This World, This Life

  I've been a bit blocked lately. Not in the digestive-y way, you understand, but....well, in the head. Which is why there's not been a lot posted so far this year. My Muse, always a bit hit and miss for me, has buggered off.  Again. Truth to tell, I'm out of ideas.  No inspiration.  Not for blogs, not for longer stuff like short stories. Or essays  And as for complete book length writing.......not a snowball in Hells chance! ----------------------------------------------------------------- I mean, it's not as though is there is nothing going on in the world to bring a little inspiration. There's Putin's War for a start, but I've lost a little bit of, I suppose, focus as it drags on through the winter months. There are war crimes being committed on a daily basis by the Russian invaders, and heroic resistance by Ukrainian forces to counter them. Life goes on mostly, as people try to live as normally as possible amid the power cuts, lack of heat...

So here we are, the first post of the year - better late than never, but at least it’s not February yet.  I hope you all had a good and pleasant Christmas, and a riotous New Year’s Eve (mine was sober but a nice family one), and wish you every success and happiness for 2023. As for 2022, I’m kind of glad to see the back of it.  My ambition last January was to get through the year without being hospitalised, and in that at least I succeeded, despite some sciatic problems that needed some physio in a clinic, but I don’t really class that as “hospital” - so I’m calling it a win. Apart from that, at least on a personal level, not a lot happened.  For a number of very good reasons, it was a quiet year.  Finishing off the new place meant there was not a lot of spare cash so for the first year in my life (at least as far as I can remember) I never got to the seaside, and I’m rather surprised at how much I actually missed it.  Since childhood I’ve loved the sight and so...

  I came back in from the doctor's, satisfied with the news that the tests I had a couple of weeks ago have revealed nothing to worry about.  For an old geezer rapidly heading for his 70th birthday I'm not in bad shape (the selection of aches and pains in various leg joints, relics of my sporting days 40 and more years ago notwithstanding).  A little overweight, perhaps, and inevitably slowing up, suffering from fatigue (too much for my liking) and with vision not what it once was, but still......reasons to be cheerful. I gave My Beloved a quick call, just to let her know the worries she's been carrying since the tests can be largely discounted, but please carry on with the better diet she's insisted I follow, then settled down in my armchair for little R&R: not too long, as I had another medical appointment elsewhere, this one to help a recurring sciatica problem.  I placed my legs up comfortably on the adjacent settee, laid my head back and closed my eyes, rel...

  Somehow, I simply can't get excited, even slightly, about this year's FIFA bean-fest.  As World Cups go, it's the first one I've failed to have any enthusiasm for - and it has nothing to do with the controversial location. I understand the controversy.  I watched the draw that awarded the competition to the country live on television while working in Trinidad, way back in 2010. Like everyone else, it came as a surprise, as did the award of the 2018 competition to Russia.  In all honesty, that was more annoying to me, since England had bid for it too, and it was disappointing not to get the nod again after nearly 50 years since the glorious summer of 1966.  Although the worst excesses were still years ahead and perhaps unforeseeable, I had even then doubts about Putin, who at the time was strutting around on the world stage as it he owned it.  It seemed to me that such behaviour was out of character - way out of character! - for someone who had formerly be...

  I'm going to place a bit of a caveat on this piece, namely that I'm not a political scientist, have never held membership of any political party, and due to my non-resident status find myself politically persona non grata - more on this later. So the comments and views that follow are certainly personal, and not influenced by anything except my own experiences and a contemplation of poilitics in Britain. As I wrote in a previous blog, politics is top of my list of inventions I can do without - but has always (and still does) hold an unheallhy fascination for me. For avoidance of doubt, I started voting in the 1970s, when the voting age was cut to 18, and have always taken it as a serious public duty. I have always taken note of the policy plans announced by all the major parties (and some of the minor ones) in the run-up to an election, and tried to vote for the party that in my view seemed the best fit for what my personal and, later, family needs were. My parents ...

  Funny thing, progress. Done right, it makes all our lives easier, more productive, more rewarding - both financially and mentally - and gives the entire human development a kick forward. Done badly and it can lead to disaster and regression. It's all subjective, of course, and I have no doubt everyone has a different view about what's been good and bad for both them and the rest of us. For what it's worth, here is a little list of 8 developments that could come under the label (perhaps misleading in itself) of inventions that I could quite happily live without as in my view they are more trouble than they are worth, plus an even smaller list of similar things that I simply could not. And why.... Remember: it's all subjective and I'm guessing few people, if any, would agree with me. So - here goes: ------------------------------------------------ Inventions I could do without: Politics and Religion.   A biggy to start with, and calling it an invention is perh...