by
Frank Hatton

To all of you dear souls who wrote to say they had missed my scribblings, I offer my humble apologies. I have had, and am still having a problem with my hands, it's a condition known as Dupuytren disease, and it causes the fingers to bend over towards the palm. As you can imagine, this makes my endeavours at the typewriter keyboard difficult to say the least, but, there is a side effect which is interesting...... Many moons ago, when I was serving in His Majesty's army, ( yes, I did say 'his,' and yes, I'm talking about WW11 in the forties) I got used to washing my face without the aid of a face cloth. I just soap my hands, and then rub my hands over my face, after which, again using only my hands, I slosh water to rinse off the soap. Now, in the past, this has never been a problem, and I swear that I have always been regarded as a clean, wholesome, sweet smelling individual. However, now that I temporarily have this bent finger dilemma, I have discovered a really dangerous, life threatening situation, every time I attempt my ablutions...... Y'see, where in the past, my hands used to glide smoothly over my manly countenance, I now find that these projecting fingers find every possible orifice and obstruction they can. The number of times my fingers have gone deep into my nostril, causing considerable pain, and have also made a serious attempt to poke my eye out, is beyond counting. sooooo, you can believe me when I say that the sooner I get these fingers back to normal, and under control, the better. Hopefully, I will be under the knife soon, and get it sorted out.

Now, we really must get on to a more cheerful subject, and what could be better than Charlie Brown of 'Peanuts' fame. The strip I saw today was on the subject of Charles's grandpa, who, as a young child had been put on medication in the form of baby aspirin, and now as an old man, grandpa had been advised by his cardiologist to take a baby aspirin every day...... grandpa feels that he is not making any progress in life!!! As all observations have a meaning, we now come to the subject of one of our newer motorway sections. It is around eight miles long, and was hailed as a breakthrough in road construction. Built at a cost of some £100 million ($160 million) and only opened about four months ago, it has now developed craters and cracks, and is causing concern on it's safety,.....while a temporary repair has been applied, it will cost many more millions of pounds to put right. Now,.... you know as well as I do, just how long the world has been engaged in the technology of building motorways/freeways/autobahns, and all the other names applied to this type of construction. How on earth is it possible to be making this sort of mistake?????

I've just realised how easy it is to sink into bitter recriminations about events one reads about in the newspapers. There are all sorts of items there about the 'true Monica Lewinsky', the decline of the former Rhodesia, (now Zimbabwe) into an economic nightmare, plus all of the subterfuge going on in our political arena...... so, if I may craftily shift the blame on to the frustrations with my finger problem, we will move on to more acceptable subjects.

Since finishing that last paragraph, we have had visitors. Namely, my daughter, son-in-law, and my five year old grandson Jack. I think I may have mentioned that they have moved house, and are now located only four or five miles from us, hence, we get them 'popping in' on a fairly frequent basis. While my wife talks to them, Jack and I have been engaged in a sword fight. He naturally takes the star role of Peter Pan or Robin Hood, whilst I am alternately either Captain Hook or the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham. He always comes equipped with two swords, and leaps around our house brandishing one of the weapons, until I admit defeat. He insists that I lose the battle, because "that's how it happens in the story Papa". I get the feeling that should I try to change this ruling, I will be demoted to the role of Nana the dog. Certainly my life has changed considerably since they moved to our area just before Xmas. I have become their odd job man. The range of work has covered, putting up shelves, changing light fittings, covering three rooms with new wooden flooring, clearing out their garage,.... it just goes on and on. Seriously though, I truly enjoy the work, it keeps me interested, and my wife assures me that the exercise is doing me good. There is a temporary respite, due to my finger problem, but, as soon as I get back to normal, it will be back to work.

A couple of days back, I read a little item in my newspaper about a British policeman, on holiday in New York. The guy was a detective Inspector, and attached to the metropolitan (London) police. As you probably know, our police do not carry firearms in the normal course of their duties, So, when our bloke saw these two armed robbers carrying out a robbery, his natural instinct was to get involved. Anyway, he was fired at by one of the bad guys, but he chased them until he saw a police patrol car, and then joined the New York police guys in the car and continued the chase until they caught and arrested the baddies. He was commended by the police chief, and it gave me a nice quiet glow of satisfaction to read this episode.

Can I now ask all of you good folk to get out your handkerchiefs and stand by to shed a couple of tears...... I am absolutely frustrated with the number of times I have to rewrite words and sentences, due to this blasted finger problem I have.... so, I am now going to end this small offering, and hope that I will be back to normal in the not too distant future.

Look after yourselves,

'Til next time,
Frank Hatton

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