Why Not Share Taxis?
With a few notable exceptions, I’m not a lover of taxis. If I get a taxi from Cambridge to where I live I’ve been charged nearly £50. But how many times has someone else been doing a similar journey and a share would have been much better?
So I was pleased to see that at Milton Keynes a company call TaxiShareUK is starting such a service.
I hope it works!
The Day I Met the Queen
Turning out and weeding the files is mainly a depressing occupation. But then occasionally, you come across a little gem. I thought I’d lost this card, which was the invitation from the Palace to attend a Queen’s Award Reception.
Invitation to a Reception
Let’s say it was one of the best parties, I’ve ever been to!
The setting was msgnificent, the staff were attentive and welcoming and all in all you couldn’t have wanted for anything.
Three of us went, myself, Richard and John.
We met the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and actually talked for quite a time with the Duke of Kent. It was also one of the first receptions, that Diana Spencer attended and most of the guests seemed to spend their time trying to talk to her. It wasn’t the most edifying of spectacles and we just enjoyed the setting, the food and the wine. But not too much, as would you believe some captains of industry, did over indulge on the hospitality.
Metier won two Queen’s Awards, but you won’t find them on the Internet. If I have one secret ambition it would be to win one for technology, but I’m a bit long in the tooth and too much of a wreck now!
But then everybody who has had a stroke should look to Louis Pasteur, who did some of his best work many years after he had had several.
An Objective in Life!
Last night, I was writing to a friend about the pubs near to my new house. I said the following.
My local is just four doors away, but it needs educating. All it serves is crap upside-down lager and chemical cider. But there are a few Adnams pubs within a few minutes walk. And most Adnams pubs serve the best cider in the world, Aspall, which has been crafted in Suffolk since 1728.
Perhaps my first objective in life is to celebrate their tri-centenary. I’ll only be 81!
I used to worry that because my father and his father died so young, that I might suffer the same fate. But now I’m more optimistic, especially as I’e found out that most of my grandfather’s brothers and my mother and both grandmothers, lived either well into their eighth decade or even into their ninth.
So perhaps, it’s an objective I stand a chance of fulfilling. I’m certainly going to give it a good shot!
It is Really Thirty Years?
When anybody writes the history of the twentieth century in the future, one of the most significant days will be December 8th 1980. It was on this day that John Lennon was murdered in New York.
Lennon was a bit hero of mine and probably still is, as in the 1960s, his attititude was an inspiration to me, as the Beatles showed what could be achieved if you just believed in yourself. I would not have succeeded like I possibly have, without the four musicians from Liverpool.
I was also lucky enough to see them live at the Hammersmith Odeon around Christmas 1964, when several of us from school climbed into my battered Austin 8, for the trip across London. One image of that concert is Lesley Clarke, who was at school with me and in the party, trying to get the girl in front to cut the screaming, as she couldn’t hear anything.
Without the Beatles, I might never have gone to Liverpool, as who would have chosen to go to University in that grim port city in the north?
Liverpoool made me, as I found C there and our first child was conceived in the city.
We both shared a taste for his music, as does or did our sons.
When C died, it was the raw tracks of Lennon’s songs coupled with the haunting ones that Dory Previn created that brought me through.
Now is the day to move completely on. I owe it to C and my son. And to John!
The world must move on too! I would love to see two things die before I do; the death penalty and war.
John and C would have agreed.
The Anonymous Widower 