The First Thing I Moved In
Despite all my troubles, there is two things I won’t do; let my standards slip and lose my sense of humour and the surreal.
So the first thing I moved into the house is this photograph.
Pride of Place
Sometimes I wish I had my uncle’s talent with drawing, as I’d create a picture, that would do C and our son proud!
As I write this it’s three years to the day since she died. So perhaps today is the first day of my new life, even if I haven’t quite moved yet!
C always said she married me, because she knew life would not be boring. So it’s now up to me to live up to her view of me. If I should get boring, please tell me!
Throwing a Life Away
In today’s world, there is not the point of keeping anything like there used to be. I’ve just spent an hour shredding bank and credit card statements, as if I need them they are on-line anyway.
Whole boxes of memories end up being compressed into a box a third the size of what you started with. Things that you hoped you would trawl through with your wife in front of your grandchildren, just go straight in the skip. Is it sad! Perhaps! But if I don’t do it now, my son will have to do it in a few or hopefully twenty years time. Even my travels of the previous few months, has ended up in a rather small box. But I will make a collage of the train and football tickets in memory of an adventure.
Ocassionally, you find the odd gem, but most of it is just rubbish. The real memories are in my mind or as photographs on disc or in more boxes.
But hey, I’m only 63 and may have a few years yet, so perhaps this is only throwing half the first half of a life away. In a way I’m going back to where C and I started in that area to the north of the City of London, bordered at the top by the North London Line.
Stem Cells and Stroke Patients
A lot of people mat well object to the fact that foetal stem cells have been used to help a stroke patient in Glasgow.
I’ve probably been fairly lucky with my stroke and it is doubtful whether I would have needed this treatment.
But, would I have said yes or no, if I had been offered the treatment. I don’t know, but I would have always wanted to get better.
It is interesting to postulate what families and the NHS will say. After all, if someone is completely disabled, it doesn’t help anybody, least of all the patient.
I must admit too, that if this treatment is a success, then the three parties involved, the patient, his family and the health service will all probably be in favour.
It will be interesting to see how the moral arguments develop.
Should We Allow Interracial Adoption?
It is being reported that the government is recommending that race play little or no part in adoption and fostering.
My late wife was adopted and always said she was special because she had been chosen by her parents. I’m certain that a lot of adopted people feel that way, but I’ve not knowingly met that many.
Two that I have met, were black and had been adopted by white families.
One was a girl, who used to cut my hair in Bury St. Edmunds some years ago and she told me, that the race difference had not been a problem.
The other was a black girl, who used to baby-sit our three boys, who at the time was being fostered in the village where we lived. Remarkably at eighteen, she liked her foster parents so much, that she effectively applied for her own adoption, so that she could stay. I think it is true to say, that her foster parents would have adopted her earlier, but that they couldn’t afford it. I can remember C coming home from Court one evening and telling me how the Judge had called her in, whilst he officiated in what he said was a rare case, but one that made his job worthwhile!
That last tale says to me, that it’s not the race or sexual orientation of the prospective adoptive parents that matter, but their attitudes and personality.
So in my book, the sooner we relax the rules on adoption, the better. Every child deserves a good home!
Gene Therapy on the Horizon
Horizon tonight was on gene therapy. It really did give people with genetic diseases hope.
As both my wife and our son died of cancer, it was thought that he may have inherited a faulty gene. He hadn’t, but I can understand how much something like that, would blow families apart.
On the other hand, I have an inherited genetic disease in coeliac disease. Would I want to be cured by gene therapy? Probably not now, as I control my symptoms through diet, but it would have been nice to know, I carried the faulty gene earlier and I could have modified my diet accordingly.
Is Lincolnshire a Nanny State?
This story, about a father being threatened with action because his seven-year old daughter walk twenty metres to the bus stop to go to school is ridiculous.
At the age of six or seven in the early 1950s, I used to be taken to the bus stop at Oakwood by my mother to catch the 107 bus to Enfield for piano lessons with my Aunt Mabel. I had my couple of pence for the ticket and used to sit in one of the back three seats by the conductor. When I got to the stop just past Enfield Town station, I would get off and run down to my aunt’s. It should also be said that my aunt didn’t have a phone at the time. Were my family responsible or not? Perhaps, my illnesses are all down to letting me look after myself from an early age!
London Buses
In the two and a half days or so, that I spent in London, I used the buses a lot. They worked well, especially, as the information at stops, generally allows you to choose the right bus for your journey with ease. There is one thing, that I’d like to see and that is some form of route map actually on the buses, so that if you are unfamiliar with the route, you can make the right decision about which stops to use. I think this is often brought about, by the fact that I’m unable to recognise where I am from the lower deck of a bus.
But I can still use the top deck, as this picture of the inside of a Routemaster on Route 15 shows.
Top Deck of a Routemaster
Stranglely as a child, I didn’t travel on these iconic buses very often, as they weren’t introduced into the suburbs, like Cockfosters where I lived, until after I left. The first place I saw them was at Wood Green, where they replaced the trolley buses.
But when C and our young family lived in St. John’s Wood, we used them extensively to get around London. It may surprise people to read that we could manage three small children and a large double pushchair with ease on these buses. But then in those days, it was either use the bus or walk! Or in C’s case push!
I should say that on my trip from Trafalgar Square to St. Pauls on the Routemaster, I had no difficulties with the stairs. So that was another victory against the Devil!
It’s Very Lonely Today
Today would have been our forty-second wedding anniversary. I shall probably see no-one all day except for the postman and the lady who delivers the papers.
I wonder what C would be thinking. She always said that she would hate to be alone and wanted to die first. This was partly because she said she hated her own company, but I suspect she’d be coping with the loneliness better than I am.
Today, there is nothing to do, as it’s not going to be the best weather and I have no driver. And there is no public transport! I simply refuse to take a taxi just to get somewhere, where there are some people!
If I did have some transport, I’d go to Colchester to see England Under-21 play Lithuania. At least there is the football and cricket on the television this evening!
But then, life gets better in the next day or so, as I’m spending a couple of days in London and then it’s off to Portsmouth to see Ipswch play!
Memories of My Grandfather – Henry Millbank
I never met my grandfather, Henry Millbank, as he died a few months before I was born. All I have is a couple of photographs at my parents’ wedding in 1946.
He was an engraver and one of his specialities was to engrave the die by which names and other words were stamped on to pencils. These days nearly all pencils are hexagonal and that according to my mother, is because her father was the last person with the skills to engrave one for a round pencil. Apparently, according to my mother in the last years of his life, people were always asking him to engrave others, as there was no-one else.
Interestingly, you now get engraved round pencils again, but that is because computers and the machines they control can do what few craftsman can.
Why the Fuss About the Coles’ Divorce?
You want to try losing your wife after being together for forty years!
You have a choice about getting divorced, but being widowed is rarely you or your partner’s fault!
I really do object to the amount of time spent on the break-up of the marriage between two complete non-entities! Especially on Radio 5, this morning!
The Anonymous Widower 