2020 Vision For Dreamsai

Over the coming days I will be talking a lot about 2020 vision. Medically this means you have perfect eyesight.

On Wednesday it will be the Year 2020. I want members of The Sunshine Smile Crew to adopt this idea of 2020 Vision both for the projects we have ready and waiting for the New Year but also I want us to open the eyes of as many people as possible, making them aware of others around them. I want here to apply 2020 Vision to Dreamsai.

Let me tell you about last Saturday's Lunch of Love, talk about things we need - IN PARTICULAR OPENING OUR CLOTHING TABLE, how we can help Dreamsai widen its

welcome, how we can make more people smile and how YOU can bring your love ?

OK last Saturday - Saturday 28th December 2019. Something very special happened to me, two of our regular gusts did not just walk up to me and say HI, they threw open their arms and gave me an enormous hug. I can still feel the warmth of those loving arms around me and tears are tickling the back of my eyes as I type these words.

One of those two, a man with a very dry sense of humour but one who always makes me smile, said: How many days a week to you play this rubbish music on the radio ?  Git ! Each Saturday the podcast from my Thursday show Dave's Disco is played at the Lunch of Love.  CLICK HERE, listen to a show and see if you think it is rubbish !

Meet SUNSHINE SMILE CREW MEMBER Julie aka Queen Of The Kettle. I thought I had a brilliant idea for Julie's kettle last Saturday. I splashed out on a stack of lottery scratch cards, she gave one out with every cup of tea and coffee. Guess what ? Not a single winner !  Morrissons I'm bringing them back for a refund.

This week I will NOT be buying any con-man scratch cards but instead some bits and pieces for a Lottery of Love. With each drink Julie will hand out a tombola ticket, everyone a winner.

Some of our guests are homeless rough-sleepers. For a few weeks I have been asking for donations of clothing: JACKETS - TRAINERS - GLOVES - CAPS/HATS - JUMPERS but my words have been falling on deaf ears. I do not want to have black sack after black sack of stuff - just a few of the above given in LOVE.

When we carried our Freebie Box into The Buzzy for the lunch it was heavy, taking it back to the car it was almost empty. The bottles of Lucozade and cans of energy drinks were very popular.  I saw one man take a teddy bear. 

Soap, deodorants and more were given in love and taken in love. Will your love put some gifts of love into the box.

Sunshine Smile Crew member STEWART BAILEY aka the

King of Smiles kick started our Freebie Box. Stewart also gave us our Smile Card. These are given out every Saturday. 

Another thought - I know its a bit of rubbish these day but where can you find a copy of MK Citizen ?  I thought it would be good to have some newspapers out and about for guests to read.

So what is Dreamsai ? What is this Lunch of Love ? I can not tell you how proud I am to be part of the Dreamsai Family, Saturday is the highlight of my week. Every Saturday, 12.30pm to 1.30pm we throw open the doors of The Buzzy for guests to come inside and enjoy a Lunch of Love, food members of the family have cooked in their homes during the morning.  BUZZY - Unity Park Bus Station opposite Central Milton Keynes Railway Station. Our Lunch of Love is open to anyone. We have homeless rough-sleeping friends, we have guests who are down on their luck, we have friends who are lonely and want some company. It does not matter if you have 1p or an American Express Gold Card in you pocket you are welcome.

Our Lunch of Love is the base for The Walk of Love where members of the family take food parcels out to homeless rough-sleepers, to YMCA MK, to all kinds of areas where

there are people who need our love.

Last Saturday we had six guests, the week before ten. Dreamsai would open the doors if there was just one guest but there are many, many, many people in Milton Keynes we need to reach out to and bring them in.  We have had people put others in their cards and

bring them to The Buzzy. Do you know someone who is lonely, feeling sad ? Do you know someone who is suffering from depression ? Do you know someone who is hungry ?  Turn your car into a TAXI OF LOVE and bring them along.

2020 Vision - Starting Saturday 4th January let's turn the decades into THE ROARING TWENTIES.

The Ramblings Of A Silly Old Man - CHAPTER FOUR

TEENAGE RAMPAGE

This is not going to happen because I do not do the lottery - The National Lottery, The Postcode Lottery, Te Euro Millions - how come we have this ?  Brexit ? Nope I do not do a lottery of any kind - perhaps I should.

Recently a young couple won one hundred and fifty million pounds on the lottery. Interviewed on television the guy said one million would be nice but what was he ever going to do with one hundred and fifty million ?

Let me dream for a moment. I have just won one hundred and fifty million pounds, what am I going to do with the money ? I know exactly what I am going to do with it.  I am going to tart a teenager rampage.

I talk with a lot of teenagers in schools and they inspire me.  I tell you when this generation takes over our world they are going to make a far better job of it than my generation and my children's generation have. I can see in the teenagers of today a vast potential, a potential which at last may give us politicians who for the first time in history understand, a potential giving us a society which does not just say it cares but one where that claim to care is turned into action.

Brilliant, but as I talk with teenagers I can see they have something lacking in their lives, something that was central to life when I was growing up as a teenager. When I explain this to today's generation the faces of those teenagers turn green.

Sweet - Teenage Rampage, do you remember that hit record from 1975 ?  I am going to use my one hundred and fifty million pounds to start a Roaring Twenties Teenage Rampage.

I plan to start a National School For The Performing Arts. It will be big, probably having around two thousand students. Music and Drama will come together to produce stage performers to rival Freddie Mercury. Song writing talents to equal and pass those of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

My school will have its own theatre producing show to be taken up by lesser establishments in The West End and Broadway.

My studio will havr a recording studio taking retro pop, reviving it into the music of what will be the best decade of music ever, The Roaring Twenties.

My school will have its own pop radio station which will put BBC Radio Boring out of business. Oh dear, what a shame, never mind.

We will slip Sky TV a few quid to have our own pop music channel. Top Of The Pops, The Old Grey Whistle Test and even Six-Five Special all rolled into one.

Melody Maker, New Music Express - do you remember them ? We will have a free pop magazine, funded through advertising, distributed free of charge every week to all teenagers in all schools in the country.

All of this will support our own weekly top thirty music chart.

We had rock and roll in the 1950's, the swinging sixties, disco and glam rock in the 1970's. Stand by for The ROARING Twenties.

I promise you if we could put pop music into the heart of teenager life today, as it was in my youth, our amazing younger generation will become a national asset beyond any form of measurement.

PROBLEM !  I do not have one hundred and fifty million pounds. But...............

Elton John you do.

Paul McCartney you do.

Brian May you do.

Cliff Richard you have The Cliff Richard Charity Foundation. Pity staff there do not know how to answer letters !

HOW ABOUT IT ?

The Ramblings Of A Silly Old Man - CHAPTER THREE

DAMNED INVENTION

If I were to ask you what invention has had the greatest impact on Mankind what would you say ?  Mankind since Adam and Eve fooled around with a Golden Delicious from the fruit counter in their local supermarket.

FIRE I hear someone saying. No, that was a discovery not an invention. What invention since the time when the dinosaurs rexed about carefree and datcyl? 

It is, of course the wheel. No wheel mean no cars, lorries, trains and supermarket trolleys for Adam and Eve to push their apples about in the supermarket. It means no machines, no buttons to turn things on and off. No roller skates or wheelie trainers. Oh dear. No traffic roundabouts but that wouldn't matter because there would be nothing to drive round them.

A world without the wheel, it could not exist could it and Chet Atkins could not have had his 1960 hit, not simply because there were no wheels for his guitar to pluck its strings about but because there would have been no 7" vinyl singles on which to release it. I wonder how many of you reading this paragraph have a clue what I am talking about.

But, oh dear, when I asked my question I wonder how man sad numskulls said The Smart Phone.

Smart phone, that's a contradiction in terms. A smart phone is a compensatory aid. If you twist your ankle the doctor ill give you a crutch to help you walk. If yout eyesight is less than 2020 you wear glasses. If you suffer from hearing loss you wear a compensatory hearing aid. If you are totally thick and stupid you can have a compensatory aid called a smart phone. Only people who are not smart by nature need to use a smart phone.

Just look at those walking down the road, oblivious of their surroundings and all that is happening, for them the only thing existing is their zombie phone. Brain dead, please do not tell me they are smart people.

In 1955 British inventor, NOTE British, Christoper Cockerel gave us the hovercraft. Do you know what a hovercraft was ?  Is ?  It's a damn sight more smart than a zombie phone !  It was supposed to change the world transport system. It didn't. I once traveled across the English Chanel to France on a Hoverlloyd Hovercraft Ferry. The difference between the two is the hovercraft was a good invention while the smart phone needs to be eradicated and exterminated from mankind.

Alan Turing gave the world its first computer a mechanical machine where wheels turned endlessly computing their calculations. If Alan Turing could see what Microsoft has done to its invention I am sure he would have issued an instruction to axe his invention and spare the world from the garbage-ridden twenty-first century and thicko geeks who presume we need Windows ever second of our lives. That includes the smart phone zombies. Microsoft, rename it Macrohard for them.

I go into schools and talk with teenagers, all were born after the onset of he internet and can no comprehend a world without it. Let me remind you that the internet was invented by BRITISH inventor Tim Berners-Lee. If you ask me he was an American spy funded by Bill Gates. Where was I ? Yes...  No internet, how did we cope ?  We did cope and did not need the world's worst invention of the zobie phone.  One of those stupid phones has more computing power than then entire NASA Control used to end man to walk on the moon. However, if you put the brains of every smart phone user together would not reach the the level of intelligence of the big toenail on the left foot of Ham the chimpanzee launched into space on 31st January 1961.

I recall my father when he was chief cashier for a giant civil engineering company engaging the services of a computer to process the weekly wages. Even though it was a multi-million pound business it could not possibly afford to buy a computer of its own, the company outsourced the work to a computer bank. I recall Dad saying the problem with computers was as well as giving you the information you asked for it gave you loads more than you asked for and put you feeling obliged to employ a member of staff to use it even if it was useless. Alan Turing .what do you think ?  Microsoft wipe that smile off your silly face ! Let's as a smart phone user for a comment. What's Information ?  I don't think I have an information ap on my phone.

I am thinking it would have been in 1976 or perhaps 1977, the headmaster was speaking to his staff explaining there was a couple of hundred pounds left in the the budget, what could we spend it on ?  When I suggested the school buy a computer he went into orbit saying the council would say if we had money to waste on a computer obviously we had too much money so our budget would be cut the following year.

My first personal computer was a Commodore Vic 20, anyone member them ? At 16 mega bites it was the most powerful computer you could buy. Alan Sugar had his Amstrad brand where there was no internal memory, everything had to be stored on floppy discs. 

Another memory, another rambling from The Silly Old Man. The Open University set up a one day course for key areas in the community. I was there representing education, a friend was there representing the police. In front of everyone was one of Alan Sugar's Amstrad Computers. A giant box which the Open University had wired to every other computer in the room. Alan, I do wish you had not,given up on computers, if you had stuck with it we would have all been spared the evils of Microsoft. Mr Sugar,  you are far too intelligent to have cursed the world with smart phones.

Anyway, the professor at The Open University stood up to begin his lecture: You may have heard of something new called the Internet.  We all looked blank.  Today I am going to tell you about what we are calling Electronic Mail. As I listened I could not see any point in it, no point at all.

My secretary is pretty good at typing a letter, I explained.

But this is instant, you don't have to wait for the postman to deliver your letter.

We have telephones for that, I sarcastically replied.

But with electronic mail you can attach documents.

Have you never heard of a fax machine ?  (Have you ?)

The professor then set the group members a task to send an electronic mail message to another member of the group. Nobody succeeded. Nobody, not a single one.

OK, yes I will agree that e-mails are good but not when sent from a zombie phone. When it comes to intelligence I do not need a compensatory aid,

I had to attend a meeting in a school a couple of years ago. I went to the reception from where an e-mail was sent to the smart phone of the zombie member of staff I was to meet with. If the role were reversed I would have been in the reception in plenty of time to meet my guest, I would not need some thicko app to call me.

Google, Apple, Microsoft don't we just love to hate you.  Tell me is Twitter installed on a smart phone as standard ?  I mean Twitter is for twits isn't it ?

Installed as standard !  Microsoft has to be the world's most evil company, an institution where customer service are two words never to have entered its lexicon. Take a trip to PC World, another institution thinking customers are just items on its money-making conveyor belt. When you have taken your life into your hands and are inside P C World try to buy a new laptop malfunctioning on Windows. P C World will be very quick to take your money in return for a semi-functioning laptop computer. You will then be asked if you want to purchase the optional extra of Microsoft Office, home or business version.  A Microsoft Windows computer is pretty useless without Office. P C World will happily sell you a package to install yourself or rip you off with an additional fee to do it for you.

Think of it this way. It is like going to a car dealer to buy a car.   You are asked if you would like the optional extra of four wheels. Will you be wanting to pay the dealer even more money to put them on the car for you or will you carry them home and do it yourself ?

Alan Turing, what do you make of this scenario ?

How long before these sad, pathetic smart phone manufacturers adapt their creations to making a phone call an optional extra ?

The Ramblings Of A Silly Old Man - CHAPTER TWO

1967 THE SUMMER OF LOVE

I remember that very first edition of Doctor Who broadcast by The BBC on Saturday 23rd November 1963. It did not achieve much of an audience, President John F Kennedy had been assassinated the day before so everyone was watching the news on the other side, only two channels in those days. That first episode was run again the following week after which Doctor Who became a legend.

I never was a fan of Doctor Who but Back To The Future, the 1985 film. I really did enjoy. Whizzing back to 1895 and H G Wells novel The Time Machine , no I did not find that story particularly inspiring. 

So is time travel possible ?  I once engaged two eminent astro physicists on the subject, their explanation was so academic I do not know if they said yes or no. There are certainly parallel universes but can we move between them ?

My first published book, Peter's Magic Fountain Pen, is a time travel story for children. Other books of mine feature time travel, it fascinates me. The Great Pretender sees Freddie Mercury move between parallel universes. Brian May you have a Phd in the subject, what is your take on this ?

Hey Silly Old Man, that's long enough for and introduction so get on with it will you please ! OK, here goes. If you had a time machine which could go back in time to any date, any location where would you go ?

I would go to San Francisco during The Summer of Love, 1967. I have a very clear reason for setting the time control dials to this destination which after I have rambled on for another thousand or so words I will explain.

July 1965, two years prior to my planned destination, Sonny and Cher had a fabulous hit record with I Got You Babe. With their pre-hippie look the establishment did not think them suitable role models for we teenagers who listened to their music. A scruffy duo who would never achieve anything. How wrong our parents and their generation could have been ? Sony Bono became a politician, as a Republican he was elected to the US House of Representatives. Had he not been tragically killed in a skiing accident in 1998 he may well have become President. Cher is an international icon. So much achieved by a scruffy singing duo.

As my time machine flies to San Francisco I want to explain there is a lot more in my arrogant opinion to being a hippie that flowers and wacky backy. I want us all here now in the third decade of the twenty-first century to learn from, take inspiration from the hippie movement.

I remember 1967 and The Summer of Love so well. I was sixteen going on seventeen years of age. I had left the pointless and wasted years of school behind me and was working in the giant Lewis's Department Store right in the centre of Birmingham, England. Vast, there were more than two thousand members of staff spread across nine floors. I was a management trainee about to take the high street by storm. Management, even at the basic level of a trainee, was dressed smart and business like. Tidy hair, white shirt, sensible (boring) tie, black shoes and a blue suit.  Long hair, tie-dye, sandals  and flowers were a definite NO NO.

A couple of years earlier I had failed a rite of passage in my peer group. When my friends started to smoke I did not like the taste so I never took up the vice. Had I been a hippie and a smoker I would happily have swapped a packet of Embassy King Size for a bit of weed.

In the fashion department of Lewis's Department Store money was made from old people, Carnaby Street had no influence on our sales. However, a buyer thought we should try to cash in on the hippie movement.  Boxes of hippe bells were delivered to the store. But hippies did not wear bells they wore beads !  I do not think we sold a single one. Hippies did not find the city centre of Birmingham. Why should they, they had San Francisco ?

I have been to San Francisco more times that I can actually say. I hope I will go there again before my time is up. Each visit to The City By the Bay I follow the usual touristroute: I walk The Golden gate Bridge, take a Bay cruise, visit Alcatraz - in The Summer of Love - it was still a working prison, Lombard Street, Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf, Coint Tower, Chinatown, ride the cable cars and more. When the time machine lands in San Francisco looking for The Summer of Love we will not find hippies in these locations. The hippies were camped in Golden gate Park which is way off from the waterside. The odd hippie or two may have wandered down to The Bay but it was a very long walk there and an even longer uphill walk back.

The last time I was in San Francisco I dressed as a hippie, tie-dye, sandals and flowers in my long hair. I was the only hippie in the vast Golden Gate Park. As I searched for Hippie Mount the few other people in Golden Gate Park looked on at the Silly Old Man with pity.

In 1967 the vast Golden Gate Park, which then took the name Hippie Park, was packed. I am truly looking forward to being there.

The first time I flew to San Francisco smoking was allowed on aircraft. The moment we entered California air space the No Smoking sign was turned on.The State of California did not allow smoking in its air space. Today you will not find people smoking on the streets of San Francisco but smoking cannabis is perfectly legal.

The Flowerpot Men, that was actually a British group sang, Let's Go To San Francisco. Flowerpot Men, there were those who thought the group took its name from the TV childrens programme The Flowerpot Men. NO !  Flowers as in flowers in your hair. Pot as in cannabis !  Programme controllers at the new Radio Boring aka Radio One never twigged that. Scott McKenzie sang about San Francisco, don't confuse the two.

I want my time machine to be the size of a fleet of jumbo jets, I am planning to being a few thousand hippies back with me to England 2020.

One million, three hundred and fifty-three thousand were killed during The Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands more were injured, death and injuries were significantly higher among innocent civilians than the armed forces on all sides. The hippie movement was a peace and love movement against this war.

The hippie musical Hair does not truly portray the peace and love of the hippie movement although the story ending is very powerful. The music is weak although Hair did give us The Dawning of Aquarius.

My time machine will bring back as many hippies as I can pack inside then head off again to August 1969 to Woodstock, the three day festival in New York State.

Please allow me to ramble and share a couple of anecdotes with you.

After two years I completed my management course at Lewis's Department Store in Birmingham. The Staff Manager thought my career lay in staff training and then staff management. At the age of eighteen I was interviewing school leavers to join the store. That actually features in one of my time story novels but we won't ramble down that road. I liked Mr Harris's idea, he was the staff manager, and from it decided I would change my career path and become a school teacher. Strange that given how much I hated school as a pupil. I secured a position as an unqualified assistant teacher in a boys preparatory school. Aged nineteen I was teaching twelve and thirteen year olds. I was in charge of PE and Games, when the headmaster learned of my love of music he added that to my timetable.

On a school trip to Blenheim Palace the coach passed a sign post near Oxford pointing to Woodstock. The boys got very exited and asked if we could go there. I had to explain it was not the same Woodstock.

Spring 2019, I was in a school speaking with a group of sixth-formers. This lad has a tie-dye shirt which I admired. When I finished telling him I thought he had good tastes he launched into talking about Woodstock. He would have been seventeen years old, Woodtock was thirty-three years before he was born.

The organisers of  the Woodstock pop festival planned for an attendance of thirty thousand. Half a million turned up !

Half a million. Peace and love. As I explained I do not smoke , would not have puffed on cannabis but there was enough in the air for everyone close to the stage to get high.  Two years ago in the Summer of Love The Small Faces sang in Itchycoo Park sang: What did you do there - I got high. Radio Boring you missed that as well didn't you !

Where was I ?

Half a million. Not a fight anywhere at any time during the three days at Woodstock. Nobody was injured in any way. Security was simply peace and love.

Half a million with catering designed for thirty thousand. Instead of complaining about the hippie invasion the local people prepared food in their own homes then the army took everything into the festival.

The Vietnam War ended on 30th April 1970.

I want our time machine to bring back as man of the one million hippies as we can fir inside.

Peace and Love.

Britain, thankfully, kept out of the Vietnam War. The Cold War and the threat of nuclear holocaust have been consigned to history but now more than ever before we are racing at top speed towards Armageddon. We need the hippies.

Before I tell you why I want to import all these hippies to the twenty-first century allow me to ramble something incongruous.

In 2019 there were 8,011 homeless rough-sleepers in San Francisco, an increase of 17% on the previous year. In Milton Keynes, England, where I live the figure given by the local authority is 97. People in England truly care about this situation as it is repeated up and down the country. Yes, ordinary people care. Politicians may say they care but facts speak for themselves - THEY DP NOT. Local authorities are cold-hearted, incompetent and filled with administration systems that does not care.  As I walked about San Francisco it became obvious that the majority of people, ordinary people did not care at all. Authorities were constantly moving them on, sweeping them away like litter on the sidewalk !

I saw one man sitting at a pedestrian crossing. He did not have a begging bowl but was holding a piece of cardboard on which was written:  I do not want money, I need change.

In San Francisco, in any city anywhere in the world sit a homeless person with a piece of cardboard on which you have written: I need a home, can  you  help me ? Then set the stop watch running to time how long before shows him some milk of human kindness. You will have a long wait, a very long wait.

In the same place put a dog on a lead, tie it to a lamppost. Put the piece of cardboard where people can see it. I doubt the dog will have to wait for an hour before he finds his loving home.

What would the hippies fro the 1967 Summer of Love think of this ? What would those a Woodstock think of our twenty-first century ?

Contrast this sad tale with my going into McDonald's on San Francisco's waterfront for breakfast. Curled up on spare seats were homeless rough-sleepers. They had been there all night. As each friend woke up staff were serving hem breakfast. No hurry to leave. each friend simply left when they were ready. I am sue the hippies would thoroughly approve as would the families at Woodstock who made the  food parcels. Could you imagine a branch of McDonald's near where you live showing similar kindness ?

When our hippies reach the third decade of the twenty-first century what will be their reaction ?

They will not find the Vietnam War, no Cold War but they will find a love-void situation in which live our homeless rough-sleeping friends. They will find food banks. Close your eyes and try to picture to picture the incredulity on their faces as they try to understand what a food bank is.

Our time travelers will not  find our politicians any different to those of their day. Greasy pole climbers who have little interest in real people. Indeed I doubt a politician today has any idea what a real person is. 

They will find that same pen-pushers they knew although today they are keyboard rattlers putting ticks in boxes never stopping to think those ticks are real people.

They will find kids in school not being educated but trained under pressure to pass examinations simply in order to put their school in a good position in the league table.  Ticks in boxes.

Once a person reached eighteen years of age local authorities do not recognise adult social care.  Perhaps at the age of ninety-seven and a half a tick may find its way into a box of care.

In their day back at Hippie Park or Woodstock drugs meant a bit of puff to go with the music, that puff today is legal in San Francisco. Drugs today are dangerous and delivered by knife stabbing criminals safely carrying out their evil trade without fear of the police.

They will find commercial charities run as businesses where only the profit actually helps those the charity claims to care for. They will find charity shops where as little as nineteen pence in the pound spent at a charity shop finds its way to those the charity pretends to be at the centre of its operation.

Our hippie time travelers will find a world populated by three times the human  kind animals reared in factory form to be murdered for human consumption. Against this they will find animal welfare organisations trying to generate love for wildlife and domestic pets. How can the two equate.

They will find a world on the eve of destruction, a world facing a far bigger threat of Armageddon than they understood the Vietnam War or the Cold War represented.

They will find greenies pretending that electric vehicles and banning diesel cars are the solution to climate destruction. Claiming these and others without comprehension of the real clause of global warming and the ease of a solution.

They will find blind politicians and box ticking bureaucrats side stepping the issues as they do not fit into their box ticking systems.

We need our time travelers to start a twenty-first century movement of peace and love, peace and love to change the suicidal direction of our society. I will need a very, very, very big time machine to bring so many hippes from The Summer of Love and Woodstock to solve the mes of the twenty-first century. The time machine will need to be big because once you hippies are here I plan to put all blind politicians and all keyboard rattling, red tape generators on a journey through time and space. They are going to the destination first featured in 1963 with Doctor Who, they are going to live with the cavemen ! 

Do not talk - DO !

Since the start of November I have had within my daily radio shows a feature ROCKING FOR THE FOOD BANK, introduces with a little bit of silliness Bananas In Pajamas.

Visiting my local supermarket, Morrissons -Westcroft Milton Keynes, the generosity of customers is there for all to see. Incredible, amazing generosity.

Every gift there and in every collection point anywhere will DIRECTLY benefit someone in need.

Yesterday The Mayor of Milton Keynes confirmed he would be supporting The Sunshine Smile Crew's Lent project A TON OF TINS FOR THE FOOD BANK. Once this silly time of Christmas and the New Year is over we will start planning the series of events to generate one ton of tins. Can we count on YOU ? 

This week more than one hundred people will receive a copy of our SMILE CARD.

Do you work in a hospital ? in 2020 we want to get our card out into as many hospitals as possible to make patients, family, friends, visitors AND staff smile and be happy.

We are initially targeting University Hospital Milton Keynes, Stoke Manderville Hospital in Aylesbury, The Churchill Hospital in Oxford, Luton and Dunstable Hospital. Do you work there ?  Do you work in another hospital ? Can you take cards in for The Sunshine Smile Crew.

Tomorrow, Christmas Day, I will be broadcasting my show live with every track dedicated to a family staying in Ronald McDonald House Birmingham. Every family has a child sick in Birmingham Childrens Hospital.

There are 365 Ronald McDonald Houses attached to hospitals all round the world - The Sun Never Sets On Ronald McDonald. I have picked out houses in ALBERTA Canada, CANBERRA Australia, AUCKLAND New Zealand, NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES in USA. I want to send Smile Cards to every family staying in every house throughout 2020.

Our card is deliberately anonymous, no link back to The Sunshine Smile Crew - the cards are not there to promote what we do - they are there to make people smile and be happy. Without removing this anonymity I want people to sign messages of love on the back, for children to draw some fun pictures. Across 2020 we are going to need a few thousand personalised anonymous cards. How many can your family take to inscribe love on the rear ?


Cards are available every Saturday at Dreamsai's LUNCH OF LOVE. Not many are picked up as regular guests have already taken copies.

We need your help in a few practical ways to build on our Smile Cards at Dreamsai's Lunch of Love.

We are looking for help with:

For the clothes table - jumpers, coats, jogging bottoms, trainers, gloves.

For the Freebie Box - any little bots and pieces - unwanted Christmas gifts guests can take away.

I'd quite like to start a tombola where every ticket is a winner. Any offers of prizes ?

Facebook is full of people TALKING - empty messages. Can I invite those reading this page to stop talking and DO. A few simple things here which need you to DO.

The Ramblings Of A Silly Old Man CHAPTER ONE

THE RAMBLINGS OF A SILLY OLD MAN:

For someone who like to think of himself as a writer I just can not find the words I need to express how I feel about being old. I don’t hate being old but then I do not like it either. I do not worry about when my end will come even if I am far from certain there is anything after that end. I am not sure I actually care. I don’t think my life has been a complete waste of time but I do wish I had achieved a bit more than I have.

At the age of sixty-nine is that considered to be old ?  My grandmother, my Dad’s Mum, lived to be ninety-four. She is the central character in my book The Bridge House, My Mum’s Mum lived to be a few weeks short of her one hundredth birthday. My own Mum and Dad are in their nineties so I guess family history would point towards my having a few years left.

RIDING ALONG IN MY AUTOMOBILE:

I was twenty-six years old when I passed my test and so got my driving license. That document has to be renewed in November 2020 when I reach my seventieth birthday. At twenty-six I remember how I looked at that license and could not comprehend the year 2020 and being seventy years old !  It would never happen.  How I can not comprehend being twenty-six.  I’d quite like to be twenty-six but not the twenty-six I was in my youth but twenty-six in a body with the mind of my present sixty-nine years. Does that make sense ?

The first car I owned after passing my east as a Triumph Herald. A rust bucket I paid £125 for from someone who lived in Hunter Drive, Bletchley if you know where that is. If you don’t then tough luck. Yes, a rust bucket which quite simply a danger to other road users. Now I drive a Jaguar which is a bit like me: it has a powerful engine, a slightly eccentric on-board computer and a bodywork which is knackered.

My dream car has always been a Triumph TR7 sports car. Sadly it has only ever been a dream, I will never proudly have one on my driveway. Even if I do finish writing this book, publish the text and sell a zillion copies I will not buy a classic Triumph TR7 sports car. Yes, I could still fit into the driver’s seat but once there I doubt I could ever get out again. More practical for me would be a Bentley, buy lots of copies of this book so I can afford one. Every day I pass Aston Martin in Newport Pagnell but I have never dreamed of owning one. Nope, I am not a James Bond lookalike. My application for a license to kill was turned down. That has just given me an idea for a story to ramble on about but it will have to wait until later in the book, if I remember.

I used to enjoy driving but now it’s just a process to get form somewhere to somewhere else. How long before it becomes a chore. I know that in time I will dislike being behind the steering wheel, even of a Bentley Continental so I guess I do need to write here a best seller so I can employ a chauffeur.

As this silly old man rambles on can I share a couple of driving experiences with you ? Go on let me ramble and you read.

The Berlin Wall came down on 22^nd December 1989. How weird is that ? I am writing this account on 22^nd December 2019, exactly thirty years later. I shed a tear as I watched the news reports on TV. As Eastern Europe began to open up the eyes of the West fell upon some sad stories.

Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu ordered that families in his country were to have many children so increasing the population. He and his wife, Elena, were executed on Christmas Day 1989. When it became known just how many Romanian children were living in spartan orphanages as their parents simply could not look after them all kinds of people and organisations in Britain sent aid trucks to Romania. I drove one of those trucks.

It must have been around Eater 1990 I guess that this adventure happened. No satellite navigation n those day, maps of Eastern Europe were not particularly accurate. No internet. No Google. No Microsoft – thank goodness. No mobile phones, smart or otherwise. The drive from Milton Keynes England to Budapest Romania, 1,649 miles, was not without incident. As I recall things there were only a few miles without an incident.

I planned the route via France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary and into Romania. What is it they say about the best laid plans of mice and men ? You won’t believe this rambling of a silly old man.

There were three of us driving the truck. Two hours behind the wheel, two hours navigation and two hours resting.

Leaving Milk and Beans – I mean Milton Keynes – we headed for Junction 13 on the M1. It was closed due to an accident. An alternative route via the A5, Saint Albans and London Colney to the M25.

A P&O ferry to Calais. NO. The French were doing some form of protest, as the French do, at the port on their side of the ENGLISH Channel so an alternative boat to Ostend in Belgium, where the natives would not know a protest if it smacked them in the face, was needed. No problem, a nap in a cabin and we were set to start driving in friendly Belgium.

Germany, ah well !  In 1990 there were two German countries – West Germany and The German Democratic Republic of East Germany. The East being the former communist bit. Our route was through West Germany, the lot we whipped in the 1966 Football World Cup. In 1990 England still was not forgiven. If  Big Time Bureaucratic West Germany was the state then god help those in the former communist sector !

Our paperwork was forensically analysed under a microscope, our passports were photocopies with everything faxed to the exit border control with Austria. We were charged an extortionate fee for the inconvenience and hold up. The border guards wore guns so hold up is not a metaphor.

I do not know if it is still the case but driving in Germany in 1990 was different. On the autobahn, the German motorway system, there was no speed limit. Autobahn – do you know the amazing 1970’s recording of Autobahn by Kraftwerk ?  Shut up rambling you silly old man, get on with the story. OK, yes, give me a minute. Where was I ?

Goods vehicles on German roads were, in places, forced to drive only on the inside lane. The right hand lane as Germany drives on the wrong side of the road. This rule applied when crossing a bridge or driving up a steep hill. I am sure the Germans built extra bridges and navigated heir roads up as many hills as possible just to frustrate our journey. We were not in a heavy goods vehicle, we were driving a seven and a half tonner so not subject to the rule but better be safe than sorry we never knew where the German police would be lurking.

All trucks were banned from driving on European roads on Sundays but this bah had been lifted for all aid trucks en route to Romania. There were so many aid trucks heading for Romania, dozens of them. It was obvious which trucks were on this mission, we would flash our headlights and wave to one another.

Planning for the journey, I had taken empty five gallon containers to bus and coach companies, to haulage business and to filling stations where I put operators under pressure to donate fuel, a minimum of five gallons, in these containers. What’s that you are saying: How many litres in a gallon ?  Sod that, we won the Battle of Waterloo so I’ll stick with British measurements not foreign stuff even if we were driving across Europe. In the back of the tyruck we had enough diesel to take us all the way to Romania and a hundred or so miles along the return journey.

Into Austria leaving Germany behind, phew !  Just to remind you England 4 West Germany 2. We spent the night in a local hotel, very nice, before heading in the morning to Hungary. Not so nice.

I remember as a small child saying to my father that Hungary was an odd name for a country. I am guessing  that would have been at the time of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. My father responded saying it was called Hungary because the people there were hungry.

As our aid truck crossed into Hungary we were not aware that Hungarian truck drivers were in dispute with the government over fuel prices. Trucks were blockading the border with Romania. It looked as if our journey was over and e would have to turn round to head for home. Sod that !  How were the other aid trucks getting through ?

I approached a Hungarian trucker and bribed him with $50 US to let us through. Form him that was almost two weeks wages so obviously he did not turn us away. We were taken down a track and into a field. Then another field, and another field and another field until we were in Romania never having seen a border post.

Reaching our destination we unloaded at the orphanage then turned to head back home. Maps came out, we could not go through Hungary so a circular route round the country was needed. That was going to have to be through Yugoslavia, that country does not exist today, Austria, Germany (England 4 West Germany 2), Holland, Belgium and finally France.

On the way to the Yugoslavian border our truck was stopped at gun point by a lone Romanian soldier. Obviously a conscript he looked all of sixteen years old. With the collapse of communism did Romania have an army anymore ?  This lad was freelancing.

In a friendly and polite way but still with his rifle ready the soldier took me to the back of the truck and had me open the shutter. “Oh you are empty !” He said in English – well I can’t speak Romanian can I ! “What can I have ? Orphans get everything, I need something.”

Back at the cab we gave him a few bits and pieces.  Seeing a torch under the drivers seat he picked it up and said, “For me ?”

No way !  We may need that.  I took it out of his hands. He did not shot me, we shook hands and our truck was on its way home.

In Belgrade we were lost. We saw a young man and tried to ask for directions.

“Go down the road, up the hill then take the first right. Go round the roundabout then follow the signs.”

Wow ! Perfect English and perfect geographical knowledge.

Next problem. About ten years earlier while on holiday in Italy I had been on a day visit to communist Yugoslavia. I remembered there were tolls on its motorway system. We had no local currency and did not even know what it was. Fortunately the US dollar, of which we had a good supply, is universal so was accepted both at the toll booth and at the filling station.

Many miles later, and I do mean many miles later, in Calais the French had given up whatever silly nonsense the French delight in, I think it was the fishermen protesting about the size of the holes in their nets, we were on a ferry and back to the calm of British soil, M25 and all !

Honestly, that did happen exactly as I have just told you. Could I do it again today ? I doubt I could even drive the truck to the end of the road.

Originally there was no speed limit on British motorways. It was during the fuel crisis and the three day week of the early 1970’s the government set a 70 mph speed limit to conserve petrol consumption. Although ration books were issued for fuel rationing never actually came into force. Once the fuel crisis was over the speed limit was retained for safety reasons even though any car worth its name could come close to doubling that speed.

In the Spring of 1981 I hired a Ford Granada, what a car that was, to drive to Cornwall. On the M5 south of Bristol I pushed my foot to the floor to see just how fast a Ford Granada could go. It was reaching 102 mph when the cops pulled me over.

“Keep it down to seventy,” the officer said. “You’ll get there just as quick.”

I did not and still do not comprehend his maths.

I was fined £102. Today, driving on the motorway at that speed would mean an instant ban. If I did that, not that I have any intention, I would not need to renew my license whan I reach my 70^th birthday.

I am trying to let my mind scramble across the different countries where I have driven a vehicle. England, of course. Wales and Scotland, are  Wales  and Scotland separate countries ? I guess it depends if Nicola, The Wicked With of The Highlands gets her way or not. What about foreign countries ?  France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Hungary, Romania and what ever Yugoslavia is today. I’ve driven in Albania and I’ve driven in Italy. I’ve driven in American and you don’t get much more foreign than that.

Italy, people say there are some crazy drivers in Italy but I did not find them even if many think the steering wheel operates more efficiently if you sound the horn. Barbados, I’ve not driven there but found road manners to be very courteous. What do you expect, after all they drive on the correct side of the road. They do that in Australia don’t they but it’s a bit too far to go and try it out.

Egypt. I did not drive when I was there. Crazy !  Mad !  Insane ! You would have to combine all three superlatives then triple the sum to get anywhere near to what is accepted as normal driving in Egypt.

Why in the United States of America do they drive on the wrong side of the road ? After all wasn’t America originally part of the British Empire ?  They didn’t have cars then you silly old man ! But they did have hoses, which side of the road did they walk on ? Oh yes, I see they were cowboy horses, cowboy drivers so they used the wrong side of the road.

I have driven widely on the Western side of America. From Los Angeles to San Francisco. From San Diego to the Giant Redwoods. From Las Vegas to Death Valley. From Lake Tahoe to The Grand Canyon. In the California Redwoods one giant tree has a tunnel carved through it, you can actually drive a car through it. I’ve done that. In San Francisco Lombard Street with eight twists is said to be the crookedest road in the world.  I’ve driven down there.

Warning, in America the speed limit is fifty-five miles and hour. Break that and the cops all carry guns.

After two weeks in America I was on board an overnight flight back to England. After hours in the sky I woke up and thought to myself that the Boeing 747 had not flown as far as I had driven during my stay.

For the most part driving in America is boring with long, straight roads. I am not planning to return to America and if I did I am no longer brave enough to tackle driving on the wrong side of the road but I have to say I would quite like to drive along John Denver’s country roads of West Virginia.

Right, that’s enough riding along in my automobile from this silly old man. Where now should I ramble to ? I know !