The UK Queen at 90

Although not a royalist, I think the UK queen has done very well over her long reign. The very survival of the institute of monarchy is in no small part due to her. The money that royalty brings in must more than make up for the expense of the royal household.

Ours is a constitutional monarchy: although the queen has weekly discussions with the Prime Minister of the day, she in no way influences the day-to-day running of the nation. She does open Parliamentary sessions in her "official" capacity as head of state (The State Opening of Parliament)

I cannot imagine us as a republic with a president. We are lacking people that we could all look up to and respect. Somehow I cannot imagine the monarchy after Elizabeth dies. It is bound to happen sooner rather than later. Will we still have a monarchy 50 years from now?

England Football Supporters

Yet again, I am ashamed of the England supporters abroad. Now, I am sure it is a small minority who cause all the unrest and violence, but these tarnish the game. Also, sometimes others start the violence knowing that England fans will be blamed.

Personally, I think a lot of this is due to drinking to excesses. Maybe there should be a blanket ban on alcohol within a certain radius of games? This seems unfair on "normal" fans who just go to follow the teams.

I am not a great football fan. Some games are watched on TV but I would never follow my teams abroad. It must be 30 years (at least) since I last went to a football match!

SPAM?

A few days ago I got an email purporting to be from Microsoft saying that they think my email address was compromised.

Now, this may be a SPAM, but if you have received any suspicious emails supposedly from me, please accept my apologies. As always DO NOT open links you do not trust or know to be safe. If you have received anything odd, purporting to have been sent by me, please let me know.
Hopefully the issue has been dealt with and you should not get further trouble. If this is a SPAM please let me know too as my mail account did not see this as SPAM.

Church Fete

This is usually held the next weekend in June each year, but it was changed to coincide with the Queen's 90th birthday celebrations. Although thundery showers were threatened all afternoon, they kept off. My wife ran the cake stall, as she does most years. It is usually a good chance to meet village people not seen for a while.

EU Referendum

As we are away on the day when voting takes place, we have voted by postal vote. We posted our votes off today. The outcome will be close.

Horses in Newmarket

We do most of our food shopping in nearby Newmarket, which is the world home of horse racing. Here everything stops for the horses! We don't mind.  After 40 years in the area I have never been to a horse race!

This was a string returning from Newmarket Heath earlier today. It is unusual not to see race horses in Newmarket.

Profound exhaustion

Since my stroke almost 3 years ago I have suffered from bouts of profound exhaustion after doing physical or mental work for more than about 20 minutes. No-one and I really do mean no-one seems to get it including medics, my wife, friends etc. They all say how well I look and assume I am fine. Well, I am definitely not right!

To be honest this gets me down. As hard as I try, this never seems to go away. I hate it.  In an ideal world I would rest more, but I know this is impossible.

I have great sympathy for others who have hidden disabilities: people may look fine on the outside but feel dreadful inside. This is how I am a lot of the time. Not always mind you. There are better days and times.