Over the top

People do make mountains out of molehills, don't they (and that includes me, I can be just as bad, given one of my many hobby horses)?

A few months ago I was very worked up about bi-lingual road signs. What was the point, I asked, when only a small minority of the NI public speak Irish and the daily language usually spoken is English.

Now I'm much more sanguine on the issue. So what if road signs are single or dual language? What harm are they doing to anybody? There are more important issues to get worked up about.

Likewise I used to get very agitated about all the union jacks flown on lamp posts and outside houses. But hang on, all they're doing is marking out territory and declaring patriotism. Flags can't be violent or anti-social (though their owners might be).

So now I'm no longer bothered by them, they're just part of the scenery.

But people do get unnecessarily steamed up about all sorts of issues - traffic jams, internet glitches, bad table manners, someone sniffing, having to queue, rude shop assistants, to name but a few.

People don't just say, that's annoying. They explode with anger and impatience as if something utterly appalling has occurred. Why oh why? We all need to be more philosophical about life's minor irritations.

Clutter, what clutter?

When I think of decluttering, I conclude that we don't really have much clutter, most things in the house are things we need and are in regular use. But is that really true?

It's startling to recall that when I lived in bedsits from 1973 to 1981 I had virtually no possessions. I simply had no room for unnecessary stuff.

Now I have many times the number of possessions I had then. So if I could survive okay in my bedsits how come I need so many belongings now?

We have many things that are purely decorative, like ornaments and paintings. We have around 1000 books. We have six tables, twelve chairs and a sofa. We have a piano. We have several CD players.

In my bedsits I had a bed and a chair and that was it. Compared with that spartan arrangement, our present set-up seems totally excessive, even though 90 per cent of our possessions are regularly used (apart from all the books sitting on shelves gathering dust).

When I lived in my bedsits, I never felt deprived of anything, I was perfectly happy with my small space and my one or two bits and pieces. Now of course it seems like an extraordinary hardship I must have reluctantly endured.

No, we don't have any clutter, just what you might call household items.

Tell me more

I've said before that I don't like the uncertainty about my future. I want to know what's coming down the line so I can prepare for it.

I know a lot of people (such as Jenny) like that uncertainty about the future and don't want to know about it in advance. They want to be constantly surprised by events, they find that exciting rather than frustrating.

But I want to know what's in store. I have lots of unanswered questions. How long will I live? How much money will I need? How healthy will I be? Who will die first, me or Jenny? What shape will the public services be in? What sort of government will we have?

I would feel a lot more secure and confident if I knew what's lined up for me. I could plan my life a bit better, allow for disasters or triumphs, create a smoother path for myself. I wouldn't be suddenly overwhelmed by some unexpected catastrophe and be left floundering.

It's curious that I'm so bothered by uncertainty this late in life, when my future is relatively short. When I was young and my future stretched ahead of me for endless decades, the much greater uncertainty didn't faze me at all. I just sailed along blithely, unheeding of what the next day would bring.

For me, this walking into the unknown is quite disconcerting. It makes the rest of my life too nebulous, too hazy.

But it feels right

One of the major topics these days is polarisation, the way people take up sharply opposed views and simply won't contemplate changing them.

The one big thing that drives polarisation is surely the big increase in self-righteousness, the conviction that a person's beliefs and attitudes are the only correct ones and other people's beliefs and attitudes are obviously wrong.

I see this all the time in relation to immigration, transgender, vaccinations, welfare benefits and all sorts of political and social issues.

People are shedding the customary idea that differences of opinion should be resolved through intelligent debate and fact-finding, and are taking up opinions because they "feel right" or it's what their friends think or it's what someone said on the telly.

But what can be done to restore rational debate and open-mindedness? I'm not sure anything can be done, self-righteousness is now so prevalent and common sense so often absent. Once a bandwagon starts rolling and a dubious opinion gets wide approval it's hard to stop it.

What can you do when someone is adamant that you can change sex, or immigrants are all criminals and sex-offenders, or vaccinations are killing thousands of people, or workshy layabouts are sponging off welfare benefits?

It's an uphill task to convince them otherwise.

Not grumpy

Many years ago I said that I refused to conform to the grumpy old man stereotype and was going to stay optimistic and philosophical about whatever life threw at me.

I listed all the bad habits I wouldn't adopt. I think most of them still apply. Not sure about not believing everything was better in the old days. With the British economy on the skids and world war three in the offing things look pretty grim right now. Anyhow this was the list:

I refuse to moan and groan.
I refuse to become a grumpy old man.
I refuse to let the world's problems get me down.
I refuse to make mountains out of molehills.
I refuse to turn petty irritations into causes célèbres.
I refuse to complain about my bodily deficiencies.
I refuse to denigrate other people's lives.
I refuse to tell other people what to do.*
I refuse to rant and rave.
I refuse to demonise young people.
I refuse to be cynical.
I refuse to be paranoid.
I refuse to see the worst in people.
I refuse to be nostalgic.
I refuse to believe everything was better in the old days.
I refuse to think that I know best.
I refuse to think life's conspiring against me.
I refuse to be offended by bad manners.
I refuse to be offended.
I refuse to over-react.

I don't want to be one of those dour-faced old geezers who has nothing good to say about anything and thinks the whole world is going to hell in a handcart. There are still plenty of things to appreciate or even celebrate. Just keep on trucking!

*except politicians and bankers obviously

Keeping watch

I still possess a wrist watch, even though the trend is to check the time on your mobile. I like being able to check the time instantly, at a quick glance, rather than turning my phone on. Not that I use my watch very often, only if I'm attending some function or other or I'm on holiday.

Also when you're in company it's easier to take a furtive look at your watch than seem rude by pulling out your mobile phone.

I've only had two wrist watches in my entire life. My father bought me my first one in the sixties; I think it cost about seven guineas from Harrods. It finally stopped working in the noughties, after around 40 years. Not bad, huh?

Then I bought my second watch, which has been working for about 20 years. I expect it'll see me out.

Surprisingly enough, I've never done anything to ruin my watches. I've never dropped them into the bath water or into a bowl of soup. Of course having said that I'll probably drop my watch into a bowl of soup tomorrow. Oh, and I've never left my watch anywhere.

I didn't know that to begin with wrist watches were almost exclusively worn by women, while men used pocket watches until the early 20th century. Wrist watches were first worn by military men towards the end of the 19th century, to synchronise manoeuvres during war.

Just out of curiosity, do any of my blog friends still own a wrist watch?

Put a sock in it

There are proposals in England for new laws to stop people playing music and videos out loud on their phones on public transport.

Many people find such behaviour intrusive and provocative when they're hoping for a few minutes' peace and quiet on their way to work or wherever.

In most cases people are either nervous about confronting the noisy person or if they do they're likely to get a mouthful of abuse and told to fuck off.

Personally I'm not much bothered by noisy individuals but I can see that others might be thoroughly exasperated by such inconsiderate actions.

At least they're not having intensely personal conversations that are better aired in some more private location. I mean, do you really want the whole carriage to know that your wife is divorcing you or you've just been sacked? Suddenly a bit of restraint takes over.

Other people's quirky behaviour on buses and trains isn't a big issue for me - unless they're stripping off or puking or screaming. I'm more concerned that they go where I want them to go, they're frequent, they come at the advertised time, and there are seats available.

The days when it was customary for train carriages to be in stony silence as the passengers scrutinised their copy of the Times are long gone. Nowadays you expect a fair amount of background noise on your journey.

No more cars?

Every now and then some daft politician or politico will declare that we should all give up our cars to "protect the environ-ment" or "get more exercise" or whatever. It doesn't seem to occur to them that for a lot of people cars are absolutely essential.

We don't use our car very often -  mainly for the weekly supermarket shop - but there are many things a car is vital for, especially if you're in a family.

If public transport is poor or non-existent, if you need to move something heavy and bulky, if you're taking your kids to school or to out-of-school activities, if you're visiting your parents or relatives in some out-of-the-way location, if you're visiting someone in hospital, and for all sorts of other awkward journeys, how would you get by without a car?

Taxis are okay for short journeys, but too dear for long journeys. You could cadge lifts but you can't do that too often.

We've used our car to take things to the recycling centre, to get to beauty spots, to bring home large purchases like furniture and plants, to take visitors for an outing or to the airport, to give people lifts in bad weather, to look at property for sale, and numerous other purposes.

It could be of course that the anti-car politicians don't seriously want us all to give up our cars. They're just looking for cheap headlines to keep them in the public eye. But most people will simply snort with disbelief and ask what planet they're living on.

Rush to judgment

I'm always a bit sceptical of court case verdicts. They're generally treated as hard fact, although in reality they're merely the considered opinion of a judge or jury.

The media in particular treat all verdicts as gospel, and deliver screaming headlines on the basis of judgments that may or may not be the ultimate truth.

Many many people who have been found guilty by a court turn out to be innocent years later, often after they've been in prison for lengthy periods.

I'm thinking right now of Lucy Letby, the nurse who was convicted of the murder of seven infants and the attempted murder of seven others. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, but many commentators have questioned the verdict and want a retrial on the basis of evidence that wasn't produced at the court. So was she guilty or has this been a miscarriage of justice? The arguments continue.

It seems to me that at the end of the day the soundness of the verdict isn't a question of  whether it was reached by a judge or a jury. The crucial factor is surely the strength of the evidence presented by each side. If the prosecution evidence is strongest, they win. Ditto the defence evidence.

I've been on a jury twice, and it seemed very clear to me that it's the strength of the evidence that counts. My first case was a black guy accused of assaulting a police officer. We started off thinking he was innocent but after a long deliberation decided he was guilty. Of course I've no idea if he was actually guilty or not. Only he knows the answer to that.

The fact is that supposedly solid "final" verdicts are regularly overturned as "unsafe".

To pee or not to pee

You'd think there would be plenty of public toilets in Belfast city centre. With so many people coming and going, including an increasing number of tourists, that seems like an obvious thing to offer.

In fact you'd be hard-pressed to find a public toilet anywhere in the city centre. If I need a toilet, I know of just one council-provided one - in the city hall. Otherwise my only option is commercial premises - like Marks and Spencer or a coffee shop. Or maybe a hotel.

There are lots of people with medical issues that call for rapid access to a toilet, but they must have kittens trying to find one.

Lots of councils have closed their public toilets to save money - and maybe because they're often used for drug-dealing.

Raymond Martin, Director of the British Toilet Association (yes, really) is trying to reverse this trend and persuade councils to reopen toilets they've closed, or even open new ones. I'm not sure he'll get very far in the current economic climate, but he's plugging away nonetheless.

He's also touring the country inspecting public toilets and giving them a star rating. The best ones (smart, hygienic, accessible etc) get five stars, the worst one star (if they're lucky).

With thousands of people pouring into Belfast from cruise ships, I would have thought there's an urgent need for more public toilets, but clearly Belfast Council is unconvinced.

Oops daisy

Some people not only hate to make mistakes, but hate other people to know they've made mistakes. They'll do anything to cover up their cock-ups, even if that involves fingering innocent people.

Politicians and public bodies do it all the time of course, but so do many ordinary individuals who hate to be caught out in any way.

I left my last job after my boss accused me of releasing confidential documents to a civil servant. I pointed out that the documents were already freely available on our website, but he wouldn't listen. He sent me a three-page email accusing me of not doing my job properly, not obeying instructions and so on.

If only he could have admitted I was right and he was wrong, there wouldn't have been any problem. But no, he had to insist I was the one who'd screwed up.

The famous neurosurgeon Henry Marsh admits that in his early days as a brain surgeon he was somewhat arrogant and self-satisfied and wouldn't admit he'd been at fault at all. It was only later on in his career that he admitted making mistakes or misjudgments, and his ex-patients appreciated his honesty.

My prostate operation apparently went very well, but if it hadn't and the surgeon had made some bad mistake, I would have expected him to be frank with me, and not cover up and pretend everything went fine (if he'd done so, I probably would have smelt a rat anyway).

What exactly is wrong with admitting mistakes? It's only by freely examining your mistakes that you learn lessons and become a better person. I'm happy to acknowledge my mistakes and whatever they might teach me.

Pic: Henry Marsh

How are your eyes?

The British government plans to tighten up on road safety, in particular introducing vision tests for older drivers, who are responsible for a large number of road casualties.

We're one of only three European countries to rely on self-reporting of eyesight problems that affect driving. As I'm over 70, I have to renew my driving licence every three years, and eyesight wise, all I have to do is declare that my eyesight is good enough for driving. I don't need to pass any official test, whatever I say is assumed to be totally honest.

I'm all in favour of a compulsory eye test. There must be lots of elderly drivers falsely claiming adequate vision, and they may be causing horrific accidents. People who live deep in the countryside and have little or no public transport may very well lie about their vision because they're very car-dependent.

Still, it's not something I need worry about just yet. I have to renew my licence next March and nothing is likely to change before then. I needn't worry again about my vision for another three years, by which time I may very well have decided to stop driving anyway. Also the new laws might only apply in England and Wales.

And because there are so many people in rural parts of Northern Ireland who're dependent on their cars but might fail an eye test, there could be pressure on the NI government not to introduce one, however much it's needed.

Manchester

Jenny and I have been in Manchester for a week. We had heard good things about the city so we thought we'd suss it out. We had high expectations but in the end it was disappointing.

We thought it had no individuality, no character, nothing to distinguish it. We could have been in any big city anywhere. Lots of people, lots of shops, lots of skyscrapers, and that was it.

The only things that stood out were the museums and art galleries, which had lots of interesting stuff in them. And the friendliness of everyone we spoke to.

Our first day wasn't too promising. It was pouring with rain in the morning and some of the tram stops were suspended. There was a bus replacement service but it didn't go anywhere near our destination, the Imperial War Museum, so we had to walk the rest of the way in steady rain. At least the rest of the week was dry and sunny.

On Wednesday we met some old friends of ours in Chester for a catch-up. which was most enjoyable. Chester actually has more character than Manchester, what with the river and the city walls.

One very noticeable thing about Manchester is the multiculturalism. There were masses of brown and black faces and (apparently) nobody seeing it as anything unusual. Quite a contrast with the rest of the UK where there's still a lot of violent racism.

But we won't be going back to Manchester. It was too anonymous, too functional. We'll stick to our old haunts in future.

A short break

Back soon!

Nick at what remains of the Berlin Wall

August 2014

Off sick

I had an amazingly good attendance record at my various workplaces. I never needed to take any time off sick, except for a week's sick leave after my prostate operation.

I simply was never ill enough to go off sick. And I never feigned illness to avoid going to work. It helped that I always enjoyed my work and had no impulse to "throw a sickie" as most people do from time to time.

Which probably made me a tiresome goody-goody who embarrassed the genuinely sick and made them look as if they were faking it.

There are people out there who take pride in turning up at work even if they're at death's door, but I wouldn't have gone that far myself. Why flog yourself for the sake of appearances?

My lack of sick leave doesn't mean I'm in favour of tight restrictions on sick leave. People can't help falling ill. Allowance should obviously be made for major illness, especially serious female illnesses like endometriosis and fibromyalgia, or for severe period pain. Too often women are expected to just "put up with a bit of pain".

And of course companies should provide for sick leave. The increasing tendency for some firms to deny holiday leave or sick pay is outrageous.

Immensely grateful

How immensely grateful I am for being in a (more or less) secure, civilised, democratic, peaceful country. How immensely grateful I am for having a warm, comfortable, safe home.

How immensely grateful I am for not

• Starving to death
• Being relentlessly bombed
• Fleeing a despotic regime
• Being trafficked
• Being tortured
• Being jailed for insulting the King
• Being conscripted
• Being a slave

How immensely sad it is that all these horrific things are going on around the world and so little is being done to stop them. How immensely sad it is that those with enormous power are not using their power more wisely.

How immensely shocking it is that a dubious embrace at a Coldplay concert gets as much attention as the destruction of Gaza. How immensely shocking it is that a film star's revealing dress gets as much attention as the bombing of Ukraine.

How immensely envious I am of those young children who know nothing of all this and still believe the world to be a kind and altruistic place.

Memory lapses

Along with my poor memory I have a tendency to remember the good things that have happened to me and forget the bad things. Which is a great advantage.

While some people remember the bad things very clearly and nurse extreme grudges for years on end, I seldom remember the bad things for long enough for a grudge to take root.

I'm sure there are many occasions on which people have insulted me or rejected me or belittled me or done me out of something, but they rapidly vanish from my memory and are mere water under the bridge.

I'll remember the enjoyable parts of a holiday, but the negative things - the disappointing hotel rooms or the flight delays or the dreadful weather - just fade away as if they never happened.

I only remember the bad things if they're especially bad and especially memorable, like the mattress in our San Francisco hotel that was the creakiest mattress we've ever encountered, or the food poisoning I had on a flight to Australia.

It means I can look back on my life and think it has generally gone well, because I forget all the things that would make me think otherwise.

The flaming row I had with my boss in 2015? What flaming row? I thought we got on rather well....

Language barrier

There are many dual language (English and Irish) road signs in Northern Ireland, but they never cease to be controversial. Some of them go up only after angry protests from the locals.

I must say I don't see the point of Irish signs in a country where the everyday language is English and only a minority of the population speak Irish fluently. But if that's what some people want, it doesn't really bother me one way or the other.

People justify dual language signs on the basis that they promote linguistic diversity, they encourage people to learn Irish and they recognise our close ties to the Republic of Ireland.

But there are only 72,000 Irish speakers in Northern Ireland out of a population of two million, so I wouldn't have thought dual language signs were a high priority.

And why only road signs? What about all the other signs on public buildings? Shouldn't they also be dual language?

There's a big lobby to have dual language signs on the new Grand Central Station, and an equally big lobby not to. I await the outcome with interest.

Personally I have no desire to learn Irish, especially as it's a famously hard language to learn. Jenny has been learning Irish for some time despite all its oddities and its fiendish pronunciation. But fluency is still a long way off.

Left handed

My father was left handed. How that happened I have no idea, he never explained. Was he copying a parent? Or copying a teacher? Who knows? But he never encouraged me to be left handed, so I became right handed like most people.

I never had any urge to be left handed. I was taught to be right handed and that was fine by me. I don't remember any left handed pupils at my two schools, but maybe I was very unobservant!

Jenny's mother was left handed, but again Jenny never had any urge to be the same. Though Jenny does do some things with her left hand, like brushing her teeth.

Roughly 10 per cent of the population are left handed. I didn't realise it was that many (that's 7 million in the UK). I don't really notice if someone is right or left handed.

Luckily we live in an enlightened age in which (on the whole) left handedness is an unremarkable personal trait. But throughout history it has been given negative associations. Into the 20th and even the 21st century, left handed children in Uganda were beaten by teachers or parents for writing with their left hand, or had their left hands tied behind their backs to force them to write with their right hand. In the Soviet school system, all left handed children were compelled to write with their right hand.

International Left Handers Day is held annually on August 13. Right handers are encouraged to try out left handed objects to see how awkward it can feel doing things the "wrong way round".

Sick as dogs

I'm lucky to have been hit by food poisoning very few times in my life. I can remember three instances very vividly. No doubt there were some other occasions but they escape my memory.

An old girlfriend Patricia and I were living in a shared flat with a bunch of other people. One night someone volunteered to cook a meal for everyone. Soon after the meal both Patricia and I were violently ill. Clearly the cook had not been sufficiently hygienic. We just shrugged it off as a typical shared-flat situation.

Another time Jenny and I were at a friend's wedding, and we gorged ourselves at the wedding reception afterwards. When we got home later we were both sick as dogs. Of course we didn't tell our friend about the food poisoning, she would have felt very guilty and it would have spoilt the day for her. I imagine some of the other guests must have had food poisoning as well, but when we saw the friend later she never mentioned it.

Then I got food poisoning on a flight to Australia. By a weird coincidence, the woman sitting next to me also had food poisoning, so we were able to deduce the cause - the egg sandwiches we had at Costa Heathrow. Boy, was I glad when that flight was over!

I love peanut butter and eat loads of it, but I read that peanut butter can easily be contaminated by salmonella, either during the growing period or during later processing. There are regular recalls of peanut butter in the States. Well, I've never heard of a peanut butter recall in the UK, so I guess it's safe for me to go on eating the stuff.