Sunday, 17th May, 2026
A warm and bright morning to drive up to sunny Surrey for a Birthday Party. It is a birthday party that has led to me doing some quite unusual things over the past couple of days. Anybody who knows me will know that I do not do clothes shopping; I do not go into clothes shops.
So, it was strange to find myself here. It was in a search for a teeshirt for a 90 year old. A teeshirt was bought but it wouldn’t have been my choice. My view was that, if you can’t wear a jokey teeshirt when you’re 90, when can you? I lost that argument until ….
…. at 5.00 am yesterday when I was woken to be told we need a printed teeshirt for the birthday. Amazon couldn’t do same day delivery but Google rarely lets me down. I found a local ‘business’ that said it would do printing-while-you-wait. We drove over there to what turned out to be a semi-detached house. The owner arrived on a motorbike as we parked up and he met us and took us in to what I assumed was a workshop. It was cluttered with little ornaments, bottles of spirits and grubby furniture. It was filthy, very ‘unloved’ and ill maintained. A woman shuffled in from a kitchen and I suddenly realised that was their Lounge.
I had one of those double-take moments. How could you live like that? Would you really not clean and tidy it? How could you be comfortable in that chaotic situation? It made me quite emotional and trembly. It took me back over 50 years when I was looking for somewhere to rent in Oldham as a young teacher. The quality of accomodation was so desperate that it reduced me to a blubbering wreck. I was asking the question: How can people live in these circumstances?
The house was across the road from a Secondary School which I learnt the owner had attended. Thinking about it later, he must have been a Special Needs boy who, in his terms, had made a success of his lfe by running a business from home. He had got together enough cash to buy the equipment for Stencil Cutting and Heat Transfer Printing. He said it made him enough to live on. Obviously, it didn’t provide much more than that but he seemed happy with it. We paid him £10.00 for a 15 minute job. Certainly, it is salutory to be reminded of the poverty that some people are condemned to cope with and just accept as the way life is.
As I knew it would, the image and sensations haunted me throughout the night and it was the first thing I woke up thinking about.
The party was delightful when we got up to Surrey. It was nice to see M&K again. And to see Richard and Alexis. Colin had so many lovely relatives and friends that the party extended to nearly 30 people with a good buffet and lovely wine, a cake made to Colin’s tastes
The residents of the Care Home were invited to wine and cake and a Frank Sinatra Tribute Act for half an hour. I sat next to a lovely couple who were there on Respite Care. He had been an Accountant and she had been an Advertising Executive. Not fully understanding who needed the respite care, I launched into a full blown conversation over a glass of wine. What had I done for a profession? Where did I live? I politely returned the questions and that was where things started to go wrong. The lovely, bright and lively lady had to ask her husband where they lived. Having told them that I lived in Worthing near Brighton, I suddenly realised that every second question she asked me was: And where do you live?
It’s a terrible affliction which I really hope to avoid. I couldn’t see myself shut in those confines for my own good but I saw ghosts of my past across the room. Perhaps it is where we’ll all meet our end.
Monday, 18th May, 2026
Yesterday was such a positive day. The 90 year old Birthday Boy who allegedly is suffering Dementia certainly rose to the occasion. He recognised and was keen to greet all his guests. He visibly made a real effort to enjoy the attention and ‘play his part’ in the day which his daughter had gone to such effort to plan. It was a symbol of how to do things well with conviction and love. But it all became too much and 90 proved to be too tiring. Colin was asleep in his chair when we left.
As we drove home, I thought about that. Living in a quiet, peaceful environment all of your days and then being suddenly being invaded is enough to make anyone exhausted. Not used to lots of socialising myself, all that talking and glad handing left me exhausted as well …. or, perhaps it was the wine. Even so, it made me grateful for my life.
I returned to receive a letter from the Bowel Cancer Screening Programme telling me that all was clear and I wouldn’t need a follow-up for 2 more years when I will be 77. I also had a reminder that we must Check-in online for our flights to Spain in 5 weeks time.
But first I must wish my little sister, Caroline, Happy 64th Birthday. Living over there in Ireland, she seems happy enough even though she has to wait another 3 years before she receives her State Pension … if little, Irish bog trotters ever do. She has lived, worked and paid tax in Southern Ireland for so many years I don’t know what her entitlement actually is.
She is pictured here in 1966 on the sand where the sea obviously fell steeply off the beach. It was World Cup year and I wasn’t on this holiday. Ironically, I was in Southern Ireland touring around Lough Derg in County Donegal in a horse drawn caravan like some Irish Tinker. When I left home in 1969, she was just an annoying little smidge. I’m sure she hasn’t changed. I think of her regularly.
We are lucky to have nice people around us even if they are not always nearby. We have made two transatlantic flights to Florida and have been lucky enough to have B.A. flights with beds to sleep. It made the journey so much more manageable.
Little M wants us to return although we are currently resisting re-entering Trumpland. She is trying everything and, of course, she will win in the end but her latest nudge is to bring us a bottle of strawberry-flavoured, melatonin gummies. Melatonin is well known and has been used for a long time as an aid to regulate sleep cycles and overcome jetlag. I’m going to try it out tonight. If the Blog is late tomorrow, you’ll know why. I am still dreaming of being greeted by an orange man-baby at Tampa Airport.
Back to earth now as we go out to plant up the street. Hoping it will rain tonight to bed them all in. Going to be steamy, hot and sunny as the week goes on – perfect plant growing weather. …. Well, the planting went well. My Under Gardener made sure of that. I decided that I couldn’t rely on rain and had just reeled out 350 metres of hose to start watering when the ‘heavens opened’ and natural irrigation took over.
Tuesday, 19th May, 2026
I was so shattered last night after a long day of gardening that I forgot to take the melatonin sweets and fell instantly asleep. At least the weather did its job and heavily irrigated the new plants throughout the night. It was still raining this morning at 6.00 am. I was having a Whatsapp conversation with my next door neighbour last night when she thanked me for the gardening outside. I told her I was happy to do it in Retirement as she would be in another 20 years. At 6.00 am today, she messaged me to say she had looked outside and decided to retire immediately.
We received a thank you photo from the birthday boy yesterday with his party bag of sweets and his card. At least he looks happy.
If I live to 150, I will never understand women. Took my wife for a blood test this morning and then on to Sainsburys. She came out of the surgery with one of those cotton wool pads stuck over the wound on her arm. We get to Sainsbury’s and she asks if she should remove the dressing. As so often, I don’t really understand the question but ask her, Why? Answer, Because it doesn’t match my outfit. Sometimes I despair.
Some people live to 90. Some die young. I was reading of the death of Scott Hastings, a fantastic Scottish Rugby International and incredibly fit man. He was just 61 and died of incurable non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma which just proves we never know who or what is around the corner. I think of my own father who died aged just 49 years old.
I found this Business Notice in The London Gazette (est. 1665) which announced that my Great Grandfather, Edwin Thomas Sanders, at the age of just 60, wanted to retire from his partnership in a Joiners & Builders firm he had set up with the Dolman family in the 1880s. He died just 7 years later.
The parnership was dissolved and the business separated between their eldest sons. In 1920, my Grandfather was 31 and in his prime. His son, my Dad, was just 5 years old but in those days lives and lineage was much more predictable especially in the Middle Classes. Grandfather established his new firm of Builders with my 5 year old Dad already incorporated into the name: Sanders & Son. Just 44 years later, he was dead.
If I don’t make 90, I will be furious! I want to be able to apply for a new GHIC (Global Health Insurance card) before I die. In fact, I want it to be an EHIC (European Health Insurance) again next time. My new one arrived today and I will be 80 by the time it comes up for renewal.
Wednesday, 20th May, 2026
The Summer is coming. Hold on. We are hoping to see 30C in the next few days. The plants are out at the front and well watered in by the rain. The next couple of days will be devoted to planting up our back garden and moving out the more delicate plants like Basil. We only have two weeks to get them established before we go away.
I’ve written to my neighbours an instruction sheet on what we’ve grown for them and how to maintain them while we are away.
This gardening bug has been with me for a long time now. From the moment I moved in to a large house and garden, I was constructing deep beds, garden paths, hiring rotovators and collecting manure by the lorry load from the local stables.
This was Slade House (1984 – 2000) and it was a major garden project. We bought a house built in the centre of an acre of land in a conservation village on the Pennines. The weather was often cold and wet, the soil was full of clay and the whole garden was surrounded by mature trees which cut out the light and littered the ground with leaves.
But the activity of developing a garden with different ‘rooms’ for relaxation & entertainment, for kitchen garden vegetable production and for woodland flowering shrubbery was challenging but exciting.
We felt we had put our stamp on the area when we sold up in 2000 to start building our house in Greece.
There is something satisfying about reordering nature and leaving it a different way than it was before we started. A building development project about a mile away from us ran out of money and stopped completely about two years ago. Nothing has happened since then but Nature has completely reclaimed the site and is rampantly covering it now. Nature and Man have to live together and each has to make compromises.
Of course, I moved straight on to learning how to garden in Greece, in intense heat with a shortage of water. It was frustrating, challenging but fun to grow aubergines and tomatoes, green beans and onions, courgettes and Basil in the dusty, volcanic soil. Two old islanders came to teach us to dig bowls in the dust and fill them with water once a day at sundown. Fortunately, we had and endless supply of free water which was pumped up from a very deep well on our land. The islanders were very envious.
Thursday, 21st May, 2026
A warm night but quite overcast this morning. The sun will arrive in the afternoon so one of my jobs is to water the newly planted beds. I have to cover a street and a half or about 350 meters now so I’ve had to buy additional hosepipes to daisychain for the purpose and bring water from my back garden tap.
If you water plants, you don’t give them half a watering can – little and often. You should give them an extended soaking that they would expect from rainfall. Of course, I will be in trouble for our increased water bill which my wife says is unjustified but you can’t do these things without cost and I have asked the neighbours to take over after I’ve established the plants.
I was listening to a vox pop on the radio this morning and the topic was food and energy prices and the effects of inflation. People on the street were questioned about their understanding of price rises. Having been a teacher for many years, I shouldn’t be surprised but I still found myself amazed at the massive gulf between the individuals confident indignation at how they saw the problem and what the problem actually was. They talk with the confidence of the ‘pub bore’ but show utter ignorance when questioned closely. This is the Farage Effect in action.
It is the same with immigration. Today, as I predicted months ago, Net Migration figures (a concept few actually understand) are at there lowest for 5 years, have come down 48% year on year and have fallen 82% since Labour came to power.
Public perception, however, is quite the reverse. Polling suggests that people in the street believe that Net Migration is rising steeply and is expected to rise next year. In reality, it is quite possible that the government will have tightened the screw too much and will have nil Net Migration which will mean we have a shortage of labour in key areas like Health and Social Care, Construction and I.T.
Friday, 22nd May, 2026
The start of Summer …. weather. Yesterday, we reached 24C/75F and we didn’t fall below 19C/66F over night. I will be doing a lot of watering today in advance of the holiday. Bank Holidays … hate them. They are not for the retired. Sainsburys was full of people flocking around Barbecue equipment and ingredients this morning. This is one of the things I really hate about Bank Holidays – the herd instinct. My personality doesn’t allow me to follow them. I instinctively go the opposite way.
My Digital Memory Box threw up this morning the fact that it was 17 years ago today that we were contacted by our Estate Agent to say that our last house in the North was going on sale for £400,000 and we were trying to choose pictures to feature in the brochure.
Looking back all that time, the house we had downsized to turned out to be fun to live in although it looks rather old fashioned from here. Almost forgot the VHS, DVD and Sky boxes on a TV stand. A gas coal-effect fire and all that heavy furniture! Can you imagine it now?
On this day 12 years ago, we were in our Greek house and a cat came to call to escape a thunderstorm. She never left until we did. We have just over a week before we fly to Greece so getting the garden ready really is the order of the day. Plastered with suncream today because the sky is vicious.
Well, it must be my age. I’ve only done a couple of hours and I’ve retreated to the shade for a break. Gone are the days when I walked under 32C/90F of furnace sunshine, stripped to the waist and with minimal sunscreen. I thought I was indestructible. Like so many brave men, I now realise that I’m not.
Saturday, 23rd May, 2026
Soon we will fly to the Mediterranean but first the Mediterranean has flown to us. I did five hours work in 27C/81F of heat yesterday. My Teeshirt turned tie-dye with dried sweat and my legs wouldn’t allow me to go anywhere by the evening. All the girls of the street are pledged to maintain the watering programme although I’m not sure Davina and Sharon will completely take it seriously. They will definitely be punished if they don’t.
I’m sorry if this is repetitive and boring but my mind always turns to airconditioning when this weather comes. Actually, climate resilience dominated the news at the beginning of the week. It is particularly important as we get older, isn’t it Dear Reader? I still have to completely persuade my wife who is a little sceptical although I am winning.
While she prevaricates, the quality and functionality of available systems is vastly improving. This system runs off a single, outdoor unit and we have the perfect place to site that without seeing it all the time. It runs 5 cooling/dehumidifying/heating wall units and that would allow us to do three of the bedrooms, the lounge and the office. With installation we could do it for £3000.00 and keep ourselves cool into our 90s. If we really bite the bullet and install solar panels, the whole thing might ultimately pay for itself.
I’ve been talking to an old friend, Kevin Sellers, this morning. He definitely won’t need air con at his home up in Northern Scotland. He loves New Zealand because that’s where his son lives now and he goes out for weeks each year. Still carries on with his art work as so many of that group do. Good to see how happy and commited he still is. He’s come a long way from his hometown of Sheffield and where I knew him in Yorkshire.
I must also wish my much older sister, Ruth, happy birthday. She is 79 this morning. Can you believe it? I remember turning 40 and thinking, This can’t be true. but it was and, looking back, it was nothing. Being in one’s 70s is bad enough but approaching 80 is really scarey. Anyway, not to put a downer on her birthday, we hope she makes the best of a bad job.
Here, Ruth is pictured with one of her daughters in happier times and doing some of her charity work raising money for Youth Homelessness. I don’t know how much of that there is in Bolton but her work for Bolton Football Club and church as well as this organisation out of Bridgeman House, are all rooted in her area. Anyone who does that is deserving of a happy birthday. I’ve just told my old friend David Weatherley, a lifelong Bolton Wanderers fan, to look for her in the carpark and say Hello.
Four hours work in 28C/83F today has been enough. We are 3C hotter than Athens. Time for a bottle of icy champagne and relaxation …. or whatever.
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