What a lousy night. There are nights like that. Could not get to sleep for ages and eventually when I did it was up time and time again to trot to the loo for a pee. Another problem that comes with age. Also the dreams were most bizarre but we won’t go into that. Yet another problem with age is that these last couple of years, come autumn come spring, I have been suffering for the first time in my life from an allergy – to what I know not – that results in itchy eyes, itchy ears, itchy nose and, worst of all, bronchitis that really prevents me from doing anything much physical. So it was a visit to Doctor Elizabeth earlier in the week and another drug addition to keep me going, this one an antihistamine. She looked at recent X-rays of my lungs and found nothing to worry about there so obviously it is the allergic bronchitis that’s the bore.
A con e-mail on this machine this morning, allegedly from Fedex this time, informing me they are holding a parcel for me together with a letter for zillions of dollars! Send £150 and a heap of personal information to ensure I am who I am. I wonder how many people blinded by the promise of those non-existent dollars will be caught in the trap and respond. Not to say we couldn’t do with a windfall but no one I can think of would be sending me that amount of money – delete!
Thinking about Olive Schreiner’s birthplace, was it in the Cape or Basutoland? It’s not surprising those biographers who don’t do their research but rely on previous information by other writers continuously fall into error. It brings to mind all the research Chris has done on George Leybourne who writer after writer before stated quite categorically that he was born in Stourbridge near Birmingham, the Midlands in fact whereas, as his birth certificate clearly shows, he was born in the North at an area near Newcastle called Stourbridge. Virtually every book on Leybourne has it wrong.
I have to reconsider my opinion of overpaid footballers, well some of them anyway. They don‘t all live the champagne life though it still surprises me that as British taxpayers, they manage to amass the fortunes they do. There are obviously exceptions to the live in a palace and own a fleet of cars numbers, exceptions such as Niall Quinn who donated £1.1 million to charity, Didier Drogba whose £3million will go to building an African hospital, Gunner Solskjaer £2million towards African schools, Craig Bellamy, Michael Essien, Gary Kelly, Tony Adams, Rio Ferdinand; all generous in distributing some of their wealth to good causes. How about the rest? And how about the bankers and politicians and African despots and multi millionaire Indians and Arabs? I wonder if their consciences could ever be touched in the same way.
I must be a little dyslectic or just a very bad typist but certain words always have to be corrected, for example ‘are’ is typed as arse, ‘her’ typed as here, and ‘from’ typed as form. Those are the three worst culprits. Starnge isn’t it?