This World, This Life

  Not quite 10 years ago, shortly before the Euro 2012 football championship co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine, I was lucky enough to spend a weekend in Kiev.  I had a great time, and liked the place a lot.  I came away thinking that I'd like to see more of the country, not least the Crimean Peninsula with its Black Sea beaches, long hot summers and a free and easy culture that appealed to the aging hippy in me.  I posted a lengthy blog about the trip, complete with pictures I took around the city: it's at  The World According to Travellin' Bob: Kiev - Euro 2012 (travellin-bob.blogspot.com)  if you want to see more.  But here a few extracts from it:  "We went back the following evening, as it was getting dark, and it was super.  There was a carnival atmosphere still, and we spent a good couple of hours wandering around eating McFlurry’s from the inevitable McDonald’s outlet, riding the carousel and enjoying the street entertainment.  ...

It’s years since the BBC ended its Grumpy Old Men series, in which a group of middle aged men, including Rick Wakeman, Bob Geldof, Jeremy Clarkson and John O’Farrell (and a host of other actors, writers, broadcasters and comedians) expounded on a wide range of issues, great and small, that quite frankly pissed them off. It was great fun and I found myself agreeing with a lot of it. Around that time, I was working in  Bulgaria and together with three colleagues, all of us of roughly the same vintage, used to meet up in an English pub close to the hotel and stage our own version of the show. Together with copious amounts of beer (local and imported) and delicacies such as cottage pie, burger and fries, and a local dish called a pork sword – it was a 12” long skewer of pork sausage meat and onions, grilled to charcoal and served with chips, and apart from looking frankly obscene actually tasted pretty good – we used to spend hours complaining about this that and the other, and re...

  NOTE: Some readers may find the following comments offensive. Who decides when a term or word, particularly one derived from an old and established word, becomes offensive? Tottenham Hotspur FC has spent the past three years conducting a survey of its fans, including on-line questionnaires, focus groups and all the other opinion-forming tools used by consultancy firms (that were no doubt closely involved in the process) to decide whether using the.....errr....Y-Word in the stadium or in other forums to describe themselves was acceptable, and if not what term to replace it with.  Leaving aside the costs involved (consultants of any description don't come cheap) this seems a frankly ridiculous exercise driven by a need to be seen "politically correct" - something imported from the US that is in my view equally ridiculous. Look in any dictionary to see the definition of the word - if it offends you, please look away now - "Yid" and it will invariably describe it ...

  So.....another update. I've received some good and helpful advice from various people - a  lot of it common sense, but also some helpful links and questionnaires/workbooks from specialists.  It's all good - the information sheets that came with the workbooks in particular gave me a lot of information that has eased my muddled mind, though the workbook stuff and assorted advice over creating mood diaries and so forth is a lot to take on board.  I have to confess I've not made any practical steps to start working through all of that - whether rightly or wrongly I'm not sure yet. Partly that has been down to time.  Despite all the stuff I'm trying to work through, I still have all my everyday things to do, and despite being notionally retired, a house husband and father, there's a lot of it.  Shopping, cleaning, sometimes ironing, cooking, walking the dog - it all takes up time. Add to that keeping this blog running and responding to the comments I'm getting...

  I watched that chancer Johnson's less than sincere apology in the House the other day when the Grey report dropped, with a mixture of amusement and disgust.  I'm not sure anyone in the country was fooled for a minute, especially after May and Starmer and Blackford dismantled his posturing - the man is clearly the most damaged of damaged goods.  His response  to Starmer's initial rebut was disgusting in the extreme - raising the memory of Jimmy Savile in a crude and inaccurate allegation against the former DPP to deflect criticism away from himself was uncalled for and rightly criticised by most - even some of his own allies - , and I can't remember ever seeing a Member looking as angry as Starmer rightly did.  Johnson's subsequent "apology" was even less sincere than anything he's said in the wake of Partygate (if that's possible).  So much for the disgust. The amusement came when he started reeling off his achievements since becoming PM, led of ...