Lying is a Habit

I have come to the conclusion, watching Boris Johnson duck and dive at questions, which he is not comfortable answering, that lying is an acquired skill. He is trying hard but he is too lazy and incompetent to do it properly. When he lies his body language, his stuttering, hemming and hawing, give him away. 'Go back and repeat that,' I feel like saying to him. 'That's clumsy.' Teaching habits don't die after all.
  At the moment he churns out lists of things his Government is going to do. 30 million trees a year. That's a lot of trees. I can't see him out there with shovel and spade. I can't see Gove there either. A few lessons from Corbyn would come in handy.
  The Press is gleeful - Johnson has gone up a few points in the polls (which are mostly fairy stories anyway.) This was achieved by dropping Farage in deep nitrogenous stuff. (Couldn't happen to a nicer person.)
  Give them time, I think, and the two will destroy each other. They might even do it without help from anyone at all. There's Cummings, his poltergeist, at Johnson's shoulder, remember.
  I wonder -- will we hear about the alleged bribery of Brexit candidates any time soon? Or will it go like the Russia Interference report?
  Our Press has a great deal to answer for.

Priti Patel at her very Smug Best.

Trust Priti Patel to add shabby to confused. What are the immigrants already here to think? Who will be welcomed and who tossed out? Who are the folk who have lived here for decades that are being shown the door?.And the fast-tracking of NHS personnel that Johnson promises -- from where, how many and how soon? Above all what happened to that magic figure of £350,000 million a week floated around by the Leave lobby at the referendum? May did not deliver that to the NHS and Johnson's word is not worth a roll of school toilet paper. The kind like tracing paper which can't wipe anything, leave alone a baby's behind.
   So, today the figures show that A and E waiting times are becoming more lethal with each passing month. Patel can mutter and mumble about immigration all she wants, but the country is concerned about our very special NHS, not the immigration figures right now. Aside from the A and E, the waiting times have increased for everything else too: G P appointments, surgery, test results...
   The Tories are getting a little frantic. In spite of having the PRESS, Television, ONS, Yougov and lying pollsters on their side. A little honesty could come in handy.
   Today I saw a video of Corbyn hugging a woman whose house had been flooded -- she was trying to come to terms with five feet of water in her house. Can you imagine Johnson in that role? He wouldn't know where to begin. Cummings has no advice to give him on that matter because he is another geek bred to luxury. And Johnson has to get instructions from Cummings to breathe.
   I would love the Labour Party to win this election, but I am totally unaware about what the people think -- the obfuscation from the Press is too much. It is like the Tories are writing the headlines for BBC. SAD!!
   This country is desperate for change. I hope the voters realize that Tories will be 'more of the same.' We need Labour to execute policies that will provide more equality, more compasion, and more hope.

My sedentary contribution to the Labour election effort - 1

The one above means that I intend to write a blog every other day; so there will be many more. In the 2010 election I went door-stepping near by my house in posh-Purley all on my own. The dogs barked at me and I retreated in a funk. In 2017, I dropped a few leaflets off in the door flaps. Now I am too feeble to do even that. But I can sit on a chair and express my outrage.
   Yesterday the dirty double was completed -- and what a double. Johnson and Farage. A serial liar and a racist. The racist changes his mind oftener than Chuka Umunna changes parties. And Trump holds the strings. Except for the knighthoods. Who holds the strings there? I wonder.
   I stopped looking at the BBC television news because the bias in favour of Boris Johnson and his Conservatives are so pronounced, I am near to puking. Sky is only marginally better, but there are a few honest journalist there occasionally.
   And as all this is going on, I am wondering about the men, women and children sleeping rough this month and onward in the freezing nights. I am also thinking about the mountain of unnecessary packaging, companies like Amazon and Aladdin will use, to distract from the cost of their goods. There will be tons of bubble-wrap and polystyrene all over the country and wrapping paper enough to build houses with. I wrote a blog about this last year, but my three-and-a-half readers can hardly change the world.
   I was in the West End a month ago and a mother and three babies were camping on the pavement;  the babies were all under five years in age. How did she feed them, bathe them, keep them warm? I tossed her some money to salve my conscience; she was too harassed to notice.
   Once upon a time we were a compassionate country. Now the inequality is obscene.
   Labour will redress the balance. We need the terrible Tories out. OUT. OUT.
   

The Booker Shenanigans

I started reading Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo day before yesterday and finished it at a gallop yesterday evening. It was clever, funny, informed,beautifully written, and brought the whole black experience in our country to life, tongue in cheek. Having lived in Nigeria for five years and in several African countries for a total of twenty-five years of my working life, the book was like going back home.
   A week ago, I read The Testament by Margaret Atwood. Apparently it shared the 2019 Booker prize with Girl, Woman, Other.  The judges decided the two books were so equal in literary merit, so inseparable in this respect, that they had to split the prize and give it to the two women equally.
   I read Booker shortlists as a matter of religion almost. As soon as the list is announced my son will find the lot and stagger in with them. And there have been serious disappointments along the way. Last year's Lincoln in the Bardo was a let down. I enjoyed The Fisherman by Obioma and Arundathi Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Very political, could do with a little less of that, but well-written and researched.
   This year I started with TheTestament. It is arid, directionless, with cardboard characters and situated nowhere. There are no real people or any real place. There is nowhere to go.
   Atwood's Handmaiden was just about readable. I didn't enjoy it, but sometimes I plod through books because I believe I should. I am too low brow, I tell myself; perhaps I need to get used to this level of affected gibberish. The TV series, which I didn't watch made it famous. Did viewers enjoy the titivation of strange sexual mores, situations and the abnegation of women?
   It was a great disservice to Girl, Woman, Other to be bracketed with The Testament. What an outrage!
   Margaret Atwood is in the rarefied company of Carey, Mantell and Coutzee, we are told, having won two Bookers. Those authors wrote books that remain in my memory. I re-read them and marvel at their skill. Atwood, I can pass on any day of the week.

My Social Media Day

Wake up at 6 a m to the radio 4 news. Comfort myself that there are fewer lies than on B B C news on television. Contemplate the day ahead, but it won't go away, so decide to face it. Find the kettle.

   With the first cup of tea bag comes the beginning of my dialogue with social media. On my e mail promotions are my daily doses of nonsense. First there is the funeral instructions -- how did they find out I was an old woman? That is followed by Harry's razor. I don't have a beard - yet. For heaven's sake. Then the one of Scamfuck. A bit late in the day; I am disgusted, but my Ad Block is clearly not working.

   What kind of e mails do I get? A few from my Writers' Group, which are routine, a few from another writers' group, which are reminders to get something written. I am not a 'write to order' kind of person, so those can be safely ignored. My banks from India admonish me about lack of transactions, threats to close my accounts down.  They'll save me the effort of doing it myself.

  I browse Twitter and Facebook in that order. Look at Peston and decide Lewis Goodall is more useful. Where are we with Brex-bloody-it? Hopeless. I give Andrew Marr a safe berth; can't stand his oily lies.

 I have a few friends on Facebook who send daily greetings and wise quotes. I don't open them. Wish they'd just fester like the rest of us, fuming and fretting. I hate even more those posts of flowers and candles and ceremonial altars. Then I have the instructions: wish so-and-so a great birthday. Now I don't send birthday greetings to anyone Facebook has thrust in my face. Cheek! I wish there was a way of getting rid of Facebook and yet keeping in touch with my family in India. They are all there on Whats App and Facebook.

   Occasionally Facebook treads on my memories, mangles them, makes me sad. Who gave them the license?

   I get my own back on the media by cursing the Tories with vigour.

A single-mum's day

A SINGLE MUM'S (my daughter's) DAY

Today is D I Y day again, this time a bedroom is at risk. All the old cup boards and the wardrobe have been broken up and pulled out, and now recline in various positions, a little like Jacob Rees-

Mogg, on my back-patio.
   The cushions for the sitting room are done and already bear the imprints of my head, the cats, the dog and my books. The remotes for the T V are in the crevices. Good place to be as I don't need to search anywhere else.
   In between, the woman of the household cleaned and disinfected the cat pee. Pepper, our black-and white cat, which actually has a brain, (unlike Boo-boo, who is a large brain-dead fur-ball) had a confrontation with a big vehicle, some years ago, which she lost. She was a year old and pee is something she has no control over. She's pretty good, especially in finding me when I go to bed, to make me feel she absolutely adores me. This is a myth -- what she wants is a prolonged scratching of her chin and neck, to the accompaniment of loud purrs.
   The woman, my girl, then sat down and had a good cry over the lorry deaths, cursed Priti Patel and the Tory Government, and made me my third cup of tea. (Few more to come.)
   Later she will drive her teen daughter to Beckenham, to a friend's house, about 45 minutes each way, for a dose of half-term titivation.
   Meanwhile, what did senior Nana do?  Faffed around the garden after the gardener, watched the Brexit parade and gave staunch advice to daughter as she worked. I am good at that. Advice is normally largely ignored.
   It is a busy day. We have to get back in time to watch Liverpool play Napoli. The Press keeps telling us we have a poor away record. True, True... I wonder --  however did we win the Chaampions' Leagues last year?
   

Climate Disaster and Waste

When you have a grandchild, who is, as usual with grandchildren, rather more precious than she needs to be, you have to think seriously about what her world will be in two or three decades when her children occupy their habitat. And whose is this habitat, anyway? Surely not just for the human animal, when there are so many more animal and other species to cherish.

   Even in my household we cannot achieve the simple objective of each person doing their best to avoid plastic waste, for instance. My daughter and I religiously use our reusable shopping bags when we buy groceries, but my son forgets every time. Similarly, we order our milk in glass bottles, but I break one or two every now and then. That is my senile clumsiness. My son wants us to go back to plastic bottles and we had a small civil war over that. Mind you, he generally does the cleaning up, frig, floor and all over the kitchen when I shatter another one and has good cause to be angry. But the bigger picture in my mind will not allow plastic bottles again. I break a lot of other things as well. Mugs, jars... My sense of space appears dismal, so I don't drive very much these days either.

   Apropos of waste, I consider all the things we now consider routinely essential, compared to fifty years ago. Indeed I remember my surprise when I asked an American friend, in 1985, what she missed most in the African bush, while working in Makeni in Sierra Leone, she said it was disposable kitchen napkins. Jesus wept!

   I am no less guilty -- I am aware of all the things I take for granted in this junk-filled planet, which I managed without in my life in Thalassery, during the forties and fifties.

   In Thalassery, salt and sugar and such like came wrapped in old newspaper. Rice came in gunny bags. There were no ready-made clothes in the shops, so we bought cotton material and the tailor made my skirts and blouses. We had just enough clothes to get by. Now, if I go to our wardrobes, (wardrobes? That itself is a new concept.) I find the clothes crushed into the spaces, hangers doubling up for existence. We clear excess out every month and the Heart Foundation man takes away several cartons of clothes. But we seem to just replace the ones we give away.

   There is the other junk too. Birthday gifts and Christmas rubbish, Mother's Day and all else in the year. I have banned gifts and told my children to give the money to Shelter. They are not impressed.

   This is just a beginning of my waste-wail. More to come. I'm sorry, but this occupies a good deal of my withered brain-space. Till next week when I shall moan and murmur again.