Blondin

My Old Boss, bless him, used to say I was like Blondin, never content without a challenge. When Blondin crossed The Niagara Falls on a tightrope, god knows who actually strung the rope for him to walk on, he stopped half way across and started to juggle.

Those who know me will be aware of my maxim for life - LIFE IS A DISCO SO DANCE !  I have also been known to say -LIFE IS A JAGUAR SO DO NOT DRIVE IT LIKE A FORD FOCUS !

As I have spent the last three months setting up the OurRebekah project I am constantly saying that the DESTINATION is to raise support for Ronald McDonald Houses but that is ONLY the destination. The JOURNEY is to have fun, be a bit silly to smile and make others smile. If the Journey is fun then the destination will be a success.

One of my former students contacted me via Facebook last week. He is headmaster of a school. Within a beautiful note he wrote this:

My memories of you are filled with images of you chasing down the corridor always doing one hundred things at the same time. You always had more energy than most people on the planet. I get the feeling you love the chase more than the prize.

Sam that was really kind of you. THANK YOU.

Call it the chase, call it the journey, call it the destination, call it the prize - we all know what life's destination is don't we ? We never quite know when that destination will arrive so we MUST enjoy every minute of the journey. Like Blondin we must rise to the challenge then add to that challenge, not just to walk across the Niagra Falls but to do something silly as part of it - JUGGLE.

Yesterday I brought on-line the project THE WILD ADVENTURES OF DI CENTRAL EATING.  Take a look. Each chapter in the story has a dedication page, I have just finished listing all of those who have given their love and fun to OurRebekah over the past three months. The lists are astounding, incredible !  The book will be published early in the New Year, I wonder just how big the lists will be then.

NO, I am NOT responsible for the incredible support OurRebekah is finding. I am just opening the doors for the supporters to walk through. If you like I am the one stringing the rope over The Niagara Falls, Blondin is the people who are walking through.

We have not actually done anything in OurRebekah yet !  Sam's description of me is accurate for the last three months and so was my dear old boss who said I always had to juggle half a dozen things at once. Everything is now ready, the projects are in place with nothing left to chance. I am about ready to hand them over to those who will be running them. I will draw breath then string a rope across The Grand Canyon and pick up half a dozen footballs to juggle.

SEE YOU THERE !

It has happened AGAIN. Wake up world - we are at war.

It has happened AGAIN !   When is the world going to wake up, to stop giving the benefit of the doubt, to stop making excuses, to stop being politically correct and accept the fact that evil within the religion of Islam has declared World War Three ?

Why is it in our own country the security services has 3,500 Islamists on the security service's watch list. In France police say there are 15,000 ! Do not mess about with words, these are our enemies. Why are they allowed to roam about free ?  Why are we spending money and wasting time on these horrible people ?  We, as a society, should round them up and imprison them. Stop messing about.

Look at the kind of people this EVIL is targeting. Why are we allowing this to happen ? It will happen again and again and again. We all know that.

Have you heard a mosque near where you live speak out against the murders in Spain ? I have not.  Have you seen an Islamic preacher in your local media condemning the attack on innocent people ?  I have not. You never will.

If it were the Jehovah's Witnesses or Catholics carrying out terrorist atrocities would their religion be allowed to continue or would it be banned and made an illegal organisation ?  The answer is obvious so why do we allow this alien religion to continue ?  In World War Two what would have happened if women walked the streets wearing the Nazi Swastika ? So why do we accept it for Islam ?  The head covering, let's say what it is the rag-bag, is not part of our culture, it is a defiance of our culture and a representation of an evil which has declared war on our culture.

WAKE UP WORLD BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE !

the bastards have done it again !

The bastards have done it again !

I opened my laptop this morning and the cretins at Microsoft hijacked it to install yet more sad, pathetic downgrading updates. When will somebody put an end to this behaviour ?

President Trump can you please drop one of your bombs on the Microsoft Office and rid the world of this plague ?

Do it now please Mr President.

Microsoft to be prosecuted under the terms of The Geneva Convention

I wonder if you can regonise the location in this photograph. You should be able to, it affects your life every day.

Any ideas ?

It is MICROSOFT'S BETA TESTING DEPARTMENT hard at work. This image was taken during the course of a normal working day with all staff employed within the department sitting at their desks !


I am going to find a human rights lawyer and see if Microsoft can be prosecuted under The Geneva Convention.

God I hate Microsoft !

You probably do as well.

Microsoft is an inward looking institution that has no idea there is a real world out here. You and I are the real world, Microsoft's geeks are cretins who belong in a lunatic asylum.

More than anything else about Microsoft I hate the way it hi-jacks my laptop with monotonous regularity to install downgrading updates. There is nothing we mortals can do to defend ourselves against the war criminal geeks at Microsoft.

How about if I were to walk into a geek's home and switch off the cooker for an hour just as Mrs Geek is cooking dinner ?

How about I downgrade a geeks's car by  removing its wheels for an hour while I check  the  tyre pressure ?

GOD I HATE MICROSOFT !


Do you ?

I wonder what the wet, spineless liberals from today's society would have done

I went to watch the film Dunkirk yesterday afternoon. Rating the film on a score of one to ten I will be generous and give it FOUR.  A hideous grammatical error was applied to the introductory sub-titles and repeated several times. I guess that did not set me in a good mood for the story.

The photography was good but while some characterisation was OK others were weak. The two main characters were similar looking so it took time to work out who was who. The action kept jumping about in time and failed to achieve the effect the director was aiming for. The biggest failure, however, was the film's complete and utter failure to show the magnitude of the evacuation from the beach.

I told my mother, she will be 90 years old in October, that I was going to watch the film. She shared something with me she has never spoken about before. She told me that as a young girl her mother had taken her to a railway station to welcome and cheer the soldiers home. She said how the soldiers had hung their clothes out of the train windows to dry.

Taking her two daughters to wave to the soldiers is something my Nan would have done. She was very patriotic. We could do with more like my Nan in today's society.

The Dunkirk evacuation happened in 1940, here we are in 2017 - 77 years later. I wonder what the wet, spineless liberals would make of the plight, the sacrifice of our soldiers were a similar situation to happen in our time. How many politicians would have the backbone to fight for freedom, liberty and democracy ?  What would Jeremy Corbyn have done ? Does not bear thinking of does it ?

Oh I wish I had looked after my teeth !

Do you remember the celebrity poet Pam Ayres ?  

Can you recall this particular poem ?

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,
And spotted the dangers beneath
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food.

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.
I wish I’d been that much more willin’
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To give up gobstoppers,

From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin’.
When I think of the lollies I licked
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,

Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.
My mother, she told me no end,

‘If you got a tooth, you got a friend.’
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.

Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin’
And pokin’ and fussin’

Didn’t seem worth the time – I could bite!
If I’d known I was paving the way
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fillin’s,

Injections and drillin’s,
I’d have thrown all me sherbet away.
So I lie in the old dentist’s chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine

In these molars of mine.
‘Two amalgam,’ he’ll say, ‘for in there.’
How I laughed at my mother’s false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath.

But now comes the reckonin’
It’s me they are beckonin’
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

I think she may well have written that poem for me !

I am going to the dentist this morning for the first in a series of fittings for my new dentures -

no let's use the proper terminology shall we - MY FALSE TEETH !

I find the idea of wearing false teeth utterly disgusting !  I blame my present predicament on the school dentist from when I was six and a half years old !

In those good old days a dentist would visit our junior school on a regular basis to check up on we kids' choppers. On one occasion he decided I needed to have two of my baby or milk teeth removed so the adult teeth could grow. Why he could not allow nature to take its course I do not know. Perhaps he was on

commission, who knows. Anyway off to the dentist I was taken - dragged.

Back then there were two ways teeth could be removed. You could be put to sleep using some form of gas or you could have an injection in your gum of - WAIT FOR IT - cocaine !  Yes the now highly illegal Class A drug ,cocaine. My dentist opted for the former. Problem was he did not give me enough of the gas and I woke up during the extraction process.

That was sixty years ago. I can still so clearly remember the dream I had when I was asleep and even clearer I can remember waking up. My mother, in the waiting room, said my screaming was deafening.

So began a life-long mistrust of dentists. I did not look after my teeth. Why should I ?  Teeth are servants of the body, they process food. My teeth are - WERE - my servants, not the other way round.

My uncared for teeth did their job faithfully for sixty and more years but in February I was obliged to visit the dentist who removed every single nasher in the top of my mouth. I was told it would take six months for the gums to harden - it has. Six months of looking like an geriatric with a sunken face. Six months of not being able to talk properly. Six months of not being able to eat properly. Today I have my first in a series of five visits to prepare my FALSE TEETH. The dentist tells me it will be strange, my voice will change and as my gums have hardened in an uneven way they may not fit properly.

OH I WISH I HAD LOOKED AFTER MY TEETH !

I have put my money where my mouth is. I have joined the Conservative Party.

I've done it !  I have joined The Conservative Party. It's no good standing on the sideline shouting my mouth off I need to put my money where that mouth is.  I will not be appearing in the party's list of top donors but I have paid more than the minimum subscription to join.

We live in worrying political times.

There is The Witch of Scotland who will spare no effort and listen to no reason as she campaigns to destroy a beautiful land with calls for a second independence referendum.  Democracy counts for nothing in her vision, she will call for independence referendum after independence referendum as she seeks to ride her own inflated ego.

Meet Flight Sergeant Billy Ashford, my uncle, who gave his live at the age of 20 years in the service of his country. He was killed in a bombing raid over Germany on 8th March 1945. He, and so many others, we fighting for freedom and democracy.

Meet Billy's father, William Ashford, who served in World War One. He died a relatively young man from tuberculosis contracted while serving in the trenches of that Great War.

My father, now aged ninety-one, joined The Royal Air Force as soon as he reached the age of eighteen. He served within The British Mandate in Egypt then went to Palestine as part of the peacekeeping force at the time the

State of Israel was set up. Two of his best friends were murdered by Israeli terrorists while serving their country. Dad told me troops were told never to leave the base without a gun, danger lurked at every corner.

Meet Thomas Ashford. He was William Ashford's father's cousin. He is wearing two medals. One was awarded for service in The Second Afghan War. The other is The Victoria Cross awarded for bravery. Queen Victoria herself pinned it on his uniform.

I am proud that when their country called my family was not slow to do its bit in defence of our way of life, our democracy and our freedom.

Jeremy Corbyn, of course, would trash their memory. Fighting for one's country is not something he respects.

We have a prime minister who I am sure is a lovely lady but she is not a good politician. She is failing every day to stand up and protect our country from Corbynism. If that evil brand of socialism gets any stronger hold on our nation all of our history will be consigned to the rubbish heap.

Corbyn was once a national joke. Now he is a national threat to our way of life.

It is debatable which is the bigger danger to Great Britain, Jeremy Corbyn or The European Union. The horrific dictatorship of the European Union has destroyed national identities in so many countries, it must not be allowed to destroy ours.

These members of my family did not serve their country for it to be dictated to by The European Union. We should stop talking to its dictatorship and walk away immediately.

Sadly, our prime minister is not strong enough to lead us out of this dictatorship. When it comes the time for her to be replaced I want to be a part of the democratic process to elect a new party leader.

It is not just Britain that faces the horror of Islam and its spread across the globe. Billy Ashford gave his life in World War Two,, William lost his life as a result of World War One. Islam has declared war on the world. How many more people will lose their lives in its acts of terror before our political leaders wake up to the threat it poses ?

Was my Dad a spy ? You know I think he may have been !

I was a good boy yesterday. A good boy but not a very good boy. I have said that I will write 500 words a day for my book The Bridge House. Yesterday I wrote 440.

I wonder if any of you recognise this building on the left. When I knew it in the early 1970's it was not well known at all. Now it has international fame. During World War Two it was the most closely kept secret in the country, Winston Churchill called it his ULTRA SECRET. It is, of course, Bletchley Park's mansion at the heart of the secret decoding of

Hitler's Enigma machine and its messages.

For three years I lived in Bletchley Park, not in the mansion which was in the 1970's the training school for Post Office Telephones, but in this building. In my day it was Milton Keynes College of Education, a satellite teacher training college of Oxford University.

Today my former bedroom is part of a museum showing the wartime work of Bomber Command. My Uncle Billy, who dominates the chapter I am working on was part of Bomber Command.

The story is moving slowly from Billy to his younger brother, my father, Kenneth.

As soon as he was 18 years old Kenneth volunteered and was signed into The Royal Air Force. He went through basic training then qualified as a signalman.

Dad, who is now 91 years old, tells how he was called to the base adjutant's office and offered three assignments. He could select which ever he wished.

The first was to train as an officer but to do that he would have to change from being in the RAF Volunteer Reserve to make the Air Force his career for life. Dad was not keen on that. He was then told he could go to work in Bletchley Park.

"What's at Bletchley Park ?" He asked.

"Can not tell you, it is top secret. You will find out when you get there."

"What is the third option ?"

"We need a signalman at Cairo in Eygpt."

If you were nineteen year old, if you were my Dad, which would you have chosen ?
No contest !

So Dad never went to Bletchley Park. He forgot all about it until I went there in 1971 to train as a teacher.

A I write The Bridge House I am going to let my author's imagination take my Dad to Bletchley Park before he is sent to Egypt. I will use my own knowledge of Bletchley Park to write the story.

After spending a year in Egypt my father was then sent to Palestine as part of The British

Mandate setting up a new country, Israel. There he had an important job managing signals for the RAF base in Jerusalem.

I wonder, I just wonder........ Did my Dad perhaps go to Bletchley Park after all ? If he did he would have been told never to speak about it and my Dad would have respected that. He would never have told anyone he was there.

Was my Dad actually a spy ?

If not a spy did he co-ordinate secret activities in Egypt and then Palestine ? From what I know of his career in The RAF that would make perfect sense.
As I write  The Bridge House that si exactly what he will be doing. Doing in the story and perhaps what he did in real life.

My Dad the spy ?

Perhaps his time in Bletchley Park in those final days of World War Two were much more of an adventure than my own in a boring teacher training college.

I need a better life balance

I need to restructure my life. The balance is not right. The balance is all over the place !
It is coming up to three months since my beloved daughter died suddenly and unexpectedly. Inside my body my heart is ripping apart but the emotions it is trying to display are masked, hidden and are being prevents from outworking themselves. I have not cried, I want to cry but I can not cry.

In memory and in honour of my daughter I am running OurRebekah but the project has taken over my life.  I am spending most of my day either at the laptop or out attending meetings as I set up activities within OuRebekah.  When things are going well I am on a high, I am on top of the world. When things do not go as I want I become angry and frustrated. Rebekah was at the centre of my life, since childhood her illness had put her there, I have replaced her with OurRebekah.

If you were to read through all of these diary entries  going back to April you will see how much I have changed. That change is not for the good. The balance in my life has disappeared. I am obsessed with the project I am running for Beck. If I do not step back and change things that project could well fail. I have got to restructure my life and restore a balance.

I have stopped writing. Diary entries here have become few, one a week on average. I just have not had time to write any more in my story The Bridge House. I have made the excuse that I will not now edit the draft text in each chapter as I go along but will work through the whole book when it is finished. Will I ?  Chapter One has 22,982 words. Chapter Two has 17,789 words. So far there are 14,879words in Chapter Three. That's a word total of 55,560 words, about half way towards finishing the story. How many typos are there in all that ? I would estimate about five hundred, could be more. If anyone were to read the text in its present form they would give up within the first few pages. Printed out on to A4 paper there are 164 pages.

Yesterday I made a promise. I am opening my heart a bit with this diary entry and sharing my promise so by telling lots of people I have to keep it ! I promise to write at least five hundred words for The Bridge House every day. Yesterday I sat out in the sunshine and scribbled into my notebook what I think will be about six hundred words once they are typed up and added to the story.  No matter what the circumstances I will keep my promise and write something, five hundred words, every day.

Probably on Wednesday I will dig very deep into my pocket to buy a new black ink cartridge for my printer and a pack of paper the print off all of The Bridge House text. I will go through this, correct the errors on the paper then work through the on-line text. I am not sure how long that will take but it will be done.

Chapter One ends abruptly. It does so for no other reason than I did not want to go through cliché after cliché describing the sinking of RMS Titanic. Chapter Two does not have quite so abrupt an ending but it does leave some lose ends. It had been my thinking that when Chapter Three reached its end everything would conclude to allow Lily to move on into the next stage of her life. I am going to end that chapter very abruptly. There will be some things which will be picked up in Chapter Four but Chapter Three will have a sudden ending. That ending will be the death of Lily's son Billy.

Lily was my grandmother. The Bridge House is partly the story of her life although there is a thick wrapping of my author's imagination surrounding it all. In telling the story I am not simply writing a biography of my grandmother, I am not just trying to relate the events she lived through. What I want to do is to help the reader understand what it was like to have lived during the years my grandmother was alive.

The original idea for the story, an idea I came up with in the early weeks of this year, would see it end early in 1983 when my daughter Rebekah was born. Lily lived to the age of 94 and died a year later. That is no longer going to be the way the story ends. I do not want to tell you how it ends but all of the chapter endings will be brought together in the book's conclusion and will make complete sense as my style of writing and chapter endings will become apparent.


Disciplining myself to devote time each day to my writing, both with The Bridge House and here with my diary will, in part, help me put a better balance in my life. As the days progress and more diary entries are written you will see if this plan is working or not.

Would you refuse to shake a hand of freindship ?

If a stranger reached out a hand in friendship would you refuse to take it and give it a warm shake ?

Silly question perhaps, the answer nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a million that would be YES.

As I am trying hard to build up the visitor profile for the OurRebekah Website we have some friends reaching out their hands.

OurRebekah seeks to support Ronald McDonald Houses in the United Kingdom. Planning for all of the projects is coming along very nicely, they will be very successful IF, and it is a BIG IF, we can present them to enough people who decide they would like to take part. If we can not then the entire OurRebekah project will collapse and fail. Success depends on getting enough people to the website, people who will want to join in the projects, have fun and support Ronald McDonald House Charities.

Google Analytics tracks every page of the website, here are the results for July. You can see in the early days of the month the website was only being viewed by those working on the projects. Then when it was launched the graph starts to rise, peaking at thirty-five people in a day. To make the projects work we need an average of one hundred and fifty visitors a day, more would be better.

Google Analytics tracks not only numbers but also locations. When I first saw The Philippines appear on our list of visitors I thought it was a random blip, someone who had surfed in by error but the visitor kept coming back. I delved into Google Analytics a bit

deeper and found  the visitor is coming from - QUEZON CITY.  A Google search and I found Ronald McDonald House Charities is there !  The charity operates: Ronald Mcdonald House Charities Phil. Bahay Bulilit Day Care Center  Please do not tell me that someone way on the other side of the world is checking the OurRebekah website by accident.

Our website shows visitors in July from the USA in:

• California - Los Angeles
• New York - New York City
• Massachusetts - Boston
• North Carolina - Fuquay Varina
• Maine - Rural location Google does not recognise as a town or city
• Virginia - Ashburn
• Connecticut - Manchester

Why are these people coming to our website ?  The website has only just been launched and is 100% UK centred.  It can not be random surfing as these people keep coming back !

Here on the left is a picture taken from Ronald McDonald House Los Angeles website and on the right Ronald McDonald House New York.

In every one of those locations tracked by Google Analytics there is either a Ronald McDonald House or someone who has a connection with the charity.

Why is this happening ?  Why are these people coming back to look at the OurRebekah website ?

We are a tiny operation that has so far only raised £812 pounds for Ronald McDonald House Charities. We may have lots of ideas pending, we may have lots of projects in the planning but nothing is really happening yet and little is going to happen until the middle/end of September.

Do we just ignore these people who are checking our website ?  I keep saying that until we have made between £5,000 and £10,000 for Ronald McDonald House Charities UK we have no credibility, either in the eyes of the charity itself or those we are asking to join in our activities.   To suddenly become OurRebekah International is ridiculous beyond any measure !

So when I check the Google Analytics stats each morning and see someone from Quezon City in the Philippines has visited the site AGAIN what do I do ?  Do I just ignore it or do I tell our friends and supporters ?

What about these American visitors ?

If somebody, a stranger, offers you a hand of friendship do you refuse to take it ?

I am thinking things through. NO I am not going to suggest fledgling OurRebekah becomes OurRebekah International. But we have to do something.

Next week I am meeting with Beth at Trailfinders to discuss our proposed and hoped for Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco and New York Central Park fun runs. I so much hope these will happen but everything turns on two things: 1. The price of a ticket and 2. getting enough people to join in. If both factors are not exactly right then the events will not happen.

When I was speaking to Beth on the phone she told me about her cousin who had spent a month in Ronald McDonald House New Zealand !

Assuming we do get these projects off the ground and do go to San Francisco in April 2018 then New York in October 2018, how about this for an idea ?  Everyone who takes part buys a small gift, something British, and takes it along with them to New York or San Francisco. We then take those gifts to Ronald McDonald House New York and Ronald McDonald House San Francisco.

I remember when Rebekah was in Ronald McDonald House in London a small parcel

arrived one day. It was a teddy bear that had been sent by the family of one of my students. That was so special and so lovely.

If we were to take some gifts with us as we take part in the fun runs it would greatly enhance the projects and give something to the families in the houses.

We live in an age of instant communication. I can speak instantly with anyone anywhere in the world. When I post this diary it can be read immediately. Call me old fashioned but is

not something received in an envelope through the mail a bit more personal than an e-mail ?

We have an idea for Christmas gifts we would like to send to families in Ronald McDonald Houses in the UK. Plans for that project are ticking along nicely. We will launch the project in November. How about asking people here in the UK to add families in USA Ronald McDonald Houses to their Christmas card list.  It's simple to do, will take next to no organising and I can tell you from personal experience of being in a Ronald McDonald House how special such a Christmas Card would be.

Ronald McDonald House Charities in The Philippines was set up in 1995. The McDonald's

Philippines website has an abundance of busted links but I did find these two pictures and text:

 RMHC currently has two flagship programs which focus on different but equally essential aspects of a child’s development: Ronald McDonald Read to Learn, a beginning reading program for grades 1

and 2 pupils, and Ronald McDonald Bahay Bulilit, which strives to build day care centers in areas where they are most needed.

Someone from there is checking our website every day ! We can't ignore that can we ? Could we some how send something from Britain to help with this reading programme ? Some books. Perhaps copies of Di Central Eating when that project comes on-line.

We are not planning a fun run in the Philippines but we have to some how take hold of that hand and give it a warm shake. What do you think ?

The Rebekah Tree - The Smiling Tree

I started writing this diary on Tuesday 11th April. I have not written a page every day but in the weeks since the first entry I think I have written to you some sixty or more times. In those weeks my life has been turned completely upside down. So here we are on the first day of August. What does this month have in store ?

The garden at the back of my home is dominated by a silver birch tree. It is so large we had a tree surgeon and his team climb up it with ropes in the spring to cut out some of the higher branches and give it a better shape. I am told that in a year or so this surgery will make it look even better and more dominant than it already is.  A few years back my wife planted a jasmine against the tree, this has now grown into thee lower branches and gives off a lovely smell.

I nicked the tree when it as a tiny sapling from Woburn Woods on The Duke of Bedford's Estate. At the time my son Peter was a very small baby. The tree is known as The Peter Tree.

To the right of the front door of my home is a twisted hazel tree. I did not nick this from anywhere but paid money for it at a garden centre. This is known as The Nanny Tree. When my grandmother died, just a few weeks short of her one hundredth birthday, we got this tree in her memory.

Here is my Nan with great grandchildren Matthew, Peter - as in The Peter Tree and Rebekah.

Last week I took Peter's oldest daughter to a beautiful area of woodland outside Bristol. She, Maureen and I took Jake for a walk. Peter's daughter Katherine had my camera and took hundreds, and I do mean hundreds, of pictures as we walked along the pathways.

These woods outside Bristol are not unlike

the woods on the Duke of Bedford's Estate from where I nicked that tiny silver birch which has now grown into The Peter Tree.

While I was walking, while Katherine was clicking the camera like crazy and Jake was cocking his leg against every tree in the wood I nicked another sapling. This is an oak tree sapling. My wife did not approve and said how would it be when that grew to maturity in the garden ? Somehow I do

not think we will be around then to worry about the problem.

But to go along with Maureen's thinking, at least for the moment, the stolen oak sapling is in a small pot. I will nurture this for a year or so then when Maureen is not looking plant it in the ground !

This will be The Rebekah Tree.

Over the past few weeks I have slowed down with my writing, just too many things happening. My diary's readership has fallen away a little, yesterday 27 people read my sarcastic page about burgers in deep space ! I wonder how many will read today's entry. I have not written very much for The Bridge House but do have at least two thousand words to type up. I need to discipline myself a bit and get back to writing more.

I have decided on the ending for The Bridge House which I hope will come as a surprise to

readers when they get to the end of the book. The current chapter is dominated by Billy, the uncle I never knew. Billy will soon have his young life ended when his aircraft is shot down on 8th March 1945. The story will then pass to my father. I am setting the foundations for his tale but I have something up my sleeve, something Winston Churchill called his Ultra Secret. I guess I had better get writing.

I wonder if I could bring The Rebekah Tree into the book.

I  have an idea.

It will be easy to pick out The Rebekah Tree in my garden, it will be the tree that is always smiling.

I will write a SMILING TREE into the story, a place where a character in the story goes to think and find inspiration for his work. He always comes away smiling as he has found what he needs.

The Rebekah Tree - The Smiling Tree.