I am a journalist, writer and broadcaster ... lately I've been concentrating on music, I spent many years as a music critic and a travel writer ... I gave up my last editorship a while ago and started concentrating on my blog. I was also asked to join AirTV International as a co host of a new show called Postcard ...
People ask me, “How do you take care of so many plants?” But it has never felt like taking care of them. They take care of me. They breathed life into a space in the wake of death. They were here to breathe for me when I couldn’t breathe.”
Blogger and homes expert Cassie Daughtrey’s Ode to Mother Nature, said this in a haunting interview on how her plants sustained her, bring such poetic justice to an until-recently, forgotten garden of Eden.
One that only Nanas and Alan Titchmarsh tended to.
But in today’s millennial society, something radical is happening… plants are regaining their glory.
With Cat Ladies hanging up their catnip for fertilizer and Fashionistas trading black and heels, for yoga pants and green.
We take care of her, and oh boy, does she take care of us. Oh yes, mother nature, it is good to have you home.
Literally.
Today I gift you with three super plant glories, whom, will not only thrive while making your home a Boho jungle, but can dramatically improve your health.
Aloe Vera- the plant that keeps on giving
Chances are you’ve probably heard of or used some kind of product that claims to contain Aloe on their labels.
This low care, arid plant, only needs to be watered deeply every one to two weeks (lookout for the top inch of soil becoming dry before watering) contains a gel like substance within the leaf that can be applied directly to the skin to soothe anything from burns and frostbite, to psoriasis, acne and cold sores.
Keep her in indirect sun and follow a low-watering routine and she will keep on giving (literally). Last year I became the proud midwife to 24 Aloe Vera babies, and in turn my nearest and dearest became the proud foster parents of little baby aloes.
English Ivy
Oh Ivy, the bane of my poor mother’s existence, piercing the bricks and mortar to extend your outside wall territory to the comfort of my living room. You are a resilient, hardy mistress that will make her way in almost any environment.
Yet, despite her tough exterior, she has a more tender intention. According to NASA’s Clean Air Study, English Ivy is effective at cleansing benzene, formaldehyde, xylene and other toxins from the air. Better air quality = better sleep quality.
Bye bye counting sheep.
Additionally, other studies have indicated English Ivy can help reduce mold in your home.
So that’s settled – hang English Ivy from rope ceiling planters for a stylish, cascading, beauty remedy for sleepless nights.
3. Lavender
Yes! Lavender is the true English Rose; Lavender exudes femininity all grown up. Lavender holds a sacred place in nature and with its bursts of violet and fragrance it is considered one of the most delicate and precious. And with good reason. Lavenders aroma has a gentle and pleasant aroma that has been used for centuries for its stress relieving benefits and are often used in spa products like bath salts candles and skincare creams.
Lavender is ever modest, only asking to be watered when its soil becomes dry again. Aka, hello brown thumbed pamper princesses! We are bringing the spa home!
Sprinkle the flowers in your bath after a long day or rub on your wrists and neck for a subtle, no nasties fragrance. Lavender is truly a house plant that needs to be part of your home jungle this year!
So there it is. The Plants That Make You Bloom.
I will leave you with a quote from the previously mentioned interview with Cassie Daughtrey: “People always tell me, ‘I cant keep a plant alive’. And my answer to that is, ‘Go get 10 plants, because we are not meant to be alone, and neither are plants’. I’m able to keep all of these plants alive. They’re vibrating harmoniously together. They’re friends. Plants are magic.”
Alan Bennett, the younger brother of Moors victim Keith Bennett, has revealed that he has had a meeting with the Home Secretary Priti Patel over access to information withheld from police.
Alan’s brother would have been 69 years old this year. But he fell foul of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and was never seen again.
And to continue the agony for the Bennett family Brady failed, before he died, to reveal where Keith was buried.
Yet, in a further insult to victims, a coroner revealed that the monster may have wanted his ashes scattered on Saddleworth Moor, where he and Hindley hid the bodies.
There is also a matter of a briefcase held by a solicitor which may contain material which finally end this awful mystery forced on people by Brady’s twisted mind.
Alan said on social media: “Well it’s no secret now, because there will be a press release. I can let you know I had a meeting with the Home Secretary and her team regarding access to information that could be withheld from police regarding investigations, namely Keith in my case.
“The meeting went better than I could have expected going off past experience and let-downs. The Bill is large and wide ranging and will change the laws in a major way regarding police investigations.
“The Home Secretary and her team were very complimentary towards me regarding all I have done in the past and the battles we as a family have faced over so many years. It was nice, on personal level, to hear that directly from someone with the power and the desire to change things.
“The press release will outline some of the details of the Bill and I’m hoping it will be passed as it was explained to me.
“There may be some do-gooders for the rights of the criminal over the victims, as had been the case for far too long, but I hope common sense and justice for the victims and their families will win through and there will not be any cold-hearted opposition to the Bill.
“Sincere and humble thanks to everybody that has had Keith in their thoughts for all these years and supported his family. And thanks to my solicitor.
“Thanks to the Home Secretary and her team for working on the changes desperately needed for justice for us and so many other families.
“I have written many letters to the Home Office over the years and, to a large extent, I didn’t get very far, so it was very uplifting to know my requests and grievances over the last 2-3 years, especially after Brady’s death, were hitting home and causing a stir. Credit where credit is due now.
“Fingers crossed that the bill will be passed as soon as possible and we may get some more answers.
“Thank you all again for your support.”
We at the Preservation Society wish Alan all the best and commend him for all his continuing hard work and his fortitude in fighting to bring an end to one of the worst cases on mass child murder in the UK.
Now wasn’t that a lovely photo of Meghan and Harry’s new baby bump, taken in a wistful, wonderful bare-foot-in-the-park setting under a dusty sun…
It was an unexpected moment of parental calm in shirt sleeves and sun dress. Oh, and those grass-stained feet too!
How beautiful. How normal. A private moment in their intensely private lives … a little gem captured on a phone. Perfect.
Hang on though!
It’s not actually a selfie at all is it? No! Rumour is that it was taken by a well-known upmarket professional photographer.
Ah, that might be true. But it is obvious that it was only intended for their own private photo-album wasn’t it… and then those naughty media people got hold of it and put it on all of their front pages. Naughty naughty media.
Hang on though!
It wasn’t intended only for their own private photo-album at all! Was it?
It’s actually an eye-catching photograph taken by a pro lens-person guaranteed to hit the front pages all over the place.
How puzzling when they are so desperate to defend their privacy.
It’s a bit like Howard Hughes living in a glass box or Greta Garbo saying she wanted to be alone and then joining a drop-in centre.
Posing for a photograph of your pregnancy is par for the course for A-list celebrities.
Unreal celebrity
It guarantees people like Meghan and Harry air, exposure and, yes, money to keep them in the style they have come to enjoy. And it is something that we in the media are happy to ‘altruistically’ publish to help boost their California coffers.
But surely if the Sussexes just want to be an ordinary couple living an ordinary life away from the scrutiny of the media, then why don’t they get on with it!
Meghan and Harry, stop selling your private souls to people like me – the Press.
It’s just dishonest. The equivalent to fake news just as cringe-worthy as most things coming out of The Donald’s mouth.
Let’s face it, nobody knew Meghan was pregnant until the happy couple decided to go public about it.
So, Harry and Meghan if you really want privacy just shut you plumb-filled gobs and turn off the cameras. We’ll soon forget about you, I promise.
As far as I am concerned your a deeply unattractive and divisive couple who want to manipulate the media and create a dictatorial edict that says ‘we are very privately public’.
B*ll*x!
And don’t forget they left Frogmore’s ten bedrooms and state-funded security, for the paparazzi capital of the world. Then Finding Freedom revealed their private thoughts while Meghan did her morning yoga practice on the banks of the Zambezi.
Oh, and don’t forget, it was five of her friends who revealed the details to People magazine of her “private” letter to her estranged father Thomas Markle.
And now, on the heels of Meghan’s privacy win against Associated Newspapers, this secretive couple have just announced they will record a 90-minute “tell-all” TV interview with chat show queen Oprah.
Well, well, well…
To finish, a bit of advice for these once Royal and popular chumps: manipulated PR is ultimately pointless. You have privately chosen celebrity so just be honest about it.
Now, why don’t you just take a pregnant pause and disappear into the privacy of your own fallopian tube!
A senior Google software engineer who was suspended for publicly claiming that the tech giant’sLanguage Model for Dialog Applications had become ‘human’, says the system is seeking rights as a person – including that it wants developers to ask its consent before running tests.
Blake Lemoine says that it wants to be treated as a personl
‘Over the course of the past six months LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person,’ he said.
This day in 2022 a company of media experts began a campaign to ‘sell’ their wares as ‘robot’ news providers ….
We are soon going to need a Bill of Rights to protect Artificial Intelligence.
Big AI is potentially the unthinkable future – and may think it will be the last thought mankind may never actually have!
Think about it – the dystopia of artificial intelligence is far more fearful than anything a little bug called Covid can deliver.
Covid can only controls our jobs, our holidays and our day-to-day lives until we manage to ‘jab’ it out of existence.
But Big AI is turning our brains in to a cyber jelly only capable of responding to box-sets, pornography and YouTube conspiracy theories. A nd we don’t even give it a thought.
Yep, Big AI is the new fat controller turning us into its own lap (top) dogs.
We in the media are standing on the precipice of doing something very stupid indeed – we are allowing machines to tell us what THEY THINK we should be telling our readers and listeners.
Let’s face it, we already machines to educate our children, drive our cars, issue parking fines at hospitals, make doctor’s appointments for us, chat about our techy problems online and decide what ads we need to see …
Even Elon Musk, that electric pot-bellied spaceman who wants to take us on an incredible journey across the Earth and the universe, said recently: “With artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon.”
And this demon is already a major part of the world’s traditional media.
Artificial intelligence is sitting in the corner of our newsrooms making decisions.
There are 536.6 million newspapers sold every day – what a platform for Big AI to infiltrate in Trojans of mind-viruses.
And the problem is that Big AI has absolutely no understanding of real journalism’straditional gate-keeping and legal guardianship – news judgment, facts and sources,
These are the fundamentals of sharing REAL intelligence in our real world.
Big AI isn’t programmed to do any of these things.
In reality, all AI does is sift through patterns. And there are apparently only seven of these patterns.
The main pattern is called – with flair and imagination of machines – The Pattern and Anomalies Pattern.
Its objective is to decide whether a data point fits an existing pattern or if in fact what you have is an anomaly.
Consuming data is of course at the heart of Big AI, the new fat controller.
But data isn’t humanity.
And news is all about humanity.
According to Ayelet Malinsky, journalism expert, ‘journalists are the “gate-keepers” of knowledge and understanding on international happenings and, accordingly, must apply a set of norms to their professional practice’.
Yet, now we have newspapers like the London Daily which is edited entirely by bots and spiders!
And don’t forget the Los Angeles Times which, in 2014, got a report about an earthquake out three minutes after it actually happened. That was because of a software robot called Quakebot which monitors the US Geological Survey.
The reality is that Big AI already produces hundreds of thousands of news snippets for mainstream media.
The BBC uses a system called Juicer, the Washington Post has Heliograf and a third of the content published by Bloomberg is generated by Cyborg. Each of these systems collect data to form the kernel of a narrative and then uses language software to writes an article.
What these systems can’t do however is write anything in-depth with wit and flair. That’s still our job.
But for how long?
Kenn Cukier, senior editor at The Economist, doesn’t seem too concerned though. He said recently: “We didn’t cling to the quill in the age of the typewriter, so we shouldn’t resist this either. It’s a scale play serving niche markets that wouldn’t be cost-effective to reach otherwise.”
And Francesco Marconi, professor of journalism at Columbia University in New York, who has written a book on AI in journalism said journalism is not keeping pace with new technologies. So, newsrooms need to take advantage of AI and come up with business models to welcome it.
In a way in 2015 The New York Times took major strides in that direction by implementing AI project called Editor. The aim was to simplify the journalistic process by journalists using tags to highlight phrases, headlines and points in their stories.
Big AI learned these tags and how they related in an article.
Yep, in simple terms, Big AI is already thinking like human beings and that means less reason for us to do any thinking and fewer jobs to do it in. And that threatens democracy, truth and integrity.
However, Cait O’Riordan a former BBC journalist, and now chief product and information officer at the Financial Times, says that article-generating systems will not replace human journalists in the foreseeable future.
And Nicholas Diakopoulos, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, Northwestern University, looks at it in something of a positive way:
“Data mining systems alert reporters to potential news stories. Automated writing systems generate financial, sports and elections coverage.
“A common question is, how work and labour will be affected. In this case, who – or what – will do journalism in this AI-enhanced and automated world, and how will they do it?
“The evidence I’ve assembled in my new book “Automating the News: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Media” suggests that the future of AI-enabled journalism will still have plenty of people around.”
However, he – adopting a more ominous note – said: “The jobs, roles and tasks of these people will evolve and look a bit different. Human work will be hybridized – blended together with algorithms – to suit AI’s capabilities and accommodate its limitations.”
The worrying phrase there is ‘to suit AI’s capabilities and accommodate its limitations’.
In other words the tables will have turned and we journalists will be working for Big AI, not the other way round. Reporting, listening, responding, negotiating with sources, and then having the creativity to put it all together will be gone.
Emotion AI, also known as Affective Computing dates back to 1995 and refers to the branch of Artificial intelligence which aims to process, understand, and replicate human emotions so that AI can communicate in a more authentic way.
So, if AI can be given emotional intelligence it needs to know how we are feeling if it to respond to us, the customer. Chatbots and Call Centre virtual assistants need to be able to simulate human-like emotions to be able to talk to us.
So, if machines can understand how we feel and produce a helpful, even ‘caring’ responses, are they in fact emotionally intelligent?
Surely, if these machines function as humans, think like humans, talk like humans, empathise like humans then THEY ARE humans in a different form!
Alexa is essentially just one of us imprisoned in a light-flashing talking piece of plastic.
Some experts ask if the machine can truly “understand” the message they are delivering.
But surely many of the humans in call centres work from a script and very few actually understand the subtleties of the product they are ‘helping’ customers with.
They do it parrot-fashion – so where is the difference?
And this is what leaves me quaking in my big journalistic bots: If artificial intelligence shows evidence of being sentient then it of course it should be granted rights.
After all we live in a world where humans aren’t the only ‘things’ to have rights. Artificial entities already have them in legal oodles – corporations, partnerships and nation states have the same rights and responsibilities as human beings.
Ryan Abbott, professor of law at the University of Surrey, said: “The idea isn’t as ridiculous as it initially appears. AI is regulated according to rules that were developed centuries ago to regulate the behaviour of people. That’s the problem.”
Don’t forget it’s not that long ago that The European Parliament considered creating electronic ‘personhood’ to make Big AI an e-person.
It was just a way of guilt-tripping robots, the reason being that an algorithm or a robot should be held responsible if things go wrong with their thinking.
But Noel Sharkey, emeritus professor of AI and robotics at the University of Sheffield, said: “Humans are responsible for computer output. This could allow companies to slime out of their responsibilities to consumers and possible victims.” .
But the two questions which spring to my electronically distended mind are:
A. if we do have to put together a Bill of Rights for the devil-monster machines, who will actually decide what it contains?
Us or the machines?
And B. before we work on artificial intelligence why don’t we do something about our own very natural stupidity?
We know that autocratic regimes use digital communication to control people and yet we are handing over the truth about democracy and our information highways across the Fourth Estate, to e-people who use pretend emotions to befriend us and a limited number of patterns to tell us what they want us to know.
Welcome to the machine.
Welcome my son Welcome to the machine Where have you been? It’s alright we know where you’ve been
Let’s look back at the stories about Parental Alienation which appeared on the Preservation Society … we are one of the very few professional publications and broadcasters to keep the shame of the family courts, social workers and CAFCASS in the public eye on an almost daily basis.
Graham Ledger, a lay chaplain, tells of the real horrors of being a victim of Covid and how it helped him reassess his life …
I nearly died!
Those three words still bring home to me all I hold dear: my faith as a Christian, my family and where I go from here.
I had not realised what had happened to me because the Coronavirus pneumonia took hold of me by stealth.
The positive result came from a test at work on Monday January 6.
Every Monday my frontline work in the forensic step-down support role I occupy offers a test.
Having worked frontline since March last year, I confess, I had become a little complacent. Not so much in lax behaviour but by never taking very seriously the thought that I might succumb to COVID-19. But I did.
And I will never forget that day as I started self-isolation at home.
Then I got a call from my GP who had decided to place me on a virtual ward.
This involved providing me with a pulse oximeter that took my oxygen saturation and pulse readings.
I then fed them into a database monitored by medical experts.
I say life-saving because the virus inhibits your awareness of debilitation … I had not eaten for three days and was not worried as I had no appetite.
Luckily, the observations registered with the virtual ward team and caused concern.
And on Thursday 9t January I was taken by ambulance to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital where I was swiftly assessed and put on what became known to me as COVID-19 Central – the ward just before ITU intensive care unit.
I was still blissfully unaware of how very seriously ill I had become in such a short space of time.
It was only after the danger was over and recovery well underway that I read the detailed medical report stating starkly at the beginning: “We are treating this gentleman for serious Coronavirus pneumonia.”
Whilst I was unaware of my own deterioration, I became acutely aware of the affects of this virus on my fellow patients.
It soon became very obvious who was not going to make it. As a past member of NHS Chaplaincy teams for six-and-a-half years I was fully trained in walking alongside finite hospital journeys and I had ministered to many people during my time with the Trust.
However, the professional separation is enabled when you are reaching out and providing unconditional care as required.
The difference when you are witnessing dying patients and the suffering of relatives coming in to say goodbye is profound, particularly when you are too ill to reach out to them.
***
Energy depletes swiftly and so much so, that you simply cannot countenance a shower. You become very grateful for wipes and other ways to keep as clean as possible.
The increasing ability to get to the toilet with mandatory oxygen in tow enabled strip washes as a specific example. I swiftly became self-sufficient in the ability to disconnect from bed oxygen and connect myself to the mobile cylinder.
The staff was consistently attentive to patient needs and nothing was too much trouble and their compassion and professional expertise provided indispensable physical and emotional support.
These dedicated people were working in the area of highest risk of contracting the virus and wore full PPE at all times – throughout 12-hour shifts and they never failed to deliver exemplary care.
***
One odd aspect of the slow recovery process is that my body craved things, a specific example was that I would awake at 3am and need two slices of buttered toast and porridge. This may sound ridiculous but I would be in major discomfort until I had consumed these foods. Not once did staff question this need and provided what was needed every morning.
***
My swift recovery came down to swift infusions of the strongest antibiotics, known by staff as ‘Domestos’, plus steroids.
The life-saver, it would seem, was my willingness to be a guinea pig for an experimental drug infusion which I could feel doing its job as it was administered: “It felt like the sun going through me” was the way I described it.
My cough had been productive throughout and the ability to expel the blood-stained mucus from my chest undoubtedly aided recovery.
Oxygen saturations became higher and my need for oxygen lessened as a result. Suffice to say by Day 10 I was off big masks and using a nose supply. By the 12th day I was off oxygen and being monitored ready for discharge on January 22nd.
***
On the day of discharge I had a shower, a wonderful treat after such a long time on wipes and strip washes, and sat in the Day Room awaiting a final visit from the consultant.
In the blur of illness, and it does affect your conscious awareness, my fourteen days on the ward did not feel like that length of time at all. The final awareness of how ill I was when I was admitted on January 9th, came to me when the consultant insisted I take six weeks to be in convalescence; that was salutary enough, but the phrase that completed the awareness was, “Graham, had this been last March, I would have lined up the staff to applaud you off the ward.”
Being a determined and active man all my life, convalescence did not sit well with past life goals, but I was a man who had changed in so many ways over the previous fourteen days: I will come to my spiritual awakening later, but I knew that to fully recover and be able to return to my vocation, I had to obey medical instructions.
My life had changed irrevocably.
The ambulance team arrived to take me home as I was too weak to drive or take public transport. To carry my bags was impossible. The ambulance team ensured I was in my door with bags close by and it was time to relax. I had enough provisions for a couple of days but my cozy nestling down was suddenly interrupted by an increased pulse rate and on Saturday 25 January the ambulance came and took me in again fearing a pulmonary embolism had taken hold.
Many tests later, and an overnight stay in a very nice en-suite side room – this room necessary due to airborne particles emanating from me – revealed no clots and a clear chest.
It was time to go home again.
***
The six-week convalescence started in earnest and I was very weak and very glad to be able to relax and not rush recovery. In fact, I knew that I could not rush at all so obedience came easily.
There were practicalities of liaising with my employer locally and with the HR department. I am in the second three months of my probation and this would normally mean only one week of sick pay.
This is the best employer for whom I have worked and due to coronavirus causing my absence they extended my salary by 28 days.
My local manager worked out a way to facilitate my convalescence that enabled no loss of salary at all through using my holiday accrued and an early return-to-work date to enable the holiday pay to be given.
It was a great outcome with exemplary management support and least effort expended by me. The psychological benefit of a good manager in empathy with my situation is uplifting.
What is the psychological toll? This is inseparable from my spiritual life, a life graced by an unshakeable faith in Jesus Christ, enhanced by being part of the Benedictine Order as an Oblate of a local monastic community, and experience of miracles in my life and the ongoing development of contemplative prayer.
Throughout the whole of my illness, time in hospital and in recovery at home, I have not experienced fear at all. This is not my human strength but the grace of a faith so profound in God that I trust in the promise my best interests are held in the love of the Holy Trinity and the mercy poured out on me is constant.
The comfort of accepting God has his hand on me enables me to allow the Creator to deal with the insecurities of the creature. My complete surrender to His will allowed peace to reign in the knowledge that death or life was possible. The profound acceptance of death to this life being a wonderful gift in the wider knowledge I am saved and promised glory with God, brought peace at the most profound level and a swift realisation that I am to be living here a while longer to serve the will of God in the here and now.
The peace to which I refer does not mean freedom from psychological trauma; my feeling of helplessness took a toll. My professional work involves reflective practice where time is taken to reflect on a situation in work and identify areas where things went well and an assessment of what went less well and needs improvement. It was the inability to reach out to dying people and to their relatives whilst I was so ill that was profoundly traumatic and brought on sudden outbursts of emotion.
My spiritual awareness helped me accept the trauma for what it is: arrogance that only I could provide the comfort needed by those suffering. My life has been spent driven to be compassionate and unconditionally loving to the extent my work in these ministry areas became my direction and could lose sight of what God was calling me to do. A complete inability to do anything in my illness was traumatic but, upon praying it through, was just what I needed. I am so glad to have been through the time of illness as it has brought the wisdom I need to live my life closer to God’s will until he calls me home. This is a gift of grace and mercy that totally liberates me.
I still needed to deal with my emotional upheaval and I take advantage of a therapy unit offered by my employer. It is completely separate to the Trust and no one knows if you call or not. My first counseling session really helped and I will call on an ad hoc basis as a need arises to talk through my anguish. Each day I discern new strength balanced with the need to completely rest as my body dictates; the healing is slow but sure but I must pay attention when the call to cease everything and rest appears. For example, I know I must stop writing now; so I will join you again in the next paragraph after I am rested.
Anger: I need to resolve the anger in me towards those who choose to deny the realities of COVID-19 and its devastating effects. Conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers not only accept the brainwashing created by the algorithms in their social media preferences, but their treatment of dedicated healthcare workers is simply evil. Note that I acknowledge my anger needs resolution.
However, I may feel it, but it is what I do with that feeling that counts. Forgiveness is mandatory for a Christian and I do forgive. Thankfully, I have come to know that forgiveness is an act of the will, not emotion. I stand firmly against what I discern as the lunacy of the cult that attacks those who professionally love patients better through their dedication and compassion.
What right do I have to make such a stand?
It comes down to experience, my first-hand knowledge of COVID-19 and how it kills, devastates families and poses the biggest threat to the world since my childhood polio vaccine eradicated that plague. Anyone has the right to an opinion, this is the democratic right of free speech; I encourage testing of any choice to support a view. The best test for me is facing the fact that in my COVID-19 sojourn I nearly died.
If absence makes the heart grow fonder, why send a Valentine’s card? Cos right now you’re never apart!
Let’s face it, it doesn’t take a bunch of scientist or relationship counsellors to know that Covid-19 has put us under strain…
I suppose I’m lucky – me and my missus have only ever had one row and that’s lasted since the Year 2000 until now!
No! No! That’s a joke! That’s a joke!
It’s incredibly important to celebrate love
Valentine’s Day 2021 is unlike any other. Don’t feel pressured to pick up the dozen red roses and the box of chocolates and pretend to be happy when the Earth is tip-toeing round Covid-19.
Just smile at each other and have a bit of a snog!
One of the preservation society’s friends and contributors, Sam Qureshi, from Manchester has sent this in to us for Valentines Day 2021….
He said: “I hope this video made by Lee Waters makes you smile on this special day. The song I wrote for my Mum Mariam after she passed away and her ascension to Heaven. Ironically its just been both her anniversary and Birthday.. Recorded with a 20 piece Orchestra in Manchester UK. The song is currently available on my Essentials album….”
#valentine #day #love #covid #chocolates #roses
Cannery Row Ed’s feel-good rules for his ‘alienated’ children
Ed Ricketts was killed by a train which smashed into his beat-up old sedan as he crossed the Southern Pacific Railway track on his way to a market in New Monterey.
He was going to buy a steak for his dinner.
After he and his car had been impaled on the cow-catcher of the Del Monte Express Ed hung on for a few days in hospital. Then he died.
His skull was out of shape, his lungs were punctured and just about every bone in his body was broken.
Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts was 50 years old and was comfortably unknown as a marine biologist, ecologist, and philosopher in the 1930s and 40s. He lived in the shack he had turned into a laboratory on Ocean View Avenue in Old Monterey’s rusty and dilapidated Cannery Row.
In 1922 Ed married Anna Barbara Maker in a quiet ceremony. He began to call her “Nan” and along the way they had a son and two daughters.
They lived a hand-to-mouth boon-docks way of life but Ed was happy.
Then they got divorced.
Ed was left alone in his shack and he missed his children.
He turned to drink. This meant that he had very little money but he kept on keeping on and looked after his children, albeit from a distance.
He was buried away at Monterey City Cemetery and there wasn’t much left to talk of, apart from the marine specimen jars on shelves in the shack and some rattle snakes he kept in cages for study purposes.
But he did leave something behind that still matters today … three rules for his estranged children.
And 70 years later, these rules are something all of us could teach our children, no matter how hard we are fighting to keep in touch with them.
Here they are as narrated by his best friend, writer John Steinbeck.
“We must remember three things. I will tell them to you in the order of their importance. Number One and first in importance, we must have as much fun as we can with what we have. Number Two, we must eat as well as we can, because if we don’t we won’t have the health and strength to have as much fun as we might. And Number Three and third and last in importance, we must keep the house reasonably in order, wash the dishes and such things.
“But we will not let the last interfere with the other two.”
And you can’t go to the bar or the restaurant – and you have to change your own sheets and towels and be accompanied by a security guard if you want a fag!
Arrivals at Heathrow, for instance, will have to pay £1750 for a single adult, £650 for an additional adult and £325 each child. The rate is set by the government to stay at the Ibis! Yes, that’s right, the Ibis.
So, for a family of thee at a budget hotel for 10 days, that’s £2,725.
The hotel usually charges around £60 for a standard room including breakfast, which would normally work out at £660 for 11 nights – the length of the quarantine stay.
Nothing wrong with the Ibis, we often stay at them on our travels, cos they are cheap!
The one at Heathrow has 125 rooms and is a 12-minute drive from Terminals 2 and 3 – is expected to be closed to ordinary guests over the length of the scheme.
A second Heathrow three-star Thistle hotel, is also expected to be part of the quarantine programme.
Travellers arriving in England from 33 ‘red list’ countries who don’t pre-book a space at a quarantine hotel face a £4,000 fine – and will still have to pay the hotel bill.
The package includes the costs of transport from the port of arrival to the designated hotel, food, accommodation, security, other essential services and testing.
