Tag: UK

Post Brexit

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I would joke that there was life after Brexit in the U.K. as an island old people’s home.

I take it back — there’s not enough people to staff it or tomatoes to feed the residents. .

But it’s worse: the inhumanity: commodification of people care, indifference of the owners, ignorance and inaction of the families, callousness of a privatised only-care-for-the-rich system, means you’re dumped into concentrated carelessness.

This article illuminates

We shouldn’t be surprised but why should we or how can we care?

Just make sure you,’re not feeble and alive to have to enjoy the mouldy fruits of the system

I sometimes scoff about extended supportive family networks. I shouldn’t but I do question whether they shouldn’t also be on life support. The fact is it’s the compassion and care amplified through people connections to each other we sorely need injecting to revitalise our communities

Me as a 66 year old am about to go care for an eight year old that helps blow life into this bundle of walking cobwebs.

I feel young again. Ha ha

Christmas

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In Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire.

White Christmas.
Liz (mum of my sons) addressing the residents of the street, as the Queen.
Some of the many many presents
Portable guru shrine
Exes. remaining good friends
Poppy and I on our way north.

Travelling around 2

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A king’s love for India reflected in the Pavilion

Tom and Amy, aka the lovely couple, who Manjula and I adopted after the first of many visits to Mysore Bed and Breakfast.

Their apartment looks out onto the sea. What a fab location.

Brighton and Hove on the English south coast an hour from London.

Travelling around 1

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Catching up with friends

My first trip back to the U.K. in over two years.

The journey through the airports and flight went smoothly as fast as pre-pandemic. I had test results and certificate proving I’d had my vaccinations. No one checked anything.

Day two test negative so all ok
Celebrating Halloween.

Being entertained by and entertaining my granddaughter Poppy. She’s eight and I’ve missed seeing her for two years! All of us share that pandemic experience.

What’s the game?

Exploring Hebden Bridge with Liz, the mum of my boys, big ex or as Manjula would say: wife number one. We remain close and dear friends of over thirty years.

Cherishable

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Today’s cherishable sad and sweet memories are the times Manjula and I spent together.

Here

The writer Didion coined the term ‘vortex’ in her book ‘a year of magical thinking’ about the year after her husband died.

It helpfully describes when one is ambushed by trigger memories of good times spent together.

But I wasn’t ambushed, as I fully expected it.

These are sad and tearful yet happy treasured moments in central London. I know it so well yet it now has an other dimension.

What a mess

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That’s been with us for a thousand years.

I’m from the U.K./Britain/England/the North/Yorkshire… We often joke about the north/south divide, I mention how the British pronounce words oddly, sometimes (?) to hide their French origin, I’ll explain how my accent and the words I use enables others to place me geographically and allocate the class I was born into and then of course there’s Brexit.

The U.K. becomes more the disunited kingdom by the day, has a rich pedigree and mongrel history. There’s the rub, the divisions we recognise are far more ingrained than we realise and have been established over a thousand years.

The divisions we see, the power games and the ascendancy of certain groups, represented by ‘The Tories’ now seems to be breaking it apart.

I recommend this book . It reveals, in surprising ways, how the established patterns of behaviour are difficult to break, we continue to adapt our national house, following the foundations and seem unable to create any real and lasting change.

Meet We Three….

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Hello from Manjula, Lucie and Stephen. Please follow the links below to the videos introducing you to our family.

An introduction from Stephen

A wonderful message from Manjula on what would have been her 47th birthday. Created by Faizan from the many videos she made for Stephen and our worldwide family.

The two lovely videos below are made by Tom and Amy who became so significant in our lives, we ‘adopted’ them.

Manjula preparing a meal and gifting her love.

Stephen guiding a MYcycle tour and providing historical, political and cultural insights in a boring Yorkshire way.

Lucie

A community asset

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In the USA some are concerned they may lose their publically owned postal service.

They’re right to be worried. It’s a social good that could be lost. In the early 90’s in the UK I recall conversations in social services about how services such as the postal service helped connect and create healthy communities. Individual posties, and refuse collectors and others who delivered to the home helped people feel less isolated and provide a safety net.

Well since those remembered discussions we’ve reduced costs of delivery, reorganised the services endless times, utilised technology, using a tremendous amount of effort and other resources. Why? To reduce the cost of the service to the consumer? No, it now costs more. Ok, to improve the service? No, there’s now fewer deliveries and more limitations. Well, is it better for the employee? That’s very subjective but I’m told that it’s not for a series of reasons. So why has there been so many ‘improvements’? In my view it’s to reduce operating costs, to increase profit potential and sell it off. And what happened? You know.

I write this as someone who’s family has worked in Royal Mail for many years and who’s worked as advisor on helping it to be a more responsible responsive organisation in terms of employee wellbeing.

So was privatisation a success? yes in terms of creating a profit for investors, and admittedly some limited income for government but in terms of being an asset to our community, in my view it’s not. We’ve lost the social value.

Storytime four and three quarters

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There’s two stories today, well one is a sad story ‘The Memory Tree’ so check it out before you show it to a little one. It’s a lovely story in its own right and really useful in a context of a wider conversation about death. Here is a link to how I explained to my granddaughter Poppy what happens when someone dies. This was after Manjula slipped through my fingers.

The next is a rhyme by Roald Dahl, a different take on Cinderella.

I’ve had a technical question from my granddaughter about my filming set up. I expect that behind this question is an ulterior motive. That I need to up my game and improve the quality of the video. So I’m trying a different Heath Robinson set-up. It’s a bit out of focus, for that I blame my age.

Here’s the photographic evidence of my studio.

I know with all this effort, you’d expect the quality to be better. Well I blame my parents.

New beginnings are disguised as painful ends

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It’s late at night and the page is blank so I turn to Laozi and Pooh bear.

Actually that’s not true. I turn to you…… to help me get the ball rolling, to create and share my and Manjula’s story. It’s the age old writer’s conundrum. As you see I have a pile of full notebooks but how to get the blank page filled to begin to start the actual story. Can you help?

If you know Manjula and I or even if you don’t 🙃 what’s the key ingredients of our story that might interest you or a wider audience. What are the main themes that will interest people?