A Real Redhead
My Aunt Gladys was a real redhead, although she was totally grey when I knew her.
Her likeness drawn by her husband and my uncle, sits and looks down at me, as I type this.
Cousins Reunited
My mother is on the left and Gladys is on the right.
Her likeness drawn by her husband and my uncle, sits and looks down at me, as I type this. She was good to me and C and even paid for our marriage licence, on condition I passed on the value to someone else. Which of course, I did! (I must write that story up some time!) I just did and it’s here.
Incidentally, that red gene is still in my family, as years ago, my beard had a touch of the reds and my son, says his does too. But that is minor really!
Yesterday, on the Underground, I saw a girl of about ten or so with her mother. She had the most amazing red hair. It wasn’t short and curly like most red hair seems to be, but long and straight and just clipped into a pony tail. Obviously, because of her age, the colour was totally natural.
They say that people’s fortune is in their face, this girl could have it in her hair.
The Selfishness Of Suicide
A good friend of my late wife’s has recently died of cancer. He had been suffering for some time and having gone through two cancer-related family deaths in recent years, I can understand in some ways, how his wife felt.
Some doctors were worried I might be suicidal, but I wasn’t, partly because, my wife had prepared me for the future and also because I had strong support from my son and of course, lots of others.
Sadly though, in my late wife’s friend’s case, his wife thought the best thing to do was commit suicide. I don’t think she had any idea of the number of devastated people she would leave behind her. I wish that someone had told me of the cancer, as I might have been able to say something of value. On the other hand, I probably couldn’t have done! But I have been rather down for the last few days!
Life may be very bad at times, but there is no excuse for suicide, unless possibly it is totally in agreement with all those around you.
Should Huhne And Pryce Go To Jail?
This stupid case, which quite frankly is all about seeing, who can be the nastiest to the other, has cost the taxpayer enough.
Obviously, the case is serious, but equally so, they are unlikely to cause any harm to anybody else, if they didn’t go to jail.
So they are a classic case for an alternative punishment.
Perhaps they should be sentenced to a certain amount of time, in something like a bail hostel, where they had to do the cooking and cleaning. Where of course, they had to stay in each night. Perhaps they should also be made to share a room to save money.
It could even be broadcast live on Channel 5.
Mothering Sunday At Carluccio’s
I got to Carluccio’s in Canary Wharf for a late breakfast.
There were obviously a few parties celebrating Mothering Sunday, but surprisingly, there were several singletons of both sexes. There certainly appeared to be more than usual, but then I was half-an-hour or so earlier.
You’d have thought that on this day, where mothers and their partners and children tend to celebrate, that dining alone wouldn’t have been so common.
I know that as a widower, who has lost his mother and contact with his two daughters-in-law, I am a bit short in the mother stakes. But my family has always been like that, with no woman having given birth on my father’s side with the coeliac gene, since 1820, that I can find.
Still those genes, when linked to my mother’s Huguenot ones gave me a strong survival instinct and I like to think an active and fertile mind.
Mother’s Day
As someone, who is widowed and doesn’t have a mother anymore, this is one of the days I wish didn’t happen. I actually don’t know my two daughter-in-laws and my grandchildren, which is particularly sad. But then you can’t cater for circumstances.
If I want to eat out with my other son today, then we’ll have difficulty finding somewhere decent.
I do hate these single-issue days. Surely, everybody should respect their mother and father all the year! And not just on one day of the year!
These days, were only invented to sell cards and flowers.
C always hated Mother’s Day, as it was some foreign invention. To her it was Mothering Sunday, which was often on a different day. But I can’t ever remember us celebrating any of Mother’s Day, Mothering Sunday or Father’s Day, except by the odd card. We did usually celebrate Valentine’s Day, as I remarked here.
Cardinal O’Brien In The Doo-Dah
I can’t say I hold a brief for the views of Cardinal O’Brien, as what right does anybody have to deny anybody a proper marriage, be they straight, gay, divorced or widowed.
So I was rather pleased that Stonewall’s bigot of the year, has got dropped in it, from a great height by a former priest and some other complainants. The priest left the priesthood and got married, which probably sums up the real fault of Catholic doctrine. Being denied your instincts, like wanting to have a meaningful relationship with someone that might lead to marriage, surely causes more problems than it solves.
The full story is here on the BBC.
I do fear that if people like O’Brien are choosing the new Pope, what sort of dinosaur will they choose?
Love Is In The Air!
Or is it the Tube?
Love Is In The Air!
I took this picture this afternoon. I hope this guy’s extensive preparations went down well with his wife!
In some ways, I miss St. Valentine’s Day more than others, as C and I usually went somewhere nice to have a meal. I’d also usually got her some nice underwear or cashmere from one of the many on-line sales after Christmas. She was very easy to buy underwear for, as she was a very common size and she always liked expensive sets, that she knew had been picked up for a bargain.
It’s now six years since I had a good St. Valentine’s Day. Tonight, I’ll be cooking myself a pork chop with some vegetables and watching the football. I shall probably have a couple of Celias.
Lonely In The Cold
I think that living alone in the cold weather, we have had the last few weeks, has been much worse, than living it with someone. The weather is after all a classic mutual moan and a problem to share. And where do you get cuddles from?
At least if the sun is out, the sun gives you a lovely rub and bathe!
This weather can’t go on much longer. After all Noah only had to put up with just over a year and he had some nice pets to play with! And some awful ones too!
The Gay Marriage Vote Today
Why has such a simple proposition created so much amount of useless hot hair?
I was married to a lovely woman for nearly forty years and know the value of such a relationship. There is also the work of William Farr in the 1850s, to reinforce it, as I outlined here.
So what right does anybody have to deny anybody happiness?
If we do, we’re following the route of religious nutters, like the Taliban and some Christian and other groups, who deny women a good life.
I would also take civil partnerships further and allow it to any couple, who wanted it. C and I had a pretty good marriage, but at times we wondered, if it would matter, if we hadn’t got married or not. Some couples, who don’t think marriage is for them for various reasons, might prefer a civil partnership to sort out their tax affairs, if one sadly dies. When C died, it saved a fortune in various taxes compared to if we’d just been living together.
There is also the problems of say two widowed sisters or brothers living together for economic and companionship reasons. Should they be allowed a civil partnership to perhaps put their financial affairs on the same basic as any other couple. In C’s work as a family barrister, she came across several cases like this. Often the surviving sibling would be living in a dingy flat on benefit. We owe people a better life and all it would need would be the extension of civil partnerships.
Dwelling On Loneliness
I do think that people will admit that my life can be rather lonely.
Although, as someone, who has often worked alone in his life, my state is little different to where I have been before.
As a child, I used to spend hours with my Meccano or just with my father down at his print works in Wood Green.
I was also very much a solitary programmer for much of my working life. Or if I did work with someone, it was just with one person. The only time I really had someone to work with was when I was writing software in the few years after I’d left ICI. And that was our third son, George, who used to sit in his chair, whilst I bashed away on an old Teletype. Occasionally, he’d get taken over to Time Sharing in Great Portland Street and sometimes, the girls in the office would take him away and play with him.
I sometimes wonder what happened to all those girls; Maeve, Maggie and and the Australians; Crystal Hendricks and Marie Thorpe.
But then I’ve always discarded friends throughout my life. only a couple of my school friends are still in touch. But what happened to Sheena Findley, Susan Portch, Caroline and the other girls from my year at Minchenden? C was just as clumsy with friends, as her best friend from school, Ruth Mason, is just a name in the past. She got married and moved to Ruislip, but where is she now?
I did bump into my first girlfriend at Liverpool; Marilyn Garland, once at Swiss Cottage, a few years after leaving University. She had a baby then and is probably a granmother now.
Some of the Metier people I still know, as I must have got better at keeping in touch as I got older.
But I never really was a team player, and that has stood me in good sense, since the death of C.
I do many things I want to on my own. And in some ways, I like it that way.Although I do miss the company of a good woman. A bad one would probably be good to!
The Anonymous Widower 