Life is too Short for Retirement
The statement is from Colin Murray Parkes, who has just received this year’s Times/Sternberg Active Life Award. This summary from Wikipedia sums up the sort of work he has done.
Parkes is a former chairman and now life president of the charity Cruse Bereavement Care.[4] He acted as a consultant and adviser following the disasters in Aberfan, the Cheddar/Axbridge air crash, the Bradford Football Club fire, the capsize of the Herald of Free Enterprise and Pan American aircraft explosion over Lockerbie. At the invitation of UNICEF, he acted as consultant in setting up the Trauma Recovery Programme in Rwanda in April 1995. At the invitation of the British government, he helped to set up a programme of support to assist families from the United Kingdom who were flown out following the terrorist attacks of 11 September, 2001, in New York. In April 2005 Parkes was sent by Help the Hospices with Ann Dent to India to assess the psychological needs of people bereaved by the tsunami.
And much of it was done after he was supposed to have retired.
One paragraph in the article in The Times today is particularly appropriate to my experience.
He has these words of advice: “The most important thing is not to avoid people who are bereaved. They won’t necessarily ask for help, but it is a lonely time. So do take the trouble to invite them out or go in for a visit. Even if all they really want to do is feel sad and have a good cry, it is nice to be able to do that with someone.
“Most people cope very well with bereavement if you give them a chance. Often people do the wrong thing for the right reason and avoid bereaved people because they are afraid of upsetting them, when actually they are upset anyway and sometimes long to talk about it. This is particularly the case at times of celebrations or anniversaries.”
He is so right. You can could the number of my friends, who have come to visit me since I moved on the fingers of one hand. But I did get large numbers of Christmas cards this year.
Am I bothered? Well, yes and no! I know that I’m way down some peoples’ lists and as someone who has always made most of his own entertainment, I can cope. But don’t say you’ll come and then don’t do it.
Cutting Debts
I was listening yesterday to the BBC’s morning phone-in and they were talking about debts and especially how people have got into trouble over Christmas.
If I look at my finances over the last year, they have improved somewhat and I felt that although I’m living on my savings until my house is sold, I’ve probably got almost a year more before my avings run out, than when I moved here in December 2010.
So what major savings have I made.
The first is the the television, phones and broadband. I like Sky Sports, and the big saving is that I can’t have an obvious dish here, as it’s a Conservation Area. Although, I could probably hide one on the roof! I did try Virgin by cable to get Sky Sports 1 and 2. Now I’ve switched to BT Vision with of course Freeview. I now pay about £50 a month to get phone calls, broadband and Sky Sports 1 and 2.
I don’t seem to miss out on watching anything I want to, but the saving is a thousand on Virgin Media and a couple of thousand compared to Sky.
Note that I only rarely watch films on television and generally stick to the four BBC channels, the two Sky Sports channels and radio.
The biggest saving is not having a car. I don’t miss it one bit, although perhaps it would have helped on Christmas Day to get to my son’s. But with the amount of money I save, I can afford the occasional black cab or mini-cab.
Getting rid of the car has other benefits too in addition to the obvious financial and logistical ones.
You walk a lot more, which is obviously good for you. I always walk with my eyes open too and I see things in shop windows that I might like to buy to improve my lifestyle or things that are just interesting in the street.
Walking is a real joy in a city and in no way inferior to walking in the country. In fact, I think it is more thought-provoking.
So how many people with serious debt problems have still got the expensive television, the full Sky and an expensive car?
The Paddington Basin
I ended up at Paddington station and went to have a look at the Paddington Basin on the Regent’s Canal behind.
I was told that when the basin was drained to create the new developments, the police had a sweepstake on how many bodies, shopping trolleys etc. they would find. I was told they were rather surprised, but obviously pleased that none of the former were found.
Thoughts Of Angel
I saw this notice at Angel station today.
Thoughts Of Angel – 29th December 2011
The URL at the top doesn’t work. But even so it’s an interesting way to get a message across.
If you can’t read it, the message is.
Common sense is the most evenly distributed commodity in the world.
Everybody thinks they have enough.
Today, there was a different one as I passed through.
Thoughts of Angel – 30th December 2011
I wonder if they will keep this philosophy up.
The New Farringdon Station
The new longer 12-coach Thameslink trains are now running through the tunnels from St.Pancras to south of the river and Farringdon Station has been upgraded and lengthened to cope.
In a few years time, it will be the major interchange between Thameslink and Crossrail and one of the busiest stations in London.
The information on what they are doing is good to.
Note that the station used to be called Farringdon and High Holborn.
The Greatest Steeplechaser
After Kauto Star ‘s epic victory yesterday, to give him a fifth King George VI Chase, there has been a lot of discussion about who was the greatest steeplechaser.
My late father saw Golden Miller win at Cheltenham in the 1930s a couple of times, just as he saw Arkle win on the television as I did in the 1960s. Unquestionably, to my father, Golden Miller was the greatest and having seen all of those so called greatest since Arkle, like Desert Orchid and Kauto Star, I won’t change my father’s view.
Golden Miller too had a very big handicap and rose above it all. His owner Dorothy Paget was a complete nutcase and insisted he run in the Grand National every year, which he hated. Although he did win the National in record time in 1934, when the fences were a lot bigger, in the midst of his five Cheltenham Gold Cup triumphs.
The Scottish Toothache Cure
Since my tooth was taken out, I have been in quite a bit of pain. Today it is a lot better, as a splinter of the tooth has just appeared in my mouth. It probably sneaked out through the gum, by the side of another tooth.
I can’t take Ibuprofen and paracetamol has helped, but the only thing that has really dulled the pain has been a small Scotch and water. My father was the same and preferred it to any pain killer. But then if the eminent Hugh Pennington recommends it, it must be right.
There’s Always Some Bad News at Christmas
This year it was the pointless but deadly bombings in Nigeria. It’s when things like this happen, how anybody with any knowledge of the world’s great religions could see them as anything other than unwarranted mass murder.
Hare Krishna In The Rain
I hadn’t seen them on Oxford Street for some years, but they were there last week in the rain.
Hare Krishna in the Rain
We may think of them as harmless religious nutters.
But a couple of years ago, I heard their work in improving school sanitation in India widely praised by the Projects Director of UNICEF in a lecture at Emmanuel College in Cambridge.
The Flying Banana
As I was waiting for my train, an unusual yellow one passed through.
It looks like a High Speed Diesel Train, and it is actually a modified one called the New Measurement Train, which travels all over the network, checking track and electrification systems. Inspection is based on a thirteen week cycle. There is a detailed article on the train here in Construction News. And a video here.
You can see why it got its nickname.
In some ways it is a unique train, not only in the UK, but worldwide.
The Japanese and the French have similar trains for their high speed lines, but these are electrically powered, whereas the New Meaurement Train has two powerful diesel power cars. So as the British train is completely self contained, it can check any line in the UK, whether it is electrified or not. Where I saw it at Basingstoke, it was on a section of track, that uses third rail electrification.
As it is a High Speed Train, it can also be used at 200 kph on the East and West Coast Main Lines, thus testing them at their operational speeds.
Note that as the lines through the Channel Tunnel to London, are effectively built using French electrification standards, the French train is used to monitor those lines every two months. But it has to be diesel hauled through the tunnel.
It all goes to show that the High Speed Diesel Train will be laughing at us for a few decades yet.
The Anonymous Widower 