So, we begin within another obscure music reference just for 94-year-old Isabella. As Hedgehoppers Anonymous once sang “ It’s Good News Week “ The Headmaster is back at school. Obviously BoJo’s dad refused to sign any more sick notes, though I bet he’s taken one with him to Number 10 that says he’s not allowed to do PE ( PPE he can still enjoy) or Games or Swimming. I know all about those kind of notes. As I said in an earlier blog, I either forged my dad’s signature on them or got him to write a few at a time and just leave out the date and the ailment from which I was suffering.
The sad thing is that I never got to see what his deputy Rabbi Dominic ( strange name for a rabbi, I always thought ) looked like. Anyway, he’s gone now and I probably never will know unless he pops up as Prime Minister at some time in the future. For now, it’s just exit, stage left, followed by a bear. Did you know that was almost the only stage direction Shakespeare ever gave? And it was probably only because he’d bought a bear’s costume for a fancy dress party and wanted to find some further use for it.
Anyway, that’s one good news story with which to start ( though, I suppose it depends upon your political affiliations ….. me, I like Boris, though I still miss Theresa and Maggie, for that matter. I always wanted to marry Maggie Thatcher when I grew up. We met her once. She was staying at the Grand Roche in Paarl in South Africa which was one of our favourite haunts ( returned last year and it had gone off a bit… as I’ve said before, in life, one should never go back ) She was really nice ( her son Mark was really rude to most of the staff though ) but, Dennis, her husband . with whom I had a chat in the gents’ loo was also a very pleasant guy ( one has a lot of conversations in toilets if you are a man…. less so if you are a woman, I guess, but women have other ways of communicating. Mainly on the phone.
Now, I hate phones. My grandson would disagree, He says I am always on my mobile, particularly when he wants to use it to play one of the many games he has downloaded on it by persuading me they are free, Well, Sam, they are until I get the bill for them. The annoying thing about these games is that I keep getting messages telling me about all the opportunities I am ( well, Sam is I suppose ) to play . I seem to be missing out on millions of free points which would enable me…. well, to play more, I think.
Back to me and my dislike of the phone. I rarely make social calls. I mean, you ask the other person how they are. They tell you. Then they ask how you are. You tell them. The length of that exchange depends upon what ailments you may have on that particular day. You might make some nasty comment about their football team ( when, like me you support Newcastle and Barnet that’s asking for trouble as everybody else’s teams are always doing better than mine so I try to stay clear of that subject ) which basically leaves me nothing more to say. I just don ‘t do small talk, I fear. In fact this blog is the nearest I’ve come to small talk for many years. In fact, ever.
Now, women start their conversations in exactly the same way ( although I do know one woman who always starts her conversation with me when I pick up the phone in the middle as if we have already been chatting for twenty minutes…. In fact, I rarely bother to answer the phone unless my wife is out because it’s never for me ) but, women, having established the health or otherwise of the other person on the line can never leave it there. They do do small talk, which becomes bigger and bigger and longer and longer. In fact, they can have that same conversation with the same person several times a day.
BUT , and here’s the but ( before I lose all my female readers and get accused of sexism, moi? Never ) The Big V has turned me into someone who does makes calls. And they aren’t the business calls upon which I can sit for hours at a time ( well, it’s work isn’t it, I explain to my missus and I don’t really enjoy it, but I am being paid to do it, as if that explains everything…. ) and I think that’s why I’ve hated making social calls. By the end of a day on one conference call after another the last thing you want to do is call a friend just for the sake of it.
And yet, I have changed . I am now conducting Bromances. A Bromance is a hetro-sexual relationship with another man. He’s your ‘ Bro “ , your brother and you love him. As a friend, of course. Right now I have Bromances going on with my friends, Mel, Jeff, Len and Robby. I do call them and somehow or other we get through the enquires as to our respective state of health and we can’t really find much to say about what we are up to and so the conversations take on a more philosophical nature. Like, what’s the first thing you are going to do when The Big V ends and the like .
In fact, my friend Robby is worse with the phone generally than me. Even if he’s the only person in the house if he’s watching cricket ( and he is most of the time…. Robby has achieved the sort of retirement to which most of us can only dream to aspire ) the phone can ring off the hook ( if phone’s still have hooks ) and he still won’t answer I am not criticizing that, merely admiring his courage from a safe distance.
I started with a good news story, so to keep the mood going, here’s another. Well. it is for at least one of the participants. Alba Maruri aged 74 . She was thought to have died from the Big V. In fact the hospital she was at in Ecuador was so sure she had died that they sent her ashes to her sister. You can imagine her sister’s surprise when three weeks later she got a call from Alba saying she had recovered and was alive and kicking ( though presumably a little scorched ) The twist to this story is that the hospital don’t know whose ashes they sent to the poor woman’s sister. I hear they are trying to identify them via social media under “(H)ash tag unknown”
Just returning to conversations. Somebody wrote an article in the “ Jewish Chronicle “ this week ( the JC has been saved by an investor by the way so people CAN still say that they never read it ) and within it she said, “ Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people. “ Hm, interesting. Anybody got any ideas they want to discuss with me. I mean I am still prepared to discuss my newspaper suit with anybody.
Last good news story of the day. We placed an order with a shop called “ Kosher Paradise “ in Temple Fortune and Paradise it was for me indeed as they delivered at 7.30pm last night my kosher chocolate digestives and my pot noodles, so that’s yet another story line down the tubes. But, I am one happy bunny. I’ve tried again to cancel my food parcels from the Government and just hope I have succeeded.
Bit shorter than usual today. Quality rather than quantity, but I’ve got a really busy day today. Lots of work calls and zoom meetings, Started before 7.00am with an online quasi- barmitzvah which was actually very emotional.
Lots of good news around then, but don’t be complacent. Stay safe and see you all tomorrow if we are spared