Farewell to another ....

 Morning Mugs,

How was Christmas then? Different I expect for very many. 

My team (Chelsea) have been happily ruining it's supporters Christmases since 1905 and this year was no different. A perfunctory win over West Ham, a shambolic defeat versus Arsenal and an honourable draw against Aston Villa, where of course we had many chances to bury them but failed to do so.  Football and any elite level sport is rather paradoxically both trivial and vital during these times of lockdown, tiered areas and lack of actual physical social meeting with friends and relatives. 

For the football/sports fan, it provides a release, a place to semi-replicate going to a match, to virtually meet friends and to share the joy and pain of the sporting experience. This is probably even more acutely recognised by actual match going fans. My point is that it is trivial, it's elite sport and entertainment for the masses....and it doesn't appeal to everyone, but for many it is a straw to clutch during times of loneliness and worry. The pain and joy of watching football or your preferred sport, especially if you have a 'team' is a welcome distraction for many and any distraction is a good thing for mental health.

On Christmas Eve, the last of my Mum's generation finally passed. My Auntie Nancy was 92, born in Sneem in County Kerry. She was a very...forthright person....almost typically Irish in that sometimes honesty was the least diplomatic route, but it was also the truth. I won't dwell on it here, but there is some sadness tingeing her passing...she was the 3rd eldest of the sisters and brother (singular, one boy with 6 sisters!) and the last to go. However, in amongst that lack of diplomacy was a wicked sense of humour and a pragmatism that went way beyond her upbringing and education in rural Ireland.  For now, my favourite paraphrases quotes from her are below. 

 

RIP Auntie Nancy.

'Sure haven't I got the worst headache ever....it must have been  a bad bottle of tonic' - said the day after her and my Mum demolished 2 bottles of gin but decided the tonic was 'bad'....

After not having seen me for 6 years, her greeting was this....'Sure..aren't you right fecking shape for heart attack' .....no 'Hello', no 'How are You'......just that. Magic.

Later Mugs, GJ

 

Keep up Jack

 Morning Mugs,

Need a little lift? This weekend you will see the Winter Solstice which means from Monday...the nights start to draw out. Thank fuck for that. I have rfeached an age where I really don't like winter. I don't like dark early evenings. I don't like rain. I don't like wind. There is a slight downside to this in that it will still get light a little later each morning for a while. 

 

Also on December 20th and 21st we will see the 'great conjunction' of Jupiter and Saturn, where the two planets appear to us to be next to each other. It did happen in 2000 but the Sun sort of got in the way of any real vision of such a rare celestial event. Before that it seems it was in 1623, but again records indicate it was too close to the sun to be seen in any great tdetail. There is a some weight to the theory that this great conjunction might have been the Star of Bethlehem! 

Anyway, weather permitting I will be outside with my telescope(s) trying to catch a glimpse. The UK weather had better start to calm down then.And yes, I am a new astronomer if you hadn't guessed. I have rekindled an interest and love of the stars and the night sky and I have to say when you see the closeness of the moons surface through a telescope, and the rings of Saturn 'live' (try that in a Martin Tyler stylee) or Jupiter and its moons...or the M31 galaxy......it is jaw dropping. Obviously the list here is potentially endless!

And today..I promise to write a list of subjects and memories and events to comment on. I need to get this blog back up and running to its former standards! And believe me I have a lot to say. My sanity is depending on it.

Later Mugs, GJ

 

Locky-D2

 Morning Mugs

Yes, Locky-D2 is what I've seen the latest lockdown called. God help us if this sort of truncated language strangling shite carries on. 

Remember just 2 weeks ago how Boris castigated Starmer for suggesting a circuit break lockdown? About how Johnsons 'tiers' system would do the trick of stopping the much wished for second wave (yes I do think people wanted it to happen, and that shutting the country down was a typically stupid Labour idea that hadn't been thought through?

How did that work out for him then? I wonder if he had any sense of irony, or duplicity or sheer shame as he announced a 4 week lockdown for Engand last weekend?

I feel sorry for all the businesses and organisations who spent money making their environments COVID secure and as safe as possible only to find the government thinks it wasn't enough. And yet, school, colleges and the key COVID hotbed, universities, remain open. A teacher friend of mine has already said that apparently between 9am and 3pm she is immune to the virus, and the virus itself won't apparently infect during those hours. She can enjoy a coffee with her sister, also a teacher in the same school. Or any of her other teacher colleagues. But from 3pm onwards she can't even sit at opposite ends of the same garden with them. The sheer illogic of this is mind-boggling. 

I don't have the answer aside from fucking hurry up with a vaccine, but there will be a point where people say enough is enough and will take their chances with the virus in order to return to a mask free world with hugs and group gatherings.

I'm on that side as well.

Later Mugs, GJ

Farewell, my friend

 Evening Mugs,

Today we said goodbye to my father in law, my wifes dearly loved Dad. 76. Too young by todays standards. Struck down after being given a very good prognosis on Prostate Cancer, by a fucking incidious, underhanded cunt of a stroke. The Lord might giveth, and The Lord might taketh away, but in my view if The Lord exists then he's a absolutely vindictive bastard. Oi...Lord, just take the cunts yeah? 

 

He was kind, gentle, caring, loving, funny, odd, never angry, never vengeful. A man who had a great life, married a great woman , spent 60 years with her and sat at the head of the most loving family, all of us inspired by him.

 This sad passing has given me a jolt on how to live, how to love, how to spend time with those you love and how to spend what the fuck you want on what the fuck you want or who the fuck you want.

Life is just way too short, our existence way too ephemeral, our connection to life and existence and love and everything we cherish is gossamer thin and we take it for granted at our peril and then in the blink of an eye it's too late.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you, no-one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

Take Care Mugs

Thought I'd something more to say......

 Morning Mugs

My last post was in July ffs. I promised there'd be more thoughts, notes, observations and stuff posted here, including an option to maybe lookat 'vlogging' for the older more mature person maybe.

But it didn't happen did it?  What a lazy git. How hard is it to spend 15 minutes a day dumping thoughts and ideas down on a public forum?

That no-one reads.

Loads of mundane stuff did, not exciting I grant, but maybe that's an advantage of lockdown....life quietened down for many of us. So, a list of things to discuss might be a good idea and then peridocially I will try and crack through it and add as necessary.

 

1. Holidays , or lack thereof and what I did with my leave
   
2. Days out I did do
3. New hobbies from days gone by - astronomy in this case and the reintroduction of walking football
   
4. Losing someone close unexpectedly
5. The joys of artificial grass and unnatural worry about the garden in general
6. Pensions, transferring out and all the worries
7. More gardening, ffs...something I never thought I'd enjoy but.... 
8. COVID bollocks - getting busy dying or getting busy living?
9. Stuff I've enjoyed watching, and of course stuff I've hated
10. Football under COVID
11. Dogs and cats.
12. Working from home, working in general. 
13. The perils and joys of online shopping
14. Why the hell do I seem to have more to do than ever before?

That'll do for now. Add grumbles about the weather , the government and all sort so other niggles  and maybe I can get some consistency going. 

Later Mugs, GJ

Ticking away the hours that make up a dull day...

Morning Mugs,

I have been bloody slack haven't I? May the 18th since last blog post....,lazy old bastard me then.

There's so much going and paradoxically so little. Well of any real interest....

Wife and youngest daughter are still furloughed. I'm still working though. I did take a week off in June, but ended up spending that time doing 'stuff' around the house and garden. There was a time when this would have been an anathema to me.....breaks from work are exactly about that...taking a break doing nothing except visitng somewhere nice, going to the mobile or just frittering away hours in an off hand way (apologies to D.Gilmour and R.Waters there...) - but there is a weird desire to purchase and use 'man-tools' and get stuff done.

It has been an expensive time.

The consequence of this is the garden looks ...well not good..but better than normal for this time of the year. Trees have been pruned using the new cordless recip saw, the lawn is cut weekly using the new cordless lawn mower, ladders are hung on the wall and new pictures added to walls thanks to holes drilled by the new cordless power drill, and screws attached using the cordless screw driver. A new plastic shed was bought and constructed, a new hose  wasbought and attached to the wall, a new picket fence in the front garden, a complete tree cut down (by visiting...ahem...tree surgeons), a new fence sits proudly down one side of the garden rendering the whole garden 90% dog proof (nothing is entirely dog proof in my experience) . New grass has been sown at the bottom of the garden on a rough old patch, with about 70% success (more overseeding needed) and in July the patio was repaired and will, in August, be covered with artificial grass.

In this lockdown period I have bought the cordless recip saw, a paint sprayer, a shaver, ladder hooks, a cordless battery powered lawnmower, new dog tracking devices, new trainers for walking the dogs, a new patio table, new sun loungers, a cordless power drill, a scarifier/aerator for the lawn, a lawn spreader, a new rake, a wheel barrow, new headphones, a new wall mounted hose-pipe, new hose spray and sprinkler fittings, grass seed, grass feed and weed, weed killer, a weed burner, a new small handy cordless screw driver, a new CO alarm to replace the end of life (after 7 years) of the previous one, a new soft bristle wide broom for the artificial grass, a trowel set, dining room seat covers, a new toilet flushing thing, new slow feed dog bowls, a mulching kit for the lawn mower, a glue gun, new vest tops for me, new shorts for me, new t-shirts for me, a kitchen whiteboard, new Blink security cameras, a new Ring Video doorbell, lawn mower blade sharpening bits, a new head torch for winter dog walking, an outdoor clock and thermometer, an Echo Show 8, a new folding trolley, new iMAC speakers (replacing blown old BOSE ones), kiln dried sand for the block paving, pre-mixed mortar for brick and path repairs, tile paint, kitchen cupboard paint and new dog harnesses. There are other bits as well, but here is definitive proof of the cognitively dissonant side of lockdown. Are these things 'must-haves' or 'nice-to-haves' or just indulgences? There does seem to have been a weird coincidence between the failure rate of some bits (lawn mower, iMAC speakers, doorbell, old dog walking trainers, insufficient sun loungers, CO alarm and loo flush mechanism) and the sudden desire for things to help me occupy my time.

Maybe the lack of a cruise to spend money on has played a part, along with an inability to get to the mobile home due to quarantine and COVID fear, have just meant the funds are redistributed, and the truth is with no main holiday looking likely this year it has been a good chance for some capital investment in tools and the house and garden. it's been a good chance to get stuff I think I need and do stuff I think needs doing.

But.....I am banking on any winter lockdown being far cheaper though. or just hoping the virus is fucked off or a vaccine or treatment found to mean this crap doesn't happen again, or if it does then has a far less pernicious impact on life.

Later Mugs, GJ

Had enough yet?

Afternoon Mugs,

Blimey, it now seems never ending doesn't it? I said at the beginning of the lockdown that if there was no real end in sight then civil/social disobedience would start to kick in, and sure enough it has. This has of course been accelerated by the confused 'easing' of restrictions by the failing and flailing government who seem to be making stuff up on the hoof.

I would have preferred a single unequivocal statement of 'another 4 weeks' until mid-June of complete lockdown. That way, as tough as staying in and watching TV or doing DIY or whatever seems you would have had clarity and a few weeks to prepare a proper caveated road map of restriction easing. You know, like France, Ireland, Spain and Germany amongst others have done.

Oh, but they're all the EU aren't they and the good old UK can't be seen to be doing the same thing as them now can we? Even if what we're doing is wrong, like some out of control village idiot we will plough our own furrow and the gormless and gullible will follow. On the one hand you have cold hard facts, based in science and an opposition leader quietly exposing the foolhardiness of this government and it's 'out of depth' minister, whilst the great British public would prefer a bumbling oaf who sees himslf as a Winston Churchill character because he uses the phrase 'Great British public' and 'hard working British families'. Its bluff, bluster and bullshit beating down the truth again.

And of course we also have the continuing unhealthy corporate greed of billionaires desperate to keep making billions whilst risking their emplotyees lives, and sport putting its business ahead of the health of participants and staff...you know,,,because the nation needs cheering up. Today the Scottish Premier League have (sensibly) called time on the season awarding positions as they stand. But the English Premier League are desperate to finish the campaign to avoid paying the TV companies millions back...sorry...I mean to lift the nations spirits. And then today they announce the likelihood that the womens super league will be stopped but not the mens .....no sexism or corporate greed on display there then!

I did think at the beginning of this that things might change. We'd be greener as we have the chance to gaze at pure blue skies unsullied by pollution haze...but no, it's all about getting people to work, even to the point of encouraging car use over public transport. Because working with colleagues is so much safer than sitting on a train or bus. Give me strength.

My message is shit or get off the pot. Remove lockdown and be damned and take the consequeneces, or lockdown good and hard and save lives. This government will do neither and we'll be stuck in Vagueness City and Indecision Town for the foreseeable future.

Grim.

Later Mugs, GJ

Funny not funny

Afternoon Mugs

As I sit here recovering from wine lag (replacing beer lag due to the fact I have rediscovered a taste for red wine)  on a quiet work afternoon, I'm watching one of the new breed  of sitcoms. No not the risible Mrs Browns Boys, or the equally dreadful Citizen Khan, but clever, darker ones. Sitcoms that have no laughter track and therefore force you to find the comedy and laugh moments. This all sounds a bit like middle class, liberal elite wankerie  I suppose. However for me the days of laughing when prompted have long gone and it's probably all the work of Ricky Gervais and the ground-breaking series The Office. It was cringe inducing of course, but so beautifully scripted and set up, and followed up by the equally brilliant Extras, Derek and his latest, After Life. I think it's perfectly fair to say he changed the comedy of the sit-com forever, and for the better.

So, on the list of honourable recent sit-coms I've watched and enjoyed are....

Back to Life: Dark, yet gentle humour in this series written by and starring the immensely impressive Daisy Haggard. The sad and yet uplifitng story of a woman imprisoned for murder, and relased 18 years later as she approches her forties.  On iPlayer.

Fleabag: Fourth wall breaking sit-com with outrageous situations, a free speaking star in Phoebe Waller-Bridge, deliciously dark and funny. Not as touching as Back to Life, but in the same vein of centering the series around a strong female character. On iPlayer.

After Life: Ricky Gervais in a stunning comedy/drama about a recently widowed man who's life is in tatters after his wife's death. Doesn't sound funny does it? And yet like the previous two it is laugh out loud funny at times and Gervais loads up the pathos to smack you in the face and drag you to tears both after and before the laughter. Netflix only. 

Breeders: One from the blue for me......recommended by a work colleague for the lockdown. Think Outnumbered with far worse language, less cute and verbose kids, concentrating on fraught parenting and the bparadox of being willing to die for your children whilst simultaneously want to kill them. Martin Freeman, Michael Mckean, the constantly underrated Patrick Baladi  and the lovely Daisy Haggard form the cast.  Cognitive dissonance at its best. Sky One (yes Sky seem to be a bit of a leader in the adult sit-com market!)

Code 404: Not watched this yet, it's on the lockdown list though and starts Stephen Graham and Daniel Mays and I can't imagine for one moment that two such fantastic actors would star in something shitty. Sky One (yep...Sky again huh...who knew...)

Avenue 5: Set in outer space on a fictional equivalent inter-planetary cruise liner. Starring Hugh Laurie, Rebecca Front band Leona Critchley and written by Armando Ianucci (of The Thick Of It fame...one of the finest sitcoms ever) - this was a grower but is a very funny and maybe a currently apt view of human behaviour in the face of a crisis! Sky One.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: I was never a huge fan of Seinfeld, always more of  a Frazier man myself. But this is a gem from one of th riters of Seinfeld, Larry David who plays a parody version of himself. He's probably acting out the stuff that's deep inside all of us, but this series is as strong no as it was from day one. Superb stuff. Sky One 

Thats all folks as they used to say, 

Later Mugs , GJ

 

JFC

Morning Mugs

Despite having more time...it seems I have less time...well for writing. I need to get in the habit of writing daily thoughts  quickly and punchily here. I am also considering a memoir from the earliest of memories, although of course dates from years ago, even years will be mere guesses!

JFC stands for Jesus Fucking Christ, a statement for when you hear, see or experience the most stupid of things from other people.  

JFC - The BBC and their Big Night In. Utter garbage at a time when people need better TV. Davina ShoutyGob is the last thing you need, but adding to her a list of 'celebs' being earnest, pious and trying to mix that with humour came over as patronising, insincere bullshit. I am a big fan of the BBC, but this was an error of judgment and poor execution.

JFC - Disinfectant? UV light? Injections? Irradiation? Seriously America, the man is borderline insane and surely suffering from Dementia of some sort? Don't elect him unless you want to lose the trust of the entire world. Russia excepted maybe...

JFC - Tory 'grandees' or CUNTS as I know them, calling for lockdown to be lifted to restart the economy. If ever there was proof that old school Tory-ism puts lives before profit, there it is.  

JFC - 20,000 deaths and that DOESN'T include care home and other non-hospital reported deaths? The NHS still short on the right PPE for the front line workers? The NHS still not getting the testing resource for the front-line workers? And yet...and yet...the press are still blowing smoke up the arses of this government. We are one fucked up country.

JFC - Kim Jong-Un is allegedly very poorly. And by all accounts might actually die. And yet on Twitter there are people saying that we should have humanity and show compassion for his family. The same humanity and compassion he showed those around him he's had executed and tortured. The same humanity he shows any dissenters and the thousands if not more locked up in concentration camps. Fuck him. 

JFC - people raising money for the NHS. The NHS, a publicly funded jewel in the diminishing crown jewels of the country. I will NOT contribute to any NHS charity because it's a failing of the state if that is needed. Tax people more if necessary, fund it properly from the outset. Every penny raised through charity just allows this government to use that as an excuse to keep on starving it of cash. 

Thats enough JFCs for now ....

Later Mugs, GJ

Lockdown Issues (2)

Morning Mugs,

Well that's more or less the first week done. The list of lockdown issues continues.....I am sure there will be some lockdown advantages along soon, but the due diligence of whether they are advantages of just me making the most of a bad situation is needed first. In no particular order of importance.....

1.) No football...that's WATCHING football. I'm a terrible TV watcher of my team Chelsea. I can go to games and win or lose, it's up the Blues. There are 40,000 soul mates of sorts who feel pretty much the same way. Watching on TV though is a solitary torturous affair. If you've seen the film Get Out, it reminds me of the TV sequences in that where the 'hero' is drugged or hypnotised to the point where he can only see the world through the screen of a TV that is diminishing in size. Yep...that's TV viewing of Chelsea for me. But now I can't watch them...I want to. Now I can't even watch meaningless games involving teams I don't give a shit about, but now....I really want to.  And no,  watching old matches being re-run doesn't do it for me unless they're from the 70s. There's talk of re-running Euro '96 in full. Fuck that...re-run Mexico 70 and I might be interested based on the fact I remember so little of it. Aside from Pele, Jairzinho, Bobby Moore, Beckenbauer etc....

2.) No football.....thats WALKING football. Blimey, I bought some new Adidas Kaiser 5 indoor football trainers to improve my game. They felt great. My passing was better. My shooting no longer looked like I had a sand wedge tied to my foot. And then it stopped. No more banter, no more controversy over whether anyone was running, or what a fair challenge is. No post match handshakes. No post match pints of Peroni. No getting home and being asked why you're so late. No late dinner. No falling asleep on the settee after the football, dinner and beer combo. I miss this...

3.) Sore hips. The nicer weather, the choice to use dog walking as the exercise of choice, the longer dog walks and then in a moment of madness doing the front and back gardens in the first cut of the year this weekend gone. It's like both hips need a bloody good dousing with 3-in-1 oil. Oh, and not just them, my shoulders as well. Hell, there's barely a bit of me that doesn't fucking ache these days. 

4.) Shortage of ice-cream. We normally have a couple of tubs of ice cream in the freezer on the pre-text that it's for the grandchildren. In truth, ice-cream is like crack cocaine for me. I can't just get a tub of Carte D'Or or Ben & Jerry's and eat some of it and save the rest. What sort of fuckwittery is that? Once I've let it thaw a bit, opened the lid and sunk the first spoon in, then I'm like a dog eating it's breakfast. I inhale the stuff. I will not stop until the tub is empty or is wrested from my greedy, gluttonous hands. But thanks to the lockdown I've had to be disciplined. A third of a tub is all that remains. Now the crisis is hitting home.

5.) Fuck me, how can you get some private time? The house is occupied almost all of the day except if Hellsbells and Pie take the dogs out. They did yesterday afternoon.....10 minutes they lasted until the hail came down. I nearly had a nap.....

That's it for now, heading into week two of fuck knows how many this will last, I'm sure there will be more trivial gripes and moans. Meanwhile I promise (sort of) to try and find some lockdown positives. There must be some .....

Later Mugs, GJ

Lockdown issues

Afternoon Mugs,

Fucking lockdown.

I work from home. I have routines. I have alarms set to get up and walk about. I have radio stations I like. The TV sits idle.

But now, my wife and youngest daughter (aged 25) are hom all day, being furloughed workers.

These have fucked up the following, in no particular order.

1.)  My peace and quiet. I usually have a bit of background radio on and nothing else. Now, if they're not chatting or shouting to each other, they're watching fucking box sets loudly on the downstairs TV. Oh and they are asking Alexa to play the most shit radio they can find...the sort of playlist crap that Radio 2, heart etc pump out.

2.) Spring cleaning. This has NEVER happened in any house since I was a kid and my mum used to do it religiously every year like all Mums did (calm down millenials, it was a different time back then) . Now my garage is being cluttered with shit that needs to go the dump but can't because they're all shut, or shit that's to be kept and stored elsewhere, or shit whose future is in the balance. A sort of shit purgatory. But my garage had order, and now it doesn't.

3.) The dogs are being walked by wife and youngest (HellsBells and Pie) every morning. Then I get the evening shift ON MY OWN! To be honest there's very few people about so that does suit me.  I'll grudgingly and grumpily acknowledge that as a positive.

4.) Deliveries. No not food deliveries. Deliveries of things for me. Gadgets, shirts, stuff for the dogs etc. I used to order this surreptitiously and the deliveries would come when everyone was out. Now the fuckers knock and walk away and I am suddenly found out. Bastards.

5.) Coffee. I have a Tassimo machine. I love the coffee. It lasts ages in terms of supply. Now with these two home it's getting drunk BY THEM! I have suggested some Nescafe Instant. This did not go down well. 

6.) I am home based for work, so nothing new for me here EXCEPT I am now plagued by 'can you help with this' or 'can you take this to the bin' or 'can you help me here' or 'are you busy?' . I haven't shouted 'FUCK OFF I'M WORKING '  but it's getting closer.

7.) Nap time. Sometime, after a sarnie at lunchtime...I either meditate in my attempt for some mindfulness in the peace and quiet or sometimes I plain out nap for 30 minutes or so. I believe it's called a 'power nap' and it works wonders for the afternoon shift. There is zero fucking chance of this. 

8.) They prefer The Chase to Pointless. Yeah....imagine that?

Fuck this , lets hope we're back to normal.

Later Mugs, GJ

Crisis? What crisis?

Morning Mugs,

Well well from a weekend in Paris to potentially weeks indoors. We, the boomers onwards , have often been referred to as the 'lucky generation' or the 'unchallenged'. I have railed at this on the basis that just because we didn't get into a fucking war with our neighbours doesn't make us less worthy than previous generations. Instead of focussing on what we have never done, fought world wars etc, why not focus on what we have done? 

Look at the huge tech advances in medicine which regularly save lives of people formerly doomed to early deaths. Look at the advances in fuel efficiency. Look at the availability of services. Look at the internet, social media and the ability to work remotely, things which are helping life keep to some semblance of normality. Look at the availability of flying to far off places for many more people instead of it being exclusively for the rich. Look at smartphones and tablets allowing people to stay in contact from their homes rather than queueing outside a phone box with a bag of tuppences. 

Boomers onwards have done more to democratise and spread wealth than any previous generations. Becaaue we refused to accept what went before. And the millenials are doing the same to us, and for the most part, more power to them for looking to better things.

We have consciences and raised awareness of what we do and the impacts we have on society far more than any previous generation had. The millenials, as annoying as it seems want to go further. Yes, they can irritate with the 'we want it all, we want it now' attitude hidden behind bushy bright eyed and untarnshed smiles, but the more they agitate nd disrupt, the more things will change for the better again. Change isn't comfortable for many until it's bedded in and the results can be felt. Working for a technology company has taught me that. 

Right now this damned Coronavirus is changing the way we interact, the amount we travel, how we socialise, how we shop, how we socialise and as uncomfortable as it seems life is not that far from normal. As I walk the dogs I notice more people saying 'hello' albeit from distance. There is less traffic. Local shops are booming without profiteering (here at least). Satellite pictures and photographs show pollution dropping like a stone, as 'predicted' at the end of the brilliant novel Stark by Ben Elton. Ironically there is a growing sense of community even when social distancing seems to be growing. Fuck you Thatcher then.

It's not a huge reset button yet, but it might be something like a soft reboot for the way we live. I'd like to think that once this is over things won't just snap back to how they were. I'd like to think more people would be allowed and encouraged to work from home. That more distance learning would become part of school and college life. People would drive less, walk and cycle more. Maybe people would finally dispose of cash for contactless reducing transmission risks to the vulnerable that way. Maybe people would use supermarket deliveries more and local shops more. There seems to be so much more that could be done once this is over. I'm not saying we have to live like we're being forced to now, but there has to be a happy compromise that improves things for us, the environment and for society as a whole.

Fingers crossed, later Mugs GJ

Paris - Most definitely NOT ruined by the French

Morning Mugs,

Paris. The city of lights. Or something. We went there over Valentines weekend and I did so with trepidation. I've been through Paris, round Paris, under Paris and over Paris. But I've never stayed in Paris and spent time there. Whenever I mentioned this to friends I would always get the usual 'ruined by the French' comment along with others as below.....

'It's expensive' - yes it is but no more than London or Rome or Venice or many other great European cities. Take a bit of time to go off the beaten track and prices fall quite a bit.

'It's got dog shit everywhere' - no...no it hasn't. I'd argue Buchjarest was the worst I've seen for this, but Paris is clean, very clean. They passed a law on dog shit in the streets, and although no city is completely free of idiots leaving it behind, paris was s clean, if not cleaner than London. 

'It's ruined by the French' - oh how I laughed at this..NEVER. Get the fuck over yourselves you gammon faced xenophobes. The french are fine, as are most of us, or the Romans, or Berliners....it's a shit lazy stereotype propagated by brexit twats. We found Parisians to be friendly, welcoming and polite. 

'It's full of pickpockets, scammers and con-men' - Now this is the closest to being true. But again it's no worse than any other major Eurpoean city, where chancers see oportunities to mug off ostentatious or gullible tourists. We did see a pickpocket team by the Trocadero, and plenty of street sellers and 'cup and ball' con men. We also got partially done by the 'wedding ring' scam whereby a stranger walking acrfoss the road next to you claims to find a ring in the road, then says they can't keep it for religious reasons and gives it to you. Then tries charging you €50 for it being your 'lucky day'. However, we only had €2 in cash on us, and said we would hand it in to the police as we would want that if we had lost our ring. She accepted the €2....we see that as a €48 gain!

'The queues for the Eiffel Tower and other sights are horrendous' - yes they are, even in February. But..get the fuck over yourselves. Paris is the MOST visited city in the world, more than London, more than Rome, more than New York, so don't be surprised it's busy. Here's a thing though...a GJ tip if you like.....book your tickets and tours online before you go. There are plenty of 'skip the line' tours with TripAdvisor and Viator, both of which have never let us down. The price difference is small and the guarantees are worth a few extra quid, as is the lack of waiting around in endless queues. The Eiffel tower, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, Place de Concorde, Champs-Elysees, Musee D'Orsay, Montmarte, Sacre Coeur and all the other stuff are terriifc places to visit. Notre Dame is behind a fence, and covered in scaffold so ...very limited stuff to see there. 

'Public transport is shit' - no it isn't, well the metro isn't. It's clean and punctual. Is it as good as the London Underground...no, but it's pretty close. 

'The food is shit' - au contraire mon amis, au contraire. The food we ate was amongst the best I've eaten, anywhere at any time. And I'm talking from the baguettes we bought on the street and in the Eiffel Tower cafe, to the food on the river boat meal and to the excellent food in the restaurant we ate in on Valentines night (Signature)

So, my advice is simple, go there. Take your cunty Union Jack/Cross of St George goggles off and see how the other side of the channel lives. Paris is a beautiful, clean , stunning , interesting and wonderful city that now vies with Berlin and Rome as amongst my favorites.

Later Mugs, GJ

Detachment

Morning Mugs,

I'm fresh back from my first ever weekend in Paris........more about that in the next post.

My question is this......as we get older do we become more detached from the shit the world throws at us? Right now, it seems to me the news is an incessant stream of bad news. Coronavirus, floods, storms, brexit, facism, anti-semitism  and an ignorant Uk government seemingly being driven by Dominic Cummings and not the PM. In sport it's all doping allegations or VAR controversy or racist or homophobic sports people.   

The list of negativity is endless. 

And I look at this and the The Wall is erected. I just think, well fuck the world. My life continues as it does every day. My influence on anything or anyone is zero. I ignore health fads. I ignore conspiracy stories. I ignore scare stories. I read articles, watch and listen to the news and base everything on the simplest balance of probabilities. That's almost ironic as probability was one of my weaker mathematical subjects. 

I can't help wondering if this attitude of 'keep calm and carry on' is a peculiarly British thing or whether it's just a result of getting older and a by-product of life experience. Looking at the rising panic and gloom in the country as a whole, especially from the more fearful and hysterical people, I have come to the conclusion it's not nationality based calmness, but more a result of becoming older, and therefore more cynical and world weary. 

And with this comes a rather comfortable feeling of detachment. VAR can fuck football up and it bothers me less because my emotional investment levels drop accordingly. Anti-semitism is a sad fact of life that can nver be eliminated by the facts on the Holocaust. The UK voted for Brexit, despite the harm it might cause. The UK voted for Boris and his gang of fuckwits, despite the hypocrisy and lies of every one of them. Nothing I or any other reasonable person can say will change that. We are disarmed, powerless and nothing we can say or do changes anything. 

The perfect 'subjects'. 

And this means I don't care. I can leave The Wall in place and ignore the crap going on. I can walk my dogs. I can play walking football. I can have a few pints on a Friday and talk shit with friends. I can go to football and quell the emotions using the inevitable fuckwittery of VAR. And this couldn't care less attitude just strengthens The Wall.

Have I found and advantage to getting older?

Later Mugs, GJ

Happy birthday to Ossie.

Morning Mugs

This fine young chap on the left below, Ossie, who we picked up in early November from the wonderful Cyprus Rescue and Rehome charity after several months of being dumped, living in the pound and then a foster home before coming to us....is ONE YEAR OLD today. 

             OSSIE                                                   BERTIE

He is a part time garden reconstruction engineer, part time furniture taster, part time cat tormentor, part time bird chaser, voluminous food inhaler, constant farter and of course full time loving dog. He has made good friends with our first rescue dog Bertie (the one who's ear is floppy on the right picture) who is a month older. Every day they take me for a walk for an hour, sometimes we go at lunchtime, sometimes in the evening , sometimes all 3! For this my life is filled with a daft bit of joy every day when waking him up for his walk. Now if I could just stop him nipping everyone with excitement at seeing them! 

Later Mugs, GJ

Pensions - will I ever be allowed to retire?

Morning Mugs,

I want to retire. No honestly I do. IO k now it's trendy to spout on about how much you love work, but after 41 years I've had enough. I want to wake up, walk the dogs, go to the bowls club, play walking football, take in a pub lunch, do the garden (yes..me...do the garden) , do another degree, decorate, vacuum, spring clean....anything but bloody work. 

But will I be allowed to?

Well, I am in the fortunate position of having been in company pension schemes since the age of 18. 40 years I've been paying into them, a mix of Defined Benefit (final salary) or more recently (as is the trend) a Defined Contribution scheme. I've worked for 3 different companies in all that time which admitted has simplified things as the previous pensions have all been consolidated into the current (now closed) company scheme. I've been with this company 26 years and will be 59 years old this year...I have no desire to leave and find another role. My only desire is to carry on a while longer and then leave when the time is (almost) right with no role other than that of happy retiree. 

I am currently looking at all the options on my DB pension, including transferring out to take the 25% tax free lump sum and clear the mortgage and some debts off. The CETV was very generous so I am seriously considering this. The house is then secured and owned, I'm still employed and working from home with minimal travel expenses. With a substantial lump left to fund the rest of my life when. am finally shown the door. 

My bigger question is it now seems my state pension age is 67, having previously moved from 65 to 66. I now hear that this bunch of fuckwit wankers called the Tory Government wants to raise that to 75. Seventy-fucking-five! This sounds to me like part of a long term plan to move 'pensioners' from deserving retirees in the twilight years of life, to 'benefits scroungers' if they dare retire. 

'Why shouldn't you work until you drop?' - yes I have heard people say that. I can foresee a time when people who declare themselves retired are sneered at and told they are sponging off of the state. Now, if you want to work until you drop, then fine, fucking get on with it. If you don't though, and you want to retire then that should always be a right, and the state should pay you a pension. And you should never fall foul of being called a benefit scrounger. And society should never reach the point where it frowns upon those who retire and seek a quieter life. 

If I had my way, the retirement age would be 60. Then the older people could stroll off into the sunset and that would/should create vacancies for the young as they enter the jobs market. This system worked for decades. There is no reason for it to change. 

As society moves on, the burden of work should be lessened not increased. 

Later Mugs, GJ

Global Warming or not, please hurry up summer

Morning Mugs,

With 2 dogs to walk every day I notice the weather much more acutely than I did before. I also notice just how much fucking litter and other crap (such as dog shit) is left lying around. I live in a village where it's probably no more than 200 metres between dual purpose bins, and yet there are lazy and pig ignorant wankers of both genders who willingly lob litter on the floor or can't be arsed to pick up their dogs shit. 

If I could I'd taser the lazy morons.

Then there's the weather. Now be honest, because I'm told London has apparently been mostly dry since October, whereas here...in the so-called sunny south, I'm pretty sure that since then we've barely seen more than 10 or 11 rain free days. Everywhere you go around here the ground underfoot is slippery, squelchy and full of puddles. It hasn't dried out, and subsequently you have damp and slippery leaves everywhere. The whole area seems to be in a state of perma-gloom. 

Now, I acknowledge that climate change is a thing, although I would dispute the impact that man has had is as high as made out...the planet is an enormous eco-system and man has rarely ever been able to live comfortably in the worst weather excesses.  Hurricanes destroy pretty much everything in their path, as do floods....extreme heat exaggerates the impact of forest fires ...razing everything in their path. That does not make me a denier, but it does represent a healthy challenge to the level of our impact on this enormous geo/eco-system. 

Having said that, I'm now sick and bloody tired of the constant gloom and the rain and the wind. Right now I would take a cold snap, with frost and maybe a dusting of snow, with crisp blue skies. And then maybe a nice early spring with sunshine and some heat to dry the ground out. It won't happen, but it's a nice thought.

Later Mugs , GJ 

Afternoon Mugs,

What a miserable fucking country this has become. We're passing laws preventing child refugees being reunited with their families. We're withdrawing from the EU and the Erasmus program allowing UK students to study abroad. We have radio stations allowing people to call in and tell 'retainers' to clear off and live in the EU (if only we could do that easily). We have a US president ordering assassinations in foreign lands and then warning said lands not to retaliate. We have airliners being shot down by missiles due to the assassination. We have a member of the Royal Family and his new wife vilified by the Great British Public for choosing to try a different and less pressurised way of life, rather than be driven down the same path that killed his mother. We have moronic, racist, jingoistic useless fuckwit MPs demanding a 'Big Ben  peal of bells on Brexit night. Because , you know, there's fuck all wrong with rubbing peoples noses in your fatuous victory.  

And herein lies the problem -= the Great British Public (GBP) . They have a voice now through Facebook, Twitter and the Daily Mail/Express/Sun comments sections. And of course this gives the impressions that the GBP are a bunch of mewling , gullible, racist, homophobic little Englander (yes the English are the main culprits) pillocks. Now no doubt some of them are. Some are ill educated, some choose to be ignorant, some think it's a laugh and some are trolls. What everyone, and I include me in this, is to remember that Social media is NOT the world. Social media is a new phenomenon....it's a spoilt kid that allows other split kids to sit behind the shelter of a keyboard and spout hatred, untruths, lies, defamation and bullying. It pains me to say it, but maybe regulation is needed. But then we value 'freedom of speech' don't we? The harsh fact is our freedom of speech has always had boundaries, but maybe more are needed. This goes for the web page comments sections as well. 

Perhaps it's time to look at 'licensing' internet and social media access, making base criteria like a  valid debit card/credit card/ID/passport a user requirement. Validated email addresses must be linked for all accounts. Phone numbers? Postal addresses? Electoral register entires for over 18s? Parental authorisation for under 18s? I don't know the answers, but I do know it's harder and harder to turn off the bile and hatred being legitimately piped over the airwaves, into our TVs and onto our laptops, tablets and phones, and then to differentiate good from bad and right from wrong and truth or lie. 

if something doesn't change, then I fear society is being dragged down into a race to the the very bottom, a free for all where moderation, reason, fact and debate is drowned out by the crowd-think hatred of the GBP. 

Depressing huh?

Later Mugs, GJ

Happy new year and all that bollocks

Afternoon Mugs

Happy new year. 

I suppose. 

It starts with scenes even the most creative Hollywood producer couldn't add to, in the form of red skies and fire created lightning via the Australian Bushfires. I am actually a climate change believer, but I do think the hysterical extremist mobs are a bit much when they cry 'climate change' for every single weather event that happens. Yes, Australia is suffering 40 degree heat, but from what I see that ISN'T especially exceptional in some areas, but more so in the percentage of the country impacted. Maybe climate change is a factor, but no-one can specifically show this wouldn't have happened anyway or has never happened before. The cruel fact is bushfires aren't caused by spontaneous combustion via heat. No, they're caused by arson. Human actions of stupidity or malice, or both. A dry tree just doesn't catch fire due to the sun, neither does a patch of dry grass. Someone just chucks a lit cigarette out of window, or has a small bonfire caught of a gust of wind and .....well off it goes. The speed is what takes the culprit by surprise if it's unwittingly started....before they can get the hosepipe out the fire has spread ebbing the boundaries of their control and is now spreading like...errr......wildfire.  For the malicious...well fuck knows what goes through their mind when starting such. thing, but they need their jaws spinning around and a long stretch inside getting regularly...ahem...stretched. 

I hope the authorities get the fires under control and I hope they find the fuckwits who started them. And then bang them up somewhere where the only heat they feel is the stifling heat of a packed cell. 

Anyway, this has been the second driest Christmas on record for me. I had 4 pints on Christmas Eve. The days when that night was a raucous booze-up are long gone as I rather like to enjoy Christmas Dinner. This year I chose not to drink Christmas Day due to going to football on Boxing Day, and then hosting a Boxing Day evening with friends and my brother. I wanted to be match fit for that beer session. However Dragon Control was taken sick on Boxing Day with violent evacuations from both ends. The bedroom smelled like the Plague. Dog number 2 was also poorly with a dose of the trots caused by his cartoon demolition of a plate of Delia recipe sausage rolls. Boxing Day this year will be memorable for the amount of latex gloves I used in my role as nurse and vet, along with 5 full dishwasher loads to get rid of the washing up from Christmas Day. Football was binned, and the evening was canned as DC was unable to leave the bed. And so it went on, culminating in me copping a lighter version on Sunday, but a version which left me bedridden for the day. We both saw New year in alone together, in front of the TV with a small but potentially risky Baileys to toast the new decade. 

Our first day outside the house was yesterday, New Years Day 2020, with a 2 hour walk along the beach in Southsea and a pub meal with hot food...the first since Christmas Day! 

The one positive from this is I don't think I've gained any weight. And there is something to be said for not having a hangover on this precious days off with the family. But it wasn't exciting. next year I need something different for New year at least. 

Later Mugs, GJ