Caught in the Moment

  

Today, I am tidying up. Out of a box under the bed tumbled a heap of photographs, some, like this one, capturing moments long-forgotten from times well-past.

I am thinking this was taken by my cousin Marylyn on a beach in Scotland in 1964, or '65. The three subjects are Geoffrey (Marylyn's husband) Robert (small boy) and Adrian, my brother.

I am not here. It was Adrian's turn to be taken camping by our closest family. I think I begrudged him the treat at the time.

Adrian died, aged just 42, a year or two before the millennium that we had assumed, when we were young, we'd celebrate together.  Geoffrey is dying of Alzheimer's disease and wouldn't know me if I saw him. Why would he? Ten years after this photo was taken, he and Marylyn divorced and we met only once after that - at her funeral. Robert battled decades of depression, then one day just upped and left his wife and daughters, never to be seen again. It happens.

When I teased this photograph out of the pile, I smiled. Their stories have come to an end, as mine must one day, but the photo carries a message: the ending is not the WHOLE story.

Funnily enough, that's a comfort.

 

 

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Congratulations!

My daughter Kate and son-in-law Darren have just become parents!

SO excited... . Congratulations you two!

xxx

 

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News Round-Up

There's a bit of a controversy over here about right-wing bias in the BBC. It does look a bit skewed to be honest. But these things usually even themselves out. Besides, I am no longer in a position to complain about BBC news, because I no longer watch it. It's a price Auntie appears willing to pay.

So I get my news from my Twitter feed, which is unashamedly biased, but in a GOOD way. I only get the news I want to hear.

I am very disappointed that Peter Phillips is being paid to ask other people to pay to go to his granny's birthday bash in the Mall. Of course I am glad the Queen has made it to ninety as the alternative would be inconceivable, but this 'pay as you party' wheeze says everything about the Upper Class attitude to the rest of us that is going to lead to us into becoming a Republic one day.

A PR firm has the job of persuading me to clean the streets for the big event: it's wasting somebody's money.

I was at a newsy event myself last week, I hauled my lazy arse off to London to attend a Fabian's conference that featured Jeremy Corbyn. Nothing flashy about Jez. He has the quiet, unassuming authoritative air of a man at home in his skin. I like it. He has a mountain to climb though, because people are stupid. Sorry, I have to say it. Look at the facts: Corbyn says something unconventional like let's not waste billions of money we're CONSTANTLY being told we don't have, on an obscene and obsolete weapons system, we can't even use. He is excoriated in the Tory press. Stupid people just can't work out that democracy only works if all sides are heard. I have to listen to enough of that over-privileged, over-stuffed imbecile David Cameron. Come on! Let's have some balance.

That's better!

Sometimes you just have to let rip.

Sorry if I've offended anyone:it was probably intentional.

:)

 

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Poetic License

I recently petitioned Parliament. This is easy to do these days, and a spiffing idea, I think. I obtained the necessary number of signatures to get it off the ground (5: hardly a major hurdle) and am waiting for the Parliamentary Petitions Department to decide whether to permit it's publication, or not. To be fair, I have no idea what the confirmation process is, or whether a 'Parliamentary Petitions Department' really exists, but I feel it ought.

 

I am a tenant with a good and responsible landlord. My petition is for the 700,000 tenants living in unsafe and/or insanitary conditions being ripped off by unscrupulous landlords (or landladies for that matter).

 

I wrote a stirring introduction, and a heart-rending appeal designed to animate the Compassion Community and spur them to action. I was immensely pleased with myself. I hit send, and there it was : "That All Private Landlords Should Be Licenced." Lord, am I embarrassed?

I shall say it's the 'Greengrocer's Apostrohe' trick ... A deliberate error designed to draw in the pedant and trap her into buying 'Potato's'... .

 

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