20 Years Gone!

This seems to be the time of year for sad stuff!

After my voluntary silence during August in honour of my lovely Grandson, Alfred, who passed on to the next phase of existence on 24^th August 2025, I am a bit reluctant to lower the mood again – but I am still going to!

Incidentally, I have decided that the August “rest” will continue in future years as long as I am here, with an appropriate reminder posted on 31^st July. I may, in fact, start preparing the 31^st July 2027 piece now – it is currently August 2026 and I don’t have any urgent pieces to write right now.

Anyway…

In July 2006 my daughter Carla (young Alfred’s Mum) was graduating from Lancaster University with a BA in History. She was not the first in the family to go to university and graduate – that honour went to her elder sister Hannah who did it 2 years earlier.

Hannah, however, did her degree in Northampton and attending that ceremony was a daytrip for us in Peterborough, while Lancaster definitely was not.

It was decided that the trip there necessitated a week’s holiday and the last couple of times we had visited Carla up there we had enjoyed staying at one or other of 2 farm cottages converted to Holiday Lets. These were at a farm in a village called Quernmore (pronounced Kwerma) about 3 miles from the Lancaster University campus, and a little further to the city itself. We decided that this would be ideal and booked it for a week.

As there were only three of us and the place could sleep six, Faith, Carla and I invited Faith’s mum and my parents to join us for the week, including the graduation ceremony. Ruth, my mother-in-law had moved to a warden-assisted bungalow in our road a year earlier and my mum and dad did the 100-mile drive from Ipswich to Peterborough and stayed with us overnight.

I had expressed some concern at my 79-year-old father doing a 200 mile drive the day after a 100 mile one. Dad had agreed in advance that this might be a bit wearing and had arranged for me to be added to his insurance for the week.

Obviously two cars were needed and it was decided that Faith would take both Mums and Carla in our Citroen Picasso, while Dad and I (with me driving) plus nearly all of the luggage for all six of us, went in Dad’s Toyota Corolla. I don’t recall who left first, but we agreed that there should be no racing and I think that we met up anyway at Wetherby services on the A1.

It was a great trip – I hadn’t spent that much time alone with my father in years and we talked about all kinds of things that we probably wouldn’t have got around to discussing had anyone else been around. Things like how very ill he feared Mum might be and how much help he might need to get by if she “went first”!

We had a great week exploring the coast and the southern end of the Lake District but the highlight, of course, was the graduation ceremony.

The Great Hall, where it all happened was only large enough to accommodate two official guests per graduate and we had been a bit worried at how the “old people” could pass the time! Fortunately, this had been anticipated by the University who had made a couple of large lecture halls available with air-conditioning and soft drinks as well as large screens providing TV coverage of the ceremony.

Faith and I were in the somewhat less comfortable Great Hall and watched proudly as Carla received her Bachelor’s Degree from the renowned mountaineer, Sir Chris Bonnington. That gentleman (who was Chancellor of the University from 2005 to 2015) paused a couple of times during the leaving procession to shake hands with people in the aisle seats – including yours truly! I think he said “You must be very proud”. I was!

My predominant memory of that day was (after Carla’s part obviously) was that Wednesday 19^th July 2006 was the hottest day of the century so far with temperatures over 36 degrees Celsius recorded around the country.

It didn’t get quite that hot up in Lancashire but it was warm enough for me on the one day of summer that I was required to wear a dark suit and a tie! My Dad wasn’t, however, and came out of the Lecture Hall looking annoyingly cool and comfortable. I can assure you that, once out of the hall, my suit jacket and tie came off in very short order!

At the end of the week, we all returned to Peterborough, Mum and Dad stayed one, possibly two nights before returning to Ipswich and Faith and I went back to work.

The summer rolled on until the week commencing 11^th September when my manager sent me on two consecutive short Microsoft courses at a Training business in Milton Keynes – 50 miles away.

It involved a drive of just over an hour each way, the course started around 9.30 each day and there had been tests on the Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for each of the two component parts. The Friday session started 30 minutes later and was purely for giving out results and certificates – which seemed a bit of a waste of a day, but as I was getting 45p per mile from my employer, I was not too bothered.

I did not make it!

I was getting ready to go when the phone rang – it was my sister calling from Ipswich Hospital to tell me that our dad had been rushed in by ambulance and was being taken into surgery. She was very upset but managed to tell me that I should get there as soon as possible!

So, Faith and I quickly shoved some clothes in a bag, jumped into the car and she drove as fast as she could legally and safely manage down the A1 and the A14. I knew that route like the back of my hand including where all the fixed speed cameras were and it is fair to say that we knew when we could get away with exceeding those limits!

I don’t remember exactly when my sister called us 100 miles away in Peterborough but I would normally have left for the course at around 8 am and we arrived in the emergency surgery waiting area at just after 9.30. I’ll let you work out the average speed from that.

My father had felt really ill on waking at about 6 am and had asked Mum to call an ambulance. When he got to the hospital he was quickly diagnosed as having suffered an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm – that is a weakness in the main artery which then bursts involving massive internal bleeding. He was rushed straight into surgery where efforts were made to close up this catastrophic rip in his primary blood vessel.

We (Faith and I, Mum and my sister and her partner) had not been sitting together for very long in the waiting area when a member of the operating theatre staff came in to tell us that   Dad had passed away during surgery at just after 9.30!

We were told that most people suffering a burst AAA do not actually make it to hospital, let alone surgery, and that dad must have been a very tough man as he held on in surgery for over 2 hours. They also told us that they could find nothing about him in the hospital’s medical records and were incredulous when we told them that he had lived in Ipswich for 79 years without ever having attended a hospital for any reason.

My father was an amazing person with a great number of interests, including sketching, painting and writing. When such things became available, he bought himself a computerised electric typewriter (a Sharp Fontwriter, I believe), learned to use it and rattled off almost 100,000 words about his World War 2 experiences including the three years from February 1945 spent with The Irish Guards in the UK and Germany.

His acceptance of modern technology went up a notch when I passed on to him my slightly outdated Escom PC and he was able to not only get access to the Internet but also a scanner and printer so that he could enhance his writings with photographs and scanned documents.

In the years before his death, it was customary for mum to phone Faith and I every Thursday evening and once all the family news had been exchanged, she would conclude with “I’ll pass you on to your father” and I would move on to the computer. This was because I knew that dad would have a list of question about things that he couldn’t work out about the PC or one or other of the apps on it. I also knew that he would be sitting there with a notebook and pen to record my answers so that he never had to ask me that particular question again.

Despite having spent a large part of my working day answering similar questions I actually enjoyed explaining that sort of thing to dad – because I knew he would listen and understand what I was telling him.

Dad’s greatest love, outside of the family, was military and civil aviation. As a teenager in Ipswich during the early 1940s he was a member of the Air Training Corps (ATC) and kept his own neatly written diary of every aeroplane he spotted – British, German or American.

I know that he was wishing as his 18^th birthday approached that he would be called up into the RAF but his 6-foot 3-inch height put him in a Guards Regiment instead; he did not enjoy that half as much as he would have enjoyed being with planes!

From my childhood onwards I remember him always having with him a monocular to spot the make, model and serial number of every plane he saw, and a notebook to record those details as well as where and when he saw it. He transferred these notebooks to his computer and I have a USB stick containing thousands of those sightings. I imagine that he would be called a bit of a geek these days!

This particular “geekiness” has, I am pleased to say, been passed on to his great-grandson (9-year-old “X”) who loves aeroplanes (only civil ones at present) and never ceases to amaze me with the stuff he knows about them. They would have got on famously together.

All in all, it is probably fitting that dad should die on Battle of Britain Day, 15^th September and you will not have overlooked that today is the 20^th anniversary of his passing.

I still miss him and remain so grateful to have had that opportunity on the drive up to Lancashire to chat about life, the universe and everything.

Alfie

 

What am I?

A strange question, perhaps, but given the labels that our “Society” seems to want to pin upon us lately, I feel that it is important for us all to know both what we ARE and what we ARE NOT. This is so that we may instantly affirm or refute any generalisations that the media may seek to attribute to us.

For example, I am a 73-year-old, white, English born and bred male pensioner with a former career with a major bank and, because of those factors, certain political parties and the news media (by which I mean TV, radio and print as well as on-line) associated with them would classify me statistically as follows:

• A Tory (Conservative) Party supporter or voter. This is presumably because of, not only my career, but because I will remember with fear and trepidation the Cold War against Communism in the 1960s, together with a loathing of the Trade Union unrest in my 20’s in the 1970s.
• A ‘Brexiteer’ – that is to say ‘one who voted to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum’.  The presumption here being that, like so many of my age group, I did not want to join in the first place and, furthermore, could not possibly want to be friends with peoples that we had fought wars with (or for) especially if they also do not speak English!
• An Anti-immigrant, borderline Racist. Following on from the last point, this one extends it to include non-European people who want to be in the UK for any reason.
• A Patriot. This is a comparatively new label related to the previous two. A Patriot is considered to be someone who cares so much about their country that they want it closed off to the outside world, and for our traditions and views to be returned to those of a sunny, 1950s Miss Marple-style idyll.
• A Christian. Statistically, anyone born in the UK in the 1950s is likely to have been brought up in one or other branch of the Christian faith – been baptised, attended Sunday school, that sort of thing. So, it is probably not all that unreasonable an assumption.

Now some of you reading this know me quite well, others know me a little. None of you, however, should be surprised (there are a number of small hints in the way I worded some of those bullet points) to learn that any agency trying to tag me with ANY of those headings would be 100% WRONG!

Let’s take those points above in order.

Political affiliation. People of my generation often seemed to start out in young adulthood full of idealism and left-wing theories (possibly due to the Hippy sub-culture of the late 1960s), but then, as they gradually acquired the trappings of modern life – career, spouse, house, mortgage, family, pension plan – their politics moved slowly to the right.

In the UK this meant the Conservative party, presumably on the assumption that all the rich people there would provide the only way of stopping the nasty Communists and Socialists from taking all of their stuff and sharing it out with those horrid poor people!

Thanks largely to my school history teacher who gave us all a very clear view of what the Labour Party actually did to improve the lot of ordinary people and to protect them from the predations of the rapacious Capitalists (who owned the companies for which most of them had to work) I never altered my belief that ‘fair shares for all’ and ‘kindness to all’ were the best way to live.

I started out with those idealistic thoughts in the 1960s but my thought pattern did not alter with time. Yes, I did the marriage, mortgage and family thing and all while working for a capitalist banking organisation. I was a Socialist in principle, and was an office representative for the National Union of Bank Employees for quite a bit of the ten years from 1978 to 1988.

I understand that to many Americans this makes me ‘a Communist’ and all I can say to that is that it shows how little they know about anything!

Leaving the European Union. It is often stated that the percentage of the UK electorate voting in 2016 to break our political and economic ties with Europe was as high as it was (an overwhelming 52%!) because of pensioners who hadn’t wanted to join in the first place! I do not know whether there is much truth in that contention but as I had retired from full-time employment and commenced drawing my occupational pension earlier that year I fall into the ’Pensioner’ category.

And I can state categorically that, from the moment the referendum was announced I thought the whole idea of ‘Brexit’ was a stupid, backwards step from which no good could come!

I also felt that the so-called ‘Brexiteers’ who whined incessantly about the reason for leaving being that sometimes the EU wouldn’t give the UK exactly what it wanted were being awfully childish. So, instead of using persuasion and guile to bamboozle the other nations into leaning our way, what did we do?

Ran away!

So, as well as damaging our economy and ruining the freedom that we, our children and grandchildren had as a part of a massive international coalition, Brexit was the biggest act of national cowardice EVER! 

And nobody is going to pin that on me!

An Anti-immigrant, borderline Racist. The far-right political groups which seem to be shouting very loudly at the moment, are doing it in scenes that seem very reminiscent of things that happened 90 or so years ago. They are very firm in their belief that our borders should be under total control, that no immigrants should be allowed in, particularly those who are not white skinned Christians and especially those arriving illegally on ‘Small Boats’. This is all supposed to preserve our racial purity.

I am currently making notes for a separate article on the ‘Small Boats’ issue so I won’t go into it too much here – suffice it to say that most people in this country are descended from others over the last two or three thousand years who most definitely did not arrive here by aeroplane!

And as far as racism is concerned, my race is HUMAN, what’s yours?

A Patriot. If you mean in the American sense where I have to sing a national anthem and/or recite an oath of allegiance to a flag, in order to convince myself that I believe in the idea of ‘my country right or wrong’ – then no, that isn’t me.

I will, however, defend the piece of this particular land that I occupy from anyone who wants to take it away from me and my family. What I won’t do though is be told who my enemy is and who I have to fight – I am an intelligent person and am quite capable of working that sort of thing out for myself!

A Christian. If you look back to the very early days of this blog you will find a piece on the subject of religion (https://littlealfie.wordpress.com/2009/03/05). Despite the fact that I was brought up in the church/Sunday school fashion typical of my age group. I soon came to the conclusion stated in that article – everybody knows that all major religions cannot be right and it seems likely therefore that rather than any one of them being right, all of them are wrong.

Look at the amount of conflict taking place in the world which can be boiled down to ‘My omnipotent sky friend is better than yours’ and you may start to agree with me.

I have come to the conclusion, after thinking about it and researching it while writing this piece that what I want to be (and, probably, what I am) is a Humanist.

Google defines this as follows:

“Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance that values human dignity, reason, and science over dogma or the supernatural. It asserts that human beings have the responsibility to give meaning to their own lives and build a better society through empathy and free inquiry.”

Yes, I think that sums me up nicely and answers the question in the title of “What am I” while the rest of the article defines pretty well what I am not.

And I’ll throw the obvious follow-up question out there – “What are YOU?”

Alfie

 

I’m Back

I would just like to let you know that my one-month self-imposed silence is now over, but I am very glad that I did it because the first anniversary of the passing of my little grandson, Alfred, was as traumatic for the whole family as we feared it would be.

I would not have wanted to have to force myself to be cheery and flippant while all those lovely but horribly sad memories were happening.

During my “exile” I have written, and scheduled for publication later this month, another two fairly lengthy pieces but as these are both on the more serious side of my output, I thought I would share this with you to lighten the mood a bit!

I was looking at my Facebook account the other day – by “my” I mean the account of the creepy puppeteer guy who always has his hand up Little Alfie’s jumper – and I saw this:

I have redacted some bits to protect the innocent (and the aforesaid creepy puppeteer, who still managed to get in on the right of the picture) but…

Can someone please tell me just what the hell Meta AI thinks it’s doing?!

Or, perhaps more accurately, “What the hell Meta AI thinks that we want it to be doing?”

Because, I can think of no possible reason for me to go down the route to creating:

“The 3D Animated Adventures of Little Alfie’s Titanium Plated Broken Ankle.”

Even if Disney or Pixar offer me huge amounts of money to come on board!

And I’ll tell you this for nothing – I am going to take great care, when out and about, to make sure that no-one gets the chance to drop a bloody great “ACME” brand anvil on my foot!

Alfie

 

In Memoriam

Just a little reminder for you that there will be no posts at all on here in August in memory of my lovely little Grandson Alfred who passed away on 24th August 2025.

We are all still thinking of you and missing you so much, Little Friend. Love you Alfred.

Granddad

No AI used in this post

 

Recent Reflections

Part 1

Earlier this month I drove to my home town of Ipswich from my home in Peterborough to attend the funeral of one of my old schoolfriends, who has attended many of the “1964-to-1969-year group” reunions that have been happening since 2017.

Cedric, not a common name in this day and age, was not a particularly close friend during our 5 years at Copleston Secondary Modern School for Boys and, unlike some of our group, did not share any junior school experiences with me, but we got on very well together.

I was very willing though to make the effort to attend his funeral in recognition of his generosity in helping our efforts to raise funds last year for my late Grandson, Alfred’s cancer treatment! And also, for the considerable good advice that he offered me concerning my proposed Charity Cycle ride in aid of the East Anglian Children’s Hospice (where Alfred spent his last days).

Cedric had done charitable cycle rides from Land’s End to John O’Groats on no less than three occasions – so he knew what he was talking about!

My trip was roughly 100 miles each way and, as I said above, I didn’t mind doing it at all – I hope some of the guys will do the same for me when my turn comes.

I set out (it was a scorching hot day) at about 1.30 pm and made it to the Seven Hills Crematorium 2 hours later – 30 minutes before the service was due to start.

I was able to meet up with the other 5 “alumni” present, sat with them during the service and met up again at the wake held in a large unused office building in a business park near the A14 (actually one junction back from the crematorium in a homeward direction).

There, having introduced ourselves and paid our respects to the family, we sat in a group, enjoyed the buffet and chatted amongst ourselves for about an hour until 6pm – when I figured that the Ipswich commuter traffic would have diminished sufficiently for me to make my journey home in good time.

I did, in fact, get in at 7.55pm, 5 minutes before the start of England’s World Cup semi-final match against that disgusting pack of hacking animals, Argentina. I wish I hadn’t bothered!

Part 2

This piece really begins at the wake for Cedric, mentioned above.

A couple of my schoolfriends were standing in a short queue for the buffet and were discussing a singer from the 1960s (and beyond). They were disagreeing over which band this person came to prominence with.

As I joined the line behind them, one of them (Keith) turned to me and said, “You’re good at remembering stuff – which band was Peter Frampton with first?”

As quick as a flash I replied “The Herd”, prompting a groan from the other person in the conversation (Dave) who maintained that the correct answer was “Humble Pie”.

Now as any fool knows, he couldn’t have been right because Humble Pie was a ‘supergroup’ – that is to say, it was made up of people already famous from other bands. No-one started there!

A day or so later I made a comment on our old school Facebook group and mentioned not only how pleased I had been to see everyone but also that, following the discussion, I had been listening to The Herd’s major hit (From the Underworld).

One of the other schoolfriends present at the wake (Chris), responded “Pity you and I didn’t have that conversation, <Alfie>. Would you perchance be familiar with their other issuances, which are worth a listen?”

That effectively ended that conversation as Keith immediately picked up on the word “issuances” which he was surprised to find is actually a word! In all my years I had not come across it either despite it being a perfectly legitimate English word- look it up if you don’t believe me.

Both Keith and I now intend to use it as much as possible in written correspondence and ordinary conversation!

I mentioned that I rather like “uncertain” words of that sort and said that my current favourite is “somewhen” – you may have noticed me using that on this site from time to time.

Strangely, in the next 48 hours I found 2 more perfectly legitimate but unfamiliar words’ – both are in the dictionary but are not in common use.

The first was used by my 7-year-old grandson who was making sure that his holiday packing included his armbands, rubber ring and other essential pool accessories.

“Mum”, he asked, “have you got the “infloatables*?” He thinks he made the word up and I’m not going to disillusion him!

*Actually, it isn’t in the OED (yet) but Google knows what it means if you search for it!

The other cropped up in one of the “Discworld” novels of Sir Terry Pratchett that I was reading recently and describes the massive array of pickles, mustards, horseradishes and other condiments accompanying the Wizards’ supper trolley at Unseen University. It is “Tracklements” and, while my spellchecker didn’t like it, it does have rather more of a history to it. Please look that one up too!

I plan to make use of both of those little gems when I can. It may not be soon but “somewhen”!

Writing all of the above reminded me that I wrote about something similar back in the early days of this blog. The words mentioned in that one were all classed as “archaic” but still are worth throwing into conversation when you can. If you have enjoyed this little topic, go and have a look at it here: https://littlealfie.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/its-only-words/

Finally, I am posting this piece on Thursday 30^th July 2026 and want to remind you that there will be one more article, which is already written and scheduled for 31^st July, before a deliberate one-month silence for August. If you don’t recall why, tomorrow’s piece will explain.

I will not be stopping writing Little Alfie articles, but you’re going to have to wait until September to read them.

Alfie

No AI used in this post

 

The CD of My Life – “Wild West Hero” – ELO

As you will all, no doubt, remember, on Christmas Day 2011 I posted a piece on here concerning the song “Sultans of Swing” by the UK band “Dire Straits”.

In it I related how hearing that song took me back mentally to the summer of 1978 and the two weeks that Faith and I spent camping in North Somerset and South Devon.

I also failed to mention in that particular article (although I have said it in plenty of others) that it works the other way round too – if I speak of that holiday I will, invariably, start humming that song in my head!

That’s how thew CD of My Life concept works.

This one is another that I did not realise belonged in this series until I heard it recently and found that I was thinking of another holiday from long ago.

It was one of several Electric Light Orchestra tracks emerging from a portable CD player in the /National Trust shop at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk, prompting me to ask the shop assistant whether I was listening to the “Out of the Blue” album or a “best of” compilation – it was the former!

Anyway, hearing it playing over the small speaker behind the counter got me thinking about our second holiday together.

This was June/July of 1979 and to put it into historical context for you – the awful Margaret Thatcher had only been in power for about two months and had yet to sell off nearly all of the country’s social housing stock along with all of the national utilities in an orgy of rampant, profiteering in the name of “private share ownership” (we all thought that we already owned the gas, electricity and telephone services but were, apparently, mistaken). We certainly don’t now!

Faith was still driving her black Mini with the gold stripe down the side but I did not have to have the luggage packed in around me as last year because we did not have camping paraphernalia this time.

I had, earlier in the year, sold my house and moved back in with my parents so even with saving up for our wedding the following year we had a little more disposable income than in 1978 and had booked a bed-sit in Boscombe – a seaside town that merges with the eastern side of Bournemouth on the south coast of England.

It is seldom spoken of separately but has its own pier and I found it rather more relaxing than its bigger neighbour.

I do not think that, from a temporal distance of 47 years, I would be able to locate the site of that holiday accommodation – even with the assistance of Google Maps but I do recall a few things about it.

It was not a massive property – a single large room serving as lounge, bedroom and a corner walled off to form the en-suite bathroom – but it was certainly adequate when you intended to be eating meals out and exploring the area every day. I also recall that it was quite a warm room and in the days before air conditioning the solution to overheating was quite simple – open the window!

It was situated a few residential streets back from the main road leading down to the seafront and the pier and near to a number of small, square public spaces some of which contained tennis courts. These have probably all been built on now!

I cannot recall whether we had that place for one week or two – although Faith thinks that it was the latter for the simple reason that 1978, 1979 and our honeymoon in 1980 were the only years we had more than one week off at a time while I worked at Barclays Bank Trust Company! The rigid production targets and lack of any holiday cover eventually made two weeks nigh on impossible to do! Although, strangely, the Managers always seemed to be able to do it – just saying!

Anyway, back to the holiday.

I do not recall the journey down to the south coast, although as the M25 London Orbital Creepway was not yet in existence, I would guess that we went from Chelmsford through the centre of London and down the A3 to Dorset. There must have been stops on the way down, but as hard as I try to think… nothing!

As, once again, Faith was the sole driver I am sure that we had at least one day of little or no driving (to give her a well-deserved rest) between trips further afield.

These visits included Hengistbury Head to the east and various small coastal places to the west – Lulworth Cove, Kimmeridge Bay, Windspit and Ringstead Bay.

In the course of going to or from those places we also stopped at other sites of interest such as Corfe Castle (which has previously been mentioned here: https://littlealfie.wordpress.com/2018/12/17 and Bovington Tank Museum.

If my sister should happen to read this, I know that mentioning the latter establishment will provoke a massive groan! In 1969 we visited the Tank Museum during a family holiday and she declared it to be the most boring day of her life EVER!

Dad and I thought it was fantastic – I suppose there’s no accounting for how a 13-year-old girl’s mind works!

It was not any of those places though that gave me the moment connecting the song to the holiday – that happened when we went to visit another place that I remembered from 1969 and which I thought Faith would also appreciate.

This was “Blue Pool” a flooded China Clay pit set in a heavily wooded area like something you might find in the Canadian wilderness! Because of the China clay lining of the pit the water is very clear and, when struck by the sun, glows as if lit from within. It’s quite beautiful!

The approach road that we took was, until we actually entered the site and headed for the carpark, quite long and straight and when this song came on the radio it was quite easy for me to imagine that we were driving along one of those American roads that simply recedes indefinitely into the distance. The scenery and the music matched perfectly!

It may just be that for that to make any kind of sense you simply had to be there!

Alfie

 

Bits and Pieces

I am struggling with the completion of a couple of slightly serious articles and, as I write this, there are only seven days left in June for me to avoid the dreaded “blank”.

In addition to the two stuck articles, however, I do have a few small snippets which could not be stretched to complete 1000 word pieces in their own right – so I’m going to string them together in a bit of a mish-mash.

FOOTBALL

If you either remember this site 16 years ago (very unlikely) or want to look in the “archive” link on this page for June 2010 you will find a series of eleven “short short” pieces in which I picked up various inanities or double entendres uttered by the various commentators reporting on the Football World Cup which took place in South Africa that year.

If you remember nothing else about this you may recall those bloody awful Vuvuzelas – long plastic, single-note trumpets which, when blown en-masse rendered even the footballing punditry temporarily inaudible!

I did a much shorter series on the same event in Brazil four years later – only three articles in fact – and managed none at all in 2018 (Russia) or 2022 (Qatar).

And now, of course, it is all happening again, hosted jointly by Canada, Mexico and the USA.

The match venues cover 4 distinct time zones and there are thirteen different kick-off times to try to accommodate the fans of the participating nations. It is fair to say that I am only watching matches that start before midnight UK time!

The game that I watched on Saturday night (20^th June 2026) was between Cote d’Ivoire – which I still call The Ivory Coast – and Germany. I was surprised to find that the “experts” did not regard this as a certain German victory but when the African nation scored first I could understand it.

Germany did go on to equalise and, at the last minute, to win, but it was close. Unlike the German opening match when they hammered their opponents 7-1. Mind you, those opponents were that mighty footballing powerhouse – Curacao!

Yes, the tiny Caribbean island off the coast of Venezuela which makes up a group of current and former Dutch possessions known as “the ABC islands”. Its companions, Aruba and Bonaire were both visited by Faith and I during our cruise in February 2023 and I may have mentioned them on here too.

I was listening to the names of players being mentioned by the commentators and struggled to catch some of them without referring to the to the team lineups on the Internet.

For example, it turns out that the Cote d’Ivoire player whose name I was hearing a lot was NOT called “Yandy O’Mandy but is, in fact, “Yan Diomande”.

I think MY version is better!

He is, apparently an eighteen year old rising star and had a hand in his team’s goal.

On the other side the name mentioned most was “Nat Brown”. I didn’t think this sounded very German but excused it by assuming it was spelled “Braun”. No, Nathaniel Brown he is!

There was really only one German player with what I call a “proper” German name and he was Nico Schlotterbeck (who was injured and substituted at half-time). I am reliably informed by Google that Schlotterbeck means either “a sloppy baker” or “a muddy stream” and I don’t think I’d like to be called either of those.

I’d much rather be called after the player from earlier this century, “Bastain Schweinsteiger” whose surname translates as “Pig overseer” that’s a PROPER German name!

DOGGIES

As I have said before I often find random scribbled sentences in one or other of my little notebooks and think “What the hell was THAT about?”

The particularly odd one that I’ve found this time relates to a couple of dogs that I met with their master… somewhere!

I think it must have been a cafe or a pub and they had all been out for a long walk over fields and both animals were very muddy and very thirsty. After drinking some water supplied by the establishment concerned they showed some interest in me so I made a bit of a fuss of them.

I asked the man their names and when he told me I thought they would make rather nice character names for a series of children’s books. Which is why I wrote down the proposed title of that series, thus: “Adventures with Darcy Doughnut and Poppy”. Maybe I will write those stories some day – I just wish I could remember where the hell I was at the time!

SHOPS and CARS

Another note (that, fortunately, I do not have to remember too many associated facts for) simply says “Why are so many cars named after shopping chains found in the UK?”

I know exactly where this one started – it was a feeble attempt of mine to demean the Company cars driven (often badly) by the management types that I despised when I had to work for a living. It was an utterly meaningless, pointless, but strangely satisfying gesture to refer to a prized, over-powered company motor by the name of the low-priced supermarket chain ALDI instead of the prestigious German car company AUDI!

I have been using that one for some years but recently decided to honour the other (frequently) badly driven German brand BMW by equating it with B&M, an even cheaper chain of shops.

I then started to listen out for similar shop-related brands of car, but so far, have only come up with the self-assembly South Korean vehicle – the iKIA! If you can think of any others please let me know.

Alfie

PS. By working through places Google maps showed me visiting since I resumed driving this year, I nailed down where I met Poppy and Darcy. It was the hospitality area of the local Ford dealership – when I took the car in for a service! Phew!

Easy! One thosand words exactly!

 

Phew! That was a close one!

The month of May 2026 has been my first full month of unconstrained mobility this year and having spent the first four months “honking on” (that’s a favourite Douglas Adams expression) about my poor old ankle I suddenly realised that I have forgotten what else to write about!

A lot of last year was taken up doing pieces about the preparations needed for “Project Little Alfred” – my proposed cycle ride from Peterborough to the caravan at Cromer to raise funds for charity on behalf of my littlest grandchild Alfred.

Originally these funds were to assist in Fred’s further treatment for the terrible childhood cancer, Neuroblastoma, but as the dear little chap passed away in August 2025 it is now intended that funds raised in this way will go to the organisations that tried so very hard to help him.

As it may be a while before my injury will tolerate pedalling for 93 miles (150 Km) in a single day I have amended the plan as follows:

I now propose a 3-step trip, with overnight stops between each one, visiting all three of the East Anglian Children’s Hospice (EACH) sites. EACH was particularly kind to Alfred in his last days and does not receive much government funding.

This will entail – Peterborough to Milton near Cambridge (39 miles, 63 km); Cambridge to Ipswich (63 miles, 101 km) and Ipswich to Framingham Earl near Norwich (51 miles, 82 km). There is obviously a lot more training and planning needed, but that is the new idea.

So, anyway, it suddenly occurred to me that we were in the last few days of May and I haven’t posted anything yet!

In the last month I have started quite a few articles and for quite a few good reasons have discarded them – so I figured that to avoid one of the dreaded “blanks” for May I would have to do some sort of emergency “holding” article with a modicum of new information – by which I mean “what you are reading now”!

And then, on the evening of 30^th May when I was firing up the computer to type this up, I discovered an almost complete Normal for Norfolk article on the rather boring subject of caravan external paintwork so instead of doing this one I typed the final six paragraphs, added two footnotes and a photograph and published that instead!

So, from having zero posts with 27 hours of the month left I have now scored two with 7 hours to go – this does, I hope, explain the title of this piece.

I now want to get this blog back to not being quite so much about me (a little bit about me is fine, obviously) and to try to make it a bit more varied and interesting.

To that end I do have reminders to do entertaining scientific pieces on Exoplanets and something called The Heliopause, so I will try to get to one of those next.

If you have anything you’d like me to explain in my inimitable style please let me know in the comments section below.

Alfie

 

Normal for Norfolk 17 – Here we go again!

In my weekly Zoom quiz (which I have taken part in most Mondays since April 2020) a few weeks ago, one of the pieces of music to be identified was “Fire Brigade” by The Move – a hit in 1968.

As everyone as old as me will know, the opening lines of that almost forgotten former favourite go as follows:

“Cast your mind back 10 years, to the girl who’s next to me at school.

 If I put my hand upon her leg, she’d hit me with a rule”!

And the reason I was thinking about the lyrics of that song is that it was my way of reminding myself to look up when I last did the job that I am currently taking a rest from.

Before I go into that though I would just like to point out that to find the last time that it would have been possible for me to sit next to a girl in school, I would have to cast my mind back not TEN years as in the song, but SIXTY-TWO*! That’s a really horrid thought and I don’t think I’ll dwell on it!

I am sure that you know me well enough to realise that the actual topic of this article is going to be nothing whatsoever to do with either a fire brigade, 1968 or Mr Roy Wood and his popular band, The Move.

You will, however, have noticed that the title puts it in the “Normal for Norfolk” series which suggests, quite correctly, that it will be something to do with our caravan on the edge of Cromer.

I looked through all of the previous articles for the one that I knew that I had written on the same topic as this one – but could not find it anywhere. So I had to open up my “Blogstats” spreadsheet and search through the entries for the last four years to find something with a title that would ring a bell.

And find it I did – it was titled “All hands on deck” and I had omitted to give it a “Normal for Norfolk” label. I have now corrected that, which meant renaming all of the subsequent posts in the series so that this is now NfN 17 instead of NfN 16.

Once I had edited the actual blog post entries and the source documents AND the spreadsheet, I had almost forgotten what it was that I was going to write about!

Here is the link to the first piece https://littlealfie.wordpress.com/2023/06/20/ and if you go and read that you will find that it is about painting (or, more correctly, oiling) the decking around the caravan. Nearly three years ago.

At least, this time around, Faith and I were aware of the magnitude of the job and how not to do it. We have enlisted the assistance of daughter Hannah, her husband, Dave, and their 9 and almost-7-year-old boys. It was to be hoped that the last two might be coerced into contributing in some way rather than tying up one of the adults on supervisory duties.

They came here from Peterborough after work and school on Friday while Faith and I set out with a stop on the way at our local B&Q d-i-y store to purchase some paint brushes and a couple of 5 litre cans of decking oil.

By the time we reached Cromer and had unloaded our purchases, “decorating accessories” and cold/wet weather gear as well as all of our usual stuff, it was too late to    do anything other than sweep the decking clear of a week’s accumulated tree detritus ready for an early start on Friday.

One thing that we didn’t have to do this time was to give the deck a damn good cleaning to get built up gunge out of the grooves – we bought our pressure washer up here a couple of weeks ago and blasted it clean. So, it was straight into giving it another sweep and getting to the “painting”!

Learning from three years ago we both realised that oiling the deck is, because of the grooves in each plank, best done with brushes. We tried a sponge pad on a long handle last time but that put either too much or not enough oil into the grooves and we seemed to get through the product at a remarkably fast rate – and this stuff is NOT cheap!

Remembering that we did the necessary second coat that time on our hands and knees with ordinary paint brushes, I didn’t think that my current mobility issues would make that a very comfortable experience and brought a couple of poles intended for reaching the more inaccessible parts of the stairs and landing at home. With a thick “block” brush (bristle area about 5 inches by 1 inch) screwed onto the end, one of these poles proved ideal and I was able to cover large areas at quite a speed. Being more careful than me, Faith opted to do the bits adjacent to the walls of the caravan – those splashes are a bugger to get off!

The oil we are using takes about 4 hours to dry so I had to leave a fairly big area in the centre to keep the “deck furniture” in while the other bits dried off for us to move it all to on Saturday morning. I was getting a little concerned because in addition to that big patch of deck we also wanted to do the shed and the square lower deck and were already into the second 5 litre tin of oil.

We started bright and early on Saturday with our team of helpers – Hannah and Dave first took an electric sander each and got as much as possible of the old surface from the wooden rail surrounding the decking; Faith and our grandsons took care of oiling the lower-level deck, while I moved the furniture around on the main deck and quickly nabbed sufficient of the dwindling supply to finish the remaining bare patch.

There must have been much more than I thought left in the second tin because I was rather surprised to find that that when Faith, her helpers and I were done there was still plenty left for the shed to be given a coat as well.

That took care of the parts that we walk on, which only left the surrounding railings and the boards which conceal the underside of the caravan, making it all look tidier, and Faith and I made a start on applying a nice, brown exterior paint (actually called “Seasoned Oak”) to those bits after the family had gone home on the Sunday.

Unfortunately, the weather turned on us from Monday and it was too wet to paint so we went home with that bit barely started.

We were back the following week with the same support team (who were able to stay an extra two days because of school half-term holidays and a  Bank Holiday) but this time the weather was TOO HOT for painting so day trips and a visit to Overstrand beach with the boys happened instead. **

Despite having to make two additional trips into Sheringham due to my inability to correctly estimate the amount of paint needed, the job did get finished before we came back home again last Thursday (28 May 2026)! Note to self – when doing this again in a few years’ time, it takes 10 Litres of paint to do the rails etc. – the same as the amount of deck oil needed!

Hopefully all this means that when summer gets here this year there will not be any d-i-y jobs to keep me from the sunbed!

Alfie

* As more astute readers may remember, I finally left school in July 1969 which, perhaps surprisingly, is NOT yet as long as sixty-two years ago. The final five years of my academic life were, however, spent at an all-boys establishment so my co-educational experience ended at Britannia Road Primary School, Ipswich in mid-July 1964. I just thought I should clarify that! 

** The beach trip took place on Bank Holiday Monday – the hottest day of the year so far! Getting my reconstructed ankle down to the beach was no problem but the trip back up that awful slope (see below) nearly killed me and the Titanium plates almost burst into flame!

 

A Christmas Break – Part 5 – Finale

I ended the last episode (19^th February 2026) of this mini-saga, about my broken right ankle, pondering on the likelihood of my next appointment at the Peterborough City Hospital Fracture Clinic getting cancelled and rearranged – as all of my previous ones had been.

Before I address that, however, I should first of all tell you how I got on with the Orthopaedic Boot issued to me on 18^th February.

Getting it on and off at least once each day proved to be a bit of a chore. To do the former you first have to fully open the overlapping flaps that cover the toes and the shin, and then reverse the foot into the boot. After that, close these flaps again by the Velcro strips lining them and the easy part is done!

It is then necessary to fix and tighten no less than five long, 10cm wide Velcro straps. They are the problem – they tend to stick themselves quite firmly to the other straps, other parts of the boot, the carpet and any other pieces of clothing or soft furnishing. Each has to be forcibly ripped free before being tightened and stuck into place. This can take a while and can cause my grandchildren (if any are present) to question the meaning of grandad’s “interesting” new words!

Once on, however, the boot is extremely comfortable (unless I did up any of those straps a little too tight) although I do have to try to remember to wear my thickest soled left shoe so as not to be too lopsided!

This is particularly important when it comes to shifting around outside on my hospital-issue crutches where the slightest change in level or gradient can send me careening sideways or accelerating uncontrollably downhill! This lack of control frequently prompts me to tell Faith that, far from getting better, I am “going downhill fast”!

The crutches are only needed for outside excursions and are not very comfortable to use because even when set at maximum length they are three or four inches too short for someone of my considerable height – meaning that I have to stoop rather a lot.

Actually, I used the present tense in that last paragraph but that may not have been completely accurate because my next hospital appointment (which didn’t get cancelled or rearranged in any way just for a change) on 25^th March bore unexpected fruit.

This appointment was with the Physiotherapy Department at Peterborough City Hospital – about half a minute’s walk down a couple of corridors from the Fracture Clinic – where I was shown how to start getting my right-side walking mechanism working again.

While the young man was trying to loosen my Achilles tendon and right calf muscle (which both hurt much more than the broken bones) I spoke to him about what I saw as potential back and arm problems arising from the crutches. He took a look at the labels on them and disappeared quickly to the departmental store cupboard.

He returned with another set marked as “extra-long” which actually had to be shortened to fit me! I felt a lot happier about that and the rest of the hour of exercises went a lot better knowing that other parts of me would not be hurting unnecessarily!

Shortly after that visit though, my 2^nd April Fracture Clinic appointment was cancelled – by text message and once again, no reason given – but this time I knew what to do and got on the phone directly to the Clinic rather than the central “appointments department” and booked for the next available appointment. This turned out to be exactly one week later on 9^th April at 10.20 and Faith and I duly attended – a few minutes early so that we could enjoy our customary coffee in the entrance area and still be on time for the appointment.

On checking in I was immediately sent a few rooms away for an X-Ray and then returned to wait for the surgeon to review them – which did not take quite as long as previous visits.

And the verdict was… the break has healed perfectly; the metal plates are doing their job perfectly and the surgeon does not want to see me again for a year; unless something goes wrong of course!

I was, at that time still wearing the support boot and tried to give it back to them. They do not, apparently, reuse such items any more though and I was told to either hang on to it or dispose of it as I see fit.  I will keep it while I get used to unaided walking but once I am sure I no longer need it I’ll probably throw it out, after salvaging those awful Velcro straps which will be very handy for keeping my fishing rods together!

Since that final visit I have been practising walking with just a walking stick for stability and, once we get back from Norfolk next week, I will be resuming training on my electric bicycle which must be thinking I have abandoned it.

There is still a long way to go but, hopefully, nothing worth writing another article about so I will take this opportunity to thank the Accident & Emergency Department at PCH, the nurses, surgeons and operating theatre staff as well as all those with whom I have had to interact, including Physiotherapy (which has not quite finished with me yet).

Mostly, though, I must thank my dear wife, Faith, the hardest working (and unpaid) nurse of them all, without whom I don’t think I could have got through all this with my sanity (mostly) intact.

Finally, I know that I do have occasional readers in the USA and to them I would just like to rub in the fact that all of the treatment, subsequent hospital visits and necessary ambulatory equipment supplied has cost me precisely… NOTHING!

I do, like many British people, really feel sometimes that I am missing out on having to make huge claims on highly expensive medical insurance. Not often or for very long though!

Alfie

 

The CD of My Life – “Three Little Birds” – Bob Marley & The Wailers

I am sure that, by now, you will know the concept behind this series – if not you can get the information you need by scrolling down two or three previous postings to 6^th March and reading the first four paragraphs!

I was, actually, getting a little concerned that the well of songs and their associated memories was running dry but then, like Peterborough buses, two came along at once!

As I look at the spreadsheet I prepared recently, I see that until now, the last years to have more than just one post in this series were 2016 with three and 2024 with two. Between these however came 2019 with none at all. So, what I am getting at here is that noticing songs with memory trigger that qualify them for inclusion has become somewhat sporadic of late.

Thinking about this, it is entirely possible that other more important family concerns have distracted me to the point where I am either not listening to the sounds around me, or I am hearing musical stuff but not bothering to make connections. It is, after all, pretty unimportant when compared to the still devastating loss of my brilliant little grandson last summer!

In the course of writing the previous CDoML post and preparing the statistical spreadsheet mentioned therein I did read through many of the thirty previous offerings and noticed that I mentioned in at least one of them that one of the original purposes was writing them down was to provide memories to restore some bits of my personality in the event of “someone formatting my head” (for which read ‘the onset of Alzheimer’s or Dementia’).

So I do feel that it is in my own best interests to keep finding these missed connections – although if the decline hits me suddenly one of my readers may need to tell me where these backup memories may be found.

Anyway, that’s quite enough padding – let us get down to the story behind this offering.

As I said at the start, it was bothering me slightly that new ideas were not suggesting themselves so I figured that it would be in order for me to help the process along by scanning through some of the thousands of photographs on this computer to see if any of them prompted any unexpected songs to pop into my brain.

I only got back to the early part of 2023 and was about to open the largest file for that year when I realised firstly, what the subject of that folder was and secondly, what the song that reminded me of it would be.

It was, as you may have realised, the folder containing the many hundreds of photographs and short videos taken by Faith and I during the Caribbean Cruise that we went on in February 2023 on our mobile phones and a small digital camera. If you wish to refresh your memory this cruise was (of course!) documented in a series of articles starting here: https://littlealfie.wordpress.com/2023/02/26/rule-britannia-introduction/

There are quite a lot of them but the part of the trip that I will mention next is referenced here (so you might want to jump to it next): https://littlealfie.wordpress.com/2023/03/02 .

Our first excursion on the island of Aruba involved, as I said in the article behind the second of those links, a madcap open bus ride out from the port to one of the best beaches.

When I say “open bus” I don’t mean an “open top bus” such as may sometimes be seen conveying sight-seeing tourists around certain UK cities, but a bus (resembling a slightly shortened USA-style school bus) from which the windows have been removed and the seats replaced with padded benches. When they were small my daughters used to refer to the open topped UK version as “double-decker sports buses”!

There were also drilled holes in the former window sills to act as sockets for the storage of as many maracas as the bus could carry passengers – who were all instructed to use these to make a great of noise every time the bus passed any kind of habitation. Which we did at every opportunity!

The locals were obviously well used to the sight and sound of repressed, uptight, middle class Brits from the cruise liners shaking maracas en-masse and screaming along to reggae classics being blasted out by the bus’s excellent sound system.

And the first of these that impacted on my eardrums as well as on those of passing Arubans was the Bob Marley classic that begins with the words “Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, ‘cos every little thing’s gonna be alright!” That is to say, the opening of the song “Three Little Birds”.

I have checked through the mobile phone video of Faith and I for that entire fortnight’s holiday and it is quite correct to say that every time we were on a Caribbean Island bus or boat a) there was music playing, b) the passengers were singing enthusiastically to it and, c)”Three Little Birds” was playing.

There were other wonderful sing-along West Indian examples, of course, and we sang those too, but this is the one that brings it all back to me – which, as I’ve said so many times before, is the whole point of CDoML.

Alfie

 

The First Bank Holiday of Spring!

Well, here we are at Easter!

Specifically, Good Friday (3^rd April 2026 – when I am starting to write this) which is the second Bank Holiday since Boxing Day 2025 – when I broke my right ankle – and the first one since New Year’s Day 2026 when I was newly arrived home from hospital.

It is, you will no doubt realise, now over three months since Boxing Day and I am still encumbered by the orthopaedic boot on my right foot – although that will have, hopefully, disappeared by the time we get to the next Bank Holiday in May!

I was going to entertain you with an article explaining how the date of Easter is calculated and giving my recollection of Easters in my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s, but when I started making notes it occurred to me that I had already done it before.

And, sure enough, I found that I had already covered that here: https://littlealfie.wordpress.com/2019/04/19/ It was a long-winded piece that even included the BBC Easter Sunday Television schedule for 1959 (the first year we had a TV) but please feel free to pop off and read it if you really must.

Then I thought I would do something about the origins of Bank (as opposed to religious) Holidays but… guess what? I have covered THAT topic as well!

Mind you, it was in the very early days of this blog (26^th May 2009 – about 3 months after I started) so it is possible that newer readers have not had the superhuman patience or endurance to go back through the files that far. It is also possible that those of you who were with me from those times are now so old and senile that you’ve forgotten!

So, for the benefit of both those groups I have decided to “cheat” and copy/paste the original below.

Before I do, however, I would just like to say that when I wrote the stuff you are about to read, I was still in full-time employment and had no reason to express my later views on the subject.

A year later and through to my retirement in May 2016 I hated Bank Holidays for the simple reason that I was a daily paid I.T. contractor and every time one occurred all the full-time staff got paid for it and I didn’t!

And then, after my retirement I would ask the question while stuck in Bank Holiday traffic, “Don’t these slackers EVER do any work?”

Anyway, this is how they all began. Enjoy.

Say “Thank you”! (originally published 26^th May 2009)

In February 1974, when I left the little community of H.M. Inspector of Taxes, Ipswich 2^nd District, I lost three things.

 The first was the need, when asked what I did for a living, to shuffle an imaginary shoulder holster under my jacket and say in a secretive manner, “I work for the Government and I can’t talk about it”!

The second was my place among a group of people united in being heartily disliked by the general public. Mind you we didn’t make the Income Tax laws any more than Traffic Wardens decide where the “No Parking” zones are to be.

There were, I believe, two types of people in the Tax Office – alcohol and tobacco fuelled nutters and those with a grudge against humanity! The latter could be relied upon to enforce the rules with total impartiality and every sign of enjoyment at so doing, while the former just showed every sign of enjoyment but didn’t really give a stuff about the job!

You will note that I don’t say which of those groups I belonged to – those of you who know me personally won’t need telling while the rest of you can draw your own conclusions from what you’ve gleaned about me in these writings.

The third thing I lost was what might be called “amateur status”!

Basically, in the Tax Office when people came in and asked questions about their taxes, we gave them information FREE OF CHARGE!  And it will not surprise you to discover that they didn’t believe us, even though it was (usually) entirely correct!

What I GAINED when I left them was a new job with a BANK where I told my customers and casual callers exactly the same things I would have said previously but now they not only believed me but they PAID for the advice! I think that, in many cases, they believed me BECAUSE they paid for it!

I may have lost the imaginary shoulder holster but NOW I was entitled to have “Bank Official” (not Bank Clerk or Bank Cashier or any other slightly menial sounding title) on my passport. I could now imagine myself as being anything up to and including the head of the International Monetary Fund!

Now as a “Bank Official” working in a specialist area (Personal Taxation) I missed out on certain areas of banking history that someone in a “mainstream” Banking Branch probably picked up on their induction course and as a result of this I did something that didn’t bother me in the slightest at the time but which makes me think “what a prat!” when I look back at it.

I had a t-shirt printed.

Nothing wrong with that you’re saying – in the 1970s it was a new and very popular thing to do.  Comedy t-shirts were all the rage and if they didn’t say what you were thinking you could have one done for you.

Mine said “Give Bank Holidays back to the Banks!” and my colleagues in the office and acquaintances at other Taxation branches (who I met socially at Five-a-side football and ten-pin bowling tournaments) thought it was very amusing.

The problem was that none of them had been given “elementary Banking history” either!

Because, Bank Holidays are, in fact, NOTHING AT ALL to do with Bank staff having a day off!

Much the opposite in fact.

Traditionally the Banks closed on certain days of the year (usually quarterly) to balance the accounts and to calculate and add interest to savings and loans.

From the Bank Staff side, it must have been a nightmare – everything in handwritten ledgers and all to be sorted out in one twenty-four-hour period! They can only have been saved from physical and mental breakdown by the fact that only businesses and the reasonably wealthy HAD bank accounts.

From the Public side this apparently meant that no business could take place on those days although as nearly everything was done in cash until quite recently, I don’t quite see why everything ground to a halt! Had they never heard of stuffing it under the mattress overnight?

I presume (and perhaps someone will be good enough to enlighten me if I’m wrong or inaccurate here) that if you had a job that involved daily banking as an essential factor or complicated financial transfers through the banking system you got a day off. Otherwise, you worked as normal.

Whatever the system may have been for Bank Holidays THEN it is not what we have NOW. And the reason for that is…… Saint Lubbock! Never heard of him? Nor had I until I started looking this up.

It is the name that the British General Public gave to Sir John Lubbock, 1^st Baron Avebury, a man whose interests are listed in Wikipedia as “Finance, Biology, Archaeology, and Politics”. He was a Director of Coutts Bank (the one the Queen uses) as well as a Member of Parliament and a distinguished amateur biologist specialising in Ants, Bees and Wasps (so I could certainly have had meaningful conversations with HIM – see the article “Stung” below).

As far as we are concerned his greatest achievement was pushing through Parliament the Bank Holidays Act of 1871. This established as Public Holidays (in addition to Good Friday and Christmas Day which were already established religious public holidays) Easter Monday, Whit Monday, the first Monday in August and Boxing Day.

Everyone (except presumably the Bankers who, we must hope, were given days off in lieu until computers made their attendance unnecessary) got those four days as paid holiday.

Certain changes were made one hundred years later to include May Day and New Years Day and to shift Whit Monday and the August Bank holiday (in England anyway) to the last Mondays of May and August respectively.

So, there we are – I’ve learned a lot by looking briefly into this subject and I hope you have too!

And as we have just returned to work after one of those Bank Holidays let us all utter a brief “Thank you” to the 1^st Baron Avebury, the man who established the principle that resulted in all of those statutory days off we now enjoy.

As a tribute I quote a verse published about him in “Punch” in 1882:

How doth the Banking Busy Bee

Improve his shining hours?

By studying on Bank Holidays

Strange insects and Wild Flowers!

Alfie

 

That’s the first time I’ve done THAT!

To qualify that title a bit I should perhaps have added “in 2026 to date”!

•  Visited the caravan.

Regular readers will know that A) there is a two month “close season” each year when Forest Park is shut to all visitors, extending from 15^th January to 15^th March, and B) that I like to be present for the Cromer Pier, New Year’s Day firework display. The fireworks are usually followed by the “caravan closing down” routine – emptying, defrosting and switching off the fridge and freezer, packing all the bedding that needs washing or replacing and giving the whole place a good cleaning.

It has been known, however, for us to return home immediately after 1^st January and to squeeze in yet another visit to do all of that “housework” before the 15^th January lockout. I should also mention that the really important cold weather precautions (draining down the hot and cold water systems to prevent problems with frozen pipes) are done by an outside company who also reinstate those systems just prior to 15^th March.

Anyway, as you will, no doubt, realise if you have been following my tales this year, I was but newly returned from Peterborough City Hospital on 1^st January after having had titanium plates put into my broken ankle and was barely able to hop from the bed in the lounge to the downstairs loo let alone getting to the car and enduring a 95 mile drive to Cromer!

The “shut down” visit was carried out by Faith and our elder daughter Hannah who did it all and came back the same day. That was 7^th January – the only day this winter that the Forest Park site received a coating of snow resulting in a rather skiddy last mile or so!

While I have been getting more and more mobile throughout January and February it has only been since acquiring the padded, Velcro-strapped boot that walking about out of the house and going to the shops with the aid of my aluminium crutches has been possible. I suspect that neither the boot nor the crutches are absolutely essential for my physical well-being but I intend to take no chances and will wait for my surgeon’s clearance at my next appointment (9^th April) before attempting unaided hikes or long bicycle rides! There is a physiotherapy session at the hospital sometime next week which may alter that.

As we have just passed the day of the “Grand re-opening” (15^th March) we wanted to get back to Cromer as soon as possible; other appointments at home meant that Tuesday 17^th was the earliest we could manage and the weather for the first couple of days has been gorgeous. I have the boot and the crutches with me but am only bothering with them when we go out anywhere.

I am delighted to say that most of the pencil version of this part of the article has been written by me while basking on a sunbed carefully positioned in the sunny part of the decking!

• Eating a fried “Full English” Breakfast.

In the early days of my enforced immobility (30^th December 2025 to about mid-February 2026) before I could summon up the strength and the confidence to hop, with the aid of a walking frame, all the way from the lounge to the kitchen, my lovely and attentive wife – Nurse Faith – would serve me my breakfast in bed every morning on a tray.

Because I was spending the vast majority of each day sitting up in bed I was not, it must be said, burning very many calories, and I don’t think I could have managed a fried breakfast if I had been offered one – which I wasn’t!

Instead, I would have fruit – Mango pieces or similar and half a Banana – along with either a bowl of cereal or, as the weather turned colder in January and early February, a nice hot plate of porridge!

When my recovery did advance sufficiently for me to make it to the kitchen (which also made it possible for me to sit on a high kitchen chair to do washing up – ah well!) the breakfast menu did not change in any noticeable way – fruit followed by cereal, porridge or, sometimes, toast for variety.

At the caravan on Wednesday 18^th March, however, the question “What should we do for breakfast?” was asked and it was decided that we would go to the Foresters Club on site and see if their breakfast menu had changed noticeably since last year.

It had not, and having previously tried their full-sized “Full English” (which left us unable to move from the table for quite a while) we learned our lesson and went for the “Small Full English” which only has one of each of the component items on the plate instead of two. This was still larger than many fry-ups that I have experienced elsewhere and I am sure we will be returning for more during the coming months.

Thinking about it, that fried breakfast was not only the first one I have had this year, but was almost certainly the first since my stay in a Brighton Hotel for my annual fishing match in mid-November 2025. Those were buffet-style, however, and it is impossible not to overeat at them!

I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that having done it once this year, I have now done it again.

On the way home on Sunday, we stopped off at the Jarrolds food hall/ restaurant formerly known as “Back to the Garden” where they were serving all-day breakfasts and I went for the Full English again – it was delicious and about the size of the “small” one served at Forest Park.

Incidentally, if any reader is struggling to grasp what I mean by the term “Full English” I did an article about them in 2013 – which you can find here: https://littlealfie.wordpress.com/2013/02/24

• Driving the car.

I am told that if you have a car with an automatic gearbox (i.e. one not requiring the operation of a clutch pedal) your driving will not be impaired provided you break your LEFT ankle. I have never driven an automatic but understand that the throttle and brake can both easily be operated by the right foot!

You will have gathered from the previous sentence that we do NOT have an automatic car and I did, of course, break my RIGHT ankle – so that piece of information is utterly useless to me.

Ever since I had the plaster, and latterly, resin casts on the lower half of my leg I have tried hard not only to wiggle my toes at regular intervals but also to make “up and down” movements similar to those your foot makes on the accelerator and brake pedals. This is so that I am not totally out of practice when the Surgeon and/or the Physiotherapists tell me that I may resume all aspects of normal life.

Having not driven a car since just before Christmas I was not eager to just suddenly get released onto the roads with no gradual acclimatisation but this week a solution presented itself.

I have, as mentioned above, been gradually extending what I do without the benefit of the orthopaedic boot and the crutches that have taken the place of the walking frame and while at the caravan (which is, of course, a single storey property) have spent a lot of time with a pair of well-padded trainers on.

It occurred to Faith that, as it would not involve me putting very much weight on my “bad” ankle, the closed network of small roads serving the multitude of Forest Park caravans would be an excellent place for me to start getting back into “proper” driving.

There was the additional advantage of the accepted 10 miles per hour speed limit on the site which meant that I could only barely get into second gear – saving wear and tear on my “clutch foot”. Incidentally I notice that site management have removed the ubiquitous “10 is plenty” speed limit signs from around the site. Too many drivers were commenting that it didn’t rhyme and were talking about doing “Twenty” instead!

Anyway, I think you can see that normal life is being restored and I am sure that I have many other “firsts” to achieve this year – walking over loose shingle with a box full of heavy fishing tackle springs to mind, but I think that may still be a month or two away, yet. We’ll see!

Alfie

 

The CD of my Life – “Titanium” – David Guetta feat. Sia

In approximately 6 weeks’ time it will be an astonishing 15 years since I started the “CD of My Life…” series! This is particularly amazing as, to me, it only seems like about 5 years since I started the whole “Little Alfie” blog thing in February 2009!

While the idea of this series had been on my mind for many years before there was an Internet for me to write it on, I cannot believe that it still took me over two years following Little Alfie’s birth to actually start typing up my many notes into the CDoML project!

In case you are a recent follower of my scribblings I should explain that the idea behind it all is that hearing certain songs will unlock specific “boxes” in my memory taking me back in time to an event or situation in very great detail. It works the other way too, in that being reminded in other ways of that event or situation will trigger an irresistible urge to sing or hum a particular song.

This series is a list of those songs and the memories triggered by them – it is by no means complete and there are, I am sure, loads where I just haven’t hit upon the connection as yet. I do, after all, have over 70 years of thoughts to go through and I was listening to music through most of them.

Before I move onto the latest connection formed, I can say (because I have just typed them all into a spreadsheet) that this is the thirty-first article in the series, and that exactly half of the previous thirty occurred between April 2011 when I began it and the end of 2013. This not only indicates that I had a backlog of previously listed connections to work through but also represents years when I was “on the road” doing IT contract work and needed something to do during evenings in hotel rooms!

I should also mention that I discovered fairly early on that some of my so-called “memory boxes” had more than one key to them and second or even third choices were mentioned in the article but not in the title. I have put all these into the spreadsheet as well and can tell you that the total number of tracks that would be on the eponymous CD (if CDs were still a thing), and including the two in this piece is SIXTY-SIX! This is largely due to the article concerning songs that remind me of my time doing night shifts at the turn of the millennium which listed nineteen separate songs!

If you want to take a look at the songs in this series in isolation there is a “CD of My Life” Category in the list to the right of this piece and if you click on it everything with that heading will be available to you.

I am sure it won’t be too difficult for you, especially for those of you who have been following my medical situation over the last couple of months, to work out the connection with the above song title. In early January when the “immobile” phase of my broken ankle put me at a very low ebb mentally and I was trying to cheer myself up in any way that I could, I decided to play on the metal plates and screws holding the fractured bones together. Guess which metal they are made from!

I found that teeing-up my mp3 player appropriately so that I could answer well-wishers’ questions about the fracture with some throbbing bass and Sia almost bellowing “I am Ti-taaan-iummm” did, indeed, manage to distract me from the claustrophobia and depressed feelings for a while. I’m not sure if it amused anyone else though!

While it had limited success at cheering me up that song has, over the 10 weeks or so that have elapsed since the Titanium plates and screws were fitted, already come to give me the requisite “memory box” association needed to qualify it for inclusion in this series. That is to say, whenever I think of my broken ankle, I will hear this song and whenever I hear the song, I will think of the whole fracture experience!

As I mentioned above with regard to there being “two in this piece”, there is another song that that will bring this whole experience back to me but I couldn’t list it first because it does not remind me exclusively of my “Christmas Break”!

As I explained in the earlier posts of 2026 I was, initially, forbidden from venturing upstairs and had to spend most of the days and all of the nights on the sofa bed in our lounge. This meant that during each evening I was able to watch the television as usual in the company of my lovely wife with the added advantage of not having to struggle upstairs at the end of the day.

And, in order to help to get me over the doldrums, we decided to return to viewing a series that has entertained us and amused us at all levels from gentle smiles to side-splitting laughter at least twice before. I refer to the quirky attempt by US comedian, producer and writer Jason Sudeikis to do a comedy about an American brought in to manage a UK Premier League Football Team.

This is the series “Ted Lasso” – it is on Apple TV which may account for many more people having heard of it than having, in the UK at least, watched it. There are thirty-four episodes available over three series (with another one coming in summer 2026) and there is, in fact, a quite extensive playlist of music featured in the show which you can find on Spotify if you’re interested.

My favourite, though, (and I’ll let you watch it all to find the episode it features in) is the very bouncy “Hello” by French DJ, Martin Solveig featuring vocals by Dragonette. It really is an earworm and makes me feel good every time I hear it.

I will try putting YouTube links here to both of these tracks but I have noticed that some of the earlier links in the series no longer work so I can’t guarantee anything!

Oh, before I go, one final comment on that list of CDoML tracks – the two listed here turn out to be the most recent that I have written about, but even so, “Titanium” is from 2011 and “Hello” is a year older than that!  I have to ask why it takes up to 15 years for me to notice stuff!

Alfie

 

A Christmas Break – Part 4 – Enduring

At the end of Part 3 of this series about my right ankle – which I broke by falling downstairs on 26^th December 2025 – I said that I would report again after my return visit to the Fracture Clinic on 12^th February, and there is a damned good reason why that didn’t happen!

On the very day that I posted ACB Part 3 (28^th January – 12 days after the first Fracture Clinic visit and 15 days before the second) I received a text message from the hospital telling me, with no explanation whatsoever that my appointment had been cancelled!

And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, they added a note to the effect that a new appointment would be arranged “in due course” – a phrase that can mean days, weeks, months or longer!

That was about the worst thing that they could have done for my state of mind. I never got to the black state caused by Codeine Phosphate which I mentioned in Part 3, but it was still pretty devastating having to contemplate more than three additional weeks of restricted movements and peeing into a bottle because it takes too long to hop to the toilet in the middle of the night!

After all, “in due course” is not likely to mean sooner than planned, now, is it?

So, it is fair to say, I was more than a bit miffed about it but still felt that I had to give them a few days to come back to me – perhaps with some sort of apology and, certainly, with a revised date not too far in the future.

I waited a whole week then looked up the number of the hospital department that arranges appointments – and called it. They weren’t a lot of help, to be fair, and simply told me to be patient. I refrained from making a joke about already being a “patient” which should indicate just how pissed off I was!

They did, however, apologise for the inconvenience and told me that the surgeon in my case had, unexpectedly, been scheduled for surgery on Thursday 12^th February.

I “patiently” waited a few more days and, this time, called a number that I found on some paperwork from the previous hospital visit which appeared to refer directly to the Fracture Clinic. It did indeed, and I found myself speaking to one of the nurses there. She seemed quite shocked to learn that nothing had yet been arranged to enable the removal of my cast and accessed the appointment records to ensure that they hadn’t simply forgotten to notify me.

Fortunately for all concerned, that hadn’t happened but she did find a space in the diary for 11.20am on 20^th February which I accepted at once, even though I could think of better ways to spend my 73^rd birthday!

Having an appointment again cheered me up and I began to get more adventurous – especially as we got to the original 12^th February date when I had expected to be cast-free – putting a little bit more weight on the bad foot and stepping out of the front door with more confidence so that Faith and I could go out for car rides without having to get daughter Hannah over to help.

So, we hopped and plodded on through the week leading up to the 20^th and my excitement at getting rid of what was feeling increasingly like a shoe that had been laced up too tight was building up. And then… my phone rang at 10.50 on the morning of Wednesday 18^th February with two days to go, and it was the Fracture Clinic calling to cancel my appointment again!

I certainly said “Oh no, not again!” but before I could go into a full rant about it, the nurse told me that there was a slot available that very afternoon at 4.30 – if I wanted it”!

If you think that I turned them down because of short notice, then you don’t know me very well and I immediately started making arrangements. Apparently “in due course” CAN mean earlier than planned!

Needless to say, Faith and I were sitting in the Atrium at Peterborough City Hospital having a cup of coffee at just after 4 pm on Wednesday afternoon (yesterday, as I type this) and by just after 4.30 I was having the resin-coated bandages that formed my cast cut away. I was then taken for another X-Ray and back to the Fracture Clinic reception area while the surgeon pondered on the pictures and checked on the healing process.

It will, apparently, still be many weeks before I will be able to walk completely without assistance but in place of the cast, I now have a readily removable, shock absorbing boot fastened by several very strong Velcro straps. This boot also has a very thick, spongy sole which means I can go around the house without hopping and, more importantly, get out of the house with no further hinderance from the high door step.

Before we left the consulting room Faith asked if she could take photographs with her mobile phone of my latest X-Rays – these are they:

I put them onto my Facebook page to elicit some sympathy – no chance of that!

One of my friends said it confirmed his suspicion that I had a screw loose; another said he turned the picture sideways and was reminded of the Orwell Bridge while a third suggested I contact the surgeon to tell him I have found his missing keys! I suppose I expected nothing less.

Since typing most of the above on Thursday 19^th Feb. I have received a message advising that my next appointment is on 2^nd April  – I wonder how many times that will get changed – and all I need now is the details of the promised course of physiotherapy.

There may be one more article in this series but don’t hold your breath waiting for it.

Alfie

 

…we were half a million strong!

From the words of the title above, which are, as you may or may not remember, a partial line of song lyric, I know that my dear wife will suspect that this piece is going to be about a certain roadside food hall and restaurant that (until it changed hands recently) we used to stop at on our way to our caravan in North Norfolk.

That, I should tell you, was named after another lyric from the same song and if you think I am being unnecessarily and long-windedly mysterious about it, you are quite correct!

The song in question exists in my music collection in several distinct versions – which narrows it down for those of you who haven’t yet worked it out, to the following:

• “The Man Who Sold the World” – David Bowie (who wrote it), Lulu and Nirvana.
• “Handbags and Gladrags” – Chris Farlowe, Rod Stewart, Mike D’arbo (who wrote it) and The Stereophonics.
• “Woodstock” – Joni Mitchell (who wrote it), Matthews Southern Comfort and Crosby Stills Nash & Young.

By no means all of these performances made it to the UK charts – Mike D’arbo and Joni Mitchell let others have the hit with their song; Rod Stewart, Nirvana and CSN&Y were happy with it as either a “B” side or an Album track.

I shall now reveal that the name of the restaurant just outside of Letheringsett in North Norfolk (which is now owned by the Norwich Department store, Jarrolds and isn’t as good as it used to be) was “Back to the Garden” and most of you will now have guessed that that it is “Woodstock” to which that title and the words “we were half a million strong” refer.

As an interesting aside, it is actually thought now that the number of people attending the three-day Woodstock music festival in August 1969 was no more than 460,000 – which doesn’t scan as well and, anyway, who’s counting?

You are probably asking yourselves “Where the hell is he going with this?”

And the answer is “Nowhere music related!”

For all of the above was just padding to enable me to report that the significant words in the title are “Half a Million”!  For that, ladies and gentlemen, is the magical number that the word count for this blog reached halfway through that last mega-post about Artificial Intelligence.

And it has only taken me just short of seventeen years! At that rate, I’ll be 90 when I get to a million!

Alfie

 

Artificial Intelligence?

Warning to the unwary: This one could be a biggie! It will have at least 6 pictures in it and an inserted document that I did not write directly but which, for reasons that will be explained still counts as part of my work. I just wanted to warn you in case you are accustomed to just dropping in for a quick read!

***

I think I must be a country boy at heart (I’ve always lived on the outer edge of whatever village, town or city that I have moved to) because up until a few of years ago, whenever the acronym “AI” was used, the words that popped into my head were… “Buckets of Bull Semen”!

That, of course, is because for many years the “I” part of it stood for “Insemination”. And if you don’t get the association between “Artificial Insemination” and “Buckets of Bull Semen” then I despair for you and can only suggest that you google at least one of those terms (preferably the first) and educate yourself a bit!

And that is quite enough of the vaguely distasteful version of that particular pair of vowels – so let us move on to the current popular meaning.

The ever-reliable Wikipedia describes Artificial Intelligence as:

 “The capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem solving, perception and decision making. It is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and use learning and intelligence to take actions that maximise their chances of achieving defined goals.”

There is actually a great deal more to the article than that but the bit I have quoted sums it up nicely and if you want more you are welcome to look it up for yourself.

It is the science that makes devices such as “Alexa”, “Siri” and the like come up with human-sounding responses to your questions and enables machines to give an excellent account of themselves when playing chess or other thought-intensive games.

There are many other practical uses for AI, but as with anything else made available to humanity generally it has become subject to abuse and frivolous (though sometimes funny) usage.

You can ask an AI application to do just about anything for you – write letters, do your homework, university dissertations or even blog posts! It can produce pictures of photographic quality of things that did not exist in the real world and can pretend to be a real person with quite a high degree of indectability!

Let us take a look at a couple of the things mentioned in that last paragraph – which I have tried out for myself.

Firstly, blog posts, because that is of particular interest to me – and why on earth would I want to turn over to a bloody computer something that I take such pleasure in? What would be the point?

In November 2022 I wrote a somewhat jaundiced account of my experience of computerised (so-called) Helplines. It ran to just under 1000 words and you can read it here: https://littlealfie.wordpress.com/2022/11/21/your-call-is-important-to-us/ . In fact, I suggest that you do so right now because this was the piece I decided to use to test AI with and I want you to read how I did it first.

On 5^th November 2025 I asked Google Gemini to “Write a one-thousand-word blog post for \\littlealfie.wordpress.com on the subject of corporate telephone helplines.”

Here is what it produced (in a matter of seconds):

***

The Ring of Truth: Why Corporate Helplines Are the Bane of Modern Existence

There are few experiences in modern life that unite us in shared misery quite like the corporate telephone helpline. The moment the robotic voice chirps, “Your call is important to us,” a collective groan echoes across the nation. For a blog dedicated to the Little Alfie in all of us – the consumer, the individual, the one who just wants to speak to a human – there is no greater monster than the automated, labyrinthine, soul-crushing black hole of the company call centre.

We’ve all been there. A simple billing query, a failed product, a lost password. The problem itself is a minor inconvenience. The solution-seeking process, however, is an odyssey worthy of Homer, a trial by fire that leaves you feeling less like a valued customer and more like a laboratory mouse in a psychological experiment.

The Seven Stages of Helpline Hell

The corporate helpline experience is so standardised in its awfulness that it follows a predictable, seven-stage trajectory of despair:

1. The Automated Gatekeeper (The IVR)

It begins with the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. A voice, usually one that sounds suspiciously cheerful for a system designed to frustrate, presents you with a menu of irrelevant options. “Press 1 for Sales. Press 2 for Billing. Press 3 for Technical Support. Press 4 to hear these options again.”

The irony is palpable. You are calling about a highly specific, niche issue. Yet, the system forces you into broad, ill-fitting categories. You inevitably press the number that seems closest, only to be transferred to another, equally baffling submenu. By the time you find a number that promises a human, you’ve already had to repeat the same information to the machine multiple times. It’s a digital moat designed to deter you.

2. The Eternal Hold and The ‘Soothing’ Symphony

And then, the waiting. This is the real killer. You are plunged into the eternal queue. The hold music, a tinny, cyclical loop of something vaguely elevator-jazz or, worse, an aggressively optimistic pop song from 1997, begins its psychological assault. Interspersed with the music are the repeated assurances: “Your call is very important to us. Please hold for the next available agent.”

But is it, truly? Statistics suggest otherwise. Research indicates that customer satisfaction plummets from 95% to 55% when wait times stretch from five to twenty minutes. And yet, many of us routinely endure waits far longer. Our time, the most finite of all resources, is treated with contempt.

3. The Unnecessary Repetition

The wait is over! A human voice, finally. Relief washes over you, but it’s short-lived. “Could I please have your account number, your full name, your postcode, the first line of your address, and your mother’s maiden name?”

You’ve already entered this information into the IVR. You probably keyed in your account number on your phone’s keypad. Yet, the new agent, often with no visibility of the data you’ve already provided, demands it all again. This, perhaps more than anything else, is a failure of basic system integration and a clear sign that the company values its internal silos more than your sanity.

4. The Grand Transfer

You explain your issue, eloquently and with a growing sense of urgency. The agent listens… and then, the dreaded words: “I understand, sir/ma’am, but that department handles that specific query. I’m going to transfer you.”

The Grand Transfer is a lottery. Will you be hung up on? Will you be sent back to the start of the IVR system? Will you be sent to an even more irrelevant department? Customers get intensely annoyed when they are transferred between departments, forced to repeat their entire case history. The company’s internal organisation becomes your problem.

5. The Scripted Conversation

When you finally connect with an agent in the “correct” department, the conversation feels hollow. Their responses are mechanical, drawn from a script. They use positive language, yes, but it lacks genuine empathy. You are not a human being with a problem; you are a data set, and the agent’s goal is to find the corresponding pre-written solution.

This over-reliance on scripts, often to meet key performance indicators (KPIs) like Average Handle Time (AHT), frequently leads to an agent being unable to think outside the box or apply common sense. You find yourself explaining why the scripted solution doesn’t apply to your unique problem, only to have the script repeated back to you.

6. The “Escalation” Abyss

When the script fails, they offer an escalation. This is often the point where you feel a flicker of hope. An escalation promises a manager, a senior specialist, a magical problem-solver. In reality, it usually means your issue is put in a queue for a call-back that may or may not arrive, with a timeframe so vague it could mean tomorrow or next month. The problem is punted into the abyss.

7. The Hollow Victory

Eventually, by sheer force of will, persistence, and perhaps a small dose of mild corporate blackmail (e.g., threatening to cancel your service), you get your issue resolved. It’s a victory, but a hollow one. You hang up, exhausted, having spent an hour of your life and a significant chunk of your emotional energy on what should have been a five-minute conversation. The experience has successfully eroded any residual goodwill you had for the brand.

A Brighter Future: Demanding a Better Helpline

This state of affairs is not inevitable. It is a deliberate business choice—a choice to prioritise cost-cutting, efficiency metrics, and technological deterrence over genuine customer service. The companies that are getting it right, the rare heroes of the corporate world, understand that a helpline is not a cost centre; it is a critical point of customer retention and brand loyalty.

How do we, as consumers, demand and foster a better helpline experience?

1. Stop Hiding the Human: Companies must make it easy to speak to a human within two or three IVR selections, with a “speak to an agent” option always available.
2. Embrace Integration: If a customer has given information to an IVR, that data must be visible to the live agent. A customer should never have to repeat their account number.
3. Prioritise First Call Resolution (FCR): Industry best practice aims for an FCR rate of 80% or higher. Agents need comprehensive training and the empowerment (and time) to solve a problem completely, even if it slightly increases the AHT. A longer, single call is always better than two short, frustrating calls.
4. Value Empathy Over Scripting: Agents must be trained to listen actively, show genuine empathy, and be given the autonomy to deviate from the script to find a common-sense solution.
5. Offer Better Alternatives: Proactive, intelligent self-service tools, well-staffed live chat, and clear online knowledge bases can deflect simple calls, leaving the phone lines clear for genuinely complex issues.

The corporate helpline, in its current guise, is a relic of a past where customer inconvenience was acceptable. In a hyper-competitive market where one bad experience can send a customer straight to a competitor, the ring of truth is that the phone line is the front line. It’s time companies’ stop treating their helplines like a punishment for calling and start treating them like the opportunity for loyalty that they are.

For now, Little Alfie and his peers will keep their phone batteries charged, their stress-balls squeezed, and their patience strained. But the good news is, we know what good service looks like, and we are starting to demand it. The IVR’s days of supremacy are numbered.

***

Now, I assure you that I have read all of that and have to say that there is nothing in the content that I disagree with!

My first thought was, I have to say, “My God that was BORING!”

It was just like a report that had been commissioned for a Board Meeting of a very dull Company – there was not the slightest hint of humour or wit to be found and I like to think that you, the reader would much prefer to read it the way I wrote it and I hope that you will call me out if something of that type should appear here.

The second thought I had about it was “Wow! That was fast – had it already been asked to do that job and just rehashed it?” You will have noticed that it did personalise the document by referencing “Little Alfie” a couple of times in the text – which may suggest it is an original piece. Or possibly not.

My second experiment concerned the creation of an “original” photograph.

As you may have read on this site, I have a broken ankle at present and my right foot and calf are currently in a cast.  I recalled old monochrome pictures of hospital wards with people having their whole plastered leg in traction – with weights pulling that leg up in the air – and thought it would be fun to use one as a Zoom background for my weekly quiz.

As I could not find any such pictures, I decided to create one with AI. I asked for something like “A 1950s hospital ward with patients having plastered broken legs in traction”. I even added a “please” because we don’t want to upset the machines, now do we? This is what I got:

And at first, I was quite pleased with it but then I began to notice a couple of irregularities!

Let us just concentrate on the man in the bed nearest to us. He seems to be utilising not one but two of the frames to which the ropes are attached and the second one is the whole width of the window away from his bed! If you magnify the picture, the clock also appears to have five hands!

For me though the big give away that this picture is not real is the TOES! All of the patients have one leg on the bed but ALL of their toes in the plaster cast! Thus:

That looks extremely uncomfortable to me!

It could be that I was guilty of the old programming GIGO rule (Garbage In; Garbage Out) indicating that I did not explain what I wanted in sufficient detail but I prefer to think that AI just isn’t quite good enough yet.

What REALLY worries me, however, is that we begin to trust stuff produced in this way when we really shouldn’t.

To illustrate this, someone on the British Mensa Facebook page recently asked several different AI applications (which I won’t name) to “please draw me a representation of a correctly wired UK mains plug showing wire colours and fuse. Thanks.” Another person being polite to the machines, you will notice.

When he saw the results though, his comment was “Good grief” which I think was quite restrained!

Just imagine if someone was writing a book of household hints and stuck one of those in without checking! The first one at least could cause fatalities! I’m not sure in what alternate reality the other three could ever even exist.

So, take my advice; Use AI, play with AI, have fun with AI but do NOT, under any circumstances, trust AI!

Finally, the plug pictures above are reproduced with permission of the guy who requested them and I am guessing that the ones that I asked for are my own property – I am certainly counting that 1000-word document included above as mine for word count purposes!

Alfie

 

The Secret origin of Little Alfie

While I am stuck in the house due to my broken ankle, I am trying to find things to make the days before the cast comes off go a little faster. And I have found that one of those things involves spending some time in the study sitting at the computer and producing more of this sort of stuff for you.  

Now, my current computer chair is not that well-padded, and gets rather uncomfortable after an hour or so, which means that I cannot be typing all of the time and have to look around for other activities. As I am hoping at some point to get a completely new desk and chair when I’m better, I thought it might be a good idea to start to sort out the three drawers in the in the small unit which have been accumulating rubbish for about 20 years now.

And in the large bottom drawer I found a folder – a slightly unusual one in that it consists entirely of transparent pockets for storing sheets of A4 paper. Some of these pockets have “historical” documents” in them – my certificates from school GCE “O” Levels and from the various Microsoft courses that I mentioned on here (in my 27^th January 2025 piece). There were other papers about the specifications of various past and present computers and some pieces of writing by my daughters (in their teenage years) but I was most interested in one particular discovery.

This comprised two sheets of lined A4 paper quite closely written in my own hand each containing a separate distinct piece of writing and dated 14^th and 15^th September 1989 respectively. At that time I was 36 years old (exactly half my present age) and I was commuting daily by my trusty Vespa T5 the few miles from my home in Histon to the Barclays Bank Trust Company Regional Office in Milton Road, Cambridge.

As these lunchtime scribblings suggest I did not bother to go into the city centre every day but stayed in one of the rather comfortable staff room armchairs for my welcome hour away from my desk.

I am going to transcribe both of these interesting forerunners of Little Alfie posts (especially in the early days when I was working from a list of topics that I had been building for years) but I am going to put them in here in reverse order – for reasons that I hope will be obvious. So, here we go:

***

15/9/1989 (Untitled)

A book I read recently on “Writing for Pleasure and Profit” recommends that, as a first step, the budding author should exercise the “writing muscles”, not just the hand, but also the mind, by writing at least 250 words per day on absolutely anything.

This is all very well but when you get down to it what on earth can you find to write about day after day? The book, which I had borrowed from the library, and to which I no longer have access, gave a comprehensive list in alphabetical order which had apparently been compiled by picking all the nouns out of the dictionary. A great idea but I am sitting here in the office staff room with my lunch hour ticking away and not a dictionary to be seen.

Should I try writing a 250 word pen picture of one of my colleagues? Better not – some of them are not very attractive and might accidentally come across my unflattering comments. There are some that are quite attractive but my wife might accidentally come across the notes on those with similar painful consequences!

What can I write about? Yesterday I had no problems – a very clear dream came to mind but I must not repeat myself – that would not practice anything except my ability to remember dreams. The subjects should be as divergent as possible and contain thoughts and descriptions of matters of interest to wider audiences than psychoanalysts!

Help! I’m rapidly running out of time! Hey! I’ve done it!

***

I can see quite clearly that my style has not changed much over thirty six years and I think doing the articles this way round gets the explanation of how it all started out of the way first.

I also note that, with the benefit of the computer’s word count facility, the words “Hey! I’ve done it!” did take me over the 250 word target. Still, the book did say “at least 250 words”!

Now that I think about it I did something similar to that piece on here about the BBC’s 500 Words competition for children  and now that I have found it and read it  (here: https://littlealfie.wordpress.com/2014/05/ ) I see that I said in it that this very document would never see the light of day! Ah, well, times change!

Let’s move onto the previous day’s effort – which details the dream I mentioned above:

***

14/9/1989

Flight of Fancy

The other night I dreamed I could fly.

It was a particularly clear and memorable type of dream – not one of those that you struggle to recall on waking that seems determined to slip away from you the harder you try to remember.

I was able to talk in detail about this one straight away – maybe that was because I enjoyed it so much.

The “flight” was not of the Douglas Adams “throw yourself at the ground and miss” kind of which I had read (not for the first time) some weeks previously but took place by my, apparently, expressing the simple wish to be above the ground – whereupon a quite slow transition took place from ‘vertical standing’ to ‘horizontal floating.’

I was able to control speed, direction and height at will and without apparent limit although I seemed to obtain most pleasure from swooping motions and ‘victory rolls’ of an aerobatic nature.

The possible manoeuvres were somewhat constrained by the background to the dream which took place in a gigantic multi-level supermarket! Now, anyone who knows me will be aware that I absolutely detest shopping – supermarket or Department Store most of all – and I would not have chosen this as a scenario under any circumstances where I had any kind of conscious control.

However, I had in this instance mislaid my wife at the entrance to this ghastly emporium and was aware that I had unsuccessfully searched (on foot) the entire ground floor for her. The vast crowds necessitated a better method and at this point I conceived the idea of aerial surveillance. Having completed the ground floor search again (by air) in seconds I then enjoyed a particularly satisfying power dive down a wide staircase followed by the ‘stunts’ referred to above.

 I eventually found my wife and the last thought of the dream consisted of my being towed towards the checkout tethered like a child’s balloon to her trolley.

Are there any dream analysts out there who would care to tell me through this publication what it all means?

***

I have a couple of remarks to make about that last piece.

Firstly, why am I unable to have dreams that give me the same sort of pleasure as I still recall that one giving me? I am quite sure I have not had one as good since.

Secondly, why has the term “ghastly emporium” not remained with me? My feelings about shopping are unchanged and I am sure that there are times and places where I could have used it!

And finally, what was the ‘this publication’ referred to in the last sentence? As far as I know the only thing I had ever written anything for was the East Anglian Mensa newsletter a few years earlier when one of my friends was the editor. I don’t imagine I will remember now but if I do I will let you know!

I will now return to that desk drawer to see if any other forgotten gems are lurking there.

Alfie

 

A Christmas Break – Part 3 – Home

In case you have dropped in at the third part of this series – here is a brief recap of the events to date.

On Boxing Day 2025 I fell down some stairs and broke my right ankle. The previous part ended with me leaving the Peterborough City Hospital (PCH) and heading for home.

My first problem on arriving home was,,, getting in!

Many years ago, when we had our drive block-paved, we decided that the step up into our front doorway was quite high and had a block paving step fitted – about four to five inches high, extending the width of the doorway and roughly two feet out from the door.  There still remains a step up of nearly a foot and another couple of inches to clear the door sill to access the hallway.

I was able, with the aid of my hospital-issue walking frame to get up onto the first bit but the larger second part gave us serious problems! My wife and daughter weren’t capable of lifting me over the threshold, and I wasn’t able to hop that high. While there was room for both me and the frame on the first step the latter had to be facing ‘outwards’ and that left the wheels on the front legs perilously close to the edge.

It is hard to remember now but after chickening out of other suggestions, I think I got in by getting the frame into the house and then getting a firm grip on both sides of the doorframe and performing a very athletic one foot (in both meanings of the term) hop over the door sill. As soon as I was indoors, I relaxed my death grip on the door frame and grabbed the walking frame instead.

Obviously, with the need to keep weight off the bad foot at all times, going upstairs was out of the question but fortunately we still have in our lounge my late mother-in-law’s three-seater sofa which unfolds into a surprisingly comfortable double bed. We also have, only about a dozen left foot hops away down the hall, a toilet. With one or two exceptions that brief journey between the lounge and the loo represented my only travel for the next couple of weeks!

I mentioned in the last article in this series that my departure from PCH was on Tuesday 30^th December – only FIVE days since I had the accident – and already it seemed as though weeks had gone by! The surgeon, who had been to see me on Monday had told me that the operation to insert Titanium plates into appropriate places had gone very well but that I was still required to keep my weight off that foot for 2 months!

Yes. Eight bloody weeks and I hadn’t even done ONE yet!

For the next few days, I was distracted by finally having our delayed Christmas with the other half of our family, but by Sunday I was having problems! Nothing wrong with the ankle, I’m pleased to say – but something changed inside my head!

As the day went on, I got increasingly tetchy, snappy and critical; I had feelings of claustrophobia, extreme anxiety and ‘cabin fever’ (Faith described it to others as ‘stir crazy’). I wanted desperately, and despite knowing it was impossible, to get out of the house and walk (hop!) anywhere and everywhere.

Faith calmed me down and got me to get out of bed and hop with my walking frame to the other downstairs rooms (i.e. not just the lounge that I was living in and the toilet) – the dining room, the kitchen and the study- just to show me that I could go to them if I wanted or needed to.

This helped a lot and when I calmed down, I was able to have a think about what might have caused this mental ‘blip’.

I eventually worked it out.

I mentioned in Part 2 how the nursing staff dispensed pain relief in the form of paracetamol tablets regularly throughout the day in hospital. I also referred to leaving the hospital’s unpleasantly named ‘Discharge Lounge’ with a bag of pills and syringes, the latter being used to inject myself daily with a tiny amount of blood thinner to prevent clots in my bad ankle. Well, it wasn’t them! I read carefully through the leaflet provided and no mental side effects were mentioned.

Which left the pills!

One of the packets contained Senna-based laxative tablets – and I hadn’t so much as opened those! The other packet contained painkillers which I had been taking at irregular intervals – 8 in total since I came home.

Not paracetamol but something which sounds (and is) much more powerful – Codeine Phosphate, which according to the packet is ‘an Opioid’ and addictive. I read the ‘possible side effects’ bit of the leaflet and under heading ‘Psychiatric effects’ found listed:

• Mood changes.
• Depression.
• Hallucinations.
• Restlessness.
• Anxiety.
• Excitation
• Nightmares
• Confusion

To be fair I have not, as far as I am aware, had any hallucinations or nightmares, but the rest of the list looked rather familiar so I stopped taking those nasty little buggers at once! And I have not experienced anything like those effects since. It’s paracetamol, and only when necessary for me now!

So, without any more drama or angst on my part, the days moved (somewhat tediously) through the new year and I have been occupying my time writing stuff for this site, transcribing the newspaper articles about the 1907 Ipswich mushroom poisonings (which you can read about here: https://littlealfie.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/ ), listening to music, reading and watching TV.

The next excitement in my life happened on Friday 16^th January when I had a 4.50pm appointment at the PCH fracture clinic.

Once again, daughter Hannah was pressed into service as our driver and arrived allowing plenty of time to get me out of the house (see start of this article for a reminder of the problems) .

Having had a lot of time to think about it, I was wheeled me to the front door in the computer chair from the study which has variable height. When this is dropped to its lowest level I can hang my feet over the door sill, touch the left one to the ground and do one small hop to reach the frame. Easy!

Or it would have been if it had not been tipping it down with rain all day which meant I had to everything faster than I wanted. I had put on my waterproof cycling trousers which zip all the way up the side of the leg (so I don’t have a battle to pull them over the cast) to knee level but still had to have a large bin bag wrapped around my bad foot and secured with elastic bands to stop the cast getting wet.

When we arrived at the hospital Faith jumped out and ran to Reception to grab one of PCH’s own wheelchairs – once I was in it she wheeled me in while Hannah drove off to park at her father and mother-in-law’s house about a mile away.

We were well in time for the appointment but did not have to wait long before I was wheeled into the “plastering room” to have my almost 3-week-old cast cut off. I really needn’t have bothered to keep it dry! After I said a fond “Hello” to my foot, a nurse very carefully removed the row of stitches from the outer side of my right leg and pronounced that the wound was healing “Beautifully”.

Another nurse then replastered me, using resin bandages rather than the heavier plaster ones and I was wheeled off for X-rays. There was no waiting here but once I was returned to Faith in the Fracture Clinic reception area, we had to wait for over an hour for the surgeon to look at the pictures and call me in to discuss them. Fortunately, we had both anticipated this sort of wait at some point in the process and had bought books with us.

The surgeon did get to us eventually and was happy to report that both the wound healing and the knitting together of the broken bones were proceeding satisfactorily – so we were able to call Hannah and go home (still in pouring rain).

I got into the house quite easily by hopping onto the step, turning 180 degrees and flopping back onto the lowered computer chair!

The next appointment at the hospital is 12^th February so, unless something else exciting happens on this topic I think I will put this series on hold until then and write about something else for a change.

See you later

Alfie

 

A Christmas Break – Part 2 – Hospital

On the morning of Saturday 27^th December 2025, I awoke (not for the first time) in the bed I had been wheeled up in the previous night.

As I mentioned at the end of the first part of this saga I had been provided with a strangely shaped compressed cardboard “bottle” and, despite not having had all that much to drink the previous day, I had utilised it a number of times during the night.

Fortunately, I was not awake specifically for that purpose but as a result of the resounding clatter that occurred every time the nurses did their “rounds”.  This happened at least twice between midnight and 5am each “night” and it would have been wasteful not to utilise the facilities while I was already awake, “Never miss an opportunity to pee” appears on many, if not most, “Rules for Life” lists that I have read!

Ward A4 has a total of (at least) 27 beds arranged in rooms off a central corridor and 3, or possibly 4, nurses on the night shift so I suppose that taking into account coffee and lunch breaks as well as dealing with emergencies, two nursing visits per night were not excessive.

The “clattering” to which I referred earlier was the wheels of an equipment trolley with the gear to take blood pressure, measure pulse rate and dispense a little paper pot containing two Paracetamol tablets for pain relief. That’s what I got anyway – other patients in the room may have had different requirements!

In the morning the lights came on, the curtains were pulled back a bit and I got to see the other occupants of the room.

As I mentioned in the first piece in this series the ward I was put in was not specifically for broken bones (orthopaedic) so not everyone present was there for the same thing.

To my right, bed 23, contained a young man from the Household Cavalry who had apparently fallen from his horse and been kicked by it, causing internal injuries. By shamelessly eavesdropping on the succession of rather posh young men (and some obvious officers) who came to visit, this happened while they were doing their seasonal exercises on the beach at Holkham in Norfolk.

To my left, bed 25 contained a gentleman named Roy who was about 10 years older than me, who had been knocked down by a car and had broken not only his ankle but his knee as well! This meant he had, unlike me, a plaster cast over most of his leg!

Next to him, in the corner of the room, was a man in his fifties, Paul, a shaven-headed former biker by appearance, who was within a few days of going home following abdominal surgery.

And finally, a man whose name I never did learn but who I think was Eastern European in origin (he looked and sounded a bit like Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine) who spent most of that Saturday pacing up and down as if waiting impatiently to be taken away.

At 3pm (Saturday 27^th December), roughly 30 hours after I had my little accident, I was wheeled down to the operating theatre. I remember talking to a couple of theatre assistants, expressing concern that I had forgotten to take off my glasses and leave them by my bed. They took them from me for safe keeping and then gave me the usual pre-med injection that had me falling asleep in mid-sentence.

An indeterminate time later I struggled back towards consciousness and became aware of Faith standing nearby. I don’t know what other utter bollocks I was talking but remember quite clearly telling her about this awful dream I’d had where I had broken my ankle! She said something soothing to me and I went off with the fairies again for another unknowable time period. (Editor’s note: Faith took a photo of me as I went back to sleep and it is timed at 18.57 – otherwise I would have had no idea).

I was very slightly awake later that evening when a lady from the Theatre team kindly brought my glasses back to me in a (clean) pressed cardboard sick bowl! Following that moment of excitement, I drifted away again to await the overnight measurements.

I did wake up again at some point during the night due to a lot of commotion on the other side of my left-hand curtain. I had not realised that between me (Bed 24) and Roy (bed 25) There was actually a square blank space. At one time this would have had a small desk and chair and would have been somewhere a nurse could sit and update records on a laptop.

Space in the hospital was such that they had decided that they could fit a bed in it and that is what all the kerfuffle was about! I imagine the nurses labelled it “Bed 24A” but those of us with larger spaces referred to it as “Harry Potter’s Broom Cupboard”.

Next morning there was another abdominal case in temporary residence (I never did learn his name) for observations and I was able to get to talk to Roy and Paul again.

In other news, the Slavonic gentleman opposite had gone home on Saturday afternoon and had been replaced by an extremely elderly Asian gent named Abdul who had fallen over and cracked his pelvis. He slept a lot of the time I was there so we did not get to talk much.

I found that I got on best with Paul who was unfortunate enough to have the same kind of sense of humour as me! He was (by the standard of the rest of us) a long-term resident on that ward and not only knew all the nurses by name but how to wind them up too!

He kept on at one of them about how many extra beds they were planning to squeeze into this ward and she came back with a retort to the effect that when the new bunk beds arrived she would make sure he was on the upper level with no ladder!

The Sunday passed by quite slowly, as Sundays often do but the early hours of Monday morning were livened up when I discovered what the two additional pills that I had been given with my night time pain relief were for! I had no means of getting about or of getting out of bed unassisted and was forced to press the call button to summon a nurse and (Oh the embarrassment!) a commode!

I later had a word with one of the nurses and pointed that, as I had eaten very little since I last cleared myself out a couple of hours before the accident, I had no need to enter the nasty world of “recreational laxatives” just yet! She listened to my complaint and plainly did nothing whatsoever about it because the little cardboard pill pot contained two more on Monday night. I was ready for them this time and managed to palm them and just took the painkillers. Sometimes the patient does know best.

Monday was livened up by visits from my grandsons (who wanted to ask all the other patients about their injuries) and a couple of nice ladies from the Physiotherapy team who brought me a walking frame, adjusted it for my height and helped me hop around the ward (the toilet was now in range – hooray!) with it.

They also brought me a pair of crutches but I still don’t feel at all happy with those and won’t until I get to the stage where it doesn’t matter if my bad foot should accidentally hit the ground.

As I was able to hop quite competently with the frame and was able to satisfy their requirements with regard to the set-up waiting for me at home (i.e. no having to hop upstairs for sleep or toilet) they agreed to start the process of letting me go home. Under no illusions about the speed of administration in the National Health Service (Hey! It’s FREE – you can’t have everything!) I assumed this meant tomorrow (Tuesday 30^th December at the earliest) – and so it transpired.

As soon as I awoke on Tuesday morning, I got all of my un-needed stuff (i.e. everything but my Kindle, Mobile Phone and notebook & pencil) packed away and waited to be called for. And waited. And waited.

Lunchtime came and went and no-one on the staff knew what was meant to be happening to me. My new friends in the room had both departed during the morning – Roy to the City Care Centre, which is what used to be called a Convalescent Home, for people not up to going home but not needing a hospital bed. Paul was deemed sufficiently fit to go back his bungalow in Yaxley.

And then… just when I had given up on a Tuesday departure, a lady turned up with a wheelchair to take me down to the “Discharge Lounge” near the main doors. While whizzing along the corridors I was able to call Faith who had been waiting with Hannah for news, and tell them to come and get me.

I think that they need (given the types of ailment people come to hospital with) to think of a better name than Discharge Lounge for what is a warm, comfortable waiting area where they sort out your paperwork and provide you with your medications.

I was there for about an hour, was handed a big carrier bag full of pills and syringes, and then Faith wheeled me out to Hannah’s car and home.

I hoped to cover a lot more in this piece but we are over 1600 words now so you are going to have to wait for Part 3 for what I consider the worst part of the experience!

Alfie