Spruce up Your Home With The Crazy Gang

Hi Everyone

About four years after we moved into our first house in 1960 we decided that it was time to decorate the Lounge. After we finished work and our evening meal on Friday we started preparing the room, moving and covering what few bits of furniture we had, before working until almost midnight, sanding the woodwork before applying an undercoat of paint. We were up early the next morning to work all day and again late into the evening, only stopping briefly to eat. By Sunday lunchtime, the painting was complete, and we spent the afternoon cleaning and restoring the room back to normal before returning to another full week of work the following day. In 2008 when we converted the stable block into our present home, I spent a few weeks decorating the whole house, working for a few hours each day. This week, the Main Contractor decided that our downstairs toilet needed redecorating, a room about six feet by three feet. On the first morning, I did all the preparation before undercoating the door and frame. Thankfully it was then time for lunch as I was shattered. On the next morning, I put a further coat of paint on the door and frame with the same result. At this rate, I should have the work completed sometime this year. Is that what happens as you approach middle age?

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Fifty years ago, we had just moved to the lane where we now live with our young family, while running my own business. A friend asked me if I was interested in joining Rotary, which at that time was regarded as an elite organisation reserved for people who owned their own business or who were in professions like accountancy, the law, architecture etc. and was male only. Over the years, it has thankfully evolved into an organisation that is open to anyone, male or female, who wants the opportunity to help those less fortunate than ourselves. While most of the money that we raise is spent on local projects, Rotary also has its own charity, The Rotary Foundation. As membership is almost worldwide, except in places like Putin’s world, or that funny little man in North Korea, the Foundation gives members the opportunity to put together worldwide grants. In 2024/25 1424 global grants were awarded. These grants are usually put together by a number of clubs across the country, together with a club in the country where the grant is needed, who provide half the funds with the Foundation contributing the other half. Just one of those grants last year was for a premature baby unit at a hospital in India. The total cost was about 60,000 US dollars. Prior to this grant, women had to travel two hundred miles to receive the care they desperately needed, which resulted in many deaths to both mother and child. The very impressive project was completed in September last year and has already saved over one hundred lives, with one instance where quads were born each just over two pounds in weight. All survived. Like me, perhaps some of my Rubbish readers are asking why should we support such projects when the country receiving the help is politically aligning itself with Putin, or is run by a non-democratically elected government. The answer, of course, is that we are helping ordinary people just like ourselves, while remembering that we just happen to have been born in better circumstances than others.

Back when I was a boy, every city had a music hall where artists travelled the country, probably with the same act for years. Then along came television, and the days of the music hall became numbered. One of the most popular acts at that time was The Crazy Gang. Now, some of the so called big hitters in the Conservative party are defecting to join Nigel Farage (the UKs Trump impersonator) and his Reform party. Could it be that a 2020s version of the Crazy Gang is being formed? My guess is as good as yours, but I would not bet against it. . 

Just a Thought: 

Ageing seems to be the only available way of living a long life. 

My friend's wife was caught cheating with a painter. She was caught red handed.

There's a crazy gang going through our local stores, systematically stealing clothes in order of size. Police say they are still at large. 

Brian