on Boredom, Lack of Appetite and unintentially going completely ga-ga

Which of the above should I deal with first. I think it has to be boredom because that lines up well with the third item ... i.e. going completely ga-ga.

I've known myelf for nearly 64 years now (well, okay - let's discount the tiny years and the toddler episodes). I can still very clearly remember that potty-training time always used to take place during "Listen with Mother" and I knew it was time to finish when I recited the Shipping Forecast (which I still have a tendency to do although I've now abandoned the potty). I learned to speak at a very early age ... I was about 13 month old. I was far too idle (even then) to actually get on my fat little legs and walk anywhere but I was expert at speaking in perfect Received Pronunciation such statements as "Excuse me, Mummy, please, but I need my little table, some paper and some pencils. So impressed was my darling Ma that I could speak so clearly that, instead of telling me to get off my bum and get them myself, she passed them to me with pride that my verbal skills were developing so nicely.

Now comes the ga-ga. I was very lucky to attend Edgbaston College Preparatory School. My headmistress used to say to my Ma that I was a funny combinaton of being a shy extrovert. Oh, I did so wanted to perform. Any poetry or reading I could manage as easily as anything. I could also dance (well, of course I could dance ... I attended the Betty Fox School of Ballet. I was never going to be Margot Fonteyn but if anyone needed an elephant, I was your girl! The most devastating thing of all for me was that I longed to sing. I cannot hold a single note in my head and whilst, these days, I sing my head off when alone in the house or the car, I am not allowed to sing in front of anyone else. I also have a  slight problem of corpsing if I'm anywhere near a microphone which is a pity because I still speak RP and I got a good, low timbre, mic voice but if requested to use said RP voice into a microwave, I can usually be found underneath a desk or hiding behind a curtain

There are many other instances of ga-ga which combined with boredom. When I started at Grammar School, rainy days were dull. Outside days were more fun because 3 of my friends and I developed an exercise called "Crab Walking" which in involved putting our left legs at the top of the grass slope from the school forecourt whilst placing our right legs at the bottom of the grass covered slope and then we spent a pleasant hour walking like crabs along the entire length of the hockey field ... to the great delight of our fellow students, the dinner ladies and our PE teacher.

On rainy days we ate our lunch and then headed for the school hall which was really dull. I decided that it would be a good idea for any student who desired to perform something ... a poem, an essay, a song, some acrobatics and then there was me. I decided that my best bet would be to speak in a  Kenneth Williams voice (and if I could squeeze a little Polari into it, so much the better), then tie an orange to a fairly long piece of string and commentate on what I was doing whilst dragging it along the school hall stage. This seemed to provide great hilarity with my co-students, dinner ladies and quite a few teachers who'd been informed that there was a lunatic in the school hall. Fortunately, said teachers guffawed at my antics and I escaped without punishment or detention. In fact, a long conversation with my headmistress ensued with her asking me if I had any aspirations into going into "Performing Arts". I did. And, when I left school and went to college I also enrolled in what used to be The Birmingham School of Speech Training and Dramatic Arts. Less polite pupils than I used to call it The Birmingham School of Street Training and Dramatic Tarts - but I was far too polite (?) to emulate or say that.

Reverting back to my time at the now de-funct Edgbaston College Preparatory School, one of my favourite lessons - after English and History - was Verbal Reasoning which was taught to us by Colonel Geffen. I was 8 years old. My hand was always up when a question was asked and at the end of one lesson, Colonel Geffen asked if I could stay behind for a quick chat. He asked if I ever read a newspaper. That answer was easy. I read one every single day and I had a very good General Knowledge according to the Kindly Colonel. Had I any idea how to use this knowledge was beyond me but I do know that I my score on 11+ was the highest in Birmingham and, had I have sat the King Edwards Girls' School Exam, I would have passed. As it was, my mother advised by the Prep School headteacher (who mainly dealth with the maintenance of the school) rather than the Headmistress, to try for Kings Norton Girls' Grammar School. Wrong choice. I could easily have got into King Edwards Camp Hill and would have been a very happy pupil indeed. Oh well, we live and learn. Sadly.

I suppose I could join an AmDram club or take up pottery but my heart beats to entertain. Not really "stand-up" but perhaps sitting down and being a raconteur.

Time is running out. I have less time left on this earth than I did and I reckon I've gone all shy again but, if anyone would like to give me a chance - what's the worse that could happen? Give me a mic, a desk or a curtain and I can corpse with the best of them.

... about self-distancing, going stir crazy and still trying to be responsible

Since the beginning of the current millenium we've sadly become used to disasters. 9/11, 7/7, random "so-called" ISIS attacks, Trump the egregious, Syrian children isolated from their parents but this ... this "Act of God" (said she, a born atheist) has knocked us for six.

We've been conditioned to "active" disasters and, whilst, COVID19 is indeed a disaster it's woefully without action. Yes ... the simple action of action is proving just a tad too hard for most of us ... even those of us who maintain a 6 foot distance to others whilst taking our daily exercise or walking our dogs or trawling around a supermarket whose shelves are ever more empty. It's dull. It's depressing and it proves that this particular disaster has more symptoms than mere COVID19. I have a feeling that life will change beyond all recognition when COVID19 becomes a thing of the past. Perhaps we'll have learnt a few lessons ... that "being nice and kind" can both operate at a distance of 6 feet and that neighbourly and community acts can still continue.

Of course, there are always going to be people (mainly youth, I fear) who consider themselves invincible regardless of all the instructions (which SO many people find difficult to understand but which are actually quite simple. STAY INSIDE, ONLY GO OUTSIDE IF IT'S FOR ESSENTIALS, EXERCISE, WALKING THE DOGS and, even, SKIPPING IN THE GARDEN. What exactly is hard to understand about any of those? There is no room at this time for anything party political. There should be an agreement in politics that any member of any party should be operating on cross-party lines in order to maintain safety during this dull and difficult time. Political point scoring should be at level zero.

To return to the theme that humans have become used to "active disasters": 9/11, 7/7, "so-called" ISIS attacks, too many random racist attacks, Syrian children isolated from their parents. Sorry ... but COVID19 has none of those things to watch, re-watch, analyse or bother with right now. An "Act of God" tops them all without any frisson of excitement whatsoever. No. The challenge not only includes trying to avoid the bloody virus but also attempts (successful and unsuccessful) at maintaining our sanity.

How's your household doing? We've discovered that the less activity there is the more tired we feel. Until bedtime ... when after days of comparative inactivity, sleep is ever more difficult for this particular insomniac.

I thought our big dog was the sensible one. She is ... but she's also daft enough to lie by my bed, fast asleep and soundless. The educationally challenged smaller dog opted to sleep in son's room. Son, currently, displays no virus symptoms whatsoever. I, however (although having a near-constant cough, no sense of either smell or taste, pains in my chest and everything else just plain hurts ... I'm neither a frontliner not a Royal and I haven't had a test but I'm not (completely) stupid and I reckon I virus-ridden. I cannot sleep without a snoring Bugly Boo on my bed. Mindfulness came into play. I went downstairs to avail myself of yet another tasteless cup of tea and, on my return, The Bugly Boo picked up on my brand of being mindful and putting half-working brain and odd-shaped limbs firmly on my bed is now snoring away in a most comforting fashion.

I am trying to take comfort that the world order may change after COVID19 expires. I like to be an optimist (although I'm a natural pessimist). How long will the neighbourhood/community spirit last after the virus has ended? It would be good to think that it will continue. I have my doubts.

I usually maintain a (fairly) friendly demeanour on Facebook and save Twitter for snarking at political types. But, in the past three days, I've gone retro to the tune of 25 years ago ... when I didn't have an iPhone, an iPad, a laptop or a computer. I haven't even watched TV and most of my friends know that I am the walking, talking embodiment of The Radio Times. I have neither had the inclination nor the energy to offer my nonsense to any one who'll read it. Manage without it ... there are plenty of other people who will fill your timelines up without me joining in. Except it's 6.03am and it's been nearly three years since last I blogged. Forvive me if you find it boring - but, for me, it represents a return to writing which I thought I'd long since forgotten how to do.

Who knows, in another 3 years I may write something else. But please don't wait with baited breath.

... SOMETHING COULD HAVE HAPPENED

For as long as I can remember since The 6ft Toddler was old enough to speak, I've always told him to be alert. When he was VERY little, he wondered what a lert looked like.


Hell. Yes, it is sheer hell to be the sole parent of The 6ft Toddler who now, as an adult, comes and goes as he pleases. I can no longer insist that he has an evening at home and, apparently, he is now responsible for his own safety. Bah and humbug!

But, perhaps my insistence on him paying attention, listening and looking on the periphery and being in touch with the "feel" of any form of situation, may just have paid off last night. The 6ft toddler was wending his way along the High Street. When he arrived home he described his route as being almost Mediterranean ... the weather has been good, it's dry and Spring is almost upon us. He encountered families out strolling and the atmosphere was gentle. Until it became bad.

Son sensed that all was not right. He'd noticed a couple of guys - one on foot and the other on a bicycle - weaving their way along the pavement and now they were parallel to him. The guy on the bicyle was somehow trying to corrall him. My son felt unsafe - he could see a guy to the left of him and heard him talk into his 'phone. He was saying "Armani, How about this one?" Son maintained his usual walking pace and just as he began to feel that everything was stinking of fish he ducked into a light, bright, busy corner shop and the something that could have happened didn't happen.

SIX MONTHS IN

The disappearing beauty of an early morning dew
Is lost on me ...
Part of my heart died with you.

Posed questions are now just muddled through;
Unsolved by me ...
Part of my mind died with you.

A star-studded night sky is just plain dark blue -
Or so it seems to me ...
Part of my soul died with you.

One half of a partnership instead of two.
So unused to being me ...
Part of my life died with you.

Question Time

about The Insides of those Dingly Dangly Bits

In the past 6 months, after 4 years of treatment for Prostate Cancer which failed, my 63 year old husband and father to our 18 year old son was told that his treatment which comprised 7 weeks of radiotherapy followed up by 4 years of hormone therapy had failed.  The prognosis was dire. He had, when told of the treatment’s failure, a prognosis of less than a year to live.  Doctors like to be as optimistic as possible. I am a realistic pessimist.  I reckon that if my husband sees the next 3 months out, he’ll be fairly lucky.

He’d have been luckier still had he have actually said that he’d been having wee problems 2 years before he mentioned them to me let alone to anyone in the medical profession. Had he have done so, we would not be in the saddest and most miserable situation in which we currently find ourselves.

What IS it with men?  Anything to do with bottoms or wee seem to make them hide in their shells, snail like and go awfully quiet about such things.  Maybe the difference between males and females is the fact that some women have babies and after gynaecological examinations-a-plenty almost anyone can tell them to open their legs and they think “Oh, what the hell, practically everyone has seen my nether regions”, and they display them without too much thought or fear.  Not so with men. The dingly dangly bits are their own and they’re not for display unless the shower or in moments of high passion or at least something that some of them consider to be moments of high passion.

So, now, instead of just having something which probably started off as an enlarged prostate, my husband’s liver is affected as are his bones and the cancer has now spread to his bone marrow. He’s in almost constant pain and now the cancer has reached the skull which also comprises of bone and marrow, he’s fairly doo-lally tap, too.  Currently he’s in a hospice where his treatment has improved his physical condition, where the nursing and medical care have been nothing short of fantastic but, within the next couple of weeks he’s likely to be moved to a nursing home where, whilst I’m sure he’ll be treated with kindness, the medical practice just won’t be the same and he will once again physically deteriorate and the inevitable will occur.

I had been caring for him at home but a combination of stress and the ‘flu prevented me from continuing so to do.  I have a kid who’s in the middle of an important academic year and whose only relief is to go out and see his friends a great deal.  If this is how he deals with it, then fine, but if his studies suffer, then his father’s death will be in no small way a contribution to that disaster.

And me? Well, my ‘flu is getting worse rather than better. My stress levels are at all-time high. I’ve always suffered from insomnia and now I find myself drinking cups of tea on the patio at 4.00am nearly each morning.  It’s no great secret on Twitter that my husband and I have had our ups and downs and plenty of them but I do know that my husband doesn’t want to die, my son doesn’t want to be fatherless and that I shall be anything but a merry widow.

So, gents … if you find that you’re getting up in the night to wee several times more than you do usually, GO AND SEE YOUR DOCTOR. Don’t delay. If you do decide to delay, you and your family could find yourselves in the same awful position that my family are currently in. And I can tell you, categorically, this is NOT a good place to be.

... about Question Time

This was a ghastly programme from North Finchley last night on BBC1 (5^th February 2015 at 10.45pm).

I am truly no fan of George Galloway … quite the opposite, in fact.  I simply can’t bear him but the behaviour of the Jewish members of the studio audience made me squirm with embarrassment.  I’m Jewish and, given the venue of the programme, I was well aware that the subject of anti-semitism would come up.  It is a great pity that some of the members of the audience didn’t comport themselves in a more composed and productive fashion. 

Galloway is horrid – that’s a given but, I agree with him on one thing.  In the wake of the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris last month, a great deal has been said about freedom of speech and, if Galloway was on the Question Time panel, he had as much right to respond to a question without any form of interruption as any of the other panel members.

I think I also have to add that I believe the kid who asked the initial question on anti-semitism asked the WRONG question.  He wondered if Galloway was at all responsible for the very frightening rise in this old, old prejudice in the past 12 months.  Galloway is a symptom of poor media reporting about Israel and Zionism rather than the cause of it.  The better question to have asked would have been “Can the British media be held at all responsible for the rise in anti-semitism in the past year?”.  I fear that the honest answer would be a resounding “Yes”.  But the BBC and other UK broadcasters would never admit to such.

In the past few weeks it has been a total dichotomy to see the dignified and sympathetic way that the Liberation of Auschwitz and Holocaust Memorial Day have been covered but then to have BBC News cocking up really quite badly with the baby-faced Tim Willcox making a complete fool of himself by saying to a Parisian Jewish lady that the attack on the Kosher Supermarket could have been caused by there being Palestinian blood on JEWISH hands.  Jewish hands … not Israeli hands but Jewish hands.  Three soldiers were stabbed in Nice whilst guarding a Jewish building on Tuesday (3^rd February 2015).  BBC News editors saw fit to publish this item on its website but both on the 6 and 10 o’clock TV News that day Harry Redknapp’s resignation from QPR took precedence and not a word about the attack was uttered.

I’m fairly sure that BBC News has had its wrists slapped by the mere fact that the findings of The Balen Report were never released.  Jeremy Bowen, Orla Guerin and Lyse Doucet have become somewhat less polemic since the report was completed in 2004 but until there are reporters on the Middle East who aren’t all Arabists the situation is never going to change too much.

I worked at the BBC many years ago and, as an employee, I never experienced even one iota of anti-semitism whilst I was there but I very often felt uncomfortable as a listener and as a viewer during that period and I continue to feel that way as an ex-employee.  I know that when I worked there I had to compartmentalise on many occasions … one of my bosses was the ex-Head of the Arabic Service and my last job at the Corporation was organising seminars for MPs (which were, regardless of the titles, all about securing a larger licence fee).  On one occasion I found myself sandwiched between said ex-boss and an exuberant actor turned MP called Andrew Faulds who was extremely and vociferously pro-Arab.  I was asked how I felt.  My response … “beleaguered” was said with a slightly wry smile on my face. I didn’t feel threatened or afraid and I certainly didn’t dislike my ex-boss nor Mr Faulds.

Only recently, I met with a friend who works at the Corporation and we agreed that it would be better not to discuss the remarks made by Joan Rivers prior to her demise regarding last summer’s war in Gaza.  He’s a nice guy and neither he nor I have any idea how to solve the situation in that part of the Middle East … so why discuss?  I can’t honestly say that I know of ANY Jewish people in the UK who took any pleasure at all in seeing the effects of (a) Palestinians attacking Israel from tunnels with rockets and the kidnapping and murder of Jewish kids, (b) Israel’s response to such and (c) the amount of death and destruction meted out on ordinary Palestinian men, women and children … whether we believe that Hamas placed them in areas of weapons storage or not.

I err on the side of pessimism and I believe anti-semitism is cyclical.  I feel less comfortable in the UK now than I have ever done before and I’m not sure that this is because of Israel’s actions in Gaza.  The current zeitgeist is yet another upsurge in fascism and radicalisation in this country and I believe realistic pessimism is necessary to keep ALL of us alert regardless of whether we’re Jewish, Christian, Indian, Muslim or anything else.

Jewish people who take notice of what is going on the world never do feel entirely comfortable in any country and with good reason.  In the past year there have never been as many anti-semitic attacks since the Community Security Trust started to keep records.  But even before records were kept, Jewish people had to contend with Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts and, prior to that, during the duration of the Second World War, however much Winston Churchill got Britain through the war he would not sanction the bombing of train lines which led only to the Concentration Camps despite knowing exactly what was going on in them.

In 1948, when the UN tabled a vote on whether the area of Palestine (which was, at the time, 70% of Trans-Jordan) should become the Jewish State of Israel, the UK voted in favour and then what did it do?  The British troops armed Arabs living there so they could fight the existing Jewish population and new immigrants who had managed to survive the Holocaust.  How on earth can Jewish people in the Diaspora ever really feel at ease knowing that regardless of most friendly rhetoric we always have been and always will be just tolerated.

It isn’t the George Galloways of this world we have to fear … for heaven’s sake he and his like are laughable.  He is full of it and so are his followers.  Picture him crawling around pretending to be a cat with Rula Lenska on Celebrity Big Brother not so many years ago.

Know that the real enemy is a culture that receives its news in badly phrased sound bites and the diminution of real news having any impact either by not broadcasting it at all or by over-broadcasting it in the rolling news that we are subjected to these days.