Thanks

 I am grateful to the bin men for emptying my bins every week.  We have a green bin for recyclable stuff and a black bin for everything else.   They are taken on alternate weeks so we get a weekly collection which will be one or the other.   I have not experienced a bin failure in my area ever. 

I am grateful to the postman who comes everyday bar Sundays.  I know Colin well and we often have a chat when he comes.

I am grateful to the utility companies for giving me water and electricity.  There is a natural gas pipeline that goes through Norfolk from the North Sea  gas fields and was put underground here back in the 1970s right across the county although most of the villages it passes through or by are unable to get the gas themselves but nobody is complaining, that is just by the by.     The path of the pipeline is marked with guide posts in the banks and hedgerows.   I had one in the corner of my garden at my last house.    You can see them in the banks and verges as you drive south from Bacton on the Norfolk coast down through the county.   A bit of disruption for farmers at the time but soon all the earth back in place and noone suffered.   The pipeline is run by the National Grid and they inspect it via helicopter throughout the year.   All works well.   There is another  feeder pipe across to the Continent too.   The Bacton Terminal is run by Shell.   (A recent wind farm application to put underground wires in place in a similar way,  but wires and not pipe,  from the North Sea to carry wind generated electricity  was met with greenpeace , or some such organisation, who have put a stop to it when one ex teacher applied to the court to stop it. I guess he was funded by one of the green  organisations.   The proposed  windfarm in the North Sea is now stopped or on hold pending an appeal and more costs so your energy will not come from this source for the foreseeable future.   It is a good thing we didn't have green protesters when Cable and Wireless put the cable across the Atlantic or we might never have been able to make telephone calls to our American brothers and sisters).   

I am grateful to my ear doctor and have just written him a thank you card.   /

I am grateful to the retailers, bread makers, meat packers, slaughterhouses, hauliers and farmers for my dinners. 

I am grateful to the police who work away in silence in Norfolk and do a good job under a constant barage of criticism and civil rights codes which tie their hands and not those of the criminals. 

I am grateful to my parents for bringing me up to accept good and bad things and to turn the other cheek and to  take life in its stride and see that death is inevitable and if one thing doesn't get you something else will.      It has become apparent to me during the Covid outbreak that fear of death has manifested itself amongst the older  population like I never knew existed and an outrage that something like Covid might have the audacity to come along and kill them.  In fact something will come along and kill them anyway and whether it be old age, flu, pneumonia, cancer,  crossing the road  or anything else, by the time they get to 70 their days are numbered and they might as well accept it, ready or not.