Company of Elders
I’ve been watcing Imagine on BBC1 with a dance group called the Company of Elders.
All are older than me!
Life is great and what you make it!
Memories of Chuck McKinley
Just watching the end of the Murray-Kendrick match at Wimbledon.
Thankfully, Murray won, but Kendrick was taking a leaf out of a fellow American, the late, Chuck McKinley. I must have been 15 when McKinley won the Championships in 1963. He had this great advantage that he would dive everywhere and retrieve almost impossible balls. If like me, you’ve played tennis on grass, you’ll know what is possible 9on that service, but not on anything hard.
I was sad to see that Chuck McKinley died at just 45.
The Iranian Basket Case
Many years ago before the fall of the Shah, I was peripherally involved in the selling of a Chieftain tank factory to the Iranians. I was providing software to the project but I left before it all fell apart with the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution.
I’m not sure if I can remember too well, my feeling about the project at the time, but now, I would feel that selling arms to regimes of that nature was not a good idea. In fact, I tend to that a lot of the weaponry we have is next to useless in the sort of wars we’re having to fight at present. But that is something for another topic and I’m not a military expert anyway. But are many politicians?
Anyway over the years, I met quite a few Iranians and I would think that all have been pleasant individuals who really only want to get on with their lives. I remember one Iranian pilot in Hong Kong, who was extremely charming to my late wife and myself, and invited us to see the joys of his country. And there are many, as a friend who visited last year on holiday testified.
And then they have plenty of oil and I believe other resources too!
So why is the country such a basket case?
One could blame the Muslim religion. I could do! But in this case, I’ll blame the religious and political leaders, who will do anything to keep power. And we all know where dictatorships lead too!
I believe strongly, that we should save energy and tax it heavily so that we save precious resources, reduce global warming and return the tax to the people, so that they can decide how it should be spent for the benefit of the people.
Let’s take just one example of their basket case strategies in this area.
Petrol is subsidised and read what happens in the Guardian, that well-known right wing rag!
It’s just a few pence a litre!
No wonder why there has been so much protest about the elections in recent days!
And it’s getting worse, with diplomats being expelled on both sides.
Widow or Widower?
I’m a widower in that my wife died in 2007.
We’d been together for forty years and married for just short of that magic number – ruby.
But why should widows and widowers have a different term? After all actors and actresses use the same term – actor.
So why aren’t we all widowers?
After all, we’re all in the same boat. The same dark, black and sometimes very lonely boat. But at least sometimes it’s happy too, as we still have memories and we don’t just sit at home and be miserable.
The Anonymous Widower 