Just a simple message

 I am writing on behalf of Tom Stevenson.

He wanted to tell you that he has been ill for the past 5 weeks and he is still recovering and will need help from therapists for a while before he will be able to  contact you.

Hopefully he will speak to you sometime in the future.

Best wishes,

Jackie (her indoors)

Wound-licking

I have not been listening to the Conservative's Party conference much (or Labour's) but I continue to be impressed by Liz Truss's astounding lack of contrition and thick-skinned insistence that she should have been left to do billions of pounds worth of  more damage to the economy just to prove a point.  She is not licking her wounds.

I worked in Salzburg about thirty years ago so it is no surprise to me that Austria is having a lot of success with far-right politicians. Ordinary citizens will shout at you for parking on double yellows, even at 2.00am in a vast, empty square.

Sound advice

I have just bought a little endoscope. This is the second one I have owned, but I sold the first on very quickly when I realised that it was not suitable for what I needed doing.

It was a large box and screen with a thick cable attached, needed charging and cost about £90. The new one is a thin cable which plugs into your phone, has an adjustable lighting system and cost under £14. The images are on the phone screen and can be saved as stills or video. At some point it is going to be very useful, but even if not it doesn't matter for that price. I will have fun with it at least.

On the instruction leaflet it warns you that it is not suitable for personal use, which is Chinese for 'don't stick it up your arse'.

When a man is tired of London...

When I kick the bucket, nobody is going to say of me, 'He never complained about anything, he never moaned about his problems and he always looked for the best in everyone'. It actually makes me laugh to even imagine it.

So to carry on where I left off, I am in constant pain now and only ever comfortable when lying down. This makes me bad tempered and irritable. When I go out for a walk in the streets, I begin with a positive state of mind, but within minutes I am resenting anyone who gets in my way because I can no longer change direction quickly. Everyone seems to walk around using their phone and peripheral vision, not noticing obstructions until they force me to come to a dead stop.

Loud noises - ambulance sirens, the air brakes on lorries and busses etc. - are sometimes verging on unbearable. I sometimes have to leave cafes because I cannot bear listening to other people's conversations - especially if they are through the loudspeaker of a mobile phone. Amplified buskers drive me nuts - especially if they are playing crap music. I went on a one-hour river cruise through the countryside a few weeks ago and it was peaceful and calming until one of the crew began a monotonous and banal commentary which lasted all the way out and all the way back. The speaker was right above my head.

I enjoy sitting outside in town with a coffee just watching passers-by, but after a while everyone begins to look freakish and unattractive. I notice more and more obese men, women and children and my heart sinks until I have to go back home to escape the visual overload.

On my occasional visits to the pub, I begin to enjoy the company after a couple of drinks and and a taste of Class-A drugs, but I am aware of the dangerous illusion and know it cannot last.

I love living in town but I would also love to have an escape hut in the countryside. Sitting under trees in a park is very soothing.

Ok, that is off my chest for another few years.

Spam

 Just to say I have found a lot of your comments in my spam bin which I have now released. Not my doing, honest. I looked because some of mine are in yours.

Everyone's a critic

What do you think? 

Do you recognise this man?

Right now I am in charge of a renovation building project which involves climbing up and down tall scaffolding. I don't normally get involved in things like this, but... well it's a long and boring story. All I will say is that I am too old for it now and have vowed never to do it again. Honest.

Some weeks ago in the early evening, I looked out to see the man above climbing around an even larger scaffold and took this photo of him when he finally got down. He did not use the ladders, but clambered about on the poles of the structure. Very dangerous. I did not bother to call the police as they probably would not have bothered themselves and besides, he looked like an ordinary nutter rather than a cat-burglar.

My job includes setting a scaffold alarm which is controlled from an app on my phone. When someone sets it off by walking in front of one of two detectors - front and back - the outside siren howls and my phone makes a sound like we are all under nuclear attack. When you go to the app it shows a series of one repeating video and two stills of the intruder. 

Last week at around dusk it was set off at the rear. I went to the app and saw a picture of someone's legs walking along the bars in the gloom. It has infra-red but the image quality is very poor and small. Basically it lets you know if there is a human or a pigeon outside.

I went to the window and found a man climbing up the scaffold, unheeding my shouts telling him to get down. I recognised him, It was the man above.

Pretty soon there were many police shining torches up from the ground.  They sent a fireman up to investigate, which I thought was cowardly and unfair. I reset the alarm to catch the man going back down, but all I got was a photo of the fireman. Somehow he disappeared without trace. After an hour, everyone gave up and went home.

At least I know what happens when the alarm is triggered.