Life

Regrets?

~ beetleypete ~ 66 Comments

Birthdays make you reflect on life. At least that is the case for me. For most of my adult life, I never expected to live until I was 60, let alone 71. Now I have reached that age, I wonder if I will see 80. But I very much doubt that.

Why?

Well, I was a smoker for over 40 years. And a hardened smoker. Strong cigarettes, up to two packs a day. I gave up in 2012, but that was almost certainly too late to do much good.

I worked shifts in stressful jobs. Irregular hours, bad diet, difficult jobs that required putting yourself second.

Since I turned 30, I have liked to drink. Mostly red wine, but at one time, a lot of red wine. I might be down to one glass a day now, but the damage has undoubtedly been done, as it was with the cigarettes.

Two divorces, the loss of savings and equity, the emotional carnage that comes with broken marriages. Starting again from scratch. More stress.

So it is March 2023, and a time for reflection.

Would I have changed anything? If I went back in a time machine, would I do it all differently?

No.

I enjoyed every cigarette I ever smoked. I knew they were bad for me, but I didn’t care.

I enjoyed every glass of wine that I ever drank. I knew it wasn’t that good for me, but I didn’t care.

I enjoyed those stressful jobs. They did some good for society, and made me think I was making a difference.

The divorces had to happen. The marriages could not have endured.

Whatever finally does for me, it will have been my decision.

And there will be no blame, no regrets.

Thoughts On The Month Of March

~ beetleypete ~ 77 Comments

Today is the 1st of March. It is my birthday on the 16th, so this month always has meaning for me. We are also collecting a car today, so fingers crossed that it all goes well. I had to insure it yesterday, and the telephone renewal went very smoothly indeed.

I take heart from that. These days, I take heart from anything remotely positive.

On my birthday, Julie has to work. So not much chance of a day out, especially with the possibility of snow that is predicted now. (Though that might not happen.) But in the evening we are going to a local Turkish restaurant to celebrate, and I am very much looking forward to the food there.

71 is not a ‘celebratory’ year, as it does not end in a 0. But I am celebrating living this long, something I never expected to happen after a life in very stressful jobs, a bad diet, and heavy smoking until I was 60.

March this year is also when the clocks go forward, near the end of the month. When that happens, it starts to really feel like Spring is here, and Summer is around the corner. I begin to anticipate those longer evenings. Daylight until 9pm, and hopefully much warmer temperatures too.

For many years, I have seen my birthday as the start of the year, rather than January the first. It is when I become another year older, and potentially another year wiser. It is also another year closer to the end of my life of course. But that holds no fear for me, as everything must end eventually.

Welcome, March. ‘In like a lion, out like a lamb’, so legend has it.

An Alphabet Of My Life: Z

~ beetleypete ~ 36 Comments

Z=Zealous

Zealous is usually a word associated with religion these days, as in ‘Religious Zealots’. A rather old-fashioned word that has changed its meaning over time in society. In the past, ‘Zeal’ was a good thing. It made me think of brave soldiers, hard-working inventors, and charitable people who helped the unfortunate.

As far as this final word in the alphabet of my life is concerned, it is connected to ‘P’. I was very zealous in my political ideals when I was younger. Determined, committed, and keen to argue my side. On some occasions, this zeal on my part upset people. It made me enemies, and affected my jobs.

But I was undaunted, and continued to be politically zealous for the greater part of my life.

An Alphabet Of My Life: Y

~ beetleypete ~ 47 Comments

Y=Yearning.

I looked up this word to make sure I was using it correctly. I was.

yearning
/ˈjəːnɪŋ/
noun
a feeling of intense longing for something.
“he felt a yearning for the mountains”

I have definitely yearned for many things in my life. But nothing comes close to how much I discovered yearning when my mum got her Winter shopping catalogue from the Catalogue Lady who lived nearby. The catalogue was bigger than a telephone directory, and so heavy I could hardly lift it. It was like a Bible of consumerism, lavishly illustrated with photos, and containing everything a family might ever want to purchase.

The most popular companies in 1960 were Freemans and Littlewoods, both competing for an eager market of shoppers who wanted to have everything in the post war boom. And they could, because those companies offered credit with a simple and affordable system. Each item had a price next to it of course. If you could afford it, you could pay the catalogue agent outright when it was delivered. But there was also an easy payments system that went something like this.

Say you spent £50 on an assortment of items. (£50 was a lot of money then, my dad earned less than £20 a week at the time.) You could pay just £1 a week for those items, over a set period. That was usually 60 weeks, so ensured the company received £8 in interest. The Catalogue Lady would call at your house each week, take the £1 payment, and mark it off on your payment card. You could see the debt decreasing, and you were also able to order more items if you so wished, the card being altered accordingly.

Yes, this was something of a ‘Debt Trap’ for working people before the age of credit cards, and when bank loans were hard to get for anyone on a weekly wage. But working-class people no longer had to save up to buy something. From a new tea-set to a girdle, a vacuum cleaner to a pair of slippers, they could have what they wanted or needed, and it almost always cost just £1 a week.

The catalogues included toys, and the Winter edition included dozens of pages of toys, usually at the back of the catalogue. As soon as I was left alone with the catalogue, I immediately turned to that section, and began yearning for many of the toys shown in the photos.

It was real yearning, believe me.

Not allowed to mark the items on the page using a pen or pencil, I would turn down the corners of the pages I was interested in, then add scraps of paper sticking up from those pages with the stock number of the toy I liked best on that page. Then I left the catalogue for my mum to look through, and yearned.

Waiting for Christmas morning to open my presents and see if the intense research had worked.

Most years, it had.

Day Brightener – “Who Is Shaking The Jar”

~ beetleypete ~ 34 Comments

This tends to sum up the ‘human situation’. Thanks, Loren.

Loren Berg's Blog

I first recieved the following quote as a video featuring Mark Twain, while Twain may have penned this comment, it appears that it is more likely from Shera Starr. It also appeared in something from Sir David Attenborough. Regardless of the origin and regardless of your political leanings, this should resonate.

“If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti-Mask. Vax vs. Anti-vax…

View original post 26 more words

An Alphabet Of My Life: X

~ beetleypete ~ 51 Comments

X=Xenophobia

xenophobia
/zɛnəˈfəʊbɪə/
noun
dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries.
“the resurgence of racism and xenophobia”

I was introduced to this from a very early age. I didn’t know the word until I was in my teens though.

The area I was brought up in was predominantly a white working-class part of London. In my youth, many of the local older men had travelled abroad during the war, but few of the women had ventured outside of Britain. Attitudes to foreigners were ingrained. Almost everyone hated the French, dating back to the Napoleonic Wars. That had been updated by the French surrender at the start of WW2, and the Vichy collaboration with the Nazis.

The Japanese were detested because of atrocities in WW2, and their treatment of allied prisoners. (My uncle had been a POW captured by the Japanese.) Italians were considered to be cowardly, and not worth thinking about. As for the Germans, well they had started the war and bombed London and other cities, so were still hated with a vengeance in the 1950s.

Nobody I knew spoke a foreign language, and the only black or oriental people I ever saw were sailors from ships in the nearby docks. Foreigners were described as ‘Wogs’, Wops’, ‘Darkies’, ‘Chinks’, ‘Yellow Men’, even ‘Cannibals’. Much of this was purely descriptive, and rarely spoken with any outright malice. It mostly derived from ignorance, lack of interaction with outsiders, and the old jingoistic love of ‘Empire’.

At junior school, there were no foreign-born pupils, and no black or mixed race ones either. The only Jewish boy was the son of the barber in the local High Street. We were sometimes jealous of him, as he was excused morning assembly on religious grounds.

But Jewish people were also unpopular. They were considered to be money-grabbing, unfair businessmen, and not really welcome in that part of London. They were routinely referred to as ‘Kikes’, or ‘Yids’, and I knew some older men who would not use Mr Cohen’s Barber Shop because he was Jewish. Catholics were rare, and almost all from Irish families. Though there was a famous Catholic school nearby that many girls went to, where they were taught by nuns. The attitude to Catholics was that they were all Irish, the men were drunks who did menial labour, and that they had too many children.

Once there was an influx of West Indian immigrants in the late 1950s and 1960s, there were still very few living in our area. I went to a senior school with 1,500 pupils, and we had two West Indian pupils and one African pupil. As I grew into my teens, I still had little or no contact with anyone who was not white and working class, though I had been on trips to France by then. Once we moved away to the suburbs, the only foreigners in that affluent area were the Indian family who owned a local Indian restaurant.

Times changed, and not for the better. Race riots in West London, the rise of neo-Nazi political groups like the National Front, and overt racism reared its ugly head in many parts of Britain. I was working by then, and married not long after. We were not racist. We embraced the new cultures, the tasty food, the shops that stayed open late. We developed an interest in foreign countries, and travelled to them. We worked alongside collagues from many countries, of many races, and didn’t think twice about it.

Xenophobia has not gone away, far from it. But most of us did not inherit the attitudes of our parents, I am happy to say.

An Alphabet Of My Life: W

~ beetleypete ~ 50 Comments

W=Wordpress.

WordPress to me means blogging, but I used something else for ‘B’.

I came late to blogging. It was not until after a suggestion from my friend Antony that I even considered starting a blog. He thought it would be something for me to do once I retired from work. I looked into it, and decided that WordPress was the platform to choose. At the time (2012) it was the easy option. The process was laid out in a way I could understand, and it was free too.

Those first few posts were very short. I let my friends and family know that I had started a blog, and they encouraged me by leaving occasional comments. Some of them even followed my blog, and I started to become aware of other bloggers, and followed some.

A year later, I was having interaction and engagement with a selection of followers, and starting to feel like I was part of an international community. I even started a second blog with a very different theme, though I don’t post much on there.

Since then, I have added photos, written fictional stories and serials, told the world about my life in a small village with my dog Ollie, and reflected on my past in London. Although follower numbers increased dramatically, and I have now published 5,257 posts, it is usually the same core group of committed and much-valued followers who read and comment on my blog posts.

Blogging not only keeps your mind active, and allows you to express your emotions and opinions, it also introduces you to some amazing people from all around the world. You gain an insight into the lives of people from other countries that you have never visited, and different cultures to your own. Blogging is great, but you have to stick at it, and engage to get the full value from it.

I’m so glad I started a blog. My life has been enriched by blogging, despite the glitches, frustrations, and occasional annoyances.

An Alphabet Of My Life: V

~ beetleypete ~ 51 Comments

V=Violence

Fortunately, I have been more of a witness to violence than a victim of it during my life, save for a few notable occasions when I was on the receiving end.

At school, fights were common. They seemed to start over nothing, and end quickly. If teachers did not step in fast enough, a larger boy usually overpowered a smaller one to gain victory. I was popular enough not to be picked on, and good enough at talking my way out of potentially violent siuations when the need arose.

In my teens, South London pubs could sometimes be violent places. Older men, sometimes criminals or gangsters, might suddenly start fighting. Those fights could be brutal, involving bottles, broken drinking glasses, and anything heavy that came to hand. I tried to leave when that happened, or at least keep out of the way. But one time a man hit me with a bar stool, which knocked me flat and made me see stars. When he realised that I was not one of the people he was fighting, he helped me up and apologised.

Some years later, I was involved in a violent street robbery, attacked by three men as I was about to deposit money in a bank. When I tried to hang on to the cash-bag, they kicked me in the head until I had to let go. Luckily, I was young and strong then, so suffered no long-lasting effects.

Being an EMT can be dangerous. More dangerous than you might ever expect it to be. Drunk people, plain nasty people, psychiatric patients, drug users hallucinating, all of those are likely to try to do you harm. I have been kicked in the face by a drunk, threatened with knives, a machete, and even a loaded shotgun. It was hard to believe when I joined the Ambulance Service, that such a large percentage of the public in London would consider me to be a valid target of their violent aggression.

But the real violence was what I witnessed in my job, not what happened to me personally. Stabbings, shootings, terrorist bombings. Faces slashed with knives or burned with acid, terrible beatings with blunt objects. Long bones broken, skulls fractured, noses and ears cut off. Murders by strangling, murders by drowning someone in a bath, toilet bowl, or wash-basin, and on one occasion, even a decapitation using a hand-axe. It is equally hard to believe how quickly I got used to such things, and was not fazed by them.

London can be a violent city. If you are somewhere at the wrong time, or involved with the people for whom violence is always their first option.

An Alphabet Of My Life: U

~ beetleypete ~ 48 Comments

U=Unhappy

Unhappy is a word that I (and others) use frequently to easily describe so many things.

I can be unhappy if it is raining when I want to do something ouside.
I can be unhappy if they cancel a TV series that I really enjoyed.
I can be unhappy if a shop has sold out of the type of bread I want to buy.

But on reflection, this is not being unhappy. That is something much more serious.

Have I been unhappy at stages in my life, really unhappy?
Yes I have. Or have I? I at least thought I was.

I was desperately unhappy for my mum when my dad left, and she had to sell her beloved house in the suburbs. I could see the pain on her face, and hear the heartbreak in her voice. But I was not unhappy to see my dad go, I was being unhappy for someone else.

When my first marriage broke up, I was genuinely unhappy. I felt bad that I had failed as a husband, and discovered loneliness sitting on my own in a new small house. At the time, I dealt with that by using denial, and felt sure we would get back together.

Some years later, I was divorced again, and living in a rented flat a long way from the parts of London that I knew well. Coming home after an exhausting shift on the ambulances, I had nobody to talk to, and sat in that cold, damp flat feeling very unhappy. I dealt with that the second time by drinking a great deal of red wine, and seeking oblivion.

I had to rethink though. Was I genuinely unhappy, or was I just feeling sorry for myself? Was ‘unhappy’ just a convenient word for a different feeling?

Now with the accrued life knowledge of 70 years, I have come to a conclusion. I have been unhappy for others, which is probably better called sympathy or empathy, depending on the circumstances. I have been miffed about something, fed up with something else, and have definitely felt sorry for myself on numerous occasions.

The good news though is that I have never been truly unhappy.

An Alphabet Of my Life: S

~ beetleypete ~ 42 Comments

S=Science

This S is about the applications of science in my lifetime. Things that were unimaginable when I was born are commonplace now. Some of those are materials; things like Teflon, Polyurethane, Velcro, Waterproof Fabrics, Memory Foam, Polyester. They have provided advances in comfort, ease of use, preserving and cooking food, and in safety wear for those working outside. Unfortunately, they have also contributed to landfill, the pollution of the oceans, and even microparticle contamination of human bodies.

Everything we invent comes with a price, it seems.

Medical science has exceeded all expectations since my birth in 1952. Birth control, In Vitro Fertilisation, Open-Heart Surgery, Genetics, DNA, Artificial Valves, Pacemakers, Organ Transplantation, and Micro-Surgery. The eqipment and expertise to care for a premature baby that would previously have died. Drugs to control Diabetes, Epilepsy, and many other life-changing or life-threatening conditions. Add to that the advances in Scanning, Medical Lasers, the ability to operate on babies in the womb, and an adult from 1952 would find it hard to comprehend the amazing possibilities 70 years later.

Life expectancy has extended significantly since I was born. Average life expectancy in 1952 in Britain (male and female lifespans combined) was 69.17 years. 70 years later, it is now 81.65 years. That has brought with it a huge number of problems. The increase in elderly people with Dementia. The problems of caring for the elderly and disabled in their own homes, or in dedicated old people’s homes. Hospitals full of old people who cannot be easily discharged after breaking bones or having major surgery. The cost of paying pensions to so many more people who lived much longer than expected, and the reduced birth rate failing to supply enough working people to pay the National Insurance and Taxation required to fund such an ageing population.

Back to everything we invent coming with a price.

There are other scientific achievements in my lifetime that were less desirable.

Atom bombs were replaced by nuclear bombs, and those in turn replaced by thermo-nuclear bombs. Military weapons became more advanced, and the ability to kill more people from a greater distance is the darker side of ‘progress’ during the last 70 years.

(Technology will be dealt with in ‘T’.)