In growing old there is a wonderful feeling of contentment. Looking back over the wonders of the years, at the family and how they have grown. There have been ups and some downs, heartaches, but we never let them get in the way of the growth and upwards.
As one ages there is comfort in the way you are treated, with respect and helped. Although it can be a little annoying when people consider you as one who is ‘loose in the head,’ when being treated like a child. On the other hand, they may be right – but help is always appreciated, athough sometimes disappointing.
We had been to one of those big stores to buy pellets for the fire. I had loaded four fifteen kilogram bags on to the trolley. After leaving the check out and trundling the load across the car park to our car one of bags fell off, on to the ground. Instantly a young man who had been loading his car came across and picked it up. I was grateful, as picking them up off the ground is not very easy, and yet I had a feeling of being a little insulted.
Insulted? It is as if I was no longer capable, and also seen as unable of doing a simple task. That is the downside of age, not wishing to lose the ability to do certain tasks, and not being in control.
Dare I mention the pandemic? Certainly, enough words have been written about it in the last twelve months, but I cannot help wondering what changes it will have made in the world of television.
In Ant and Dec’s Saturday evening ‘Take Away’ they had a virtual audience beamed in from people’s living rooms, and arranged on a bank of television screens; will that be the norm in future?
I find the use of canned laughter or cheering sad. Will there be a change to that, also, in future? Why have a real audience in an expensive theatre, when you can do a show in a studio, with canned, unreal background sound to lend to the reality of the show.
It will be possible to run the snooker championship from a scout’s hut with the taped sound of people cheering.
Television, the all encompassing method of entertainment capable of deceiving the eye and the mind. ITV produced a programme one late evening, ‘Macdonald & Dodds.’ After seeing the show I could not help thinking that it was nothing more than an advert for a well known chain of restaurants. The plot was terrible.
Fiction is ‘make believe’ and unless the author is writing a story which is out of the world, then it should at least be believable. Yes, it is difficult for the writer who is trying to think of a murder plot, killing people without the obvious method of shooting or knifing is not easy. In Macdonald and Dodds, plotting to kill someone by making the supports to the basket faulty, and throwing them out of a hot air balloon, is corny and unreal.
Since the turn of the year, when the UK left the European Union, I think we all still feel exactly the same as before that monumental happening, going about our lives and eating the same food. So why are the supermarket shelves bare and empty of British produce?
Is it some plot that we know nothing about? Is it an excuse that lorries cannot get across the Channel, if so why? It is the same water, same boats and tunnel.
The sun came out over the weekend in the UK and never mind the pandemic, people flocked to the coast, jamming the roads with their cars, and leaving some parked on the pavements as they attempted to make their way to the water’s edge. Some made it, but not all, as they were turned away by the police.
It has been a long journey fighting the virus, three lockdowns and now the early signs that the end is in sight, where it will be possible to contain Corvid 19 and its variants.
This can only happen with the help of everyone. There is a sad story in the papers of a sixty year old mother, who, with her daughter, broke the rules over Christmas and got together. They both died this week.
Percy Chattey books available on Amazon and Kindle. Facebook.com/percy chattey
