5 Positive things about today

1. Did the housework upstairs without a hitch.
2. The sun shone when we went shopping.
3. Eat a healthy lunch: mackerel and salad.
4. Enjoyed an afternoon snooze on the snuggler (i,e a large chair or small sofa) with my wife
5. Garden looks good after a watering.

Am I proud to be British?

I should like to be proud of my country but I am not.

The Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen made me think about patriotism.  Yes I am a patriot and one has to admire the dedication of a monarch who has shown remarkable dedication to duty for sixty years and continues to do so even at the grand age of 86.  This is the case whatever one may think about her wealth and privilege.

But, when I look around me, I am not proud of the slovenly self-absorbed country that we have become.  How many people there are who fantasise that they are some kind of celebrity because they appear on their own Facebook page.  How many waste time by endless tweets on Twitter, filling cyberspace with meaningless and inconsequential drivel.  Read any internet comment page and see massive evidence of poor education.  Look around and you see a nation full of unwashed scruffy people wearing clothes that would be a disgrace at the bottom of the dog basket (which is where many of them look as if that is where they are kept).

Too many are proud of their inability to bring up children properly.  Upholding a decent family life has become old-fashioned.  Many parents are too lazy or too self-absorbed to give the time and attention to bringing up their children properly.  Concepts for child rearing such as being a good role model, setting and maintaining boundaries for good behaviour, providing family mealtimes around a dining table with intelligent conversation, insisting on good manners and showing concern and respect for other people are regarded as old-hat.  This endemic laziness finds expression in expecting schools to undertake what should be parental duties.  The tragedy is that too many parents also think the means of securing the respect of their children is to buy love and by regarding their children as beyond reproach.  Look around and see the children who are not allowed a childhood and, in the case of girls, who are dressed like young tarts.  See how many are incapable of sitting in a restaurant without causing havoc.  Their usual feeding experience is to be allowed to "graze", eating crisps and cakes whenever they like.

Our education system is a disgrace. Just one child leaving primary school without being able to read, write and do sums is one too many; but the number doing so is far, far higher.  Even "A" levels are handed out like confetti to people who, truth be told, can barely write literate English.  We pretend that standards have not been dropped but this is delusional, if not plain dishonest.  There are teachers who decry any notion that learning sometimes requires hard work, whether on spelling correctly, learning the rules of grammar and punctuation or mastering difficult texts.  People want to be famous without having any talent or achievements to justify it.  Tragically, there is a  growing under-class of people who wallow in near-illiteracy and inactivity.  There are women who think they deserve financial assistance for deliberately becoming single mothers when the truth is that what they needed was an ability to keep their knickers up or, failing that, to use contraception.

Dismiss these comments as the rants of an old man, but find out what people in other countries think of the Brits and you will find that I am not alone.

Early Days

1946
I was born in 1946. I know the date (19 September); time (about 9.00am); and place: 145 Mortimer Road, London NW10 in my parent's bedroom on the first floor, where I was delivered by an Irish midwife whose name I have long since forgotten. I know little else about the event. Unsurprisingly, I have no recollection of any events during what remained of that year.

The house in Mortimer Road was tenanted by my paternal grandparents, who lived on the ground floor and let my parents have the first floor flat as sub-tenants. Grandmother, later known to me as Nanny Cook was sixty eight when I was born and still very active. She went on to live for over thirty more years, missing what would have been her centenary by only a few months. Grandad Cook was younger and still working. My parents had married during the Second World War each at the age of 19 and had been apart for most of the War whilst my father served in the RAF as a Corporal in South Africa, Egypt and Malta. I was a "bulge baby", that is one conceived as couples got together at the cessation of hostilities.

Mortimer Road was a stretch of Victorian terraces which at the time of my birth had bomb-sites half way along on each side of the road, where the Luftwaffe had done their worst. Our house did have what was perhaps in those days the luxury of a downstairs bathroom but I do not think that the premises were in any other sense luxurious. In deed, they were dull and dreary.

1947

History books tell us that 1947 started with a severe winter. In the first photograph of me above aged 15 weeks, I look snug enough. The second photograph is me at 5 months old, by which time I seem to be piling on the pounds (the story of my life).

I was baptised on 26 January 1947 at St Martin's Dean Vaughan Memorial Church, which was just across the road from where we lived.
I suppose 1947 was the year in which I spoke my first word and took my first step.

My mother would have been pregnant, expecting my sister, during the second half of the year. Perhaps it was as well that I was a good baby (so I am told).
Friends of my parents included a couple called George and Lillian (Lil) Hobbs. Lil had been a friend of my mother during the war and I believe they had worked together.

1948
My sister was born on 8 February, less than 17 months after my own arrival in the world. I cannot imagine that this had a substantial impact on me because I was barely old enough to register the significance of having a sibling. Although my relationship with my sister in later life became less than close (for reasons it is inappropriate to detail in this account of 1948), I am told that in my early years I took upon myself a protective role. The protectiveness may have been coupled with a bit of bossiness, but in truth I do not remember a great deal about the relationship until we were both older.

I think my earliest memory is of waking in my bed to find a Christmas stocking filled with the sort of things that would give no pleasure to a child today. As I remember this (and memory can play tricks, especially when the recalled events are so long distant) my sister was in a cot in the same room, when I found this stocking. I cannot be certain this was Christmas 1948, but I record it here. If I am wrong about the year, this paragraph needs to be moved to 1949!

1949
At some time around 1949, George and my father took an interest in a Thames sailing barge named Brian Boru that was built in 1906 at East Greenwich and was originally owned by T Scholey & Co. At least at one time Scholey came under the ownership of James R. Piper, Pipers Wharf, East Greenwich.

James Piper rented this wharf in the late 1890s and soon began to build sailing barges here. One of the earliest was his prize winning racing barge ‘the famous Giralda’ – and many others. Sailing barges may look romantic but they were the heavy haulage carriers of the London river. They were built at a time when most vessels were steam driven, because they were cheap to run with a crew of only two, could go inshore across shallows and up muddy creeks because of their flat bottoms but at the same time many of them could regularly cross the channel and go into European inland waters.

I cannot recall in which year I first visited this barge but I do recall that it was moored at Greenwich. I recall spending the occasional weekend on board, when we were all cooped up in quarters at one end of the craft. I hated it. Greenwich was not very prepossessing in those days. I recall shuffling along by temporary walls made of corrugated iron somewhere near where the Cutty Sark was to be sited in later years.

Another of my father’s hobbies was canoes. At one time these were parked either in the back garden or on the stair case at the house. Like many of my father’s passions, I do not think this past-time endured for very long.

1950
I cannot say for sure in which year my father and mother decided to make their home on the Brian Boru. It was before I first went to Infants' School (which I assume was when I got to the age of five years in 1951). Brian Boru had been moved up-river from Greenwich to Isleworth (where I went to a Church school for a short while) and later to alongside the Hollows Footpath at Brentford (where I attended Strand-on-the Green School). We lived at one end of the boat and Lil and George lived at the other. The idea was that both families would do up their own living quarters to a suitable standard. I do not think my father ever made much progress at his end of the craft. My memories of living on the boat are mainly unpleasant. These include the time when someone forgot to replace the seal to the bilge compartment, with the result that the floor of the living quarters was submerged in foul water from the bilge. On another occasion, the boat ended up on the tow path at high tide in danger of falling into the river on its side. Then there was the occasion when my sister and I were left near a clothes horse that caught alight from the adjacent coke fire. I do not remember precisely when I fell into the Thames but I can recall going down under the water and coming up to be rescued by my father whose attention my misfortune had caught. I do not think these experiences gave me much faith in the capability of my parents.

1951
Despite the comment at the close of the 1950 paragraph, I must have loved my parents as I have a memory of my first day at a Church of England infants' school and it is that I spent some time crying after being separated from my mother. However, I think the tears disappeared after not too long. Indeed, I came to enjoy life at school. During my time at my first school, my mother had to row us across the river to the riverbank (or at least she did when the tide was in) as our barge was tied up at Brentford against what I think was almost an ait in the middle of the Thames. I say "almost" because it looked like an island to me at the time, but I can now see that this tree-covered piece of land is joined to the main river-bank some yards upstream.

1952
My memory is hazy as to the precise year in which certain events occurred during my infancy. Around this time the barge Brain Boru was moved down-river to the tow path called The Hollows at Brentford.  This was very close to Kew Bridge.  I was enrolled at Strand on the Green infants school which was along the river bank past Kew Bridge.  I think it is around this time that my father was hospitalised for a time with yellow jaundice and my mother suffered the same fate.  In my own case a bout of pneumonia contributed, I think, to a decision to leave the Brian Boru and find alternative accommodation on land away from the cold and damp of the life on board.  On the other hand, the fact that George and Lil (see above) were getting divorced may have been just as pertinent.  In any event, we moved back to Mortimer Road to live with my grandparents but, this time, the top flat was unavailable as it had been sub-let to a couple called Doreen and Barry.  My parents took the "front room", where a settee served as their bed and my sister and I shared a room with my grandparents sleeping on a bed made up on the top of their large blanket box.  This move meant another change of school and this time I went to Harvist Road infants.  My main memories are chanting the times tables after sessions of exercise in the playground.  It was there that we children dressed up to celebrate the Coronation in the following year. I wore the uniform of a guardsmen made mainly of crepe paper in red and black.  We each received a Coronation mug but I fear that I have ventured into 1953.

Ten More Things About Me

1. I have to wear a hearing aid.
2. I wish I did not have to, but life must go on with whatever help one can get.
3. I am too fiercely independent, preferring to do things for myself by myself.
4. On the other hand, I think I am quite good at working in a team.
5.  I am an owl, rather than a lark.  I have to force myself to bed.
6. My fuse is shorter than it should be.
7. I wish I were more patient.
8. I wish I were more tolerant.  I am not good at suffering fools, of whom there are far too many.
9. I am pedantic about the use of grammar and punctuation.  Even if I fall short of perfection, I do at least try.
10. The Forest of Dean means a great deal to me.

Thirty Things About Me

1.	I love my wife very much.
2.	I love my son very much.
3.	They love me, but I do wonder why.
4.	Although I may have a reputation for working hard, I think I am lazy.
5.	I believe that everyone should work hard, given the chance; and everyone should be given the chance.  The Labour Party, to which I belong, needs to recall its origins as the party of the worker, not the work-shy.
6.	I hate noise.
7.	I hate cooking smells
8.	I hate the celebrity culture prevalent in the UK.
9.	My regular rants are boring.
10.	I read books about politics.
11.	I read history books.
12.	My boredom threshold is low when it comes to fictional films.
13.	I enjoy listening to classical music.
14.	I think children should be seen and not heard (and, preferably not be seen either).
15.	I do not understand why almost every parent these days is useless at responsible parenting.  Take responsibility!
16.	Although I have spent a career engaged in contention, I believe I am shy.
17.	Very few other people believe that I am shy.
18.	In the first 35 years of marriage, we have lived in 7 different places (6 houses and 1 apartment).
19.	We are staying in our present house until the Great Reaper calls, but that is what we said before we last moved home.
20.	I get upset if the house is untidy.
21.	I try to keep a tidy garden.
22.	I wish I had felt more distress when my parents passed away.
23.	I find it hard to hide my feelings: the look on my face gives them away.
24.	I was never any good at ball games.
25.	I am trying to avoid another heart attack after having one in November 2008.  I keep taking the tablets.
26.	I miss eating cheese.
27.	I like to have a pint of real beer with my chums.  Usually it is rather more than one.
28.	I try to walk every day.
29.	Wine is one of my interests.
30.	I still do not understand the poems of Robert Browning.