Splendid Olympic Torch Relay

I haven't read too many congratulations in the paper directed to those who organised the Torch Relay, so here are mine.  I think it remarkable the way it has gone so smoothly, with excellent choice of torch-bearers.  About 6 weeks ago we, in Thornton Heath, were told it would pass through here on July 23rd at 11.30 a.m. and it did just that.  We had only to go to the end of the next road, where a lot of people were collected, and, for once, there was some sense of Community.  It was good to see the normally empty streets full of people walking and we all cheered and shouted when we saw the flame being carried by a man in a wheel-chair.  A man in a shop there brought a chair out so I could watch in comfort. When I took it back, overcome with the feeling of goodwill we all experienced, he gave me a smacking kiss on the cheek!   May the whole Olympic show go off in such an atmosphere of friendship and goodwill!

What is an elite?

Yesterday's Observer's headline reads "£13 trillion:  hoard hidden from taxman by global elite."

The Oxford English Dictionary describes an elite as "a group of people considered to be superior..."
If even the Observer considers these people to be an elite we are lost indeed.  To me they are people who take but don't give.  They have the nerve to rely on whichever country they happen to be residing in or where they own property to provide the infrastructure on which even they depend, but who don't want to contribute to the cost of its upkeep.  They need the police, they need the roads to be kept paved, they need the sewers to work, they need the airports to function safely, they even need the state school system to provide minions who can at least read and write well enough to serve their needs.  But they want the rest of us to pay for it all for them.

If we think they are an "elite" we contribute to the idea that it is money, not morality, which drives society.

Closing Maternity Units

We are told that a senior specialist thinks it will be better to close local maternity units so that we can all have the benefit of senior specialist care in centres of excellence.

This is the most recent example of people who don't know how the other half live making rules for the rest of us.  Chances are this senior specialist has never had a baby!

What we need is to be in easy reach of our much-trusted midwife, who knows us.  Most of us just go ahead and have a normal baby in a normal way.  Sometimes there are false alarms - you don't want to have travelled miles to a strange hospital to be sent home again.   This is turning a normal process, more and more often accomplished at home, into something weird and wonderful that needs specialists.  If that is the case we are grateful that they exist, but it's probably only in 5% of cases.

We are being driven mad by people who have no "real" life experience making daft rules.  This, increasingly, includes politicians who know nothing but politics.

Buying a Travel Card for London

Balham is our nearest Underground station, so we went there to buy travel cards for my adult and child visitors.  Long wait at ticket office.  Only one man in front, an American, who apologised, but he was only trying to get his refund on his Oyster card, which is why I'm not getting Oyster as it's a complication to get refunds at end of your visit.  In the end he got it and had to sign 3 bits of paper!!!  So I got the adult card, no problem, but they don't have them for children.  Suggested you buy a ticket each time, but that you can get them from Rail Station for children.  Luckily Balham has both, so went up there to get it.  Photo needed, nearest booth 5 minutes away at Sainsbury's.  Finally achieved this.  £29.  Perhaps cheaper to pay each time, but if you already have a travel card, you don't want to have to queue up to buy tickets for your child.

There are people sitting in offices making daft rules for the rest of us to follow, in so many walks of life.  See next blog.

Amendment to yesterday's

I have discovered that it's only at rail stations you have to have a photo in order to get a London travel card.  At Underground stations you don't.  Great relief!

Photos on London travel cards

Some Japanese friends arrive today.  I wanted to get them travel cards in advance, but have discovered, that just a month ago, a new rule was made insisting on photographs on them, so I couldn't buy them for them.   Even when they arrive, there's nowhere to get photos taken anywhere near my station.  What a time to start this, just when all these people will be coming to the Olympics!  Travel cards are much easier for people who aren't used to the system than Oyster cards are.  Since we seem to be able to do everything at short notice, couldn't we waive the need for the wretched photos until after the Olympics?

What makes a baby happy?

Today I heard an unusual sound in the bus.  It was a baby about 10 months old gurgling and crowing to itself so happily, as is natural.  Perhaps you don't notice babies as much as I do, but I tell  you, this is not usual behaviour in the bus.  I turned round and saw that, unusually, his mother had placed the pushchair facing the aisle, so he could see what was going on, and of course there's lots of movement.  Most mothers shove the pushchair in facing the grey wall of the bus and then get on their mobiles.  The babies sit there dully, vacantly.  Winking or smiling at them often can't stir them from their torpor.  When the pushchairs had to be folded, then they were sitting on their parent's knee and could see out of the window.  It was a good day for the mothers  when they first had this facility, but it was a bad day for the babies.

I really think it is important for babies to be stimulated and to enjoy communication and the sights and sounds of the world.  I just don't know how to put this idea over.  I am sure it is an important one.

Political Correctness

P.C. drives me mad.  If four-letter words can be shouted by schoolchildren in the bus all the time, why shouldn't they be used for the functions they actually describe, when needed?

However, it's not them I worry about.  My father was blind.  He was proud of being blind and the way he managed his life despite that.  He was indignant when it was suggested he was "visually impaired" as though "blind"  were a rude word, needing a euphemism.  Nor should "deaf" be a word we can't use. I must admit that "disabled" is much better than "crippled" because that word has so many other implications.  As for "black", well that is what my husband proudly calls himself. 

But what is bothering me at the moment very much is that we need to accustom ourselves to talking about death.  Old age can be a lonely time when your contemporaries begin to die, or be too old to visit and too deaf to enjoy phone conversations.  We can have lots of other friends and relations, but it is still the ones of our own age with whom we have a special bond.  This is because we understand each other and our situation and that situation is that we are going to die.  But younger people, mostly, and particularly those caring for the elderly are just too embarrassed to talk about death and if the old person brings it up they are likely to be told "Don't talk like that dear, you'll be with us many a year yet".  This is just what they don't want to hear.  And it makes them feel very lonely, because they know they must not bring up the one subject that they really need to think about.  Many don't want to be here for endless declining years, we just want to be able to talk, quite normally, about what lies ahead, which is death, inevitably, without embarrassing anybody.  So if there is one thing carers need to learn, it is that.  Please listen to me.  I know from talking to plenty of people in their final years.

Good manners

Yesterday, in Covent Garden, an opera singer was entertaining the crowds.

On the steps, just below her, a group of school-children were talking, laughing, playing, eating but their teachers made no attempt to either ask them to keep quiet or to sit somewhere else.  Disregard for each other is becoming a very noticeable feature of our society.  Surely it should be explained to children that if someone is trying to entertain, even if you are not interested in what they are doing you owe them the common courtesy of keeping quiet while they do so?  If nobody teaches children these things, how will they grow up to be just normally kind people?  It is unkind to behave in that way

Old people and their houses

I don't understand why old people who can no longer live in their houses should be allowed to keep them and borrow money from the government instead of selling them and paying for their care with the proceeds.  Well, I do understand, it is because it is thought that that is what they want, and old people tend to vote more readily than young ones do.  But, really, if the relatives want to hang onto the house to inherit, then they should look after its owner.  Keeping houses empty for years is anti-social when there is such a housing shortage.

Not understanding the Internet

I was very excited today because got 2 e-mails from people who had actually read my blog and one of them liked it very much.  However, when I tried to read the comments I couldn't do it.  And then  I seem to have wiped out the one about Teenagers, which was what they commented on, without wanting to at all.

There has never before been a product for which there are no instructions.  Hopeless to click on "help" because it is written in a language I don't understand by people who can't imagine there are people like me.  My grand-daughter says "You know so little about your computer, Grandma, I don't know how you manage to use it at all."  Yet it's essential to me.  No good asking some kind reader to help me, because I won't be able to read their comments, and will be scared to try to in case I lose another one.

All I can say today is so glad of evidence there are readers out there.

Look after the elderly OR inherit their house

I really can't see the problem.  You can either look after your relatives while they are alive and inherit their house when they die or have the State look after them and be paid with the proceeds of its sale.  You can't have it both ways.

A kinder way of treating babies needing adoption.

After a rest, I'm returning with happiness to comment on a piece of good news.  Why it has taken so long for the authorities to come to this conclusion is a puzzle, but common sense now prevails and little babies needing adoption are to be looked after by the same people who want to adopt them during the time they are to be fostered until the process can be completed.   Anyone who has had children knows how sad it is for tiny children to suddenly find themselves in a different home.  In some ways, the smaller they are the worse it is because nobody can tell them what is happening.