Autumn is on the way!

Today there is no sun and that makes a huge difference in this modern flat with a lot of windows. I managed to find some gloves and a scarf and have bought myself a new coat which is nice and warm. The stallholders at the market were freezing and shiverering as it has been so warm up till a few days ago.
After coming home and having a hot cup of tea I was still chilly and like some many of us this year, I do not want to put on the heating yet so I rooted out my vest. Magic! Lovely and warm but it is going to be a long, hard winter judging by the generous amount of red berries on the holly and the hawthorn trees and in the hedgerows.
Sadly, there are going to be a lot of pensioners who die of hypothermia this year because of the huge rises in fuel prices and the reluctance of the government to give any real help and financial aid to all those who find it hard to pay. People are already struggling with huge food price increases and the abolition of the 10 pence tax band. That has meant that for many on low incomes and pensions that tax has doubled overnight. The knowledge that money is being poured into prop up shaky banks and that financiers are still making millions and the fuel companies are also making obscenely huge profits is very hard to stomach especially when we can see there is no quick fix for the economy. Oil is going to run out and the only person who has come out straight with it is Jeremy Clarkson in The Sun. Everyone else is like the boy in the dyke, plug the hole with money and we will be safe but unfortunately this time it is the whole wall that is collapsing and no amount of plugging will stop this erosion.
There needs to be strong and meaningful help for those on low incomes and pensions now. Actions speak far louder than the reams of words we get from politicians of all colours and persuasions. Brown, we are watching.

Words, words and more words!

I am delighted to have set up this blog! I am a silver surfer and do not find it easy to sort all this technical stuff out although it is second nature to my son's generation.
I remember when I was a young driver and drove by myself all the way to Kent from Somerset and stayed with my grandfather. He was probably in his eighties and had been the village blacksmith in Benenden until he retired. He wanted to use the phone which to him was a new-fangled invention and so I went with him to the telephone box and helped him press button A and then put his money in and press button B - remember those days! But he was not at all confident about it. I also remember when my mother was in her 70's I gave her a small walkman and tape recorder and got her to record her earliest memories of when she was a child in India (now Pakistan ) and visited the beach and was horrified as it was volcanic ash and black! Also, she recalled that she was very distraught when she had yellow fever or something similar and all her books and toys had to be destroyed because of infection. She never forgot that. It must have been about about 1916 and just before the outbreak of the First World War which turned the world upside down.