This World, This Life

  So that's Christmas out of the way.  Considering in the run up I had absolutely no interest in it this year, it was pretty good and I enjoyed it.  The weather helped - proper Christmas weather, very cold, a decent bit of snow, but lots of sunshine and blue sky so that walking the dog was a pleasure rather than a chore.  I can remember the odd Christmas like it when I was a kid - I think, but I could be hallucinating - and certainly the first few I celebrated here in Poland were like this.  Climate change has made a nonsense of that for the last few years, and we've walked to Mass or driven to relatives in warmer, wet and windy weather instead. The new normal, I guess, with this year the exception. Anyway, it was quiet and we spent it at home.  No visitors this year, just we four, plus Lulu the dog and Jazzy the cat, and it was cool.  We ate well, made the effort to dress formally (that is, for me, suit and white shirt and tie), watched the mandatory ...

  "The way we consume music...." Even the phrase gets up my nose!  American techie buzzwords all of 'em.  What's wrong with "buy music", or "listen to music", or better yet "enjoy music", for Gawd's sake? Let me restart this piece...... ------------------------------------------------------------- Someone forwarded me a meme the other day on Facebook (yes, I KNOW I'm supposed to have dumped the platform, but I'm still finding uses for it - like prompting internet rants of my own....) that kicked my brain into reverse gear.  It was a simple picture of racks of vinyl LPs in a record shop c.1973 I should think, with a "Share if you know what this is" caption.  And, hell, yeah - I know what that is and I go all misty eyed at the memories it conjures up. I didn't say that, of course, just gave it a Like and moved on. I love my music, as I've written many times in my various blogging activities, have done since I w...

  A few years back, when I was working in Amsterdam and Britain was unaccountably trying to leave the EU, the entire continent was engulfed in a wave of migrants trying to find a better life.  Cue much hand wringing and panic stories of "terrorists" being in the vanguard.  Boatload after boatload of refugees and economic migrants from across the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa braved the Med in flimsy inflatables provided at extortionate cost by so-called people smugglers, aiming at Greece and Italy, the EU's southern outposts, from the North African coast.  Thousands died but thousands more made it to islands like Lesbos and Lampadusa.  There were no welcoming committees, only police and troops escorting them to transit camps, tent cities on the edge of dusty towns, where they relied on charities to provide them with food and water and medical aid.  Many remain there still.   The nationalists like LePen and Salvini, Johnson and Farage, Kaczyns...

  This a re-post from last year.  The sentiments are unchanged and always will be, but I've updated it to take account of the passage of time and the Pandemic. Forget Hallowe'en.   Despite all the trick or treating, crazy costumes and horror movies on the telly, here in Poland it's no more than a sideshow.  Thankfully the American obsession with it hasn't reached us, at least not to the same extent.  Indeed, the Catholic Church here, whose priests and nuns provide religious instruction in schools, in a country where First Communion and Confirmation are taken much more seriously than in many places (certainly than back home in Britain) openly and happily denounce Hallowe'en as being Evil, and encourage parents to ignore it and punish kids who join in the fun.  Mind you, they say likewise about the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas.  Which says a lot about the the shape of things here right now..... No, the big day here is the next day, November 1st...

  So the whistle-blower has now testified before Congress and the British Parliament and held firm to her story, despite Facebook's attempts to discredit both her and her testimony.  This should be no surprise to anyone who has followed the story, or indeed the growth and decline of the platform.  Sure, it has billions of users, but the service it now provides and the way it works has changed very much for the worse. I've had enough.  I'm off. ------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Zuckerberg created the platform and founded the company when he was a spotty teenage undergrad at Uni - he never did complete his degree.  It was all very altruistic: a way to maintain contact with friends and relatives, have a bit of fun, organise dorm parties, exchange bright ideas and unused stuff no longer wanted, and have a good old on-line natter.  It worked, so well that it quickly outgrew its home Uni base and spread to other college faculties a...

  Finally!   After several months of stop - start planning, largely down to the prohibitive costs and restrictions BoJo's amateur Government chose to apply to travellers to and from the UK, I managed to get back to my homeland after almost exactly 2 years.  Getting to see my grandkids, especially the lad born last year during Lockdown, and visiting my ailing elderly sisters has been a target since early this year, when restrictions began lifting, but it's taken much grief, stress and expense to finally achieve it. And how was it? In a word....interesting. ------------------------------------------------------------ I'm fully inoculated, as is my wife and my daughter who accompanied me to England.  We have our EU Covid passport documents.  Last month, I visited Switzerland for a couple of weeks, solo, and it was a painless travel experience, no different from a pre-Pandemic Schengen hop.  The only extra document I needed to complete was the online Swiss...

  The thing about depression, I think, is that it's a bloody sneaky ailment.  It creeps up on you suddenly.  You can be feeling perfectly ok, if a bit crotchety or under par, but put it down to factors beyond your control - the weather, tough times at work, latterly Covid - whatever.  Then one day you wake up and it hits you. You are not simply pissed off about these things: you are really really REALLY unhappy about them.  It's beyond anger. Mere frustration is gone. Forget a little bit sad.  You are Depressed. This can happen relatively quickly, a matter of weeks.  Or it can be dragged out over months - years even.  You don't want to get up.  You don't know what to do, how to face it.  You want to shut yourself away somewhere and wallow in self pity.  Every little thing that is not right (in your befuddled brain) makes you blubber like a two year old.  Your appetite goes.  Your concentration levels drop through the floo...

  There is light at the end of the tunnel, at least as far as my personal Covid experience is concerned. After a difficult 15 months or so, I can look to the future with optimism, and start making plans again. And about bloody time, too! I sincerely hope that this will be the last piece I write on the subject, but I’m not betting my home it: there is still way too much uncertainty out there, too many variants popping up and spreading despite all the efforts of science and medicine to stop them. We still don’t know for sure where it came from, or how; the vaccine roll out is going superbly well in some countries and appallingly in others; vaccine shortages will continue to plague the effort and there is no consensus on how often boosters will be needed…… But all things being equal, my family were fortunate to get through it relatively unscathed: just to be certain I have a full physical check up soon with particular emphasis on my lungs (that have been impaired for a few years...