Where would I be without You Tube?

 

 

 

 Retirement.

It comes to us all, like death and taxes (to paraphrase Sam Clemens), but I'm betting I'm not the only one to neglect planning for it. But it happened, incredibly four years ago already, and without a backward glance I walked away from the workplace with a spring in my step (as far as dodgy knees and hips allow, in any case).

A weight fell off my shoulders. I had plans, places to go and things to do. A backlog of books to read. Others to write and one to (finally) publish. Time to relax a bit away from the business treadmill - time for myself. Sure, money would be tight, but that was inevitable: I had been very well paid for several years so was bound to take a bit of a hit because, in retrospect foolishly, I hadn't saved as much as I should have. But that was ok, I decided, I'd manage.

I soon discovered it wasn't quite what I had expected. I'd not done my sums right at all, maths never being my strong point, and my income plummetted far more than I had anticipated when the salary was replaced by pensions. To make matters worse, during the good years I had failed to msake voluntary contributions to top up the funds, too busy having good winter and summer vacations with my family and enjoying good meals out. Investing in the present rather than the future is never a good idea...

Then Covid came along and blew the entire planet out of kilter - and of course my life too. Travel basically stopped, people worked from home or lost their jobs altogether, economies collapsed and everyone was stuck indoors for safety (or had to wear masks and sometimes gloves when going out, say for shopping) while the scientists and doctors fought to engineer a cure and save lives respectively. It took a couple of years but they managed it, by which time I had been quite ill with the virus myself (and I'm still carrying the consequences in various ways), and everyone tried to get back to normal. All things considered, I, and my nearest and dearest, didn't fare too badly.

Economies were inflated by governments injecting huge sums of money to support struggling businesses and the new unemployed - and I'm not being critical at all, it was needed - , and that has inevitably caused inflation rates to jump alarmingly. I'm no economist, obviously, and I'm sure there are yet other reasons for the parlous state of European and British economies (not least Bloody Brexit and the War in Ukraine) but what I do know is the costs of everything have shot up and my pensions haven't. The result, inevitably, is that it doesn't go far enough.

Times are indeed tough, but we're managing.

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But my retirement plans have been shot to Hell in a handcart.

The reading is going ok, slow but sure (like many things, that Covid hangover has had an effect, in this case focus issues), and the writing improving. The books are still either unfinished or unpublished, but after a very slow couple of Pandemic Years I'm getting back into the swing of it (as this ramble demonstrates: the words come at odd times and not how I originally envisaged them - this is my fourth re-write of a relatively small piece - but at least they do come) so I'm happy with that.

I have time to myself, though not as much as I want or expected. Partly this is because I still have my family responsibilites (and thank God for that!) and they have increased with the acquisition of Lulu, a soppy but adorable English Bulldog who demands my attention too. The kids are old enough to be left to their own devices, whether during term or vacation time, but Lulu - not so much. She needs exercising and feeding at certain times that don't always coincide with the kids being here (my Beloved is at work full time) so I can't hop on a train to, say, Białystok for a wander and a change of scenery for a day or two - even going into town to meet a mate for lunch can be a challenge.

In any case, money is still tight. Besides the inflation stuff (currently 13% here and rising) that I mentioned, there is another major issue that I'm not going to detail here - at least not now: maybe in the future - that is also very restrictive. Trips anywhere are difficult to organise and even more difficult to fund, at least for the moment. I'm hoping we'll be back to relative normality come 2023 and I can dig the passport out again. Despite all the Bucket List items I had, and indeed have added to over the past months, since my retirement I've made only a handful of out of town trips: a couple to the Baltic Coast, a couple to England and one terrific two week trip to Switzerland (I wrote about that at length in earlier blog posts). Nowhere near what I had planned and to nowhere new - the Bucket List has nothing ticked off yet. So I have some ground to make up.

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I've watched a couple of videos on YouTube recently about retirement planning (not the financial variety). They were both from a channel that carries an extensive catalogue of videos from the TEDTalk series. This is an organisation, I believe American, that runs a program of big conferences with an extensive range of short and invariably entertaining lectures on every subject under the sun. I watched a few relating to mental health and coping with problems therein a year or so ago and found them helpful.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across one given by a retired University professor that was funny and serious and pertinent all in one go. He basically talked about the importance of (non-financial) retirement planning - about setting goals beyond spending every spare moment on the golf course (which I can't afford to do and in any case don't play); not cutting yourself off completely from friends and family by, for instance, moving hundreds of miles away to be by the sea and achieving the ambition of permanent vacation; of finding things to occupy both your mind and body; and above all about meeting other people and finding new interests. He gave some examples that work fine in your home country perhaps but must be difficult elsewhere, when language issues creep in. But it was a good talk, and gave me food for thought because I had done little of that.

A couple of days later, a similar talk popped up, this time by a younger psychotherapist and counseller, that was equally interesting and thought provoking (if not quite as funny). It said much the same thing only without the golf analogy. The conclusion in both talks was that the people who enjoyed retirement most, and who benefitted from a long happy and healthy life after retirement tended to be those who had actually done some planning, set out their goals and interests and plans properly before leaving work. Half-assed walking away with some vague ideas but none about how to realise them was simply not the way to go. But it's basically what I did.

So I'm doing a bit of re-planning right now: I have some ideas that, maybe, one day I'll achieve and chronicle here. So watch this space.

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And mention of YouTube brings me finally to what this piece was supposed to be about (see what I mean about the words flying off in unexpected directions?), when I first had the idea and jotted down some notes: "Where would I be without YouTube?"

Now I realise the platform deservedly has come in for a lot of criticism (and still does), and is certainly not perfect. It's the primary repository for scare mongering, misinformation, conspiracy theories and assorted other social ills that in my view are making a right mess of society these days. But in my view, calls to regulate it more closely are misplaced: the internet was designed to be the home of free and unfettered information - good, bad or indifferent - for everyone - and I have no problem with that. There's some wonderful stuff there but also a whole lot of pure shite.

And, yes, I accept that's a matter of personal taste - which is what makes policing it next to impossible, in my view. In any case, I truly believe the internet is like Pandora's box: once the lid is off and the stuff inside - good and bad - has escaped, you'll never get it back in and close the lid again. What's done is done, and we users must police oursleves rather politicians police the web.

I spend a lot of time on the platform. For a start there is the subsidiary YouTube Music, dedicated to, well, music. It's owned by Google (not exactly a plus point but still...) and a year or so ago became the replacement for Google's own music streaming platform: we users were effectively forced to transfer our library of music, whether down-loaded or ripped from CDs as much of my own was, that was stored in Google's cloud service into a similar storage in the YouTube Music bit of the cloud and into your own account (of course with your main Google account sign-on). Bit of a chore, but what the hell - before I did so, I looked at YouTube Music as a guest, tried a few searches for obscure 1960s prog rock stuff and was nicely surprised by its content. So I duly opened my account, moved my Library over, created a shortcut on my command line and use it quite a bit (though perhaps not quite as much as Spotify). Parenthetically: I've just dipped into YTM and there is absolutely no sign of all "my" stuff, the Library I moved over from Google Music - Christ only knows where it's all gone but it's a good job I kept a copy on my hard-drive....

The real pleasure for me in YouTube is the range of video content on the platform that covers, quite literally, every subject I can think of (which is a lot) and many more besides. But you knew that already. As someone with, I like to think, a decent range of interests, it's been a Godsend these Covid years, especially as my travellin' days ground to a halt. For a start, I can get my football fix, my club's match highlights, player and management interviews quickly - it's the only way, given the Vanerama National League South is not covered by any tv or satellite channel operating in Poland. I can dig out documentaries on some of my favourite bands; arguments about who was the better drummer, Keith Moon or John Bonham (IMO technically Bonzo but for creativity and unpredictable genius Moonie); old Monty Python tv shows; WW2 documentaries; movies about why DeLorean failed; which is the best browser today; commentary and opinion pieces on the parlous state of British politics; and old and forgotten sci-fi movies. It's all there, in black & white and living colour, and much else besides.

What makes it indispensable for me is that I can browse it and find so much travel related content to not only entertain me but inspire me too. I ignore stuff by airlines or travel companies or tourist boards - the professional stuff - because all of that is essentially there to sell a product or a country and hence is nowhere near objective. OF COURSE Lufthansa is going to plug its Business Class as being the best in the skies (it isn't), OF COURSE WizzAir is going to push its low fares (but check the small print on the website for all the extras and understand its refund policies), and OF COURSE SNCF is going to say its TGV service from Paris to Milan is the best (ignoring competitor services offered by rival private train operators at a lower price for an identical but sometimes faster journey).

No, I search out the army of vloggers, independents like you and me, that travel at their own expense on these trains and airlines and coach companies and cruise lines (and in the odd occasion when the ticket is provided by that airline or train operator, own up to the fact) and provide warts-and-all films of their experience, good or bad. And in a non-boring entertaining way.. I have a list of perhaps a dozen Channels that are my Go-To's, and they rarely, if ever, disappoint. I've subscribed to them all so get Notifications for their weekly output.

Some focus on airline travel - be it Economy Class exclusively or Business Class (or a combination thereof). They give detailed videos: toilet and lounge reviews, good food or inedible, lie-flat beds or cheap seats, legacy carriers or the cheapos like RyanAir. I don't always agree with their opinions (and why should I?) and tell them so in the Comments: had some fun dialogues doing that. Favourites here include Simply Aviation (it does what it says on the tin: flying only, mainly Economy Class); DennisBunnick Travels (Aussie tour operator tours the world in Business and First Class - something I will never do now); and, now and again, NonStop Dan (Swedish/American kid uses only Business or First Class and whinges about how BAAAD it is...).

Others focus more on rail travel, and provide similar videos to the flight ones, again in an invariably entertaining way. These are probably more relevant to me, since the prices and locations are more likely to be within reach - from Warsaw I can get trains to pretty much anywhere in Europe (after a bit of research). For these vlogs, my Go-To channels are Superalbs Travels (young English guy who is very good indeed at foreign place name pronunciations - even Polish and Turkish...); Dylan's Travel Reports (young Yorkshire bloke and his girlfriend go all over the shop in trains); and The Man in Seat 61 (close to an industry sponsored channel, but the routes covered are the kinds of rides I want to take and the linked website is a great source of booking informations and prices).

Coach travel is another popular category, and many vloggers combine all three for often entertaining films where things go wrong. Here, try Planes, Trains, Everything (Scottish guy tries a Paris to London trip using pre-Eurostar routing - train to Calais, ferry to Dover, train to London - and is beset by line closures in France, restrictions on foot passengers on the ferries and train strikes in Britain); Noel Phillips (English guy suffers stomach and heat problems in India and Africa and the US while journeying on awful airlines, filthy trains and Greyhound buses - but eats a lot of chips and curries), and, slightly more upmarket, WinginIt!Paul Lucas (former civil servant does flights and long train trips, typically in First or Business Class, but sometimes Economy - and some of the train trips have been epic....lucky bugger!).

There are others I dip in and out of when something pops up on my feed that catches my eye - notably Tips for Travellers and Emma Cruises (middle aged Englishman and young English woman who specialise in cruise vacations: not sure I fancy that - the thought of being stuck on a ship with two or three thousand strangers for a fortnight does not appeal to me at all - but perhaps a trip along the Rhine or Danube on a smaller vessel and only a hundred other people might be fun).

I had a good find a few weeks back where a guy tried to explain how far back in time an Englishman could travel before being unable to understand the English being spoken - turned out to be soon after the Norman Conquest. Another compared and contrasted provision for cyclists between Swiss cities like Zurich and Geneva and Basle with Canadian cities like Calgary and Windsor Ontario - the Canadians did not fare at all well. He made a similar film relating to the Swiss rail system and the Canadian, and once again the Canadian system fared poorly: surprisingly Calgary, one of the biggest cities in Canada, isn't served by a single transcontinental rail service - it doesn't even have a station for freight. Gas guzzling cars and trucks rule the roost there.

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Go to YouTube, type in a random search query - Firefox, say (since I'm giving that browser another run out, and liking it: it's definitely been improved lately): I just tried it, and the top choice was a clip from the classic 1982 Clint Eastwood film of that name (it's a top-secret Russian stealth plane that he is sent by the CIA to steal), followed by a film about why the browesr and its Mozilla Foundation must survive for the sake of the internet, followed by another clip from the movie, then a guy explaining why he's ditching the browser for something else.......and so on. Pages of suggestions.

And its the same for pretty much everything. It certainly beats the hell out of daytime tv here because I know I will definitely find something I will enjoy, something new that I haven't seen before, rather than an umpteenth Top Gear or Doctor Who re-run or awful local soap opera.

"Where would I be without You Tube?" Climbing walls, quite probably.

My space - at last!

 

Today is a good day.

The sun shines brightly and warm in a cloudless blue sky. Not as hot as in other parts of Europe in this blistering heatwave, for sure, but a pleasant 25C nonetheless. Certainly hot enough for me.

Outside, there is peace and tranquility. Butterflies flutter aimlessly past the door, bees flit clumsily from bloom to bloom - not too many in this place, not yet, but it's coming. The grass is green in patches, bare in others, and freshly cut this past weekend: I need to get some lawn feed and nourish it. All in good time.

In the distance, I can hear the constant thrum of traffic on the Warsaw by-pass, the A2 that leads away westward to Pozńan and beyond (unless you branch off a couple of kilometres from here and head southerly through Wrocław to the Czech border, and on through Austria to Croatia and the warm and clear Adriatic deamlands. Or an hour's drive further, and branch off north towards Gdańsk and the Baltic coast). Eastward, beyond Warsaw, the road heads off to Lublin and Białystok to the conflict lands of Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus.

But here, where I sit typing on my battered old Lenovo ThinkPad, the traffic noise is no real distraction: it's simply background, like the dog occassionally barking nearby, or the roar of another LOT Dreamliner blasting off for Chicago or Seoul from the main runway of nearby Okęcie airport. There goes one now.......would that I were onboard!

Instead, I have the beautiful sounds of The Nutcracker Suite from my Music Library on my laptop to soothe me as I write this piece. When it finishes, perhaps I'll switch to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, or maybe Frank Zappa. I'll see how I feel.

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I am at my działka.

I've written of it previously, how much I enjoy it - an oasis of green peace and tranquility away from the hot and sticky and polluted city centre. Away from the confines of our apartment, where the only greenery is on the balcony planting boxes and the courtyard garden four floors down, overlooked by all my neighbours and I.

Much as I love it there, here there is more space. I am surrounded by trees: many pines in neighbouring plots, and fruit trees - apples and pears, mostly - and on my own plot, towering over the roof of my cottage, a productive walnut tree, with the green cases growing fat and juicy now, to drop in October and provide an ample supply of nuts for Christmas for family and friends.

The front and back boundary hedges have grown tall and thick, almost overgrown - certainly in need of a good cut-back: my job for the weekend. The tall yellow sunflowers are everywhere, here and next door, and the roses, planted by the gate last autumn, are beginning to bloom nicely. The rhododendrons by the cottage door are some way from bloom - probably next season now, they are relatively new plantings - as are the freshly planted lavender in the corner. Next summer will be beautiful.

It's a good sized plot, I can't remember the square metreage - but enough for me to handle anyway. Unlike my late father, I'm not much of a gardener, no green fingers, me. But it is all we need. There is a nice cottage here with a good brick patio before the doors, all built and installed new last summer, and wintered in nicely. This spring and summer we've done much work to improve the flower beds and get the place how we want it, and we're pretty much there.

It's an oasis we can come to at weekends, potter around pruning and weeding and watering the plants and mowing the grass, or relaxing over a good barbecue and cold beer and a good book. Or just sitting and enjoying the sun. A place to escape to. And the bike ride, a 16km round trip, does me good too.

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My music has moved on to Swan Lake now - Tchaikovsky was a wonderful composer: the music matches perfectly the gentle surroundings here. Perhaps I should move to Beethoven's Pastoral next instead......

It's clouded over a little now, but that is ok. I'm not here to work in the garden, nor to sunbathe (though I could do both quite happily). Instead, I'm finally - after three or fours years' good intentions unrealised - using the cottage how I've always planned to use it. As my creative space.

I have a pair of glass-fronted bookcases overflowing with the best part of 20 years' worth of purchases to read and re-read, and hopefully inspire me. I have a fridge with food and drink (note to self: must get some beer, there is none). I have a comfortable settee I can sprawl out on if the Muse deserts me and I need a break from writing.

I have a solid wooden table to work at, and an old office chair that makes this as close to an office space or library or study (all the terms can apply) as I'm ever likely to get, now. It's fine. I can do my thing here, with minimal interruption: for a start, I do NOT have an internet connection here (unless I use my phone as a mobile hot-spot, which I am avoiding....).

It's what I've wanted, yearned for really, through these depressing Covid years. Somewhere to get all these ideas and thoughts banging around inside my skull into something resembling coherence. Work on my memoir - which means thinking about sixty odd years and events and people, crises and triumphs, good times and bad, and putting it all down so that, before I croak, I can give it to my kids and say, "there you go, this was me...". Re-write the novel (again) and maybe publish it one day. The same for the short story collection (that I need to add to).

Or simply sit here, and watch the world go by, planning where to go next when money allows, or just letting my mind go blank (something I've been told frequently is close anyway) and let time drift.

I'll take all of that, thank you very much.

WHY I write. And HOW....

 

I'm currently reading a book by acclaimed author Salman Rushdie called Languages of Truth.  It's a collection of essays and speeches he has written or made between 2003-2020, rather than the novels he is more well  known for, and I have to say I'm enjoying it more than the novels I've read (his two most famous: the Booker Prize winning Midnight's Children and the Muslim upsetting Satanic Verses - and I enjoyed both of them very much).  The essays cover a wide range of topics, from appreciations and criticisms of different authors, both old and new(er), a section on what Rushdie terms "WonderTales" - the age old myths and legends from Greece and elsewhere, and in particular his native India, that led him to become a writer, their influence on his work, and what it actually means to be a writer, its trials and tribulations and triumphs.  It's a fascinating portrait of a renowned author at the top of his game, and for anyone interested in the craft I give it a strong Recommend.

It's also made me look again at my own attempts at scribbling stuff - I wouldn't call myself an author by any stretch of the imagination, not yet! - and what it means to me.  I thought I'd share it with you, my handful of loyal readers.  Because - why not?

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First: let me explain the WHY?  What makes me sit down at a desk or table with my laptop and attempt to write something? 

I write.  I always have done, since I was a kid.  I've written stories, short ones and longer ones, almost novella length.  Poetry.  A novel.  Currently, I'm battling through penning a memoir as well.  For 10 years or more - actually, now I think of it, it's 12 years - I've been writing this Blog and its two predecessors..  For most of my working life, I've had to write a wide variety of documents, factual things like procedure manuals, training guides and system requirements, as well as slideshows and presentations of varying complexity and then deliver them to audiences from a couple of people to a dozen or more learners in a proper training room.  So the written word, and creating it, has been a huge part of my life.

It's always been challenging, and sometimes an absolute pain, and now and again I've found myself completely stopped in my tracks - the fabled Writer's Block that everyone who does this for a living (or otherwise) has experienced.  But still I carry on. It's like an itch, somewhere in the middle of my head, that compels me to do this, and there is little rhyme or reason to it.  It's just there and I must scratch it.....

It's not as if I've made any money from it.....well, discounting the professional stuff, the procedures and training guides and presentations, but they were just a part (albeit an important part) of my day job, for which I received compensation of varying quantity.  But the personal stuff, the stories and the book and so on - no.

Well, apart from one thing.  When I was I think 12 (so nearly 60 ago now, for God's sake!) I entered a story into a competition run by the Surrey Mirror newspaper to write a Christmas story.  I can't remember the terms and conditions of the competition, nor much in the way of detail about the little yarn I sent in - it was, I recall, about a bloke hitchhiking home for Christmas from Northern Alaska to I'm not sure where, so I guess it featured snowmobiles and big lumbering timber trucks, maybe a train and airplane or two: I really can't remember.  But Our Hero made it, and walked through his front door at 5 to midnight on Christmas Eve, to the delight of his family.  To my surprise, and that of mum and dad, the paper printed it in their Christmas edition, along with several others, and what's more paid me £5 for it.  My dad bought several copies of the paper and my mum cut the story out and posted it off to friends and family scattered all over the country and indeed the world, and insisted that I would one day earn my living from my pen. Which, I suppose, I did, although not in the way she meant.

And that is the sole direct payment I've receivcd for all the hundreds of thousands of words I've written since, in my poetry and my stories and my books and my Blogs.  Not a single word has been published (apart from the several hundred Blog posts I've written and published via this Blogger platform or LinkedIn, which I left when I retired four years ago).  

Partly this has been because, for whatever reason (and I still can't quite get my head around why) my AdSense settings on Google have never generated any income (and now seem to have stopped working altogether), so the Blog is simply an exercise in creativity, a hobby, with an audience that has never really grown beyond a handful of views per post, and try as I might I haven't found a way of growing it via social media, word of mouth or whatever.  I put it down to most people having way more important things to do than to read the demented witterings of an ageing retiree ex-pat.  Or perhaps the writing simply isn't as good or interesting as I think it is....  It's a question I've posed a few times in previous posts, but never yet had any answer, which is, shall we say, frustrating!

So - the big question here I suppose is this: If I never make any money from all this, WHY do I still do it?  Simply: because I need to.  I have to scratch that itch.  And I always try to finish what I started.  And because, who knows, one day I might figure out how this Amazon Publishing thing works and actually do something with it all.

And there's a bit more to it even than that.  Over the past couple of years, because of the well known pitfalls of finding a new direction and purpose after retiring, and of course that bloody Pandemic, and a couple of relatively minor accidents that led to hospitalisation, I plunged into some nasty mental issues.  They're largely gone now, or at least under control, but still linger in the back of my mind and make the odd comeback when least expected.  I've written in more detail about them recently, but the essential point is this.  My writing has helped, and continues to help, with the healing process.  It gives me something to get out of bed for in the morning (besides walking the dog and getting my Beloved off to work and the kids off to school) and something to focus on besides what a mess the world is in right now.  If I can make my mind focus on the creative process, even if not every day, then it keeps it from wandering off into darker places I really don't want to visit.  

It's been therapeutic too, in that a couple of the stories I've written have, quite by chance and totally unplanned, directly addressed some of the problems that caused the Depression, and trying to marshal all my distant memories into a cohesive and hopefully entertaining narrative in the memoir have helped me realise that, despite the problems I've faced over the years - and like everyone else continue to face - it's actually been a good life, one I can be proud of with more ups than downs, and not the disaster area that mental problems can often suggest.

But, mostly, I write because I love doing it.

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So that's the WHY.  Now: what about the HOW? Where do the ideas come from and what do I do to convert them into something that makes sense and is even vaguely readable?

Without wishing to sound pretentious, this is where the magic happens, but since I'm not Gandalf I can't really answer very clearly how or why.  For the Blog, most of the ideas that drive content are in turn driven by the daily news cycle - and, let's face it, there is an awful lot of stuff going on to write about now.  What with the War in Ukraine; incompetent and possibly corrupt government in a number of countries including both my birth and adopted homelands; global warming; the food crisis; rampant inflation across much of Europe; extreme weather events causing chaos globally; no end to senseless gun violence in a divided USA; the football season including the first winter World Cup (happening in November); a Covid pandemic that is still roaring on.......the list is endless.  I'm spoilt for choice - as is every other journalist, blogger or YouTube vlogger on the planet.  So the difficulty is to somehow make my stuff different from everyone else's - and that is incredibly difficult, and possibly (even probably...) not something I've succeeded in doing well enough.  

Re-hashing someone else's ideas or points of view is a pointless exercise, so I have to spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about stuff and searching for a personal angle or viewpoint that I can build a piece around.  Then more time, from a few hours to a couple of days, writing and reviewing the piece before hitting the Publish button - by which time, as often as not, it's no longer News.  It's also, because of the news cycle driven nature of the content, in constant danger of becoming repetitive: it's one thing being paid, as a journalist, by a paper or news website, to specialise on a specific subject, follow it and immerse yourself deeply in it, and write pieces every day to keep people informed, and something altogether different to express a personal opinion in an entertaining way independently.  

Do I try to write a short piece on something every day, specifically to cover a "story" (for want of a better word), or do I take more time, produce longer pieces but less frequently, that are not only driven by the news cycle, but also personal, things that I care about?  Right now, I tend to fall between the two - there is newsy stuff here when something jumps out and bites me (the sudden death of a favourite sportsman, for instance, or a Prime Ministerial resignation, or another US mass shooting atrocity), but also plenty of personal stuff too: book reviews, pieces about trips made to Switzerland or the seaside, and some deeply personal things covering my own struggles with both Covid and Depression (they have even crept into this essay).  

But when I sit down to write, I typically have little in mind but a very very general idea about what I want to say.  I stare at a blank page, type a handful of words, and see what happens.  Sometimes it flows, and the thoughts burst out of my fingers and fill the page, almost without a conscious effort. Those are good times....  Other times, those few words are all that comes and after a few hours of angst and increasing panic it's scrapped.  Read, review, take a break, then read review again.  Maybe again. However many times it takes to polish it to my satisfaction.  Then Publish (or less often Delete).  Tougher, for sure, but somehow even more rewarding.

With longer pieces, the book and the memoir and the stories, it's not so very different.  I am not a planner: there are no wallposters with timelines, maps, cast lists, key events or anything like that.  Very rarely are there even any notes to refer to - it's all in my head.  The closest I've come to that was The Match, my sex booze and football novel, where I started the original draft with a couple of pages, mocked up like the Teams page in a football program, that listed all the characters, major and minor, that would appear.  That exercise took perhaps an hour, then I made myself a coffee and started writing.  Somehow - I have absolutely no clue how it happened! - in the time it took to brew the coffee the very nebulous idea I had had that started the creative process solidified in my mind, and when the pen tip hit the paper, the entire story poured out in a single collosal brain dump.  Every setting, the timetable and events, individual incidents in the football match that is central to the yarn, even dialogue was there, complete.  It took me perhaps three weeks to finish my dump and commit it all to paper, in a couple of Ryman Jumbo exercise books, and it was done.  Extraordinary, mysterious and frankly unexplainable......  Since then the book's been reviewed and edited many times, but the finished story, the one sitting as a pdf waiting for me to do something on Amazon or whatever, is not significantly different to the version scribbled out by Ball Pentel all those years ago.

And that is how I write..  Ideas come to me, at odd hours, and I try to remember them (not always possible: the lingering effects of my two brushes with Covid include increased fatigue and a lack of focus and concentration - the so-called brainfog) but sometimes the ideas drift away as fast as they appear.  But if the idea comes back, it seems to come back in a bit more detail and that gives me my start.  And off I go to another blank page and start bashing keys again, to see where that leads. Now and then it's a dead end, but often, eventually, the result is a completed yarn.  

And because I've not planned anything, it grows and changes and develops as I go along, and often in unexpected ways.  I wrote something recently, a longish short story that came as an initial idea of a guy going for a solo swim in a warm sea somewhere, and is eaten by a shark - I dismissed that out of hand: way too depressing.  But it kept nagging away, and eventually, after a couple of weeks, it grew into a story about a bereaved husband dealing with his loss and the guilt around it, coming to terms with it and moving on.....kind of.  From the outset I could see a couple of possible conclusions, and more came to me as I wrote, but I had no idea which one to use - until I got to the last few paragraphs, when my subconscious mind settled on one and somehow, to my suprise, it works and makes sense......but in an odd, open ended way that actually allows the reader to perceive a couple of the choices and settle on whichever conclusion seems right - to that reader.  Weird?  Well, yes, I guess it is. And (spoiler alert) with no sign of a shark - unless summoned by the reader.

So: it's all for want of a better term, ad-hoc creation, words coming to me on the fly and hitting the page for a period of time that may be a few hours or a few minutes.  While I'm typing, I'll often go back over a couple of paragraphs, correcting typos and punctuation, and most importantly reminding myself where I'm going and keeping things on some kind of track.  Then at the end of that writing day or period or story section I'll go back through it again and correct it.  When the whole thing - be it a blog post, a story or another section in the memoir - is I think complete I'll go through it all a couple more times and polish it.  Only then will I move on and Publish (the blog) or take a break and seek a new idea for the other stuff.  It's undoubtedly an unprofessional way of working, but it works for me, and in any case it's, to an extent, the only option I have because I don't have the luxury of a dedicated work environment, no place where I can shut myself away from distractions and get my head down to at least try and focus for an extended time.  As things are now, and likely to remain for the foreseeable future, I have to continue with the Wing And A Prayer method of writing, whenever and wherever I can.

So I will.

A better place to be....

 

I've not written about either of these topics for a while now.  Those pitiful few who have read this blog over the last couple of years will know - if they were paying any attention! - that both Covid and Depression have hit me hard, and may even have wondered how I'm getting on facing their challenges.

So time for an update then.

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Covid has not gone away, nor will it any time soon.  There was a good column in The Guardian today suggesting that the UK Government, that collection of fools and Brexiteers run by the incompetent Serial Liar, is in denial about this, and acting as if nothing had happened these last few Pandemic Years.  No masking, no social distancing, no free testing, a slow down in vaccination uptake......all the time while case numbers are at present rising (and yes, I know the rates are, thank Christ, way lower than they were even a year ago, never mind earlier), people are still being hospitalised and dying from the illness, and over 2million are suffering - something like 826,000 of them for more than a year - from the mysterious (because ill-researched) Long Covid.  The article made some good points.  But Britain is not alone.  

Many countries are following a similar open path (for want of a better term) through these times.  There have been recent outbreaks in China, in India and other Asian nations that have resulted in more strict lockdowns (notably in Shanghai).  Even in the US, numbers of hospitalisations and deaths continue to be high and show little sign of dropping off yet.  The much vaunted vaccination programs have made a difference, certainly, but increasingly they are running out of momentum - so the possibilities of further mutation are a certainty and further outbreaks high.

People seem to have come to a conclusion that a couple of jabs is enough to protect them, but this is not so.  All the vaccines were swiftly invented, manufactured and distributed as a challenge to the original strain, and in that were largely successful and saved countless lives.  But Covid has mutated, several times already, and none of the vaccines are fully effective against all the strains.  It's lucky that, so far, the mutations have not been as virulent as the original strain - but at some point it's quite likely that something much worse, a really bad mutation, is going to come along and we will be back to square one.  Or worse......in uncharted territory.  

One can only hope that governments and pharma companies are aware of this and are working hard at playing catch up and trying to develop something that works better and lasts longer.   I originally had the single dose Jansson vaccine in April 2021, and a booster six months later in November that was the Biontech one and the doctor who gave me that laughingly told me that the Jansson had probably lost 80% of its efficacy in those 6 months.  I'm assuming I should be due something else already, but there is no information about further booster scheduling here.  It's as if the Polish Health Department has decided it's job done and moved on......  

But I'm ok.  Touch wood, stroke the rabbit's foot etc etc, I seem to have missed out on the various newer strains that still circulate (although a couple of times I've had coughs and colds that felt a bit Covid-y so maybe not...) and I'm getting on with life, trying not to think too much about it.  I still mask from time to time, in crowded places, and get very strange looks from everyone, but do my best to avoid such situations where I can.  I'm not living like a hermit, just simply being careful - and I wish to God more people would do the same!

But Long Covid worries me.  There is still so much science and the medical professions still haven't figured out about it.  There seem to be no obvious - at least that I've seen reported - reasons as to why one person may get it and others not, and amongst those who do get it, why some people get it far worse than others.  Nor why in some cases it clears up in a matter of days and at other times it can linger for months (and now into years).  I have a sneaking suspicion I may have it, in that some of the most common symptoms - like increased and strong fatigue, a lack of concentration, poor and irregular sleep patterns, and a likelihood that even the slightest suggestion of a sniffle can hit you like a ton of bricks - are things that I've noticed in myself these last couple of years.  I did mention it to my local GP, and was met by shrugged shoulders, a blank stare, and "don't worry it will go eventually" - not really what I was after (namely some advice and reassurance) but all I was going to get.  I may be completely up the wrong track anyway, as the "symptoms" could also simply be down to my increasing age - 70 next year.  I simply don't know - which is of course the worst thing.

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Covid of course has been a major factor in the increase in recent years of Depression - and I can fully understand that.  When there is something wrong, apparently physical (whether growing old or suffering from some un-diagnosed malady) or mentally, it's easy to get increasingly worried about it - and then it's but a short step, it seems to me, to Depression.  Get to that point, and every little thing, no matter how trivial, can seem like a catastrophe, like the End of the World.  That I think, after much reflection these past 12 months, was the root of my own issues.

I was going through the inevitable life changes and adjustments brought about by my retirement - finding a place in this world, something to occupy my mind, adjusting to a much reduced income, figuring out what really interested me - and just beginning make some progress after nearly a year of enjoying having Time To Think, when the Pandemic hit.  In what seemed overnight, the world shut down and all the plans and dreams I had been tentatively forming disappeared out of the window.  My global horizon shrunk to less than a square kilometre around the apartment block where I could exercise the dog.  My home felt increasingly like a prison cell.  

Then I caught Covid, twice within about six months, the second time very badly.  The first attack took more than I realised out of me both physically and mentally.  Then things improved, and we were able to start doing things, get out and about - and I celebrated by having an accident that led to a brief hospitalisation.  The injuries were relatively minor but painful, and healed quickly, just in time for me to catch Covid again, and badly.  I struggled through that, and eventually started getting going out again, despite feeling like shite, then had another, worse accident, that led to more hospitalisation and surgery.  I recovered, but the injury has left some slight (and permanent) disability in one arm and hand that I can manage fine without any real problem - but I'm aware of it and have to be careful.  And it's all left me increasingly accident prone, my hand-eye co-ordination all over the place.  I'm always dropping things or knocking things over, much to my Beloved's (understandable) annoyance.

Which is when everything mounted up, piled into a mind left fragile from these incidents (all happening within a 12 month period, remember) and knocked me for six.  Everything, and I mean everything, was terrible and part of some doolally conspiracy to make my life a misery.  I was the classic victim, imagining all kinds of slights, blaming myself for everything that was not perfect in This World, This Life.......

Essentially, I was confused as much as Depressed, I think.  I was being unreasonable with everyone around me, and especially with myself, and that made me more unhappy (as it did them of course).  I've read loads of stuff, including some workbooks one of my sons sent me about coping with depression, tried some simple meditation (difficult to do when, through home circumstances, I have nowhere I can shut myself away to do it), and tried to reason it all out with a minimal support network.  I also took a conscious decision to reduce my social media time, and reduced drastically the amount of time spent consuming the news from the BBC, CNN, The Guardian and other sources - it was all simply too distressing (especially after 24 February this year).  Now I focus on stuff that interests me - mainly sports, culture (The Graun has a very good section of book reviews and music stuff every day), personal technology and travel.  I devour certain YouTube content within the last two items in that list: it gives me ideas for trips to make when things improve financially (and are entertaining in their own right) and what tech and software to use to improve things I can do here, which is fun as well (at least it is for me).

I feel much better for it.  I have a lot to be thankful for and I'm appreciating it more now, and my head is clearer (even if concentration and tiredness and clumsiness remain problems).   I'm back out and about, exercising more, and my weight has come down a lot so I feel a lot better physically.  After a two year injury hiatus I'm back on the bike a lot, and mixing it with hiking too - yesterday, according to my Samsung Fitness tracker on the mobile I piled in a 31km bike ride and 17km hike (although I believe that last can't be an accurate number - perhaps closer to 10).  But whatever, it's not a bad effort for a bloke approaching 70, in temperatures in the mid 30sC, without a cloud in the sky - especially less than 48 hours after a 24km bike ride and 6km hike. .  

Has the depression gone?  I doubt it.  There are days, still, when I feel shite and have no enthusiasm for anything, but I think I've figured out how to manage it and lessen its bite.  I suspect it's something that will always be there in the background, like Covid, and I guess that its management will get harder, as inevitably time catches up with me and my strength, mental and physical, wanes - but I believe - I HAVE to believe! - that won't be for many years yet.

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So I'm in a much better place now.  It's not perfect - but then again, what is?  Life is precious, and passes far too quickly to dwell on the bad stuff that's in it   I'm striving to live each day as it comes, get the best out of each one, focus on the things that I love and enjoy - and that includes in First Place my family - and not dwell on past mistakes (while striving to learn from them).  We've all made them, but they are history: we can't change the past and it's frankly bloody stupid to carry that baggage.  I care about Now and the Future, not What Was.

Seems to be working at the moment, anyway.......

The Serial Liar

  So the Serial Liar scraped home in the confidence vote, and proclaimed it a resounding victory, vindication etc etc.....see? More lies.

 

He should remember Sir John Major and Theresa May, who won similar votes by bigger margins than his and were still gone in months. The Serial Liar will be, too.

 

This is not about Partygate, and never was, no matter how he and his cronies try to spin it. In itself, Partygate merely proved his unsuitability for public office.

 

His lapdogs rave about his successes, as a "serial winner". They boast "he delivered Brexit" - yes, he did: through a bad deal that HE negotiated and signed, and decided to ignore and try to change within weeks. This in itself proves his incompetence and that he cannot be trusted. 

 

"He led a successful vaccination program during the pandemic" - yes, as the government's figurehead. But most of the key decisions and hard work were taken by NHS staff (remember, the ones he awarded with a paltry pay-rise that doesn't cover their car parking costs at their places of work) and scientists who delivered the vaccines. The Serial Liar was too busy getting pissed in No.10 with his staff to remember this.

 

"The economy is damaged because of Covid and the War in Ukraine," he lies. Yes, Covid did damage the economy (or more correctly, the financial support measures - which WERE needed, as will be the tax rises over the next several years to pay for it), but the queues at British ports, the additional costs and complexities faced daily by British exporters (who now face far MORE red tape than they ever did when in the EU - yet another one), the growing food shortages and rising costs as a result, the crisis in NHS dentistry that is leading desperate people to pull their own teeth out, and the daily flight cancellations and travel chaos all have absolutely NOTHING to do with Covid or the Ukrainian tragedy. They are all, one way or another, down to Brexit, but conveniently hidden as Pandemic Costs. See? More lies.

 

All the result last night shows is that a small majority of MPs are more scared of losing their seats at an election or the additional pay and privileges a Cabinet post brings in, than being honest and considerate of their constituents - remember them? The people who voted you in - and voting for the good of the country. These Members have no shame, no conscience and no loyalty except to their own self interests.  I can't wait for the Portillo Moment when the smug toes-rags like Patel and Raab and Gove and (especially) Rees-Mogg - amongst others - get their electoral come-uppance......

 

The Serial Liar is NOT the best man to lead the Tory Party or the country. He never has been and never will be. His fall will come as night follows day.

 

PS.  I tried desperately to find a picture of him looking embarrassed, but alas, there were none.  So I had to settle for this one - which is at least true to life.

 

 

Tony Blair and me: A change of heart....

 

I bought this tome at a second hand book shop in Warsaw, it cost me PLN10 - which is a little over a quid in today's money.  It's taken a while to get through, such is the level of detail, but I'm glad I did.  It's made me re-assess him, as both a man and a leader.

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I admit to having a soft spot for the bloke: we're the same vintage (he's about 6 weeks younger than me), he's apparently a football fan (Newcastle United his well published loyalty) and has similar tastes in music.  I remember him moving into Downing Street with a Fender Stratocaster guitar and amp, which seemed pretty cool to me at the time, and frankly still does.  On the debit side, he went to a minor public school, Fettes, rather than a state school like mine, and thence to St. John's College, Oxford to study Law and then on to the Inns of Court School for Law and a position in chambers, while I left school at 17 with four O-Levels and a CSE without taking my A-levels, and went straight to work as a filing clerk at one of the biggest stockbrokers in the City.  There I earned the princely sum of £675 a year - it took me four years' graft and my 21st birthday to crack the grand a year barrier.  No expensive education and well-paid legal eagle job for this council house kid, I'm afraid - or, perhaps on reflection, glad - to say.

I remember when Blair swanned into No.10 with the gurning missus and kids in tow, waving from the doorstep in the traditional manner of new PMs, and he seemed to me a breath of fresh air.  I had grown up with a succession of both Blue and Red but always grey old men running the show - McMillan, Home, Wilson, Calaghan, Heath, Foot, even John Major, with an interlude of bossy schoolma'am Thatcher, so the sight of someone my own age, with young kids, looking smooth and (sorry about this, but I can't think of another word....) dynamic taking over was exactly what the country needed.  I empathised with what he proclaimed he was going to deliver - a change for the better, a Third Way, New Labour, government for all not just the rich, and all the other spin - using the kind of middle management buzz-words and Cityspeak I heard every day at work, as I had been for ten years or more.  I was suckered in like so many other people who voted in that Labour landslide.....  It was not Labour as I knew it, it actually sounded vaguely Tory - which as someone who had voted twice for Thatcher was fine by me, but I was prepared to give New Labour a chance: God knows a country that seemed to me stagnating under a succession on nonentities was ready for a change.  And besides, his Deputy was the aging unreconstructed Old Labour activist and shop steward John Prescott, who seemed more than capable of rubbing off the media gloss and reminding us what, traditionally, the Party had stood for - which is to say working class values, which coming from the stock I did meant something. 

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Briefly: my mum and dad were archetypal working class, meeting "in service" (her a chambermaid, he a gardener) at Chiddingstone Castle before World War Two, and voted Labour all their lives.  They worked hard after the longtime War separation, lived all their lives in a council house as tennants, never owned a car (though dad had a motor bike he rarely rode).  He had a succession of manual jobs - stoker, coalman, removal man, mill operator - that eventually killed him at a ridiculously young 56, from cancer.  Mum stayed at home, raising me and my two sisters, then worked in a tobacconists and newsagents in my home town, as well as moonlighting as a cleaner in a hotel and the local Nat West Bank.  She lived for another twenty odd years after dad passed away before a cancer took her too.  They were never politically active and seemed to complain about whichever Party governed, but their own upbringings always made them tick the box for the Labour candidate come Polling Day - living in a staunchly Conservative constituency it was always a token protest vote, but to them important.    

I broke the mould.  I passed my 11 Plus and went to a Technical High School (not quite good enough for a Grammar), then went to work in the City - the first person in my family to achieve such elevation, as they saw it: an important job for life, then a decent pension and a gold watch or carriage clock on retirement in due course.  Their pride knew no bounds - but their aspirations turned out to be way off the mark (but that's a different story, one for the memoir I've been beavering away at for the last few years....).  By the time I got the vote, at 21 (just before voting age was reduced to 18), my years at the venerable old stockbroker influenced me to vote Tory, for Ted Heath.  Cue the miner's strike, the three-day week, working by candlelight in a dark and dingy old fashioned Dickensian office, the postal strike....  I voted Labour next time, true to my roots.  Thereafter I vaccilated each election from party to party, trying to find one that I thought best served my needs and those of my own family.  

This resulted in votes for both Labour and the Liberal Party and even the Social Democrats (before the Liberals swallowed them up and morphed into the LibDems) before returning to the Tory fold for the election of Thatcher.  There followed my boom years, as well as the country's.  The City opened up and became one of the biggest and most influential in the world, and I was swept along with it.  I bought property, jumping from a two bed mid terrace semi-slum, through a three bed end-terrace in a very nice neighbourhood, to a brand new three bed semi in a new town.  I bought shares in the privatisations and duly took my profits (typically to buy more stuff, have holidays or pay off credit cards), passed my driving test and went from a Fiesta to an Allegro (no, honestly!), to a Maestro, to a Montego Estate, then a brand new Montego Estate company car (so top of the range, power everything) as my family grew and my career advanced.  Then it hit the buffers, soon after the three-bed semi was replaced by a big 4 bed detached with a big garden, so the company (and the car) went, replaced by a third hand Montego saloon bought at auction, that part exchanged for an old Volvo Estate, and finally a Renault Savannah estate, through a succession of temp jobs, until I settled again in a German bank and my career got back onto some kind of track.  At which point: Blair's election in '97 and we're back on track.......sorry for the diversion!

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I was very busy during that first term.  Settling into a new job, moving between different positions in the organisation, getting heavily involved in an IT rebuild project (my first experience of such a thing, and it turned out to point up a new career direction), plus the needs of a growing family meant that I didn't really take too much notice of what Blair and his government were doing, or how it performed.  I remember very little, to be honest, except for the way he seemed to step up to the plate after Princess Diana died: I remember his eulogy, sppsrently off the cuff but in retrospect carefully scripted, when coming out of his local church that day and being impressed by his words and his performance, and I felt he handled the aftermath through to the funeral very well.  But beyond that: the changes he had promised seemed to have receded and we faced the same old slog.  Neither the country nor my life changed significanlty throughout those early years, let alone the overnight we had perhaps been led to expect.  But ok, I thought, it will take time: carry on, Tone.

Come election time and I happily ticked the Labour box again (although of course the Tory, as usual for my constituency got in by a big - but reduced -  majority).  Another landslide, and the New Labour Project continued.  But I had noticed that Blair seemed to spend more time travelling to summits all over the place, and welcoming leaders and Oasis to Downing Street, and pontificating on every subject under the sun rather than engaging in the daily Commons rough-and-tumble.  But then he'd already had a tendency to do that anyway.  It seemed all very Presidential, the kind of stuff Bill Clinton was doing, so I figured this must be one of Blair's promised "changes".   The constant rows he was having with trades unions, and with some people within his own party, notably grumpy Gordon Brown, all seemed a bit petty, but I figured it was all part and parcel of political life (and rivalry).

I changed jobs again, then again, just in time for the Millenium and chuckled at the uncomfortable expression on the Queen's face next to Blair at the New Year Celebration in the Dome: clearly she wasn't fully in tune with the New Labour administration.  And then I started zooming off all over the place in my new IT project career that lasted in one guise or another for the rest of my working life.  So a lot of the ills that were still evident, and not being fixed, receded because I wasn't there.  By the end of 2000, my personal circumstances had changed and, through work, I was what today is termed a digital nomad, no longer living in Britain and working pretty much remotely via the internet and new fangled mobile phones.  I saw no prospect of that changing, all of my property, cars and stuff, was sold or on the market, the kids had left (or about leave) home to start their own lives. so naively and selfishly I stopped really taking much notice of what was going on at home, in Britain.  I was too wrapped up in my own new life....

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9/11 happened, the day before I was due to travel home for a weekend visit, and shocked me just as much as it shocked everyone else.  I got into my flat, after work ground to a halt early, and switched on the tv, just in time to see the two Towers fall, and felt sick.  Later, when the shock had worn off a little, I called BA and confirmed my flight the next day was still happening, and despite pleas from various people not to do so, headed off to the airport after breakfast, convinced air travel would be the safest form of transport for the foreseeable future......   I expected security to be a lot tighter, but wasn't expecting the tank on the approach road to the terminal, or the armed soldiers in combat gear roaming around inside.

The aftermath of that atrocity has changed international travel, especially by plane, for ever.  The tanks and the troops may have gone (at least in most places), but the security lines and x-ray machines and bag searches that resulted are still with us, and probably always will be.  Blair's premiership was also changed forever, as he immediately pledged the country's support to George Bush whatever happened in the future, as the American launched his War On Terror - and the two remained in lock-step for the remainder of their terms in office.

As part of that campaign came the invasion of Iraq, despite the fact that there were no Iraqis involved in the 9/11 attack: the majority of the funding, planning and execution was carried out by Saudis, including all but two of the suicide bombers (the remaining pair were from the UAE).  But somehow, Rumsfeld and Cheney convinced Bush that Saddam's Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (iit didn't) and had to be stopped at all costs: the link between that reasoning and 9/11 remains obscure to me 20 years later.

For the rest of that second term and into his third, Blair's attention wandered far from the NHS, from education, the cost of living, and all the other concerns British people had.  Even defence spending (or the lack of it) was parked, despite it being quite obviously crucial to the armed forces that he had pledged to aid Bush being hampered by the lack of equipment.  Blair became messianic about getting rid of Saddam, for the security of humanity, and as a leader of special brutality (which he was) and a sponsor and leader of Radical Islam (which he wasn't).  Saddam had to go.  The war was short and not sweet, but America and Britain got their way, and Saddam was toppled, went on the run, was eventually captured, went on trial in an Iraqi court, found guilty and promptly executed.  The tragedy remains that neither Blair nor Bush had any plan to deal with the power vacuum and civil war that the fall of Saddam inevitably triggered.  Blair left it to Bush, who wasn't interested because he wanted to turn next to Afghanistan, the next target in his War On Terror......and of course Blair went along with it.

That didn't end well either.  The campaign in Afghanistan dragged on until last year and ended inconclusively with the Taliban regaining control and turning the clock back several hundred years.  British and American casualties numbered in the thousands, in both deaths and life-changing injuries, the cost to civilians even higher.  Militant Islam has not been destroyed, the War On Terror a failure.  Bush has shuffled off into retirement and made a decent sum from publishing his memoir, Decision Points.  Blair, meanwhile, eventually abdicated in favour of Gordon Brown, who didn't last long, so that in some form or fashion Conservatives have remained in power since 2010.  New Labour has long gone.

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Blair has done pretty well out of it all, at least financially.  He too published a memoir, called rather grandly A Journey that made him several million quid.  I read it, and it's a well written but self serving whitewash in which he paints himself as a great leader let down by his weak and unruly lieutenants and unfairly villified by his opponents and the public at large.  Of particular frustration to him is the poor picture painted of his conduct in the lead up to Iraq, with accusations that he misled Parliament (or lied if you prefer the word, hence the derogatory Tony Bliar nickname) thus taking us into an illegal war without the required UN Resolution.  As a result of the casualty list, especially amongst British citizens serving in the Armed Forces (Iraq's far higher number of civilian victims usually left out of the charges) he is widely considered to be a War Criminal......whatever that is: I'm not going to discuss it here since I'm not qualified to do so (not being an international lawyer).  What I will say, as a purely personal view, is that if the same criteria had been used historically, then pretty much any leader that takes his (or her) country deliberately into conflict is a war criminal - be it Thatcher, Eden, Chamberlain, Asquith or Blair himself.  Or Churchill, for that matter, thinking of some of the awful decisions he made during World War 2.  It seems to me a slippery definition.  But on the major points of dicussion, I noticed that his views and conclusions matched very closely those of Bush's.....collusion?  Who knows?

I also read the two volume biography written by Anthony Seldon, which is very good and covers in  detail Blair's early life and pre-political career, plus a lot of detail of the key events during his premiership, but does not cover what happened next since the first volume came out in 2004, while he was still in office, and the second in 2007, shortly after handing over to Brown.  There is thus no mention of the Chilcot Report from which much of the animosity came to the fore and was given justification, nor Blair's role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives, nor his highly lucrative public speaking career (for example, when asked to fulfil one engagement of a 20 minute speech he demanded a fee of £250,000 plus first class hotel and travel expenses and a private plane; when offered £25,000 flat he refused the gig: a rarity apparently).  Similarly there is no mention of Tony Blair Associates, his consultancy firm selling his influence and political know-how to banana republics world wide and its affiliate Faith Foundation (performing a similar service but wrapped up as a religious charity), nor of the multi-million pound property portfolio - all of this controlled through a complex network of shell companies and offshore accounts.  All of this is discussed in great detail in the book that heads this piece.

None of it is really a surprise, I suppose: he is not the first former PM to make a fortune from publishing memoirs and engaging in various consultancy positions with international banks and manufacturing businesses, nor will he be the last.  It's one of the (unwritten) perks of the job, and as far as I'm comcerned provided it's all done after leaving politics and does not peddle any state secrets or in any other way damage the country, then it's a perfectly acceptable way of earning a living and of course benefiting the country's economy by paying taxes.  The concerns only come, rightly, when that doesn't happen, at least in my view.

What did surprise me was how poor Tony Blair was at doing the job of Prime Minister, how little respect he had for his Ministers (and, frequently, they for him).  I hadn't realised quite how poor many of his Cabinet choices were, how totally unsuited and downright incompetent they were, and in certain cases how downright mendacious they were.  His reshuffles were rarely thought through, his appointments seemingly pulled out of thin air.  He had little or no concept of the details of how, say, the NHS worked, or why the armed forces needed more finance, or why no matter how much money was thrown at education schools and pupils continued to underperform.  Worse, he wasn't that interested.

He was primarily an ideas man, and surrounded himself with a handful of special advisors whom he trusted to come up with the policy detail which he then signed off (typically without reading or really understanding).  But he had a charisma and skill as a public speaker (not unusual in a barrister used to performing in a court of law) and was able to use that skill to sell the "policy" to his Party and, at least initially, adoring public.  His Cabinet meetings typically lasted less than an hour, senior civil servants from the various government departments ignored, and even the daily grind of debating in Patliament shunned wherever possible.  

Incredibly, in the run up to Iraq and Afghanistan he did not appoint a War Cabinet (the first Prime Minister in history to go to war without doing so), preferring instead to consult with a handful of intelligence chiefs and armed forces commanders who always had competing agendas and advice and often disliked one another, plus his two key aides, Jonathon Powell and Alistair Campbell (who had absolutely no military experience whatever), to plan the campaign.  Even the Secretaries of State for Defence and the Foreign Office were excluded from these discussions, along with their senior Civil Servants.  Experts in the Middle East and Arab politics and religion were completely ignored too. 

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There is much else in Tom Bower's book, but the above points are my key takeaways.  Most of the content has been taken from several hundred detailed interviews with the surviving key participants and thousands of official documents and other resources, and the entire sorry tale presented in more or less chronological order, and the focus is solely on the premiership and Blair's life since then.  And that's quite enough.

If there is any truth in even half of the revelations - and as many were hinted at it in Seldon's version of events it suggests that is indeed the case - then my contemporary was very very VERY far from the man I gave him credit for.  I've defended him and his (apparent) legacy in the past, because much of it was created while I was elsewhere in the world and thus relied on news reports and after-the-event accounts, and not formed as a front row spectator.  I regret that now: jumping to conclusions is never the right thing to do, but often the easiest.  My mistake.

But what I am sure of is that, perhaps unwittingly, Blair changed the way Prime Ministers operate.  Cabinet decision making seems to be rarer now.  Of Blair's successors, Gordon Brown didn't last long.  Cameron took over as Prime Minister, forming a Tory-LibDem coalition that in my view was a tad dysfunctional with the LibDem part of it largely marginalised and in minor roles, to be followed by a Tory majority government.  Cameron was another slick ex-public schoolboy (Eton of course) so undoubtedly knew better than anyone else what was needed (says the cynic in me), and employed similar snake-oil salesman oratory to Blair.  He then lost an uneccesary Referendum on EU memberhip and within hours took the cowardly route of resignation.  His replacement Theresa May tried to administer Cabinet government again, but was hamstrung by Brexiteers in key positions (and infesting the back benches) and was replaced by serial liar and another Old Etonian contemporary of Cameron, Boris Johnson, who continues to go his own way, leading with the reward of an overwhelming Commons majority from a grateful ex-EU British public that allows him to do pretty much as he wants. And that, frankly, he cares not too hoots about. 

But all of them, every single one, failed and continue to fail to govern by consensus, master their briefs or listen to what the electorate, the British people, actually think or want or, most importantly, need.  To that extent, they are Tony Blair Lite.  In it for themselves, not public servants, lining their own pockets and planning for a wealthy post-Westminster career.  In fairness, Theresa May does seem to be an exception, continuing to work dilligently from the back benches on behalf of her constituents and trying to act as the voice of reason against the government's excesses.

Blair wanted his legacy to be a New Way in British politics.  In that, he seems to have succeeded.  But it's the wrong way.

The country suffers as a result.  

Mea Culpa

 

The more attentive of you may have noticed that, apart from the odd pithy comment in relation to either the terrible situation in Ukraine and/or the Tory government, on my TravellinBob Facebook account and This World,This Life FB page, I've not written anything - or at least posted anything here - since the end of March.  So I thought as the chilly and damp Polish spring gives way to a (hopefully) hot and sunny Polish summer this weekend, I should explain myself.

First up, there have been some technical issues on the Blogger platform I use for this and, so far, I've not been able to fix them.  The View Count function seems to have stopped working, for a start, and when I log off I get a message saying that the system has been unable to comply with my request please try later (I'm paraphrasing there, but you get the gist I'm sure) then logs me off anyway......  At least, I think it does, on the basis that if I come back to the site later (be it after a minute, an hour, a day or longer) I have to log in again.  I've reached out to the Blogger Community - which is as close as you get to a Help Desk on the platform - to see if anyone has any bright ideas and checked and rechecked all my Settings, but to no avail - the silence, as they say, is deafening.  I can still post stuff, so it's not completely dead, but I have no idea who (if anyone) is reading it - there are no Comments appearing or coming through to give me even the slightest clue.  I don't get that much feedback in any case -  there is one reader who has given at least one Comment to every Post I've published, but even those have dried up.  More than anything, for my part, it's disheartening......

But mainly, I haven't written anything because I've found it next to impossible to find anything to write about.  Messrs Putin and Johnson have dominated the news cycle that typically feeds my creative juices to such an extent - and in such bloody depressing ways! - that for me at least it's drowned everything else out.

The aim has always been for me to entertain with this stuff, and to be honest I can't really find any entertainment in writing about a psychopathic Russian serial killer who seems intent on starting World War 3, and Britain's Worst Ever Prime Minister, a serial liar intent only on advancing himself (and his sycophantic camp followers) and who clearly doesn't believe the laws his own Government has passed  apply to themselves.  These are strange times we live in......

My travel (the original raison d'etre for the blog) has all but ceased, because there are so many other things to spend my pension on; it's taking me forever to read any book longer than about 5 pages because since recovering from Covid my attention span has shrunk to teenage levels and the odd book review would now take me at least 6 months to get to; and even sport - football, F1 and especially cricket - doesn't float my boat in the way it used to.  The pandemic, despite popular beliefs, has NOT ended, it's still going on as events in and around Shanghai right now clearly show, and the worst effects of Brexit are just beginning to manifest themselves, but are masked by the global economic issues caused by Covid....but those topics are nearly (but not quite) as depressing as the War and the Nasty Party.

So there we go....... I'm at a bit of loss as to what to do next.  When it flows, I still enjoying writing this Blog, but because I get no feedback I have no idea whether anyone reads the damned thing, never mind enjoys doing so.  For the time being, at least, I'll carry on writing it - and hoping that the world changes during these summer months and I start finding stuff that's interesting enough to share with you (and not depressing enough to drive us all over the edge....).

Finally, if anyone of you does read this, at least TRY and let me know what you think! Try posting a Comment in the space provided under this Post, or use the Contact Form to send me an email with your views - neither cost a penny and only take a couple of minutes, and it would help me a lot.  

In the meantime, stay safe, all, and stay healthy.......and stay happy!