To be ... beautiful or not to be ... beautiful

Samantha Brick's article in the Daily Mail, about woman disliking her for being so beautiful while airline pilots send her champagne, is a delight. Although no longer young, I was once mixing with princes, prime ministers, world-famous sportsmen, films start, and not a few beautiful woman, including the 1970 Miss World, Jennifer Hosten.

What strata of society does Samantha move in, where women are so jealous of her beauty they dislike her on sight? Definitely not top drawer. Beautiful women - and I emphasise the world beautiful - in my experience are as lovely on the inside as the out. If it is just the outer skin, people rarely find them beautiful and then they cold-shoulder them. I do hope that's not the reason why Samantha find herself out in the cold.

 To give her the benefit of the doubt, either she is writing the article tongue in cheek or she is seeking publicity - and that she has got in spades. I congratulate her on a job well-done.

Note to self:  But what if she really believes this. No way. Nice looking she is, but no show-stopper. I have seen women walk into a room and reduce it to total silence. Would Samantha even be noticed? 

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Frothing at the mouth

I try to erupt on Twitter but it's not a serious medium so blogging it has to be. So what's got me so riled?

I guess the fact that politicians never learn. In comes a new government and immediately they decide to change everything - no waiting to find out what actually works. A good headteacher changes nothing in the first year of a new appointment. The old adage ' if it ain't broke don't fix it' would save the government billions of wasted money - tax payers money naturally. But do they take notice - no.

So having decided to waste billions changing the health service which was at last becoming efficient, they have turned their attention to roads. Living in the country, thousands of us suffer from a lack of transport. Our last bus to Bath is 5.40 p.m. What happens to workers who finish at 6 p.m.? Cars are a life-line. And now they are talking toll roads! At least they aren't talking but exactly like gas, electricity etc. etc. etc. this is how it will end up. So I am angry. In times like this I wish we were more like the French - expressing disapproval by a visible presence on the streets.

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A Piece of Paper

I understood the great benefit of the computer society was getting rid of paper. The reverse has happened. Today, no one dare move without the right piece of paper.

At Bath station Saturday morning, the 8.13 for Paddington could not leave the terminus because one of the crew members had turned up for work without the right piece of paper! I guess it was his identity card. Wasn't there anybody on board that could vouch for him? So the railway came to a halt! Fortunately a crew member from the next train went in early and, eventually, 24 minutes behind time - the train appears!

In Sheltered Housing, carers can't change their schedule for an unexpected hospital release unless there is a care package in place to say they can! The only relative of the very ill can't be spoken to by medical staff because they don't have a piece of paper to say they can and the person concerned is too ill to write it.

I despair.
Throughout British society, paper comes first. No one can talk to you, do anything for you, take anyone anywhere, without that piece of paper saying they can! 

If fishing vessels had waited for the relevant piece of paper before they crossed the Channel to Dunkirk, half the men rescued would have died!
I cannot believe the independent streak of freedom-loving Britishers has been wiped out?
It's time we got rid of this obsession with paper. 

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Retirement

There is no doubt retirement is an amazing institution provided you have plenty to do. Having said that, in the word plenty I am not referring to housework or gardening unless you have a definite unmitigating passion for them. I decided a year ago that housework for housework's sake was a non-starter. I've done it for years and years - exactly like cooking - hate it, and ironing. Now, I clean windows when the mood grabs me, not because I should.

My house still remains relatively clean. Unfortunately, my mother always spring-cleaned before Christmas. She washed curtains, she polished saucepans and cleaned cupboards. The result was she hated Christmas being too tired to enjoy the festivities. And that has stuck. I am currently examining my carpets. They definitely need cleaning and the lace curtain in the cloakroom look decidedly grubby.

So what do we know from that - we inherit the worst things from our parents!  Perhaps if I do nothing, express no views, stay in bed even, my children will escape an awful inheritance. My problem is, I write.
I get up at the crack of dawn, working on my latest thriller. I bore my family with plots and twists, and ask them to read long books to see if they are any good. Poor children - I hope they escape unscathed.

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Social Graces - Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee (apologies to John Donne)

If I had a great following, I probably would resist the temptation to write this blog. However, since I am the only person likely to read it ... here goes.

As far as I am concerned, the biggest difference (which is the one that socks you on the jaw every time you encounter it) between teachers in the public sector and teachers in the private sector is the lack of anything that smacks of social grace.

I mean, you would think that if you find a stranger sitting in the staff-room, a few questions might just pop into your head: such as, could this person be a terrorist, is it a poltegeist, or even ' what the hell is this strange person doing drinking our coffee and eating our biscuits!'

This does not happen. In so many state-run primary and secondary schools, I deliver my lecture to a year group and go into the staff room for coffee or lunch and the staff walk and talk over, around and through me. On one occasion I was even climbed over.

I might as well be invisible.

Not from them is the subtle, 'hello', 'good morning', 'what have you been up to?'

Yet in private schools, I quite frequently find myself talking to the headteacher. The head of English makes a point of welcoming me. At lunch in the canteen, I am carefully escorted to a table and introduced to the staff, with whom gentile conversation then flows. Then, at the end of the day, I am offered more tea or coffee, and a thank you and escorted to my car.

I wonder if there's a course at teacher training college on: how not to use good manners!

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Problems with age

It's rather like finding you have become an antique drainage system. You are still serviceable but full of kinks.
And there are always new hurdles cropping up. For me it's the keyboard of the computer. Once a touch typist with skill beyond reach, I find myself missing letters, typing 'o' instead of 'of', 'without' instead of 'within'. Ah, the painful nostalgia, remembering how my fingers flew across the keys.

Next week, I shall start wearing my glasses to wash up, then I might actually see that I have rinsed the cups clean!

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Life's like that!

It all so unreasonable - this getting up at seven full of good intentions. You'd think by the time m aturity has been reached, you'd have learned that good intentions are like the old saying: rain before seven fine by eleven. Except with intentions it's the other way round - by eleven they're gone - vanished in a puff of smoke - rather like Aladdin after his three wishes. So swimming didn't happen, nor the ironing, nor the housework, nor the car cleaning. Worse the few thousand words I meant to write - not so much as a scribble.

Ah well, there's always tomorrow. Meanwhile, the characters in my next book are stranded in a wood - I simply haven't written them out of it yet! How much longer, I hear them cry. Tomorrow - maybe!

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