Tension is who you think you should be.Relaxation is who you are.
Chinese proverb

Writing: The hobby that can rewire your brain and help you build resilience | The Independent https://share.google/GgL5rNgDAgvw6sODP

When I was young and almost here
I had a problem with my fear.
My mother’ d not known what to do
And I kept running to the loo
At last the doctor’s mind was clear
They sent me to a nuclear seer.

The man looked up, the man looked down
I’d never seen him in the town
He asked me if I had bad dreams
Or ruined my sleep with howls and screams
I never knew quite how to say:
The nuclear bomb might go astray.

They told us what to take inside
The nuclear shelter, where we’d hide
Tampax weren’t allowed as they
Might break our hymens on the way
So we had our bags of pads
As seeing our blood ‘d dismay the lads

We must lie down in the hedgerows
But not daydream or take a doze.
In our mill towns we’d no hedge
It was a metaphor I grudged.
Clutching bags of bloody cloths,
We would come out and see God’s wrath.

On the nuclear fires, we’d burn
The sanitary towels society spurned.
I hope before the bomb comes back
The Bishops will permit some slack
For Tampax are so small and neat
Our bin would have an odour sweet

We might be turned into grey ash
And our hymens all out-blast
We’d not enjoy sweet love and sex
Nor send our lovers teasing texts
So get together while you can
Before they drop that bloody bomb

What the hell,a villanelle!
It looks too hard for such as me
But I write well.as you can tell

I have a story.who knows Belle?
It’s from the English who love tea
\What a hell,oh villanelle

I saw a man with a sea shell
I asked him for a pod of pea
I write well.yeah super Nell

I often wonder if I smell
As I drink so much green tea
What’s s to tell ,my villanelle?

But worry makes life into hell
And it’s bad for those who see 

I write well,but who can tell

I must take much charity
If you ask, what is your fee?
What the hell oh villanelle
I write well but life is hell

In answer to your question I declare
That I must die seems totally bizarre
Yet since you ask which burial I prefer
Cremation seems to be the least unfair

I’d like to hear the sound of Joan of Arc
Jennifer and Leonard sing in parts
And as the Maiden burns up in the pyre
I shall be consumed by controlled fire

I’d like to be more useful while alive
I am not a husband nor a wife
But I might be a friend to those I love
And pray the sun will shine ,below, above

I think I made a Will,but why d’you ask?
Do you think you’ll benefit at last?
I plan to leave it all to Charity
One that gives old folk meringues for tea.

You never phone without your wise advice
About how housework should fulfil my life
But my mind is as good as yours, I find.
I keep it oiled and covered in red wine.

Joan of Arc will be my friend and saint
September Cohen will become my mate
He’ll sing a

n anthem while I sail away
And give me courage when it hurts to pray.

It’s time to laugh and cry over our lives
As to the young we dictate our archives
Though people rarely listen to the Word
At least we can assure God that we have tried

I wonder why you never rang before
And today I shall be nineteen ninety four
I will ring you when your birthday comes
To ask you if you’d like pickling well in rum.

We’re probably tired of trying to save money since brexit the pandemic the increased price of food etc

Sometimes it’s easy to save money for example if you go to a coffee shop every day for coffee which is about four pounds a cup now in London then you could save 120 pounds a month by giving up your habits

Should you do that?

It might be a mistake because it might be the only time you go out if you are not working in a paid job outside the home.

Maybe you could go to one of the local church halls where they frequently have coffee mornings. Unfortunately the coffee is not always very good and you maybe afraid that someone will try to convert you when all you want is some cheap coffee and maybe a chat with somebody.

At the moment with the free bus pass older f people don’t save any money by walking although it might be very beneficial to your health

When I was a child we had no bathroom so I’m sure that’s saved my mother and father lots of money

You could try only having hot water on alternate days of the week so that you save money on your electricity or gas bill.

You could eat cold food most of the time but that’s not very nice really is it especially for the elderly

Someone I know who’s about 86 years old every morning with our free bus pass and she goes  to o the charity shops. She always really interestingly dressed and she said it’s all second hand. She srays out most days until about 4 pm so that she doesn’t have to put her heating on but not many people are quite so fit and strong alto be out of the house for five or six hours in a day in the winter

Of course there’s always the public library that you can sit in and read the newspapers maybe or even read a book and you can use it a computers there as well so you wouldn’t need to heat your home if you went to library for the morning

The other point about all this is that what is regarded as normal now was once a luxury. Like having a shower every day. But if everybody does that you feel embarrassed if you can’t afford it I imagine I’m not sure because I’ve never taken to showers very much but it is very pleasant to have a bath whenever you feel like it.

I suppose we all have things that we regard as essential to our life and then there are other things that we might be willing to give up because they’re not so important

If you are very wealthy person and you’re going to move out of Britain because you’re afraid of paying more income tax then I would say go please go because we are a society. Everybody in the society has to contribute something towards it and clearly the very wealthy are more able to give money than the poor are.

Interestingly the poor give more to charity than the rich. Not such a surprise really is it?

The luxury of not being very poor is that you’re not constantly thinking about money and wondering if you can afford to have a cup of tea while you are out shopping. And that you can afford to have the food that you like

If you are good at shopping you will realize that one of the more expensive supermarkets in Britain has an essentials range which is very cheap

You’ve got to be fairly strong to tramp round several supermarkets trying to get the cheapest food.

So it’s a subject which is painful for many people. Is losing £200 a year winter fuel allowance is worrying you remember that the state pension went up 8% this year and it went up 10% last year which was about 900 pounds for the average pensioner and so losing 300 pounds in the year it’s not so bad compared with getting 900 pounds extra that year in your pension.

But there’s no doubt about it even when you are  not at rock bottom nobody likes to lose some money they’ve been getting and expecting to go on getting for several years

And we were going to be so much more wealthy after brexit weren’t we?

Well  Boris Johnson is much wealthier I think. But he’s done a lot of harm to this country in my view.

I wonder how big the eye of the needle will be for him?

I must remember to tell God that I use easy threading needles and to ask whether that will make it easier for me to get through the eye myself.

I know I’ve lost a lot of weightsk since I was in the hospital but even so getting myself through an easy threading needle will not be much fun

Some of the meals I was getting were very small such as the following

Butterbean stew which consisted of about two or three tablespoons of butter beans in a soup like sauce with the other onion tomato in it .

Save money on entertainment by having a book group in your house once a month also and visiting others for their book group

I have noticed that nobody ever start some mathematics group in their home in the evening

So that’s ruled out

You can save a lot of money by having a a digital subscription rather than buying a newspaper every day.

I think it will be less than half the cost and you can access lots of other articles on the website I’ll also sorts of different topics so it is really good for people who like newspapers and article was on a wealth of subjects

The telegraph is good if you love the royal family very very much but it’s also a little bit right wing

And the guardian is a little bit left wing

It’s good for those who don’t particularly like the royal family. And maybe with a slightly higher reading age. But it’s just been found guilty of being a little bit unfair to Israel in its news reportage. I’m not sure how that is judged

Whenever has  compassion determined pensions or earnings?

It’s well known that more people die in winter than you would expect. About 500 per year in this country.

So it’s possible that losing the winter fuel allowance will increase this number.

These people were dying while in receipt of the winter fuel allowance.

That shows that they must be living on a very small pension which is not enough to pay their heating bills and to have  a hot meal every day.

Are there other explanations? Even people do have enough to pay their heating bills and food bills are more likely to die in the winter .

In the winter

we take less exercise1 we are not so good at planning and so we may go out dressed inadequately. I have seen with my own eyes that this is true when I observe people waiting at the bus stop. Some of my friends won’t wear hats in the winter because it will spoil their hairstyle.

It’s hard to get real woolen coats now although of course many of us wear padded or quilted coats which are just as warm

Are we less good at planning when we’re older or is it simply just lack of thought?

Of course if you are living on a low income you have less money to spend on clothes and if you are not very mobile you’re not going to go to the sales looking for clothes

Well it’s very sad and if the conservative had done this we would all be angry but because it’s the Labour Party some people feel they have to support it but it’s even though undoes because of it it gives a poor impression of the  care for the elderly

And the media like a nice juicy topic like this.

Although many of us will not get dementia indeed most of us won’t there is something called cognitive decline which means your brain doesn’t function as well as it used to do.

This might be because you don’t use it enough so if that happens that’s likely to affect the decisions you make.

You may not think about  what you can do in difficult situations.

Also if you are married or living with somebody they might have taken the decisions in the household and if they die or leave you may not be used to doing all those things for yourself

And finally two people living in one house would both have  got the winter fuel  allowance. But if one diesls the other person will still be living in the same house but only get one winter fuel allowance.

A sad situation indeed. Living in a very unequal society which this is anyway regardless of the winter fuel payments living in such a society creates a lot of stress for the poor

But also I have seen articles by psychoanalysts saying that rich people who go for therapy are often suffering from moral problems about their wealth but thenmy are not aware of it

I suppose it must be there unconscious mind that is having these thoughts. Because all the news we get indicates that rich people applying to leave the country if we get an increased tax in the budget in October. But we don’t hear about the ones who are not going to do that.

In the past rich people started charities or libraries or other similar things such as the Carnegie libraries

That will be wonderful if some rich people paid to  keep the library’s open in places where they’ve been closed for several days a week.

I think they would have feel better and so would the rest of us so if we can do that on a small scale it might if you have a friend or relative who is quite poor then you could ask them  for hot meals once I twice a week.

Or you could go out with them somewhere else and pay for the meal as long as you agree this beforehands because some people  hate what they call Charity. That’s another problem ….pride