This month the indoor critic and I will have been married for 44 years.
Reflecting on this I find myself wondering where the time and the money went.
Certainly raising a family of four, spending six months in the USA with a young family, and just the general business of getting through life, usually meant that in most months there was more of the month left after the money ended.
Usury played its part.
Not that I was a usurer but the introduction of debt cards, AKA Credit Cards, around about the time we got married, seemed to offer the impossible dream of unlimited funds with no pain, wrong of course, but that's usury for you.
Still it's not been a bad 44 years, the usual mix of tears and joy, with a few arguments and a few shared jokes and some very fine moments of which the finest was probably four years ago when we invited our children, their partners and their families to lunch to celebrate our Ruby wedding.
It was a great occasion, one we remember with great satisfaction.
November is also the month when my mother was born and when she died.
Born in 1917 she was 63 years of age when she died in 1980, the year that our youngest child was born.
It was only when we had the photographs taken at his christening developed and enlarged that we realised how ill she had looked, even though at that time she was still working, commuting daily to an office in the centre of Manchester.
Her premature death came as a direct consequence of a wrongly diagnosed breast cancer in her late forties.
So what has any of this to do with the big society?
I guess its because we can only ever view the big society through the lens of how it impacts on our own lives.
If the big society is real and capable of doing what the Prime Minister claims it can do for society then we have to ask what difference will it make to my life, my family, my community?
And the answer usually amounts to a j'accuse against governments and society at large.
It never occurred to me to read Barrack Obama's book, but I stumbled across it by accident on a web-site, read the first 44 pages, was hooked and immediately went out and bought the paper back from Oxfam.
It is a fascinating, intriguing, shocking and compelling story.
As I was reading I noticed that George Osborne had an article in my Newspaper comparing the Tory led coalition with the Democrats under Obama.
No, not really, there is no comparison,, Osborne's specious, self serving comments, bear no comparison with the vision set out in the Obama book.
This Tory Led coalition, with the equally self serving motives of the Liberal's led by Clegg, is in the business of keeping things as they are, not changing anything, keeping the poorest in their place, not giving them a stake in the democratic process, ensuring that the only voices heard in the public square, speak with their accents.
I try to keep things as light as possible in this blog.
It aims to offer a wry look at the big society.
It is as easy to blame the coalition for so much of what is wrong as it is for the coalition to blame the last Labour Government, but that would be equally untrue.
Over our 44 years, over the life of my parents, party politics has failed us equally.
As a youngster in Stoke on Trent in 1964, I campaigned as an Anarchist with the slogan Politics Out, that was the year when the Conservatives lost to Labour led by Harold Wilson.
I can claim no credit for the outcome, because it was also the year, despite the hopes and aspirations of supporters of the Labour Party, when the Millenium was postponed indefinitely and politics were most definitely in.
The current crises facing the coalition with the great estates of the Media, the BBC, Parliament itself being subject to increased scrutiny and public disquiet, with Banking and Financial services equal under critical scrutiny, with MP's choosing to abandon their constituents for a quieter life, still being found with their hands in the till of mysterious expense claims or appearing with other self proclaimed celebrities in a jungle near you, it is hard to discover where common sense has gone.
As a friend of mine would doubtless observe they're all barking.
Just as the USA is seeking to de-politicise its policing and its public services, we are electing political Commissioners for Police and Crime and firing Civil Servants in an attempt to create more biddable departments who will carry out more directly the wishes of ministers.
George Osborne and David Cameron's principal aim is to be re-elected.
I would so much prefer it to be to serve the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.
After 44 years the indoor critic and I have reached a stage of companionable silence and so we set our sights lower, simply to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.
Reflecting on this I find myself wondering where the time and the money went.
Certainly raising a family of four, spending six months in the USA with a young family, and just the general business of getting through life, usually meant that in most months there was more of the month left after the money ended.
Usury played its part.
Not that I was a usurer but the introduction of debt cards, AKA Credit Cards, around about the time we got married, seemed to offer the impossible dream of unlimited funds with no pain, wrong of course, but that's usury for you.
Still it's not been a bad 44 years, the usual mix of tears and joy, with a few arguments and a few shared jokes and some very fine moments of which the finest was probably four years ago when we invited our children, their partners and their families to lunch to celebrate our Ruby wedding.
It was a great occasion, one we remember with great satisfaction.
November is also the month when my mother was born and when she died.
Born in 1917 she was 63 years of age when she died in 1980, the year that our youngest child was born.
It was only when we had the photographs taken at his christening developed and enlarged that we realised how ill she had looked, even though at that time she was still working, commuting daily to an office in the centre of Manchester.
Her premature death came as a direct consequence of a wrongly diagnosed breast cancer in her late forties.
So what has any of this to do with the big society?
I guess its because we can only ever view the big society through the lens of how it impacts on our own lives.
If the big society is real and capable of doing what the Prime Minister claims it can do for society then we have to ask what difference will it make to my life, my family, my community?
And the answer usually amounts to a j'accuse against governments and society at large.
It never occurred to me to read Barrack Obama's book, but I stumbled across it by accident on a web-site, read the first 44 pages, was hooked and immediately went out and bought the paper back from Oxfam.
It is a fascinating, intriguing, shocking and compelling story.
As I was reading I noticed that George Osborne had an article in my Newspaper comparing the Tory led coalition with the Democrats under Obama.
No, not really, there is no comparison,, Osborne's specious, self serving comments, bear no comparison with the vision set out in the Obama book.
This Tory Led coalition, with the equally self serving motives of the Liberal's led by Clegg, is in the business of keeping things as they are, not changing anything, keeping the poorest in their place, not giving them a stake in the democratic process, ensuring that the only voices heard in the public square, speak with their accents.
I try to keep things as light as possible in this blog.
It aims to offer a wry look at the big society.
It is as easy to blame the coalition for so much of what is wrong as it is for the coalition to blame the last Labour Government, but that would be equally untrue.
Over our 44 years, over the life of my parents, party politics has failed us equally.
As a youngster in Stoke on Trent in 1964, I campaigned as an Anarchist with the slogan Politics Out, that was the year when the Conservatives lost to Labour led by Harold Wilson.
I can claim no credit for the outcome, because it was also the year, despite the hopes and aspirations of supporters of the Labour Party, when the Millenium was postponed indefinitely and politics were most definitely in.
The current crises facing the coalition with the great estates of the Media, the BBC, Parliament itself being subject to increased scrutiny and public disquiet, with Banking and Financial services equal under critical scrutiny, with MP's choosing to abandon their constituents for a quieter life, still being found with their hands in the till of mysterious expense claims or appearing with other self proclaimed celebrities in a jungle near you, it is hard to discover where common sense has gone.
As a friend of mine would doubtless observe they're all barking.
Just as the USA is seeking to de-politicise its policing and its public services, we are electing political Commissioners for Police and Crime and firing Civil Servants in an attempt to create more biddable departments who will carry out more directly the wishes of ministers.
George Osborne and David Cameron's principal aim is to be re-elected.
I would so much prefer it to be to serve the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.
After 44 years the indoor critic and I have reached a stage of companionable silence and so we set our sights lower, simply to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.
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