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.

Being beautiful

One thing I'm grateful for is that as a boy I didn't grow up amid a torrent of "beautiful boy" images and given the message that if I didn't look like one of these beautiful boys, I was therefore unattractive or even ugly, and I needed to make myself more like them.

We boys never even discussed our bodies or whether we were attractive or not (not even comparing willies!). We just took our bodies for granted whatever they looked like and that was that.

Young girls on the other hand are having a terrible time of it, bombarded on all sides by "beautiful woman" images and by men's endless criticism of female bodies.

Many succumb to the pressure and do their best to make themselves more "attractive", changing their appearance in any way possible, from different make-up to cosmetic surgery. Only those with very strong wills can ignore all this pressure and accept themselves just as they are.

As far as I remember my sister was never influenced by all the focus on beautiful women (which when she was growing up was nothing like as rampant as it is now). She accepted herself as she was and never got hung-up on what she looked like.

I've never had the slightest desire to remodel myself as some beautiful man. I'm very positive about my body and have no urge to change any part of it. I am what I am.

Battling covid

Jenny and I have both had covid for around ten days now. It's my second dose and it's a lot worse than my first dose, which just seemed like a slight cold.

Both Jenny and I are feeling totally exhausted and in the grip of brain fog. It's all we can do to drag ourselves through the daily chores. I have to stop in the middle of washing up to regain some energy. Just a 30 minute walk round the neighbourhood is absurdly draining. I did manage to get to the MOT (car inspection) centre on Friday to get the car passed as roadworthy.

All I can say is, I hope I can shake this thing off before too long. It's no fun staggering through the day in a mental haze. But it can take anything up to 12 weeks for a full recovery, which is a depressing thought.

Of course I wonder if I might be getting long covid, which affects at least two million people in the UK and can be sufficiently debilitating to prevent many people from working. Luckily I'm retired so I don't need to worry about that.

The risk of getting long covid has dropped to about 3.5 per cent among vaccinated people (which includes me), but that's still a significant number of people.

Watch this space....

Party time

It's reported that young people are very keen on birthday parties for their dogs and cats, spending an average of £120 on birthday cakes, special gifts, favourite foods and new toys.

Well, time for me to dust off my party pooper hat and wonder why on earth cats and dogs need birthday parties. Do they actually appreciate them? Do they know why all these people are hovering around them? Do they like all the fuss and bother?

Why isn't it enough to mark your dog's birthday by giving them lots of fondles and extra grooming, taking them for extra walks or just giving them lots of attention and affection? Some cats and dogs are actually quite shy and might hate all the inexplicable commotion.

Surely birthday parties for pets are more for the benefit of their owners than the pets themselves? They're partly to show how much their owners care about them. But where will it end? Sooner or late it'll become competitive (if it hasn't already) and people will want their birthday party for Fido to be more lavish than their neighbour's birthday party for Rover.

Probably all Fido wants on his birthday is to curl up somewhere warm and cosy and ignore the rest of the world. But his owners may have other ideas.

.....................................................................................

Pet owners are complaining that veterinary fees have risen so steeply that some of them have had to put their pets down rather than incur fees of thousands of pounds for medical treatment.

Best avoided

I have no bright ideas for a blog post this morning, so I'm falling back on an old post about things that aren't worth wasting time on, things that don't add to my life.

Yes, life's too short to:

Pretend I'm someone I'm not. It's so easy to respond to what others expect of me, and hide my real self. But it just leaves people with a phoney idea of who I am.

Exhaust myself in a gym. Natural forms of exercise like hill-walking are more fun and more scenic. Why struggle with machines in a sweaty gym?

Listen to moaners. The hours I've wasted listening to people moaning away about their workplace, their neighbours, their relatives.

Think about the Royal Family. I couldn't care less about the royals. They're just a bunch of parasites sponging off the rest of us and giving little in return.

Idealise politicians. I no longer kid myself that politicians who promise a bright new future mean what they say. I've seen too many false dawns.

Bear grudges. Better to let bygones be bygones rather than brood over old grievances that will never be put right. Simmering over something for years only makes us sour.

Dwell on things I can't control. There's no point in harping on about things I have little influence over. Like drink-driving or homophobia or religious fanatics.

Keep the house spotless. I'm not one of those houseproud obsessives who clean and sweep non-stop. As long as the place is presentable, that's enough for me.

Shop till I drop. I can't stand shopping. I do it only when I absolutely have to. Spending time in a shopping centre, assaulted by endless Musak, is my idea of hell.

Worry about my failings. Like everyone, I make mistakes and I upset people. There's no point in fretting over it. I do what I can to make things right, and then I move on.

Misrepresented

Shocking scenes in Ballymena and Portadown, Northern Ireland in the last few days as rioting mobs targeted anyone who wasn't "local" i.e. anyone from another country. And families from elsewhere who have lived here for many years were still seen as "not local" and fit to be intimidated and told to leave their homes.

In general Northern Irish folk are quite welcoming to people from other nationalities, but there's a hard core of racists who do their best to stir up hatred and intolerance, either for political reasons or because they enjoy a bit of violence and disorder.

Most of the Ballymena and Portadown residents must have been horrified by the rioting and wanted no part of it. They are sleepy little towns were normally nothing very dramatic happens and the biggest sensation is a new set of traffic lights.

The rioting paints a negative picture of Northern Ireland that completely misrepresents the reality of sensible, peace-loving folk who just want to get on with their lives. Tourists must be wondering if the rioting might spread to Belfast or other parts of the country. Fortunately there's no sign of that as yet.

As usual, the rioting was encouraged by numerous social media posts, that no doubt included a lot of false information about foreigners getting "preferential treatment" while locals miss out.

Hopefully the rioters have already got tired of rioting and Ballymena and Portadown will return to their normal uneventful daily lives.

Suitably masculine

I do envy women the wide range of clothes they can wear, while as a  man I'm limited to a small list of clothing that's considered suitably "masculine".

Basically I'm confined to suits, jackets, shirts and trousers. Anything else would cause disapproval and dismay. But such a limited selection is horribly boring and restrictive.

I know some female clothing is absurdly uncomfortable and impractical, like shapewear or high heels, but at least women have the choice of whether to wear them or not wear them. They can be as flamboyant or dazzling as they wish and nobody will object (except in an office of course).

The irony is that every item of so-called female clothing has been worn by men at some time in the past - high heels, corsets, tights, skirts, whatever (men wore high heels for centuries before they were gradually reborn as female footwear).

Men do tend to stick to recognisably "masculine" clothes, and recoil violently from anything that's deemed "feminine". The very idea of wearing anything "feminine" is seen as humiliating or belittling or just weird.

Those men who want to cross-dress either have to do it in private, out of the public eye, or simply stifle their desire and pretend they're happy with a suit and tie. Unfortunately wives of cross-dressers are not always supportive. They often react with horror when they learn of their husband's "abnormal" inclination.

Granny's advice

I'm not an angry person. I'm more of the "Keep calm and carry on" persuasion. I believe that anger is pointless and usually self-defeating.

Some of you may remember from earlier posts that at the age of ten my grandma urged me not to be like my father - habitually bad-tempered and out of control. I took her advice and I've been remarkably even-tempered ever since.

On the rare occasion that something riles me enough to make me angry, other people are taken by surprise. They're so used to me having a cool and measured approach to whatever situation I'm confronted with that they wonder what on earth's going on.

Of course some people say that anger is one of our basic emotions, the emotion that brings us to life, and that never being angry is a bit abnormal. On the contrary, I think anger is as negative as guilt or jealousy or bitterness. Someone who is regularly angry just makes other people wary and defensive.

Anger is very fashionable at the moment. Look at a newspaper or go online and there are any number of people getting furiously angry about something or other. Where they get the energy from I can't imagine.

I also resist anger because it so often leads to violence, especially misogynistic violence. Once you allow anger to flow freely, it easily morphs into something much more dangerous. Keep a lid on it, I say.

PS: Several blogmates have suggested I'm bottling up my emotions and that expressing anger is a normal human trait that I'm lacking. Well, expressing anger may be the psychological norm but norms don't apply to everyone and to my mind it's also normal to be an un-angry outlier. I've never felt that I'm bottling up my emotions, I just hardly ever feel angry.

Coin stuffing

Tourists don't always respect the place they're visiting and many of them commit what can only be called acts of vandalism. The Giants Causeway on the north coast of Northern Ireland has been one of the victims.

Visitors are jamming tiny coins into the gaps between the stones, and these coins are discolouring the stones as iron, nickel and copper leach out of them. There's a copycat element as people see others shoving coins between the stones and do the same themselves.

It's hard to see what the motive is for this "coin stuffing". They'll never see the coins again and probably will have forgotten all about them a week later. Tour guides warn visitors not to leave coins, but the problem persists.

Unfortunately tourist vandalism is very common. Graffiti, love locks, stealing cobblestones, carving names on ancient monuments. There's a general lack of respect for the places they're visiting and too much mindless self-indulgence.

It would be a shame if popular tourist sites are routinely closed to the public because vandalism has got out of hand. A spectacular canyon in Iceland, featured in Game of Thrones, is now closed to visitors after a huge influx of tourists has damaged vegetation and trails. Iceland as a whole is now so fashionable it's buckling under the same tourist deluge as many other places.

Where will it all end?

Pic: the Giants Causeway

Giving up

Since Jenny and I gave up alcohol several months ago we're surprised how little we even think about alcohol. We never have any hankering for a glass of wine, and we can easily ignore the alcohol sections at the supermarkets. We just don't miss it.

It's strange that we've abandoned alcohol so easily, since we'd been drinking regularly from before we first met. We'd been cutting back a bit from our earlier days together when we'd consume a bottle of wine or more in an evening. But it never occurred to us to stop drinking, especially when all our friends drank.

Then one day in the spring we both realised that alcohol just wasn't doing anything for us any more, so why were we still guzzling it? Why not give it up? So we did. We were expecting it to be a bit of a struggle but we were amazed at how effortless it was.

It's saving us a lot of money of course, which is an added bonus. It was expensive enough just for the two of us, but if you're buying a round in the pub the cost is crazy.

Nobody has suggested that we're missing out by giving up alcohol, that we're party-poopers or strait-laced puritans. I suppose it helps that a lot of young people have gone teetotal, either for the health benefits or to save money or because they don't like being drunk. So rejecting alcohol has become somewhat fashionable.

Cheers!

Downsizing

Every so often someone suggests giving people in so-called over-large houses some sort of incentive to downsize to a smaller property.

It happened again yesterday on the TV programme Question Time, when someone debating the possibility of reducing the state pension proposed that if more people downsized they could manage on a smaller pension.

He suggested that people in very spacious houses like our own could be given an incentive to move to somewhere smaller - presumably some sort of financial grant.

Well, I enjoy living in a large house and I don't see why people like us should be singled out for our preference, especially when there are thousands of empty houses around the country that could be targeted instead. And how could you ensure that an "over-large" house went to a family and not another space-loving couple like us?

In any case, even a sizeable financial grant wouldn't make up for all the upheaval and hard work and stress of moving house.

We space-lovers are being turned into scapegoats for the continuing shortage of new homes. We're supposed to feel guilty for not "making do" with a much smaller house.

And if family-size houses are so badly needed, how come so many tiny apartments are being built?

Doggie devotion

It's still true that many people find their pets more soothing and reassuring than other people - maybe even their partners. A survey of 31,299 pet owners reveals 58 per cent of people find cats and dogs more comforting than people at stressful times, outranking spouses, friends and kids.

If you're going through some sort of crisis, the average dog won't give you a load of unasked-for advice, won't pretend to be sympathetic when they're not, won't tell you it's not as bad as you think, and won't tell you everything's going to be fine and just hang on in there.

The average dog will simply give you lots of love and affection until you're no longer at sixes and sevens and have sorted things out.

Of course there's a downside to such reliable devotion. A dog might wake you at 4 am demanding food. Or might empty your dinner plate when you're not looking. Or it might jump all over your visitors. And it won't do the washing-up.

Well, that's what I'm told at any rate. We don't actually have a dog so we can't tell you if all that's true or not. But I can certainly testify to a dog's unwavering love and affection, having experienced it many times when dogs are about. In fact a dog will give me enthusiastic affection even if we've never met before. 

A dog may not speak but it has many other virtues.