Wednesday 11th March

The Beatles sung this on Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  It was a much more old-fashioned song among all the psychadelia of Lucy and Rita and Within You Without You.  Paul wrote it, of course; he had a penchant for this sort of timeless melody whereas John was always pushing the boundaries.

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me – when I’m 64”

Well, I am 64 today – and hopefully one or two still need me, though I am still feeding myself, both physically and economically.  As a sixteen year-old when the record came out I couldn’t imagine what I would be like, what I would feel like at 64.  I heard the record on Radio Caroline first.  Kenny Everett had got hold of a promotional copy and he played every track one Sunday afternoon.  Even on Caroline this was probably against the rules, but then Kenny specialized in breaking the rules.  I can remember holding the tiny transistor radio to my ear on full volume as I listened to every song.  It was truly mind-blowing.  Actually “When I’m 64” passed me by; it was obviously a novelty song though, when I eventually taped a copy of the record from a friend on my reel to reel, I grew to quite like it.

So.  Sixty-Four.  And how does it feel? Not so bad actually.  My Grandad was the only person I knew who might be that sort of age and he was certainly an old man when he retired, as was my Nana.  People seemed to sink into old age, or rather to compose themselves, to carry themselves as elderly even when they were as young as fifty.  Nowadays you aren’t old until you are well into your seventies, and even eighty doesn’t mean you have to think of yourself as old.  There was a report in the Independent yesterday which said that as the mean age for both men and women would soon be approaching 90, who-ever was in Government in ten or fifteen years time would have a huge problem.  An ever ageing population would impose great burdens on an already hard-pressed NHS.  Maybe 60% of Government budgets would have to go on the retired.  Well, let’s hope that I won’t be using too much of it myself.

Tuesday 10th March

I am as you are probably aware an avid poll-watcher, and even though I am more than conscious that the polls are merely a snapshot of possibly less than a thousand people at a certain point in time they are all we have.  There is a margin of error of about three percent either way too, so these carefully constructed and extrapolated polls are quite hopeless as an indicator of people’s thinking.  And they are not moving, or at least haven’t really budged since the turn of the year.  One poll putting Labour maybe one or two points ahead and another the Tories. No real movement at all. So what exactly are the public thinking?  And my only conclusion is that they ‘aint.

In any poll there are always a proportion, usually quite high of “don’t knows”.  Maybe they really do know and don’t want to say, or quite possibly they haven’t even thought about it and in all probability won’t even vote.  This is the real tragedy of our times.  When so many fought for the right to vote, when so many decisions are made in our name, when our daily lives, our children’s education, the possible treatment we will receive if we fall ill, the likelihood of our children getting jobs, the fate of our poor selves when we should become old and infirm – all of these decisions and many more are to be made by those who less and less are actually voting for.

And with the almost inevitable probability of another Coalition or a Minority Government emerging it will be with an even lower percentage of the popular vote, which in itself is a smaller percentage of the possible electorate, and even here people are neglecting to even register to vote, let alone bring themselves to actually think for a few minutes and make a decision.  And so we are doomed yet again to be ruled by a party voted for by probably less than a quarter of the adult population of the country.    And our politics is so boring that there is no movement in the polls at all.  Why do you think that UKIP is doing so well – because they have an interesting, if bonkers, Leader.  The parties really need shaking up and if anyone is to make a breakthrough at all we need somehow to be enthused.  Woken from our torpor might be a start…

Monday 9th March

We started off as usual at four in the morning.  Pitch dark and minus 1 degree C.  The road from Bergerac to Perigeux is the worse; the road swings from a dual carriageway to single lanes, it is almost totally unlit and winds through heavy trees.  Eventually we come out onto the A89 and an hour’s drive to Brives La Gaillarde where we stop for a rest.  My wife has a sleep in the back of the car and I go for a Grand Café Au Lait and a Pain au Raisin.  We set off again as the dawn breaks, today was rather pretty, a soft pink which gradually lightened as the sun rose on our right.

Straight up towards Limoges and the temperature was minus 4 but slowly warmed up.  We crossed the Loire at Orleans and then on to Paris.  Last time the sat-nav took us through a long tunnel south of Paris but this time we ended up driving North West along the Seine through West Paris and then crossed and joined the Motorway towards Amiens and Calais.  It was 20 degrees in Paris and sunny and we stopped in a delightful little aire and had tea and sandwiches in the sun while the dogs rooted around and examined the doggy deposits on all the trees.

As we neared Calais though the skies clouded over.  What is it about Calais?  It is always bad weather.  Often raining and cold and the wind is biting.  Today it was 3 degrees again and we scampered into the services.  Very disappointing; a Burger King, a Starbucks and a Duty Free which was half-empty and had a tawdry selection of wine and spirits and a few chocolates – all of which you can buy cheaper in any supermarket in France. It obviously appeals to the English !!!

Home by eight.  Tired but quite happy.

Sunday 8th March

This one is more recent, about seven years ago.  Another failed relationship…but then hope emerges from the gloom.  So, for a change – a happy ending.

Is This The Sound

Is this the sound that a breaking heart makes

Not a roar, not a rip, not a squealing of pain

But the incessant hum of the drizzling rain

The radio’s static drowns logic again

The binding up of the tattered remains

This is the sound of a heart’s breaking pain

Is this the sound that a breaking heart makes

Not a crash or a clunk or  a splash in the lake

But the gentle erosion – like fear in the dark

The crushing of confidence like every missed train

Like a biscuit on a plate left out in the rain

This is the sound of a breaking heart’s pain

Is the the sound of a heart on the mend

Not the swelling of brass, strings uplifting soar

Not the triumphant march or the timpani’s roar

Just the fading of mist as the sun burns the blue

The dissolving of doubt, belief in the new

This is the sound of a heart pulling through

Saturday 7th March

Well, after the madness of London and a few crises at work in the last few days I have returned, though this time just for a few days.  Life just seems to get more and more complicated these days.  My wife, who has been rather successfully running the Cafe des Artes in Eymet for almost two weeks now, and I are returning for a week in England.  Not that it will be at all quiet.  I will be working Monday to Wednesday then down to Walton returning on Friday.  On Saturday we are celebrating my own birthday with family and friends.  This has become quite an event, where the family gets together for the first time since Christmas. We have Hospital and Vets and Dog Grooming and Solicitors to see, and we are going to The Range where I am certain we will be buying more embellishments for the Cafe.  Also picking up paint and lots of Nespresso coffee, we will be taking chairs and our London coffee machine back to France too.

Complicated!!! We are bound to forget something important.  My wife will be driving us both back to England tomorrow; as you know I don’t really enjoy the journey, being a somewhat reluctant and bored passenger.  She will make the return journey on her own the following Sunday, the day after my party and I will be flying here the Thursday following that.

I keep finding myself waking from sleep and reaching for the light on the wrong side of the bed, not even sure which country, let alone which house I am in, or if it is a work day or a slightly different French work day, as I am also a fully unpaid barrista…hahaha.  Not that I am complaining, I am really very lucky to have such an interesting life.  Though retirement is looming, and it now looks as if we will both be spending far more time out here.  I had, as you know, intended to spend more time writing and maybe even painting….we will see.

Saturday 7th March

Well, after the madness of London and a few crises at work in the last few days I have returned, though this time just for a few days.  Life just seems to get more and more complicated these days.  My wife, who has been rather successfully running the Cafe des Artes in Eymet for almost two weeks now, and I are returning for a week in England.  Not that it will be at all quiet.  I will be working Monday to Wednesday then down to Walton returning on Friday.  On Saturday we are celebrating my own birthday with family and friends.  This has become quite an event, where the family gets together for the first time since Christmas. We have Hospital and Vets and Dog Grooming and Solicitors to see before then, and we are going to The Range where I am certain we will be buying more embellishments for the Cafe.  Also picking up paint and lots of Nespresso coffee, we will be taking chairs and our London coffee machine back to France too.

Complicated!!! We are bound to forget something important.  My wife will be driving us both back to England tomorrow; as you know I don’t really enjoy the journey, being a somewhat reluctant and bored passenger.  She will make the return journey on her own the following Sunday, the day after my party and I will be flying here the Thursday following that.

I keep finding myself waking from sleep and reaching for the light on the wrong side of the bed, not even sure which country, let alone which house I am in, or if it is a work day or a slightly different French work day, as I am also a fully unpaid barrista…hahaha.  Not that I am complaining, I am really very lucky to have such an interesting life.  Though retirement is looming, and it now looks as if we will both be spending far more time out here.  I had, as you know, intended to spend more time writing and maybe even painting….we will see.

Friday 6th March

At Prime Minister’s Question Time, or the Punch and Judy show as we might call it, on Wednesday the issue of the Leader’s Debate or lack of one was raised.  In 2010 we had three leaders debates and both Nick Clegg and David Cameron were eager to have them.  Whether Gordon Brown was so keen we do not know, but even though he was not at all a telegenic character he went along with them.  Despite the spike in popularity for Nick immediately after the first one I am not sure there was much of a lasting effect; the polls settled down quite quickly and the actual vote was about the same as the polls were indicating four weeks out.  The debates are all about presentation, and of course the candidates are rehearsed to the nth degree, so we never get really straight or honest answers.  But in their imperfect way they do let us see the potential Leaders and if nothing else they generated a lot of interest.  There is a danger that without them the election could pass people by.  In fact my only prediction for this election is that the turnout will be the lowest ever.  Which may of course suit a certain party.  It looks as if Cameron is running scared.

Mr. Cameron seems to be throwing stones in the road over every possible debate suggested by the broadcasters.  He says he now wants an early debate at least a month before the election, (so that any bad effects may be long forgotten one presumes) and it should include all seven parties (but not Sinn Fein) represented at Westminster.  He is resisting a single Leader’s debate between the only possible two potential leaders, which actually might be the only format which might tell us anything.   What we really need, a I wrote before is a series of in-depth probing and questioning of each party leader’s policies by a panel of leading commentators over a few nights leading up to the election.  Milliband and Cameron would be the last two, and they could be shown in reverse order of Poll ratings.  Even then I am not sure it would change that many minds.  The popular narrative is that the Tories are disliked but Cameron is quite popular, and the reverse that Milliband is the millstone around the neck of Labour.  I am not sure that is really true.  People feel that the two main parties are not really offering a reason to vote for them at all, simply trying to hang on to their core votes and to prevent the other side from gaining any advantage.  The Lib-Dems are also in fortress mode, desperatey trying to hang on to maybe half of their M.P.s.  The SNP and UKIP are snapping at the established parties heels and may well win a few seats, especially in Scotland, and the Greens may poll well too.    But the sad fact is that under our first past the post the election will be decided in maybe fifty seats.   A lot of commentators are saying anything could happen, but I suspect that despite what people tell the pollsters most people will stick with the party they usually vote for.  UKIP will poll about 10% and they may win four or five seats, the Lib-Dems will hang onto maybe 35 seats, the SNP will win about 25 seats from Labour in Scotland, but Labour will pick up a few seats from the Coalition parties.  There may even be a situation where the Tories win more votes but less seats than Labour.  It could be messy.

Thursday 5th March

Flying out to Eymet again today but I have just finished reading this and it is really not that good at all.  The reason for the blog is not to recommend you buying it but to explain the title and the idea behind it.  The Fixed Term is an idea which becomes a law in a small English speaking colony in the future.  Well, Trollope’s future, which as he was writing in 1880 would be the 1980’s as he perceived they might be a hundred years earlier.  The story is quite poor by Trollope’s standards; he should have stuck to romances and gossipy books about the clergy.  Anyway the fixed term is the policy that mankind should be limited to just so many years on earth, in this case 68 years.  Then they would all, the healthy and the sick, the rich and the poor, be euthanased.  I won’t tell you any more of the plot, daft as it is.  Suffice to say that all visions, my own included, of the future are wrong.  Trollope had no electricity, no computers, no radio or TV or cinema; Lords still ruled Britain and there was no social progression at all.  The book is largely a philosophical exercise on the idea of mankind choosing the length of their lives, or more specifically having this fixed term imposed on them.

What possible advantage would pertain from everyone being dispatched at a certain same-for-all age?  You only have to go, as I did yesterday to any Outpatients Clinic in your local Hospital.  It is literally full of old people in various stages of decay.  Many appeared to be in real pain, some could barely walk, many were in wheelchairs or on crutches and some were almost bent double.  This by the way was a Glaucoma clinic; the suffering I saw was not even what they were there for.  And the thought came to me “Is this what we have come to.”  Many of us simply do not see these people in our everyday lives.  Some may be looked after by long-suffering relatives or in Care Homes.   The expense of keeping them alive, treating their various ailments and paying for care must be horrendous.  So, on purely economic terms the idea of a “Fixed Term” certainly has something going for it.  Then there is the actual suffering; how many old people might actually welcome the idea of no more pain.  We often hear relatives saying “It was a release” when their loved one eventually dies, when medical science finally gives in.  And ones finances could be arranged so much smarter if we knew just how long we had left.  We could spend it all.

Ah, but when it comes to it – how many of us would be brave enough, unless suffering greatly, to voluntarily call it a day.  In my book “2066 – a personal memoir” there is euthanasia available for those for whom it is too expensive to carry on treating.  And though in my book this is sort-of voluntary, it is so common as to be accepted by everyone that this is the best way to go.  Mind you, it only applies to the sick.

And of course although it isn’t spoken of we all suspect that many Doctors help some patients out at the end.  But we all fight desperately for our Mum’s and Dad’s to be kept alive as long as possible – how could we live with ourselves if we didn’t.   The thought of voluntarily submitting to euthanasia is very alien to us, but maybe if it were legal and we got used to it we might actually welcome it. Even if Trollope’s book was pretty poor it did at least get me thinking.…

Wednesday 4th March

Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister for over ten years, and many were shocked when she actually went, deposed by her own party.  She obviously wanted to carry on, was desperate to remain and was devastated at what she (and some still do) saw as treachery from within.  Tony Blair was P.M. for almost ten, and equally deposed from within, and he undoubtedly thought the country would be better if he had remained as P.M.  One of the more interesting ideas from America is the Statute of Limitations, whereby a President can only serve for two terms, or eight years.  Harold Wilson was elected in 1964 and left office in 1970, after six years.  Unlike now, when a defeated leader of a party almost has to resign, he remained leader and in 1974 he was re-elected.  But suddenly in, I think 1977, he resigned and Callaghan won the ensuing leadership election.  Harold gave as part of his reason, that the country needed fresh thinking, and that when you have been in the job for a number of years you get lazy in your analysis of problems.  Every Prime Minister wants to be re-elected, at least once, but few actually are.  The public tire of them and their own parties tire of them too.  But if you had the very ambition to put yourself forward as a leader of your party and are elected and then become P.M. you obviously want to hang on to the job.  But when you have been there for maybe two terms, what do you really have left in the tank?  The job must be draining, the sense of failure despite some successes must be overwhelming.  Almost every Prime Minister’s term ends in failure.

And the strange thing too, is that in America former Presidents are held in reverence.  They are still referred to as Mr. President.  They usually donate their private papers as a library for scholars.  Here, our former P.M.s are held almost in contempt, they are openly vilified, many calling for their arrest even for taking us illegally into wars, or they are quietly forgotten; we don’t talk about them and their own parties quietly disown them.  Maybe we should have a similar limit on how long any Prime Minister can remain.  In America it is eight years and that seems about right.  Rather than have to keep facing re-election a P.M. could leave office, not as a result of failure (either kicked out by the electorate or their own party) but as a distinguished end to a period of service to their country.  It would take away that arrogance, that over-riding ambition that so dominates our politicians.    Cameron brought in fixed term parliaments, which was maybe a mistake, but five years certainly was.  Maybe two four year terms should be the maximum a P.M. could serve.  It might be a better system both for us and for them.

Tuesday 3^rd March

And here is the voice of Authority again, commenting on the first entry Janek Smith made in what he thought was his most secret little journal…

-[Janek himself would probably describe it as a growing dissatisfaction, a slow realisation that everything is being controlled, manipulated subtly by forces beyond his understanding.  What he has failed to grasp is that this may simply be the price to pay for progress.  We have a stable Gov and an open and full democracy, or the appearance of one (which is just as important).   Well, enough democracy anyway to make most people feel that whatever action Gov takes, ultimately it is legit and fair.  And actually it is.  Legitimacy, unlike most other things, isn’t conferred – it is assumed.   It just might not be what earlier generations would have described as democracy.  You see, ‘democracy’, as it used to be configured, kept going wrong; idiots kept being elected, amateurs were running things, everything changing with each so-called administration.   It all resulted in chaos.  So it had to be changed, re-configured, modified and improved.  We really had no choice.

Most people, most educated people I would say anyway, feel well looked after, and that is the real achievement.   What else is Gov for but to look after people, and as you must know this is not always achieved by giving them what they vote for.  We have almost eradicated what used to be known as poverty.  In a way it is the old Socialist dream of a benevolent world.  No hunger; homes, work, edu and good health for all.  It is just that we worked out that Marx got it quite wrong; people are not all equal.  Far from it.   Once we realised that we came up with a way of categorising, measuring and treating everyone differently.  Differently, but we like to think much more appropriately.

The con-gloms too have at last learned (or been persuaded) to work together; all that competition nonsense that so dominated the last few centuries has been well and truly consigned to History.  The Hypercom computers now ensure that no con-glom gets too big, and that almost everyone is employed. Even though most of their work could easily be done by, and is in fact checked by, computers; they are all technically ‘employed’.   The con-gloms have realised (or been forced to accept) by the three great financial crashes in the early years of this century, that it is far better to make a smaller regulated fixed profit than to attempt to dominate the market.  They no longer compete but work together to keep everyone employed, incidentally creating all these happy consumers.  As we like to say, now that everyone is graded in the many strata, the carrot is the ever-dangling possibility of moving up a grade or two, which tends to keep most people in line.

The stick?  That’s hardly ever used, of course.  The possibility of the existence of the stick is enough to make most people accept that the carrot doesn’t actually taste that bad.

So why is Janek so unhappy in this best of all possible worlds?   Why exactly has he taken the drastic and dangerous step of communicating, even to himself, his dissatisfaction?  We will find out soon I suspect.  He isn’t the first person to have behaved in this way.  And in all likelihood he will be writing some more soon.]-