Absent friends...

I'm sure that this man will be remembered for many years to come, and it's amazing that he was 51 years old when I was born (today's yet another Scrobs birthday, and we're going out later...)

What a big man Henry Allingham was! I salute you Sir!

Another much younger name to leave us - thankfully still with us in body, is the Grumpy Granny duo.

I was sorry to read a thoughtful comment that was left here on Friday, and even sorrier that I missed them and didn't see it in time to wish them 'bye!

So, here it is, slightly abridged as GG said that she's been instructed by Blogger not to say so much in one post.

It says an awful lot, so over to you Grumpers...

"This posting illustrates perfectly why we Grumpys have finally decided to quit and buzz off to our secure little hidey hole far far away from Nosepicker McStickyfingers and the rest of the poofs in Downing Street and the Marxist claque in Brussels.

I know we "retired" a few months and then returned - but that was caused by a minor hiccup to our long standing plans which has now been successfully ironed out. Grandad is a modest chap but he spent much of his life in economic and finance work and first saw the writing begin to appear on the wall when those who were pulling Bill Clinton's strings (and now probably those of his wife) instructed him to pass into law the conjoining of high street retail banking and investment and commercial banking; an absolute NO NO in banking terms. He described it as foolish and dangerous and said it would lead to great trouble and distress.

Knowing something similar was likely to follow in the UK, since then we have carefully watched minutely every action of our politicians. Things began to come nicely to the boil with the so-called dot-com bubble when brainless investors declared a young girl with a cat and a computer had suddenly produced a billion pound company overnight and out of thin air. No product, no history, no accounts. Lunacy. That little bubble went pop quite early on and we were not affected as we had no investments in that sort of idiocy.

The simmer continued gently with the ever increasing house prices. Grandad used to have a small graph showing average salaries (which hardly ever moved) against house prices which rose almost daily. It was obvious for anyone with eyes to see that this could not go one. How could anyone earning £20k before tax ever hope to service a £250k mortgage which, by the time the compounding had been done would amount to nearer £800,000. The sums simply did not add up.

We continued to watch. However, on the afternoon that Snottyfingers announced the £5billion pension grab changes, grandad was on to our fund manager and cashed in the lot within 24 hours. The proceeds were despatched to our hidey hole offshore and have since been earning a steady if unspectacular (but tax free)return annually. We eventually decided in 2002 that it was time to get rid of our house and rent while the money was there for the taking, so we put it on the market for what our agent said he could get for it and sure enough 3 weeks later we had a firm offer from a thick Indian who paid us over 3 times what we had paid 10 years previously and over 5times what we considered it was actually worth. The vast majority of that substantial amount of cash too followed into our offshore fund.

And now we both have new passports and ten years permanent resident visas, so we have left the tip that the UK has become for pastures not exactly new for us as we have visited our little cottage overlooking a beautiful bay at least twice a year since we bought it in the 1980s for really quite a pittance. We have made new friends in the village and happily we both speak the local language fairly fluently. It will see us out now I think. We do not have a land line phone installed so we will not be able to browse the internet any more.

The major advantage of this is that folks of our advanced years do not need all the daily boiling blood pressure, frustrating but helpless feelings over much of what the politically correct garbage and other mendacious crap we read or get fed via the BBC. We spent the better part of 130 years between us working honestly and diligently doing our bit for the UK (or England if you prefer) and were really quite proud of our country in a quiet sort of way. Basic things (health service, utilities, transport etc) worked ok most of the time, most companies were there to help rather than screw you, kids got educated properly and many did very well by their own efforts.

Take a deep breath, look outside and note what you see - wheelie bins with chips, cctv cameras all over the place, a useless politicised police force, once the finest armed forces in the world engaged in 2 illegal wars and reduced to penury by a one eyed Scottish Communist prat, and from overseas, our so-called "government" is simply a laughing stock.

So, in a nutshell we have had enough and we have been careful enough to secure more than sufficient resources to ensure our futures well away from Scottish poofs and nosepickers and Marxist theorists in Europe. We shall honestly miss all our blogging/commenting cybermates, and you all know who who are, so from the bottom of our hearts Grandad and I thank you for keeping us in turn, mildly irritated, bloody annoyed, screamingly helplessly infuriated - as well as most of the other emotions from amused smiling at the sharpness and unalloyed wit of many of you, to those who more than once occasioned the necessity to change the grandmotherly undergarments (it happens when you get to our age you know) when creased up in uncontrollable hysterical laughter.

En passant you may be wondering how I managed to type all this if I no longer have a computer. Well, the answer is that we have stopped off en route to spend a few days with one of our regular commenting gang who has kindly offered us accommodation, victuals and transport free of charge – which is nothing less than is to be expected from somebody I have known since we were both in the infants schools at the age of six in South London.

Bye everyone; it has been fun".

Luckily Pips was here to wave them off, and so do I here (waves)!

'Bye Grumpers, sorry to have missed you, and the very best of good fortune to you both!