About Cliff Richards.

About Sir Cliff Richard – christened Harry Webb.

I have always had a kind of moderated empathy with the pop star (Sir) Cliff Richard, although our paths have only occasionally crossed – and then many years ago in his early days of fame.  Although we were born thousands of miles apart – him in India and me in the East End of London and with only 4 months between us-  I found him to be a very pleasant and polite person despite already  being an incredibly popular ( and talented ) entertainer from the very start of his career. And from recent  media coverage he  still seems to be basically the same kind of person.

Of course his homosexuality – once hidden from the public for many years – is now common knowledge, a fact which he now has to cope with after the many years of adoration by his millions of loyal female ( & many male ) fans.  

His 1963 hit song Batchelor Boy ( the line “happy to be a bachelor boy until his dying day” might have given us a clue to his sexuality then) has come to be actual fact as Cliff has never married although several unsuccessful attempts have been made to link him to possible girlfriends.  He is of course and always will be a committed homosexual , his brain irreversibly damaged from birth. ( see my essay Homosexuality the Cause & Effect.) 

Unfortunately he has had a bit of a rough time lately what with the internet and what is laughingly called social media able to say anything they like about him, while any attempts by him to put his side of the story only tend to make things look even worse than they really are.

Cliff is now a old man and most of the time despite the stress , the make up and his extreme wealth looks it for most of the time he is exposed to the pubic gaze. 

He still has a wonderful singing voice and is also fortunate in being able to get away from it all to his very private small vineyard estate , possibly with some kind of friend/companion of similar  lifestyle/persuasion.

I do feel very sorry for him as he had no choice in his inherited genetic lifestyle and like very many homosexuals terribly unhappy with their lot has tried just about everything possible to try to correct it , but of course to no avail at all. 

And there is not very much more than I can say about it - except to wish him luck for the future.  

good humour

We can often discover good humour in the strangest of places. Not long ago I bought a small book – not much more than a booklet actually – in Waterstones Piccadilly store.  Published in 2017 it was a light hearted look at The British Diplomatic Service over a period of years and made good reading.

Here is a short piece that I have pinched from it – with apologies to the Turkish population everywhere.

It’s a letter from the British Ambassador to Moscow to Lord Pembroke at the Foreign Office , London dated 1943.

“My dear Reggie,

In these dark days man tend to look for those little shafts of light that spill from the heavens.  My days are probably darker than yours and I need - my god I do - all the light I can get .

But I am a decent fellow and I do not wish to be mean and selfish about what brightness is shed upon me . So, I propose to share with you a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me that he is called Mustapha Kunt.

Well , we all feel like that Reggie from time to time especially when spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards.

It takes a Turk to do that ! “  

Mid December 2018

11/12/2018

I’ve been having a pretty easy time of things health wise just lately ,teeth , hearing and general health not giving me too much trouble  -  until last week that is.

I was at  Barbara’s bungalow in Stowmarket when out of the blue it suddenly hit me. My myeloma that is , which although it was diagnosed 9 years ago I had never had any kind of reaction from it and was only aware of it through regular blood tests. It came without any kind of warning at all, was extremely painful and as I was to discover caused some quite severe damage.

Barbara managed to manhandle me into her car and rushed   me straight to the local hospital in nearby Bury St Edmunds and that’s where I woke up about 4 hours later not having the faintest idea where I was.

I soon discovered that they had found major deterioration of a bone in my upper arm and that I  had immediately undergone a major operation to deal with it by fitting a permanent metal splint in the arm. The operation was a success and although the arm is in a sling I can move it about and there is not too much pain.  I have a review of the situation in 3 days time and hope I will be out of the sling by the Xmas holidays.

In the meantime I think that Barbara has found a very nice mature local man to deal with the garden , trees and etc; and even possibly some general handyman work.

 Our local park. 

We will have a very quite Xmas here in Stowmarket for the holiday but Barbara has planned one of her usual magnificent buffets for the new year for family and neighbours who are on their own .  Our grandchildren are no longer children but grown up with their own lives but I expect we shall still see them from time to time – I do hope so anyway.   

R.I.P. KEN SHELLITO .  Died 31^st October 2018.

Footballer extraordinaire and a really nice guy.

Kenny was six weeks older than me and part of our little ‘gang’ from about age 17.  Although he found National ( and sometimes International ) fame as a world class footballer he was never a show off of any kind and a real unassuming character in every way. 

He became Captain of Chelsea  in 1963 when he was only 23 years old and eventually team manager. A world class footballer , Ken also played for England until a serious knee injury caused him to retire in 1968.

However famous Kenny  became in football , he was still ‘one of the lads’ and never neglected his old friends – things were so different in those days.  Where-ever he was in the world he would return to the UK to attend one of our reunions – the last in 2010. 

Footballers in those days did not earn the incredible amounts of dosh that they do now , but although Ken was still a lot better off than the rest of us he was not at all ostentatious and in most respects just led a normal life.

Ken bought an old London taxi but he couldn’t drive so I would come down to Elm park where George , Harry and Dave lived and either me or Dave Acklin would drive the taxi up to London and we would all go out on the lash.   PHEW those were the days !!  

Ken married early in life and had two children , but the marriage did not survive the stresses and strains of fame and fortune.  In later life he married a Malaysian woman where he then lived and worked as  coach for The Asian Football Association.  We met his new wife Jeany,  at our last reunion in 2010.

Photo;   George , Me , Harry , Ken & Dave.

Sights and sounds of the Cap.

An unusual cup of coffee.

You see some strange things at the holiday village of Cap d’Agde , but this was just about as strange as it could get. We were still in the South of  France at the end of September. It was warm and sunny and we were sitting at a pavement café just about to start working out the details of getting ready to return to our normal winter life in Suffolk.

I heard the click clack of high heels and into view from behind me came a most unusual – even in Cap d Agde – sight.   The woman, tall , svelte and  immaculately dressed in black leather and wearing loads of heavy gold jewellery was leading the most amazing looking animal  I have even seen outside a zoo or circus.  It was a ferocious looking beast about the size of a Labrador dog which I later identified as a European Wildcat and as I looked over towards it ,  it hissed loudly and almost spat at me. Its owner almost as awesome as her pet ,apologised to us and pulled the animal closer to her with its professional halter leash.

I don’t think that Barbara was really frightened by the animal , but I could see that she was not really comfortable with the situation, so I quickly paid the bill and we went on our way.        

On the issue of Gender

In the chaos of my current efforts at  downsizing I’m afraid that I have got a bit behind on my ongoing BLOG.  I do try and keep it interesting as well as up to date , but although I still have a pretty active lifestyle with plenty to write about, enough spare time is always a bit of a problem.

I suppose I will just have to try a bit harder as I don’t want to give everything up quite yet and of course the more I do the better condition my brain keeps in.

So here we go again.

ON THE ISSUE OF GENDER.

I’m absolutely and totally cheesed off with all the media hoo- ha on the current issue of Gender. The word occasionally came up in general conversation twenty years or so ago as a description of a persons sex, ie; are they either a man or a woman.  Most people are what would simply be described as NORMAL.  Meaning that they conform to a usual standard and are free from mental or emotional disorder.

For the vast majority of humanity the answer to that was fairly easy to define physically, primarily by examination of the sexual organs. Vagina – Breasts; Female. Penis ,Testicles; Male. And in spite of all the various theories on Gender that is very much the same now.

Greater knowledge of science has informed us that in some people there can be some kind of abnormality with the brain which does not match up with the actual  physical evidence.   The individual looks like and feels like one sex , but there brain tells them that they are the opposite.

The media describe them ( and many describe themselves ) as transgender or gender this or gender that  ? It is a major problem for the person that this condition affects, but as yet  there is no known remedy.

I am sorry for all those people that are affected by this situation , but it is a complete waste of time and effort going on about it. Just like the Homosexual their brains are damaged and cannot be repaired or changed in any way. Some may benefit from psychological help to deal with what will be a permanent problem throughout their lives , but they cannot ever be cured and that is that.

I may often refer in my writing to the word NORMAL.  In this case I use the dictionary meaning ; conforming to a usual standard and free from mental or emotional disorder.

And for me, that’s  the end of this discussion. 

A VERY UNUSUAL MAN.

Until today I had never heard of PHILLIP ULLMAN , but a short piece about him appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine ( 28/10/18).    Aged 53 he is the head of The Cordant Group , a family owned business with over 5000 major clients. The feature - by Caroline Scott whom I imagine works for the Sunday Times - is a superb piece of reportage which I recommend to everyone that can get hold of it.

Mr Ullmans major aim in life at the present time is to turn The Cordant Group into the UK’s biggest social enterprise, directing profits into education, employment and healthcare programmes and he hopes to influence others by his own actions and examples.  I am pretty certain that he will succeed and in no small way. 

While we have people like Phillip Ullman alive and kicking there is still hope for us all in this often seemingly totally insane world. 

28/10/2018       

NOW IN SEMI RETIREMENT at last.

August 2018.

I have finally realised that age having caught up with me, I can no longer carry on with my hectic lifestyle .

I am no way the fit person I used to be not that long ago , in fact the reverse is true and my days of walking a couple of miles wandering around London for a whole day taking pictures is long gone  Chasing around from one place to the other, London one minute , Suffolk or France the next is right out of the window,  in fact I often have trouble remembering where I am when I first wake up in the morning and it has to stop before it stops me .   I have had to give myself a quick kick up the backside – metaphorically speaking of course - and so from now on my life will rapidly move into full retirement mode instead of part time.  

First to go will be London as I can really do without the hustle and bustle of City life.  My full time base will soon be in the quiet Suffolk countryside and holiday time will be just once a year – about six or eight weeks will do – in our small but lovely holiday home on the Mediterranean coast at Cap d Agde.

  

The actual changeover will be hard work as it is quite involved , but I hope to have a bit of help here and there - and also quite stressful to give up what has been such an interesting lifestyle for the past two decades. However ,  what will be will be and it will always be something to look back on with a great deal of pleasure.

I will still have my writing – the last part of my trilogy - French Kissing, is in its final editing stages and will soon be on Amazon. French Kissing is a compendium of short stories and a true saga of explicit sex and sensuality in the 1960’s & 70’s and will come on to the market co-incidentally at just the right time.

I have just read in the press that explicit sex is about to hit the screens in prime time as Wanderlust, described in the press as “a ground breaking moment for sex on TV” is about to get plenty of public exposure at any moment. I will have to reserve judgement on Wanderlust, but whatever the reality and quality of content I can guarantee that the actual sexual bits will be measured in seconds rather than minutes.   

 And finally for this blog, I am pleased to report that I have been able to place my archives with the National Media Museum where they will form a part of  the National Collection.