Struggling at the moment. For a few days my mouth felt a bit strange, which I put down to the after-effects of recent dental work. Friday morning my right eye felt sore and gritty. But I had a meal to prepare as we had friends coming round for dinner yesterday. So I swallowed an aspirin and rushed around the kitchen, cooking up a storm. Made a challah, chicken soup with kneidlach and lokshen, turkey roll marinaded with turmeric, garlic and paprika and cooked in white wine and chicken stock - with sprouts and roast potatoes. Everyone said the meal was great. All fine except the right side of my face dropped, the lower eyelid had drooped and my mouth was numb on the right side. I looked in the mirror and tried to smile but only the left side of my mouth lifted. First thought: panic. Maybe I’d had a stroke. But I can put my tongue out straight and the rest of the right side of my body is fine. Xmas day. You can’t get a doctor on a normal day. Fast forward. I’m 100 % sure it’s Bell’s palsy, which hopefully will improve in a few weeks. And, what do I read in a recent British Medical Journal? They’ve found a link between the Pfizer jab (which I had 10 days ago) and Bell’s Palsy!! Let’s hope 2022 is better.
19th December 2021
Today would have been my late mother Thora’s 111th birthday. What would she have made of today’s chaotic world? So many stupidities. At restaurants, diners wear masks until their meals arrive, then take them off to eat. Clearly, the virus goes away when we eat. The world is being ruled, not by elected leaders, but by scientists. How much longer are we going to continue to hide away from an invisible virus? I foolishly thought that now we’ve all had two jabs and a booster, normal life would return, with our own natural immunity plus the vaccines protecting us from serious illness. How long before it’s mandatory to have booster no. 99? I grow exasperated about how the virus and its ever evolving variants have ruined the whole world, maybe for ever. And yet no-one has held the originating country to account for what, to me, is the likely cause - a lab researcher’s gross incompetence. Worry free enjoyment of life has gone and no-one can plan happy future events with any confidence any more. Yet, what are we in the UK complaining about? A Xmas party 12m ago, when rumour has it the other political Parties had similar ones but no-one recorded them! Oh well, as 2022 approaches, I must somehow soldier on. Happy birthday Thora.
12th December 2021
Watching the current government wrangles over an alleged Xmas party which happened 12 months ago, I couldn’t believe it. When we lived in France, there were many differences between life there and in the UK. On the political front, even though I read the French papers and watched French TV news, I was struck by one major difference: we never heard any blow-by-blow accounts of what happens in the Elysee Palace. There was no equivalent to the English weekly live TV comedy hour, called Prime Minister’s Question Time, nor any insider ‘leaks’ of juicy Government gossip to the tabloids. Whenever President Macron appeared on TV, his speeches were always well-prepared, his suits and hair immaculate. In my view, we in this country must stop this constant need to ‘show our sore toe’ on prime-time live TV, in full colour, to the rest of the world. I don’t see that happening anywhere else. It’s time we as a country grew up, discussed government legislation in private, and presented a more balanced and coherent UK stance to the media and the world at large. Our image on the world stage is vital. Time we recognised that and stopped ‘washing us dirty linen in public’ as they say in Yorkshire. It’s long overdue.
5th December 2021
As I contemplate yet another birthday tomorrow, I think about my long journey... I was born two years after the end of WWII. My father was still away with the army, my mother at home alone. No NHS, doctors too expensive, so my mother had to bang on the party wall to alert Mrs S next door when I was about to be born. Winters were harsh and we were poor. Cold lino on the floor, and coats on beds. No-one in our road had a car, so I would run out into the street every time a car went by. No phone. No TV until I was ten, then a rental. Central heating was unheard of, every house having an open fireplace. Coal was delivered by grimy men, who lugged heavy sacks to each house before emptying them, in a cloud of toxic fumes, into the coal bunker along the entry. At five, I walked a mile to school and back, on my own. One house I passed had a bowl of fruit in the window. I couldn’t understand why, if they had such exotic items, they were displaying it instead of eating it. So many changes in my life since then as home comforts improved and technology arrived. And internally, the extreme introversion from my mother gradually morphed into the extrovert style of my father. What a journey…
