I wonder why?

I sometimes take to a form of navel gazing and wonder why I - or anyone else for that matter - try to write something fresh every day to publish on a blog that hardly anybody ever reads.  Is it that I (or we) consider that we have some important point to try to get across, some point that will enrich the lives of millions of people across the world if only we could get a few more people interested?  Is it because our egos are so enormous that we think any vapid thoughts of ours are worth recording for posterity?  Are we perhaps hopeful that somebody somewhere in a position of authority will say, "I like your style of writing.  My company will offer you a ginormous amount of money to publish what you write"?

As far as I am concerned, the answers to those questions are, "No, no, no".  Which still begs the question, "Why?"  I suppose the real answer is, "I haven't the faintest idea".  But I still do it.

~~~~~

There's something about the tracery of bare branches against the sky that I find attractive.  And each variety of tree looks different.

The little luxuries of life

If my great-grandparents - or, come to that, even my grandparents - could see some of the things we now take for granted they would be absolutely amazed at the level of luxury in our lives.  Come to that, so would many people alive today and living in what we once called "the third world".  And I'm not talking about the big things like jet aircraft or refridgerators (yes, I can recall when fridges were luxury goods).  I'm thinking of the little things like central locking in cars and remote controls for televisions.

I think my favourite luxury-producing device (for that's what they really are) is the snooze button.  Oh, how wonderful it is to be able to reach out and press that little button knowing that I will be allowed a few more minutes of blissful nothingness.

(A parenthetical aside:  my radio alarm in England allows me an extra nine minutes.  Why nine?  What's wrong with a nice, round ten minutes?  And the one in France - a different make - allows just seven minutes, which is just as odd as nine.)

My enjoyment of those few extra minutes under the duvet stems from the last few years of my working life.  In those days I had to be ready to leave the house at 6.00am so that I had time to scrape the ice off the windscreen if necessary before driving about ten miles to catch a train.  Not being one of those people who can be up, washed, dressed and out of the house in 20 minutes, I set the alarm for 5.00am.  That was the alarm on the bedside cabinet.  But I was always wary of my proclivity to switch off the alarm in my sleep, so a second alarm - a wind-up clock with those two bells on the top - stood on the chest of drawers on the other side of the room.  That alarm was set for 5.15 so that if by chance I should switch off the first one in my sleep...  But I quickly discovered that the 5.15 alarm allowed me ample time to go through my first-thing-in-the-morning routine before I needed to leave so it became a matter of habit to switch off the first alarm and turn over.  Now I'm retired I just press the snooze button - maybe once, maybe twice, but probably three times.

~~~~~

The last two days, especially yesterday, have been sunny and positively spring-like.  Today is more overcast and we are promised (?) rain.  The sun has brought out the thousands of crocuses we have in the garden.

Procrastination rules, OK?

Long, long ago  - back in December 2009 - I posted this picture explaining how I had decided to replace the ribbons and remount the medals earned by my grandfather in World War I and my father in World War II.  Both of them served in the Royal Navy and I am proud to have their medals and service documents.  My grandfather was awarded the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal and he also earned the Long Service & Good Conduct Medal.  My father's medals are the 1939-45 Star, the Atlantic Star, the Africa Star, the Pacific Star and the Victory Medal as well as the LS&GC Medal.  I did order new ribbons and the bars on which to mount the medals and eventually managed to remount my grandfather's medals.  My father's, however, remain devoid of their ribbons and unmounted.  Which is, in a way, a blessing.  You see, the Government has finally relented to pressure and decided to award a new medal to those who took part in the Arctic convoys delivering war materials to Russia all those years ago.

I might well have missed the announcement that applications for the medal should be submitted as we were in France at the time it was promulgated.  However, I spoke to my brother at the weekend and he told me about it.  It is down to me to apply as I am the official next of kin and I have the service certificate showing that my father served on HMS Sheffield when she was deployed in the Arctic.  I thought I might have quite a job locating the application form.  That, in fact, proved simple.  Trickier was making sure of the Sheffield's movements during the time my father was aboard.  But the application form has been completed and submitted with copies of Dad's service record.  Now I just have to wait and, eventually, see about those new ribbons for the other medals.

Now the Old Bat wants me to take her to the butcher's.  Seems we are getting low on meat.

I've just noticed today's quote from Ellen DeGeneres
"Procrastination isn't the problem, it's the solution. So procrastinate now, don't put it off."

Does this make me a failure?

The author of a blog I came across some weeks back posted the following and it has been flitting through my mind ever since I read it:

It's so easy to put ourselves down, to think only of our failures and to forget our successes.
So here's a request for those of you who stop by to read this blog, and you can comment anonymously is you wish:
"Please tell me three things that you do well"

As I said, those words have  been flitting in and out of my mind since I read them.  I have yet to comply with the author's request.  You see, I'm not so sure that I can claim to do anything particularly well.  I suppose I would call myself an above average driver.  So would most men, but at least I can back up my assertion by pointing to the fact that I have passed the test to become a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists.  But, quite honestly, I can think of nothing else which I can claim to do well or at which I am successful.

There was one occasion, years and years back, when I was a member of a winning darts team, but any skill I had managed to develop in that particular sport has long since deserted me so that doesn't count.

One thing at which I do consider myself successful is map reading.

I suppose one could claim that as an Englishman I have an innate sense of modesty.  It was, after all, always considered the done thing not to brag or boast about one's achievements and to claim to be only moderately successful in anything.  Or to have enjoyed a huge slice of luck if winning at anything.  So perhaps that's the third I'm good at: being self-effacing and modest.

Or perhaps it is enough that I can do lots of things reasonably well.  So perhaps I'm not a failure after all.

~~~~~

I am so thankful that I am able to walk on the South Downs when we have days like this one was.

Among My Souvenirs

I didn'y start out with the intention of writing about Connie Francis or any of the other singers who are associated with the song of that title so I shall say no more about it.

There can be very few of us who have not, at some time or another, come back home from holiday with a souvenir of some sort.  I have returned from Switzerland with a cuckoo clock, from America with a CD of screen savers of views of Shenandoah National Park, from Spain with an orange sombrero, from Detroit with a CD bought at the Ford Museum entitled Music Box by Candlelight as performed by the Porter twin disc music box, and from France with a CD of accordian music.  I rather fancied a cuckoo clock and it did hang in my office for a while but I cannot for the life of me remember why I thought it such a good idea to buy the screen savers, the sombrero or the music box CD.  I do know why I bought the accordian music.

It was when Chris and Mrs Chris were spending a blistering hot week with the Old Bat and me in our French home.  The Old Bat and Mrs Chris had taken themselves off to explore the clothing stalls in the market in Chateaubriant (of which there are many) and Chis and I had retreated to our favourite café/bar where we sat in the sun on the terrasse to enjoy a welcome few minutes of doing nothing in particular.  One of the nearby stalls sold DVDs and CDs - every market of any size has one of these stalls - and to attract business the stallholder played one of the CDs.  In this case, as in so many, it was accordian music.  I've never seen anybody buy anything from one of these stalls.  Looking through the titles on offer, yes; but buying anything, never.  Except for that day.  I think Chris and I must have had a touch of sunstroke because we both bought a CD.  We bought different ones and (whisper it quietly) copied both of them so we each had two CDs.  I don't know about Chris, but my two CDs haven't seen the light of day for yonks.

On the other hand, the CD by the Kish Celtic Band that was given to me by the lead player in Detroit has been played many a time. This is one of my favourite tracks.

~~~~

The weather during our recent sojourn in the western Loire was mainly grey and cold with several frosty mornings and a couple of light dustings of snow.  However, there was one afternoon when the sun shone and, as I wanted to check if Mr Bricolage was still open in Segré, we took ourselves off for a drive.  It was that afternoon that we passed through the village of Armaillé and I took this photograph.

The I Spy Tribe

Back in the early 1950s I was a Redskin in the I Spy Tribe.  Quite how I heard about this club I have no idea.  It was run by the News Chronicle newspaper but my parents were Daily Mirror readers.  Be that as it may, somehow or other they were persuaded to change their allegiance and move up market so that I could read the daily I Spy column.

Presumably we had to pay to join this not very exclusive club.  In return for said payment the members, who were known as Redskins - no such thing as political correctness in those days! - received a code book and (presumably) a badge.  The daily newspaper column included a coded message and we would have to look up the appropriate code to find out what important details were contained in the message.  But the newspaper column was only part of it.

The paper also published a set of books such as I Spy in the Country, I Spy in the Street, I Spy at the Zoo and so on.  Each book - they were small enough to fit in the pocket of a jacket and cost 6d (that's six old pence) - contained line drawings of various objects such as a telephone box, a policeman on point duty (both these being from I Spy in the Street) and so on.  The Redskin would note when and where s/he saw each item.  Points were awarded depending on the rarity of the item or the difficulty involved in seeing it and when a specified number of points had been accumulated, the book could be sent in the Big Chief I Spy.  He would then return the book together with a large, coloured feather, the feathers being coloured according to the book sent in.  I have a very clear memory of receiving a bright pink feather to put into my headband.

One book I remember very fondly: I Spy the Sights of London.  My mother took my brother and I to London for the day so we could  basically do an I Spy trail.  There was the Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park, the imperial measurements in Trafalgar Square (I wonder if they are still there?) and other interesting tourist sights.  But the one that lives in my memory was the lamp lighter we spotted in one of the Temples.

Some of the first I Spy books are still available through specialist sites at £4 upwards.  That's 16,000% inflation!  (I think - though it sounds an awful lot.)

~~~~~

Another cold and misty morning in France.

Collecting

Is it just a boy thing or do girls collect things as well?  I didn't know many girls when I was a boy.  We had separate schools from the age of about 8 and the only girls I knew were my two girl cousins (one of whom we saw only about once a year) and the girl who lived two doors down the road.  Since then, the only girl I have known of an age when I was into collecting has been my daughter, and she was never a collector.  Come to that, I don't recall the two boys collecting things very much either.  But I did.

I suppose it all started with collecting car numbers.  Quite what was either the point or the fun in writing down the registration numbers of cars as they sped along the main London to Dover road is something that, these days, I find difficult - make that impossible - to comprehend.  The sheer pointlessness of the exercise, its utter futility, was something that quickly became apparent to me even at that young age.  The in thing, according to my peers, was train spotting.  And so it was that, armed with a new notebook and a freshly sharpened pencil, I made my way to the level crossing where the footbridge over the tracks was considered the best place to practise my new hobby.

Looking back, I have to say I'm surprised that I was not only allowed to go that far without an accompanying adult, I was even allowed to supervise my younger brother who wanted to come with me.  (I've just checked and discovered that it wasn't as far from home as I had thought.)

One of the drawbacks associated with train spotting at that particuloar spot was that it was only just on the downside of Gillingham station and the line was electrified as far as Gillingham.  This meant that the majority of the trains we "spotted" were uninteresting electric trains.  They all looked the same and just had numbers whereas the steam engines - at least, the majority of those pulling passenger trains - came in different classes which looked distinctive in style - and they all had names.  There was the Schools class in which the engines bore the names of English public schools such as Rugby and Shrewsbury, the King Arthur class with Sir Lancelot and Sir Gerwain, the West Country class in which the engines were named after towns in the south-west of England such as Appledore and Bideford, but best of all was the Battle of Britain class with names of famous air stations and squadrons that took part in the battle.  Just occasionally we had a treat and the Golden Arrow, the famous London to Paris all-Pullman express, was diverted from its usual route and came through the more northerly line over our level crossing.  This train was usually pulled by a Battle of Britain or West Country class engine but on one occasion we saw it pulled by a London, Midland and Scottish engine - Britannia - instead of the regular Southern Railway engine.

Like all the other train spotters, I had bought the Ian Allan book which listed all the Southern Railway engines, both steam and electric, in their various classes and I very carefully underlined in red the ones I saw.

Ian Allan published other similar books covering buses, warships, tugs etc etc and I was soon hooked on collecting bus numbers as well - and, when I could talk my mother into taking us to Gravesend - the names of tugs operating on the Thames.  Bing part of a naval family, it was natural as well that I should note down the names of the warships moored in the Medway and in the dockyard when we visited on Navy Days.

Mentioning the Ian Allan books reminds me others - those in the I Spy series.  But perhaps I'll save that for another day.  Meanwhile, here's a picture taken on a chilly morning in France.