UTI’s.
Non stop spasms.
Dire lack of sleep.

That’s been my life for quite a while now.
Sure, I press on and do stuff, but F me, it’s wearing.
SCI – the gift that keeps on giving. It just gets more complicated the longer you live, seems to me.

Anyway (!) what I am looking forward to is my new ( surprise ) brother meeting quite a few of his new ( surprise ) family in Wales soon.
Having organised a party, my brother, his wife and my 2 nieces will soon meet quite a few people they didn’t know existed until recently.
Party on…!

Suz and I have been to see Franz Ferdinand in Shepherds Bush and my friend Flipper and I saw Backstroke at the Donmar, to name just a couple of things I’ve been up to.
But tbh I’ve been in a bit of a semi Zombie state for a while through lack of sleep.

I’ve changed my diet to see if that lessens my spasms, as well as gone on different medications… but nothing seems to help.

What’s a fella to do?
It’s certainly testing me, I’ll tell you that.

I’ve just been to Brentford vs Everton and I invited my refugee ( now with right to remain ) buddy, Omer.
I met Omer about 4 years ago, not long after he’d fled Turkey ( where he’d been jailed for writing something truthful about the President Erdogan )

Omer’s English vocabulary has improved no end since I met him, but his pronunciation is possibly even worse than it was 4 years ago.
I always tell him the same thing when I see him – sort out your English. Listen to well spoken Brits on the BBC etc and you’ll be far more employable. Somehow though it doesn’t seem to have sunk in.

I’ve been here for decades. Imagine if I said ‘ come by year will you butt and we’ll go out now in a minute ‘ .. just like I used to.
I’d never have got a job.

I had to listen to the BBC News and programs like To the Manor Born.

Look at me now – posh as anything.

I’ve just been to Brentford vs Everton and I invited my refugee ( now with right to remain ) buddy, Omer.
I met Omer about 4 years ago, not long after he’d fled Turkey ( where he’d been jailed for writing something truthful about the President Erdogan )

Omer’s English vocabulary has improved no end since I met him, but his pronunciation is possibly even worse than it was 4 years ago.
I always tell him the same thing when I see him – sort out your English. Listen to well spoken Brits on the BBC etc and you’ll be far more employable. Somehow though it doesn’t seem to have sunk in.

I’ve been here for decades. Imagine if I said ‘ come by year will you butt and we’ll go out now in a minute ‘ .. just like I used to.
I’d never have got a job.

I had to listen to the BBC News and programs like To the Manor Born.

Look at me now – posh as anything.

Lovely to see my Uni mucker, Charlie P, the other day. We went to the theatre ( well a comedy night at a theatre ). Like 2 old queens going out. Except straight fellas.

It was Hamilton Jones, who fires off hundreds of one liners, most of them clever. Often he’d be halfway through the next joke before I got the last one. It was like a funny intelligence test.
Ha!Milton, his show is called- and not anything to do with the Founding Fathers, or a play featuring a lot of actors of completely the wrong race for the parts.

I’d had very little sleep the night before, which didn’t help much. That along with a lot of red wine at the top of The Shard on a date, no less.

I think I was soaked through 6 times in a row of going out. That kinda puts you off going out and I’m glad I’ve got a very nice TV as I’ve never used it so much.
Apparently it gets warmer next week. Thank F for that.

I’m seeing that new Bridget Jones soon. I’m not a particular fan of the BJ films, but the MILF / Cougar thing is gaining such traction.
Apparently MILF is the most searched word on porn sites. What’s that about? When I was 21, 23 was too old lady for me. A grown up woman of 50 would have been more of a nightmare proposition than a fantasy. I think young men have difficulty pulling their own age girls because half of them are now more interested in other girls.
It’s clearly a good time to be a girl/ middle aged woman, and a shite time to be a young bloke.
I think every woman I’ve talked to online has been propositioned by at least 5000 twenty two year olds.

Great to see Roy the Boy the other day, and SuzySue at another theatre thing called Sathnam Sanghera How British imperialism changed the globe. Very interesting and very well balanced. No ancestors were harmed in the making of this production. For a change.

Me n Suz are going to Richard 11 tomorrow and this time i know it’s in ye old Shakespearian.
So this time im getting familiar with the plot before i go. Ha!

I went with my friend SuzySue to see that new film, Baby Girl, the other day.
A tale of sexual dynamics and power… it was.

You’ll have to go and see it for yourself ( and watch it carefully ) for it all to sink in properly.
It might help if you are getting on a bit ( well over 48 ish ( and maybe it’s best if you’ve been married for quite a long time as well ) for you to really get it.

The main take away though/ the top tip for the guys out there …is that if your relationship needs a big injection of excitement… then a regular saucer of milk given to the Mrs at bedtime might actually work wonders.

Remember where you heard it first.

Unless you’ve already seen the film, in which case you already knew, and have stocked up on Full Cream already.

Having recently watched a Jordan Peterson speech where he said that all people have the potential to be very evil concealed within them, and as a proof of that to read a book called Ordinary Men, I have been.

It’s a detailed account of The Final Solution activities in Poland during WW2 under Hitler.
It’s jaw droppingly awful from start to finish.

Many more Jews were ( just ) shot in mass executions, than died in Camps. The numbers are vast.. and in the book the numbers are listed … for hours on end. Two hundred and 14 here, three hundred and 73 the next day in the same forest etc etc. The 4 metre deep holes dug by the Jews that were about to fall forward into them, having been shot in the back of the head whilst standing on the edge of the hole, or the orderly way that the next ten Jews were told to lie on top of the last 10 ( now dead ) Jews so that as many would fit in the hole as possible… 10 rows deep of dead and dying people, those not quite dead being crushed by the weight of the many on top of them.
The searches of forests and fields for Jews hidden in underground tunnels, grenades tossed in , those coming out machine gunned, the fleeing chased until captured and then shot in the head.

It really does make you understand why Israel I is so uncompromising in its self defence against all aggression.
Clearly the destruction in Gaza is awful. The casualty numbers for the whole conflict thus far is equivalent to just a week of Final Solution murders of the Jews in WW2.

The point that Jordan P was making though is that the execution squads were largely made up of non army members, just ‘ Ordinary Men ‘ given the instruction to get on with the elimination of Jews.. and then the absolute enthusiasm in which they carried out their ‘job’. Not a handful of men, but hundreds of men who’d previously had no history of violence.

There have been innumerable conflicts where neighbours have coldly killed neighbours of a different ethnicity in adherence to ‘the cause ‘.
And of course there will be again.
And again.
And again.

Historically the killers have been men, but i imagine that will change and women will also take part in the slaughters.

Go equality.

But what a good day.

I spent the day with my first ever pre registration student.. Arti.. back then she was 23. Now she’s got two 6 foot sons.
She’s a Liverpool supporter… and well, for 88 minutes the ickle Brentford team held the League leaders to no score.. then it went a bit tits up.

Doh.

And then I took my lovely refugee buddy to the theatre in Richmond.

😊

Just seen this play.
A Girl on the Train, it was called.

Basically it was about this bloke.
He had a wife, an ex wife, and he had a mistress.

In the end he was run over by a train.

Moral of the story?

Too many women.

It kills you in the end.

The other day I was going along the pavement and I suddenly I found myself enveloped in a combination of fabric and something very hard which had whacked me in the face.
For a few seconds I was totally trapped in this thing.. unable to move enough to escape it.
Transpired this bloke had ‘ not seen me ‘ enough to open a huge pavement umbrella as I went slowly by.
I’ve had a sore neck ever since ( as well as a cut on my forehead ).
Annoyingly the bloke seemed to find it funny..
evidently very unaware that if i wasn’t trapped in a bloody wheelchair, I’d have picked up said large umbrella and knocked him over with it.

Anyway (!) since then I’ve driven to Stoke Mandeville hospital and had the maximum amount legally allowed ( apparently ) injected into my para spinal muscles and my quads and hamstrings.
F me, my leg rigidity is ridiculous and nothing is working to reduce it. Four days after the injections and there isn’t much change. Work that one out – injections that knock out the function of a muscle don’t seem to work on me.
I had enough Botox to service all the ladies in Chiswick… and there’s no real difference thus far. Doh.
I’m being put on yet another/ different medication that perhaps might help… but who knows.
Aside from my medical issues.. as usual I continue to be a theatre luvvy. I went to see Sigourney Weaver in Drury Lane on Friday. It was The Tempest ( Shakespeare ).
I’d wrongfully assumed that it would be an interpretation of the story set in a modern world… but it wasn’t. Full on 16th century script.
If you speak ye old English, you’d have been fine . Note to self to find out before you go how it’s going to be, to prevent general mystification.
However the theatre itself was absolutely beautiful- just architecturally stunning… so there was that.
I came back by road rather than Tube. It was minus 5 and I don’t think I’ve ever been more covered in grit and salt in my life.
Tricky to clean it off without more movement than i have… another note to self – get the Tube when the conditions are awful. There’s just something about me that says ‘ go on, give it a go mate ‘.
Note to self – ignore myself a lot more.

Brentford’s winning ways seem to have stopped.
Tonight it’s Man City and on Saturday it’s Liverpool. Two dead easy matches then. It might be a case of just getting pleasure from the skills of the players in the opposition team… which obviously makes me not a football fan. You aren’t supposed to do that.

I rejoined the Royal Geograpical Society for this year. Blimey the talk last night was dire though. I think the fella winged it with a few slides and 20 minutes prep.. but he had no talent for winging it. The talks are supposed to be an hour long and most speakers run over a bit. This bell end ran dry after 40 minutes, even with 10 minutes of thanking people for letting him be there.
He needed to be taken out with a pavement umbrella. It wouldn’t be a loss to the world of public speaking.
Let’s hope next week sees an improvement.

Happy New Year though.

What a lovely Christmas!
Quiet, but just fine.
Loved having my two foreign brothers with me on the big day. Very funny playing Monopoly with an Iranian and a Turk… just to hear them trying to say Marylebone Station and Leicester Square…

And lovely to see my bro, Stu, and his wife Mandy for a pre Christmas lunch in Brentford.
Top day!

And two pantomimes! Both with SuzySue.
Well, one and a quarter actually, because I got the start time wrong by 2 hours for the second one.
What a bell end.
We saw all of it in Hammersmith, but only half an hour in Richmond.
Oh no you didn’t, I hear you say.

Oh yes I blimmin did.
🤷😂