5 February 2012

One of my regular sources of media material which I include on my blog, is Bob Foraker, who lives in America. I’m extremely grateful to Bob, as he teased me supplied with some wonderful material which I’m then able to share with my readers. However, today he sent me an Alzheimer’s test which presumably if you fail then you are either are already suffering from it likely to suffer from this form of dementia in the near future.. I did not bother to take the quiz on principle.

I think it’s a great pity, in many cases there an elderly parents has to be told that they are suffering from the early onset of Alzheimer’s. Somebody in their 90s, for example, is far more likely to die of something else before they become a complete nuisance to their loved ones. Admittedly, everyone has a right to know but I think we should all take one step back and think very carefully before we inform our loved one that they are suffering from some form of dementia, which, in many cases, will cause a great deal of anxiety. Whereas to laugh off the odd lapse of short-term memory, citing the problem we all have of getting to the top of the stairs and forgetting why we went up, might be more kindly.

To switch to a topic which has caused me a great deal of anxiety, I can.scarcely believe it but my very long, detailed e-mail to Dragon disenchanting them of their conclusion that they had resolved all of my problems with them, has again, been deleted, unread! What a convenient way of them claiming not to be notified and therefore not taking any action on a complaint. So here I go again, another telephone call to the senior technician, Ruben on Monday morning.

With the opening of the Six Nations Rugby yesterday England were drawn against Scotland, so traditionally, apart from the championship. they were playing for the Calcutta Cup. (It is a very handsome, 12 inches high silver cylindrical, cup stop listening to start a with a decorative lid capped with a little elephant. I was surprised to learn that it had been made entirely from silver rupees, heaven knows how many hundred and to be melted down to get the amount of silver needed to make it).

England were pretty scrappy in the first half and went in at the interval 6-3 down. by virtue of a lucky kick from the Scots, which is very charged down. They then went on to score a try early in the second half. England eventually won 17-6 but it was not an impressive performance. On the other side of the world. England were battling out the last of the cricket matches against Pakistan and, as at the time of writing, were heading for a Pakistan whitewash. I hope they sharpen up their game before they come back to England for the cricket season. here, as I am determined to make two or three of them if I possibly can .

As forecast heavy snow fell overnight and we woke up at fairyland of sparkling white. Great fun for those sitting in the warmth looking through the windows but not so for the poor girls who had to drive from house-to-house to minister to their patients, many of whom were living alone. I must admit, Alice and I were very impressed when I our early morning carers, Carla and Emma arrived pretty much to time they had been parked their cars at their office around the corner and then walked the last hundred yards or so.

Harriet, the boss of Ross Nursing, rang while they were here and said she would pick them up in her much maligned 4×4 and drive them to their patients, who live in. some of their more difficult locations. Where it is unlikely that the roads would have been gritted. At the end of our morning session. Harriet roared in, muffled up to the nines with kisses all-rounder roared out again. She’s like a mother hen with our girls-they are very lucky to have such a caring boss. Now we must hope and pray that this snow disappears before Alice’s journey to Wales for her mother’s memorial service next Wednesday

Speaking of my dear mother-in-law, Click here for today’s joke . Perhaps a little irreverent, but my mother-in-law had a good sense of humour.

4 February 2012

I haven’t mentioned recently the pain that I was suffering from a night in my joints. Much of it has been alleviated by’ ‘my lovely’ coming down regularly to turn me over and therefore relieve the pressure. However, even with all this special attention . I have had one or two quite miserable nights when my right shoulder and right hip in particular, have been almost unbearable. I’m going to have a nerve block injection from the pain, consultant towards the end of this month that will only sort out my shoulder. It may be that I will have to rely on even stronger painkillers at night, for the other joints, t as there is no way I can have a general anaesthetic and an operation on my knee.

Awoke this morning to a completely carpet of white frost covering the garden. Heavy snow is forecast for tonight, and with the underlay of frozen ground is likely not to thaw out but to leave a dangerous driving surface. A month of freezing Arctic weather has been promised to us. We just hope that a small window appears. next week to allow girls and all the other people to travel to Wales who wish to celebrate the life of my dear mother-in-law.

Regular readers will recall the extensive media cover on the removal of the so-called’ travellers’ from Dale farm at an estimated cost of £18 million., After 10 years of court action. the local council was given permission to remove them which they did however almost immediately they started partking their caravans on the approach road to the farm, which is where 20 or 30 of them remain today and the council faced with further court action in order to get them removed. It really is a nonsense. I cannot imagine any other country in the world, even from the so-called civilised Western bloc, putting up with this sort of nonsense.

The chairman of Basildon Council seems adamant that they are going to make them pay the eviction costs. I know that we have been told that many of them own grand villas in Ireland but it seems that there is some difficulty in matching with properties , Surely this can only mean lack of cooperation from the local authority who must know who are the owners, It will be interesting to see how the council achieved its objective of getting money from these’ travellers’ it’s not as if they have not been offered alternative accommodation or sites-they have, but have always found a good reason for rejecting them. I think the time has come to ignore the humanitarian pleas concerning the children and the old folk and take some positive hard action against these people who, frankly, are being a bloody nuisance.

We have a not dissimilar situation with the ‘ professional’ protesters’ camped around the entrance to St Pauls Cathedral .

In fact, they have established a proper county providing hot drinks meals etc to these protesters Against Capitalism. What I don’t understand is why the authorities have to go court to have these people removed. Surely they’re breaking some by law or other. What surprises me is if I decided to pitch my tent on a pavement in London or on a traffic island somewhere, or perhaps in St James’s Park I’m sure that the police would have powers to come and arrest me and moved my tent as an obstruction. Yet when it comes to protesters such as these have attracted a great deal of media coverage, they tend to’ walk on eggshells’ and go through great contortions in order to remove them. Of course people have the right to make their voice heard by peaceful protesting but not to the point where they are costing the country millions of pounds and causing a great deal of local disruption. I’m not suggesting we get the troops out and know them down as they would be in some Middle East countries that perhaps the odd water cannon in this freezing cold weather might have a salutary effect!

I received a comment yesterday fromone of my readers asking me what I thought about the landlords who were evicting tenants now with a view to letting out their properties during the forthcoming Olympics. This came from America so there must be something in the newspapers there that suggested that this happening. I have neither read nor heard of such a thing happening in this country. What the commentator from America, perhaps does not understand is that it takes a minimum of six months to remove a tenant who refuses to leave. Witness the problems we have had over the Dale farm travellers and the St Paul Cathedral campers. What is more likely to be happening is that anyone, including council tenants, who have a flat or apartment within the Olympic area, will vacate them for a month, probably staying with their in-laws, and make a packet from letting them out for that period. All totally against the terms of their tenancy, of course, but I suspect the authorities will close a blind eye to it., And I certainly wouldn’t object. Good luck to them a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make some serious money.

I recently purchased a decent web cam for my mother’s husband, Richard, and last evening with the first time we have got him to use it properly, with Paul’s help we can not only see each other but also hear each other, After a few minutes chatting with Richard, my mother appeared, took one look at me and uttered her first immortal words on this miracle of communication , “You need a haircut.“. That’s another is for you. So much for the joys of seeing each other on Skype!

One of the’ ‘old faithful”, Judith William Powlette, who came to the village almost precisely at the same time as us ,just under 50 years ago, came to see me this morning. Then another’ old faithful’ Jill Simpson pocketed briefly the place was bustling, but the visits were short and sweet and it was nice to see them and keep in touch.

For today’s diversion. I am going to show you a fascinating way of projecting images on the facade of a building,, this one on a store in Berlin. Some of you may recall a similar display on the front of Buckingham Palace, last year sometime for some celebration or other. It is very clever. Click here and see if you agree with me.

3 February 2012

Here we go again with the Dragon people. They now have the audacity to write, two days ago that “Of course. we are glad to hear that Dragon seems to be working better for you at the moment. Please let us know when you have any other issues with Dragon“

Heaven knows where they got this information from unless they happen to be reading my blog on one of the days when Dragons seemed to be behaving itself.. There are multiple problems still with Dragon but the tone of their e-mail implies that they have resolved all of the issues. The only thing they have suggested in seven months that we have been trying to sort it out, was recently to create a new user profile, which, following their instructions proved impossible, but when I explained why, they never came back with any alternatives.

My response, do their e-mail, was as follows:

‘I am replying to your e-mail dated. Wednesday, 1 March

I have to say that your programme is no better now than it was seven months ago when we first complained. It is only through an immense amount of patience and work on our part by stripping the laptop, right down to its bare essentials and then reloading all the programmes that I believe we have got it to work at all.

Your service or lack of it, is an absolute disgrace. As I have repeated time and time again. the only way to resolve this is for you to send a technician here to see for himself what are the problems. Your answer to this is that this not the way you do things. How many other customers have you had that have fought like I have s over seven months to resolve your problems?. The key problems are pretty much as fully detailed in my earlier e-mails but to summarise.

Dragon still does not respond to all commands. For example trying to correct ‘wear‘ as the obvious context shows it. It should have been ‘where’ and yet this option does not appear in the correction box.

The correction box is hopeless. It constantly fails to respond both to Windows and to Outlook.

The ‘ Nats Speak Add-In’ frequently comes up in a pop-up box and has to be disabled

Frankly, I am at my wits end to know where to go from here. The Trading Standards people although they agree with me, have no teeth to enforce Dragon to do anything. So far as suing a large corporation in court., I know from my 30 odd years in the business of dispute resolution that that would be madness. I have always advise anyone considering such a step to think again. Usually, the end of the day, the lawyers are the only winners. So although I would like nothing more than to fight my corner in court. I really have not got the resources or the strength to do so and must take note of the good doctors advise that this business is having a serious effect on my health. I shall consider my options over the weekend as it has become quite clear that your organisation is unwilling or incapable of resolving what must be a relatively straightforward matter. What I think is even more disgraceful izzard you have taken no cognizance of the fact that I am severely disabled and that all of this takes a great deal out of me.

Turning to more homely matters, the water tank in our heating system is developed a problem. This at the very worst time of year when we really need are heating. According to the weather people. this is one of the driest and coldest periods for 90 years. Apparently we have had less rainfall , in the last 12 months, in East Anglia, then they have had in Jerusalem

Alice holding our breath for the weather next week in view of her mother’s Memorial Service on Thursday.. It is touch and go as to whether we get the milder weather from the West or a deep freeze and snow currently over Europe, as we are right on the cusp of where these two weather fronts meet.

The snow and icy roads could mean that half the congregation, coming from all parts of the country, could not make it, so Alice and her sister Victoria will have to make a decision as to whether to continue or cancel it, no later than, say, Tuesday next

. Just to show my readers that I’ve not lost my sense of humour. Overall, this catalogue of misery I include a very short video, which I must confess, is a little cheeky, if you will forgive the pun. I just hope it does not shock to many people or be construed as sexist. Click here and you’ll see what I mean.

2 February 2012

Sir Fred Goodwin, the erstwhile boss of the Royal Bank Of Scotland (RSB) has now had his knighthood .annulled (cancelled). No doubt, Mr Goodwin, was awarded this honour for ‘services to banking’, which, in the event, turned out to be presiding over the largest corporate loss ever recorded in this country, something in the order of £23 billion, so it would have been hypocritical to leave him with this honour once this loss had been disclosed. Of course there are some who say that he should never have been given a knighthood in the first place, far too young and not having proved himself etc.

There have been other instances of honours having been cancelled but they were usually where a crime had been committed or the person involved had been struck off their professional register for a serious offence. However, this is apparently the first time that the annulment has taken place effectively for commercial incompetence. There are so many other instances of professional .or commercial incompetence, often with the transgressor walking away with a large compensation packet and a fat pension, one wonders whether this case will create a precedent.

Having said that,, apart from the public humiliation. Mr Goodwin will still enjoy a very handsome pension and the millions he made through share options, etc., whereas all the rest of us, that is the taxpayers, are having 22to bear the losses he incurred. Why is this? Answer, .because of his very tightly drawn contract .Question; why was it drawn so tightly in favour of Goodwin in the first place? Why not provide for loss of pension and
bonuses in the event of poor performance due to incompetence? I agree it might require careful drafting but it doesn’t seem difficult to draft it the other way to ensure that the person concerned receives handsome benefits in the event of some form of success. Do I think it was right to strip him of his knighthood? Certainly I do. He was only given it in the first place for doing a job for which he was employed for and for which he was grotesquely overpaid.

The other issue which has been taking up a lot of media space is the exercise by our Prime Minister on his veto in respect of the proposed EU Treaty. .

As I understand it the treaty was put together with a view to dealing with the default of any member of the Eurozone, but included .elements in it which our Prime Minister considered could damage our financial institutions and for that reason he exercised his veto. In the event, ,this Treaty has been signed by the other 27 members of the EU, clearly not as a Treaty but if not a Treaty then what is it? An informal agreement outside the normal EU directives? If every time one of the founding members exercises its veto against something proposed by the EU and its veto is ignored, then what value the veto? Of course, you can imagine that the Labour Party are making hay out of this situation. Mocking poor Mr Cameron as if the whole fiasco was his fault.

A third big issue currently being lauded about is the potential bonuses to be paid at this time of year to the bankers. Readers will recall me recording the fact that the current chairman of the RSB, after much media pressure., has waived his million pound. Bonus but we do not yet know what level of bonuses will be paid to the thousands of other city employees in the financial sector. They will certainly be considerably less than previous years.. if they .heed     the present government’s warning. How .Ed Milliband has the nerve to stand at the dispatch box and criticise this present government over the size of the current bonuses when he was a member of the Cabinet who signed off last year for £1.3 billion of bonuses to be paid to this select group. beggars belief.

What about the home front? I have sadly come to the conclusion after that one small glass of white wine I had with Rowan yesterday that any alcohol is going to stimulate my sinuses to a point where my breathing under the ”nose only’ respirator can become alarming. Sensibly, then I should become teetotal but it is very hard decision to make. Not that I crave alcohol-I can go two or three weeks without-but I do so enjoy the odd glass of champagne and what will I do when the good doctor arrives here next Tuesday to stay for four days, break the habit of a lifetime ? Or suffer the consequences. A true dilemma.

Click here to see why we all need the right brother-in-law to sort out our problems.

1 February 2012

My old friend Rowan Planterose, from arbitration days, sacrificed the best part of his day to come down yesterday from London to give me lunch. Instead of popping next door to the Cricketers, as it is almost sub-zero outside/, we decided to have a light lunch in the breakfast room and not risk me catching a cold, which, thank heavens, I have avoided so far this winter. I had a small episode last evening, which demonstrated to me the problem I would have with a severe cold. One of my nostrils was blocked and I was having to take in the whole of the air expelled by the respirator through the remaining nostril and this was not a very relaxing thing to have to do. In the end we switched from the ‘ nose only’ respirator to the full nose and mouth one. Certainly more cumbersome and less comfortable than the little one , but at least with a blocked nose, I was able to breathe through my mouth.

Whilst on the mundane. I should mention that the battle of the evening teeth cleaning seems to have resolved itself. Until a month or so ago I could still hold the electric toothbrush supporting my hand by the other. Now my grip has gone completely, and the brush falls out of my hand so’ my lovely’ had to take over. As she is what I have always described as’ a scrubber’, in terms of cleaning her teeth, this really didn’t suit me at all. and although, the dear old thing, tried with the manual brush, she made a pig’s ear of it/, after a certain amount of wrangling, /we agreed a compromise which is to get the night carer, who comes in at 9.30 to add /this to their duties, after all, it only takes 3 min.

Back to matters of more importance. The Prime Minister is having a rough time over exercising his veto on the proposed EU Treaty As I said a couple of days ago, they seem to have ignored this veto and introduced it anyway, but of course it cannot be binding us constitution without without having been approved by parliament. Just how far it can affect us is not clear, but this proved too good an opportunity for the leader of the Labour opposition, Ede Miliband, who felt it incumbent to point out to the House of Commons, what value this Veto? . A veto is not just for Christmas but for life., Milliband said, echoing the message given to parents who buy their children puppies for Christmas. Poor Cameron could only reiterate what he said before, that he would accept nothing that in anyway affected the financial institutions in London, if necessary, he would take the matter to the European courts. I think is a matter of watch this space as this is entirely new ground.

Click here for an appropriate comment on’ spending a penny’!.

31 January 2012

The Eurozone mandarins have won the first round in the battle to control the budgets of the countries within the EU, and in particular those within the Eurozone itself. 25 of the 27 countries involved have signed up to the new regime leaving the UK and the Czech republic outside these controls. (As I understand it what they have signed up to is in effect was to have been the European constitution, which the UK vetoed) The same mandarins are attempting to force Greece to allow an outside body to monitor taxes and outgoings – rather like one’s parent insisting that you wrote down every penny of expenditure from your pocket money each week, when you insisted that it was not enough. Of course, Greece is opposing this sort of control, claiming it is humiliating to suggest they cannot run their own economy effectively, although the evidence over the past few years must be in favour of some form of outside agency. In fact, if Greece wants to have the continued financial support of the Eurozone then they will have no choice, ultimately, but to agree to some form of outside control.

In exercising his veto against the proposed EU constitution, the Prime Minister has made it clear that he will not accept any directive or legislation that restricts the functioning of the UK financial institutions. There was some talk earlier on that, as a tit-for-tat for the UK vetoing the proposed EU constitution, they could somehow move London’s position as one of the leading international financial markets, perhaps to somewhere in the Eurozone, like Frankfurt, and I suppose this was a sort of thing to which the Prime Minister was alluding. Of course, it would be disastrous for this country if that were to happen as I believe the City brings in almost a third of our GDP

Moving closer to home there was another tragic accident on a railway level crossing a couple of days ago this is local to us and then only a few miles away from an earlier accident at Elsenham, where a couple of young girls were killed on a level crossing by a train, 6 years ago. This seems to have been a similar type of accident where a young girl simply did not see or hear the train coming. One suspects that, like so many of the young, she probably had her ears stuffed up with earphone listening to her music.

Whilst being immensely sympathetic with the parents for the loss of their 15-year-old child, one cannot help wondering how anyone could be foolish enough to open the gate at the level crossing when the lights were flashing and the alarm sounding predicting the oncoming train. To say she neither heard nor saw it beggars belief.

What is even more surprising is that the parents, in similar cases have blamed the railway company and it seems from yesterday’s High Court decision (for the Elsenham case) the parents, are going to win (substantial compensation?!) from the rail operators for failing to observe certain safety regulations, to which they have already pleaded guilty.

I have no idea which directives or regulations were infringed (except that the electronic lock was not activated), but for most sensible people. the current arrangement is certainly safe if common sense is used when using the crossing. I suppose the one improvement. which could be made would be an automatic electric lock on the pedestrian gate that operated at the same time that the barrier came down. Whether this would stop youngsters climbing over a locked gate in order to try to catch the train, which is already in the station-which has been observed by one of the rail way regulators-I know not

The other suggestion, that the father of one of the two girls killed on the Elsenham crossing made, was that there should be no level crossings at all. The pedestrians should be able to cross the line either underneath by means a tunnel or over the top, but on a bridge. This is simply not a practical suggestion bearing in mind the number of such crossings (6500) and the phenomenal cost involved.

After all that serious talk. Click here for something entirely frivolous

30 January 2012

A row has been brewing over the last two or three days concerning the amount of bonus it was proposed paying to the head of the Royal Bank Of Scotland. (RBS) Some readers may recall that during the great bank collapse, a couple of years ago, the government had to step in and save the bank by injecting vast sums of money into it and as a result ended up owning 81%. In effect, we the taxpayers, own this 81%. Year after year, there’s been a storm of protest over the grotesque amounts of money being given to bankers by way of bonuses even in cases where they have lost money, usually on the grounds that the losses would have been far greater had the governance of the bank not been so skilful .

The government has been under great pressure to bring in some form of regulation on the size of these bonuses, some of which can run into tens of millions of pounds but in a free market it is extremely difficult to see how this can be done effectively without damaging London as one of the leading financial centres of the world. For example, if we capped the amount of earnings and all bonuses received by the top people, you can imagine that they could immediately move the whole show to a country where such restrictions did not prevail.

Quite simply, our banks must be competitive with the other world markets and unless there was a universal agreement – which I doubt could ever be achieved – then the remuneration of these top people must be left to float to find its own level.

In a case like RSB, which, as I say, is owned by the taxpayer, there is some excuse for imposing a cap on overall earnings and probably getting away with it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made it quite clear, to the relatively new chairman of RSB, Mr Heston, that he expected his bonus this year to be well under £1 million (last year it was over £2 million) . In the event the remuneration committee settled on the figure of £963,000 . (Not exactly what you would call ‘well under £1 million!). Anyway, leaving the amount aside, the howl of protest from the public since it was announced, has eventually shamed the chairman into declining to accept the bonus. I cannot feel too sorry for him as he is entitled, under his contract, to millions more in shares, almost whatever happens to RSB, such is the nature of the beast in banking.

It is also being proposed that ‘workers’ should also sit on the remuneration committee and in doing so, bring some sense into the whole process and thus moderating the amounts being awarded. It has been suggested that no employee, however senior, should earn more than 40 times the lowest paid worker which would restrict the CEOs salary to roughly £1 million. However, this has yet to be fully debated to see if it could possibly be implemented.

The immorality of these vast sums of money paid to the so-called bankers or the streetwise traders on the trading floors, have been the subject of dissension for many years, particularly as a number of these so-called traders are not particularly well educated and are little better than barrow boys who happened to be extremely numerate.

This brings me onto the parallel situation concerning footballers. Here we have another group of people, almost to a man, uneducated, who could scarcely hold a job down stacking shelves in the supermarket, but who have some skill in dribbling and kicking a football. Their salaries, or wages, are certainly grotesque, running into the millions, in some instances, in comparison with their peer group holding down ordinary jobs I have not heard one single criticism about these levels of income, from political parties of any persuasion, as I believe it would be political suicide to criticise them. The Labour Party, in particular, rely heavily on the working man’s vote and as half the country is football mad, to attack the amount of money their heroes receive, would almost certainly affect their standing in the polls.

I’m certainly in favour of capping anybody’s income to a reasonable level, and even £1 million a year is far beyond the dreams of avarice, for most people, it should apply to city workers as well as footballers. On a personal front, when I started in the City, 61 years ago, I was paid £2.50 p per week and I recall the at most senior member of staff achieving the magic £1000 per year and how we all went down at lunchtime to view his second hand Morris Minor and drink his health. So far as we were concerned he had made it but I can assure my readers that there is no green eyed monster here, I’m not in any way, of envious, of today’s people who are able to earn more put in one year, then I have in my 60 odd years as a professionally qualified man.

But I do know this. That unless governments throughout the leading countries of the world can come to some sort of agreement on these ludicrously high incomes there will be some serious backlash against it sooner rather than later.

Given the problems that the government are facing over trying to control the level of bonuses they must feel desperately frustrated. Click here to see a cat who is also frustrated!

29 January 2012

Being a Sunday ‘ my lovely’ announced that today would be a’ lazy day’. How that differs, in my case from every other day, I’m not sure, but certainly it might mean that’ my lovely’ manages to sit down this afternoon and nod off in front of some golden oldie. My days. during this winter, when I am unable to go outside, vary very little, except for the odd visitor or tradesperson. Yesterday, our highlight of the day was Jamie’ the plumber’ who came to investigate some problem with our central heating which, to the delight of’ my lovely’ ‘proved not to be too serious and will be remedied. shortly. (This is not the time of year your central heating to go wrong, particularly with the coldest February on record being forecast something like -11 agreed degrees centigrade during the day) I suppose I should add to that my fairly regular visits to hospital not only from my quarterly checks-ups but the other bits and pieces. For example, the pain clinic and the eye clinic. Otherwise I usually spend the best part of the morning writing up my blog and answering the various e-mails that come in daily.. This usually takes me to lunch time when, after being fed, we spend half an hour or so in front of Judge Judy, I am glad that we are not literally in front of her’ as she is a fairly formidable lady. After Alice has finished her short rest, and departed to do her jobs, I will either read or watch one of the exciting series of programmes that Paul’ the computer’ has downloaded for me. The first two being Lost and 24. I can’t think where I was the first time these were being shown on British television but they are both absolutely riveting and tremendous entertainment. The afternoon disappears quite quickly until teatime when Alice joins me again, usually to watch Flog It., a sort of downmarket Antique Road show, the presenter of which, Paul Martin has a certain amount of charm, (Alice has been interested in antiques for the last 30 or 40 years and is quite knowledgeable so these programmes are of great interest to her.)

That over. I have another couple of hours to kill before the six o’clock call from my carers who get me ready for bed.
Then we have supper after which ‘my lovely’ will have found some Poirot or
Midsommer Murders type amusement which will take us up to my bedtime at 9.30. By which time, to be absolutely honest, I’m getting rather breathless and feel extremely fatigued. having done virtually nothing all day. Such is the nature of MND. and so another day passes!

This routine will continue until I find I need respirator intervention during the day and, depending upon how invasive that becomes will determine when I will call it a day. In the meantime, I can honestly say that I am reasonably content; still have some quality of life and could not be better looked after and that has to go a very long way towards my well-being, both by ‘my lovely’ and my splendid carers.  Click here to see why you should always carry a camera.

28 January 2012

From time to time I hear from my readers that they cannot open some of the diversionary pieces that I add to the end of my blog. This is because they are probably .docx documents and in order to be open by others I should convert these to .doc documents and will do so in the future if anyone still has trouble, opening these little gems,. please let me know.

‘ My lovely’ told me yesterday that she had seen that my carers were questioning whether or not I should still be using the standing hoist as they were concerned about my breathing. There is no doubt that if I’m left dangling too long the harness squashs my chest and diaphragm and I become a little breathless on landing.. The alternative is to use the body sling hoist that we have had parked in our inglenook for the past year or so. The trouble with this is that it is so much more cumbersome and time-consuming so I was you want to avoid making the switch earlier then we need to.

a couple of days ago, the American equivalent of the British SAS raided a compound in Northern Somalia and rescued two American citizens. Who were being held captive, for ransom, by the Somali pirates It seems that we have enough intelligence penetration to know either precisely or roughly where individual hostages are being held. This being so, I can’t help wondering whether anything is being planned for Mrs Tebbit,t, whose husband was shot in front of her when they were snatched, by the Somalis, from a beach honeymoon suite in Kenya. Nothing has been heard of poor Mrs Tebbit, who apparently is very deaf. must be terrified I understand it is not our policy to pay ransom is to terrorists but it wouldn’t be the first time that the SAS have been employed in such an exercise. The sinister aspect of this particular kidnapping is that no demands have made, or at least we have not been told of any on behalf. Mrs Tebbit, which begs the question as to whether she was still alive?

The mention of Somalia reminds me of the polo trip that we made in early 1963., Down to the Cape T. We sailed from Aden -the British protectorate in the southern Yeman -to Lorenzo Marks, the Portuguese colony or protectorate. On the way we disembarked some passengers at Mogadishu but for some reason the ship was too big, or the sea was too rough, for the ship to be berthed dock side, so passengers and cargo had to be transferred in a large basket, from ship to shore. A pretty hair raising experience which I captured on my camera and is part of my 50 year old film record of this amazing trip. The passengers had every reason for being apprehensive about this manoeuvre, as more than once we saw baggage being dropped into the sea. which could equally well have been a passenger. Fortunately, we did not have to disembark at the port in Lorenzo Marks, which proved to be not much better than Mogadishu, as they managed to drop my trunk into the sea, The Indian agent, was delightfully apologetic and seemed genuinely concerned, opened it up the trunk, as soon as it was fished out, and all of my personal belongings was stretched out in the sun on the quay for all to see. The most valuable part of that cargo were several boxes of photographic transparencies. which I assumed had been ruined. Not a bit of it, showing a lot of initiative, the agent stripped them out of their soggy cardboard cases dried them in the sunshine and then rre-set them into new surrounds, all within a couple of hours or so. The only problem that resulted from that was that, whereas the original transparencies were all labelled some of them, we could not identify, precisely where they were taken even to this day

Oh dear, the number one cricket team in the world, the English test team, were humiliated today in Abu Dhabi by Pakistan. Our bowlers had done their job, leaving the English team to score 142 winners during our 2 ½.days to do it. This should have been a cakewalk. Instead, we were all bowled out for 72 ,the third lowest score ever in test match cricket. Add to that Andy Murray’s defeat in the semi-finals of the Australian Open Tennis by Djokovic, admittedly in a fine five hour marathon, but a loss. nevertheless and British sport has taken yet another dive.

Whilst I’m feeling sorry for our defeats, I might as well compound it by showing you some amusing signs used around the world where our language has been murdered. Click here hopefully to be amused.

27 January 2012

With all my talk yesterday about a moment of Spring I heard on the news this morning that we will very shortly be going into a month of deep freeze, so that will teach me not ‘to count my chickens’ (for my overseas readers, who may be unfamiliar with this term, in its entirety it is ‘ Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched). Presumably, this means that until the eggs have hatched you cannot be sure of how many chickens you are actually going to get. -some may not survive). Anyway, a month of deep freeze will be very appropriate. In my case, as I am currently ploughing my way through that magnificent BBC programme, The Frozen Planet. -kindly lent to me by one of my carers, Sarah, who is very moment is on her own part of the frozen planet, hopefully skiing like a champion I thoroughly recommend this documentary to anyone who has not seen it- superb photography capturing an entire living world in the frozen Arctic and Antarctic..

Dragon have at last made a positive suggestion, basically to open up a new user profile under a slightly different accuracy level. I tried to follow the directions but my computer simply would not allow me to do what they requested.

In any event, as I said to them, the actual dictation side is significantly improved is significantly improved now that Paul has stripped down the computer and reloaded the programmes, There are still one or two wrinkles that need sorting out, in particular, commands and corrections, but it is 100% better than it has been over the past few months, although it would be great if I could get it completely right. This is going to be particularly important if and when I lose the use of my one splinted finger as a result of weekend arms.

Paul’ the computer’ came round after lunch today to babysit and at the same time went through the past years blog text tidying it up before tackling the same task for the media. He does it so much faster than I could by voice plus one finger so as he is here and he seems to enjoy working on the computer. I’m only too happy, and indeed grateful, to let him do it . He is very knowledgeable and an excellent teacher and I usually manage to pick up a trick or two most times he comes here.

Click here for a rather amusing homily on’ why I do not drink water’. (I hope I have not used lhis before)