just me

I just had

a birthday  to which friends rallied, sent wonderful cards,  flowers, called (even from Milan and Portugal –  thrilling) and I started off laughing aloud in the kitchen as  the coffee heated a t 6.00 am (Pam the Painter’s card).  My son came to supper (apart from loving him, I like my son) and I  tripped on a shoelace and fell , banging my head and full weight under my body on my thumb – not broken thank heaven.   And not drunk – clumsy.   

We were  drowning in cake (the Italian Columba, dove shaped

and M&S Lemon Drizzle) and even lousy  television programming turned up the goods  started with  David Attenborough’s treatment of wildlife in a British garden – not my garden, impoverished  by the Peabody light which has now been on 24/7 for three years repelling everything that isn’t underground – and anyway tiny,  or yours, if you have one.  A socking great expanse in Oxfordshire, the desmene of a very old house (nearly 1000 years).   Fascinating and quite lovely.   But oh the music…

Look, if it really is my BBC – that sententious boring  campaign  (“Everything we do is because of you”) – can  we have  some input to it ?   In my favourite tv column every week, I read complaints about music.  It  disturbs perception.  Why do you think they put it in supermarkets ?    Here is the choice – don’t watch: put it on mute or turn the sound up and down because you’d like  some of the voiceover: or suffer.

I’ve got to the stage when a whole programme with very little music is a triumph.  Old films are often very good for soundtrack  without music.   I respect  Attenborough’s work and life and ability but not enough to put up with  an hour of being cued into emotions.  It’s insulting.

Stop telling me how terrible it is to be overly dependent on your smartphone

– yes you know it negatively  influences those younger than you and the young suffer all kinds of social and mental maladaptation as a result.  That’s if they have survived the latest toy giving  which is basically tablet before teddy bear – and no, I don’t mean pills.   But you are addicted…

I don’t have  a smartphone.    I loathe concept of the  mobile phone.  24 hours a day availability to me sounds like madness by invitation. 

  My ex husband told me  he could not have built his eventually very  successful business without the phone in the car and I understood. But how we have gone on from there terrifies me.  And the unholy alliance and crossover from screen to  phone and the idea of social media … no no no. Switched off from Facebook on 

 Defining my life choices by what any number of strangers says sounds suspiciously to me like asking an audience of couple of hundred for clothing and style advice.   Wouldn’t contemplate it.  Start from a different place.  Me.  

a sense of self

My shape, my needs, my interests, my weaknesses, my  choices (lots of quiet and white hair).   And every day, almost without exception, out of that security, I meet people, talk to people, cherish exchange and have  such good experience that it sets me up for one more day sharing a world with the madman Trump.   Because, be sure, that’s hard to live with.

I could list my pleasures  though they are only ever mine.  I could tell you truthfully that having  enjoyed remarkably  reliable health for many years, two years of on/off health problems, complicated  by the unavoidable advance of age from which no diet/lifestyle/heritage will insure you though luck,  good choices and a few  bob may help – that’s been lessons.  In multiple.

I am delighted and grateful  that the NHS finally came through for me  vis a vis my eye, and in the persons of two such kind and competent technicians.  But I regret bitterly the hooha I went through for 3 months. 

I  cheered for the piece on Sir Jim Mackey new chairman of NHS  England whos e strategy seems to be to do with thought not money.  I read a book I liked so much I bought copies for friends (Operation Heartbreak) though I know that recommending books or films or any other kind of art is a risk because you like what you like. 

But you won’t know what you like if you  constantly defer to what some devil you don’t know is thinking. Maybe AI is an abbreviation that really stands for Anti Social Intercourse. Or maybe it stand for Absolute Inanity. 

It’s all right. Just me.

shining