Sweet Little Lies

Greetings from a cold but sunny South Manchester. Sadly, summer has departed for another year and, as I stare out of the window, I can see blue sky, white clouds and a light breeze making the trees wave to me. That breeze is chilly though and when I went for my walk this morning there was frost on my car.

Since my last post I’ve been abroad twice. First I went to Skiathos in Greece where I tasted the end of summer with temperatures of about 30 degrees Celsius (about 86 degrees Fahrenheit). Skiathos is lovely and very scenic and, of course the place where the “Mamma Mia!” movie was shot. And boy did I know it. There were numerous boat trips where the customers were subjected to trips to the adjacent island of Skopelos just to see a chapel that featured in the movie while being serenaded by Abba. I had to do this trip too because Mrs PM insisted on it. It was fun though because it wasn’t all Abba related. For example, we found an exclusive beach that we could only get to by boat and we got to explore Skopelos Town.

My second trip was a weekend in Budapest with my old mates from university. This year marks the 40th anniversary of leaving Liverpool University and the five of us spent four days reminiscing about those good old days while exploring this magnificent city. I’ve been there before but I forgot how lovely the place is. I would recommend going to Budapest but don’t bother trying to learn Hungarian – it is such a difficult language to understand.  For example, the Hungarian for:

“I really enjoyed walking around Budapest today. I saw a lot of historical sites and had an enjoyable day strolling by the river.”

is

“Nagyon élveztem ma Budapesten sétálni. Sok történelmi helyszínt láttam, és egy kellemes napot töltöttem a folyóparton sétálva.”

and the only word I could even guess is the word for "Budapest". 

Shall we answer some silly questions from Sunday Stealing? 

1. What do you hope your last words will be?

I hope they are something amusing like these from Oscar Wilde:

“This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.”

I’d like to think they would be something like:

“You know I love travelling; I’m off to somewhere incredible now. I'll try to come back as a ghost and tell you what it's like.”

2. What do you spend the most time thinking about?

That’s a difficult question. Apparently there is a myth that most men spend their time thinking about women and sex and while that may have been true for younger men, I can’t say that is true now at the age of 62 (it was my birthday on 8th October). 

At the moment I am thinking about how I can make the most out of my new retired status. It’s been difficult so far because I’ve been quite busy with trips and sorting stuff out but hopefully I will be able to focus on things between now and Christmas. 

3. What is something you can never seem to finish?

A novel. I have started one and I even have the ending in my head but I have been procrastinating a little because writing a novel is really hard. Now I am retired I need to focus on it a little but I also have another book idea going on at the same time – a kind of memoir based on my travel experiences. It is much easier to write non-fiction so I must try to prevail in my ongoing war against procrastination.

4. What mistake do you keep making again and again?

I usually try to learn from mistakes and it can be frustrating when you don’t. When it comes to life choices I’m pretty good at that but when you are learning a new discipline, you have to learn to overcome such mistakes. For example, when learning a language, the grammar is tough to learn and I find that there are certain idioms and language structures that set traps for me to fall into repeatedly. Similarly when trying to play the piano, there are certain tunes that are more difficult than others and I find that I repeat mistakes sometimes. 

But you know what they say: “Practice makes perfect”. 

5. What’s the best thing you got from your parents?

That would be life itself. I am eternally grateful that the fates conspired to set up the perfect circumstances for Mother Nature to allow me to pop into existence. 

In terms of personality, I am quite laid back like my father was but I can be quite stubborn and determined like my mother. 

6. What’s the best and worst thing about getting older?

The best thing about getting older is that my experience has made me wiser and made me care less about things that used to irritate me when I was younger.

The worst thing is watching the slow decline of my body. 

I once wrote a blog post about this very subject back in 2018:

The Pros and Cons of Growing Old 

7. What do you wish your brain was better at doing?

Learning a new language. They say when you are younger, your brain is like a sponge that can retain knowledge and the way a child can pick up a new language is amazing. I used to be quite good at languages when I was a kid. I learned Latin, French and German to the point where, at the age of about 16, I could actually talk to a Frenchman, a German and, had I met one, a Roman Centurion.

Now the basics of French and German are there but I have lost a lot of what I learned and it is much tougher to learn Spanish from scratch than it was with the other two. But I am kind of there. I just wish my brain retained the information better. 

8. If your childhood had a smell, what would it be?

That would probably be sweets and chocolate. 

9. What have you created that you are most proud of?

During my time as a software engineer, I wrote some pretty good software that has made me proud.

It is time to give you a hint about what I did. 

I worked for a company that supplied systems to airports. I worked on and wrote software for Flight Information systems, Airport Management systems, Baggage Reconciliation systems and Resource Management systems and I see the fruits of my labour at many airports in the world. For example, my company supplied the Flight Information system to Budapest airport so when I was there last weekend, I pointed out to my colleagues that without my software all of the displays would be blank. 

I’m proud of that. 

There a quite a few airports worldwide that have software that I have written and there is a chance that you, dear reader, may have experienced that.

I’m also proud of creating this blog.  

10. What were some of the turning points in your life?

There have been many: 

Passing an exam to get me into the best school in Walsall.

Passing my A-Levels to get me into Liverpool University.

Graduating from Liverpool University with an Honours Degree.

Moving to Manchester and starting a job there. 

Getting married and buying my first house. 

Having two wonderful boys.

Getting divorced.

Meeting Mrs PM.

Paying off my mortgage.

Retiring (just starting down this path). 

11. What song or artist do you like but rarely admit to liking?

That would probably be A-ha, the Norwegian pop band who were really successful in the 1980s and 1990s. There are still around and they used to be like a boy band in many ways and in their heyday they had loads of female fans screaming at them, something that made me embarrassed to admit that I liked them. Despite them being heartthrobs for teenage girls, I thought (and still think) that musically they are amazing. 

I’ve even seen them live – and I loved them.

Here is one of my favourite songs by the band. 

I’m happy to admit I like them but I rarely do.

12. What small impact from a stranger made a big impact on you?

Nothing leaps to mind at the moment. There’s plenty of time for that to happen I guess.

13. As you get older, what are you becoming more and more afraid of?

I’m afraid of truth being distorted, post-truth and fake news. A lot of society’s ills and the slow decline of world peace in the 21st century are the result of people lying and others believing those lies. 

We see it a lot at elections and referenda but in the past twenty or so years this is getting worse and leading to terrible consequences. We have seen it in the UK with the Brexit debacle and it surfaces whenever there is an election. Take Boris Johnson for example. He has thrived on telling massive lies and, thankfully, he has been found out. But he still denies that he lies and people still believe him.

Across the pond we have Donald Trump who lives in a fantasy world. His lies led to the storming of the Capitol Building and there are so many people who believe that the last election was “stolen” that he is going to get millions of votes and could even be president again.

With the advent of social media, people are believing any old nonsense they read and see. They say that if you continue to repeat a lie then people will believe it eventually and social media is a huge quagmire of total bullshit. This has led to a rise in conspiracy theorists who, when challenged, seem to dig in and fortify their flawed positions. Don’t get me wrong; I love a conspiracy theory and they have been around for decades. The problem is now that such conspiracy theories are gaining momentum. Just look at the rise in the number of people who believe that the Earth is flat for example. 

It's a dangerous precedent and while it doesn’t give me sleepless nights, I do think that common sense is being compromised and replaced by absolute bullshit. 

14. What are some of the events in your life that made you who you are?

See my answer to question 10.

15. What could you do with $2 million to impact the most amount of people?

At the time of writing, $2,000,000 is worth about £1,530,416. It doesn’t make any difference; it is still a very large sum of money and could make a lot of difference to a lot of people. 

There is a big problem with homeless people in the UK and we often see such people on the streets of major UK cities, including Manchester. I would probably try to donate that money to a charity that helps such people.