A Contribution To The Danny Baker Show
This morning Danny Baker on his BBC Radio 5 show, asked for contributions about decorating the smallest room in the house.
In the 1960s, my parents were thinking about moving. They saw this nice house in Palmers Green, which had a totally black toilet, with black walls, floor and even a black suite.
They didn’t buy the house! I should say that even with my father’s excellent decorating skills, he was totally daunted at the prospect of removing all that paint. I even heard him talk about the house, years later.
I was invited to discuss this on air with Danny and he said, he’d once used the same colour for a kitchen.
He said, it was a disaster! especially, as the gloss paint he used wouldn’t dry and he’d even painted the lino.
There could be use though, for this crime against good taste.
If say your partner is keen to move and you are totally against it, what better way of putting off buyers, than to paint the toilet black.
It would also be a good way to get even with your ex-spouse in an acrimonious divorce, especially, if they got the house!
A Bathroom For Flirts?
I took these two pictures in the Silken Gran Dominie hotel.
C would have loved this, it gives endless opportunities for discrete displays of flesh to your partner.
She could be an exuberant flirt at times.
I remember one incident, where in a hotel in Berlin with a two-star Michelin restaurant, she’d secretly put the full set of underwear with stockings on for our mutual enjoyment. She was demure to everyone in a silk suit and I knew nothing of any surprise, until she returned from the loo, felt for my hand under the table and put a small scrap of fabric into my grasp.
The small scrap of fabric was her knickers.
She was then unduly slow with the rest of the meal!
Eating Alone In Restaurants
It is usually several times a week, that I eat a meal or have a drink in a pub or restaurant alone. I often do this in places where I’m known and may annoy the staff a bit, by talking to them too much!
But that is a problem of loneliness!
I remembered yesterday a story from my past. I think I’d driven to Bristol to do a presentation in something like 1990, and I’d not eaten particularly well. It was before my diagnosis as a coeliac, and I think lunch had probably been something like an egg salad sandwich and a Coke. Not what I’d eat now!
I was driving back by a cross-country route to Suffolk about seven and I knew that I’d told C that I was going to be home late and not to cook for me.
So somewhere in probably Oxfordshire, I happened to pass was looked to be a village pub with those magic words of Real Ale and Home Cooked Food on a sign. There were a couple of good cars in the car park and it all looked pretty welcoming. So perhaps I could have a pint and meal.
I walked in and approached the bar and ordered a pint of something real and after choosing a ham steak and chips, I asked the landlord where I should sit.
He told me to sit on the large table along the side of the bar, as that table was reserved for people eating and drinking alone, who might want to socialise.
I’m not sure what we talked about, but I did have a pleasant hour or so in that very friendly pub.
I just wonder why, so few pubs and restaurants seem to treat single people in a creative manner.
Sexist Tweets
There have been two big stories lately about two women ; Caroline Criado-Perez and Stella Creasey being abused on Twitter
I have never abused anybody knowingly on Twitter and I condemn the abusers unconditionally. Although on the other hand some of the things I’ve said, might have provoked a rabid response from certain classes of bigots. I have removed the odd message saying what I said was rubbish, but there has been nothing I have not found honest comment.
I will defend some men in particular, by saying that there are quite a few good men out there, who know how to treat a woman properly. I hope I do, as I did manage to keep my half of a relationship going for over forty years.
It’s not difficult! You just need a bit of give and take!
Angelina Jolie’s Example
I’ve never had breast cancer, but my late wife, C did, in her late fifties. She caught the cancer early and luckily only had a lump and lymph nodes removed, followed by a course of radiotherapy. She made a complete recovery and the cancer never returned. Sadly she died of a totally unrelated cancer a few years later.
I think Angelina Jolie’s upfront approach to her double mastectomy is to be praised. It’s reported here on the BBC. I know that Angelina has a lot more money than all of us and probably had the best surgeon, that money could buy, and C had a surgeon, who works extensively in the NHS, although she went privately. But her outcome was good and provided she was careful about what she wore, no-one knew that she’d had an operation. She was still able to wear a bikini, as I reported here. She also had to be reasonably careful about the bra she wore.
One thing that worried her, was that from professional experience, breast cancer operations, were quite a large cause of divorce, and I think she worried about my attitude to her body, after the operation. So I would also praise Brad Pitt for his support of his wife. Too often, in C’s experience, men often went looking for a perfect model.
I think my advice to anybody going through cancer or any other serious medical treatment, is to make sure you get a doctor, who you can trust and get yourself as fit as you can both before and after the treatment. And don’t rush things! Even with my stroke, the best advice I had was from a man, I bumped into on a train. He turned out to be a retired professor of medicine, who’d worked a lot with stroke patients. He said that time will be the biggest healer. I think now, three years later that has been very true.
I also wonder if those going through serious operations, in a stable relationship have a better chance of recovery.
Nude Cyclists For Jesus Convention
Every so often a series of amusing letters appears in The Times.
Yesterday, they were talking about people holding up signs to greet relatives at airports. This absolute gem was posted.
As a tender-hearted mother I have driven many miles to collect my sons from far-flung airports at all hours. It is a small compensation to take with me a large greeting sign, often along the lines of “Nude Cyclists for Jesus Convention” or similar. It amuses me.
I can’t see C or most of the mothers I know, ever putting up a sign like that for one of their children.
On the other hand, the letter writer seems to be my kind of lady, as I like to think I don’t do boring either, and C stated many times, that she married me, because she knew life wouldn’t be boring.
Love Is All You Need
I saw Love Is All You Need tonight at the Barbican cinema.
It was I think the first Danish film, I’ve ever seen and it was certainly one of the few films at which I cried at the end.
But then the two main characters were a widower and a woman going through breast cancer. I am of course the first and C suffered a bought of breast cancer, which she successfully overcame.
On the whole though it is an excellent film and quite uplifting.
What Would Happen If We Banned Steeplechasing?
Many believe that the Grand national and all steeplechasing should be banned.
I don’t!
But what would happen if we did ban it?
All our major races would probably move to Ireland or if the Scottish government decided not to ban it, to Scotland.
They would be overjoyed and some places in the UK, like Liverpool and Cheltenham, would lose quite a few jobs and lots of income.
But life in this country would lose one of its great spectacles. Soon horse racing would be reduced to a shadow of its former self, with probably only all-weather racing on the flat surviving.
I do think sometimes, that the various antis in all sorts of areas, have one aim in their mind; to take all the fun out of our lives.
If a man has never made love to a woman, who’s wearing nothing but a fur coat, he’s never lived! Incidentally, it wasn’t C’s coat either and it was at a two hour break in proceedings in a Catholic wedding.
Labour Can’t Win If It’s On Mick Philpott’s Side
This is the headline on an opinion in The Times.
It’s full of good facts and is a must read.
A Thought On The Philpott Case
The Philpott case, which is reported here, is raising a lot of debate, about the rights and wrongs of the level of benefits received.
C used to deal with some cases, where there was a vast bill for benefits on the one hand and because of the nature of the family, they cost Social Servicves a lot of time and money in keeping things in hand.
She felt, and I would agree with her, that these families are keeping benefits and services from others who need them.
So the first thing we must do is find a strategy to make sure that families like the Philpotts don’t get out of hand.
How you do that, I don’t know!
The Anonymous Widower 