Inchy: Friday 17th January 2025 – Memories

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REMEMBERING
Do You…
Remember the comfort & luxury of home life as a nipper?
The Kodak Brownie box camera?
The black & white photo booths all over?
Your first motorbike, I think this was a Jawa?
Were you impressed by Blackpool Tower?
Did you use the 1960’s new Surf Automatic soap powder?
Remember the 1959 Ford Anglia, with rear window angular?
Or even more appealing was Rita, who was far more cuddlier,
I desired her so (sob) but never got a date with her!
Remember the 1955 number-one hit. ‘Let me go, lover’?
Sang by sexpot Teresa Brewer?
She wisely didn’t answer my letter!
Recall the Ration Book, weekly; bacon and ham 4oz; 4oz of butter, loose tea 4oz; sugar 8oz; meat one shilling-worth; cheese 1oz; preserves 8oz a month! Then biscuits, breakfast cereals, cheese, eggs, lard, milk, canned and dried fruit joined the list. Babies, pregnant women and the sick were allocated additional food items such as milk, orange juice and cod liver oil. Domestic coal was rationed to 15 hundredweight yearly in London and 20 hundredweight for those in the north. Clothing was rationed using a point system. This allowed for approximately one new outfit per year but was reduced steadily until buying a coat used up almost a year’s supply of clothing points. Clothing became utilitarian: pleats and turn-ups disappeared from trousers, and garments were plain. Women painted gravy browning on bare legs to replace silk stockings and painted black lines at the back to simulate the seams! Food rationing worsened after the war due to the country’s badly damaged economy. Bread rationing began for the first time in late 1946; the bacon ration halved in October, and potatoes were rationed in November. The Standing Committee on Medical and Nutritional Problems was concerned about those who had to live on their rations and lacked access to canteen or restaurant meals. The Ministry of Health decided to help with assistance with shopping, cooking and providing meals on wheels. Rationing ceased in May 1954,
During & after the war, Spivs, black-marketeers Galore,
Nottingham prosecuted 2,400, elsewhere more!
Do you remember the outside toilet, the pissoir?
The coal house, the yard gate, and more?
The wooden lid? Bum splinters that were sore?
The discomfort of a freezing winter?
No toilet paper, but cut-up newspaper?
The cistern would freeze after December?
Lighting a candle or lamp, you had to remember!
No hot water tank; for the better-off, an Ascot geyser.
Unaffordable for the Inchy geezer.
The Saturday night bath; that was a bummer?
Boiling water on the stove and on the coal fire?
Getting mine last was a bit of a harrumpher…
Cleaning out the other’s dirt, scurf & seborrhea!

 DC electric shocks, with a ‘let-go” threshold high?
Compared to AC, is it likely to knock you over or fly?
But more people getting AC shocks die.
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I didn’t keep much of a diary today. I spent so long trying to find pictures for my Memory Ode, but I didn’t have a camera this morning, so I had to use something from the file or web.

I returned to this facsimile of life at 05:15hrs. Got the scrub-up and shaving done. Then ablutions & medicationings were completed. Trotsky Terence Porcelain’s visit was made without any premature evacuational movements. Phew! 

I started the ode, and seven hours later, I finished it. (I’m not joking; my concentration was all over the place.) However, the ailment has been fair to me up to now. I’m not able to say that very often! Although the struggle with getting the right pictures from the web and files may have been part of the problem, it seems to have appeased some of my ailments?

During the Ode workings, Carer Chris visited me, and then Carer Joanne visited again. We had a little natter and a laugh about our current problems.

Between this activity, I put one large potato in the slow cooker. I walked into the wet room door, another should-charge job; was not one of the being-good-to-me ailments! Which, understandably, set off and , but both soon calmed down again. I can’t believe all this good luck I’m having! 
As for the past 4 or 5 days, is still on form. I forgot to ring the Doctor about asking for some under-tongue dissolving medication, but it’s too late in the day now, and of course, with the weekend coming, I can’t do anything about it. Not until Monday, when most likely the only thing I’ll do is forget to make the call again. Huh! 
Nowadays, life continues like this; Never-ending returning circles, tangents and variations of failures, errors, forgetfulness, mysterious episodes of utter confusion (unrecognised seizures possibly?), with rare but precious dabblets of contentment, verging on happiness. The feared visits of unreasonable sadness, self-anger, & self-disgust, almost a loathing sometimes. But not yet today. This may be why I just flooded out my feelings. Is it as if I’ve only just realised what is going on?

Yet help & solutions are elusive.

Even talking to myself (I do an awful lot of that), my queries, questions and even my own answers or decisions I know are evasive, not logical or practical. Conceivably inenarrable. Confidentless and doomed not to be done and to fail even if they are attempted. Taking all the things I’ve just written & read above, I now see with clarity one word that I’d missed. Bonkersness! What a load of talking nineteen to the dozen, prattling, gabbling twaddle! I’ve lost it! Hehehe! 
If anyone can understand it, please let me know.

I’m going to check on the potatoes now…

No, not ready yet. I hope the Carer doesn’t call while I’m eating. The spuds will get cold, and the potato skin will go hard and hurt my teggies. Hehe!

Well, the potato skins went hard and hurt my teggies. Not considering the pain from the gums and lips, it was enjoyable-ish. Sorry, there’s no photo cause it looked a lot better than it tasted. I settled with the TV on, and at my first bite of a pickled mushroom, Carer Chris arrived—not that it spoiled the meal in any way. I cooked the lad a chicken pattie in the microwave; it only took two minutes, and he scoffed it down with a drink of lemonade. Well, he was tired and hungry. Hehe! Help with the camera loan was much appreciated. The poorly-poo Kodak will be examined on his days off. Fingers Crossed!

Sleep came so quickly.
But thanks to the occasional jerking from , I seemed to be shooting awake every few minutes – it probably wasn’t that often, but it felt like it was in the morning. Humph!
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Hasta la vista!
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