Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
Posted: January 6th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | No Comments »
Dear Philippa
For more than two weeks now we have been in the grip of snow and arctic temperatures, and loving it. No need now for me to worry about getting to the office, just the simple pleasure of romping about in it with Rosie the dog. Rosie is a flat coated retriever, not quite 2 years old, with unbounded enthusiasm for plunging into the Derwent, which flows briskly and deeply a few yards behind our house, and flinging herself about in deep snow.
One day I hope we’ll meet an otter, which are abundant in our river; she may make a new friend sharing, as she does many characteristics of the otter. She is a very bright dog and I have high hopes of her SAT results next summer.
What do we make of these scientists at the Met Office? In the spring they confidently predicted a “barbecue summer” and what we got was rain-sodden misery. Unabashed, they then predicted a mild winter. And here we are, enjoying the most severe winter weather for decades, which has already lasted three weeks with more to come. When I was a child the official short term weather forecasts were a joke and most people relied on the more accurate seaweed hanging by the back door, or in my father’s case his haemorrhoids and whether or not they were itching. Many an outing to Bridlington was cancelled on the basis of messages from Dad’s piles. Now, decades later, the Met Office’s 5 day forecasts are very accurate, the result of increased understanding of the causes of weather on the part of weather scientists together with better data, from satellites and so on, and computers. Seaweed is no longer fashionable and, sadly, Dad is no longer with us.
All those decades ago long term forecasts were the responsibility of an Old Testament sage living near Thirsk who based his predictions on the closely observed behaviour of moles and badgers. The causes of weather are multi-factorial, variable and complex and it may be that, as with short term forecasting, the scientists will get it right. But why do they make these ludicrous announcements every year? They should keep up the good work, share their findings with other researchers, and keep quiet. Behaving the way they do damages the reputation of the Met Office and the scorn their failures provoke, especially in the press, carries over into attitudes to the excellent short term forecasts.
Much as I love wintry weather I am a little concerned that this lot may interfere with my plans to attend a dinner with a large number of doctors who specialise in sexually transmitted diseases, which would be a pity. The reason I know so many pox doctors is not that I have an overwhelming need for their clinical opinions and ministrations, but rather that twenty years ago I started a journal for them and the Editor is retiring. In spite of their grim duties, or perhaps because of them, they are excellent company. I shall be staying at the Groucho club, of which I am now a country member and pay less, an excellent establishment. If I get to London and cannot get back immediately I may have linger there over the weekend. The bar flies on Saturdays are considerably more louche than during the week. One Saturday in the bar there a film director offered me a part in a film he was planning, the part of a limo driver to a Russian gangster, but it came to nothing. On another I was persuaded, having drink taken, to perform karaoke as Doris Day singing Que Serra Serra, to the mortification of my children who were present. People still talk about this; they thought Doris was in the room.
Anyway, back to these Met Office boffins. I reckon they should stop scratching their heads over these long term forecasts and scratch their bottoms instead. Like Dad, who knew a thing or two about decision making.
Regards
Howard
Posted: January 6th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | Comments Off
Dear Philippa,
It is often observed that as the years pass people become disinhibited. I witnessed a florid example of this deterioration in my grandmother, a woman with unforgiving Victorian attitudes whose duty it was bluntly to draw attention to the failings of others, including on a weekly basis, my own. Usually the target was my acne, or plukes as she called the spots. Insufficient washing and too much chocolate, she would say. Luckily I had another grannie, just a few doors away, who liked children, was a reliable source of chocolate, and had no interest in the personal habits of little boys hygienic or otherwise.
Later in life, living in residential accommodation for the elderly and subsisting largely on Bailey’s Irish Cream and Crawford’s shortcake, she lost her 19th century control and correctness and began to denounce her co-residents for their largely imaginary failings in ripe language. “There goes another one with a tile loose!”, she would bawl at a passing old lady, “She doesn’t belong in here, she belongs in De La Pole!” (her local mental hospital), and she would loudly and routinely accuse visitors of stealing her bloomers. Her finest hour was the occasion of her 100th birthday, attended not only by her family but also representatives of the local newspaper and the Lord Mayor of Hull (a man with a nose for a camera lens). As soon as she spotted His Worship, she fixed him with her rheumy old eyes and roundly condemned him for his hypocrisy, his weakness and his filthy personal habits. Never can a chain of office have felt more like a burden.
Anyway, I have not yet reached that level of loss of control, but there was recently an early indication of what lies ahead. I was sitting in my local pub, the Royal Oak in Old Malton, waiting for a couple of friends who were to join us for pie, peas and chips, a specialty of the house. It was snowing hard and they were late, and when they showed up they were accompanied by an attractive woman I had not previously met. She was wearing a large red pompom hat and before any introductions could be made I pointed at her hat and screamed “Red hat – no knickers!” She was clearly taken aback by this advice (or was it a lucky guess?), quickly removed the revealing garment and vowed never again to wear it. I don’t know what came over me, but it certainly wasn’t mature reflection. Why had I suddenly dredged up and expressed this fragment of wisdom, known to every schoolboy?
I was taken aside by one of my friends and sternly told that this was a titled lady from an old Yorkshire family of aristocrats and that I should guard my tongue. Presumably, she has lived a sheltered life surrounded by sycophants and liveried footmen, none of whom had been kind enough to warn her of the dangers of choosing a hat of the wrong colour. She is wiser now.
I was later told by a witness to this incident, much appreciated by the drinkers in the Royal Oak, that it is not “Red hat – no knickers”, but rather “Red shoes – no knickers”. Well, not in my experience.
Regards
Howard
Posted: January 3rd, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Press coverage | Comments Off
A Little Bit of Everything – Product Review Blog has given our Vehicle Document File 10/10 describing ![carbook[1]](http://blog.thefutureperfectcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/carbook1-300x265.jpg "carbook[1]")
it as the perfect present at a great price for the untidy car enthusiastic who has everything! Despite having space to store MOT Certificates, Vehicle Registration, Insurance Certificates, Service History and Driving Licence, at 26 x 23cm it stores away easily in a bookcase, cupboard or drawer.
Read Anna Guest’s review in full at http://little-bit-of-everything-reviews.blogspot.com/
Posted: January 2nd, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | Comments Off
Dear Philippa,
Happy new year.
I would rather sit on a spike than go to the January sales and join the feverish queues formed by the legions of the living dead eager to snap up a bargain, but this does not mean I despise a good price and when you are an OAP you must make your economies where you can. Especially this is true when, like me, you live with a bit of a spender.
I have, like my father before me, a frugal side. I remember when he was retired he spotted an attractive “suede” boot on a rack outside a shop on the Hessle Road in Hull, not a high end retail district at the time, its partner safely inside to thwart thieves. The price tag was £5. He ran into the shop to try on this snip where he discovered to his astonishment that this price was for a pair, not per boot as he thought. Having steeled himself to spend £10 he immediately bought two pair. Sadly, within only a few weeks the “suede”, a revolting ginger colour, had turned to a sticky degrading mess. Not such a bargain after all.
Recently a new shoe shop, a bargain shoe shop, opened in Malton where I live. It is called Goodie-Two-shoes and offers high quality, low price merchandise for the discerning buyer. My first purchase was a pair of sand coloured desert boots (£14 – the pair, not each), which have proved to be excellent value and attract many admiring glances as I swagger up and down Wheelgate on a Saturday morning. Encouraged by this successful purchase, and going up market, I next bought a pair of those heavy duty yellow suede (not “suede” notice) boots with thick treaded soles – £18 for the pair. My daughter tells me that I look like a roofer, and I am indeed hopeful of offers of casual work.
More recently I wandered out of the cold into Greyhound Antiques, a new venture located above a deli in the market place where I spotted a smart overcoat, new condition, labelled “Vintage Crombie Tweed, circa 1950 (dry cleaned – ready to wear)”. I tried it on – perfect fit, even with my short arms. Maybe this shortness of arm explains my frugality – short arms and deep pockets, my father’s phrase for misers. The price was an astounding £65. My Saturday morning promenading is now even more sensational and although I have yet to receive any actual proposals of marriage I deduce from some of the looks I get that this coat is definitely giving a boost to my otherwise fading sexual allure.
But these are high ticket items, and you cannot buy boots and coats every week simply to save money. The real savings are to be made in the supermarkets with their BOGOFs and BOGOFLs and other offers on grocery items, for example baked beans and wine. You have to be vigilant however, noting when the offers come off and not dithering before buying as these offers fly off the shelves, and you want to be down there on a Monday morning when the new offers come on, which being retired I have plenty of time for. I don’t understand why the Government is so keen to put a stop to these “two for one” deals, and is even talking about legislating about it. They have two, mutually exclusive, lines of reasoning. One is that we shall buy two for the price of one, and the moment we get home we throw one away because we actually need only one harming the planet in the process. The other is that we’ll buy two for one when one is all we need, but in a fit of gluttony will neverthless bolt down both, making ourselves obese, which will cost the NHS money and harm the planet as well. Don’t they know we have freezers (don’t tell them, they’ll ban them), and have friends and hunt in pairs (don’t tell them about this either or they’ll make us CRB check each other)?
And what’s wrong with half price wine, I want to know; doesn’t mean I drink twice as much. Don’t get me started.
Regards
Howard
Posted: January 2nd, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Miscellaneous | Comments Off
My father bought my mother an iPhone for Christmas. Nothing odd about that except this was her first ever mobile phone. Unimaginable to our tech savvy teenagers that someone would have to wait for over 60 years for this first bit of kit.
It took 14 of us 2 days to set up the phone over Christmas. Of course, we didn’t read the instructions. Everyone in the family “knew” how to do it. And anyway, what instructions there were did not seem to entirely fit with the device before us.
We also all had an opinion about which apps would be most useful. Having established that my mother was unlikely to want to turn the phone into a pocket guitar or to be seen to be drinking a pint of beer, we settled on showing her how to send emails and texts.
After this exercise in gross over-complication, to her great credit, my mother did not at that point turn tail and run.
And then a very interesting thing happened. Landlines are all about exchanging information but emailing and texting is different. Suddenly my mother was introduced to her children’s, in laws’ and grandchildren’s on line personas, honed by hours on email, Facebook, MSM and Bebo. And it was great fun.
After a typo renamed her “muvver9”, my mother was truly launched into the mobile world and a whole new avenue of communication within the family has been opened up.
One day I hope we’ll meet an otter, which are abundant in our river; she may make a new friend sharing, as she does many characteristics of the otter. She is a very bright dog and I have high hopes of her SAT results next summer.![carbook[1]](http://blog.thefutureperfectcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/carbook1.jpg "carbook[1]")