I Just Broke a Glass
I was drinking a glass of wine, when I wrote the last post. Because I make so many typing mistakes and have to correct them, I constantly shift from side-to-side on my chair, as I have to hit backspace all the time and then correct all of the mess created by inadvertant control keystrokes. The outcome was that the phone cable got tangled in my chair and as I pushed against it, the desk moved backwards and the glass which was in a safe place to my right toppled over. It may have been actually toppled by a fly-spray canister that was handy to zap the aerial irritants, inhabitating my office.
So no harm done really and it’s the first accident for about a week. I think, I’ll log them, as it would be progress to do a month without a problem. At least my little cordless Dyson mopped up all the broken glass, I couldn’t pick up with my right hand.
But it just goes to show, how frustrating computing is for a man with a gammy left hand! I believe that if I get the keyboard driver I want, it will improve my life in a very positive way.
Getting Emotional
Since the last stroke, I sometimes get a bit emotional. When people ask how I am and they say nice things, sometimes it can make me cry. But then I’ve been through a lot with the death of C and our youngest son and the strokes haven’t helped.
But then I’ve always been a bit like that. This piece is from the book I wrote about life with C.
There are quite a few people, places and events that have radically altered the way that I think and how I conduct my life. One event was the death of Jan Palach in Czechoslovakia. He committed suicide by setting himself on fire in Wenceslas Square on January the nineteenth, 1969, as a protest against the Soviet invasion.
I swore to C that one day, I would stand in Wenceslas Square in a totally free and liberated Czechoslovakia.
With the coming of Go, British Airways low-cost airline started by Barbara Cassani, Prague was suddenly a short flight away from Stansted. I should have gone earlier, as the Velvet Revolution that had ousted the Soviet-backed Communist regime had been ten years before.
But I hadn’t and I regret that.
We stayed at the Hoffmeister, which has all the charm and service expected of a Relais & Châteaux hotel. It was seriously good and from reading reports on the Internet, it still appears to be.
The weekend was our thirty-third wedding anniversary, but I have no recollection of where or what we ate on the seventh. All I do know is that the food and wine was excellent throughout the time we were in Prague.
But it was to stand in Wenceslas Square that was one of the main reasons that we had gone to Prague.
I cried!
And I cried buckets!
Will I ever be able to do the same in Harare, Rangoon and the many other places in this world, where people are oppressed and murdered by the state?
I wrote that in probably about January 2008 soon after C died. Do I feel the same now? Perhaps, I actually feel stronger about the last statement, as there are other places I could add to the list.
I sometimes wonder how C felt about Jan Palach! She booked that trip and she knew how I felt. But remember too, than he was only 15 days older than she was!
Perhaps I should return to Prague? I will only do that, when there are no more demons in my mind, dragons to slay and goals to fulfil.
In other words, I never will return!
Rough Aunties
This looks like a film to be worth seeing, according to the review in The Times.
I shall try and see it!
Nepotism – Tajik Style
This report says it all.
You may not be able to read it unless you have a subscription to The Times, but if you can’t just type “Zarrina Rakhmonova” into Google. There are several reports of her becoming a TV newsreader, in Tajikistan, where her father is president. Apparently, her brother, Rustam, is a professional footballer and a Member of Parliament. It would be interesting to see if he ever gets a red card. Incidentally, the national football team has a FIFA ranking of 135.
Female Priests as Sinful as Child Abuse, says Vatican
I could not believe this headline, when I saw it in The Times today.
But as it is in a nrespaper of record and by their respected religion correspondent, Ruth Gledhill, I’ll accept what it says, as a disgraceful statement, that completely betrays all those myriads of children, who have been abused by those who belong in one way or another to the Roman Catholic Church. I know quite a few Catholics, including a couple of judges, and I suspect most of them will be as horrified as I am by this report from the Vatican. The few crumbs of comfort in the statement, is that the Vatican has tightened the rules on abuse, and made it easier to dismiss and prosecute an abuser. Everyone who abuses a child, should be immeditely turned over to the police, so that they can suffer, the full and fair force of the law. If anybody, such as a bishop, protects an abuser, he should be prosecuted as well!
Annuity Rules to be Scrapped
You save all your life and create an adequate pension pot and then at 75, you have to turn it into an annuity, ehich in many cases would be like using twenty pound notes to keep warm in winter. But now the government has stated that it will abolish this rule according to the BBC.
The government has outlined its plans to scrap the long-standing compulsory deadline for people buying an annuity.
Present rules state that those with a personal or company money purchase pension must buy an annuity once they hit the age of 75.
In the Budget, the government changed this age from 75 to 77, and now it has outlined plans to abolish the deadline.
I’ll believe it when and if I get to 80. Remember that this change will mean all those commissions and charges that insurance companies and pension funds will lose. They’ll try all they can to stop the rule changes. After all government needs their services like the rest of us.
Nuisance Calls
My last post took a long time to get posted as I was interrupted by an American lady on the phone, saying C had won a cruise. I dropped the phone and this hit some dodgy keystroke, which meant that the post I was editing got deleted.
If I have time, I usually greet these callers with suitable arrangement of Foxtrot Oscar, especially when they ask for C. These low-life are a very good place to vent my anger and frustration with life.
My phones are all listed on the Telephone Preference Service, so they should not be cold calls. But then American companies do not feel that they should abide by UK and EU law. It’s America first and the rest don’t count.
Until they do, I will not buy any products from US companies, unless they adhere to the ethics that all sensible people adhere to!
Cambridge Park and Ride
It looks like Cambridge are going to change the charging structure on the park and ride for the city, according to this report. If they do charge for parking as well, they will be going against what was said on Radio 5 some months ago. Then, it was said, that those parking and cycling were welcomed and that they took traffic off the roads in the congested city.
I have used the park and ride, usually to go to the centre for shopping or perhaps to see a film. As I have a bus pass, I don’t pay anything, so if they charged for parking, would those over sixty like me still use it. After all, Bury St. Edmunds has fairly low car park charges at certain times and it is just as close to me.
I also use the park and ride near to Addenbrookes and then walk in or take the free-for-me shuttle bus. This is cheaper than parking at the hospital and actually gets you conveniently closer to out-patients, than the car park. If I walk, as I do in the sun, it can also be argued that it is good for me.
If they do charge for parking or make it that parking includes the bus fare, it will be a sad day and except for Addenbrookes, I will cut my visits to the city.
I suppose though, Cambridge has to fund the busway somehow!
Another Problem for the Cambridge Busway
It looks like it was only a small tree, but this report shows another problem for the Cambridge Busway.
It looks like it was only a small tree, but after all the other faults, problems and just bad design, it illustrates, that this busway, must rank as the worst-planned and designed transport project in the UK and perhaps even Europe.
Will we ever get to use it to vitis the birds at DraytonLakes.
European Computer Driving Licence
I had never heard of this until Wednesday, when an unemployed man said that he’d been offered a course to get him back to work. I am not sure, if it helped him get a job, but it strikes me that it is simple proof, that the holder has the minimum computer skills needed in the most basic of jobs. Speaking to two friends at dinner that night, it turned out that both their sons had done this qualification at school and had thought it worthwhile.
I have read about the syllabus on the British Computer Society’s web site. As I have actually written a book on how to use the Internet and have many years of computing experience, this qualification is something I could teach or at least point people in the right direction.
There is almost a barter here, in that I might teach say an unemployed person, a bit of computing and they do a few of the jobs that I can’t manage in my state. I suspect too, that I’m not the only person with good computer skills, who needs a bit of other support.
The Anonymous Widower 