Spring and new traditions

It's almost Spring... isn't it? So far this year the weather here has been grey and wet. At least we've had no floods... yet. Parts of Leicestershire have been under water for several weeks now. Is it climate change or is it the good old British weather? I don't know but I know that I need something to cheer me up, so I went into the garden early this morning and found a bed full of Hellebores. I took a photo of one. 

I love the way the petals show off such dainty spots, an artist's challenge if ever I saw one. 

So what has Spring got to offer? Lighter evenings and warmer days for a start. Mr A has not been able to work in his much loved garden lately and I've not been able to sit on my swing seat and watch him work! We used to have in depth discussions each Spring about which vegetables to grow for that year's harvest but not any more. Vegetables need such a lot of attention and it's time for a new tradition. We will discuss which flowers to order, plug plants to take the risk out of the seed sowing, and we will fill those beds with a mass of colour. There's too much grey out there.

Spring means that everything is beginning again, birds building nests, flowers preparing to dazzle but it's not all about looking forward. All that new life is tinged with sadness. It's so hard to accept that this Spring my sister won't be planting out her pots. My sister, who died last June, lived in an upstairs flat in Lyme Regis. She had no garden but the path beside her front door was packed each summer with all manner of flowers tumbling over the sides of pots. She spent hours each evening dead-heading and watering... until two years ago when her health deteriorated. I have a rose bush in our garden that she bought me for one of my big birthdays. It has the most amazing flowers every year and I have always sent her a photo of the first full bloom. This year I hope you will indulge me because I would like to post this year's rose photo on my blog. Like I said, it's time for new traditions. 

ABBA Voyage Show - a Trip to London

We’ve been to London to see ABBA Voyage, a digital, virtual performance by ABBA looking exactly as they did in the 1970s. It was strange seeing holograms of the four ABBA members on stage looking so young. At the end of the show they made an ‘appearance’… or rather a virtual appearance, looking like they do today. It was all very moving. 

Throughout the show they were accompanied by an extremely talented live band and an rather lively light show. The light show was so lively in fact, that I had to close my eyes for part of it as the strobe effect was too much for my ‘elderly’ eyes to cope with. There was plenty of singing along to songs we all knew and we even joined in with the arm waving.

The Arena was well organised and very welcoming from the minute we arrived. The photo on the right shows the brightly lit entrance:

Photography was, understandably, strictly forbidden once the show began but I managed to take one of the packed Arena before it started to try and give you a feel for the atmosphere:

We went down to London by train. This was not without its stresses. We ground to a halt somewhere near Harpenden and there we stayed for forty minutes. It would seem that someone had stolen leads from the signals on the track. It was a good job we’d given ourselves plenty of time.

We really splashed out on the day taking a taxi from St Pancras all the way to the Arena and back again after the show. It was a long (and expensive) drive but fascinating. It’s one thing seeing the names of places from the Monopoly Board on underground station signs. It’s quite another seeing them in real life. Being driven through the East End of London had an additional frisson for me. My Mum was born and grew up there and we drove along roads that she used to talk about.

Before getting the train home we treated ourselves to posh fish and chips in Searcys restaurant at St Pancras Station. An excellent end to a great day. Must admit though, it did knock me out just a bit. It took a few days of dossing in front of my iPad for me to recover.

Good Grief! The Comedian's a Bear!

I was listening to an old radio programme this week, Word of Mouth from February 2024. They were talking about things that families say, snippets and phrases that become original family sayings. I tried in vain to think of something original that my own family have created but ours all seem to be cliché phrases like, 'It's a bit black over Bill's mother's.' I'd love to know the derivation of that, who Bill is and why his mum always has storm clouds over her house. After much thought I came up with a few that I thought were originals but which turn out to be well-known phrases.

My mother-in-law was forever suspicious of new technology and her stock line was, 'We're getting far too clever by half.' She'd shake her head and fold her arms as she said it. She died many years ago but whenever we hear of a new technological development we chorus the words, 'We're getting far too clever.' Who knows, maybe we are getting far too clever.

When I was a child my mum would always say, 'It'll end in tears.' whenever I was too silly. Again, it's not original but I often hear her voice in my head, even now, if I get the giggles. That's rather sad but I know that Mum would never have meant to impose such a forever reaction on me.

I like to think that a phrase adopted by my son and myself is fairly original, even if we did copy it from a television show. The title of this blog may give you a clue. We were fanatical Muppet viewers and every time anyone said... and still to this day says... 'Good grief!' My son, me and family chant in chorus, 'The comedian's a bear. No he's a-not he's a-wearing a neck-a-tie!'

This is my only contribution to clichéd sayings. It's not very highbrow but it makes us laugh every time we say it and no, it doesn't end in tears. For those who have never seen the Muppets, it's a Fozzie the Bear joke. He was and still is my favourite Muppet character.

For those who are still wondering what on earth I'm talking about, here is the excerpt. It makes me laugh every time. Enjoy:    Muppet Show excerpt

The Train from Leicester to Manchester but…

…there is no train from Leicester to Manchester. 

The track is there but it ceased to be in service way back in the 1960s. The only way to get to Manchester by train these days is a tortuous challenge of timetable checks and clashes. 

We took on this very challenge last week to visit our lovely granddaughter and family. We declined the Birmingham option because it takes about an hour longer and we declined the Sheffield option which involves the Trans-Pennine Express as it is anything but express. We opted for Nuneaton but our connection was almost an hour late and the waiting room had an ‘Out of Order’ sign on the locked door. How can a waiting room be out of order? It was cold on that platform. There was an evil wind whipping at my ears no matter which part of the platform I paced along.  What a shame they haven't yet developed the technology so I could be like Captain Kirk in Star-Trek and cry, “Beam me up, Scotty!”

The Manchester train departs from platform 3 but platform 3 is the route taken by an almost continual barrage of non-stop bullet-like trains. The woman over the loudspeaker kept warning us to stand well clear and to hold onto bags and pushchairs. She wasn’t kidding. I could almost feel my hair tugging at the roots. How do they avoid daily or even hourly fatalities? There should be protective screens. They have them on the new London Underground lines... at least I think they do... but there was not a screen in sight at Nuneaton.

I tried to take photos of one of the offending high speed monsters but my phone couldn't cope wih the velocity so I've created a cartoon instead. 

Getting to Manchester by train was stressful but perhaps marginally better than the stress of me driving, Mind you, the sight of our granddaughter and husband waiting on the platform for us when we arrived made it all worth while.

My London Grip Poem...

...and some editing notes

London Grip New Poetry has been publishing a quarterly online magazine of new poetry for over ten years. It was last month that I heard from the editor to say that they would be publishing my poem, 'Driving Home from Work' in their Winter 2025 issue. A few of you messaged me to ask for the link on publication. I've attached the link below. 

It is a packed magazine and I'm sure you'll enjoy having a read through some of the other poems, but if you want to jump to mine first then click on my name in the list at the top of the site.

I had the idea for this poem a few years ago. I was driving home through Leicester when the traffic slowed near a small Tesco food store. The O in the Tesco sign was flashing... annoyingly flashing, yet no one else seemed to notice it. I reflected on my irritation. Maybe I'm obsessive compulsive, I thought. I mulled over what else irritated me. The poem emerged from those ruminations, but it was only recently that I retrieved it from the pending file, tightened it up and reworked a more satisfying conclusion. Writing is like that sometimes. It needs to sit in a computer file and settle before it can be completed.

I hope you enjoy reading it at London Grip New Poetry.

My Top 5 Motoring Moans...

...an excuse for a good grumble!

1 Too many cars: Is this simply because there are more people in the world and they all want to drive a car or is it caused by all the delivery vans cruising the streets with parcels or boxes of food? I don't know the answer.

2 Rush hour: Not so long ago there was a rush hour in the morning and another at teatime as people went to and from work. Now it feels as if we have a constant daily rush hour and yet since Covid there are many people who continue to work from home at least a few days a week. Makes no sense.

3 Roadworks and potholes: In our City it seems as if every other road has cones and barriers and copious diversion signs and yet there are still many potholes that threaten our cars' suspension systems. What are all the workmen doing?

4 Parking: When I was young Dad would park his car beside any kerb, even in the centre of town. Now street parking is almost impossible and paying to park is becoming more expensive by the month, or so it seems. It now costs £5 for three hours in the multi-storey car park in town and the local shopping areas have all put a charge on parking. No wonder local shops are struggling to survive. 

5 Delivery bikes and scooters: Only yesterday a young food delivery driver cut in front of me and several other cars on his bike as we were moving at a steady speed along a main road in town. Is delivering a pizza to someone more important than his life? And this doesn't only happen on the roads. I've almost been swept off my feet by electric scooter drivers while walking along the pavement. That's just plain rude!

End of grumble, but if you have any motoring moans that I haven't mentioned do please share.

The night AI freaked me out

There has been a lot of hype about AI recently. Some of it is bad with people predicting that AI will take over the world and we will become surplus to requirements. It's quite enough me worrying about things I can change. I'm afraid AI and world domination is not one of them.

On the plus side, AI helps people everyday with their report/essay/email writing and that can be useful, especially for those who have trouble expressing themselves in writing, but in order to do that AI has scanned all published work - and I mean all. It has scanned the entire contents of works from Shakespeare to Dickens to Enid Blyton... even to the words I'm typing on this screen right now. Here is proof if proof were needed:

Last night I conducted a little experiment. I asked AI if it could suggest new blog posts that I might write in the style of my existing blog posts. Literally within seconds it had produced a screen full of ideas. Its ideas were sorted into topic sections. Each section had a numbered list of suggested posts that were varied and, indeed, the kind of thing that I might write. It ended by asking if I would like it to produce a detailed weekly schedule of work for me to follow. At that point I closed it down. It totally freaked me out. 

The speed and accuracy of its response was not what I was expecting, but I can assure you that I will not be producing posts written by AI. Sometimes the content of my posts even surprises me, so I don't rate AI's chances of dong it. It might be able to replicate and reconstruct past ideas but it can't predict future thoughts, events or trips. 

Talking of future trips, I have to admit to being in something of a rut right now. Before she died my sister said, 'You won't forget me, will you?" I knew I never would and I told her as much, with great emphasis. What I didn't expect was the overwhelming feeling of loss that has, for want of a better phrase, stopped me in my tracks for the last five months. So I won't be writing about trips or holidays, not just yet, maybe next year.

On a more positive note, have you had any experiences with AI either positive or negative? I'd be fascinated to hear about them. I've changed the blog comment setting back to allowing anyone to post without me having to moderate. I know some people had problems with it, so please feel free to contribute to an AI discussion in the comment box below. Hope to hear from you soon.