No. How can we be unless we know someone? We tend to jump to our own conclusions, not admitting when we got it wrong, but celebrating when we get it right. My “character” is prone to change with external events and I’d prefer to know someone before judging them. Have an open mind, you could be wrong in your judgement….
Christmas time 2023
Christmas – it’s a time of joviality, of family, of gifts, meeting and greeting, laughter, snow, mulled wine and for some obscure reason, of novelty songs wishing for the return of an unexplained, but delayed, loved one.
For some, that is.
For others, it’s a time to hide away and attempt to avoid the above. To ignore the smiling, bedecked chorister who recently stabbed you in the back during the church’s “Prisons Week” (leave that one with me, it’s a personal thing!). It’s an especially difficult season to deal with ongoing depression and to live with the depressed. Trying hard to celebrate and engage in the frivolity of others, whilst providing support and understanding for those at home, in normal times is difficult, but the Christmas period ramps up the strain.
There’s no easy answer because depression can strike at any time of year, and any time of year is not a good time to be depressed. I will deal with it by providing a quiet, at home, Christmas. Unlike many others, we have a home in which to tuck ourselves. We will celebrate with our family before Christmas and distract ourselves on the day with the normal stuff – a jigsaw, a bottle or more of wine, the tv and copious amounts of snacks.
Snapshots of previous Christmases flick through my brain:
The first Christmases in our homemade matchy-matchy dresses standing in front of the silver six foot tinsel tree, dollies held by their hair and sleepy smiles (well, we probably were up since 5am). Tucking in to a boiled sprout Christmas dinner, with a bottle of whiskey and supermarket cola on the table. Hopefully we drank the cola whilst the parents hit the whiskey – wine wasn’t fashionable for us at that time. Round the TV with my dad teasing my younger sister that Roy Wood of Wizzard fame was actually her dad…. She hated that! Having to visit my dad’s elderly parents to receive gifts wrapped, but not taped, that fell apart as they were handed over. There’s a memory gap, then the crowded mum’s family Christmases began – they heralded several years of face-aching family fun and laughter, in-jokes a plenty, made up games, definitely no TV. Of my first run up to Christmas working, coming home to mum and saying that it just didn’t feel like Christmas. Her solution…. Have a gin and tonic, that’ll cheer you up! Of awful parties at a nearby pub with drunken revellers telling you to “cheer up, it’s Christmas”…. I was designated driver, they were all pissed.
Living with my sister and her two young children – they were fun times. We allowed the kids to do what they wanted and we allowed ourselves to chill out and eat and drink in front of the TV – and to try to ignore the family squabbles and tears as they would rage in the background. I would resort to sherry with my cornflakes and attempting to drug my sister into a slumber with herbal sleeping pill laced tea.
Then came a period of quieter celebrations, where I took control and prepared the house like a hotel for incoming family. Fun was still had, but dealing with an inebriated family member would often mar these occasions. With the death of my mum and father in law, and my older sister’s emigration, even these celebrations moved on. Married children have their other families to attend to, so now we prefer it just the two of us. We do what we want and that makes us happy. I fulfil my desire to open presents by purchasing low value items throughout the month and immediately wrapping it, in the hope that I’ll forget what I bought – which usually happens! I’m turning into my grandmother with my “I don’t need anything, I have everything I need” attitude…. Everything except a content husband. That would be a lovely thing to unwrap at Christmas time.
Merry Christmas to you all and I’ll quote Greg Lake for my profound ending:
“The Christmas we get we deserve”
A Pavlovian response to the postman
I started this post on September 19, 2012 and never finished it. It’s only after recent events that I discovered it and thought it needed dealing with. First, here’s the draft post:
We had a bit of a rollercoaster home leave this weekend. And it demonstrates how deeply affected we have both been by Mike’s criminal activities.
I went to collect Mike Friday morning for the start of an eagerly anticipated, final home leave before his release on licence. When we returned, I found our postman had left us one of those innocuous cards advising we’d missed signing for a Special Delivery letter, addressed to me. And I was off.
I didn’t divulge my fears to Mike immediately, I waited until we sat down with a cup of coffee and we began to wonder who was writing to me. And then I just blurted it out – what if it’s from the lawyers, what if they’ve read my magazine article and decided to write to me. What if I’ve said something I shouldn’t have and they are going to bring some action against me?
Fast forward to Friday 3rd November 2023. The postman delivered a small, brown envelope addressed to husband. I looked at it, didn’t recognise the quality of paper framed within the window – it wasn’t an NHS letter, they use a very economically recycled brand of paper. So I panicked. Should I open the envelope? Husband was only upstairs so I left it on the table for a few seconds, shooting it furtive glances. I picked it up again, holding it to the light, but no clues were visible. I don’t know what you do with mail you receive in the post, hopefully open the envelope, read and consider the contents? That’s “normal” isn’t it? Sadly, for me, it’s one of those now freely bandied about on social media words…. “triggering”.
It was revealed to be a perfectly innocuous letter, but by the point at which it got opened, I had been reduced to a grizzling wreck. I need to address this issue, which, I’m assuming, could be described as Post Traumatic Stress. The site of an unknown envelope will fling me back eleven years, to when it was not an uncommon event to receive legal letters demanding our immediate attention. I don’t know what I think is going to come through the post now, but I find it incredibly annoying that my brain is fixated on nastiness delivered by our lovely postie. I’ve told my husband that he should buy a book of stamps and start mailing me random lovely letters in the hope that I can fight fire with fire!
The Mandela Syndrome
Oh my, I think I need to call the Emergency Services. My colleagues have been hit by the Mandela Syndrome, a “type of false memory that occurs when many different people incorrectly remember the same thing”. OK, I admit, we are talking about a much smaller cohort here.
They might also be suffering from a case of biased reconstruction of events after the cause. Apparently, what happened was, they’d asked a solicitor to draw up a contract of sale for something our company owns, to a consortium. Correctly, they thought they’d better do a bit of due diligence to ensure they were not selling the item to anyone with anything on the internet that might raise a red flag. I don’t know, like maybe to a money launderer who keeps a list of victims on their LinkedIn profile. You know, you’d do it yourself. As we know, the internet is a really good place to research people. I was once accused by a solicitor, of owning a home in Canterbury on the basis of my extremely common name. It happens. Oh, and also, weirdly, they decided to do a bit of due diligence on the people – or more accurately – one of the people, who is selling the item.
Ok, you’re rolling your eyes – like you wouldn’t need to do that. Well, you wouldn’t want to be accused down the road of selling something to someone and them returning to you in a couple of months time saying “hey – I bought this from you, but now I’ve found this about you…. take the item back and refund me”. It happens…… doesn’t it? It doesn’t?
Things we don’t like to admit to having done – Part 1:
I once sold a car that was leaking from the driver’s footwell. When I say leaking, it was a front-runner for replacing the local swimming pool. The potential purchaser failed to do his due diligence (this was pre-internet …. remember that time?) and just asked me if there was any rust in the footwell. Me, a young lady driver? What do I know about footwells and rust? Obviously, desperate to off load the car, I said “no, not that I’ve noticed”. Pre-sale, I would have researched, in the most basic way possible, whether my potential buyer was going to part with his hard earned cash. But, did I investigate myself to see whether I was a fit person to be doing the selling. And had I discovered I had told a whopping great fib, should I have ceased the sale and kept the car that I could no longer afford to run, tax or insure? I’m just struggling to understand how me conducting due diligence research on myself would have helped me get rid of the car. Ah, I’m missing my own point…. I should have kept the car. And yes, I do feel guilty about the sale even though it was some 40 years ago.
So back to my original story. Husband has finally been told that, in the natural course of events, a solicitor decided to do a bit of research on the sellers and discovered an article on the internet that mentioned a very common name that my husband also shares, the county this person resided in and the fact that this person had committed fraud (semantics… it was theft) in 2011. “Could this be you?” was their cute, cuddly, naive question. So honestly, they didn’t know if it was him, and obviously this was nothing to do with their original decision to part company with him…. honestly.
Couple of facts to round up this sad medical dilemma ….
- Having viewed the sale contract, no seller names are mentioned.
- The original two reasons they gave in their first email were so terribly minor, I would have thought the best course of action was a “we’ve known each other for seven years” friendly chat. Sadly that opportunity was not made available to us.
- I still have to work with these people.
“The Right To Be Forgotten”
Again, it comes back to hit you in the nether regions. This “thing” just happened, make of it what you will.
Back in 2016, long after his release, husband set up an online business with a colleague, I came on board to help out around about 2016/17. This business chuntered on until 2023 when the colleague “left” and the other members of the team, including myself and my husband, took over.
The team struggled with the business for a few months, we nearly crashed our site and we weren’t doing so well. We brought in a consultant to help us move forward, to more effectively market our online product. Everything was going swimmingly until a few weeks back, out of the blue, husband received an email advising that his services were being dispensed with. Two reasons were given, both highly dubious and (you know me so well) nothing to do with finances. Two reasons that could have easily been resolved in a one to one chat.
Trouble is, I’m a member of this company and they took the decision to end their association with him (he acted as a consultant) in a meeting from which they decided I should be “recused”. So I have absolutely no idea how or why they came to this conclusion. For clarity, husband continues in his profession of management accountant – he’s not been disbarred, he doesn’t use his qualifying Institute letters after his name (never did, to be honest). The company is small and their finances come from member subscriptions and is therefore rather transparent. Not only have their actions caused no end of admin issues that now have to be resolved for the company, but instead of concentrating on increasing membership, we are now running around problem solving where no problems previously existed.
I’m at a loss. I have to work with “colleagues” who have either made a really poor business decision, which leads me to question their future decisions, or ….. do you think they might have lied to me and discovered my husband’s past offence? In which case, I’m working with liars. It’s a difficult one for me.
Which, in a roundabout way, leads me on to “The Right To Be Forgotten”. I had a quick “Google” again to see what’s out there and how I could get mentions removed and came across a very pertinent article by Paul Retout https://insidetime.org/the-right-to-be-forgotten-3/. Paul is a leading tax specialist and has run seminars in both HMP Wandsworth and HMP Brixton. He’s also visited several prisons where he has provided tax support to prisoners. Paul has released an article on the very same subject and although I was awaiting the next instalment, I thought I’d just plunge in there and give it a go. I am pleased to report and both Google and Bing have been really helpful and removed articles that were 12 years old and really not relevant.
Tricky one though…. who am I to decide what’s relevant? Searching revealed one bland article reporting on the outcome of the court case and then a handful of press releases, submitted at the time to trade magazines. The company involved in the case continued trading profitably, until it was sold to a bigger competitor and dissolved in 2020. Since 2011, my husband, mortified by what he did, tries to forget about his past – but I can tell you, not a day goes by that he does not regret the pain and embarrassment he put his family through. Does he have the right not only to be forgotten but also be allowed to put this incident behind him and move on with his life? It is the role of “the internet” to mete out never-ending punishment for a once in a lifetime offence?
It makes you think – how would I have reacted in the same situation? Would I take such a knee jerk response? Would I not speak to the person to find out the full facts and then come to a decision? What do you think?
Not much of a blog huh?
I can’t believe that it’s been almost a year since I noted something down on this blog – I suppose it’s because life has become mundane now I’m back working. I have however, kept myself occupied in my spare time. The one thing I missed when we moved from our larger home and garden was – our sauna.
I don’t quite recall how and when we fell in love with the art of sauna, could have been when we visited Swedish Lapland oh so many years ago (yeah, typical of me, I can’t remember the year). We went on a tour that included snuggling in a Sami teepee, eating fried reindeer meat, all so tired from our travels that the stories from the Sami lady lulled us into a stupor. We rode around on a reindeer pulled sleigh first, before his friend became our dinner. We went dog sledging with the one and only instruction “don’t let go of the reins”. Who let go of the reins – me of course. We travelled across a frozen lake by skidoo (and at one point, partially broke through the unseasonably, thawing ice). And we stayed in a long log cabin in the snow, with an adjacent sauna. That must have been it, we were smitten.
Back in the UK, deciding that a log cabin was the best idea for the end of the garden, we purchased one in kit form and whilst husband went off to work in the day, I became Master Builder and slotted the giant stack of planks together to create a two room cabin complete with spider housing loft space up top. The sauna was part of the “kit” and was easily installed – it worked – I was amazed! The chimney leaked – pah, who cared. The crowning glory was the year it snowed and we went the whole authentic way, running out into the snow to make steaming snow angels. Ahhh, sweet memories.
Leaving that all behind was easy except for the sauna. I still had a hankered after that one. So last year, finally, after all the “I’m going to build a shed” conversations, I got down to planning my masterpiece – and a shed with en suite sauna was raised from the ground.
I’m not going to say the whole thing was easy, it took some time! The pieces of colour glass was an afterthought as I realised the sauna area was going to be a little gloomy without any light, but also, didn’t really want the neighbour’s peering in. The logs took an age to seal in and don’t admire my carpentry skills – the sauna benches were purchased ready made, I just had to install them. But pretty pleased with the whole thing. Especially with the plunge bath outside, filled with cold water!
So now I’m awaiting this summer, to see what else needs sorting in the garden.
Raw Milk – yum yum yum
A few years ago, I decided I wanted to make mozzarella cheese – who doesn’t. So I got books (my ideas always start with a book, …..or a few books) and then I realised I needed “raw milk”. That’s milk straight from a cow’s bum – well, technically you got me there, it does in fact come from the udder, but when we were kids it was “yuk, has that milk come out of the cow’s bum?” followed by “I’m not drinking that”. Followed years later by niece and nephew asking the same question as Sis and I gratefully drank their portion. Which goes to prove what goes around comes around.
I digress. I needed Raw Milk, unpasteurised, non-homogenised, unadulterated, whole creamy milk – and I couldn’t find any in the UK. I did visit a local herd, but was advised it was illegal for him to sell me milk, I could find the stuff if I lived in the US, but my locale seemed deplete of the stuff – and then I found a supplier who used to visit Egerton Farmers Market. Joy. Shortlived Joy. I made cricket balls and burnt my hands.
Recently I’ve that hankering for the pure white stuff again and am more than delighted to have discovered Hook and Son (http://www.hookandsonfarmshop.co.uk/). Not quite on my doorstep, but they deliver (by courier) direct to my door. I order a week’s worth and store a few bottles in the freezer just in case. I’m recycling too. The bottom of the plastic bottles are an ideal size to start my sweetcorn seedlings in and the polystyrene is going to be (eventually) used as insulation in the new potting shed!
I am trying to make rice pudding, but this has so far not been successful because …. well, we drink it all before I get around to it.
Delving deeper into the Hook and Son website, I discovered Steve Hook also made a movie, released in 2013, telling the story of how “….he and his father Phil (who) together decided to turn their back on the cost cutting supermarkets and dairies to sell direct.” I can’t believe that our local indie cinema didn’t show this, but then again, I might have missed it. What a beautiful film and what a star Ida was! I’m going to see Rams tomorrow (A hard-drinking Icelandic farmer (Theodór Júlíusson) and his estranged brother (Sigurður Sigurjónsson) band together to save their flocks of sheep from authorities who want the animals destroyed) and I rather think these would have made good back-to-back viewing!
I could kick myself for not being aware of Hook and Son before now. Milk is a precious commodity, it is a super food in it’s natural state yet most of the time it is sold as a loss-leader by supermarkets. This cannot be right. This is not right. I would rather pay the correct price for my milk and support the person who works bloody hard to produce it. There are far too many “bargains” to be had out there, a lot of stuff to waste our money on, but when it comes to thinking about what we ingest and paying for quality I do wonder why we squeal about price so much.
The cream experiment
I recently saw a tweet from Joanna Blythman reporting the upsurge of homemade butter and I realised it was one of the food items I’d not “had a go at”! Unbelievable considering that as a child, my sisters and I were wont to decant the cream off the top (we’re talking about a million years ago, when non-homogenized milk was delivered in glass bottles, by the milkman, on an electric float) put it in some tiny plastic Tupperware pots, that mum had obviously allocated for curry powder or celery salt and shake the buggers like mad. This would eventually, by magic, result in butter. We’d throw away the liquid and the remaining yellow blob, warmed by excited hands, would be spread onto a bit of white sliced (also delivered by the breadman in a lorry) and consumed. Snack enjoyed, we’d move off to find some other messy/destructive activity that would no doubt result in being chased up the stairs by mum wielding a slipper. Was this really just 45 years ago……. oh, happy days!
So determined to go the whole hog with home produced sour dough loaf, plus homemade butter, I got hold of 2 litres of double cream (and, I should probably add, with apologies to my husband, a further cook book “Forgotten Skills of Cooking” by Darina Allen – second hand mind you) and proceeded, an hour before we were due to go out, to make butter. It couldn’t have been easier, or more exciting. I poured the whole lot of cream into the big bowl on my stand mixer and set it to a steady, sedate speed and watched as first it thickened, then suddenly, in an instant, separated into the required scrambled egg appearance. It dutifully sloshed around the bowl in what I’ve now discovered is creamy buttermilk until I scraped the massive lump of newly made butter off the balloon whisk. The bit i’d never practiced with my rudimentary, cream-off-the-top experiment, was expelling the excess buttermilk after draining. Not having access, to a set of fridge chilled butter pats, I stuck my hands under the cold tap (they were warming up caused in part by husband reminding me that I was supposed to be getting ready to go out), broke off wodges (technical term for cold, slimy, lumps of yellow stuff) and began to squeeze.
Little spurts of liquid decorated the tiling around the kitchen sink, but it was working. I could imagine that the butter pats, as a novice, would have hindered me, but I definitely will invest in a set before the next batch is made. In my rush, my hands were heating up, so I had to do a quick squish and squash and then chuck the lot in the fridge.
Ultimately I have produced one heck of a lot of lovely butter – mine was unsalted, due to lack of “dairy salt”, again another purchase will be made before the next batch. But the stuff is freezable so I reckon I’ll not need to purchase any butter for the next couple of months. Is it more tastier….. hmmmm. The provenance of my cream was not particularly special, just a 2 litre plastic jug of the stuff, but the fact that I got it for a fiver and have produced about one and a half kilos of butter, I’m pretty pleased with the result. I will have another go, with salt this time and maybe a different quality of cream – but what fun. Oh and the buttermilk was used in scones and a chocolate cake, so I should add that to the thriftiness equation!
Ched Evans just won’t go away/”sorry” is the hardest word…..
Really interesting blog on the BBC today (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30697264), Jon Kelly has taken the time to investigate a lot of the myths and stories surrounding Ched Evans and he raises and provide answers to some interesting questions. The main thrust of the piece is whether or not the general public would have had more sympathy for the man if he had apologised for his actions. This is something I picked up on when I first blogged on the subject. Apologies go a long way in this world, sometimes apologising for things you don’t think are wrong, but those offended do.
As Jon Kelly says in his piece, Ched Evans obviously believes himself innocent, but what he did was morally wrong. To argue the toss about whether or not he committed a rape, rather ignores the fact that your moral compass must be severely out of whack if you believe it acceptable to have sex with someone so drunk that they cannot even stand up. The law doesn’t deal in morals though, only facts. What you do may be morally wrong (or indeed right) but our laws are not in place to guide us through that morass. And one persons opinion of what is morally correct will always differs from another’s.
So the argument rages on over whether he should or shouldn’t be employed. It’s still a bag of snakes whichever way it goes and it still reflects supremely badly on the multitude of people with convictions who have accepted what they did was wrong, have paid the price (in jail time or not) and are trying to move on with their lives. It serves to keep the discussion alive I suppose, but to use a good old football analogy, not the game of two halves, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to be given the opportunity to work, earn money and look after yourself. Or do we want all our people with convictions just to survive off the state?
I was in prison and you saw the chance for a cheap story
A blogger after my own heart – lovely piece James Christie, highlighting more sloppy journalism from the Dundee Courier.
I was disappointed, but not at all surprised, by in the Dundee Courier on 16th December 2014. We were invited to be shocked at the lavish fare on offer to prisoners in local jails. The headline and first sentence set the tone.
“Christmas feast for prisoners doing porridge”
Criminals doing porridge in prisons across Tayside will be treated to lavish Christmas meals with all the trimmings.”
Feast? Lavish? All the trimmings? That is not reporting. It is a verdict, that the prisoners are receiving high quality meals, by implication meals of the standard one would expect in a good restaurant and certainly of a higher standard than they deserve. The article is opinion masquerading as reporting.
The choice of the first word of the article is interesting. Criminals. Yes, prisoners have, by definition, committed a crime. But when should we use that word? While they are engaged in a criminal…
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For the Kids I Never Had 