Nuggets

 In Switzerland apparently you can go to the doctors and get a covid test result in 10 minutes. (travelling from Switzerland coming to the UK on Radio 4)   They are that efficient and apparently according to a book I am reading to get rid of epidemics you need a very tight test and trace situation, which you can do if you can get test results that easily.  In the UK you still can only test and trace about 50% of people who have tested positive, yet now if you go to Switzerland you have to   quarantine for two weeks.    This book also says that planning in advance is the only way to deal with pandemics - they said only 19 countries had decent plans prior to this current pandemic rather astonishingly the UK was one of them!

Free range chickens apparently are less eco friendly that Red Tractor chickens in a big barn.  

I am pleased to say the Victim's Ombudsman has thanked me for sending in about my experiences of being a victim of crime and about how painful moving through the criminal justice system is. She cannot get my money back,  I know that, but at least she can acknowledge how painful it is to be a victim and the damage it causes,   being groomed is very difficult, to know others have been affected by the choices I made because I was groomed has also been painful.  Because I owed it to my Dad, and my son, who suffered in a way along with me when I defrauded,  I wanted to try and at least be able to take the person who damaged me so much to court and have my say and try and get the money back if possible.  I have been told I am not his only victim, so of course,  I also hoped that taking the matter to court would help other women not be in the same position if only for a short while, whilst he was in the system. I also thought I might even have a better insight into his motivation.  The money he took from me, was a lot for me, but given he took 6 months to achieve it a small return,  so why go to all that effort.  What motivates him and people like him who prefer to use their brains in an illegal way rather than in a legal way.  We can all be bad and stupid but to spend 6 months grooming someone, did that give him a kick?  Or does he feel so inadequate compared with the rest of his family that this is the only way he can raise his sense of self esteem.  Anyway unless another woman reports hims and he is finally taken to court I probably will never know, but if my evidence helps the Victim's Ombudsman address some of the issues with proving fraud and the lack of help for victims, that will be at least something.  

I ranted and raved when he hurt me that badly,    sometimes we need to rant and sometimes we can only be silent. Sometimes when one feels angry one rants, sometimes when something seems just too overwhelming too difficult to unpick and discuss, one stays silent.  And only time will tell whether that really is the end of the conversation or whether one day one can talk again and listen objectively and with compassion and sometimes actually move forward again.      

Intrigue or intriguing.

 So a couple of days after falling out with my friend,  I received this but from someone with a different name.  Some of the information in it, suggests it was from my friend, but and this seems more likely perhaps this is evidence of how clever  fraudsters can be or those who just infringe on one's life - perhaps that is my fault for putting too much information out there but this email uses information about my " friend"  or information that suggests the person knows me  and my son but it also does not seem real - as if someone really wrote it, more like it would be if a  card reader or someone giving a horoscope reading had written it for despite the apparently accurate specifics on the whole it is quite general. 

The two currency exchange bureaux I can get to remain closed since the lockdown in March.  I have Dollars cash from my cancelled US holiday, enough to cover my night of arrival and the following day.  After your visit to Croatia it occurred to me that N O or N and his partner could benefit from the currency, if I could pass it on . I was going to raise this with you.  As it is the money will continue to languish on the mantlepiece. I'll probably donate instead when I eventually change it up.  I will miss knowing how N O's  life shakes out as he gets older.

I have a lovely bi-racial toddler in the family.  A cousin married a Kenyan and have this son.  This couple like to have gatherings on special occasions. The outdoor feasts, with goat meat, are something else. It's good to know this little bi-racial boy has extended Kenyan family in the UK  in addition to all his relatives in Kenya.  I've come to see how important that is through N O. .

I'm over my moment of explosive exasperation. I donate periodically to a Calais charity, for the few truly desperate displaced children and youngsters who turn up there, but it is those who buy a passage to the UK who usurp.

Nothing more to communicate except I regret seeing the BB posts.  Your horrible time and thoughts placed into the ethersphere. Too much.  A crystallising moment later for me in the debacle was that it is a person's actions and not their words which count in the end.  Separately, the breakings of trust with N along the way over the home abroad were shocking too. Once again actions over words. So relieved to be far away from that facet of your personality.

I wish N O well in his future.

If it is from my "friend" - well they are out of my life anyway, but if from someone else, what is their motivation.  It is scary that people can access information and create a fiction.     Whoever it is they do not like me.  

Weird goings on on my other blog, something I have not touched for years, but someone has commented on that. And very weird goings on with my gas and electrics.   All the world seems a bit out of kilter still. 

It also seems that I have comments on this blog.  Interesting comments.   I think that they have answered the intrigue. 

 

A time of loss.

 This year will be a time of loss for many people, lost work, lost lives to Covid, lost opportunities for children.  This year I have lost two friends and two great family friends have died - but neither from the virus.    The latter two were both a great age at the time of their passing, both brought down by age over recent years, but both full of life till the end.   I love living in a mixed aged world When I was a child, I loved visiting my aunts and uncles and learning about their lives.   Although these two men, Roy and B,  were neither they were honorary family .  I have stayed in their homes, eaten at their tables, listened to their tales and benefited from their kindness and generosity for a very large chunk of my life and my son holidayed with both of them, but especially B, if it had not been for B, he might not have learned to canoe or get a job working with young people when he did.      I have been the oldest women on my side of the family for some years, but I am not their equivalent to the younger generation.   Much as I love my nieces and nephews, I do not know all of them as well as I would like, nor have I become an honorary  aunt for example though I love getting to say hello to the many local kids in my road, it is fun watching them grow up.   So I will miss these people,the vital threads in my life.  

One friend was lost for reasons I cannot defend or explain.  But having known him for almost 40 years,  I realised that whilst he had become my best friend,it would and could never be more than that and that was painful.  I do not know if it was cognitive dissonance, but I decided a sort of compromise friendship was not feasible and I cut him out of my life.  That is a terrible thing to do to a friend, so I am guilty of being a very bad friend.    And it is not like I have so many friends that I can afford to let people go, but I have. 

Then this week.   A women I have known for a similar length of time, declared herself to be a fascist, or she defended being fascist.  She has an extreme position on migrants the most extreme I have ever come across.  I have fiends who have declared that no Muslims are good, but then I have realised that they have friends from a variety of faiths including Islam, so whilst I am not comfortable with their views,  I think that their humanity is intact.   But when someone more or less says that no one should be allowed to migrate or ask for refuge I wonder what is going on.     It may not be relevant, but this person says they want to uphold the idea of Britain being a white Christian mono culture, but that Christ - a middle Eastern refugee, is not anything to do with Christianity and she more or less accused my neighbour of being a hypocrite - of being a middle class, in effect a virtue signalling do gooder,  who does not have to actually deal with the consequences of immigration.  Given that my neighbour could not be someone more divorced from being middle class, the attack on Facebook was surprising and uncalled for. My friend had seen my neighbour's comment on Facebook because my name was included in the feed.  We accidentally transmitted material showing understanding of why people might want to run away from bombs and that was enough to label us as hypocrites.   

True her anger and ugly views, pulse through many of us, I am not immune from being ugly at times, but I know that if I lived in a country where bombs rained down on me, or where there was not enough food, I might have the courage to upsticks andto try and be safer. Sadly the UK is not a haven, it is not honourable or honest and it helps very few refugees compared with many other countries, however there is a crisis when some 70 million people having to escape their countries.  It is a crisis of corruption and mismanagement,it is a crisis of intolerance and poverty, some of which we have contributed to directly and indirectly. I do not have an answer to it.  I do not know how to stop Assad bombing his people, I wish I did, I do not have an answer to poverty, I wish that the money wasted on murderous traffickers was spent helping build positive healthy countries with citizens who did not listen to the siren call about European culture - a culture that has done so much to undermine African autonomy.   So I guess I feel as powerless as her,  and perhaps I am virtue signalling whereas she is happy to be the ugly crazy women in the corner spouting hatred.   But that is definitely not the answer, and that is something I do know.   But now I have to be the intolerant one because that is a view too far for me.    Her views threaten me,  they threaten me.  And so much as I value so many other things about her,  sadly I cannot sustain the friendship any more. I am sure she feels  the same way about me,  but it is never good to lose friends, especially people one has known since a holiday in the 70s whichi s where we first met .This woman did a similar liberal open univeristy degree to me, she has always liked travelling, we both worked at the very liberal GLC, and have had very similar health issues and issues with ghastly employers, yet she is now on the far right on this issue, and I am not.  Car owners and their pollution, people who dig up forests, I could understand if she objected to that kind of behaviour, I am very intolerant of some things,  but I genuinely do not understand why she is so inhumane about this.   She feels threatened by cold desperate people in boats, and I feel threatened by her and her views instead. 

Coasting down Croatia - Part 2 Kastela

According to my book on Croatia,  there is virtually nothing of worth between Split and the airport, other than a rather unique garden that happens to be situated in a school in Kastela,  but that is to ignore the rather charming small old towns that promenade along this part of Croatia, providing nice places to moor a boat,  clear waters to swim in,  warm days and warm nights and the odd bit of rain. If my son's partner did not live in the area, I might not have visited, but there is nothing nicer than pottering down to a

beach,  swimming ,relaxing, wandering back up the beach to a lovely lunch, followed by a siesta, and another swim or a night out.  Croatia proved to be a good place for a night out, from the esoteric sax and guitar concert in a church to clapping to Klapa Croatia has a good music tradition.   Just north of the Kastela's is Trogir, which is a lovely town to wander around, just south of Split is Omis another lovely town to just wandering around and in the middle are the Kastelas with their charming old buildings and castles.     A lovely seaside holiday. 

Coasting through Croatia part 1.

Coming into land Croatia looks stunning - little coves and clear seas.   Rijeka is a partly industrial town by the sea and when one is rushing up and down trying to find somewhere to stay it is hard to spot its charms.  Sadly despite being in touch with Ryanair and Hotels.com who are responsible for my booking - I have neither had a refund or assistance.   However,  on a warm day there is nothing nicer than sitting in the sun and enjoying a freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, true it could be almost anywhere in Adriatic area, but it is pleasant enough.  The town has some attractive buildings, a small old town, port and market.   I hope if I have to fly in there again, some interesting museums look worth visiting  and I would definitely stay at 

the little hostel where I stayed in before as that is right in the  heart of town, cheap and the people who run it very pleasant, much better than the rubbishy hotel that I had booked and which was closed!  I am trying to label the picture and reduce its size, but cannot get to grips with Bloggers new layout, which is horrid at present and has suddenly underlined things and gone blue!. 

The joys of  Croatia are beyond Rijeka - the bus climbs up into the mountains, with lovely seaside views,  goes over the plains and then drops down into Zadar and nice old walled city with a lovely atmosphere.    I stayed in the new part, but only had to walk across the bridge to be immersed in the lovely energy.   Mostly people are happy to wonder the streets, take in the Roman remains, dip into one of the many shops or sit in the warm evening sun and have a meal.   I had the biggest ice cream ever.    It was a lovely town to pop into to buy breakfast in the market,  or to wonder around.  I visited the glass museum and the archaeology museum and would especially recommend the later.  In the afternoons I walked to the nearest beach, which is a good half an hour a way, but by then a dip in the sea is absolutely vital, and then in the evening you can pop back into town.  I was there at the start of the Zadar summer festival so on my second night was able to see the rehearsals for a free concert and on my third night I was able to sit on a roman remain at a good social distance from others to watch the actual concert.    One of the special joys of Zadar are the wonderful sunsets - and whilst you watch the sun slowing sink down you can also sit and listen to the mournful sounds of the sea,  via the Sea Organ installation.  Then when it is finally dark,  head for the Greeting to the Sun and be in some kind of weird disco of lights generated by the heat of the day,