Numbers

Here are two numbers to juggle with. They are 81 and 152. 81 is the number of  comments I found in my spam folder yesterday and 152 is the number of  comments I have found there today.

90% of the comments were originally posted by me in response to visitors' comments. They dated back to 2007. None of these comments were offensive  and none were written to promote dodgy businesses.

You can imagine how irritating and time-consuming it is to plough through a folder packed with alleged spam comments. You have to re-publish each comment individually and what I do not know is what tomorrow will bring. Will my spam folder be annoyingly refilled by mindless Blogger bots?

Although Blogger has been a pretty kind and efficient host through the years, there seems to be no way of complaining to the service or explaining user problems to them. It's the same with a lot of big businesses these days. They just don't want us talking to them or even finding ways and means of contacting them. It is very frustrating.

Still thinking about numbers. This old Beatles song contains a number which indicates precisely my wife Shirley's birthday age tomorrow. It is hard to believe that she was just twenty years old when we first met and fell in love over forty three years ago.  I was her Paul and she was my Linda.

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/qOGRmbj

Today

 Send some motivation

And discipline 

My way

Tell me something good. 

from R's rue https://ift.tt/YGH6Ta7

Sheffield Botanical Gardens

I remembered his face, but not his name 

I had forgotten it a second after he told me.

I was wrong footed at the door what with the dogs barking and all.

So it took several minutes to restore order, quiet and peace.

I sat him on the couch , and I sat on the grey chair under the lamp 

He refused the offer of tea.

Albert walked through sniffing loudly before we cut to the chase

I will call him Jim 

Jim used to enter my flower show a decade ago 

He asked about the “ Sponsor a pane “ initiative for the hall, that’s why he was there

His partner had died four years ago now and he wanted to sponsor a pane in her memory

But they had lived almost 7 miles away so he wasn’t sure he could fit the criteria

I told him of course he could sponsor one.

He was so worried that he didn’t qualify 

We chatted

“ I miss her on Sunday’s the most “ he told me gently “ having breakfast which we made together listening to the radio “

“Cooking alongside someone without chatting “

I nodded and told him that I was divorced so understood a little tiny bit of what he described .and 

Jim surprised me by saying without any guile

“Oh Divorce can feel worse than a regular bereavement “ 

We talked about it for a while and I was oh so grateful for his insight and vindication , …he was divorced too

He booked a pane of glass in memory of  his partner 

And I told him the inspiration of the whole event was the fact that for his 31st birthday, many years ago,  I had sponsored a pane of glass in Sheffield’s newly revamped Botanical Gardens glass house Pavilion, for the Prof ….

“How Good Is That.” Jim said with a smile 

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/XDvFPpY