RND 05, or Red Nose Day to the uninitiated, is just a fortnight or so away. However, as has become the custom, Comic Relief use every opportunity ahead of the big guffawfest to publicise their cause and their raison d'etre. They are aided and abetted in this by an extra-ordinarily co-operative BBC, together with a sometimes unlikely combination of retailers and commercial supporters. The American clothes discounter TK Maxx is, I see, the latest to jump on the bandwagon to show themselves as having a Comic Corporate Conscience.
Tonight on BBC ONE also brought an excellent all-star tragi-comic drama, from Lucy Gannon, she of Soldier, Soldier and Peak Practice fame, among many others. One star of the original series of the latter medical romp over the rocks, the Derbyshire Peak District, was Kevin Whateley and he played the part of a loving son driven to desperation by the sudden incapacity of his post-80 father and his mother afflicted by the insult to personality which is Alzheimer's.
I didn't get to watch too much of the programme "live", because I was too busy attending to the new needs of my own mother, who returned home from hospital today. Or rather, attending to the needs of those ladies caring for her personal hygiene needs and transferring her from armchair to the loaned electric bed which now occupies a couple of metres of floorspace where that favourite chair once sat.
The theme that Comic Relief are aiming to alert people to is the little-publicised issue of "Elder Abuse". This refers to the bruising of physical assault of elderly, vulnerable citizens, often by those closest to them. Whately played the son who eventually hits his father in a mad mood of utter desperation at the circumstances imposed upon him and his father's uncharacteristic behaviour.
Please God that I never become like this, but today's events have certainly proved it is not going to be easy adjusting to caring for our newly-housebound Mum. The lounge was just not designed to accomodate such things as an electric hoist- for carers rather than caree-, commodes and sundry other accessories deemed to be necessary for the proper care of a disabled person in these circumstances. It's also only at times like this that you realise quite how much clutter you accumulate in a home over more than forty years.
I'm trying to keep life as normal and family oriented as possible, but am up against "the system", Mum's care plan, and as it often does, that makes me feel slightly angry. The plan at present means that Mum will have TWO female carers come in up to four times a day to attend to her needs- all of which of course takes up space and bites into the privacy and personal space of domestic routine. Not that this has really been my domestic routine for many years, but my filial devotion along with Matthew has made it something that just has to be done.
Please God that we can cope and do this, lovingly and without complaint, for as long as circumstances and your will deem it necessary to do so, Lord. Tonight I got a text from Dave, Chris and Alan, presumably down the pub for their usual Thursday night curry bargain with Wetherspoon. Would that I were able to join them, but not tonight, J D. What this sudden, awful intrusion into the "normality" of my life has shown is how you can be plunged from being a man wandering along life's highway to an emergency service bringing relief and care to the ones who put you there in the first place. I'm certainly learning the hard truths of commitment and love at the moment, as I have to make some surrenders that I don't like at all, of course- though it has to be said that my Mum probably doesn't feel any easier about it than I do, probably much less so actually.
Nevertheless, life must go on and we must do our best and try to make this work. At least the cat seems to approve of the new arrangements, as she has made herself company on Mum's bed- with Mum asleep in it too!- but I'm rather unimpressed that one of the regular carers is not a cat person. You would have thought they could have taken this into account: one of the reasons I wanted Mum to be able to come home was so that she could see and fuss the cat again.
Will I be able to sleep easier tonight? Who knows. Theoretically, my tendency to keep fearing that early morning call from the hospital has now gone, but I find myself now feeling just as worried now that Mum doesn't have the watchful eye of nursing staff over her through the night. You can't win, as a parent or a child, can you.
POPE THE QUESTION
Vatican Radio ought to be the station of choice tonight, to keep an eye on events in the Holy See as the Pope has undergone an emergency tracheotomy. It seems it can only be a matter of time before the Catholic hierarchy once again loses a beloved Holy Father and the Holy Smoke quite literally has to be seen again for the appointment of a successor.
SNOW BUSINESS LIKE SNOW BUSINESS
It would be a rare month in Britain where the weather did not hit the headlines and this week has been the first real taste this winter of disruptive snowfall for many. We've even had a fresh sprinkling in Feltham tonight, though I wonder whether it will still be there when I look out of my window in the morning. Oh how I yearn for the enjoyable stress and action of the Radio Sussex Snowdesk again, my moments of broadcasting "glory" in 1991 when I did my bit to keep the local listeners of South East England informed on the various effects of the white stuff, from buses stuck on hills to schools closed with burst pipes.
Those were the days, and how I long for them again right now. Life seemed so much simpler then, even if I was poor through only being a humble Employment Trainee. Even more would I love to be transported back to the Winter of 63 when we built our first snowman here in a winter garden in Feltham.
Thursday, 24 February 2005
Tuesday, 15 February 2005
Hancock's Half Heard
Typing this while listening to another classic episode of East Cheam's finest export on BBC 7. This is the one where the lad himself was unwise enough to entrust his tax returns to Sid James and ends up owing more than ever due to the latter's rather too creative accounting. Pity I missed the beginning of Hancock's Half Hour, but at least the BBC's digital archive station now gives you no less than four chances to hear it during the course of a day.
This particular show also had a classic Sid James "fluff" when struggling with a particularly tongue twisting script, and a woman in the audience who'd obviously lifted a canister of Nitrous Oxide from her dentist's. Clearly she subscribes to the view that Laughter is the Best Medicine, and I'd be the first to agree.
Having a good chuckle with the best of radio and TV comedy at the moment is proving very helpful in coping with the emotional traumas of this sad and difficult phase of life. It's even more welcome when I can share it with my "little" brother here at home. I hope too that when Mum is discharged from hospital soon, God willing, we will still be able to laugh together as a family from time to time even if our hearts are filled with hidden sadness and anxiety about the future.
Some TV comedies I'd recommend to cheer saddened souls are the new kid on the block "Look Around You", a brilliantly-observed and executed spoof of Tomorrow's World which currently airs at 22.00 local time on BBC TWO television. Last night's looked at the "future" of sport, including a football that is rounder than anything yet seen (which is why it had to remain unseen for legal reasons!), a betting prediction system designed by a carthorse called Championess, and a miracle fuel for athletes based on rocket science which enabled champion Ros Lamb (won't beef about that name!) to run between London and Dundee in under five minutes. All inventions which are bound to be commonplace soon, of course!
This Friday though will be the poorer without "My Hero", the wonderful comic fantasy centring on Father Dougal's altar ego, Thermoman/George Sunday. Apparently, he's been supplanted for one night for the second going of Den Watts on East Enders. Who cares: it was a pretty incredible piece of plotting to bring Dirty Den back from the dead in the first place, and some would say a desperate one.
However, we all wish we could turn back the clock and that bad things wouldn't happen, or that some superhero could save us from destruction, or even that we could swap minds or lives with someone else, or filter out the bad parts of ourselves- this was partly the premise of last Friday's brilliant episode, one of the funniest yet. Part of the appeal of the Ardal O'Hanlon characters is their childlike naievity. Our children are the font of all laughter, a reminder that God has the faith and the trust for our race to carry on despite all our awfulness and the terrible things that happen to us or we do to each other.
Observing Lent is proving particularly painful and difficult for me at the moment, as Matthew and I have had to face up to the challenges and the difficult decisions which what could be Mum's final illness bring. I say could, because laughter it seems to me is the twin of hope and the last thing any of us should give up is Hope.
Nobody really knows what course Mum's illness will take, or how long lies ahead of her. Of course, for our own sake I guess of having her with us to share, I hope it will be as long as possible, but the experience of others tends to make one think the worst in worldly terms-but ultimately only God knows.
Early Sunday morning brought the sort of phone call I had been dreading, at 04.15, to say that Mum was "not feeling very well". We prepared ourselves for the worst, raced to the hospital to find Mum indeed looking very poorly. But alleluia, she pulled through- and indeed, knew little about this happening the next day. 34 hours later, when I visited yesterday, I found her looking very much better, back on normal foods and fluids and even able to stand for a short while when getting out of bed. It may not be much but it mattered, and it made all the difference to my own piece of mind. Good days, bad days. Little things matter to a Bird's Eye Mum, as an advertising slogan of yore said! Let us hope that these good days will outnumber the bad for as long as possible.
Yesterday's experiences came after a half hour prayer session from me before I visited and no doubt added to by the cherished friends who I know are putting up their own requests before the almighty at the moment. God does not or cannot always answer our prayers as we would wish, but I am sure he does and he indeed brings the peace that passes all understanding.
That is my hope, and indeed, it is at the core of Christian belief. We will all have to face a final parting from this life at some stage-whether it be losing the ones we love and those who raised us, or our own exit from the stage show of life. When people laugh, they are allowing themselves to believe that despite the sad events which none of us can avoid eventually, there is always something to be cheerful about, to enjoy and to celebrate. Perhaps that's why Jesus himself was portrayed as a clown in Godspell- or was it Superstar? Like Hancock, sometimes the most brilliant humour can still emerge from tragic or unhappy events. Dermot Morgan, star of Father Ted, lost his life suddenly in West Middlesex hospital a few years back, but the brilliance of that show and its star will remain.
But this life is really just the warm up, albeit one that often fails to raise chuckles of the intensity of that woman on Hancock's Half Hour today. But the life which is to come will bring joy immeasurable and be worth the waiting and patient endurance.
ALL OUR YESTERDAYS
Thank heavens for the invention of the magnetic tape and its successors in recording technology. Without them, we could not have the authentic experience of enjoying again the brilliance of the performances of three comedy giants now dead or the laughter of that wonderful woman who made that show so memorable that night in 1958 that HHH was recorded. I wonder where she is now- she could well still be with us!
Thanks to the tape recorder, great voices and talents of old do not surrender their personality or their influence when they leave this mortal coil, but leave the most precious of legacies to future generations. Every word uttered or written, every poignant or profound song lyric, every stroke of brush on canvas of the genius of a Leonardo, or the balletic brilliance of a Nijinsky, reminds us that life is a continuity. Yes, what will be will be- that is the part we strangely find so hard to take sometimes- but equally, what has been, has been! Now what is the Italian for that, and why hasn't Doris Day sung it yet!
THIS SCEPTRED ISLE
Started my mid-morning BBC 7 listening today with This Sceptred Isle-the Twentieth Century, focussing today on the havoc-wreaking events of the mid seventies as the Heath government was nearing collapse.
History matters. Sorry, Henry Ford, but a bed is bunk, not the study of man's activities and his wonderful but also awful ways. When you are faced with the declining health of a loved one and have to accept their eventual loss, the living grief you experience is as much for the apparent departure of your past, of a way of life that is now "Gone with the Wind", to quote those classic lines from Margaret Mitchell's ever popular book/film.
I guess some of my own grief at present is as I now contemplate the changes that have to be made here at home. I well recall back in 1974, before the desperate measures of chancellor Denis Healey took VAT on luxury goods to a staggering 25 per cent, we bought our first hi-fi stereo, had a new carpet fitted and got a new gas cooker to replace our New World stove which had cooked around twelve thousands meals in my lifetime. And long before Carol Smilie got in on the act, we were Changing Rooms, as the lounge became the dining room and vice versa.
Now, thirty one years later, that Dynatron Hi-Fi still sits comfortably in place where Dad installed it back then, though the Toshiba tape deck with the incomprehensible instructions has long since gone to magnetic heaven. Whether the Hi-FI can remain there much longer than a week though remains open to question. It's rarely used these days anyway, but will never be dispensed with as long as I am around, I'm sure. But the space may be needed for a bedroom come sitting room for Mum.
The Dynatron from Pye of Cambridge: such a wonderful piece of cabinet making, creating a beautiful sound on FM even though the windings on the AM tuning dial have long since limpened to the extent that accurate tuning is now impossible.
For what was heard and recorded on this wonderful combination of equipment were the sounds and the songs of my adolescence and some of my parent's golden years. Hopefully, hearing these may still be able to bring some comfort and enjoyment to the eighty year old ears which sung many of those songs in the times when she had a lovely voice, and which I hope I have inherited albeit in the tenor variety.
This morning, we had a visit from the Occupational Therapists from Ashford Hospital, who were measuring our lounge for suitability of installing a hospital bed, hoist and chair, which it now seems would be essential for the safety of Mum's carers. It's hard to accept that Mum may- again, I always say may- never be able again to climb the steps to the first floor of our thirties semi and to her own bedroom and the bathroom. But it's still home, and I hope she will still be happy here.
I feel in my prime now at 45, indeed I probably feel inwardly about ten years younger. I guess that is what makes it hardest in some ways to accept what is now happening, all these changes and the sudden unwelcome intrusion into my own growth. But maybe this is part of God's way, and this is necessary. But it sure isn't easy, and my thoughts are with any of you who has ever experienced any similar life-shaking experiences or is going through them right now.
But right now I really need to hold to those words on the front of one of my notebooks: "God, grant me the courage to change the things I can change, serenity to accept those I cannot, and wisdom to know the difference". But as I said, it's often hard for me, because my mind seems to work in such an analytical way as well as being imaginative of things and experiences yet to happen, good or bad. It's that which produces anxiety.
Nevertheless, nothing can take away the past -it's there, another country, passport-stamped countless times in photos physical and mental, visited, enjoyed and sometimes endured but all part of our tapestry of life. The carpet in the lounge may have several threadbare holes right now, but the Lord is sewing up the fabric of time all the while. When this earthly garment is finally worn out, like my old raincoat finally about to go to a jumble sale, what a wonderful new clothing we should all see to replace it. So, as it's London Fashion Week- taking place in Battersea Park this year, another place I fondly remember, maybe it's time to update the wardrobe!
D-DAY REMEMBERED
In case you've wondered, most of these postings are written in "real time", with only the occasional bit of sub-editing to correct errors of grammar, spelling or dare I say the occasional fact! As a result, you're really getting the unfiltered, honest written outpourings of my mental processes at times. I hope you don't feel that you are being flooded with them, but as I said earlier there is something of a tsunami of emotion going through me at the moment, yet writing down my thoughts for public reading somehow helps. However, there are also the happier, more trivial reflections but my grasshopper mind is inclined to skip over them! Nevertheless, I couldn't conclude today's posts without another vivid memory of the seventies, this time of that "other" D-Day when Pounds, Shillings and Pence had to make way for decimal currency in Britain.
Is that when the rot set in? Mmm, some would say it was but at least we still have the pound- for the moment. My most vivid memory of D-day though is of paying for my school dinner (it was a Monday, you see). Suddenly, it was priced at 9p instead of 1/=10 (that's one shilling and tenpence for younger readers!). Hence, a shiny new penny in change from my converted two shilling piece which has suddenly become a ten pence bit. But what to do with that penny? Ooh, difficult decision: do we preserve it for posterity? Of course not! Straight down to C F Avery, the local sweetshop, against the rules of course, for two "black jacks", or was it half-penny chews, out of the sight of battleaxe and spare battleaxe, the revered dinner ladies of Feltham Lower School. Their real names have been disguised to avoid any nasty legal actions!
This particular show also had a classic Sid James "fluff" when struggling with a particularly tongue twisting script, and a woman in the audience who'd obviously lifted a canister of Nitrous Oxide from her dentist's. Clearly she subscribes to the view that Laughter is the Best Medicine, and I'd be the first to agree.
Having a good chuckle with the best of radio and TV comedy at the moment is proving very helpful in coping with the emotional traumas of this sad and difficult phase of life. It's even more welcome when I can share it with my "little" brother here at home. I hope too that when Mum is discharged from hospital soon, God willing, we will still be able to laugh together as a family from time to time even if our hearts are filled with hidden sadness and anxiety about the future.
Some TV comedies I'd recommend to cheer saddened souls are the new kid on the block "Look Around You", a brilliantly-observed and executed spoof of Tomorrow's World which currently airs at 22.00 local time on BBC TWO television. Last night's looked at the "future" of sport, including a football that is rounder than anything yet seen (which is why it had to remain unseen for legal reasons!), a betting prediction system designed by a carthorse called Championess, and a miracle fuel for athletes based on rocket science which enabled champion Ros Lamb (won't beef about that name!) to run between London and Dundee in under five minutes. All inventions which are bound to be commonplace soon, of course!
This Friday though will be the poorer without "My Hero", the wonderful comic fantasy centring on Father Dougal's altar ego, Thermoman/George Sunday. Apparently, he's been supplanted for one night for the second going of Den Watts on East Enders. Who cares: it was a pretty incredible piece of plotting to bring Dirty Den back from the dead in the first place, and some would say a desperate one.
However, we all wish we could turn back the clock and that bad things wouldn't happen, or that some superhero could save us from destruction, or even that we could swap minds or lives with someone else, or filter out the bad parts of ourselves- this was partly the premise of last Friday's brilliant episode, one of the funniest yet. Part of the appeal of the Ardal O'Hanlon characters is their childlike naievity. Our children are the font of all laughter, a reminder that God has the faith and the trust for our race to carry on despite all our awfulness and the terrible things that happen to us or we do to each other.
Observing Lent is proving particularly painful and difficult for me at the moment, as Matthew and I have had to face up to the challenges and the difficult decisions which what could be Mum's final illness bring. I say could, because laughter it seems to me is the twin of hope and the last thing any of us should give up is Hope.
Nobody really knows what course Mum's illness will take, or how long lies ahead of her. Of course, for our own sake I guess of having her with us to share, I hope it will be as long as possible, but the experience of others tends to make one think the worst in worldly terms-but ultimately only God knows.
Early Sunday morning brought the sort of phone call I had been dreading, at 04.15, to say that Mum was "not feeling very well". We prepared ourselves for the worst, raced to the hospital to find Mum indeed looking very poorly. But alleluia, she pulled through- and indeed, knew little about this happening the next day. 34 hours later, when I visited yesterday, I found her looking very much better, back on normal foods and fluids and even able to stand for a short while when getting out of bed. It may not be much but it mattered, and it made all the difference to my own piece of mind. Good days, bad days. Little things matter to a Bird's Eye Mum, as an advertising slogan of yore said! Let us hope that these good days will outnumber the bad for as long as possible.
Yesterday's experiences came after a half hour prayer session from me before I visited and no doubt added to by the cherished friends who I know are putting up their own requests before the almighty at the moment. God does not or cannot always answer our prayers as we would wish, but I am sure he does and he indeed brings the peace that passes all understanding.
That is my hope, and indeed, it is at the core of Christian belief. We will all have to face a final parting from this life at some stage-whether it be losing the ones we love and those who raised us, or our own exit from the stage show of life. When people laugh, they are allowing themselves to believe that despite the sad events which none of us can avoid eventually, there is always something to be cheerful about, to enjoy and to celebrate. Perhaps that's why Jesus himself was portrayed as a clown in Godspell- or was it Superstar? Like Hancock, sometimes the most brilliant humour can still emerge from tragic or unhappy events. Dermot Morgan, star of Father Ted, lost his life suddenly in West Middlesex hospital a few years back, but the brilliance of that show and its star will remain.
But this life is really just the warm up, albeit one that often fails to raise chuckles of the intensity of that woman on Hancock's Half Hour today. But the life which is to come will bring joy immeasurable and be worth the waiting and patient endurance.
ALL OUR YESTERDAYS
Thank heavens for the invention of the magnetic tape and its successors in recording technology. Without them, we could not have the authentic experience of enjoying again the brilliance of the performances of three comedy giants now dead or the laughter of that wonderful woman who made that show so memorable that night in 1958 that HHH was recorded. I wonder where she is now- she could well still be with us!
Thanks to the tape recorder, great voices and talents of old do not surrender their personality or their influence when they leave this mortal coil, but leave the most precious of legacies to future generations. Every word uttered or written, every poignant or profound song lyric, every stroke of brush on canvas of the genius of a Leonardo, or the balletic brilliance of a Nijinsky, reminds us that life is a continuity. Yes, what will be will be- that is the part we strangely find so hard to take sometimes- but equally, what has been, has been! Now what is the Italian for that, and why hasn't Doris Day sung it yet!
THIS SCEPTRED ISLE
Started my mid-morning BBC 7 listening today with This Sceptred Isle-the Twentieth Century, focussing today on the havoc-wreaking events of the mid seventies as the Heath government was nearing collapse.
History matters. Sorry, Henry Ford, but a bed is bunk, not the study of man's activities and his wonderful but also awful ways. When you are faced with the declining health of a loved one and have to accept their eventual loss, the living grief you experience is as much for the apparent departure of your past, of a way of life that is now "Gone with the Wind", to quote those classic lines from Margaret Mitchell's ever popular book/film.
I guess some of my own grief at present is as I now contemplate the changes that have to be made here at home. I well recall back in 1974, before the desperate measures of chancellor Denis Healey took VAT on luxury goods to a staggering 25 per cent, we bought our first hi-fi stereo, had a new carpet fitted and got a new gas cooker to replace our New World stove which had cooked around twelve thousands meals in my lifetime. And long before Carol Smilie got in on the act, we were Changing Rooms, as the lounge became the dining room and vice versa.
Now, thirty one years later, that Dynatron Hi-Fi still sits comfortably in place where Dad installed it back then, though the Toshiba tape deck with the incomprehensible instructions has long since gone to magnetic heaven. Whether the Hi-FI can remain there much longer than a week though remains open to question. It's rarely used these days anyway, but will never be dispensed with as long as I am around, I'm sure. But the space may be needed for a bedroom come sitting room for Mum.
The Dynatron from Pye of Cambridge: such a wonderful piece of cabinet making, creating a beautiful sound on FM even though the windings on the AM tuning dial have long since limpened to the extent that accurate tuning is now impossible.
For what was heard and recorded on this wonderful combination of equipment were the sounds and the songs of my adolescence and some of my parent's golden years. Hopefully, hearing these may still be able to bring some comfort and enjoyment to the eighty year old ears which sung many of those songs in the times when she had a lovely voice, and which I hope I have inherited albeit in the tenor variety.
This morning, we had a visit from the Occupational Therapists from Ashford Hospital, who were measuring our lounge for suitability of installing a hospital bed, hoist and chair, which it now seems would be essential for the safety of Mum's carers. It's hard to accept that Mum may- again, I always say may- never be able again to climb the steps to the first floor of our thirties semi and to her own bedroom and the bathroom. But it's still home, and I hope she will still be happy here.
I feel in my prime now at 45, indeed I probably feel inwardly about ten years younger. I guess that is what makes it hardest in some ways to accept what is now happening, all these changes and the sudden unwelcome intrusion into my own growth. But maybe this is part of God's way, and this is necessary. But it sure isn't easy, and my thoughts are with any of you who has ever experienced any similar life-shaking experiences or is going through them right now.
But right now I really need to hold to those words on the front of one of my notebooks: "God, grant me the courage to change the things I can change, serenity to accept those I cannot, and wisdom to know the difference". But as I said, it's often hard for me, because my mind seems to work in such an analytical way as well as being imaginative of things and experiences yet to happen, good or bad. It's that which produces anxiety.
Nevertheless, nothing can take away the past -it's there, another country, passport-stamped countless times in photos physical and mental, visited, enjoyed and sometimes endured but all part of our tapestry of life. The carpet in the lounge may have several threadbare holes right now, but the Lord is sewing up the fabric of time all the while. When this earthly garment is finally worn out, like my old raincoat finally about to go to a jumble sale, what a wonderful new clothing we should all see to replace it. So, as it's London Fashion Week- taking place in Battersea Park this year, another place I fondly remember, maybe it's time to update the wardrobe!
D-DAY REMEMBERED
In case you've wondered, most of these postings are written in "real time", with only the occasional bit of sub-editing to correct errors of grammar, spelling or dare I say the occasional fact! As a result, you're really getting the unfiltered, honest written outpourings of my mental processes at times. I hope you don't feel that you are being flooded with them, but as I said earlier there is something of a tsunami of emotion going through me at the moment, yet writing down my thoughts for public reading somehow helps. However, there are also the happier, more trivial reflections but my grasshopper mind is inclined to skip over them! Nevertheless, I couldn't conclude today's posts without another vivid memory of the seventies, this time of that "other" D-Day when Pounds, Shillings and Pence had to make way for decimal currency in Britain.
Is that when the rot set in? Mmm, some would say it was but at least we still have the pound- for the moment. My most vivid memory of D-day though is of paying for my school dinner (it was a Monday, you see). Suddenly, it was priced at 9p instead of 1/=10 (that's one shilling and tenpence for younger readers!). Hence, a shiny new penny in change from my converted two shilling piece which has suddenly become a ten pence bit. But what to do with that penny? Ooh, difficult decision: do we preserve it for posterity? Of course not! Straight down to C F Avery, the local sweetshop, against the rules of course, for two "black jacks", or was it half-penny chews, out of the sight of battleaxe and spare battleaxe, the revered dinner ladies of Feltham Lower School. Their real names have been disguised to avoid any nasty legal actions!
Friday, 4 February 2005
Batteries Not Included
John Humphrys was silenced in his prime Today. Not by some spinning politician who had got the better of him, nor by any seasonal lurgy, but by a dawn power cut here in West Middlesex. There was I about to enjoy the review of the papers and catch up on the world’s events, when suddenly it was silent. No radio, no telly. All the familiar accompaniments to our home life had been snatched away from us and we were powerless to do anything about it, literally. It took 90 minutes for the electricity supply to return here, but at least our home has a gas supply for boiling water (and indeed toasting crumpets!).
I couldn’t possibly start the day without my cuppa. I could hardly start it without the radio, either. However, I was ill prepared in not having a battery or self-powered radio set to hand. There's a metaphor here too, I am sure, for how often this applies to our unreadiness for the crises of life, let alone an energy crisis like that of 31 years ago currently being recalled in the excellent TV adaptation of Jonathan Coe's The Rotter's Club on BBC Two. It brings back instant, largely happy memories of my own adolescence in the mid-Seventies, and of bedtime listening to Robbie Vincent with The Crisis Programme when the TV screens went blank at 10.30 by official diktat to save power. It was a source of some amusement to two teenage brothers in Feltham, and inspired Matthew to create several memorable cartoon characters such as No Telly Nelly, shown in nightgown and carrying candle, and Power Cut Pete- not to mention Blackout Bert.
Power cuts in the noughties then come as something of a shock to the system, but seem to be happening more regularly than they once did. Unlike my brother, who wakes to his bedroom telly every morning, I enjoy my daily dose of Messrs Humprhys, Naughtie, Stourton et al, though I’m rather less keen on their female counterparts such as Sarah Montague. Radio 4 even seems to have taken to having double-headed female presentation on some of the Today shifts, but for me it just does not work. The voices they use are just far too earnest and almost harsh, lacking that subtle mixture of gravitas and warmth that was the great strength of the still-missed Sue McGregor.
A perfect Today for me blends the serious probing of a post-eight political interview with the lightness of touch, information, humour and occasional silliness which we all need when we are bleakly faced with the start of another weekday after the comforts of a night’s slumber. With new traumas to face in my own life at the moment, I find the radio is particularly important right now. The trio of experienced journos named above manage to satisfy my breakfast listening diet pretty well most of the time, though one of my Radio 4 heroes remains that champion of Macclesfield, the late Brian Redhead.
MEN'S SANA IN CORPORA SOUNDA
What is it then about men’s voices? Despite the best efforts of some entertainment stations with the crucial breakfast slot, it’s still the male jocks and hacks that steal the scene and get the ratings. At the other end of the working day too, Johnnie Walker has admirably filled the void left by the retirement of the late, great John Dunn on Radio 2. So much a fan of “Big John” was I, that as an 11 year old I launched a short-lived campaign to keep him on Breakfast Special when that Radio One interloper from the Emerald Isle, Wogan T, was about to usurp him. Of course, my campaign came to no avail, though I have to concede that Wogan’s words and music are ratings toppers now and deservedly so (even though I usually only listen to about a quarter-hour of him myself, around Pause for Thought).
Radio is a warm and very comforting companion in a way that TV, at Breakfast or otherwise, can never be. The interface of a glassy screen always gives it something of the experience of gazing on a goldfish bowl: you’re there, I’m here and ne’er the twain shall meet. Good old steam wireless however thrives on the most important piece of advice given to any aspiring presenter: remember you are speaking to an audience of one. Johnny Walker recognised this in an interview with Lisa Tarbuck, which I caught part of in the car park of Ashford Hospital before going in for my daily visit to my Mum in her hospital bed after I had spent an afternoon on the coast dealing with some of my home matters there. Johnny’s listeners had apparently been making comments about what a friend radio is, and who am I to disagree.
Back in the early seventies when I first seriously got into radio, there was no commercial radio in the UK: no phone-ins, no Classic FM, no all-night BBC Seven and certainly no 24/7 Radios 1, 2 and 3. Instead, if you hadn’t already reached the Land of Nod, you could take a Night Ride until 02.00, when the excellent Theme One by George Martin closed the BBC’s domestic network for another day until re-surfacing on Radio Two a few hours later with Ray Moore, another much-missed denizen of the silver speaker.
I still often sought solace in the still of the night however, and this is when stations such as AFN and the BBC’s European service (long since defunct) came to the fore. AFN was like another world, particularly when the American Football commentaries came on. Even if I could not make a blind bit of sense of the action, somehow there was something very comforting about knowing that while I struggled to sleep, sometimes, on another continent the evening was in full flow.
It wasn’t just the footie on AFN though. I probably would have soon stopped listening to those fadey Medium Wave signals if it were. Just as important were the music programmes, with the hit parade of the moment, the same oft-repeated tunes on different nights, juxtaposed with the nocturnal meanderings of the yankee presenters aiming to bring a touch of home to their boys in West Germany in the bad old days before the wall fell.
However, sometimes the interplay between the tunes chosen and my idiosyncratic mental processes was a fraught one. I well remember that "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne was a regular AFN favourite. I guess it describes a broken relationship, but at a time when my Dad was in hospital for reasons my 12-year old mind did not wholly understand ( I later discovered it was because of stress- or as we would call it today “burn out”) the line “Now that you’ve gone, all that’s left is a Band of Gold…” kept making me think of Dad in hospital, and that he had died suddenly! That is the way this Savage mind tends to work-sometimes anxious, rather imaginative, but always longing in a rather childlike way even now for things to be better.
HOW TO SLEEP BETTER
Thirty-four years on, the music may have changed, the voices certainly have and we are blessed, if that is the word, with a plethora of both digital and analogue audio services at our beck and call every hour of the day. Whether your taste is for shock jocks or baroque, you’re sure to find somewhere on the “dial” where you can find an audio solace at any hour of the day or night. I’m very grateful for that, and certainly leaving the radio on has enabled me to divert my thoughts from worries and concerns on many an occasion to enjoy a comfortable night, as they say.
I’ve always tended to be a light sleeper, which probably makes me just the kind of listener that the commercial stations need really; otherwise, I’ve always wondered how they manage to make any money from the night shift-which probably accounts for so much awful automated programming in the graveyard shift from smaller commercial stations. The whole point about overnight radio is that it should be intimate: in the loneliness of insomnia, or night-time driving fully awake, you know there is someone else out there sharing it with you. Unless it turns nasty, as in Clint Eastwood’s classic film Play Misty for Me, you’ve got a friend on the radio. Indeed, James Taylor’s You’ve Got a Friend was another favourite song of mine as a pre-teen listener, though probably more in the garden shed than the bunk bed.Hours and hours of computer-selected music don’t do it for me: there’s got to be some evidence of human habitation out there, even if it is in an ancient repeat of a Radio 4 comedy-but then that’s often what the World Service brought in the small hours anyway and BBC 7 now pleasingly reprieves.
You can tell then that I am all for having the radio by my bedside until morning is nigh, and having it on even if at low volume. This is a practice which would probably not be endorsed by some of the “experts” featured in an enjoyable one-off documentary feature on BBC ONE on Wednesday night called How to Sleep Better. It was presented by that TV doyen of all things to do with the mind and body, Lord Robert Winston. It seems you need an uncluttered bedroom to sleep soundly, according to one of the pundits: no wonder then that this untidy bachelor is such a light sleeper! I know I need to tidy up my “personal space”, but I will not pay any heed to the suggestion that a bedroom should be kept free of electrical and home entertainment equipment. Me and my radio are as close as boy and teddy and I will not surrender that lightly (the radio, not the teddy that is, who eventually departed when I was seventeenish!)
WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN RADIO
I’m sorry, I don’t wish to sound irreverent. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, then I hope you haven’t suffered any withdrawal symptoms from the absence of more regular postings over the last couple of weeks. For all I know you could have been using my ramblings as an aid to sleep anyway: among the suggestions for getting back off to sleep after a tough night is to read a book or some other not too stimulating material for a while. If this is you, I hope it doesn’t reflect a boring writing style on my part! I’ve written a bit about radio again this time because I know many of my readers are dear friends in the British DX Club. It’s time I pay them and my favourite hobby some homage anew.
BDXC has been the source of my most enduring and rewarding friendships for nearly thirty years now. As in life, people come and people go from our club, but we now have around 500 members around the world. That is part of the wonderful bond which a radio set and a postage stamp fostered long before the World Wide Web was even a glimmer in the mind of Tim Berners-Lee, recently ennobled belatedly for his development of this wonderfully accessible medium of the internet. I know I have friends out there who care about what is happening in my life, my sorrows, triumphs and challenges, just as much as I care about theirs. One friend welcomed a new life into the world this Tuesday for instance, so hi to Jonathan Michael Guy up there in sunny Stockport! Maybe Mum and Dad are having to rely on the radio for company as they stay awake with their new bundle of joy right now.
Just as life has its joys, though, it also has its sorrows which sooner or later we all have to face in one form or another. There is a lot of truth in the saying “a trouble shared is a trouble halved”- or perhaps if a radio agony uncle or aunt is involved, maybe the fraction would be even smaller! I certainly had times in the traumas of teenagerdom when I was tempted to rush to Raeburn (Anna) for my solace.
However, everybody goes through changes. It’s a part of life, but not an easy part at times. Although part of the fun of being in a radio club is knowing what is out there to hear and sharing it, everyone will hear it with a different, unique pair of ears and eyes. Their brain will receive the information signals, be they speech or music, coming out of the radio speaker or headphones and process it in a way which is theirs alone. This is where the world of ideas, creativity, thought and even spiritual inspiration start. It's also where, when having trouble processing the incoming signal, as if through a mush of radio noise, undue anxiety and frustration can start.
It is through a radio friendship that the most important relationship in my life, with Jesus Christ, was re-kindled twenty years ago this month, and it is to that relationship that I am having to look for comfort, solace, guidance, wisdom and freedom from anxiety at the present time when even friends can't provide all the answers or cheer. Again I face the prospect of a loved one with a possibly life-limiting illness (for real this time). If she were still on air, I’m afraid Anna Raeburn alone could not offer an answer for this one. Even Esther Rantzen would have to say That’s Life!. With all it’s joys and sorrows, life is a beautiful but occasionally painful mystery- yet which I firmly believe for those who trust in Our Lord will carry on forever even when that fantastic signal which is our own ID has long faded into the ether. We look to the radio as our audio beach if you like, but we all have to face the turn of the tide at some point in our lives and the cloud which dominates the skyline here in my family home of 44 years reflects the mood of the moment in my heart. I would far rather be visiting the seaside studios of Radio Platja d’Aro in Catalonia, as I did in February 1985 than hospital bedsides or sitting here in Feltham, unemployed and having to face difficult decisions on behalf of my loved ones. Then as now, I know though that God is full of surprises and there is nothing wrong with hoping for a miracle, even praying for it or the next best thing, even when the chances of extended transmissions seem slim.
My visit to the former accommodation address of a pirate (somebody please post me a reminder of which one!) was made after “gatecrashing” the holiday of two BDXC friends,
But the music goes round and round and it comes out here! It may have been written with the phonograph in mind, but it is just as applicable to the radio. Unlike the tides and the torrents all too clearly seen in Winter 2004/5, the unseen radio wave can bring a tsunami of blessings into the home and into the heart. Just recently, I have valued even more such gems as Prayer for the Day, Pause for Thought and especially the Daily Service. Somehow, through the broadcast word and favourite hymns I have been able to see God at work, and thus I have seen hope for the moment and for the future. It’s extraordinary how just hearing the tune of "What a Friend We Have In Jesus" can indeed bring comfort- even when it is in the clever adaptation by Alan Price – heard on Heartbeat over Christmas- of this Victorian hymn which I referred to earlier. Everybody is going through changes all the time- to change is to grow, it is said.
The radio scene has changed immeasurably since I joined BDXC in 1976, and now the club itself is changing this year with Chris Brand moving into the editorial hot seat to succeed Tony Rogers, who has decided to step down from the reins of Communication this Spring after an incredible two decades. It will be interesting to see what changes happen, and what stays the same. What we can take on board from the past, and what we can bring to the club with the best of the present, for the future. Whatever happens, I am sure the club will stay lively, and my prayer is it will become even more friendly.
This is my prayer too for life, my own and that of my friends and loved ones, whose own worries are not unknown to me even as I grappel with my own. Another favourite hymn comes to mind: Amazing Grace: How Sweet the Sound. Where there is life, there is hope- and where there is hope, there is God.
.. UNASHAMED PLUG TIME..For anyone within reach of Reading, Berkshire, a reminder that this weekend sees the re-launch of the long-running Reading International Radio Group meetings at a new venue in the town. More details in the diary section at www.bdxc.org.uk . Hoping to catch up with some of you there, but otherwise I will do my best to post here again soon. Keep visiting regularly to check for updates, but please bear with me if I’m not so verbose for a while or if I appear a little sombre in tone. And if you’re a praying person, God bless you brother or sister- please add the family Savage to your list!
I couldn’t possibly start the day without my cuppa. I could hardly start it without the radio, either. However, I was ill prepared in not having a battery or self-powered radio set to hand. There's a metaphor here too, I am sure, for how often this applies to our unreadiness for the crises of life, let alone an energy crisis like that of 31 years ago currently being recalled in the excellent TV adaptation of Jonathan Coe's The Rotter's Club on BBC Two. It brings back instant, largely happy memories of my own adolescence in the mid-Seventies, and of bedtime listening to Robbie Vincent with The Crisis Programme when the TV screens went blank at 10.30 by official diktat to save power. It was a source of some amusement to two teenage brothers in Feltham, and inspired Matthew to create several memorable cartoon characters such as No Telly Nelly, shown in nightgown and carrying candle, and Power Cut Pete- not to mention Blackout Bert.
Power cuts in the noughties then come as something of a shock to the system, but seem to be happening more regularly than they once did. Unlike my brother, who wakes to his bedroom telly every morning, I enjoy my daily dose of Messrs Humprhys, Naughtie, Stourton et al, though I’m rather less keen on their female counterparts such as Sarah Montague. Radio 4 even seems to have taken to having double-headed female presentation on some of the Today shifts, but for me it just does not work. The voices they use are just far too earnest and almost harsh, lacking that subtle mixture of gravitas and warmth that was the great strength of the still-missed Sue McGregor.
A perfect Today for me blends the serious probing of a post-eight political interview with the lightness of touch, information, humour and occasional silliness which we all need when we are bleakly faced with the start of another weekday after the comforts of a night’s slumber. With new traumas to face in my own life at the moment, I find the radio is particularly important right now. The trio of experienced journos named above manage to satisfy my breakfast listening diet pretty well most of the time, though one of my Radio 4 heroes remains that champion of Macclesfield, the late Brian Redhead.
MEN'S SANA IN CORPORA SOUNDA
What is it then about men’s voices? Despite the best efforts of some entertainment stations with the crucial breakfast slot, it’s still the male jocks and hacks that steal the scene and get the ratings. At the other end of the working day too, Johnnie Walker has admirably filled the void left by the retirement of the late, great John Dunn on Radio 2. So much a fan of “Big John” was I, that as an 11 year old I launched a short-lived campaign to keep him on Breakfast Special when that Radio One interloper from the Emerald Isle, Wogan T, was about to usurp him. Of course, my campaign came to no avail, though I have to concede that Wogan’s words and music are ratings toppers now and deservedly so (even though I usually only listen to about a quarter-hour of him myself, around Pause for Thought).
Radio is a warm and very comforting companion in a way that TV, at Breakfast or otherwise, can never be. The interface of a glassy screen always gives it something of the experience of gazing on a goldfish bowl: you’re there, I’m here and ne’er the twain shall meet. Good old steam wireless however thrives on the most important piece of advice given to any aspiring presenter: remember you are speaking to an audience of one. Johnny Walker recognised this in an interview with Lisa Tarbuck, which I caught part of in the car park of Ashford Hospital before going in for my daily visit to my Mum in her hospital bed after I had spent an afternoon on the coast dealing with some of my home matters there. Johnny’s listeners had apparently been making comments about what a friend radio is, and who am I to disagree.
Back in the early seventies when I first seriously got into radio, there was no commercial radio in the UK: no phone-ins, no Classic FM, no all-night BBC Seven and certainly no 24/7 Radios 1, 2 and 3. Instead, if you hadn’t already reached the Land of Nod, you could take a Night Ride until 02.00, when the excellent Theme One by George Martin closed the BBC’s domestic network for another day until re-surfacing on Radio Two a few hours later with Ray Moore, another much-missed denizen of the silver speaker.
I still often sought solace in the still of the night however, and this is when stations such as AFN and the BBC’s European service (long since defunct) came to the fore. AFN was like another world, particularly when the American Football commentaries came on. Even if I could not make a blind bit of sense of the action, somehow there was something very comforting about knowing that while I struggled to sleep, sometimes, on another continent the evening was in full flow.
It wasn’t just the footie on AFN though. I probably would have soon stopped listening to those fadey Medium Wave signals if it were. Just as important were the music programmes, with the hit parade of the moment, the same oft-repeated tunes on different nights, juxtaposed with the nocturnal meanderings of the yankee presenters aiming to bring a touch of home to their boys in West Germany in the bad old days before the wall fell.
However, sometimes the interplay between the tunes chosen and my idiosyncratic mental processes was a fraught one. I well remember that "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne was a regular AFN favourite. I guess it describes a broken relationship, but at a time when my Dad was in hospital for reasons my 12-year old mind did not wholly understand ( I later discovered it was because of stress- or as we would call it today “burn out”) the line “Now that you’ve gone, all that’s left is a Band of Gold…” kept making me think of Dad in hospital, and that he had died suddenly! That is the way this Savage mind tends to work-sometimes anxious, rather imaginative, but always longing in a rather childlike way even now for things to be better.
HOW TO SLEEP BETTER
Thirty-four years on, the music may have changed, the voices certainly have and we are blessed, if that is the word, with a plethora of both digital and analogue audio services at our beck and call every hour of the day. Whether your taste is for shock jocks or baroque, you’re sure to find somewhere on the “dial” where you can find an audio solace at any hour of the day or night. I’m very grateful for that, and certainly leaving the radio on has enabled me to divert my thoughts from worries and concerns on many an occasion to enjoy a comfortable night, as they say.
I’ve always tended to be a light sleeper, which probably makes me just the kind of listener that the commercial stations need really; otherwise, I’ve always wondered how they manage to make any money from the night shift-which probably accounts for so much awful automated programming in the graveyard shift from smaller commercial stations. The whole point about overnight radio is that it should be intimate: in the loneliness of insomnia, or night-time driving fully awake, you know there is someone else out there sharing it with you. Unless it turns nasty, as in Clint Eastwood’s classic film Play Misty for Me, you’ve got a friend on the radio. Indeed, James Taylor’s You’ve Got a Friend was another favourite song of mine as a pre-teen listener, though probably more in the garden shed than the bunk bed.Hours and hours of computer-selected music don’t do it for me: there’s got to be some evidence of human habitation out there, even if it is in an ancient repeat of a Radio 4 comedy-but then that’s often what the World Service brought in the small hours anyway and BBC 7 now pleasingly reprieves.
You can tell then that I am all for having the radio by my bedside until morning is nigh, and having it on even if at low volume. This is a practice which would probably not be endorsed by some of the “experts” featured in an enjoyable one-off documentary feature on BBC ONE on Wednesday night called How to Sleep Better. It was presented by that TV doyen of all things to do with the mind and body, Lord Robert Winston. It seems you need an uncluttered bedroom to sleep soundly, according to one of the pundits: no wonder then that this untidy bachelor is such a light sleeper! I know I need to tidy up my “personal space”, but I will not pay any heed to the suggestion that a bedroom should be kept free of electrical and home entertainment equipment. Me and my radio are as close as boy and teddy and I will not surrender that lightly (the radio, not the teddy that is, who eventually departed when I was seventeenish!)
WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN RADIO
I’m sorry, I don’t wish to sound irreverent. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, then I hope you haven’t suffered any withdrawal symptoms from the absence of more regular postings over the last couple of weeks. For all I know you could have been using my ramblings as an aid to sleep anyway: among the suggestions for getting back off to sleep after a tough night is to read a book or some other not too stimulating material for a while. If this is you, I hope it doesn’t reflect a boring writing style on my part! I’ve written a bit about radio again this time because I know many of my readers are dear friends in the British DX Club. It’s time I pay them and my favourite hobby some homage anew.
BDXC has been the source of my most enduring and rewarding friendships for nearly thirty years now. As in life, people come and people go from our club, but we now have around 500 members around the world. That is part of the wonderful bond which a radio set and a postage stamp fostered long before the World Wide Web was even a glimmer in the mind of Tim Berners-Lee, recently ennobled belatedly for his development of this wonderfully accessible medium of the internet. I know I have friends out there who care about what is happening in my life, my sorrows, triumphs and challenges, just as much as I care about theirs. One friend welcomed a new life into the world this Tuesday for instance, so hi to Jonathan Michael Guy up there in sunny Stockport! Maybe Mum and Dad are having to rely on the radio for company as they stay awake with their new bundle of joy right now.
Just as life has its joys, though, it also has its sorrows which sooner or later we all have to face in one form or another. There is a lot of truth in the saying “a trouble shared is a trouble halved”- or perhaps if a radio agony uncle or aunt is involved, maybe the fraction would be even smaller! I certainly had times in the traumas of teenagerdom when I was tempted to rush to Raeburn (Anna) for my solace.
However, everybody goes through changes. It’s a part of life, but not an easy part at times. Although part of the fun of being in a radio club is knowing what is out there to hear and sharing it, everyone will hear it with a different, unique pair of ears and eyes. Their brain will receive the information signals, be they speech or music, coming out of the radio speaker or headphones and process it in a way which is theirs alone. This is where the world of ideas, creativity, thought and even spiritual inspiration start. It's also where, when having trouble processing the incoming signal, as if through a mush of radio noise, undue anxiety and frustration can start.
It is through a radio friendship that the most important relationship in my life, with Jesus Christ, was re-kindled twenty years ago this month, and it is to that relationship that I am having to look for comfort, solace, guidance, wisdom and freedom from anxiety at the present time when even friends can't provide all the answers or cheer. Again I face the prospect of a loved one with a possibly life-limiting illness (for real this time). If she were still on air, I’m afraid Anna Raeburn alone could not offer an answer for this one. Even Esther Rantzen would have to say That’s Life!. With all it’s joys and sorrows, life is a beautiful but occasionally painful mystery- yet which I firmly believe for those who trust in Our Lord will carry on forever even when that fantastic signal which is our own ID has long faded into the ether. We look to the radio as our audio beach if you like, but we all have to face the turn of the tide at some point in our lives and the cloud which dominates the skyline here in my family home of 44 years reflects the mood of the moment in my heart. I would far rather be visiting the seaside studios of Radio Platja d’Aro in Catalonia, as I did in February 1985 than hospital bedsides or sitting here in Feltham, unemployed and having to face difficult decisions on behalf of my loved ones. Then as now, I know though that God is full of surprises and there is nothing wrong with hoping for a miracle, even praying for it or the next best thing, even when the chances of extended transmissions seem slim.
My visit to the former accommodation address of a pirate (somebody please post me a reminder of which one!) was made after “gatecrashing” the holiday of two BDXC friends,
But the music goes round and round and it comes out here! It may have been written with the phonograph in mind, but it is just as applicable to the radio. Unlike the tides and the torrents all too clearly seen in Winter 2004/5, the unseen radio wave can bring a tsunami of blessings into the home and into the heart. Just recently, I have valued even more such gems as Prayer for the Day, Pause for Thought and especially the Daily Service. Somehow, through the broadcast word and favourite hymns I have been able to see God at work, and thus I have seen hope for the moment and for the future. It’s extraordinary how just hearing the tune of "What a Friend We Have In Jesus" can indeed bring comfort- even when it is in the clever adaptation by Alan Price – heard on Heartbeat over Christmas- of this Victorian hymn which I referred to earlier. Everybody is going through changes all the time- to change is to grow, it is said.
The radio scene has changed immeasurably since I joined BDXC in 1976, and now the club itself is changing this year with Chris Brand moving into the editorial hot seat to succeed Tony Rogers, who has decided to step down from the reins of Communication this Spring after an incredible two decades. It will be interesting to see what changes happen, and what stays the same. What we can take on board from the past, and what we can bring to the club with the best of the present, for the future. Whatever happens, I am sure the club will stay lively, and my prayer is it will become even more friendly.
This is my prayer too for life, my own and that of my friends and loved ones, whose own worries are not unknown to me even as I grappel with my own. Another favourite hymn comes to mind: Amazing Grace: How Sweet the Sound. Where there is life, there is hope- and where there is hope, there is God.
.. UNASHAMED PLUG TIME..For anyone within reach of Reading, Berkshire, a reminder that this weekend sees the re-launch of the long-running Reading International Radio Group meetings at a new venue in the town. More details in the diary section at www.bdxc.org.uk . Hoping to catch up with some of you there, but otherwise I will do my best to post here again soon. Keep visiting regularly to check for updates, but please bear with me if I’m not so verbose for a while or if I appear a little sombre in tone. And if you’re a praying person, God bless you brother or sister- please add the family Savage to your list!
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