Going back

Though it happens every year I can never get over how quickly it gets dark in the evening on the day after we put the clocks back in late October. I walked through the village today and it was practically dark when I got back at about a quarter to five. I remember as a small boy in 1968 when the Wilson government decided to retain British Summer time for the next three years. Apparently evening casualties fell considerably during this experimental period - though new drink-driving legislation may have had a significant impact - but morning casualties increased and so the new government switched back to the clock adjustments twice a year and we've made them ever since. I can remember it being incredibly dark to my young eyes in those freezing mornings when my Mum helped to dress me in front of an old three-bar electric fire. Now my older eyes find it incredibly dark in the evenings. Perhaps this is what 'time passes' really means?

A Golden Age

Some years ago I was in Amsterdam on business. Thankfully we finished early and our host suggested we might like to view an art exhibition which had just opened. It was entitled 'The Golden Age' and featured some amazing paintings from Dutch masters.

This was my first introduction to the art of Johannes Vermeer and it was love at first sight. I adored the way in which he gave us glimpses of private, domestic tasks undertaken by women of that era. Of course I met him again through Girl With a Pearl Earring, one of his most famous paintings and subject to both a fictional account by Tracy Chevalier and also 2004 film starring Scarlett Johansson .

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has an exhibition running until January entitled 'Vermeer's Women' which features a number of his and his contemporaries' paintings from that time. These include the famous 'The Lacemaker' (above), on loan from the Louvre in Paris and which was painted in about 1670. We saw it again today and the detail of it and many others in this exhibition is quite exquisite.

Of course the usual Cambridge art intelligentsia aka 'deluded through a misguided sense of self-importance' were out in force but they could only see what we mere mortals saw: genius.

Care quality: not in Chesterfield

I heard a piece about the Care Quality Commission on Radio 2 yesterday. It appears that inspectors have been doing spot checks in 100 UK hospitals and found an "unacceptable" level of care in many cases. Elderly people were treated with a lack of dignity, left unwashed and unaided for lonely hours on end. I have been witness to exactly this and could have written the radio script. My father was in Chesterfield Royal Hospital for three weeks and it was clear after three minutes that nurses could not care less than they did; and this isn't about money or resources it's about motivation. With such an obvious lack of vocation they should perhaps go and work in shops where they are able - in fact expected - to be rude to people all day long. My Dad was confused, unwashed, unshaven, hungry and covered in bed sores when 'allowed' to leave. I've always stood up for and looked up to nurses but things have clearly changed for the worse as I grow older and draw closer to a similar fate. For too many nurses now it's a question of Carry On Doing Very Little if you possibly can. Royal and Hospital are just anonymous labels in Chesterfield: care is a smaller word but the lack of it is so much more meaningful.
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Care quality: not in Chesterfield

I heard a piece about the Care Quality Commission on Radio 2 yesterday. It appears that inspectors have been doing spot checks in 100 UK hospitals and found an "unacceptable" level of care in many cases. Elderly people were treated with a lack of dignity, left unwashed and unaided for lonely hours on end. I have been witness to exactly this and could have written the radio script. My father was in Chesterfield Royal Hospital for three weeks and it was clear after three minutes that nurses could not care less than they did; and this isn't about money or resources it's about motivation. With such an obvious lack of vocation they should perhaps go and work in shops where they are able - in fact expected - to be rude to people all day long. My Dad was confused, unwashed, unshaven, hungry and covered in bed sores when 'allowed' to leave. I've always stood up for and looked up to nurses but things have clearly changed for the worse as I grow older and draw closer to a similar fate. For too many nurses now it's a question of Carry On Doing Very Little if you possibly can. Royal and Hospital are just anonymous labels in Chesterfield: care is a smaller word but the lack of it is so much more meaningful.
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All alone with a memory

I had very few pets as a child. We did have a budgerigar one Christmas which - for what seems a quite bizarre reason now - we called Merry. I used to come home from school and talk to Merry who would cock his head and then often his leg in response to my childish banter. We also had a fish called Freddie but he didn't take much notice of me either, or at least only for every 180 of his 360 degrees life.

When we married, my wife had a horse and cat. As children arrived, so did more cats. We've had six in all and two remain. Josh, a beautiful black cat, died this morning. He had a spinal disease and we held him and cuddled him as he fell asleep for the last time. Our daughter was devoted to him and he to her. In her fourteen years on earth she cannot remember a time when Josh didn't lie on her bed, meet her from school or wait patiently, paws under door, until she came out of the bathroom each day (increasingly that was a very long wait).

For me, this morning was my first encounter with death at first hand. I had been close to relatives and friends passing away, as well as the other cats and my wife's horse, but never, for one reason or another, actually there as death replaced life. Of course I see Josh everywhere at the moment: 'nesting' under the tree outside, or curled up in his basket or standing expectantly (hopefully) beside his empty dish. I know that he can now see all of us and will watch over our daughter as intently as ever he did when he was alive. I also know now for certain that life is never so precious as at that point when it is about to be taken away.