Sunday, 7th December, 2025
What a horrible morning – dark and wet – but at least it’s warm. Didn’t fall below 12C/54F over night. Still, it doesn’t make me want to go out.
Two birthdays to celebrate this morning. The Blog is 18 today. I was only 56 when I started it. It has seen some real lows and some wonderful highs. Of course, by its very nature, it contains much that is ordinary and unremarkable.
If you stick with it, Dear Reader, it will help you sleep although I do try to amuse and to be prevocative at times. If you are a regular reader and you have my sympathies, you will feel my joy and pain, my patterns of life and inconsistencies. In short, you will see an ordinary man laying out his life before you. Hope to see you this time next year and every year until 2051.
The other birthday is that of young David. He is 28 today. Do you remember when you were 28, Dear Reader? A year of weddings and new challenges. Anyway, we wish David a happy day even though it is pouring with rain in London. It sounds like we are going to have a warm but very wet week ahead. So, that’ll be something to write about, won’t it?
At the beginning of the year, I decided that I would trial doing without our landline. We both have smartphones with unlimited calls, texts and data. It seemed over kill to have a landline which just duplicated that service. First couple of weeks felt a bit strange but this morning I realised that it wasn’t even an issue today. Like the loss of High Street Banking, Landlines are yesterday’s technology which we just need a nudge to abolish.
Our contracts with EE for smartphones are up in a couple of months and they will offer us new models. We have Samsung S24 Ultras and I will almost certainly choose S25s or S26s as an upgrade. We will be able to trade our existing phones in for about £450.00 each which will contribute to the new 18 month contracts at about £180.00 per month for the two.
What I could never abolish is this piece of music that makes me cry instantly I hear it. The opening Aria from Handel’s opera Xerxes – commonly know as Largo. It throws me back to 1973 spontaneously and a grubby flat in a grubby street in a grubby town in a grubby world. I am playing it now in my comfortable Office in a comfortable street in a comfortable town in a comfortable world but I am still crying. I have lost so much.
Monday, 8th December, 2025
The morning is dry and fairly bright. Incredibly warm for December. I’ve got an early appointment for a diabetic rhetinopathy eye scan – the last real medical testing of the year. It involves pupil expanding drops so I’m not allowed to drive. My chauffeur is only too pleased to get her hands on the wheel.
This is another fantastic service that I am offered. Every year they contact me and push me to be scanned and photographed to see if there is any change. I always go although I do worry about it because a fellow student who is the same age as me lost his driving licence when deterioration was found in his sight. Anyway, all is well. The feedback was immediate and positive so I get to drive for another year.
The problem is that the enlarged pupils because of the drops means seeing is painful for some hours to come. The sky suddenly feels electric and so painful. Plus, I can’t read or write which is a nightmare. Anyway, now all I have to be concerned about is the body scan report which won’t be until the beginning of February unless they spot an emergency.
After what seemed like an age, I was able to complete my 28th consecutive Christmas Newsletter ready for printing and placing in cards for posting. If you were getting anxious about your card, Dear Reader. Don’t worry. It will be with you soon.
Tuesday, 9th December, 2025
A grey morning but a frantic start. Gifts ordered for friends – mainly cases of wine – being delivered and delivery men are contacting me. I began to wonder why I’d bothered. Then the task was printing 50 newsletters, 65 address labels and putting stamps on 60 envelopes. Do you know how much 50 x 2nd class stamps cost these days – £43.50! It wasn’t helped by my knocking a glass of coffee over my keyboard but a little woman rushed to my rescue and I was up and typing again in hours.
Amazon may be delivering my Christmas presents to friends but I couldn’t resist sending myself some with the same service. I have written before of a friend of mine who had his car stolen from his drive this time last year. It took months for him to get back on his ….. wheels. I bought a Faraday Box from Amazon to shelter our car fobs. Today, we went one stage further with a Faraday Card Holder to protect our Financial Accounts particularly when travelling abroad. Might be overkill but you never know.
Went out to an active beach where birds were searching urgently for food. It was absolutely wonderful to be there and smell the change, hear the shoreline shift with every ebb and flow of the heavy tide. It is important that we accept that Life does not stay the same. It moves and changes constantly in a state of flux. We should be constantly looking for new beginnings, Dear Reader. Resistance is pointless.
Wednesday, 10th December, 2025
Lovely bright and very warm morning. Going out walking in the sunshine to make the most of it. Alexa read the jobs for the day to me. It included ordering fish for Christmas. Our meal will be a Fish Platter including King Scallops, Langoustines and Fish Goujons which will use Tusk Fish, a Lobster flavoured white fish from the Indian Ocean. At 5.30 am, I also listened to a podcast about the attacks on European Liberal Polity by the Trump-led, Far Right movement in America and about Trump’s increasingly autocratic attempts to control the media.
You may have heard or read of the battle for the Media outlets in America at the moment. It is happening because of the change in accessing news and entertainment over my lifetime. In the 1950s, Mum & Dad had a shiny, walnut cased radiogram sitting proudly on a shiny, walnut table in the Lounge. They listened to the BBC Home Service. It was piped through to a huge speaker on the wall in the Dining Room & Kitchen which was quite advanced for those days. They listened to the Today program that dominates my mornings now and which first came on air in 1957. They listened to The Archers in the evening and Sing Something Simple on Sunday afternoons.
In the 1960s, my brother Bob bought an old, valve radio in a jumble sale and we listened to Dick Barton, Special Agent drama and ‘pop’ music – Pick of the Pops with Alan Freeman on Sunday afternoons. It was on this tatty old box with a fraying speaker cover that I read the place names I dreamed of visiting – Prague, Strasbourg, Brussells, Lyon, Oslo, Warsaw … Oh, let me go … and where I first heard The Moody Blues, Go Now. It was an old radio that really spoke to me.
We didn’t even have a television until after I had left home although I watched Doctor Who and Dixon of Dock Green at my Grandparents’ house on Saturday evening. In those days, Television & Radio was totally linear. You either accessed them when they were broadcast or not at all. Time-shift suddenly became possible in the late 1970s when video recorders first came on the market. I had only been married a year and just bought our first colour television. I chose a Betamax Video Recorder. I have always been an early adopter of technology and sometimes suffered because of it. I loved the machine but it was soon dropped in favour of the VHS process.
We increasingly gathered more control over the process of accessing media. Sky came along having pushed out BSkyB. I had an early satellite installed and everything changed. Suddenly, we had extra channels and could choose when to watch programs. Time shift was almost built in to reception. Now, it felt like the consumer was in control and not subject to the tyranny of the scheduler. Increasingly, its capacity increased. Today I can record 6 channels while watching a 7th. I can save them and watch them whenever I want but then along comes streaming. I don’t even need to save them. They are always there to download and consume wherever I am in the world and what ever time of the day.
I can watch PMQs at 3.00 am or Gardener’s World at Lunchtime in Spain. I can download a podcast recording of the Today programme in Greece or Newspaper Review from Sky in Tenerife. The World is my Lobster, as they say. I no longer have to wait for Episode 2 of a drama to come round a week later on a Wednesday evening when I’ve already forgotten the plot of Episode 1. I can access the whole thing from BBCi Player, Netflix, Prime, ITV-X, etc when I want and binge.
Sky has huge power. Owned by Murdoch (Right Wing)and controlled along with Fox News in the States, The Times and The Sun in UK plus lots of other news outlets around the world this one family hold huge influence over how the news and politics is reported and accessed. The gullible think they are getting the facts. They are not. They are only getting the facts according to one ideology.
But now we have Trump who wants to bend the media narrative to his view of the world. We used to say the Chinese and Russian state control was Totalitarian. Trump is bidding for the same. You might laugh but this is really serious. His biggest backer, Ellison who is the 2nd richest person in the world, has a son who is trying to buy up the streaming services of Warner Bros and HBO. Trump’s son also has a stake in the industry. Trump sees a way to influence and control media output. If the Labour Government announced it was going to restrict news coverage to only what it considered appropriate, we would be up in arms. But that is what Trump is trying to acquire abroad and through that to influence other markets abroad. We should be very afraid.
Thursday, 11th December, 2025
These are strange days. Last night, when I went to bed at 11.30 pm, the sky was absolutely clear and full of the most beautiful stars. In mid-December a clear sky would mean cold temperatures and morning frosts. Throughout the night, we didn’t drop below 13C/56F. What is going on? I just don’t understand. Lovely orange sky at 7.00 am today and so the day begins.
Received news yesterday from my old friend, Kev, who had just returned from hospital after a cataract operation. Old age can be dire, can’t it Dear Reader. Oh, take my hand and help me down Cemetery Road. We all need support. I bought Kev some wine for Christmas, I’ve had to advise him to sit down to drink it if he’s still got the bandages on.
On a much more serious and devastating level, I had a message this morning from one of my sisters that my Brother-in-Law, Kevan, has fairly advanced bowel cancer and is being operated on next week. They have been dealing with it, I now understand, since the summer. I didn’t know. What I do know is that dealing with cancer is something that needs support of family and friends. In fact, it shows you those who actually care. We will be thinking of Ruth & Kevan over the next few days in their hour of need.
I am so grateful to be healthy enough to walk on the beach this morning with the salty sea spray rising in the warm breeze and the sad refrain in my head …
And so it is just like you said it should be
We’ll both forget the breeze
Most of the time
Life is so fragile and unpredictable that urgency is the key. Don’t hold back; Don’t take No for an answer; Don’t put off. Advocate for yourself and be up front with what you want out of life. This life is not a rehearsal. It is the only one we will get.
Of course, it may all be pointless if the Head of NATO – Marc Rutte is right in what he warned of this morning. To anyone from my Generation, talk of World War is very stark and very real. What it will mean is diverting money from Societal Services towards preparing for war by building up our Defences. It may be very different this time with Drones and Cyber tools being built, stocked and deployed, with less man power and hard machinery like tanks, etc, being used.
More than ever, the older generation who won’t be called on to fight may find themselves being left to struggle because the State will not have the funding for Social Care. We need to build up our Resilience both at State and Personal levels. Difficult times are coming. May be time to baton down the hatches.
Friday, 12th December, 2025
Another lovely, warm morning. I am chauffeuring a client to the Beautician’s for 9.00 am. Hard to believe what wonderful times these are. Who knows, we may get away without a Winter at all. Having said that, there is a Winter of Discontent in the international air.
Yesterday, I was writing about the NATO Chief warning about a new World War in the next 5 years. This morning a number of articles have followed up with the argument that it has already started but that we are wilfully trying to ignore it.
The power blocs are flexing their muscles – Russia in Europe, China all around the world economically but militarily in East Asia and Hong Kong and Taiwan specifically, America all around the world economically but militarily in South America and Venezuela specifically, Israel militarily in West Asia and Palestine and Iran specifically, India militarily in South Asia and Pakisatan and Afghanistan specifically. It feels like the tectonic plates are shifting and we are going to have to address them not later but NOW. The time of the Peace Dividend is over.
Russia is already showing its military intent in Europe with invasion of Ukraine now being pushed further out with drones across Poland and Rumania, Fighter planes entering Estonia, drones in Denmark and Norway, poisonings on British soil and multiple threatening of essential undersea pipelines and cables.
The world is ever more connected. Power, natural gas, oil, and of course the internet all rely on undersea infrastructure. Data centers and nuclear power plants could go the same way. A victim of future wars might be your internet connection when a cable is cut or your heating bill as a gas pipeline or electricity cable is blown up and these events might take place thousands of miles away, and hundreds of meters below sea level.
The ludicrous contrast between these two positions – Chauffeuring a girl back from a Beauty Treatment and contemplating World War III is not lost on me and it was ever thus. WW2 was met with incredulity and denial right up to the point of declaration. We were still entertaining the idea of appeasement and desperate to believe nothing was going to happen. I was shocked to find that, in 1938, a facial treatment often took place in a beauty salons which were growing in popularity at the time and social life was booming until …. it suddenly wasn’t. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Going out for a walk to clear my head. I can’t change the situation other than by putting forward views and casting my vote. I can really only fight for myself and my life. As I wrote yesterday, strong self advocacy is our only tool. I try to rely on no one for my health and wealth. I try to take control and argue and fight for what I want and need. The thing is to be strong and never give up. Don’t hide from signs of illness. Demand help urgently. Don’t expect State Handouts. Save, Invest and Build Financial Resilience. The world is an insecure place. The world is where we live.
Saturday, 13th December, 2025
Glorious day although a little cool start. Out walking under clear, blue skies with a long, low, strong sun. Everywhere looks painted with primary colours. The starkness of the sky set against the luscious grass below.
Delivery vans are everywhere and constantly at the moment in this affluent Development. Nobody has time to go to the shops. Even at the weekend, they are out in the garden basking in steaming hot tubs, browsing Amazon for presents. Our neighbours are cash rich and time poor. Badly paid and poorly treated delivery men drive round in demented frenzy delivering orders almost before they were ordered.
I am walking and observing and being observed as I tour the Development and then leave for the huge park outside. It is all very quiet. Nobody stiring at 10.00 am. They are all exhausted after their weeks. I, of course, am not exhausted. I want to be but have to push myself through exercise to replicate a week’s work. After a 90 mins walk outside, I will finish off in the Gym where I am watching a gripping political-espionage Drama on Disney+ of all places.
This is just my sort of interest. Espionage and Politics blended into intrigue with an intelligent plot I can lose myself in and forget the workout pain. Deep State will keep me going over Christmas with 16 hours of storyline.
Meanwhile, Chef is in the kitchen icing three Christmas Cakes, steaming a second Christmas Pudding, preparing to roast a chicken with broccoli, carrots and parsnips and making sage & onion stuffing to accompany it for Supper tonight. She is watching Strictly Come Dancing at the same time. I have no idea how that is possible. Personally, I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than even turn it on but each to their own.
The disparity in our tastes may well be a guide to our enjoyment of another drama which we are jointly watching in the Lounge in the evening. The Revenge Club is lovely, light but captivating stuff which can be found on Paramount+. It features six divorcees who are harbouring a sadness but also a grudge against their exes for the way they have been treated.
They meet at a Divorce Support Group and come to the agreement that they will collectively support each individual to seek revenge upon their former partners. Seems reasonable and is great fun. I think my wife is planning already.
I am consuming media avidly all day at the moment. Apart from the two Dramas described above, I was listening to a fascinating political podcast at 5.00 am today. It was about an obscure American populist politician called Huey Long who was Govenor and Senataor for Louisiana in the 1930s. He was a strange contradiction of a man who veered between Stalinism, and McCarthyism but was a natural politician.
The first time Huey Long campaigned in rural Catholic South Louisiana, his agent reminded him that he was from North Louisiana and he was now in the south where he had to appeal to the large Catholic vote. He acknowledged it and throughout the day, he started his campaign speeches with this story:
When I was a boy, I would get up at 6.00 am on Sunday and hitch our old horse up to the buggy and I would take my Catholic Grandparents to mass. After mass, I would bring them home and at 10.00 am, I would hitch our old horse back up to the buggy and I would take my Baptist Grandparents to church.
The effect of the anecdote on the audience was electric and on the drive back home after campaigning, his manager said to Huey, I didn’t know you had any Catholic Grandparents.
Don’t be damn fool, replied Huwey. We didn’t even have a horse.
The point of the anecdote is that it doesn’t matter how good your intentions or how intellectual your approach, politics is a craft that you either learn or you fail. Keir Starmer is a good man with intellectual strength but he lacks the guile and statecraft of a politician. If he doesn’t learn it quickly, he will be replaced.
Sanders Blog 