SID 92. Thankful Thursday - Piddling

What are you doing today?

Piddling around.

But you did that yesterday.

Yes but I haven't quite finished yet.

Today has been a strange day. It started very dull and totally windless with a moist atmosphere. Midge heaven. I fed the birds and the fish and retreated indoors. I wrote a blog post and read a few blogs and answered some emails, drank coffee chatted to various people on WhatsApp. By 10am I'd got a few things done in the workshop and  discarded the first blog post. 

A friend arrived with my shopping and a slight breeze. The two were, so far as I know, unrelated. We decided on a socially distanced coffee in the garden as the midges had retreated in the face of the breeze. We couldn't see the sea because of the haar but it was very pleasant listening to the birds and the water in the waterfall into the pond and being able to chat face to face.

I spent the afternoon in the garden in the sun mowing the grass, scarifying, weeding, and many such mundane and rewarding tasks. It was good exercise. When I had my afternoon coffee I wrote another short blog post. Then I discarded it. Not, I decided, my day for a blog post.

However half a day in the garden was good for the body and the mind and at 6 o'clock I decided that it was time for The News and to make some dinner. A wee libation whilst the dinner was cooking was a  bonus. 

This evening I have various emails and so on to write and I managed to get carried away and write another blog post. The fact that I have managed to say absolutely nothing in it just about sums the day up.

The wind has dropped and the midges are gathering in clouds. I have shut the conservatory door and battened down the hatches. I have put some strawberries in a dish and when I've finished the emails I shall add some ice cream and go and watch a recorded QI.

Life is good. I am content. For that I have every reason to be very thankful.

More Transport Nostalgia

I was contemplating a post on a current news topic but decided that that would require brainpower and could be a bit controversial so I decided to return to the theme of my transportation starting with my first car and my subsequent three cars.

The first car is a Standard Ensign WNE 193 bought when I was 20 or 21 with a loan from my Grandmother.  Apart from the opportunities she afforded for taking my Grandmother out (we were great pals as well as Grandmother and Grandson) it also enabled me to do my London trips, formerly undertaken on the Hippogryph, in comfort. This photo was taken when the family went to visit a relative in North Wales. (For my records, thanks CJ, it was Flora Scott, née Jarvis, my Mother's first Cousin, daughter of Aunt Edie, my maternal grandmother's - Nana's - sister).

The second car was a Singer Vogue picture here on the banks of Loch Ness.

I think that I decided after a while that I should stop being an old man and get a car more suitable for my age. So I acquired an MG Midget Mk I. Oddly I have very few photos of it that I can find so this was provided by my brother CJ from his archives.

My fourth car came after I'd married and decided that we needed a car more suited to married life than to courtship and weekend excursions to the Lake District (where the Midget took us to our honeymoon staying at Riggside with the Roscamps at Grange-in-Borrowdale).  

The car was a Volvo 221 Estate. When we had done the deal we noticed that the letters on the bonnet said VOOVO and not VOLVO. The dealer was mortified but the deal had been done and we refused to have it changed. It was sold 80,000 miles later and was still known as The Voovo, The picture was taken at the top of Honister in the Lake District. The person shown is my Dad. I think we were all on holiday together. 

SID 77. Music - Another First

I was brought up with music. My parents had catholic tastes and a wide selection of music when I was a young child. It was, of course 78 rpm records played on a wind-up gramophone which was a wedding present from my Mother's place of work. I still have lots of old 78 rpm records even though I got rid of my hundreds of LPs. Except, that is, for the first one that I bought. I was 16. I bought it at Rushworth and Draper in Liverpool on the corner of Whitechapel and Richmond Street. How is it that I can remember all that but not how old I am?

The record was, rather predictably I suppose at the time, some Tchaikovsky pieces played by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra C Sir Malcolm Sargent. It was an orchestra I listened to at the "Liverpool Phil" almost every week during the season. 

As time goes by our tastes tend to alter, some would say mature, and that probably wouldn't be my first CD now. On the other hand in 'classical music' terms my tastes are still late Classical (Mozart and Haydn for example), Romantic and post-romantic. 

I wonder how many of you recall what your first record/CD was. It's interesting that in another 10 years people may well not be buying CDs in any number and music will generally be streamed.

SID 71. A Matter of Trust

I've not been in Blogland much for a few days. The garden has needed my time again and it's been a welcome escape from the fact that I've been strangely unsettled. What has unsettled me? Something that I would never have thought would have even made me give it more than a disgusted or disdainful thought. After all I worked with politicians all my working life. I've learned to take their sincerity and their insincerity and treat those two qualities with an equal degree of detachment.

Despite the effect that President Trump is having on the world and it's economy it's not something I can influence so I've ignored it. Living in Scotland we've been fortunate in having a First Minister who has a very high acceptance rating in her dealing with the present Covid-19 pandemic. However our British Prime Minister now has a negative rating. Why? Largely because of his support for and total reliance on his chief special adviser (Dominic Cummings - a political appointee not a civil servant) who has been the architect of Brexit and the Government's response to the pandemic. In this government he is arguably more powerful than the Prime Minister and certainly than any member of the Cabinet. 

Despite the Stay at Home slogan and edict, of which he was the author, DC ignored it and drove, with symptoms of Covid-19, with his wife, who also had symptoms, and their 4 year old son 260 miles to stay in a family home on the family farm "to be near child care if needed". There is a great deal more to it than that, of course. However what is absolutely clear is that he disobeyed the spirit and the letter of the instructions in many ways. He has refused to resign and the PM has refused to sack him and told the public to 'move on'. The furore rumbles on. The whole point that no one at the top seems to grasp is that the author (or approver) of the rules has broken them. It does not matter how small the break. It does not matter that you and I would have been hauled over the coals for doing what he did. It's a matter of trust and credibility.

Regardless of his ability, the ability of the PM and their political colour the sheer arrogance, the sheer treatment of the populace with total contempt is on a scale that I cannot recall in my lifetime. And, let's face it, we've had some pretty significant scandals in that time.

It's unsettled me and made me feel sad for the future. 

However this really was what the sunset from my conservatory looked like at 10.30 pm last Sunday:

So life's pretty good really.