Bright sunny day with two friends, Rob and Margaret, who came from Worcester to walk with us. We discussed the numbers of our friends who are ill or dying.
I asked Margaret if she knew the five regrets of the dying.
I listed them three years ago in my commentary, but perhaps supporters might like to be reminded. They came from a book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” by Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse from Brisbane. She had nursed hundreds of the dying, and she asked some of them if they minded her summarising their final regrets in a book: they agreed.
The first regret is the wish that they had worked in jobs they wanted to do instead of being forced into jobs that their parents wanted them to do. For example poet John Betjeman wanted to be a poet while his parents wanted him to run a shop! Luckily for us all, John won.
The next regret was that they had been so driven at work, when they retired, they found they never had time to enjoy themselves, and they were disliked and had few real friends.
The third was that, as they had worked so hard, they had allowed their few most treasured friends to drift away.
The fourth was that they had never told the people they loved that they loved them. Apparently, some men find expressing emotion to their sons particularly difficult.
Last, when they woke in the morning, they had never realised what a privilege it was to be alive, and it was not just another boring day.
The Great British Giveaway
As you pay your tax bill, consider this.
Your government has given tens of thousands of your dosh to the transgender charity Mermaids. Yet, according to a Charity Commission inquiry last year, Mermaids wrongly claimed that puberty blockers were reversible, and gave chest binders to children as young as 13 – often against their parents’ wishes. Even more disturbingly, one of its trustees gave a speech at a conference organised by what the Commission described as a “paedophile support group”. It seems your taxes are supporting depravity – shame on you!
Now to the total waste of your money. The Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded £841,830 to a study titled “The Europe that Gay Porn built” – nice that, isn’t it? Then a hefty £759,253 went to “Comics and Race in Latin America”, and let’s not forget the £123,470 awarded to the initiative “Decolonising South-East Asia Sound Archives”. Meanwhile, the Department for Business allocated £200,000 to Shanghai to “foster creativity in Chinese communities” – plus the same again to fund all-female Yue Opera performances for urban viewers on social media.
Oh yes, I almost forgot – we are handing £133 million to deeply corrupt Pakistan, and £33 million to India – a nation that can famously afford its own space programme. And let’s not overlook the £13 million going to South Africa – the weather is mighty nice there at this time of the year.
Go on… pay your tax bill and smile. It’s only money!
Mind Your Language
And now to political correctness…
The National Farmers’ Union has declared the phrase “farmer’s wife” to be inappropriate. And the word “sick note” has been cancelled – instead, it’s referred to as a “fit note”.
You couldn’t make it up…