Britain is an old country with an island called Jersey where an old treasure hunter called Reg will grow rich from a hoard of old coins

                                                                                            An article in 'The Daily Mail' today was entitled :

So, Reg, how did it feel to find £10m? One man and his mate spent 30 years searching for a hoard of hidden silver.

 

It told the story that :

*  best friends, 70 year old Reg Mead and Richard Miles, 49, have, for 30 years, walked up and down the fields on the Island of Jersey, sweeping their metal detectors above the furrows, straining their ears for the smallest metallic bleep as they searched and searched for a cache of 2,000-year-old hidden treasure, once vaguely hinted at by a farmer’s daughter half-a-century ago.

* on a gloomy day in February, Richard suddenly yelled : "I’ve got one! I’ve got one! "as they discovered a stash of 120 Iron Age silver coins which was just the beginning, because Reg, a part-time satellite engineer and Richard, a customs and excise officer, carried on in their spare time — up and down, up and down.

* finally, on June 5, Reg’s detector picked up an unusually loud signal, the pair called in a team of professional archeologists and together they unearthed more than 50,000 handmade coins from the 1st century AD, said to be worth £10 million.

* the cache was heralded by Dr Philip de Jersey, a former Celtic coin expert at Oxford University as "extremely exciting and very significant, and the largest hoard of Iron Age coins ever found in the whole of the Celtic coin-using world".

* the coins from 'Armorica', modern-day Brittany and Normandy, were extraordinarily well preserved and intricately decorated on one side with an exotic head with tattoos, plaited hair and necklace and the other with a stylised horse.

* Reg said that : "they were all stuck together and weighed nearly a ton. It took four days of digging and a crane to get them out. Looking back, there was no logical reason why we would persevere in those fields for so long. But something made us. Something kept us going."

 

*  it is possible that in 55 BC, as Julius Caesar’s army sliced and pillaged its way through Gaul and Roman galleys popped up off the coast, a Celtic tribe called the Coriosolitae buried their treasure in a panic and according to Reg : "They must have dumped it in a hurry. There was no box, no container, just a rough-shaped hole and they hurled it in. Maybe they were taken into slavery, maybe they were all killed. But it’s been sitting there for over 2,000 years. How can anyone not be interested in history? How can anyone not be interested in metal-detecting?"

*  Ruth, Reg's wife said their lives have been thrown into disarray : "It’s been a rollercoaster. The phone won’t stop ringing. Everyone’s so pleased for us. He’s had calls from America, Australia, Thailand, Canada, Spain and South Africa, and it won’t stop. I wish it would now. I can’t think straight."

Reg on You Tube :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkYUmXJxW1I

Photos of the finds :
http://izismile.com/2012/06/28/treasure_found_after_decades_search_9_pics.html

P.S. Reg is at pains to point out that there is a long process to go through before he and Richard see any money from this treasue trove.

Britain is a country where young dogs teach old men new tricks

My wife and I have become dog owners. A nine week old pug, named 'Klaus Schmidt' by her, has joined the household and I have the feeling our lives won't be quite the same again. Our daughter, the vet, checked him over before we parted with the £££'s. Here he is being held by my good friend Del Boy. He's not a dog owner, but a cat lover and is hoping for a new kitten. I've been looking at dog training videos on You Tube to teach young Klaus to "drop" and "stop chewing" and so on and there's always Cesar Milan, 'The Dog Whisperer' to help
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooUq0VVbcPM&feature=related
but it's hard work and there's a lot to learn.

According to the website 'Best Dog Breeds for Older People' we've made the right choice :      

Here are the best dog breeds for older people: Pug, Boston Terrier, Cardigan Welsh Corgi, Pembroke Welsh Corgi, French Bulldog, Beagle, Schnauzer and American Eskimo Dog.

Pug is a good dog for old men because he :

* super:dislikes his master to be angry with him, and because he loves to eat, you can encourage obedience easily using dog treats.
* despite the fact that he has a grumpy looking face, is a happy, sensible, loyal and loving animal.
* has a huge heart. He is extremely good-natured, calm and balanced.
* loves older people and he is never aggressive.
* is a real companion dog.
* is kind, calm and balanced.
* does not disturb the neighbours because he doesn't not barking too often.

I wish I knew a few more people like our new pug.

Britain is a country with a tv pesenter called John Simpson, a series about old people and talk of "suicide","punishment" and "dread"

An article in 'The Gaurdian' newspaper about the BBC tv series 'When I get Older' due to be broadcast next week was entitled :

BBC's John Simpson: I'd rather take my own life than face illness in old age

John was joined by Gloria Hunniford, 71, Tony Robinson, 65, and Lesley Joseph, 69, to live with old people in Britain dealing with the depressing problems of isolation, poverty, grief and caring for an ill partner.

It seems to have had a depressing effect on the presenters because 67 year old John :

* spoke about his plans to take his own life, should he be faced with serious illness in his later years and said ; "I'm not advocating [euthanasia] for anyone else. But just in my own case, I don't want my own six-year-old son to have his main memories of me as a gibbering, sad old freak. I'd rather take, in television terms, the early out, rather than to hang on purely for the sake of being alive and keeping on breathing and all the other functions."

65 year oldTony said :

"I don't think it's too over-dramatic to say that I think care homes, by and large, are prisons that people are sent to as a punishment for being old." and "In 100 years' time British people will look back on how we treated the elderly now with the same kind of disbelief and shock and horror that we look back on child labour. I hope that this treatment of the elderly is a temporary aberration."

71 year old Gloria who said :

that moving into a care home filled her with "enormous dread", spoke about her sister, who died from dementia two years ago and "what upset me more than anything was she went into a very good care home … but when push came to shove the nursing staff, though they were terrific, there weren't enough of them to make sure my sister ate and drank the fundamentals." and "I'm afraid in Britain we don't look after the elderly, the elderly don't have the place within the family. "I do think that in some other countries the elderly do take their place at the head of the family and they are listened to. They have an opinion and they're not as invisible."

John's advert for the series :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsMBuXbZXLI

Britain is a country where old tv foreign correspondents, like John Simpson, make programmes to convince other old men that "they don’t have to be old until they want"

:
An article in 'The Daily Mail' today was entitled :

Why 65 is the new 55, by John Simpson: Broadcaster says age is no barrier to remaining active

He became a father again at 61 and still reports from danger zones around the world for the BBC. So it’s little wonder that John Simpson has hailed 65 as the new 55.

Apparently, the veteran 67 year old broadcaster is making a series for the BBC1 called, 'When I Get Older', in which he and other presenters examine what life is like for old people in Britain. It sounds like John  is going to present evidence to suggest that, unlike me, he believes that Britain is indeed, a country for old men because, according to him :

*  "There is a bit of crusading to do here – persuading the elderly that they don’t have to be old until they want to be and the young not to write off the elderly just yet. Being 65 now is what being 55 seemed like back in 1967."

* " If your health holds up, you ought to be able to keep active and involved until your 80s. Back in 1967 we thought that people of 65 had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin. Nowadays, if someone dies in their 60s it’s regarded as unusual."

In the programmes he and actress Lesley Joseph, presenter Gloria Hunniford and comedian Tony Robinson all spend time with old men and women and encourage them to become more active. However, the first episode, to be broadcast on the 4th of July, doesn't sound much fun because :

* John : 'has to face the reality of loneliness after he spends time with an isolated pensioner'.

* Lesley, 69 : 'finds out more about the pain of caring for a loved one after she spends time with a couple who are dealing with ill-health.'

* Gloria, 71  : 'spends time with a grandmother who has very little money to live on.'

* Tony,65  :  ' has to deal with the anguish of a pensioner's recent bereavement.'

Of the letters published in response to the article,  'Romy' from Sussex said of John  :

' I'm sorry he should retire. He looks so old and warn out when he's reporting. NB much younger women are "retired" on TV !' and 'jaydee' from London put it simply with : 'old deluded fart'

P.S. My posting about John last year :

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

Britain is still a country 'for' and says "Happy Birthday" 'to' a fearless old reporter called John Simpson

http://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/britain-is-still-country-for-and-says.html

Britain is a country with callous scams designed to get old men to part with their money

Britain's Insolvency Service has warned old men and women and their carers to beware because :

*  bogus retail and investment schemes are aimed at them and 78 rogue companies which raked in over £28million from the public have been shut down and in England and Wales in the last three years which  scammed 2,000 investors with the oldest aged 92.

* 49 of the companies sold plots of land for ‘building’ that either didn’t exist or were on protected green belt land'

* 4 sold wine stocks that did not yield any profits.

*  6 sold retail products that were either unsuitable or at highly inflated prices, including burglar alarms, mobility scooters, ‘heritage’ coins and stair-lifts.

* the scams typically employ the telephone equivalent of ‘door-stepping’, phoning old men and women and often refusing to come off the phone until they have closed a sale.
.

The Government Business Minister, Norman Lamb said:

“These scams are especially bad as they target some of the most vulnerable members in our society. Older people have grown up trusting other people. To take advantage of this trust, and then exploit it is both manipulative and deceitful.
I support the work Insolvency Service and its partners are doing to warn older people, and would urge people to be vigilant when approached to make investments out of the blue.”

Robert Burns, 'Head of Investigation and Enforcement' for The Insolvency Service said:

“We have observed a number of companies targeting older people in recent months. These scams are particularly unpleasant because they target the most susceptible members of society, older people who may be unsure how to seek advice or afraid to say “no”. They can destroy lives at a time when those targeted should be taking a break from worry and enjoying life after working hard.
Victims are paying for something and getting nothing. The worst aspect is the callousness with which the fraudsters go about their business; ignoring the obvious fact that that because of their age, most victims will never be able to make good their loss.

Today is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day and we would urge all friends, carers and family members to be vigilant and look out for the older members of their family to ensure that they are not scammed by rogue businessmen.”

'Age UK' have produced two free information guides ‘Avoiding Scams’ and ‘Staying Safe’ which provide practical steps to ensure older people are able to protect themselves against this type of crime in their home and on their doorstep.”

From the Alzheimer’s Society is also campaigning against the financial abuse of people with dementia.

Jeremy Hughes, Chief Executive of Alzheimer’s Society said:

“There are currently 800,000 people living with dementia in the UK. Many are older people and easy targets for con artists. It is disgusting that these scams specifically target the most vulnerable in our society. Con artists are dealing another blow to people who may already be struggling financially due to the huge cost of care. Everyone from banks to the general public needs to work together to stop these scams and help protect those who need it most.”
Gary FitzGerald, Chief Executive of Action on Elder Abuse, said:

“Research tells us that over 342,000 older people face abuse in our communities every day. They are too often seen as an easy target by unscrupulous people out to make ’easy money’ and it is therefore crucially important that we are all vigilant in their defence. Families play an important part in helping older people to protect themselves against fraudsters, and a little bit of planning ahead can make all the difference.”

 

Britain is soon to be no longer a country for an old and once prolific Australian writer and broadcaster called Clive James

An article in yesterday's 'Gaurdian' was entitled :

Clive James wistfully faces death, admitting he may not see Sydney again

Australian polymath speaks candidly about his illness to the BBC, saying "I'm a man who is approaching his terminus"

• It made the following points, that the 72 year old author of  34 novels, long poems, collections of essays and criticism and five volumes of autobiography has said :
• " Iv'e been really ill for two and a half years. I was diagnosed with leukaemia, then I had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is a fancy name for emphysema and my immune system packed up. And that's just the start. I almost died four times and I swore to myself if I can just get through this winter, I'd feel better. And I got through the winter and here it is a lovely sunny day and guess what, I don't feel better,"

What you possibly didn't know about Clive, that he :

* was born in Kogarah, Sydney, 'Vivian' James and had his name changed as a child because after Vivien Leigh played Scarlett O'Hara in the film 'Gone With The Wind', it became irrevocably a girl's name no matter the spelling.

* was brought up by his mother as an only child, after his father, survived being taken prisoner by the Japanese during The Second World War, but died when the plane returning him to Australia crashed in Manila Bay.

*  was educated at Sydney Technical High School and studied psychology at the University of Sydney and became associated with the 'Sydney Push' libertarian intellectual subculture, edited the student newspaper and directed the annual student union revue.

* graduated and worked for a year as an Assistant Editor for 'The Sydney Morning Herald', then moved to Britain in 1962 and became acquainted with other Australians, including Barry Humphries, and had a variety of occasionally disastrous short-term jobs : sheet metal worker, library assistant, photo archivist and market researcher.

* gained a place at Pembroke College, Cambridge to read English Literature, contributed to all the undergraduate periodicals, was a member and later President of the Cambridge Footlights and appeared on tv in University Challenge as captain of the Pembroke team on the right and during one summer vacation, worked as a circus roustabout to save enough money to travel to Italy

* was an undergraduate at the same time as Germaine Greer, Simon Schama and Eric Idle and graduated after having 'not read' the course material but 'read' widely in English and foreign literature and then began a Ph.D. thesis on Percy Bysshe Shelley.

* from 1972 - 82, worked as tv critic for the 'Observer' newspaper and contributed literary criticism extensively for newspapers, magazines and periodicals in Britain, Australia and the USA and published poetry in periodicals all over the English-speaking world.

*  published his first book of autobiography, 'Unreliable Memoirs' in 1979 followed by another four and has written four novels and published several books of poetry

* on tv, hosted the ITVshow 'Clive James on Television', in which he showcased either unusual or often unintentionally amusing tv programmes from around the world, notably the Japanese TV show 'Endurance'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=109-5Q5S3tU
and then  hosted 'Saturday Night Clive' at the BBC from 1988-90
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd1sxsJ0zJg

* made a documentary series, 'Fame in the20th Century' in 1993 which, presenting a history of 'fame' through film footage, explored its growth to today's global proportions and in his closing monologue he remarked :
 "Achievement without fame can be a rewarding life, while fame without achievement is no life at all."

* was after the death of his friend, Diana, Princess of Wales, wrote a piece for 'The New Yoker' entitled : 'I Wish I'd Never Met Her', recording his overwhelming grief at her death and has since then declined to comment about their friendship.

Few old men in Britain are able to look back like Clive, on a life so full of things achieved, as they 'approach their terminus'.

Britain already no country for old men, will be less a country for more old men working longer and longer for their pensions tomorrow

Currently, old men in Britain can claim his state pension at 65 and a women at around 61, however, the age is being raised for both to 66 by 2020, 67 by 2028 and 68 by 2046 and will continue to rise and experts from accountancy firm 'PricewaterhouseCoopers' predict that babies born this year will not get their pension until they are 77 in 2089

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has reported that workers across many countries will inevitably have to wait longer for their pension including not only Britain but also Germany, France, Japan and Switzerland.

The OECD report comes as the 'Association of British Insurers' warned of a ‘chronic savings gap’ in Britain and many people are ‘increasingly resigned to working longer or downsizing to a smaller property’ in order to help pay for their retirement, due to a chronic lack of pension saving.

Steve Gay, Director of pensions at the ABI, said: "One in two people are not saving enough for retirement and many are not saving at all."
Britain is a country where millions of young men and women do not have a pension or have one which will not cover the cost of a comfortable retirement.

 

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Britain says "Happy Birthday" to an old rocker called Paul McCartney, an old poet called Geoffrey Hill and an old blogger called JohnBoy

Paul McCartney was born on this day 5 years before me and is 70 today, Geoffrey Hill was born 10 years before Paul and is 80 today which means that this old Post Second World War baby boomer is 65 today.

Paul is one of the most famous geminians in the world and needs no description, but what you possibly didn't know about Geoffrey is that he :

* was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire where at the age of 11 he went to grammar school and as a an only child, developed the habit of going for long walks alone and as an adolescent deliberated and composed poems as he muttered to the stones and trees carrying a copy of Oscar Williams' 'Little Teasury of Modern Poetry' and late said  "there was probably a time when I knew every poem in that anthology by heart."

* in 1950, went to Keble College, Oxford to read English, where he published his first poems at the age of twenty and then on graduation started a teaching career in the universities of Leeds and Cambridge before moving to the USA as Professor of Literature and Religion at Boston University before moving back to Cambridge in 2006.

* in 2010, was the successful candidate in the election of the Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford  with a broad base of academic support with 1,156 votes and became the 44th Professor of Poetry since the role was created in 1708.

^{Geoffrey interviewed :}
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RObz4jbVO2Y

              Requiem for the Plantagenet Kings

For whom the possessed sea littered, on both shores,
Ruinous arms; being fired, and for good,
To sound the constitution of just wards,
Men, in their eloquent fashion, understood.

Relieved of soul, the dropping-back of dust,
Their usage, pride, admitted within doors;
At home, under caved chantries, set in trust,
With well-dressed alabaster and proved spurs
They lie; they lie; secure in the decay
Of blood, blood-marks, crowns hacked and coveted,
Before the scouring fires of trial-day
Alight on men; before sleeked groin, gored head,
Budge through the clay and gravel, and the sea
Across daubed rock evacuates its dead.

                                

 

Britain is a country where old journalists tell old jokes from France which strike a chord with old men

Simon Hoggart is a 66 year old journalist whose weekly column in 'The Gaurdian' newspaper I've been reading and enjoying for years, but not quite the 46 years I've been a reader. Simon related a joke he had heard 'from a nice restaurateur' he'd met in France last week. It's worth repeating, as Simon said : 'You won't need me to spell out what is being described. Unlike most jokes, it has a title, :                                                
                                       MMS'
At 20 years : Matin, Midi, Soir.
At 40 years : Mardi, Mercredi, Samedi.
At 60 years : Mars, Mai, Septembre.
And finally at 80 : Mes Meilleurs Souvenirs.

Simon talking about train journeys from Hell :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTEM4Q6BKfg

Britain was almost no country for a brave, old Second World War rear gunner from Bomber Command called Freddie Johnson

A recent article in the 'Daily Mail' was entitled :

Betrayal of a hero: He flew 92 missions as a rear gunner in the Second World War. So why won't bureaucrats let Freddie Johnson, 91, attend the unveiling of a memorial to his comrades in Bomber Command?

It made the following points about Freddie, that he :

* was 20 when he joined the RAF and as a rear gunner in 1939  had a life expectancy of 3 weeks but survived the War and earned 6 medals including the 'distinguished flying cross'.


* was  a survivor of 92 bombing missions 25 over Germany, as well as stints in Burma and North Africa in Wellington and Halifax bombers and during five years of service was shot down twice.

* badly damaged his leg in another operation and was in hospital when his medal and letter from the King arrived and still has pins in his legs and suffers severe arthritis.

* had his closest shave at El Alamein in 1942, when his plane was shot down and had a stroke of luck when the turret  where he was sitting came away as the aircraft crashed, while the front end exploded, killing four men and despite being behind enemy lines, marched off into the desert and was picked up by a group of British soldiers who had spotted the crash.

* at the age of 91 and in a wheelchair, should have been a VIP guest at the unveiling of a long-awaited unveiling of the 6.5 million, 'Bomber Command Memorial', for which he had helped to raise money, in Green Park in London on June 28th.

* was told he couldn't attend the ceremony because there were no tickets left and found out too late that veterans had to apply for tickets, like anyone else wanting to attend.

* like other veterans, was determined that 55,573 bomber crew who lost their lives should have a fitting memorial and said: " I would have loved to have gone. I was very pleased when I heard it was being built."

* remains fiercely proud of his war years and his wife Jean, 85, believes the authorities have let him down saying : "It's a shame. He is bitterly disappointed. There can't be that many veterans left who saw such long service and were presented with so many medals. This memorial is what my husband has been waiting for. At one point in the war the bombers were all we had. The bombers deserve this."

* was told that the memorial organisers 'were extremely sorry' that he and other veterans had been unable to get tickets  and that they had been 'absolutely overwhelmed by demand' and had a licence limiting them to 6,500 guests' which they couldn't exceed.

The memorial, a sculpture which features seven bomber air crew members, is expected to be unveiled by the Queen and is seen as overdue recognition for the bomber crews whose place in history has been widely played down because of the high number of civilian deaths they caused.

As a happy P.S. :

Within hours of the article about Freddie, his family received a call from Royal Air Force organisers to tell them that two tickets would be provided after all.