Yorkshire Pudding
"O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." - Hamlet Act II scene ii
27 March 2024
Dropout
26 March 2024
Updates
25 March 2024
HMRC
As a former government employee myself, I never needed to pay much heed to taxation for I was taxed at source and it was not necessary to submit tax forms at the end of each financial year. It was all done for me.
However, this year I have a couple of tax issues to address via HMRC. In this process I have discovered that on their system I am still listed as being employed by Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council. HMRC sent me a letter about the matter last week. It was a big surprise as I was employed by Rotherham between January 1978 and August 31st 1980 and never since.
Last Friday morning I tried to phone HMRC about this but our wireless house phone ran out of charge after thirty minutes. I had been kept waiting all that time. This morning I tried again with a fully charged phone but again it ran out of charge so I tried our old wired house phone.
I sat there for fifty minutes until finally, finally I was put through to a human being in the north east of England. As I waited I listened to mind-numbing muzak and an intermittent recorded message: "Thanks for waiting. Your call is important to us. Please continue to hold. An adviser will answer your call as soon as possible". You have probably heard similar false claims yourself while waiting at the end of a call.
Earlier I had heard, "Please note, this call may be recorded for monitoring and training purposes". When I hear that I always think I should be warning them that I will be doing the same!
Anyway the adviser with the north eastern accent dealt with the matter as best he could before telling me that I would need to get in touch with Rotherham Council myself to request a P45 termination of employment certificate - from 44 years ago!
On the internet, Rotherham Council seem to be highly skilled in hiding contact details and building "chat" systems that do not address the questions you want to ask. However, I persevered and finally managed to get through to their Human Resources department where I spoke to a helpful young man who noted my request and promised it would be dealt with in the next few days. Truthfully, I would not put much money on that happening.
The time I have spent on the phone dealing with a matter that was not of my own making is time I will never be able to get back. "All of our advisers are very busy at the moment". Well employ and train some more then!
24 March 2024
Quiztime
Once upon a time, when I was a teacher, the last lesson of the term would frequently involve a general knowledge quiz - just for fun. In fact the classes usually pressed me to make this happen - "Can we have a quiz sir? Please!" As years passed by, my expectations were lowered but it never ceased to amaze me what teenagers did not know. I mean, most of them had been in school for ten years and yet I sometimes wondered - what had they learnt? I guess that one of the main pre-requisites of general knowledge quizzing is curiosity - the urge to know stuff but many of my charges seemed to fully lack that trait.
I was always dumbing down because as a quizmaster you certainly do not want quiz teams to feel entirely hopeless. You want them to score with some correct answers - make them feel they're achieving something at least.
Here are ten questions that are typical of those I used to pose in those bygone days when King Charles III was merely a prince:
- Prince Charles has two brothers and a sister. Please name one of them.
- What is the name of the ocean between Europe and North America?
- In nursery rhymes who ate curds and whey while sitting on a tuffet?
- Who was the drummer for The Beatles?
- A baby dog is a puppy but what is a baby fox called?
- London is Great Britain's capital city but what is the capital of Scotland?
- Which American pop singer made albums called "Bad" and "Thriller"?
- What is Fred Flintstone's wife called?
- Which famous English playwright wrote"Hamlet" and "Julius Caesar"?
- How do you say, "Thank you very much" in French?
Entirely separate - here's a photo of Ian and his Sheffield people after brunching today in "The Wild Card" on Ecclesall Road. Phoebe, Margot, Frances and Stewart were also there as well as Sarah and Zach. It was so great that they could all get together and this picture gives me much joy. Soon afterwards, Ian had to head back to London.
23 March 2024
Birthday
It was my wife Shirley's sixty fifth birthday today. The best gift of all was to have the members of her immediate family around her.
Yesterday, Ian and Sarah drove up from London with Baby Zachary. It was his first ever visit to Yorkshire and clearly he loved it because he couldn't stop drooling. They came up in their fairly new electric vehicle - a big black Volvo replete with technology, lights and screens. Whereas London boasts many public charging points for electric vehicles, Sheffield and indeed all other northern cities have very few facilities for such cars. However, this morning Ian located a speedy charging point by the KFC on Queens Road. It took two hours to get up to full charge.
Today we all went out to "The Rising Sun" on Fulwood Road for a late lunch. Shirley and I, Frances and Stewart, Little Phoebe and Baby Margot were of course joined by Ian, Sarah and Zach. We enjoyed tasty meals with our beers, wine and apple juice though two members of our party opted for milk. Four of us chose the homemade steak and vegetable pie with chips, gravy and mushy peas. Phoebe had beans on toast and Ian had the vegan burger with chips and salad.
How lovely it was to be with our family - all comfortable in each other's company - with our three darling grandchildren. You never know what the future might hold but today was a day to feel blessed and fortunate.
Much later, back at our house, Ian ordered an entirely vegan Chinese meal from "Wawin Chinese". It was delicious and there was plenty of it. In fact, I would say that too much was ordered. The excess is currently in the fridge and I guess we might have some of it at lunchtime tomorrow.
I am so sorry that there are no pictures of the family event. You see, because the others all have expensive camera phones, I decided to leave my own camera at home. Instead, at the top there's a picture of a removals van that Shirley snapped on Friday morning. She was helping a friend to move house. Oddly, the van had been driven over from Hull where my football team, The Tigers are based. Hull is sixty five miles from here
22 March 2024
Catherine
Once, by the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, Thailand, I threw some bread into the water at a point where stone steps rise towards a riverside temple. Almost immediately, a congealing, writhing scrum of desperate, gluttonous fish rose up from the murky depths to compete for that bread. Audibly, their tails and fins slapped the brown water.
Think of Catherine Middleton as the bread and disreputable newspapers and social media outlets as the greedy fish - feeding with impunity. Manufacturing tales, promoting lies, endlessly speculating. Filling columns, contributing to the unholy din, mocking and disparaging, saying what the hell they wanted to say.
And now that Princess Catherine has told her sad and ongoing personal health tale, do any of those who were in the feeding frenzy pause for a moment to say "Sorry!"? No, of course they don't. They would probably prefer more of the same because truth does not sit comfortably in their agendas.
Sitting on a wooden park bench, Catherine looked older and thinner as she gazed into the camera. She has obviously been to hell and back - not that the voracious fish mob would care.
I'm not a royalist and for large parts of my life I thought of The Royal Family as an archaic encumbrance that symbolised historical privilege, preventing ordinary Britons from breaking down the barriers to success. My views have mellowed somewhat over the years. I think of Prince William as a decent, intelligent and compassionate man who fell in love with a good woman when he was at university in Scotland. Their three children seem adorable.
William and Catherine have done their royal duties for this country. They didn't run away to California. They were steadfast and uncomplaining, supporting good causes and trying to make a difference.
The least they could have expected was some kindness, some respect, some quietness when cancer crept into their lives. Instead, they were met with a deluge of intrusive nastiness. I wish them both well and hope that with the assistance of medical people, Catherine can leave this nightmare behind her and finally get the all clear.
21 March 2024
Norton
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