This is a question I ask a lot and it can end in disillusionment.
Take a certain TV celebrity by the name of Charles Hanson for example. You may not have heard of him but he turns up on numerous TV antique shows such as Bargain Hunt.
Now on the surface he's a genial fun loving extrovert, the kind of guy you could share a pint and a laugh with.
"I bet he's fun to live with," you might say.
But then you read that Mr Hanson has been sent for Crown Court trial on charges of domestic violence and coercive behaviour and been banned from visiting the family home apart from one visit to pick up personal items.
Hanson has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and so we mustn't pre judge a trial but it does look as if his character is not quite how it comes over on television .
How many times does this happen? When we were living in Beccles we were friendly with another young couple. I don't know how we got to know them but they came to ours on a few occasions and seemed to be a normal loving couple. The man was subsequently found guilty of domestic violence.
People often aren't what they seem. That's precisely why I can't watch the lovey dovey nonsense of programmes like Strictly Come Dancing where everything and everyone is peaches and cream
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It's been a pretty good start to the year for us. We have a new granddaughter and Wednesday was our youngest son's 40th birthday and he heard that he is on the verge of promotion at work. All that despite the fact that he has a bad dose of man flu.
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Don't get nearly as much junk mail as we used to. We now get more junk e-mail but yesterday in the post was a letter addressed to me personally from Pure Cremation. It was sub titled The Freedom to Choose and told me that by choosing one of their funeral plans it would be "less fuss, stress and expense for the ones you love."
The leaflet was full of glowing praise for the service and smiling families and it promised me a £50 gift card of I take out a funeral plan. What is it they say about you can't take it with you?
The service even promised the delivery of my ashes to the family.
I chucked it straight back on the bin. I'm thinking of resurrecting (if you'll pardon the pun) the idea of collecting unwanted mail and addressing it to one of the sender's and sending it back to them without a stamp. What do you think*.
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I mentioned yesterday our meeting with a printer for the publication of our book on Le Paradis. So how did that meeting go?
Well first I saved the book on numerous places. On my desktop, on my laptop, on a portable drive and on a USB stick. I don't want you to get the idea that I'm a tad obsessive here but I can't envisage having done thousands of hours of work and then losing the lot. So I save on numerous places and then forget which is the version I am working on when I want to update or change something.
So I start re-saving under different names like final final book for printing which is then superceded by final final final book for printing again and so on until the name of the file is almost as long as the opening chapter.
Cut the rubbish I hear you cry. Just tell us how the meeting went on and when the book is coming out because goodness knows you've been prattling on about it for long enough.
Well the meeting went well. Paul Y is a print broker - a kind of agent I guess but for printing rather than content. He recognised me immediately. Apparently he remembered me from my days writing a rock music column in the Eastern Evening News. Paul was in a number of local bands.
Onwards and upwards as they say. Lots of other things happening as well. By the end of the day after getting back from writers' club my brain had turned to mush.