Bewildered where staff had got a couple of inmates up and dressed in time to receive and look grateful for their pre-prepared Christmas feast.

One of the things I’ve had to do this morning is urgently get to grips with the new Schengen European entry exit system calculator. I have visions of us being turned away at the border. I’ve still got French trips to sort out and it’s looking tight but doable. Fortunately, Oldham doesn’t count.

The hooligans managed to guide an escapee from the Home for the Bewildered all the way up to Old Trafford. You can see here that he is struggling to keep hold of reality. He even bought me an xtra large shirt.

After United won at last, K will now have to fly back from Florida for every Home Game this season. What else has he got to do?