White Haired Woman

(besides Charles and Diana’s wedding)

I was 38 with a teen-age daughter and a teaching job. It was the summer holidays when teachers and pupils get six weeks off. Veronica* was approaching her 17th birthday and studying for A-levels. One of her teachers was going on an archaeological dig in the West Midlands and her students were allowed to apply for a chance to join the dig, as well. When I heard about it I immediately asked whether I could go, too. It was arranged that Veronica, Betty and I could join the dig for a week!

By the weekend before our departure for a place we’d never been to, I hadn’t received the directions to the dig or any other information. I knew that we would have bed and board – I had paid what I thought was quite a small amount for it – but no addresses! Nevertheless, on the day of departure, we duly departed.

We arrived at Victoria Coach Station, bought tickets to our destination and took our seats in the right coach. When we arrived in the nearest town to the dig, we disembarked, stretched and then wondered how we were going to find out where we were meant to be going. In the end I asked a taxi driver if he knew where the dig was taking place and, though he didn’t know about the dig there, he recognised the name of the hill where it was. He dropped us near to the hill and we started walking along the road trying to find someone – anyone – who could tell us where to go.

After some loooooong minutes (half and hour? more?) we met a young woman walking along this deserted road. Thank goodness! She not only knew where we should go, she was taking part in the dig! I can’t actually remember now how long it took to get to the dig (work had finished for the day!) nor can I remember how we managed to get to the disused army camp that was to be our home for the next week – but, we did!

That week was definitely not a holiday – but we enjoyed almost every minute of it. The accommodation was more basic than most older women in their 30’s would expect – a bed in a room with 10 or 12 others as I recall (I may be remembering it better – or worse – than it was!). We had cooking duty and washing-up duties; I remember that the kitchen sink was surrounded by a very strange smell which I imagined was some sort of fungal growth somewhere. Ugh!

But the actual archaeological work was really great, although exceedingly tough on the knees and the sun shone brightly giving Veronica sunburn on the parting in her hair! She was moved to ‘finds’duty – cleaning those items found in the sweepings made by those of us who were on our knees, brushing the earth with our trowels and our hands, looking for small items which would be otherwise lost until another year and another dig. Her job was under cover and she was safe from the blistering sun. I didn’t find anything much but I remember the girl next to me found some stone items which had been part of a loom, I believe.

My clearest memory of the hours spent digging is of absolutely nothing to do with archaeology, though. We were working near the edge of the top of the hill and there was a gentle drop in front of us, leading to a valley quite far below. I was suddenly aware of the noise of an airplane and, looking up, saw a small air force? plane heading directly towards me!!! I have always been frightened of airplanes, at least travelling in one, but had never imagined being dive-bombed by a plane, but, that day, it seemed that I was going to be crashed into by some maniac in a plane.

I had no time to run but must have looked like a lunatic for a moment or two as I hunched down close to the ground and closed my eyes but, instead of being splatted by a noisy engine and tons of metal, the plane suddenly swooped away!

It turned out that the pilot’s wife was working at the dig and he was just saying hi to her in this wacky way. We occasionally saw similar planes below us flying down the valley – we were near an air force airfield where pilots were training.

Because we hadn’t received the instruction papers before we left Kent, we missed the vital things that they wanted to let us know before we left home – like, we should bring long trousers because of ticks and snakes; we should bring kneeling pads because of the wear and tear on knees; we would be having the usual day off – the Wednesday of the week.

Since we didn’t know about the ticks and snakes we happily played rounders in the long grass – until someone who had received the instructions, told us why we shouldn’t really be running about there. We quit that game! After that we mainly stayed inside in the evenings, playing games, reading etc.

On the day off we went into the nearest big town with nothing planned. We must have known that that Wednesday was the day of the Wedding Of The Year – Prince Charles and Lady Diana. None of us was particularly worried about not watching the wedding on tv – although we did see a bit of it as we walked past a tv shop showing the wedding in the shop’s window. I have to admit that I really don’t remember what else we did on that Wednesday but we probably ate something pleasant, maybe bought some sweets or ice creams, some magazines and then went back to the camp. After the following two days, we made our way back to the large town where we boarded a coach which took us back to Victoria and the train back to East Malling, where we probably all collapsed happily into our comfy beds after watching something ridiculous on telly!

I told the girls I wanted to go back every summer. I can’t remember what they thought about that, but, in the end, that was my only ‘dig’. That autumn, I met Julian and my life took a different turn and my summers were too full of other things.

* Veronica and Betty are pseudonyms.

Today is the second day in a row that the cold north east wind has ceased to blow on our little Isle of Thanet. It seemed like everyone in the UK was enjoying warm and sunny weather during the last month or so. Here, we have had long days of sunshine but accompanied by a wind straight from the North Pole!

Yesterday morning I walked into the conservatory and found that the temperature was 30°C! What a change from the day before when it was 17°. I’ve been using the conservatory more over the past month or so but, even with the sun shining outside, it wasn’t warm enough for short sleeves.

I started this post partly because someone had a look at my archives earlier today. It’s not exactly unknown but it’s always pleasant to see. Today’s person, unlike all the others who have looked at something I have written, comes from an ‘unknown’ place!

I’m fascinated when I find that I’ve had views from places like Bangladesh, China, Finland and other non-English speaking countries. I try to work out why, for example, 3 different people in China would look at a certain post on the same day. Usually, I come to the conclusion that my posts are being used for English lessons – and that’s great. It must mean that my writing is useful.

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I started writing this post a week or so ago. It feels like each day has arrived hotter than the previous day which has ended up being way too hot for Lola and me! I have spent most of those days indoors where it is reasonably cool – no air-con, just an Edwardian house aided by the sea breezes and open doors and windows.

One afternoon I ventured into the garden and put out my reclining garden chair. I had to put the garden umbrella up and tilt it in such a way that my head and most of my body was in shade so I could read but, 10 minutes was enough!

I think age has something to do with this dislike of heat. When I was a child, living in Ohio which was hot and humid in the summers, I loved playing out in the sunshine. Unlike Judy who had the palest of pale skins, I have skin which always looks slightly tanned – I think it’s called ‘olive’. Where Judy would burn from just a few minutes in the sunshine, I could spend all day and only get slightly more tan. (Jennie, on the other hand, tanned beautifully, without trying!)

A few more days have passed and it is still too blooming hot! Apparently, it will cool down a bit either tomorrow or the next day – not soon enough for me and for Lola who spends most of her time lying on the ground, panting or lying on a chair, panting.

Well, this old lady is going to venture into the garden now to give the plants a bit of encouragement.

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Aaaaannnnnd, it’s now July and, as it always does, the British weather has changed again. Last night it rained fairly heavily for about 6 hours – no need to water the plants today! Perhaps the rain was connected to Storm Poly which has hit the Netherlands with strong winds and masses of rain as we’re not too far from that part of Europe, here in Thanet. Veronica and her fella were off to Amsterdam for a quick visit and arrived at St. Pancras this morning to find that no trains are running to (or in) Holland!

The garden has looked really pretty this spring and early summer. Our ‘flower meadow’ (a triangular shape in the centre of the garden filled with wild flowers) has been stunning with loads of pink flowers a few weeks ago followed by loads of big daisies. They’re dying back now and the triangle will look a bit blah for a while but there are seeds galore for the birds – and a few teasels, which will produce some amazing flowers which the bees love.

When I was was about 10, my great-grandma Weller (also known to us youngsters as The Great Weller), died. She was about 93 and had spent at least the last part of her life with diabetes. I knew her as a slim old lady who sat in her chair by the window with a blanket over her knees. She always wore an aquamarine and platinum ring and one day, when I was still very young (3?, 4?) she said, “When I die, this ring will be yours.”

When I was slightly older, (5 or 6) I was sitting on her lap and asked her, “When are you going to die?” I was really keen on owning that ring! Needless to say, I was not given that ring when she died but, when I was around 18, it finally came my way. By that time I had realised that I was far too young to wear such a big and expensive ring, preferring my Mexican Wedding ring which I had bought when we were in California – just a plain silver band set with chips of turquoise. That ring stayed with me until I foolishly gave it to the boy I was going out with and he ‘lost’ it. (Looking at you, Dennis!) Since then, I have rarely worn a ring except, for a few years before my wedding ring finger got too fat!

That is all beside the point, really. We’re talking about the age of 80.

My grandmother and my mother both went on to reach 80, then 90, though neither of them was as mentally competent as The Great Weller by the time they left their 80’s.

Because almost all my female relatives on my mother’s side have lived into their 90’s, there’s a chance that I will, as well. Now that I’ve reached 80 (!OMG!), I can almost imagine going the full way or even passing 92 or 93. But, do I want to?

I’m really of two minds about it. On the one hand, it means that I would be alive to see another 12 or 13 years of advances in science and art; alive to paint more abstracts (I’ve given up trying to paint figuratively!); alive to read more; alive to see Lola get old; alive to see the beauty in the world – and, sadly, the ugliness.

On the other hand, getting older has meant my legs are not able to walk so far or dance so much. It has meant, too, losing a lot of hair, gaining wrinkles where there was until recently only smooth skin, and having odd pains suddenly jabbing me then vanishing, only to reappear somewhere else a bit later. It also means becoming, once again, scared of the near future when the authoritarian heads of one or more countries have intimated that they may – or may not – spread their warlike tentacles into the places where I and my loved ones live for the least valid of reasons. (I won’t even mention the ridiculous would-be authoritarians who are stealing liberties and banning books in the name of Jesus Christ (poor Jesus!)

And, of course there’s climate change and all that means! Living in the UK, we seem to be having a slightly longer cold period of winter and, if last July and August are anything to go by, the hideous HOT of summer temperatures in the 30’s. (For you Fahrenheit people out there, that’s high 80’s/90’s.) Just at the moment, the last day of April, 2023, the temperatures in the south of Spain are threatening to go up to 40C – 104F and, presumably, it’s all going to get worse!

I can’t imagine not being alive but, unless death is only a new beginning to something really wonderful, (and nobody’s going to tell me with great authority that it is) I guess I’d like to stay alive as long as I can!

I remember my 20th birthday party. I reached that age while we still lived in our ‘luxury flat’ in Bayswater. Really, my party consisted of my family and my friend Shaun. My boyfriend had broken up with me earlier in the year and I was still trying to get over him. I remember having a gin and tonic, then lying on the floor in quite a depressed state. Shaun said she thought she could get Lance Percival to come to the party. I thought that might cheer me up so she rang his number and left a message inviting him. He never turned up, nor did he ring up. I carried on being depressed – and gave up gin for the next 50 years!

My 21st birthday was completely different. By this time I had met and fallen for a totally unsuitable man. He didn’t have a job, still lived at home though he was 28, and told lies very easily. Though he changed my life completely, I really only knew him for a couple of months. Now, remember, I lived in “Swinging London” and was a modern young woman (who still believed that a woman’s future was with a man who would love her and look after her for ever and ever, Amen.)

The relationship ended before my 21st birthday (see below) – though his mum would have been happy to be a grandma. He ended that year by “borrowing a car without the owner’s permission” and spending a few months in jail. He ‘borrowed’ the car, apparently, from his new girlfriend. Not sure how long that relationship had lasted but it ended quite quickly!

I was pregnant. I had to hide it from my job – I would probably have lost my job if the bosses knew. I hid it from my family for about two and a half months but they finally had to be told. Judy was furious with me, Jennie was a bit confused, I think, and Patty…..was Patty. She made me feel worse than I already felt. I had been brought up in small town America where “good” girls didn’t lose their virginity until they were married (at least that’s what EVERYONE said). I had already spent several weeks thinking it wasn’t possible that I was pregnant but I was! Abortions were illegal but happened. Personally, I didn’t want an abortion. I had no idea what having a baby might mean but I knew that I couldn’t “get rid” of it. (At that time I had no idea that it was a girl.)

Patty being Patty was determined that I should have an abortion and found a doctor who would carry out the procedure safely. I went with Patty to his office and she discussed my ‘problem’ with him, then he asked her to leave while he examined me – and I told him that I wanted to carry on with the pregnancy. That doctor was a hero! He lied to Patty that I was too far gone for it to be safe, and we went home. A few weeks went by. Life went on. On the 17th of April, 1964, my 21st birthday, I went to work as usual and on my way home bought my mother a bunch of flowers to say thanks for giving birth to me.

The flowers were wasted! When I got home there was a terrible panic! Patty had decided not to go to work and started drinking in the early afternoon – or even the late morning. She put a load of washing in the semi-automatic washing machine. Semi-automatic meant that you had to wheel the machine over to the sink, put the ‘in’ hose on the tap and drape the ‘out’ hose over the sink, then turn on the water so it would fill the machine and turn it off before it overflowed. Patty forgot the turning off bit.

She went into the lounge and had a bit more to drink then realised that there was a dripping noise coming from the kitchen. She ran into the kitchen, saw the machine overflowing ——and didn’t know how to stop it! Eventually she called a repairman who came fairly quickly, took one look and turned off the tap. I wasn’t there yet and don’t know if he charged her for the call out or whether he felt sorry for her.

When I got home the hall carpet was soaking wet and – much worse – the water had overflowed through the ceiling into the flat below! Luckily, the people in the flat below were way for several weeks. No one ever seems to have said anything! Or maybe they did but I never was told.

Of course the baby turned out to be my own bundle of joy, ‘Veronica’, and the entire family loved her from the moment she was born (I loved her from well before that!)

My next, and latest, birthday party was just over a week ago. Veronica was in charge of it all. She chose a venue, the menu, the wonderful cup cakes with my face on rice paper on the top and the decorations. (Bunting with my photo on!) I had to give her the email addresses and names of all the people I could think of from the friends I’ve made in Broadstairs to the people I went to college with – including the young man who broke my heart back when I was not quite 19, and another young man from even further back than that. I invited my cousin Fred and his wife Linda who came all the way from Georgia USA, and my brothers-in-law, one of whom lives in Belgium and the other near Bristol. Veronica sent out emails to everyone telling them where, when and why, then sent a reminder email. There were 40 people at the party with only a few who weren’t able to make it!

I had a wonderful time, chatting with friends I hadn’t seen since before covid; Veronica’s estranged best friend, Betty; some of the people from Thanet whom I have met over the past 17 years; the in-laws, the cousin and his wife, and the 2 young men (now much older!) who left me bereft back in the mists of time.

Lance Percival wasn’t invited this time!

(I haven’t been able to add any photos. For some reason the site has changed but not bothered to tell me how to put a photo on. If I find out how, I’ll add some later! )

It’s a long time since I wrote a blog post….I’m sorry about that and I have no excuse. Indeed, I have been thinking about it but haven’t been able to come up with any ideas for a post, though occasionally, as I’ve been on the point of falling asleep, I’ve thought of something only to have forgotten it by the next day!

This blog started as a set of things which happen to people as they get older as well as a load of memories to help my family know and remember things that happened in my childhood and right up to my old age.

I found myself wishing, earlier today, that my mother had written such posts. I have a memory of being pulled in a ‘one-horse open sleigh” by my father up Convers Avenue in Zanesville when I was very young. I don’t remember snow, I do remember that it was dark outside. BUT, I realise that this may not be a memory of something that really happened but the memory of a dream which had made a big impression on me. There is no one left alive who would be able to tell me what is the truth about this memory – and that makes me sad!

Now, about old age. Did you know that when you get old (and that could be anytime from 40 to 90!) your eyelids can stick to your eyeballs? I only found this out a few weeks ago when I woke up one morning and found that my left eye wouldn’t open; it was stuck somehow. Before I could get too panicky, I was able to open it. I looked it up on Google and found that it’s because the natural moisture that lubricates your eyes has started to dry up a bit. I know that I have a touch of macular degeneration and this is likely behind the problem.

Another thing that has bothered me for several years is cramps in my feet, toes, and legs. Julian used to tell me about the cramps he got when younger and I thought he was being a bit dramatic but, yes, there are cramps that mean your big toe points upwards. There are also cramps that go up the outer calf of your leg, cramps that make your foot turn towards the side and even cramps in your thigh. Finally, I worked out that wearing flat shoes can make me have cramps in my feet and legs and sitting in one position on a hard chair can suddenly cause a cramp in my thigh. But I also found out that I can keep most leg cramps away by drinking tonic water every few days. I found this out by working out what I had been doing differently upon realising I hadn’t had a cramp for weeks. (Since then, people who already knew this have affirmed the fact that tonic water helps stop cramps.)

Nowadays, I laugh out loud when I see adverts with women in their early forties worrying about ‘wrinkles’, ie almost invisible laugh lines on the outer side of their eyes. For real wrinkles, look at women in their late seventies (who haven’t used Botox!).

I will admit that I haven’t done anything to keep my face wrinkle-free. I have fallen into bed without a rigorous cleanse, forgotten to put on my moisturiser in the morning and have slept most nights with at least half of my face buried in my pillow. But, I was born with good genes (as far as skin goes, anyway) and was wrinkle-free until my seventies – except for the frown lines between my eyebrows. Only this past year have the laugh-lines become apparent and I’ve noticed that the skin under my eyes has become a bit ‘baggy’. I think the collagen, or whatever it’s called, has deserted me😩

Other changes since I have got older, have been in my nails which have the dreaded ‘ridges’ which occasionally form a little split on the top edge, which can be difficult to deal with; in my hair, which I’ve complained about before in a post; in the skin on my neck, which suddenly resembles that of a turkey; and in an unmentionable part of my body which has been suffering from something horrifically called ‘lichen sclerosis’. I won’t scare you with the details of that!

In about four months I will have reached the beginning of my ninth decade. Women in my mother’s side of the family usually live until they are in their nineties, though their final three or four years are usually not full of fun. So, I may have another eight or ten years of reasonable life – assuming Putin doesn’t carry out his threats!

Now, one thing I’ve found out during the last fifty or so years is that each year seems to go by more quickly than the previous ones which means the next few years are going to whizz by! Am I scared? No, though I am a bit annoyed. All of the most interesting things that are coming to the world in the next few decades will happen without my knowing – maybe teleporting (being able to go from one place to another without taking any form of transport); cures for the most hideous diseases (my sister, Judy, if she had been alive today, would have had a treatment for her cancer and possibly even a cure); man landing on Mars or travelling to another galaxy; and all the million and one things that I can’t even imagine.

But – it’s nearly Christmas! I love this time of year! Not the weather, it’s usually too cold. I love the busyness of buying and wrapping presents, planning meals and ordering the food, decorating the house, remembering to have crackers and tins of chocolate and cakes and biscuits and, best of all, seeing my family for the first time in ages and sitting around with teas and gin and wine and plates of turkey and roast potatoes…..whew!

Then, suddenly, it’ll be next year with my next term of painting lessons online, days getting longer (hooray!), and (ugh!) dieting to get rid of all the weight I’ve put on in the last months.

Have a wonderful Christmas/Hanukkah/Alban Arthan or whatever you might call your celebration time.

And, may the New Year bring peace to the world and a happiness to us all!

Most days, when I use the downstairs loo, I am made happy by one ridiculous item!

Probably eight or nine years ago I bought, via EBay, a small cupboard with four drawers to one side, as a storage unit for loo roles, hand towels and other items one might need in a downstairs loo.

Right away, I found a problem. The drawers weren’t very easy to close. They didn’t just slide in the way they slid out and, over the years, I have wished I’d spent more and not had such a job closing the drawers.

The cupboard to the right is really easy – pull on the handle and it opens, push the door and it closes. The cupboard stores extra loo rolls (I hate running out when I’m home alone and haven’t noticed how little is left on the roll!). There are also bleach and other loo-cleaning materials.

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The line above denotes all the years that have passed since I received the cupboard. Just this year, sometime in the spring, I was sitting there and opened the top drawer for some item or other, took out said item and, without thinking, shoved the drawer shut with my elbow – and it shut! No problem!

I tried it again. Same!

Now, every day or so, I shove the drawer shut with my elbow or, if I’m already standing, with my hip. It closes. I smile.

Here is an abstract painting I made the other day. I quite like it – it’s colours and the shapes – but am not sure which way up it goes, so I thought I’d ask you.

Thanks! 😄 (Don’t you hate it when the computer thinks it knows what you wanted to write? In the paragraph above, the word ‘its’ has been given an unnecessary apostrophe! Sorry, I should have proof-read it but it was so short I just assumed it was okay. Now I know.)😩

My sleepless night is not important. It hasn’t any earth-shaking repercussions. I will survive it. But, it shouldn’t have happened!

During my childhood in America there was an air raid siren on top of the neighbourhood school. Every once in a while someone tested it to make sure it was still working but, as far as I know, they hadn’t warned those of us who lived close enough to hear it and it really worried us, particularly my sister, Judy.

Life in 1950’s Ohio, for little white children and their families, was pretty good as far as I remember. We weren’t rich but we weren’t poverty stricken either. Our mother had decided to study architecture at the University of Cincinnati and our step-father was also studying part-time. There was enough money for our mother to hire a ‘baby sitter’ who came every day, mainly to look after Jennie who was still quite young but also, I guess, to make sure we were home from school at 3:30 and not running riot. The only ‘war’ we knew was between our mother and her husband which was quite worrying really but there were no bombs, grenades and guns involved and on the whole, we were safe.

In the world in general, there were all sorts of things going on. There was the Korean War which didn’t seem to have any effect on us and something called the ‘Cold War’ which we definitely didn’t understand. Towards the end of the 50’s, though, when I was in my early mid teens, I started to realise that the ‘Reds’ was not only the nickname for our city’s baseball team but also the nickname of a group of people also known as ‘the commies’ who, it was thought, were dangerous and might just drop the A bomb or even the H bomb on us.

That worried me. Once in a while I’d lie awake wondering what would it be like if the air raid sirens went off, followed by a big explosion. Would we live through it, only to have radiation sickness? What would that be like? Would we mutate into monsters? My thoughts on the subject made me feel hot and cold and sick and I would lie awake worrying, wondering if it would happen that night and, like that prayer* children said at bedtime, my soul would have been ‘taken’ by the Lord.

*(Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.)

(I always thought that this prayer was horrible…..what child wants to die before they wake up? Thinking of dying in my sleep, as a child, was another thought that made me lie awake, worried about dying. We weren’t a religious family and weren’t made to pray before bed but we sort of picked these ideas up from friends, books, or tv. Perhaps if we had been church goers we would have been comforted by the thought that ‘the Lord’ would look after us but we weren’t. As an aside I will say that I did go to church regularly but that was because I had joined the church choir.)

Happily, the older I got the less likely it was that there would be a nuclear war – until 2022, when a certain Russian ex-KGB officer with a guaranteed life-long position as the head of state, threatened to use some of his vast stockpile of nuclear weapons if people « in the west » helped Ukraine in the war he started with that country.

So, I have spent nights awake, worrying, recently, not so much about me and dying (at 79 I’m quite used to the thought – I don’t want to go but I can think of worse things!), but about the terrible things that are happening to people whose lives were rather like mine until recently. They went with their partners to the local shops and bought goods for their homes, worried about their children, looked forward to the next instalment of their favourite tv show, hoped they wouldn’t get covid, cried because their boyfriend fancied someone new or whatever and suddenly, just when they should have been getting ready to greet spring, even in the cold weather, they have been assaulted, lied about, chased from their homes, lost loved ones, found themselves in foreign countries or imprisoned, learned how to shoot and to kill another human being (something many of us have no desire to do!).

It’s about a month since I started writing this post. In that time I (and others around the world) have been told that I’ve got it all wrong, that everything I’ve read and seen has been ‘fake news’, that I should read such and such a newspaper or watch this particular tv channel; that Mr Putin isn’t having his soldiers kill civilians, isn’t trying to annex the whole of another, separate country, isn’t trying to rebuild the Soviet Union, and that ‘the West’ has been at fault over the years, trying to influence people towards their way of thinking. The real war isn’t a war at all, we’re told….it’s an operation to get rid of the Nazis who have taken over Ukraine.

It’s all crap! It’s people! More than 5 million people have run away, some of them ending up in a foreign country without their small child who died on the way or who was in the way of a bullet or a piece of shrapnel. How many others have been ambushed as they were trying to leave, bombed as they were sitting in a hideout with CHILDREN written in huge letters outside, been at the receiving end of a missile as they lay in labour in hospital, have been raped then stabbed to death or been shot down when trying to find food or water?

How can I sleep when others can’t? If I were young and brave I might have done something more to help besides give some money or old clothes, but I sit here tapping on my iPad, eating fresh food, and watching fiction on tv or reading or painting so that I can forget the terrible things that people are doing to other people in a land so far away – and yet so near.

It’s been a few weeks since I wrote a post so I thought I would just send you all seasons greetings, whoever you are and whatever it is you are celebrating.

Every few days I have a look to see if anybody has read my recent posts and am often surprised for two reasons – the first is that not many people have visited my blog and the second is that so many people who have visited are from countries which do not have English as a mother-tongue.

My most recent non-English as a mother-tongue readers are from China . Now, I know that many Chinese people speak English because it is so important in today’s commercial world but I don’t know why they would find my posts interesting. The same applies to the UAE and Bangladesh, although those places’ views seem to have tailed off during 2021.

If you are from a non-English-speaking country and have come to my blog pages for any reason, please write and tell me what it is that interests you. I would like to write more articles that you find interesting.

Also, thanks to everyone who reads my posts. You all make taking the time and making the effort, so worthwhile!