Eat Drink And Be Merry

For tomorrow you pay your care home fees.


I don't want to sound like a cynical, grasping relative watching an inheritance go down the plug hole but if we've learnt one lesson about growing old and needing care in the last few months it's that the state doesn't reward the thrifty. If you are into old age and you have saved a few quid instead of spending it on booze, cigarettes and holidays in the sun, you aren't going to get any help with your care home fees. The only benefit Flo has from squirreling away her pension week after week is that she at least has the opportunity to choose where she stays rather than take what the local authority gives her and I suppose that we should be grateful for that small mercy as she is in a place with a nice atmosphere.


But it won't take long to erode away her small nest egg. You are allowed to have £23,000 left when the state steps in. Anybody who owns a house or flat is likely to have more than that but you've got to sell that to get the cash to pay the fees and it's not exactly a sellers' market at the moment is it? So you sell at a knock down price with the attitude that it doesn't really matter as it's all going to go until that £23k figure is reached. And it won't take that long. Care home fees around here start at about £400 per week and go up so that a bill of £25,000 a year is not unusual. If Flo went back to her roots in Richmond (which she would like) that would escalate to almost £50,000 so it would not be very long before she called on the state for help and (after watching some TV news items recently) God knows what sort of place they might find for her down there.


So if you are getting on in years it makes sense to start getting rid of your savings now if you have any. Treat yourself to that car or holiday you always promised yourself but didn't get around to. Splash out on the family Christmas presents and support your favourite charity. Give money to your grandchildren or put it in trust for them to have when they go to university. All those bequests in your will? Give them now. It's just not worth keeping it. 


OK so that may be a jaundiced view and you may well think that everyone should pay for their own care if they need it. And I would agree with you to a point but it just seems that if two pensioners start at exactly the same financial position and one blows the lot and the other is very careful it seems unfair that the profligate is rewarded whilst the careful pays the price.


And yes I will be putting my money where my mouth is. The give away will start next year.

One Year Down How Many More To Come?

If retirees like us knew the answer to that question we might well solve the current economic crisis at a stroke. We could live like there's no tomorrow and spend,spend, spend if we knew that there wasn't one or at least knew how many there were. For now we'll have to keep an eye on the cash and live within a budget that should give us a comfortable lifestyle without being overly extravagant. 

We'll have been retired for a whole year on Wednesday. We've had a great year in very many ways with the wonderful arrival of our first granddaughter Rose, our new caravan in St Andrews and the new found freedom that retirement has brought. But sadly our happiness in the past few months has been overshadowed by Marion's mum's relentless fall into Alzheimer's which has turned her into a Jeckyll and Hyde character who one day hasn't got a clue where she is and another will correctly tell you that there's eighteen minutes to go in the football and seem quite her old self before bursting into tears and asking what is happening to her brain.

So, apart from that struggle, and it is a struggle that occupies us on some level almost every waking minute now, what has retirement been like? It got off to a fantastic start with a brilliant Madness concert in Manchester just a few hours after leaving the office. Then, within a week of clearing my desk, I was in hospital having a new hip. That wrote off December although Marion looked after me brilliantly and I quite enjoyed being nursed and loved passing the time watching the new 3D telly and reading a big pile of novels.

I was up and about by the end of December when we had a memorable new year at The Old Course Hotel in St Andrews where we watched the most amazing firework display courtesy of the wedding celebrations of Di Stewart and Nick Dougherty. Since then we've got into a routine that revolves around the gym, cinema, reading, cycling, blogging, metal detecting and writing and rewriting my novel. I'm on the second rewrite now and maybe one day I'll be happy enough with it to try and publish. We've also managed to take a few holidays after going through 2009 and 2010 with none and enjoyed breaks in Cockermouth, Kirkby Lonsdale, Feizor, Isle De Re and Italy. Next year we'll probably spend all our holidays in St Andrews.

It's been a good year for cinema for us. We've seen about 37 films at either FACT in Liverpool or Vue in Southport with just one visit to the St Andrews Picture House. There's nothing wrong with the local Vue which is fine for a multiplex but we love going to FACT in Liverpool which has a much more interesting film selection and a great little cafe. I wouldn't say that there have been any classic movies this year but there have been plenty of very good ones. My favourites include A Separation, Midnight in Paris, Of Gods And Men and We Need To Talk About Kevin. Our worst experience was The Tree Of Life. Some that were undeservedly panned by the critics in my opinion were The Eagle and The Lincoln Lawyer.

We've only managed five theatre trips but two of those, One Man Two Guvnors and The Ladykillers were comedy classics.  Concerts have been fewer still with Dolly Parton, Glen Campbell and Madness all that we saw. 


All in all a good year. I hope that there will be many more to come. I read an article in the weekend papers about longevity. The writer reckoned that, although I can hope to live for up to another twenty years, the rot sets in at around 63 and most men will encounter some sort of functional deterioration or illness that will restrict them from then onwards. So we had better make the most of the next four or five years. Get the cruise brochures out Marion.

On Winter, Strikers And Indian Talent

I'd like to start today with a thank you to the three kind souls who have "flattrd' the blog to date (giant oaks from little acorns and all that). Your support is appreciated.


As I write, it looks like winter has finally started to head our way and in the past hour the house has been buffeted by gale force winds and hailstones and there's a distinct chill in the air. We're off to Ribchester shortly to visit some friends. It's quite hilly up there but I don't think we need to pack the snow gear yet although it's around this time last year that we awoke on our first morning of retirement to a heavy blizzard in Manchester. We're looking forward to visiting Mark and Nita who run the excellent Workhouse Marketing the best creative marketing agency in the North West.

Last time we got together Mark had a try metal detecting with me and I gave him my old machine. I don't think he's had much success to date. Pretty much like me I suppose. Yesterday I headed up to Cumbria with my detecting pal Ed. We put in about five hours on the fields where I found my Roman gold bracelet link in the summer but all I had to show for it was this small Roman bronze coin. Ed had a similar one. At least we didn't go home completely empty handed but we will have to try and come up with some new places to go when we get out again in 2012. I think I will hang up the detector, spade and wellies for a few months now unless we get a very mild spell.

I don't tend to get political at all on here usually but the impending public sector workers' strike is really getting my back up. It's not because our son and daughter in law are flying back into Heathrow on Wednesday night/Thursday morning having been delayed on their outward flight to a wedding in the USA because of fog and now face more misery on their return. No, it's because I just can't see the point. I know that it's hard to discover that you are going to have to work longer before you get your pension and you may have to contribute more to it but it's something that has been coming for years and successive governments have failed to do anything about it. When most pensions were set up the average life expectancy was much lower. It is now heading towards eighty years which is eight years longer than it was even as recently as the 1970's. It doesn't take a mathematician to work out that a scheme set up to fund a pension for say fifteen years on average will run out of money if it has to pay the pensioners for twenty three. And, as these are public sector pensions, it is the UK tax payers that will have to foot the enormous shortfall. So it is common sense to make pensions kick in at a later age. Marion is one of those unlucky women in their fifties who expected a state pension at sixty and now has to wait another five years but, however much she dislikes it, she understands why it is essential to the economy and someone, somewhere, who is organising this strike should know that public sector workers will have to accept change too (unless they want us to end up like Greece that is).


Sorry about that but I can't see the point of damaging our fragile economy to further personal aims. If they've got a proposal of how it's going to be paid for, I would love to hear it. Rant over. Normal blogging resumes.


It's the X Factor quarter final tomorrow night. We've still got our bets on the two favourites Marcus and Little Mix although Marcus's odds went up the other day and Little Mix are now favourites by some way. Which is strange considering that they have not performed since last weekend. Have I missed something in the press? If both survive this week without being in the final two it should be a certainty that one of them will win (unless Janet, the only other act to escape the sing offs so far is a dark horse). It hasn't been a classic series this one, although it's still pulling in huge audiences - like that other Simon Cowell franchise "....'s Got Talent". I said on here that Britain clearly didn't have talent but has India? Judge for yourself.


 

Buddy Can You Spare A Dime

Regular visitors to this blog will spot a slight change today with the addition of a Flattr Me button. In case you don't know about Flattr, it's a new site which aims to create a way of rewarding bloggers, tweeters and other providers of internet material for their efforts. I've always steered clear of Google Ads and similar on this blog as it's basically here for my own writing practice, I enjoy it and I'm not looking to earn anything from it. However, the beauty of Flattr is that you can donate miniscule amounts and, in due course, those miniscule sums could eventually grow into something worthwhile. 


To participate you need to go to Flattr.com and sign up. You then fund your account with a sum that you can afford and, if you like, agree to a monthly commitment. Say you put a fiver in on the first of the month. You are then free to click on as many "Flattr Me" buttons as you like for a month. At the end of the month your fiver is shared equally between those sites that you have "Flattr'd" so a hundred clicks would give them all 5p, ten clicks 50p and  five clicks a pound. It's a way of flattering tweeters and bloggers you enjoy reading and it costs as much or as little as you want.


So there it is. Click on it if you are enrolled and donate a penny to this poor blogger. I will leave it up there for a while and monitor the progress. It's a new site and I don't expect that number of Flattrs (currently zero) to move much initially but please don't leave me with zero - it's bad enough having no friends on Facebook.

Finally back to the cinema today. And where better than the fabulous FACT in Liverpool where we enjoyed a tasty snack in the cafe before settling down to The Ides Of March. With an amazingly strong cast including Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti the omens were good. And we were not disappointed. It's a very believable story of spin doctoring and political scheming on the American Presidential campaign trail perhaps a little in the manner of the old BBC House Of Cards series. Gosling plays the Alastair Campbell style guru behind Clooney's whiter than white Democrat Governor  Mike Morris but Gosling's character Stephen Mayer's idealistic views are shattered when he discovers a skeleton in his boss's cupboard. We both enjoyed the film immensely and  can strongly recommend this tight and finely plotted piece of intrigue and study of political morals. A great title too.

After Clooney's thought provoking piece we had time for a quick drink before heading into the super little Box screen at FACT for Snowtown. I've read three or four glowing reviews of the film and all mentioned that it was dark. But the quality papers' reviewers must be made of sterner stuff than me as dark is way too light a word to use for this horrific true story of Australia's worst ever serial killer John Bunting. Bunting was responsible for eleven murders in total but fortunately the director spared us much of the grisly detail and we only witness one of the killings and the prelude to and aftermath of others. But the one murder shown in graphic detail was enough to prompt two of the audience to leave early. The film tells the story of how Bunting weaseled himself into the friendship and hospitality of a single mother and her sons after a neighbour she trusted to babysit turned out to be a paedophile who abused her children. Bunting's initial blood lust is cloaked in the guise of revenge but as he befriends the teenage Jamie and grooms him as a partner in crime we see him for the sinister and horrifically violent sadist that he is. The film is unquestionably hard hitting, extremely well filmed and has incredible performances from Daniel Henshall as Bunting and Lucas Pittaway as Jamie but it's grim, grim, grim. In addition, we both struggled with the sound and felt that some of the thick Ozzie accents could have benefited from subtitles and consequently we were not always sure exactly what was going on. See it only if you have a very strong stomach and even then make sure it's empty.

Have You Checked Out The E-Petitions Yet?

With the Governments e-petitions initiative in the news I thought it was time to have a closer look at the site and see what it's all about. I've signed a couple of them in the past after receiving tweets and emails asking for support but I haven't really paid much attention to any of the content apart from the petitions in the links forwarded to me. You can check the site out for yourself by clicking here. At the moment there are some 468 pages of live petitions that you can sign. They are sorted in order of popularity and at about twenty per page that's almost ten thousand of them. I reckon there are over 1400 that have so far achieved just one signature and 6,400 (about 64%) have ten or less. You would have thought that anyone media savvy enough to set up a petition might also have a couple of Facebook friends or Twitter followers. Blimey, even I reckon I could drum up twenty or thirty signatures. 


When you think of all the millions using the internet (over thirty million are logged onto Skype as I write this) it's a sad indictment that for example only ten have taken the trouble to support a petition to prevent employers discriminating against diabetes sufferers whilst the same number support "No Dubstep To Be Played On The Radio Between 5am and 11 am". Spend ten minutes on the site and it appears to be pretty much an abject failure. Most of the popular petitions seem to be from Daily Mail territory (stop immigration, brig back capital punishment, tax travellers, and the like). I signed one to stop legal loan sharking and another to ban scrap metal merchants from making cash payments.


If you want five minutes amusement have a look through the rejected petitions. Pity the poor sod who has to read this sort of stuff for a living "THE TAZER IS BY THE UNTED NATIONS OWN COMITTEE ON TORTURE ,AN INSTREMENT OF TORTURE. IT WAS INTRODUCED INTO THE UK POLICE FORCE INITIALY AS A LAST RESORT AS AN ALTERNITIVE TO A BULLET FIERING GUN. NOW IT HAS BECOME THE POLICE FAVORITE MEANS OF COMPLIANCE. THE POLICE ARE NOW AUTHORISED BY THE HOME SECETARY ( TERESA MAY) TO USE TAZERS ON... CHILDREN, PREGNANT WOMEN, OLD AGE PENSIONERS, THE DISABLES AND THE VUNERABLE. YES ANYONE AND EVERYONE IS FAIR GAME ITS OPEN SEASON ON THE BRITISH PUBLIC. THESE EVIL TAZERS ARE NOT BEING USED FOR WHAT THAY WERE ORIGIONALY BROUGHT INTO SERVICE FOR, ONLY TO BE USED IN A SITUATION OF LIFE OR DEATH ............"

Don't forget to watch episode 3 of Josephine's Sorority Girls tonight at 9 on E4. If you haven't seen it yet it's a fun and light hearted show that highlights the differences between university culture for girls here and in the USA.

I see that Martin Kelner devoted almost his entire column in yesterday's Guardian to slagging off Paul's A League Of Their Own. He did pretty much the same hatchet job on the show when it launched two years ago but it is now in its fourth series and the ratings are strong. I sympathise with a lot of what Kelner says - Freddie Flintoff's recent response to another panelist "f*** off " is hardly Oscar Wilde - but it appeals to its target 10pm Friday night audience and that is paramount.It's an original format and long may it succeed.  Criticising the show in The Guardian is a bit like The Sun sending a reviewer to Covent Garden to report back on La Boheme. 

Attempting A Return To Normality

With Marion's mum Flo now living in a care home we have a little peace of mind. We know that we won't be getting panic calls from her neighbours saying that she has been wandering around the corridors of her flats in her nightclothes at five in the morning or attempting to catch a bus to town when the shops have closed. But that doesn't make things easier. Her well-being is a constant worry and it's not a case of out of sight out of mind as we need to know that she is happy in her new place. We went to see her yesterday and helped her to write her Christmas cards but she struggled to remember who some of the people in her address book were. Today she is going to come and watch Liverpool play Chelsea on TV. This is something that she would have loved a couple of months ago but I suspect that she won't show any interest and, as for the 3D specs, we won't even think about going there. I worry that within a couple of months she may not know who we are and the care home will have to be changed for an EMI establishment. She won't know much about it but it won't be a pleasant experience.

On Friday we found time to meet up with Peter Eglin an old friend from our working days. Peter used to run one of our dealerships in Blackburn and then went on to be a successful sales executive with one of the country's leading catering equipment manufacturers. Like us, he took early retirement, although, unlike us, he was tragically unable to share it with his wife Christine who passed away far too young. Having read my blog about my childhood experiences with dogs, Peter kindly left his German Shepherd Ben at home. I don't dislike our canine friends but I am a bit scared of them (especially big ones). We met at The Mulberry Tree at Wrightington which both of us had somehow confused for the nearby Wiggin Tree. However, it was a good mistake to make as the food, from a ridiculously extensive menu was quite spectacularly fine. And with two courses on offer for £12.95 it was tremendous value for money. Decor and atmosphere don't quite match the exceptional standard of the food but we were in good company and had a very enjoyable couple of hours. We hope to catch up with Peter again next year.

For us to go a week without a trip to the cinema is unusual. For three weeks to pass has been unheard of for some time. So we plan to remedy this with a trip to FACT in Liverpool on Wednesday to see George Clooney's political oeuvre The Ides Of March and the critically acclaimed Australian Serial Killer movie Snowtown. We had hoped to cram in Wuthering Heights as well but we just couldn't get that in without hanging around for over four hours and hope we will catch it another time. 


Before then we've got more appointments with Flo. Tomorrow we're taking her to Ormskirk to see an eye specialist. She's not seeing too well at the moment and she thinks that the specialist will be able to put things right but I have a horrible feeling that it's all linked to her memory problems and there won't be a great deal that they can do. After that we've got to help the care home to draw up a care plan for her. It really is a very caring place and they will do their best to meet her needs.

I haven't been doing much gambling at all this year but I can never resist having a bet on X Factor. Last year I got it wrong and lost nearly £900 on Cher (although she has been the most successful of the contestants) but this year is looking a bit better with a potential win of £252 if either Marcus or Little Mix win against a loss of about £55 if they don't. Marion and I picked these two out a few weeks ago (I think Marcus will win, Marion likes the girls) and we managed to back them at over 10. I think they both stand a good chance so we won't trade the bets and hope one of them will pay for a couple of Christmas presents. 


Great to see another two minutes of prime time devoted to our daughter in law Josephine's creation Sorority Girls on Harry Hill last night. Keep it up Harry and it will become cult viewing.

 

On Liverpool's Ladykillers

Since we got back from Scotland at the weekend we have spent a great deal of time with Marion's mum. But we took a few hours off last night to go and see The Ladykillers at Liverpool Playhouse. We booked the tickets ages ago before Flo's memory started to deteriorate badly and it was perhaps ironic that the plot of the play we had chosen to see revolves around an old lady with a bad memory.


The show, which is moving to The Gielgud in London shortly, is a good old fashioned farce scripted by Graham Linehan of Father Ted and the IT Crowd fame. It is a resurrection of the famous 1950's Ealing comedy with Alec Guinness' lead role of Professor Marcus played here by Peter Capaldi who heads a strong cast. Being preoccupied with Flo's troubles we hadn't much time to read up on the cast before the play and, as we also didn't buy a programme, we failed to spot Ben Miller as the bearded Romanian gangster in the "string quartet". Miller has been a great favourite of ours since his wonderful BBC comedy The Worst Week Of My Life but even when we spotted his comedy parter Alexander Armstrong in the audience we failed to twig. 


For me the star of the show was the set. This was a spectacular piece of workmanship which could surely never have been afforded if this was just to be a two week run at the Liverpool Playhouse. Revolving from terraced street to 50's interior to smoky rooftops and then to railway tunnel, it was worth the ticket price on its own - quite spectacular and beautiful. That's not to say that the cast were not stars too. Capaldi was a brilliant manic criminal mastermind and was matched with fine performances from Miller, James Fleet as the cross dressing major, Clive Rowe as the lovable dope One Round and Steven Wight as a cockney petty thief with a penchant for drugs. Marcia Warren plays the forgetful old lady very convincingly and Graham Linehan's script has plenty of laughs.


Sadly, for me, the audience had an average age of well over fifty and there was a distinct lack of young people amongst us. It was not as bad as the Gilbert and Sullivan opera we saw at the Lowry last year when we were probably the youngest there but it does not bode well for the future of live theatre. Perhaps with Linehan, Capaldi and Miller's popularity it may attract a younger crowd when it hits the West End. I hope it does as it's an enjoyable night out. 


Having seen this and James Corden's One Man Two Masters in the past couple of months I think it is worth a comparison. Each is old fashioned in style, each has an excellent cast including famous TV names, each relies upon a degree of slapstick and farce but, much as we enjoyed both, Corden's One Man Two Masters is more in tune with the 21st century and, consequently, a lot funnier. I would recommend both but if you could only see one, my recommendation would not be The Ladykillers. It's funny (not hilarious), brilliantly acted, beautifully designed but, like Blithe Spirit which we also saw this year, it is very much a piece from the past.


We were back to reality today when we took our own forgetful old lady to start a new life in a care home. It felt a little like a bereavement as we left her flat for the last time and it was difficult for all of us leaving her, after settling her into he room, looking like a child on the first day of school. We won't be abandoning her and will be making plenty of visits but that doesn't assuage an underlying feeling of guilt that probably won't go away until we are sure that she is happy in her new environment.