A most treasured possession stolen from under my nose.

 

A set of domestic wind-chimes, owned by a dear, late German friend who died (AIDS-related) at age of just 40 in 1990. I was myself living at the time in Germany. After his passing I took over his apartment in Cologne and lived there for a year until financial necessities forced me, unwillingly, to return to England.

Heinz-Jurgen had brought the chimes over from San Francisco when he'd been visiting his closest friend, an American, in Sacramento, where this friend lived and still does. (I actually met him, and we've maintained mutual e-mail contact to this very day).

I'd set these chimes up inside my kitchen window here in Worthing when I moved here in 2000 - their gentle tinkling reminded me daily of that dear friendship of the past (as if I needed any reminding!). It was the sole possession of his that I now owned, putting me in mind of not only H-J, but also the several other friends, German, Dutch and English, I lost from around that time for that same reason.

Couple of months ago (I really should have posted about this before now) I was in my living room when I heard a clatter from the kitchen, at first thinking that one or both of my cats had upset something. On investigating, before I knew what had happened I looked out of the back window (my apartment is on the first floor - 'second' floor, I believe, in America!) and saw a female figure with distinctive hair - couldn't see her face- actually making an exit from 'our' back garden - through the gate which must have been left unbolted from the inside. I called out to her but she either didn't hear me or (more likely?) had slunked guiltily away out of sight. Only then did I notice that the chimes were no longer hanging there - and that was what I'd heard. How on earth it had dropped down from inside the kitchen and out through the opening of 8 inches or so (left permanently so for the cats), slid down onto the projecting sloping roof below and then dropped down into the garden below. At first I thought it must have been caught in the guttering, but no! Though then - that lady! I went down and outside, but by then she'd gone - no doubt holding my dear chimes. She must have been close by when she'd heard the sound of their falling onto the ground, tried the solid wooden back garden gate and, on finding it unbolted, seen the object lying there, and taken it up for herself. Just what sort of person would - or could - do such a thing!!! And in broad daylight too! On that day there'd been a lot on my mind and I do sadly recall thinking "Oh well, it's gone! Too bad!" I can't tell you how bad I still now feel on having thought so!

Some days after that event, thinking that the thief having disappeared so quickly, must have lived close by, even perhaps next-door (a large house divided into three or four flats), I wrote a long note addressed to 'All resident here' detailing what had happened, the value the object had meant to me, and that I'd seen the criminal, if only the top of her head. What I didn't say is that if I'd been flushed with money I would have paid a tidy to sum to have the stolen item back - even with no questions asked! As it is, and having checked on eBay, a similar set of chimes can be purchased for a mere £30 (American $40) or even less. Of course I myself could buy another, but naturally it wouldn't have any of the same sentimental value at all. It's hardly surprising that I got no response to the note I posted. If everyone next door had read it, including that lady herself - or if somebody read it who knows but is shielding her - I simply do not know what else I can do.

Still missing it every single day. Absolutely irreplaceable. It cuts me deep. 

 

One of two recent(ish) losses (other being NON-dental in post to follow).

Only in my case both the upper front 'biggies', the incisors, are now gone.

It's one more aftermath of the trip-over accident I had six months ago, breaking my left arm (now, thankfully 95% mended), taking a minor fracture to upper right jaw (no treatment merited, though can still feel it - but no pain) - and then losing the first of the two incisors, the second coming out only night-before-last in my sleep, again painlessly. 

In Feb made visit to my latest National Health Service dentist - it's still a major problem in this country just trying to find one which will take patients like me who can't afford private treatment. 

This particular practice I found has turned out to be rather unsatisfactory, as well as being far away and hard to visit by public transport, my also not being able to afford a taxi. After negotiating the (too) quietly-speaking receptionist, the dentist himself turned out to be Indian, which itself was quite fine by me, but his English wasn't easy to comprehend - and he even spoke Hindi to his assistant as he went through my teeth one by one, telling her what to note down. Then when that examination was over (at that stage just one of my incisors was missing) he said something like "They'll all have to come out!" which surprised me as I thought the lower set were fine as well as the upper side sets. Then he chuntered on in matter-of-fact manner about my having to make an appointment for major extraction - and I caught the phrase "Very painful". At this stage I was reeling a bit from his news, but I did go ahead with arranging a date some weeks henceforward from then - but the one who'd being doing the extracting also had an Asian-sounding name (another Indian?) so would he know about, understand and allow for the jaw fracture? Or could he exacerbate the already present damage? Maybe my worry was misplaced but I was becoming very seriously concerned. 

On getting back home and reflecting, I wondered did the dentist mean having all my teeth out, top and bottom, or just the upper set, which itself would have been more than I'd expected? So I telephoned back, but the young lady who answered was herself speaking in halting English with, once more, an Indian lilt - and we just could not understand each other. "So you want to have all your teeth removed?" she asked. "NO!" I almost shouted "I don't want to have any taken out if I possible!" After further confusion I gave up and put the phone down. 

So as at now, with that even further gaping space in front, and having cancelled the extraction appointment, I still don't know what the situation is. Worry is - has that particular dentist given up on me? Have I been removed from their client list after all the trouble I'd had of finding one at all? Can only wait and see.

However, as long as there's no pain, and I can continue to eat, even bite, with hardly any problem - and I don't have to open my mouth wide when speaking to anyone (I only need to talk with someone face-to-face maybe just once in a month - or even less)......and I'm not likely to administer a B.J. to anyone in the near future - or, very possibly, ever again(!), I can get along quite fine with the rest of my truly necessary 'oral activities', thank you.

So that's the more recent of my losses. The other one, now having happened a couple of months ago (and which I really ought to have posted about earlier) cuts me rather deeper, concerning which I'll now start to write for my next post, for posting either later today or, if not, tomorrow.........

I got the 1% question right. Well, almost in time.

 

I quite like TV Quiz Shows, though without being addicted to them - preferring General Knowledge questions to I.Q. ones, my being slightly better at the former. 

Monday evening is my favourite quiz time which I never miss, when, all on our BBC2 channel, three of my favourite shows (and the most difficult) are shown in succession - Mastermind, Only Connect. and University Challenge. Other quiz shows on different channels on other nights I might happen to dip into now and again, usually when there are ad-breaks in the programme I happen to have been watching.

So it was that yesterday, I turned on 'The 1% Club' (of which quite a number of countries have their own versions) just as the programme was in its final minutes, to catch the final question where only one member of the 100-strong audience of applicants had survived to the end, meaning he had a chance of winning the then £94,000 jackpot by answering the final question correctly, or of leaving with the £10,000 he had earned up to that point. He took the latter option but was given the chance of looking at what the final question would have been. This was that question which, the programme said, only 1% of the public got right within the 30 secs allowed:-

If FT=GD, and SD=SR, what does TD=?

To be honest it was only in the final couple of seconds when I saw it. If I'd been there, it would hardly have given me enough time to write the answer down within the time permitted, so I doubt if I'd have deemed a winner. Can you see the answer? The man who had opted to look at it, was by then rather half-hearted and came up with the guessed answer 'BR'. Incorrect. Quite frankly I'm surprised that only one out of a hundred people asked would have got it, me rather expecting it would have been nearer 20% or even more. But nonetheless I did go to bed feeling rather chuffed with myself.

Now if you still can't see it I could give a clue which would, I'm sure, serve you up the answer on a plate. So here it comes - and try to look away if you can - but if you'd prefer not to know I'll hide the clue a little by moving each of its letters down the alphabet by one - So think 'Pmznqjdt'. 

The chap who tried it was on the right track, but wth a slightly untidy finish - and I went to bed rather pleased with myself. I think it's been the only time when I saw a final question on that programme and got it right - well, nearly.

Two American politicos for whom I've got the 'hots'.

Maybe with me it's a passing phase, though I hope not - even if at my age it may seem like baby-snatching, when happening upon either of these similar-looking dazzling guys appearing on my lap-top, I'm so transfixed by their appearances that I pay far less attention to what they're saying than a serious politics-watcher ought........ 

Hayes Brown, Writer/director with MSNBC Daily:-

And -

Maxwell Frost, Congressman for Florida 10th District:-

I've purposely avoided delving into the background and histories of these two, for not wishing to unearth something I'd regret learning about - though it would genuinely astonish me if there were to be any such thing. However, one never knows........

I think it was about 10 years ago when I posted about my over-bearing fascination with American politics, such that by far the largest share of daily time spent on my laptop was watching YouTube postings from left-of-centre (or at least 'middling') American sources. Resulting from a realisation that such a practice got me nowhere other than to keep me up to date - though also, frankly, being a 'waste of time' - which might have been better utilised on doing something more productive. I did then manage to curtail my excessive interest. However, now with the political American scene having been transformed in the last decade or so into a near-monstrous attention-grabber, I've found that its appeal has once again become irresistible, this time with an horrific dimension which very few could have imagined, let alone wished for. So here it is - I'm back to spending easily the majority of my lap-top hours on American politics once more. I know that a determined effort ought to be made to get control of my screen-watching again - though the likelihood of either of these two gentlemen appearing on my screen (with my slavering over them) sure don't make it easy for a lone, old, sex-starved being like yours truly. 

    

Vikram Seth - astonishing writer and remarkable person.

 

Even though my opinion derives from reading just two of his books, I've no doubt it's justified. Born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) India, in 1952, so six years younger than myself, he's lived some years in California and now flits between India and a home in Salisbury, actually just 75 miles from where I'm sitting now. His mental capabilities are nothing short of astonishing, just one of which being his enviable linguistic proficiency. Apart from English as well as his native Hindi and Bengali, he speaks fluent German, French, Urdu and.....not only Welsh(!)..... but also Mandarin!

A self-acknowledged bi-sexual (he had a 10-year relationship with a French male violinist) as well as having been 'conventionally' married. He was a prominent voice in seeking the Indian government and its judiciary to overturn gay criminality. No children, he's physically in stature quite short at just 5'3". Having lived in England a lot, he took his degree in Oxford in 1975, the very same year when I myself started residing in that city.

But what I want to get on to say is that I've just finished my first re-reading of his novel-in-verse 'The Golden Gate' (referring, of course, to the 'Frisco bridge) and whose book's construction alone is an astonishing achievement - and first published in 1986 when he was just 34. Written throughout in 390 scrupulously rhymed, 14-line tetrameter stanzas it's got to be classed as a veritable tour de force - and nearly uniquely so, though Seth did take as his model the poetry of his own most revered writer, Alexander Pushkin. 

The novel's story, set in S.F., is actually quite a small-scale domestic one involving a mere handful of characters, all American of both sexes, of varying temperaments and sexualities, relationships and their fallings out, arguments flaring up, reconciliations.....you get the picture. Maybe not exactly riveting in themselves, but all the time my attention was held by the author's amazing scope of vocabulary (several English words I myself had never come across!) and his perfection of rhyming all fitted into this rigid structure - and I never once put down the book without my having been repeatedly astonished at his towering literary talent. If you want a reading challenge, something you can really get your teeth into, then this is not to be overlooked. Not an easy read for sure, but its nothing less than engrossing - and, for once, it's more because of its accomplishment than for its subject matter.

Incidentally, on finishing this book a few days ago, I did as I usually do, write that day's date on the opening leaf - and I was rather agreeably and interestingly surprised that it had been exactly, to the very day, twenty years since I had first read it.

Vikram Seth is not a prolific writer in terms of the number of novels he's written so far - his even bigger love is that of poetry - and 'The Golden Gate' is one of only two of his books I've read up to now. The other one is his other major tour-de-force 'A Suitable Boy' (1993), actually longer even than 'War and Peace', I've now read it three times. Quite as epic in length as the Tolstoy, though without that Russian's amazing scenarios of large scale (Napoleonic) battles in the Emperor's hopelessly futile attempt to invade and conquer Russia, battling against not only the Russian indomitable determination to defend, but also against the elements of that country's crippling Winter (with the author's own 'aside' commentaries) - whilst all in parallel with small-scale familial relationships, romances, enmities, reconciliations etc. 'War and Peace' would, in fact, be my own favourite novel of them all. It's one which I've now read at least eight times, in three different translations. Though many (most?) say that 'Anna Karenina' is superior, I wouldn't necessarily disagree, though that particular work remains throughout written from an intimate, individually personal, perspective of its characters, whereas W & P has huge vistas of historical, political and world strategies intertwined with a range of personal, small-scale episodes all with their own private individual emotions and complications. It's a work which, once I've started to read, I want it never to stop - and it almost obliges! It would be my own choice as castaway on 'Desert Island Discs' of one single book to read for, potentially, the reminder of one's life.   

'A Suitable Boy's hefty tome is set in India's middle-class milieu shortly after that country's independence from Britain, and concerns an of-age daughter to a mother who's wanting to get her married off to some 'suitable' husband, young or not so young, even though the mother doesn't yet have any specific person in mind. The daughter is resistant to her mother's interventions and has no present inclintaion to marry at all, though she does develop a friendship with a young man, stopping short of a real 'relationship' - complicated by the fact that he is Muslim, evident from his name, something to which her Hindi family would be antagonistic were they aware. What may be surprising to some, and certainly was to me, is that within the novel's 1,300+ pages, and given the writer's own life, among its many characters there's scant mention of any 'gayness' in a single one of them, male or female. Perhaps at the time of writing Seth was concerned that broaching the subject even by just slightly glancing at it, might have harmed his book's chances of being appreciated, and hence sales. I don't know, though of course in the era he was writing of, the subject would have been a great 'unmentionable' - as indeed it still is throughout vast swathes of the world. Also there's quite a significant part of the novel concerned with Indian party politics. Nevertheless, despite any shortcomings (if one may describe it as such) the story is a captivating one and a good, solid read. I am certainly inclined to read it for a fourth time. 

But if the thought of embarking on either of Vikram Seth's two magna opera (yes, I had to look up this plural - of course!) does interest you, although the suggestion of reading 'A Suitable Boy' may be somewhat too daunting an ask, do please give 'The Golden Gate' a try. 

Good reading and good luck!

Progress report on arm says 'Good progress!'

 

I really ought to have posted earlier, knowing how some of you had been seriously concerned, and which hasn't also been exactly helped by my long silences. 

However, on Xmas Eve the free-movement orthopaedic 'sleeve' on left arm was removed after two months wearing, which itself had followed a full month of plaster-cast with sling. At the time of removal I was worried that it might have been too soon as it felt at risk of being exacerbated by inadvertant sudden movement, like when you drop something. Even now I can't extend that arm fully. But after a session with physiotherapist nurse, and since then several-times-daily exercise of that limb real progress has been discernible. I'm still unable, for instance when eating, to get the fork in left hand to reach my mouth, but it's getting closer by the day. That's the current greatest 'inconvenience' which itself is not a big deal as I simply have to use the other hand to shovel it in, though hopefully for not much longer. (Nor can I, incidentally, use my left hand to....erm....'pick my nose'!) So there's no genuine cause to complain at what the hospital have most ably achieved, and I have to say that they certainly look after one - and all for free on our National Health Service, the equivalent of which all 'developed' countries have - well, nearly all. My greatest worry is if I might happen to keel over again at any time (which might very well finish me off!) so now have to be ultra-careful and extra slow in my ambulations, especially au dehors.

By the way, although it was classed as a 'broken arm' there was no fracture in the traditional sense of a bone splitting. What happened was that one of the two bones in the forearm (radius or ulna? I don't know) came away from the 'hinge' in the middle of the arm. When my X-rays came through the consultant wanted to show them to me but, being of the squirmy-squeamish type, I declined his offer. But I've now had several sessions of X-rays, and with the last ones his verdict was that it's "mending nicely" - which I can only assume that the 'separation' is now coming back together by itself. Can only hope so. Don't want to think too much about the details. 

So that's it. With more such good luck there shouldn't be any need to post more on ths 'Me-Me-Me!' subject which, anyway, must make for a boring read.

Thanks for all the good wishes. Hope it's now just a matter of (short?) time before we're back to 'normal' again! Cheers!