November 30

November 30 An historic date. At least for me. I now have the keys to my new home,10 Bridgeman Court, Bridgeman Road Penarth CF24 3NR.

Not a bad address - said to be the most expensive road in Wales for property. prices. Not mine!

Robert came down for the day yesterday to organise the arrangements which all went perfectly.

I now have four busy days preparing for the move on Saturday..

Exciting times ahead.

Thank you all for your interest, encouragement and support over the past difficult two and a half years. 

Hope to see you all soon in Penarth.

What more could I ask for?

Another milestone in a very long lifetime road. And a memorable one. In November 1926 when I arrived at 20 Bushey Road, West Ham, neither I nor anyone could foresee how exciting and revolutionary the next century would be. it was a smaller world, population just over two billion - now eight billion - and I could expect to live perhaps to seventy, the average life span. 

Roads were bustling with horses and carts - the new fangled cars few and far between. Gas lighting in streets and homes. Coal fires. Food was more basic. Cheap, too but wholesome - a loaf cost twopence. 

So a dull start to little Bob's life? Not at all. I enjoyed those early years and I have continued to enjoy life over the decades, welcoming all the developments and discoveries that have made life more comfortable, more complicated, even if more dangerous. Looking back, I realise and appreciate what good fortune I have had - my parents, brother and sister, home life and a marvellous family that has extended over the years. 

What more could I ask for?

The sun sets on Sunrise

As my stay in Sunrise comes to an end there are two celebrations - not for my departure - but to mark the takeover of  the UK care homes run by Sunrise, the US care home group, by the British Care UK company.

Sara Reading, Cardiff general manager, has left to take over the Care UK home in Buckingham.

Virgil, her deputy, is now in charge here at the renamed Llys Cyncoed (Cyncoed Court). An upheaval which ends a unique period in my  life.

The pandemic still makes for an uncertain future but I am looking forward to my new home.

It will be a challenge - these days the word used too often in place of ‘difficult’. There is a big difference and I am relishing the prospect.

I appreciate that I am three years older than when I decided I had to leave Windsor Court in Penarth to come here and be looked after, fortunately a few months before the onset of coronavirus.

Thanks to the brilliant Sunrise carers and whole team I am feeling so much better and am able to look after myself.

But my move would not have been possible without the support of my family.

Robert and Karen have borne the brunt of the mountain of work involved and Brenda made most of the arrangements for my eye operation. Despite the long enforced gaps I have enjoyed so many visits.

I could not be more grateful to you all.

The lessons of history

As most of my family know, my school attempt at history earned me the report, ‘too vague and romantic’. Translated? I made it up. And there was some truth in that.

I was just not interested in dates and facts on royalty so I used my imagination.

It is strange, therefore, that, more than eighty years later, I am absorbed in history. 

Living through the war and, more importantly, the seventy years that followed, I am relishing learning of momentous battles, deadly dictators and national heroes.

It has made me more aware of the literally historic changes that have taken place and are being enacted today.

Having had the luxury in lockdown of time to read and watch television, history is now my favourite subject.

I have just watched two magnificent series, on the last war and Franco’s 40 year rule in Spain. Both were a revelation, bringing to life the events that led to millions of deaths.

Countries are still threatening violence in the name of national self interest. Ignoring the disasters it has caused, blind to the growing dangers not only of war but the impending disaster of global warming,

Will we ever learn?

Sorry...

‘I am sorry’. A simple expression, one we say every day, mostly over trivial matters.

Failing to apologise has made headlines for weeks now, mainly centred on politicians and the government, their refusal to take the blame for anything.

At the centre of the storm is the prime minister who is a world leader in evasion and truth abstinence.

His latest test has been over the accusations of former government ministers Paterson and Cox to apologise for breaking rules with lucrative second jobs.

Not a word of contrition, just blind, arrogant stubbornness. a steely determination to defend their actions. Even worse than these sordid stories is the long running refusal by Mr Johnson to apologise for anything.

A rare exception was when he ‘unreservedly apologised’ to MP Emily Thornbury describing her as 'the baroness something or other’- her husband is Sir Christopher Nugee, a high court judge.

Since then, silence, leading to his cowardly act of scuttling to a hospital instead of  ‘facing the music’ in parliament and sending a lackey to the Commons.

Thankfully there have been many bolder, more honest politicians.

The latest example of a heartfelt apology was from FW De Klerk, former President of South Africa, in a video released this week after his death.

For hundreds of years most national leaders have never owned up to or apologised for actions that have had catastrophic results.

One exemption was Billy Brandt, former West German Chancellor. Twenty five years after the last war that ravaged Poland he went on his knees at national commemoration ceremony in a wordless apology. He was later awarded a Nobel peace prize.

Another rare outstanding apology, by the Roman Catholic church in 1965, was the Declaration of the Relation of the Church to Non Christian Religions, the Nostra Aetate (Our Age).

The world today has tragically forgotten how to say sorry.

Remembering King Coal

Penrhos Junction, 1920. Gwyn Briwnant Jones. Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

Robert's Facebook photograph today (from his blogpost) of steam engines pulling wagons full of coal reminds me of my stay with Auntie Flo in Moorland Road Cardiff. At the end of the long garden was the railway line leading to the docks and the steelworks. As a schoolboy I used to stand waving to the drivers and firemen. They always waved back.

Nearby at Gabalfa were the huge marshalling yards for coal trains.

My experience of the ‘black gold’ that made Cardiff famous as the world’s largest coal exporter included several trips underground, the first, also as a school boy with Uncle George, my reporting mentor.

Uncle Walter bought wooden pit props from around the world.

Many years later I organised a visit underground for councillors from Ludwigsburg, Caerphilly’s twin town. At the Windsor colliery in the Aber Valley we had to crawl to the coal face where one German visitor had a heart attack. He recovered.

Another memorable trip was with the the Queen at an Aberbargoed pit where I was one of two reporters chosen by ballet to go underground with her. 

She even stopped to talk to the pit ponies.

COP26: the reckoning

With the COP summit drawing to its close there will be a frantic effort to frame a final bulletin that suggests at least a prospect of international co-operation. 

More hope than expectation with so much uncertainty and lack of support, especially from some major nations.

So can that the magic 1.5% be achieved?

I have my doubts. We have been struggling to contain many kinds of pollution for centuries with coal the major culprit.

King Edward of England in 1272 banned the burning of sea coal but evidently without success as it plagued the the country ever since, becoming steadily worse since the industrial revolution. 

Mines and factories relentlessly and and disastrously belched toxic fumes into the air.

For me, the most vivid example was when I was a toddler living in east London. In those days we were not so obsessed with weather forecasts as we are today. There was just one a day on the fledgeling radio.

But the weather in London and all the big cities was crucial. It could be a mass killer.

I will never forget those London fogs - ‘pea soupers’, ‘killer fogs’ when day turned to night, the toxic yellow fumes swirling the streets, invading our houses, stopping traffic.

The worst year was 1952 when 4,000 Londoners choked to death with the overall total reaching 12,000.

The first improvement came with the a clean Air Act of 1956, followed by further Acts in 1968 and 1993.

But far worse was to come, new fuels, petrol, diesel, and a new range of deadly substances to power movement, industry and our personal lives.

Now comes the reckoning. 

Judging by progress so far from encouraging with future generations at great risk.

Back to life

Sunrise has come back to life again after nearly three weeks lockdown.

The ‘all clear’ came after breakfast yesterday and I enjoyed leaving my room to go down to the restaurant for lunch.

The normal activities programme has restarted and there is a busy few weeks ahead, including parties marking the end of Sunrise and the takeover by Care UK of the renamed Llys Cyncoed (Cyncoed Court in English). 

There is the Armistice celebration and my 95th birthday social, and I will be reading my story, The Braydon Manor Mystery, originally written for Siân and Ria thirty eight years ago.

Quite a flourish, with what I hope will be the completion of my Penarth flat purchase which has given Robert and Karen a mountain of work. 

It would not have been possible without them.

A climate for change?

The Glasgow summit lumbers on to its final week, most of the leaders having departed.

It is already becoming boring, its mix of gloom and optimism reflected in the debating rooms and on the activist-crowded streets through the country.

Soon we will get a final communique which will satisfy nobody but merely reflect the complexity of it all. 

There will be dubious half promises suggesting progress has been made but the world knows that the next few decades will decide the future and how badly the world will be affected.

The critical question is if the world’s richest nations are willing to - as they certainly could - help save the hundreds of poor nations.

Sunrise reflections

Today is my 850th day at Sunrise. Another 34 to go, if all runs to plan.

So, what have I learned in my stay here?

A great deal: in fact more than I have learned in most of my lifetime.

It has been a total change, a unique time, most of it successful.

I have learned to curb my natural impatience, to take my time. Over the years, especially when work was involved, I was always too keen to get things done, at once. 

With the luxury of time, I have slowed down, thinking before acting, and it has made life easier.

One of the most rewarding aspects of my life at Sunrise has been keeping in touch with my family and friends. I have sent and received hundreds, thousands maybe, of emails, and had many Zoom chats with Robert and the family.

I have enjoyed a range of activities, including the Sunrise entertainment programme to which I have contributed, but my main interest has been writing, every morning, including the daily diary that led to my book.

Old age inevitably involves some slowing up, and lockdown has not helped me keep awareness of time, days and dates, but generally the days have passed smoothly. I just let them roll by.

I have tried to keep positive, not to worry, and certainly not to panic although misplacing or losing things, even for a short time, has been a problem.

Altogether, life at Sunrise has proved one of the most settled periods in my life for which I shall always be grateful.

Pure power: the Severn Barrage saga

Speaking at the Glasgow climate summit, First Minister Mark Drakeford was in optimistic mood.

One reason, he explained, was that Wales has the advantage and potential of being beside the sea; in fact surrounded by it on three sides,  All that sea and air. So much potential for energy saving. 

But is the optimism justified?

A look back over the years suggest it is not.

Time after time the opportunity to harness wave power to energise industry and businesses, to light and heat homes, has been turned down.

Wales’s one world class climate change achievement has been the Dinorwig North Wales hydro electric scheme. Completed in 1984 it is a brilliant, simple idea. Pump water up a mountain and let it rush down, creating instant electricity, and repeat the process ad infinitum.

Wales and Britain has ignored since 1849 an easy, affordable way of harnessing the power of the world’s second highest tidal range.

That is as when the importance of the treasure that could be wrested from the Bristol Channel was first recognised by the Gloucester City engineer, Thomas Fuljames. He suggested a barrage linking Wales with Monmouthshire to make Gloucester docks more accessible.

Nothing happened, as after the next, much more ambitious study many decades later, in 1933. That chose a similar line, the English Stones, with electricity - 2:365 million kilowatts per hour on 706 tides a year.

A new study was ordered by the government in 1943 resulting in a positive report two years later. 

The benefits, it said, would include expansion of business and commerce, shipping, tourism, recreation, housing and infrastructure.

Its construction would provide a workforce of 35,000 with 10,000 plus permanent jobs.

The report concluded, ‘If renewable energy resources are to be utilised to increase diversification of electricity generation and reduce pollution, the Severn Barrage remains the largest single project that can make a significant contribution on a reasonable time scale’.

Later that year the case for the barrage was forcefully argued at a civic engineers conference on tidal energy.

It asserted that if every practicable estuary in England and Wales were harnessed to produce energy, 20 percent of the nation’s electricity demand would be met; the largest, the Severn Barrage would account for 7 percent.

Decades of silence followed  

Then, in 1973, the Severn Barrage committee was formed in which I was involved

Its secretary was Peter Davey, chief executive of the South Glamorgan county council, my boss.

I helped arrange the committee meetings, including organising helicopter flights over the Bristol Channel to select the barrage route.

Its enthusiastic report in March 1981 proposed a further study be taken.

The prospect at last, looked rosy, boosted five years later by the influential Severn Tidal Power group report.  

By then the cost had risen to five and a half billion pounds.

Asserting the project would be ‘of great value and a permanent asset to the country’ they wanted an immediate three year £18 million study and, on time, an impressively illustrated report was presented to the Secretary of State for Energy.

The ten mile long barrage on the preferred Lavernock to Brean Down route would built with huge concrete caissons involving embankments on both sides of the channel with a dual carriageway crossing.

The report confirmed it would meet one seventh of England and Wales' electricity needs, would save eight million tons of coal a year and last for at least 126 years. Since then, silence.

There has been limitless water under the bridge, up and down the channel, with the world now facing possible disaster.

Mr Johnson in Glasgow is pleading for action by Great Britain and the world.

Why is the Severn Barrage scheme still dead in the water?

Remembering Rosemary

Rosemary died three years ago today. 

Had she been here I would not be leaving Sunrise. We would have been together and I would be doing my best, with the Sunrise carers, to look after her. But it is not a sad day. Why should it be. She lived until ninety and I think she enjoyed our life together and I know how much she appreciated the love of the family.

I hope to continue to be as fortunate as I have, all through my life?

There is so much to be thankful for.

A COP-out at Glasgow?

It’s a change from the pandemic with the Glasgow summit taking up most of the media's time and space, it is almost at saturation point already on the second day.

So much talk, just what everyone complains about.

There is hope, but will there be much action?

The trouble is that climate change is a confusing, complex subject, and the outcome of the attempt to get countries to act together depends on their overriding self interest.

The absence from Glasgow of Russia and China, giant polluters, is serious.

The most worrying contribution to the debate with all its last minute warnings are the pleas of the small countries that are already seeing the danger of extinction yet are not receiving the promised aid from the rich nations.

Rivalling the world leaders in the effort to get action is the phenomenal teenager Greta Thunberg.   

I find it astonishing that such a young person, however committed, intelligent and eloquent, has achieved such a status, driven by the media.

Solving the climate crisis is vital for new generations and she epitomises the determination needed but it all seems a little too facile, with the media making her as important as the world leaders.

Celebrations

I was looking forward to a family get-together for my 95th birthday later this month, postponed due to Sunrise lockdown.

It might even have been possible for us to have it in Penarth but I will not be in my new home in time.

The last family celebration, for my 90th in 2016, at the Cardiff County Club, organised by Siân, was memorable.

Looking ahead, optimistically, I hope to arrange a celebration in the new year, for my birthday and as a welcome back to Penarth.