Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
Posted: June 24th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | No Comments »
I am often asked if I enjoy retirement, my usual response being that I don’t especially recommend it. I was fortunate to have a career, as a publisher, that provided lots of colleagues most of whom I liked, apart from a few snakes. I also spent a great deal of time with authors and editors, mostly medical practitioners, whose company I greatly enjoyed. There is much there that I miss.
But retirement is not just a time of loss, which is natural enough, but also of opportunity – to move back to Yorkshire, for a start, but also to try new things, things unconnected to former professional endeavours. Being appointed an Independent Custody Visitor (ICV) by the North Yorkshire Police Authority (NYPA) was a real stroke of luck.
I have been able to stay out of police stations all my life, thanks to strict parents and an inborn aversion to the idea of incarceration, though I did once pop into Malton nick to hand in a wet tenner I found in Finkle Street one rainy day. Now I’m in and out of Scarborough HQ – nine visits in April and May, four more scheduled in June – and I feel less and less uneasy every time.
Police Authorities have a statutory duty to maintain ICV schemes, which are operated by volunteers from a variety of backgrounds, whose only qualifications are that they live or work in the authority area and are over 18. There are some disqualifications, of course; if you are a serving police officer or married to one, for example, or if you’ve ever robbed a post office, that will keep you out, and a few others.
The Scarborough ICV panel has thirteen volunteers, who undertake to make at least eight visits a year, to attend various meetings, and to undergo regular training. What we do is to go into the custody suite, talk to the detained persons (who can refuse to see us – we operate in pairs) to ensure that they are being given their rights, to legal representation crucially, and that they are being treated decently in respect of nourishment, adequate rest, medical attention if required. And all this in a clean and safe environment. What is it like in there, I am often asked. It’s just like you see on the telly – custody sergeants, raised up behind a counter from which they have a perfect view of their fiefdom, from which they manage everyone, the willing and the reluctant, and take responsibility for the process.
I have to say, Scarborough is a cracking spot. Spotlessly clean, cheerful and calm staff who ooze equanimity, and roomy digs all en-suite. If ever crime disappears in North Yorkshire, and you fancy a few days in Scarborough, you could do worse than contact the custody sergeant and see if you can rent a room.
The food is not fine-dining, however, a possibility that had not occurred to one detainee I met who, when we discussed eating arrangements, told me that he was very fond of seafood and particularly partial to lobster. I didn’t tell the sergeant; he was still reeling from the breakfast request he’d had earlier – poached eggs on toast, croissants, and a Mars Bar.
Best wishes
Howard
Posted: June 12th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | No Comments »
Dear Philippa,
I have noticed over the years how many men sit in their cars on supermarket car parks, while their wives are inside doing the shopping, or wait outside butchers. It seems that I see it more these days; or maybe it’s just that, in retirement, I visit such places more frequently. I have always wondered why they do this. It surely cannot be that they fear their cars will be stolen. Do they think that shopping for food is an unmanly activity? In some cases it’s obvious idleness – I saw a chap this morning who, when he spotted his wife struggling through the rain back to the car with a loaded trolley, popped the boot from inside and went back to his newspaper leaving his better half to do the heavy lifting.
Men who behave in this way have surrendered any possibility of influencing what gets put on the dinner table, but I doubt if this stops them complaining when it doesn’t suit them.
However, not all shopping is fun; for example the interminable traipsing from boutique to boutique in search of garments that probably don’t exist, the agony prolonged by the refusal of someone to ask for assistance and minute scrutiny of items not even remotely on the search list. Yesterday, when on just such a painful outing, I was hanging about in a posh frock shop in York, in what I hoped was a sullen way, where I spotted a very rare bird indeed – a natty looking cove, sprawling on a sofa from which he actively engaged in his wife’s search for the right dress. Too actively, in my view, and in a way that systematically undermined her self-confidence. I watched her diminish before my very eyes. And he was suspiciously well-informed. Everything she tried on, most of them to my admittedly untutored eye looked charming on her, he scoffed at and sent her packing back to the changing room. I exchanged strange oeillades and most meaning looks with the helpful but exasperated assistant as we shared our disapproval. At least I think that’s what we were sharing, but you never know.
There was something very odd about this fellow, but it took me a while to work it. He had a rather dubious tan, and he was wearing shoes but no socks – a sure sign of a bounder.
I always go into the supermarket. For a start, it’s a bit of an outing. But more than that, it’s an opportunity slyly to introduce into the trolley forbidden treats such as cream buns and Kellogg’s Frosties - and to spirit out of it excessive salad stuff, especially the leaves that might have been harvested in hedgerows. I feel bad about it sometimes, but recent events in Germany have confirmed my suspicions, as salad ingredients are emerging one by one as lethally toxic. A cucumber can kill you in three days, but with booze it takes thirty years.
Best wishes
Howard
Posted: May 30th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | Comments Off
Dear Philippa,
Grave news of my clever economist friend. Having detected a very small lump on his foot a few weeks ago, which has since baffled all the physicians who have viewed it, all of them distinguished and very nearly as clever as the patient. Anyway, the medical profession’s finest having failed to come up with a definitive diagnosis – it looks like a lump, one of them solemnly observed – he set to work on the problem himself. He considered the signs and symptoms, took into account his clinical history, and with, I suspect though he denies it, some cribbing from Wikipedia, he got there himself – it is foot cancer!
He promptly checked himself into a hospital in York, private of course, and presented his aggressive tumour to a brilliant surgeon. To a man with a scalpel everything looks like a lump; the theatre was prepared at once, his leg was painted orange, and under the knife he went for heroic surgery. After weeks of self-dramatisation, and coming up with the only diagnosis he seemed to want, the resolution was disappointingly prosaic – a cyst, moreover, not an exotic cyst, Not even a wart, but a lower class common or garden cyst. I have not seen him since he was discharged, with bland assurances a packet of paracetamol, and a lighter wallet, but I hear that he is hobbling about in some sort of orthopaedic boot, to which he has become emotionally attached. So attached, his long-suffering wife tells me, that she has trouble persuading him out of it and into his pyjamas at bedtime. He is expected to make a full recovery.
After this brush with death, albeit at second hand, I hoped for a quiet end to the week, but not a bit of it. On Friday I attended a fund-raiser in aid of The Army Benevolent Fund, commonly referred to as The Soldiers’ Charity, a splendid, lean outfit that devotes itself not to bricks and mortar but to delivering financial help to soldiers, active and verteran, and to their families. They generally put on a good show, and this was no exception. We had an amusing turn from Gervase Phinn, schools inspector turned comic, with food and wine, the wine branded Howcroft oddly enough. And there was an auction, the sort where you overpay for stuff.
One lot caught my eye – a tandem sky-dive with an army paratrooper. If I judged it right I could bid aggressively, but drop out near the top, giving me the opportunity to swagger about as a bit of a daredevil who had been frustrated by the careless wealth of others, and avoid stupid risks. I dropped out at four hundred quid, the top bid was four twenty-five. Job done. I reckoned without the charity’s director, a brigadier of my acquaintance, who saw through me. He sidled up, told me he could see I was disappointed, and said he could fix a second jump for me for the four hundred.
Bummer!
I consoled myself with the certainty that wife and daughter would beg me not be so foolish, not to subject my raddled old body in such a hazardous venture. Not a bit of it. They urged me on, telling me it is an ideal opportunity to solicit sponsorship for the church’s New Toilet Fund, to benefit a second good cause. So I’m stuffed. And four hundred quid is not so much, after all, for the chance to relax in the arms of a para, even if plunging earthward at God knows how many feet per second, with bowels in uproar. I could of course come up with a little bit of foot cancer if my nerve fails.
Best wishes
Howard
Posted: May 24th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | Comments Off
After his dalliance with local politics, Howard returns to his regular slot and his musings about the joys or otherwise of retirement.Dear Philippa,
During the eighties and nineties, I was a frequent guest at the University Club in New York, so frequent in fact that the porter remembered my name. His invariable greeting was, “How very nice to see you again, Mr Croft. How is the Princess Ferguson, sir?” To which I would always reply, “Very fine, Mr Bauer. Thank you for asking.” I never understood his devotion to the (now) Duchess of York, alone of all the members of our Royal Family, nor his simple faith that because she and I both lived in London we were personally acquainted – perhaps my aristocratic swagger persuaded him that we must be.
I wonder what Mr Bauer made of all the Royal Marriage coverage, and if he grieves for Fergie’s exclusion from the guest list. What the guest list did reveal was that some of the Windsors, or their court perhaps, are as preoccupied with celebrity as any Hello! magazine reader. David and Victoria Beckham were there, for example, as was Tara Palmer-Tomkinson who is famous only for having the appearance of possessing more libido than is good for her and for having destroyed her own septum. Allegedly. Are these people really friends of the Family? I suppose they must be.
Not that any of this is new. Princess Diana enjoyed the company of the glitterati, Wayne Sleep and so on, and Prince Charles’s friendship with Spike Milligan was well known, arising from his enthusiasm for The Goon Show. But where will it end? I suspect a downward trajectory will be revealed.
Yorkshire people are not so easily dazzled. The Princess Royal came to Malton the other week in her capacity as President of a charity devoted to the care of injured jockeys. Apart from a bit of civic courtesy there was little fuss and she was allowed to go about her business, useful business at that, untroubled by gawking rubberneckers. Last year the Prince of Wales arrived here by train, alighting onto a deserted platform, not even a ticket inspector to be seen.
The keenness of politicians to enjoy the company of show business personalities began I suppose when Harold Wilson, who had “put the levers of power within the reach of youth” by lowering the voting age to eighteen (with catastrophic effects on the percentage turnout at elections ever since) gave the MBE to the Beatles, some of whom later put aside their spliffs to mail them back in disgust. Echoes of this in Gordon Brown’s improbable claim to fondness for the Arctic Monkeys, few of whose fans will have voted for him, or indeed for anyone. Recent press reports, based on her diaries, claim that Mrs Brown (Gordon’s wife, not Judi Dench) spotted Berlusconi trying to get Naomi Campbell to hand over her ‘phone number at a Downing Street dinner. It has not been explained why Naomi Campbell was present, though perhaps merely to be an hors d’oeuvre for the Italian whose unwholesome interest in beautiful girls is common knowledge. But I myself doubt this – it would after all suggest that there are those in government who are not averse to a bit of pandering, which is unthinkable.
Now I have to confess to being drawn to celebrities. Early one morning, having landed at Heathrow, I spotted a fellow looking through a copy of the Sun newspaper he’d taken from the rack, and showing no sign of going the cashier. “Having a free read, are we?” I asked. He blushed beautifully did Wayne Rooney, the spud-faced nipper. Made my day.
Best wishes,
Howard
Posted: May 10th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | No Comments »
Dear Philippa,
So. The people have spoken. I did quite well, but not quite well enough. I came fourth of eight. Results as follows:
Paul Andrews (Independent) 639 votes: ELECTED
Lindsay Burr (LibDem) 559 votes: ELECTED
Ann Hopkinson (Tory) 518 votes: ELECTED
Howard Croft (Independent) 451 votes: NOT ELECTED
I won’t bore you with details of four losers behind me, except to point out that
I gave a jolly good thrashing to two LibDems, a Tory and a Labour candidate. I was busy in London on polling day, attending to weighty matters, possibly a blunder but I didn’t fancy strutting about in the market place surrounded by no-hopers in silly rosettes. I did manage to get back in time to vote. The polling station was deserted apart from a damp LibDem candidate stood outside in the rain, and two bored clerks inside who looked like they needed a drink. I told them that the eight candidates looked to me like a bunch of Moabite wash pots and it probably wasn’t worth voting at all. They said that I was entitled to take such a view and to act upon it if I wished. I voted anyway. I didn’t attend the count but chose instead to stupefy myself by drinking a couple of bottles of a rather robust Italian red with my clever economist friend.
Incredulous at the news of my humiliation, I swiftly called a meeting to analyse the results. I enclose a photograph of me conducting a post-mortem with old friend, and Michael Gambon look-alike, Tim. The gravity of the situation is written all over our stricken faces.
What went wrong? For a start I was the victim of low tactics on the part of one of my opponents, who falsely attributed to me views I do not hold; this may have cost me votes. This dishonourable campaign was lent plausibility, perhaps, by my friendship with the outgoing Chairman of the Council and my principal supporter who indeed holds these views, but the credibility my candidature gained from his public endorsement by far outweighed any possible lost votes.
There must have been something else.
Well, it’s this. I am by nature a frivolous person, which by posing as a serious fellow and striking attitudes suggestive of a mature and reflective character I seek to conceal, with a considerable want of success even my friends would say. The electors may have detected this flaw and looked elsewhere. The 450 who did vote for me may have spotted it too, indeed several mentioned it but didn’t seem to mind. I clearly remember my schoolmasters frequently pointing out my lack of gravitas in my school reports: ”He is not a serious boy”.
There it is, then. I expect that Fiona will soon get used to people pointing her out at the shops, saying “There she goes, poor woman – the loser’s wife. What a life hers must be!” And as for me, I can erase all the pencil entries from my diary, relating to future Council commitments and look forward to tackling demanding beefy reds with the economist.
Regards
Howard
Image ©TonyGMurray Photography
Posted: May 1st, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | Comments Off
![Howard-Croft-smiling1_edited-224x300[1]](http://blog.thefutureperfectcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/Howard-Croft-smiling1_edited-224x30012.jpg "Howard-Croft-smiling1_edited-224x300[1]")
Dear Philippa,
Only a week to go. Easter was very disruptive, of course, but I enjoyed a very happy day on Sunday eating a turkey with friends. Rosie the dog was ill so it wasn’t all festivity. After a few days she rallied and is now doing well.
In my election brochure – leaflet is a better word – I called for greater transparency in planning decisions, and suggested that they should be evidence-based rather than, as they appear, capricious. This seems to have struck a chord. I recently came across a case where a chapel, which had been converted unsympathetically to a dwelling many years ago, had passed on to the next generation and the new owner had submitted a planning application to improve the building.
The application was rejected on the grounds that this was not a chapel, but a barn. The alterations should therefore reflect the building’s history, said the planning officer, who offered an alternative vision, which was mostly awful, but it did, sort of, look like a barn. The applicant questioned the barn designation and was told that, because it was in a field it had to be a barn. The fact that people had been singing hymns in it for two hundred years, the presence of “church windows” and other ecclesiastical features, none of this was persuasive to the planners. One wonders if they ever visited the site, or consulted old OS maps, or asked a farmer if he would house cattle in it or store hay there. As you know, my house started life as an Elizabethan school – the First Elizabeth that is – but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to be told by the planners that it looks like a wool sorting shed and that I should modify it accordingly.
My own dealings with the planners were not difficult. As I considered what I would like to do I met the planning officer to discuss it, had another, on-site, meeting at which I was given guidance as to what was likely to be approved and what not and drew up plans accordingly and got what I wanted. Now, I hear, we shall have to pay for such informal advice. This is outrageous. They are behaving as if the planning department is a service that we choose to use, whereas it is in fact a jurisdiction to which we are obliged to submit, which has considerable legal powers. After all, if just by saying so they can declare a building, whose stones have been hallowed by two centuries of prayer, to be a barn, what can they not amuse themselves by doing. How would it be if we popped into the local police station to check on the legal requirements for child restraint in a car, only to be told “that’ll be fifty quid, guv”?
Anyway, only a week to go. I have decided not to go to the count – hanging about in a draughty town hall until four in the morning is not for me, not with my dicky bladder. If necessary I’ll get a doctor’s note.
By the way, my posters at the tip have been removed by order of the Council. They were put up at the start of the race and the Council ethics officers sprang into action after three weeks. I gather a Council employee visited the tip to deposit his rubbish, saw the posters, and fainting with shock ran to his boss who rang the contractor and issued the order, plus I gather a £50 fine. My instinct was to offer the pay the fine, but that would be electoral corruption. Local elections are every jobsworth’s dream.
Best wishes,
Howard
Posted: April 19th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | Comments Off
![Howard-Croft-smiling1_edited-224x300[1]](http://blog.thefutureperfectcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/Howard-Croft-smiling1_edited-224x30011.jpg "Howard-Croft-smiling1_edited-224x300[1]")
Dear Philippa,
A brief hiatus in the feverish quest for votes was provided four days ago by the arrival of my granddaughter, Imogen. Her older brother Archie, four, has been calling her Tilly-Lily ever since he was informed that she was in the pipe-line, but no-one seems to know why. Even more mysterious is his decision at the weekend to stop calling me grandad and instead to address me as Smelly Bottom. Anyway, I made the 600 mile round trip to view the new child, as you do. Mercifully, she slept throughout my entire visit.
Back to the election. Easily the most contentious issue on the doorsteps is the widely hated sale of the Wentworth Street car park, allegedly for a cool five million, with plans to build on the site a large superstore, widely believed to be a Sainsbury’s. I hear that another candidate is putting it about that I am in favour of this; a currently serving councillor, who voted in favour, is known to be one of my friends and from this, I suppose, a faulty deduction has been made by someone who can have little insight into the nature of friendship.
There are two issues here: the sale of the car park, and the introduction of a superstore. I am opposed to both. I am uneasy, to put it mildly, to see the Council trouser five million; once they get their unreliable fingers on this sort of booty it would tempt them away from their determination to find the economies and efficiencies required of them in these difficult times. Further, it is likely that the population of the town will increase significantly in the coming decade or so, which will increase the demand for car parking spaces; the loss of Wentworth Street would mean that there would be no all-day parking in Malton. Except, of course, the hundred or so spots at the Council offices; these are free, but sadly available only to Council officers and employees. Other workers in the town will have to follow the Council’s pious exhortations to cycle (in the interests averting global warming and combating obesity, of course); it would be gratifying to see the Council providing leadership here.
As to the superstore idea – frankly it’s a mess. Until recently we had two: a Morrison’s and a Netto. In the past year the Council has given permission to Morrison’s to almost double in size, and planning consent to the building of two further low-ticket stores. If the ”Sainsbury’s” goes ahead we shall have five supermarkets, serving a total population of less than fifteen thousand. The incoherent dishing out of planning permission to supermarket chains, taking no evident account of the impact of mounting fleets of heavy goods vehicles supplying their outlets, strains credulity.
The beneficial effects claimed for the arrival of a superstore are based on comparisons with three other towns that seem to me to bear little weight – Wetherby, Beverley and Northallerton. These are prosperous towns that were targeted by retail giants precisely because of their prosperity. Beverley, it is said, is where Hull keeps its money; Wetherby is in the so-called Golden Triangle where property is as expensive as it gets in the North, and Northallerton is where large numbers of high-end employers are located. These advantages did not follow superstores, rather the other way round. Malton is an agricultural centre with relatively low wage opportunities. The comparisons are bogus. A supermarket to compete with Morrison’s will be needed, and it will come, but not yet. I suspect that if a valuable and saleable public asset did not exist in the town the Council would not be running around looking for some way to find a site to build a superstore. This is about the five million. Local people have not forgotten the attempt to sell the police station years ago releasing valuable land for a developer who would build a new nick – on Wentworth Street car park!
Anyway, none of this is of interest to Tilly-Lily whose only concerns are food, sleep and how soon will Smelly Bottom show up again with another nifty outfit for a nifty little girl.
Best wishes,
Howard
Posted: April 13th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | No Comments »
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Dear Philippa
The action is stepping up a little. The past week or so I have delivering leaflets to some of the two thousand dwellings on my patch – done about half. It must be getting on for fifty years since I worked as a student relief postman at Christmas, which I did for many years, but I have not forgotten how beastly some letter boxes can be. Some that function like gamekeepers’ traps to snare unwary fingers, others set at ground level to torment the lower back, and those too small to admit anything larger than a teabag. These days there are new refinements to challenge the equanimity of the postie: slots that have set inside rows of stiff bristles that defy all but the most rigid items, and a significant percentage screwed firmly shut.
Also new since the sixties are all the stern notices people stick onto their letter boxes: No Free Papers or Junk Mail! Think Rubbish!; Doorstop Sellers Beware! You are Not Welcome Here!; Do Not Knock Unless You Have an Appointment! Do Not Incur Our Wrath by Knocking! I have obeyed all these strict warnings, especially the one’s about junk mail - I know junk mail when I have a fistful of it, and my leaflets do, after all, bear my name and address.
On the whole the people I ran into were friendly and interested, or friendly and uninterested, and I encountered no hostility – I even occasionally saw my own poster displayed in windows, a slightly disconcerting experience seeing one’s photograph popping up. This is how Kate Middleton must feel when she pops into the newsagents and glances at the magazine rack. Like Kate, I am trying not to let it turn my head.
The assault on my posters in the shops continues. I have my suspicions of course, but I cannot prove who is behind it because people are afraid to name names. One clue, perhaps, lies in the words of one shopkeeper: “menacing pressure is being brought to bear by a sinister figure from the dark side”. I knew that politics is a grubby business, but that it is also furtive has taken me by surprise. It has been said that attacking Nick Clegg is like clubbing seal pups, and I feel like a seal pup.
What about the issues? There are many that face the town (few seem to be interested in issues facing the District), but invariably the first one, sometimes the only one that has been raised with me is The Wentworth Street Car Park. More about this when I recover my strength after all the pavement bashing, and the liniment has worked its magic on my skinny legs.
Many memories have flooded back from my years as a Christmas relief postman, but one puzzles me; I distinctly recall trudging through deep snow as I made my rounds, but I have no recollection otherwise of a white Christmas. I also remember that there were many invitations to “come in for a cuppa, dear” from clearly bored housewives, but not this time round – but that was in Hull, particularly in Aberdeen Street, and I was younger then and had sturdier legs.
Best wishes
Howard
Posted: April 5th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | No Comments »
Dear Philippa,
Last week I spent a day going round the retail businesses in the town asking people to display my splendid election poster. I started at places where I am known as a regular customer, with excellent results. The cold-calling was more mixed, with about half I think agreeing to help, and those who refused did so because they did not want to be seen as politically partial. My resemblance – fancied resemblance in my view, but clearly a widely shared delusion - to Alf Garnett is a definite asset.
So my face is to be seen at vital locations, such as barbers, newsagents and so on. No sign yet of my opponents, who are a little slow off the mark; exhausted perhaps after four years of office. Maybe they are wiser than me, letting me run the risk of peaking early then nipping smartly ahead at the finish. But I have an ace in the hole – a new grand-daughter due on 11th April, just the right moment to update my website.
The bad news is that some of my posters are being torn down. One retailer appears to have received “a phone call”, following which he removed the two posters he had placed earlier. But on the other hand, a couple of others, on hearing about this, removed theirs from internal display to more prominent window locations. Perhaps I am doing something right. Reminds me of a colleague during my teaching days who, when he was standing for some public office or other, complained to me that he had “had increment pushed through (his) letter box”. Obviously he meant something other, but it did reveal, that little Freudian slip, the preoccupation of teachers with their pay.
Easily the most exciting development has been the alteration of my election posters that appear in the window of Linton’s Pet Shop in the market place. Done in the spirit of April Fool’s Day by the ladies in the shop, by doctoring two of my posters they implied that Alf Garnett, Sean Connery and I might be triplets separated at birth. It caused a sensation in the Market Place, attracting much interest in the pet shop and in me. I expect that Alf and Sean (as they insist I call them) will get a few write-in votes on May 5th. As you will see from the photo – we could be sisters.
Best wishes,
Howard
Posted: March 25th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft | No Comments »
Regular readers of Howard’s columns will recall that he has decided to dip his toes into the maelstrom that is local politics and he will be sending back to us regular dispatches charting his progress between now and the local elections on 5 May
Dear Philippa,
A bit of a confused start. When enquiries were made on my behalf at the District Council HQ as to the earliest date candidates are permitted actively to campaign we were told, verbally, Friday 25th of March. On reflection, and in light of other deadline dates that I had in writing, I wondered if this might not be correct so I toddled down there myself and asked again. There is no mandated “not before” start date – we can do as we like; the helpful lady from the Elections Department who told me this was a bit flustered as she was about to go and train a hundred people in fifteen minutes. When I told her that incorrect information had been previously given out she didn’t seem very interested, saying only “not by anyone in my department”. I thought – but did not say – you don’t work for your department, you work for our Council. Not a battle worth fighting I think, and not one likely to be won either.
But, much has been achieved. Fiona built me a
website in about two days, which has been widely admired, and together we have written and revised leaflets and posters with which to litter the district. I collected them from the printer today. I’m a bit worried about the amount of red that has come up on my photograph (above); I look like a bit of a drinker. What I had hoped for, a resemblance to David Niven in his younger days, has not been achieved but instead I look like an enraged Alf Garnett. Still, it will have to do, I can’t afford to reprint, and anyway even with modern print technology and expensive German machines there are limits to what can be done.
I’m off to the Royal Oak tonight with a couple posters and a few leaflets where, in addition to drinking a bottle of Shiraz and eating a pie, I’ll try to perfect a style of patter that will excite the voters. I am thinking the shy charm approach will suit me best, with a hint of consumptive fatigue thrown in. That should do the trick.
The candidates from the two main parties, and from one that no longer exists, will be sporting rosettes in approved team colours but I shall be in episcopal purple. I bought them from a local saddlery that supplies them for horse-riding events – the roundel at the centre carries the word First, which I had thought to cover with a small photo of myself but given the bucolic effect I wonder if it’s wise.
Tomorrow I’m on the stump trying to persuade local shops to put up my poster.
Best wishes
Howard
I am often asked if I enjoy retirement, my usual response being that I don’t especially recommend it. I was fortunate to have a career, as a publisher, that provided lots of colleagues most of whom I liked, apart from a few snakes. I also spent a great deal of time with authors and editors, mostly medical practitioners, whose company I greatly enjoyed. There is much there that I miss.
