This week

Monday

To work at my part time job with a national children's charity. The project I work for is funded by the local county council and finance is only guaranteed until September 2007. There is a real possibility that they may pull the plug on us then and our short break care service to disabled children and their families will be gone. This current uncertainty instills an air of pessimism which makes the work experience less fulfilling than it was. I am sixty years old in five or six weeks time. Do I want this, should I retire?

Tuesday

Off to the hospital to see consultant about cataract operation. My logic is whilst I am fit and active maximise sight potential. So should I retire whilst having some beans if not being full of them?

Wednesday

Work. Team meeting with colleague and boss. Discuss the need for numerous measures which will allegedly make us more likely to get the county council contract in September. I am not sure I believe this.

Thursday

Day off. Morning spent replacing the bushes on the front forks of Honda C90. Half the work done by dinnertime (lunch to the middle classes). Then off to solicitors to register as founder director of Sleaford and District Citizens Advice Bureau. One of my current voluntary activities as a trustee of the bureau is processing their application to become Incorporated. Back home and finish the bushing job. Much better than work.

Find out that my Puch MS50 D moped has sold on Ebay for £102 to a man in Wales. He seems a decent bloke and pays immediately.

Friday

Refit forks and put the bike back together. Go out for a ride in the Vale of Belvoir. All much better than work.

Man from Wales confirms he will collect the Puch on Sunday.

Saturday

Stand on a corner in Newark Market Place rattling a collection tin for the Framework Housing Association. They are an extremely good concern which provides housing and support to vulnerable individuals who may in some cases be rough sleepers. Freezing cold but I met about fifteen people who I have not seen for ages and was able to engage in one of my favourite pastimes, gossip.

Went home and told the wife I will retire this year.

Immediate panic attack. Can we afford it? Social isolation beckons? My world may crumble without the structure of work. I'll be a nobody without a job. Maybe I am now!

Hope to see clearly

I discovered about a year ago that I had cataracts. One in each eye, the right being worse than the left. At the time the opthalmologist offered to list me for an operation but being terrified I refused and said I would wait. So the right eye has deteriorated and I have been pondering increasingly on why I would choose to go through younger old age with a sight problem that can be improved considerably by surgery (though obviously there are risks). Today therefore I went back to outpatients at Newark Hospital and have been listed for the operation on my right eye in April.

I have always had a passionate belief that free and comprehensive healthcare is an essential in any decent and civilised society. We do not need Blair's Foundation Hospitals and supposed "choice".

The existence of Foundation Hospitals in some areas implies there will be less competent facilities in other parts of the country. What justification can there be for giving some members of the population an inferior service in this way?

Choice? You can only make genuine choices when you have a full knowledge of the product you are purchasing, the alternatives that are available, and the power or resource to ensure you get it. Selecting a treatment for a possibly life threatening illness is rather more complex than buying a pound of apples off the market. With illness there are not the opportunities to learn by mistakes "the surgeon made a balls up so I'll try another the next time I need a hysterectomy".

What sick people need is a decent facility not too far from where they live adequately resourced and staffed with competent and motivated people. I have faith in the UK NHS and I have always had a good service, as I did today. This despite the fact that staff have been demoralised by years of change which has not always had an obvious benefit for patients, so called modernisation and other triumphs of form over function.

I will keep you posted on developments as my treatment progresses.

Admission to addiction

I think I have a craving I need to confess to. My name is David and I am addicted to putting adverts in the paper to see if anyone has an old moped for sale.

The excitement and adrenalin rush of it all. Cold sweats and bitten finger nails waiting for the advert to appear. The phone call from the hopeful seller. The 40 mile trip to view. Peering into the broken down shed to view the rusty heap. Paying £40 for something worth £25. Spending £60 on it. Selling it for £80. On Ebay.

I did it again last week, furtive advert in the Lincolnshire Echo not disclosed to wife "anyone got a Honda C90 for sale"? One reply which seemed hopeful and I arranged to view today. As my garage is full I decided to get rid of the Puch which you see here so onto Ebay it goes. It came from Epworth the birthplace of John Wesley. Space needed for my "new" Honda.

Unfortunately the guy selling the Honda has now rung to say he can now not go ahead. Gone into cold turkey. When the Puch has gone I will have a tiny space in the garage that must be filled. Must get in touch with the Lincolnshire Echo classifieds again tomorrow.

Some things have not got better

Last Sunday night was as usual pub quiz night at the Castle and Falcon. Our team has up to seven members depending on who turns up. We didn't win last week but came second. The usual post performance inquest took place with individuals claiming that they had known and stated the answers to questions we had got wrong but had been overruled or ignored.

One of our keener and more capable male team members, Pete, has an openly hostile attitude to the only woman in our group. Jill is a divorced 60 year old who lives alone and I would guess is very lonely. For example she seems to have very little contact with her daughter and grandchildren who live in Newark. On Christmas Day she was allowed to visit them in the morning but just before dinner was served her daughter instructed her husband "you take mum home while I strain the veg then we can start when you get back". Jill told me she spent the rest of the day on her own and was devastated by the rejection she felt she had received.

Pete explains his extreme antipathy towards this mild and harmless individual "I don't want to be with women in the pub, if I wanted a woman to talk to I'd go out with our lass". It's strange really, apart from being a selfconfessed hard core racist he can be a very decent bloke.

I used to believe that such attitudes would be bound to erode as attitudes became ever more liberal after the sixties. It is depressing.

Met with my old boss on Tuesday, the first time I have seen him since he retired two years ago. He has Parkinsons and this precipitated his leaving work early. We had a good gossip and he told me that he is now a volunteer with the Motor Neurone Disease Society supporting sufferers living with this distressing illness. Restoration of faith in humanity.

Not all bad. I forgot to mention that I won fifty quid on Quiz Night in the Open the Box competition.

Queen surprise at funeral of local man

Freddy Mercury died on November 29th 1991. Press reports before Christmas on the anniverary of his death reminded me of a sad but amusing incident that I experienced a couple of years ago.

In 1998 I took early retirement from my job as an Area Manager with a Social Services Department. The department was being restructured and three of us were finished. One of these, Mike, had become very disillusioned with the organisation and could not wait to be gone. He almost fell over his laptop case in his haste to be out of the building. Soon Mike found himself a position as the Chair of his local Primary Health Care Trust. I saw him a couple of times and he told me he enjoyed the role immensly.

Mike was a decent man, slightly pompous in a nice way, conservative of dress apart from always wearing white socks. I would never have taken him for a Freddy Mercury fan but I was to be proved wrong.

A couple of years ago I was told that he had died suddenly and unexpectedly. I went to the funeral at Grantham Crematorium and as he was a popular well liked man there were many in attendance. The usual solemn music was the order of the day.

At the end of the proceedings it was announced that Queen had been one of his favourite bands and an uplifting track would be played whilst the many mourners filed out.

The elderly organist put on the CD, I can't remember which song, and the masses shuffled along. By the time the track finished only half the people had left. Before the obviously inexperienced DJ could get the disc off and to his embarrassment the next track had started. Yes you've got it. "Another One Bites The Dust" pounded out of the speakers. Mike would have loved it. In fact with his level of self belief he probably organised it.

What's in a local pub?

They say that good snooker players have had a misspent youth. I am no good at snooker despite a misspent youth..... and adulthood. Although I don't regret it I have spent far too much time in pubs. Local pubs not cheap beer warehouses like Wetherspoons.

Now sadly due to a mix of social, cultural and economic factors the institution of the "local" seems to be dying. I have patronised the (not very) New Inn and the Horse and Jockey for the last twenty years. Both have become a shadow of their former selves in the past five years. The New Inn closed over a year ago and has been boarded up. There are rumours it is due to reopen. I am not too optimistic about this or the chances of success, but if it does what should it as a "local" have on offer?

1. When you go in you will almost always see someone you know and hopefully can stand talking to.
2. Often this will be the bar staff who are paid to be nice, to your face at least.
3. A landlord and/or landlady. They may be tenants but if the pub becomes successful whoever owns it will make sure they are soon managers.
4. The landlord will know everything, have had many life experiences and may claim to own a racehorse.
5. Even if he doesn't own a horse he will advise you of his frequent success at the bookies or the racecourse. The fruits of this may not often be seen.
6. The landlady will "take" to some of the punters and not others. They will know which section they are in.
7. She will have a unique and bizarre fashion sense. Her clothes will come from some special "landlady boutique". Non licenced victuallers will not have access to this fashion emporium.
8. The landlord will think he is in charge, the landlady will allow him this conceit but will know that he is just a drone.
9. Drinks will not be served by the landlord who is above this and anyway is occupied with the important business of studying form.
10. Drinks will be served by pleasant, assertive women who are well able to deal with stupid comments from the mixed bag of intoxicated customers who are called to the bar.
11. The landlord will study their form and may consider he has, as their employer, a special relationship with them.
12. The landlady will be aware of these old fool delusions but will nevertheless keep an eye on the situation. It may be necessary to sack the member of staff.
13. Main problem will be to find a reason that doesn't contravene annoying PC employment legislation. What are they alleged to have pinched? Does landlords significant backside count?
14. Beer and lager will be sold. As no one drinks the beer anymore beware as it may be rather sour due to spending too long in the pipes.
15. Drinks will be on the expensive side. Perhaps double the price of what you would pay to drink supermarket stuff at home.
16. There will not be many solicitors or accountants in the bar.
17. Unless they are from the pub's holding company and have come to close it down.
18. There will be darts and pool teams.
19. If there isn't the pub will not have a large enough customer base to survive. Football teams and fishing clubs are an additional bonus.
20. Food will not be served. Except that is for haselet, black pudding and cheese and onion sandwiches provided for the darts and pool teams.
21. If you don't know what haselet is contact me to find out.
22. If you do know what haselet is contact me to let me know, quick.
23. The sandwich platters will be decorated by the landlady with three pieces of lettuce and a tomato. What is left after the team has had their fill will be gratefully consumed by the non sporting customers
24. Usually they only get the lettuce leaves but this is a useful contribution to the five vegetables they consume each week.
25. The others are four portions from the local chippy.
26. There will be a juke box.
27. The juke box will have many compilation CD's on it.
28. "Waterloo Sunset" will often be played.
29. Men who used to have long dark brown curly hair, and now have little will wax lyrical about the 60's (or seventies or eighties) when music was not like it is now.
30. Customers will argue about things of no consequence, for example how to pronounce haselet.
31. They will fall out about money, religion and sport but will usually have forgotten by the next time they see each other.
32. And have the same arguments all over again.
33. Unfortunately racist views are common but denied or unrecognised as such.
34. Punters will swear despite the image of the local portrayed on TV soaps.

I hope the New Inn opens again, I can't wait to get my social life back.

Willum refuses to join in the plot

Willum, that's him in the picture, reluctantly declined to be part of my plot to get rid of Ruby and her hangers on. Remember I told you about them in previous blogs.

It's not that he likes the Hackney Slasher, "no way mate, can't stand the ginger Southern furball."

He explained it's a matter of principle, "never peed on the furniture and not going to start now but very tempted cos it's in a good cause." Looked me straight in the eye and said, "look mate I only ever piddle on things that can easily be swilled down under the tap. You know, like the laptop, printer, mobile phone or them old books you've been hanging on to for years."

Thank goodness there's some principles in the household.