Monthly Archives: July 2024

Now it’s really time to declutter

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Stack of books burning

I started clearing my desk yesterday. It is more of an art installation than a usable desk these days, and something has to go. Well, a lot has to go. The ice cream wrapper from two days ago was easy, as  were the notes made on the backs of envelopes, but some things were harder to get rid of. All my poetry notes, for instance. Siegfried Sassoon’s papers were purchased by Cambridge University with the help of a £550,000 grant. I note that they contained financial papers and postcards – I could do that. I still have insurance papers relating to my Vespa and I certainly have postcards. I’m a little light on diaries written in the trenches (still with original mud) and letters from famous writers, but anyone who wants to wave £50 in my direction can have several box loads of my papers. Buyer collects.

I think it might have been Maya Angelou who never threw any notes out in case she needed them later. Unfortunately I can’t find any mention of it to post a link. That might be because it wasn’t her, so don’t quote me on this. I thought I should keep all my notes too, as they may contain something useful. I’ve been back to them looking for inspiration, but I cannot understand half my notes and I can’t read most of my own writing, so it’s a complete waste of time. I have books of poetry and notes that take up room and gather dust, but they are no use at all in creative terms. They will be going out this week.

Moustaches! Why don’t they just grow beards? The kids that is, not Julia. Best to be clear about that.

There are five, or six, or seven, or ten things you should never throw out when decluttering. It all depends on whether the writer of click bait ism being paid by the piece or by the word. It all boils down to this – you shouldn’t throw away important documents. The rest of the stuff, I feel, can go. Would you go back into a burning building to save pictures drawn by your unartistic children, or a collection of half-used ballpoint pens, or a selection of baby teeth? No? Well you can probably do without them.

I have the memories. so I don’t need the photos. When I lose my memories, I won’t be able to identify the people in the photographs anyway. We are, after all, just dust in the wind, and very little will remain of us after we go, apart from the memories of others and our blogs. And even they will eventually depixelate, or whatever old blogs do.

A man with time on his hands and buttons on his camera, is never short of something to do. It’s a bit like monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare, but not as highly evolved.

Chugging Along

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The new blood sample is given, the shopping delivery is confirmed. I have also pulled three poems out of long term storage ( it’s the file next to oblivion) and polished them up. I have  also lined up another six which need a bit of editing. Once that is all done, I will have the nine I need for this month. Then I will need to find a few more for the month after, but sufficient to the day is the evil thereof as the King James Version tells us. Or in other words, I will worry about that as the time approaches. By that time I will probably have had at least six of this months submissions returned and they will be ready to go again.

Writing poetry is probably one of the more sustainable hobbies – nearly as ecological as composting and a lot better for the environment than rally driving. many of my poems are accepted on te second or third try, one on the fourth, as I recall. After that I tend to lose interest in them. I once had one returned for the second time, sent it off immediately, and had it accepted within days. It’s true what they say about rejection, it’s how it fits with one particular editor on one specific day.

Medals of Superintendent A W Tacey of Nottingham City Police – I will be photographing some of his old addresses before the talk. He had a less exciting life that Colonel Brighten (see below) but wsa arguably a much better citizen. When tacey was awarded his Silver Jubilee Medal (the fourth one in the group) brighten was probably still incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs.

Nothing much else happened. I’ve done  bit more towards the September presentation, and it is starting to take shape, but it still feels a long way from coming together. That’s top of my list for next week. I don’t expect that I will come close to finishing it, but I’d like to think I get most of the slides roughed out and in the right order. If I’m honest, I can take it from there without doing much more – most of my presentations are not properly finished and rely on my memory rather than a script.

The problem with this one is that it’s an introduction to the history of miniature medals, with some anecdotes about collecting and a number of stories stories I have discovered in the course of researching. I could easily do 100 slides for it, which will be far too long and will send people cross-eyes. Forty five minutes is my target, about 50 slides, and leave them wanting more.

The medals here and in the header picture, for instance, is the group of medals which belonged to a solicitor and war hero. A solicitor, he had a distinguished war, awarded the Distinguished Service Order twice, mentioned in dispatches three times and given two Belgian medals. In WW2 he commanded a Home Guard District and was awarded an OBE. Between the wars he was caught up in a couple of news stories and in 1932 he was struck off and imprisoned for fraud. He bought a department store in 1952 and was killed in a motor accident in 1954 at the age of 64 – a packed and interesting life.

 

 

Failed Blood Test and Watching TV

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Today marked a new low in terms of activity. I took Julia to work, came home, did a few bits on WP and email, went for a blood test, went home, watched some Lewis on player, had lunch (the last of the lentil soup), fell asleep, rewound player to the point where I fell asleep, fell asleep, rewound etc, and again, washed up, greeted Julia, had a nice refreshing cup of tea.

If I had to mark the day I’d give it 4 for procrastination and sloth, 1 for activity and zero for progress in moving house. If I had an emoji for a big black hole full of nothing I would use it now.

To make things worse, my recovery is still progressing very slowly (maybe even regressing very slowly) and I had a phone call from the surgery to tell me that one of the blood samples had been rejected as the tube had not been filled to the line.

For some reason the INR test, which can be done with a finger prick of blood, needs a full tube of blood if being done without use of the quick and convenient machine test. I think this is to do with the use of machinery in testing rather than the actual quantity of blood. (This is the one I have to monitor my warfarin intake. It is an irksome procedure where the anticoagulation service worries, sends me excessive text messages and messes me about constantly. What they never seem to do is get my dosing right, but it doesn’t matter to them, as it only inconveniences me. They jsut sit in an office and draw their pay.)

This means I now have to have another test tomorrow. Fortunately I have nothing much to do, but if I had been working I would have had to refuse it, or go to phlebotomy at 7 am. This is one of the benefits of being retired.

I have more comments but I am going to do a Hemingway again and leave the rest to seethe beneath the surface.

Despite all this, it was a good day as I had another acceptance – making three out of three for June. The ever-present danger of smugness starts to become a possibility . . .

Photo by ThisIsEngineering on Pexels.com

Writing Like Hemingway

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Bangor Pier

I’ve spent ages reflecting on the words of JD Vance yesterday. I’m not sure if I’ve ever used the word contemptible in a blog before, so I’m grateful to Mr Vance for giving me the chance.

I’ve decided, for the rest of my comments, to follow Hemingway’s advice and just write one eighth of what I think, possibly even less. You will, I’m sure, be able to fill in the rest for yourself.

It’s not that I want to be political in the blog, as politics seems to attract idiots to leave comments, but I keep thinking that if a research student accesses my blog in a hundred years, I don’t want them to think that I knew nothing of world politics. So I have left a note to show that I did notice some historical events before I go back to my hatred of modern life and my obsession with soup.

Jellyfish at Bangor

In case you aren’t familiar with it, here is Hemingway’s quote:

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

The rest of the day has been pretty dull, and never really got going. Part of the problem is that I wrote into the early hours of the morning, when I really should have been asleep.

Beaumaris Lifeboat

 

Becoming the Boring Bloke in the Corner

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Reverse of the Russian Fleet Medallion

I started writing last night. First I finished editing a piece on a small medallion commemorating the visit of the Russian Fleet to France in 1893. Then I sorted the photos and sent it to the man who manages the Numismatic Society Facebook page. I am such an interesting man.

Then I did 400 words on another medallion – this one features the Prince of Wales on one side (later Edward VIII)  and the centenary for the railways on the other. Was it really only 1830 when the railways began? Probably not, but it was the first timetabled inter-city service using only steam locomotives. Earlier railways were horse-drawn or featured assistance from winches and cables on the harder sections. I see their point, but saying railways started in 1830 is taking a lot of credit from the earlier pioneers.

I am well on the way to becoming the boring bloke with the unusual interests that sits in the corner at club meetings. In fact, I have probably already become that man. We don’t seem to have one in the club at the moment and they often say that if you don’t see one, it is probably you.

The meatballs were reasonably edible last night, though I forgot to do the pasta, so we had a sort of meatball and Mediterranean vegetable stew. We were probably better off like that, though, as we don’t need all the carbs. Unfortunately there wasn’t as much vegetable sauce  as I thought so we don’t really have enough to make another meal from it.. We will finish the lentil soup for lunch today and I will probably make cauliflower cheese for tea. It’s a big cauliflower this week and I need to make a start on it.  The remains of the vegetable sauce will do for the foundations of another tomato soup.

Edward VIII. Opinions vary on whether he was a doomed romantic figure or a spoiled playboy with links to the Nazis.

Soup and obscure medallions. This is not the stuff of my youthful dreams. Neither were bad knees, dodgy plumbing (personal and household) or insomnia. My dreams used to feature mysterious oriental beauties (so that, at least came true), sports cars and the South of France. Later they were about walking in the Lake District, eating pie and chips in roadside pubs. See my previous comments on mysterious oriental beauties. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to get out of a low-slung sports car, that I’d have to limit my intake of pie and chips and that walking would become so difficult. Fortunately, I still have my dreams, even if the focus has changed.

Centenary of the railways 1830-1930. Note that it is Foreign Made.  Despite our industrial muscle in the 1930s, we still imported cheap foreign tat.

The medallions are all less than an inch across, which keeps the costs down.

Good intentions, but a bad memory

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When Julia returned home today one of the jobs I told her I had done was “blogging”. I’m not sure it’s actually a job, or that there’s much effort involved. However, on viewing eBay I realised that I hadn’t blogged. I’d sat down at the computer with the intention of blogging but I’d drifted off, checked a few auction results, looked up “cruciverbalism” (another word my spellchecker doesn’t like) (you will have to ask Derrick what it means) and cooked a pan of Italian-style sauce to go with the meatballs tonight.

I’m hoping they are going to be better than last night’s meatballs, which I managed to overcook and douse in quite a dangerous sauce. It was honey, soy and chilli but it became quite clingy after cooking, coated my tongue in burning sugar and then set on the plates. In culinary terms, I have had better nights. It tasted good, but Health and Safety probably wouldn’t have been keen. The meatballs, having been browned, left, then reheated, had a tough coating a and fought back when I tried biting them.

Tonight’s sauce won’t be quite as clingy and will be divided into two parts – one for tonight, one for tomorrow. I will cook the meatballs when we need them.

The other “job” of the day, which I accomplished successfully, was sitting in the back room of a shop drinking tea and talking about the old days. It may not be particularly hard, but you do need certain skills, such as a functioning memory, and broad knowledge of deceased dealers and an infinite capacity for depression and dullness. I score highly on all subjects.

Mainly, however, I must confess to researching bartitsu for a project I am starting. And I ate lentil soup. It was quite good but needs some work. However, it was cheap and, by grating the carrot as advised by  Helen (Growing out of Chaos) it became easier, quicker and less dangerous, as my dwindling knife skills are not called into use.

The start of an Italian-style sauce.

The Ashes of my List

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Got up later than I intended, had breakfast, drank tea, watched Lewis on TV. I didn’t see much of it originally and am enjoying watching the full run. I have watched 13 stories so far and have 20 more to go, though some are in two parts and I did watch a few of tha later episodes so, if I can remember them, I will skip them. The ability to catch up on Player like this is one of the few things i like about modern life. Along with anaesthetics and antibiotics I would name it as one of my top three favourite modern things.

I prefer Lewis to Morse.  The title character is more human. So far I have only watched a few of Endeavour, the prequel, but will probably give them a go. Unfortunately it suffers from the presence of an overarching corruption/conspiracy plot line, and I’ve rarely found one that worked. Generally they annoy me, and strike me as a sign that the writers are running out of ideas. It’s just jumping the shark in another guise.

Unfortunately I didn’t have “watch Lewis” on my list, but I did, fortunately have “blog” so by answering my comments and writing this I have, at last, made a start. I’m going to make soup now and work out the recipe for tea. It will involve meatballs because I (lazily) bought some ready made meatballs on Saturday. This means that I don’t have to work out a tasty vegetarian meal, and that I don’t have to make meatballs, which are simple enough but just an extra task which I can do without. The ever-present danger is that I get to teatime, decide that I can’t be bothered, and get a takeaway. My healthy eating strategy is based on buying some convenient ready made things and avoiding takeaways.

That’s why I tend to buy meatballs, fish fingers, pizza bases and ready chopped onions. The first three are shortcuts and the fourth is out of consideration to my arthritic finger tips.

Despite this, it’s likely that I won’t be getting through much of my list today. Again.

Iranian Vegetable Stew

Every Bursted Bubble has a Glory

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Dalek, The Bath Inn, Sneinton, Nottingham

I know that Sunday is, theoretically, the start of the week, and that Monday morning is not the beginning, but deep down I have never believed this. Traditionally, even when I as a small boy, Sunday often seemed the pinnacle of the week, as if we’d spent all week building up to it, and Sunday night seemed like the edge of a depressing precipice as i teetered on the edge of what seemed like the horror of a headlong descent into Monday morning.

Part of this was caused by going to a village school that was in the grip of a bullying sexual deviant. I can say this, because he eventually ended up in jail for some of his activities, so it isn’t defamatory, or exaggerated. I was once shaken violently and thrown to the floor for making a mistake whilst reciting my tables. I can’t say that it left any lasting scars, but at the time it used to make Sunday night a time of special torment.

So, as I sit here pottering away at the laptop, I am reflecting on the end of another week, and looking forward to the next one. The next one, I always think, will be better. Experience dictates that it will be much the same. That’s the tragedy of life, as I am starting to see it. I don’t mind that I wasted my life, or even that I find myself dwelling on it so much, I just regret that having wasted part of my life I didn’t learn from it and do better in the next part. In the end I just lurched, well, oozed really (lurching is too active a word and indicates some sense of direction) from one disappointment to another.

Ah well, it’s time to add the title, tags and photos and then pack Julia’s sandwiches for tomorrow. Then bed. Time to pack away the past and face the false dawn of future optimism.

They say you are more likely to die on your way to buy a lottery ticket than you are to win the top prize. I do hope this isn’t true, as all I do to buy a ticket is walk from the living room to the dining room, where I tap away at my computer, squander several pounds and then spend several days or hours hoping that I have won, and planning the spending that will follow my win.

You can tell how my life has moved on over the years. I used to want a Ford Mustang, a property overseas and a life of adventure. Now I want a practical electric car, a reclining armchair and a housekeeper. That is a true measure of how I have declined.

However, a corner of my mind still burns with ambition. And that is where I take my title from.

Tardis and Dr Who themed wheelie bin, The Bath Inn, Sneinton, Nottingham

Photos are from Julia. While we were running the Quercus project she worked at the Sneinton Leisure Centre to keep groceries on the table. It is just across the way from The Bath Inn, a handsome old pub. It is now even more handsome, having had a change of landlord who, with a magnificent display of flower baskets, is attempting to make it into The Hanging Gardens of Sneinton. He is called Piers Baker, and the reason for the Doctor Who murals is that he is the son of Tom Baker, one (in my opinion) of the better Doctors.

Day with a Honey Mustard Glaze

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A few years ago I looked at my stash of recipe books, realised that I rarely used them, and took about 20 to a charity shop. That is where they had originally come from, as I’m suspect that I’m not the only one that does the same thing.

They are beautiful things – lavishly illustrated, reassuringly bulky and crammed full of delicious sounding recipes that are too time consuming or which feature ingredients I don’t have. The lack of stains on the pages indicated that they had never been used in a kitchen.

The point about ingredients is (moderately) important because that’s why the recipe for chipolatas with honey and mustard glaze, sweet potatoes and red onions has just emerged from the oven as sausages with honey and mustard glaze with carrots, a few bits of sweet potato and leeks. I had sausages (part of my normal weekly order), carrots which needed using, a chunk of sweet potato from nearly a week ago and leeks. I don’t buy whole onions these days due to chopping/arthritis problems. It looks OK and I am grateful for the recipe, but use it as a prompt only. If this were a glossy lifestyle magazine I suppose I would term my evening meal an homage to the recipe.

The same is true for most of my recipes – they are inspired by recipe books rather than copied from them. In truth I only take a couple of recipes and a few pointers from each book. That’s why I tend to cruise the internet these days instead of cluttering the place up with books. Recipe books are lovely things, but most of my meals are inspired by books with titles like Meals for a £1 or One Pot Cookery. They tend to come from the discount racks in book shops and they invariably show evidence of having been open next to a pan of simmering tomatoes or a pot of curry.

No pictures of today’s meal – it wasn’t very photogenic when it emerged. However, there may be photos later s I am intending to try a variety of new recipes this week. Time to get out of the rut.

Salmon with Roasted Vegetables and Soy and Sesame dressing.

The Presentation Looms

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George Medal group awarded GM for gallantry under fire in Iraq when he defused a mutiny by Iraqi troops.

On Monday night at the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire AGM the list of talks for the new season was announced. I am officially listed as making my presentation in September. That is just 59 days away. The time has flown by. I have written a rough script and the first few slides and am currently relearning how to use the Presentation part of my Apache Open Office suite. It’s similar to PowerPoint for those of you who aren’t familiar with it and Open Office is similar to Microsoft, but has fewer features, much lower costs (it’s free) and doesn’t fence you round with a variety of restrictions. I would love the features of PowerPoint, but I prefer the feeling of using Open Office.

We had 14 members attending, which is good for what is universally accepted to be the most boring meeting of the year. Sometimes we have over 20 if the talk looks interesting. Sometimes I fall asleep, so perhaps some meetings are more boring than this. Other societies, from what I hear, have varying memberships. Some are larger and seem a bit more active. Some are smaller, which is a comfort to us as it makes us feel more viable. What is certainly true is that membership of coin clubs is down to about 50% of what it used to be and most of our members are 60 and over. Sometimes well over. there are younger collectors but they tend to use social media.

A pre-war railway specialist who, became a Lt Colonel in the Royal Engineers and was decorated three times for efficiency in feeding troops and Dutch civilians

We had one place available on the committee and, we thought, one person wishing to join. As it turned out someone rang during the afternoon and expressed an interest. One space, two enthusiastic volunteers. What do we do? I’d have accepted both, but we seem to have rules about that. However, as they are both younger than me and both good candidates, I volunteered to step down and make another vacancy. I was planning on stepping down next year after we move so it wasn’t a problem. We now have two new and enthusiastic committee members, which is good.

A railway signalling specialist working for a British firm in Argentina. Decorated with the Military Cross for rescuing a train under shell fire in WW1 and a civilian OBE for services to railway engineering. Both his sons died flying with the RAF in WW2 

One of my previous incarnations on a committee was Nottingham Outlaws where I was the Volunteer Coordinator. This is the ungrammatical title given to the person who coordinates the club volunteers, rather than the person who volunteers to coordinate. That’s how I know Rule Number One – never turn a volunteer down.

Anyway – 59 days to go. Just over 8 weeks. I need to research and write approximately ten slides a week so I don’t have time to spend chatting, I’d better get on . . .

DSO, DFC & bar to a pioneering night fighter radar expert. He wrote a book after the war telling of his exploits. As a pre-war actor he was Robert Donat;s understudy and was actually given leave from the RAF to play  a Gestapo officer in a film.

The photo at the top originally belonged to a multiply decorated war hero. Then someone got hold of it and used it as the basis for making up a fraudulent group. In fact he had an active service career with the Royal marine Light Infantry lasting about 4 months before being wounded in the battle for Gavrelle windmill in April 1917.