Yes I Know We're Selling But We Still Love You

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I'm about to chat about the mundane. It's important that I do. For this is written after the terrible events in Nice. We are slowly moving into a digitally medieval world where a person can deliberately drive a truck into people in France or attack people in Britain because they are Polish. These are two sides of the same mentality. The planet is moving towards a very dangerous place. So mundane is good. Mundane is what we have to aspire to. For at the moment the alternative is scary.

So the board was up on Thursday. Those in the Bridgend suburbia who didn't follow the internet or the gossip line now know...our house is for sale.

Mind you the gossip line seems very powerful where I live. The wife has been approached by a couple of the neighbours for a chat as to why we're selling when she mentioned this before any call to an estate agent was made. And apparently someone even noticed the house viewing early Monday afternoon. Good thing I'm not having an affair.

Of course it's only right that she is the one answering the suburban scrutiny since she has been the driving force in this. I having taken "no interest" other than on the issue of finance. As mentioned before the strains of an early drive to Cardiff for her work, as well as the wish of being closer to her family are the reasons why she wants this. Once my daughter was attracted to this too I was outnumbered, content as I was to live here (although finance aside I'm not particularly bothered as long as the process is relatively smooth).

When a family announces it's intention to move then to those living around them three reasons come into their heads.

1) The family has financial problems

2) The family has new found wealth and/or

3) The family has found a better area to live

With us, or two thirds of us anyway the reason is the third one. As explained what it's not is a question of snobbery (my wife is the most unsnobby - if that's a word - person I know). Still that's what it appears to be on the surface.....that this place is not good enough.

And so I'm expecting people I don't know to approach me. Seemingly innocently enquiring of our motives with undercover agent moves.

And should people ask us for favours, babysitting for example, well we have to say yes unless there is a very good excuse. You can hear the gossip go round immediately. Not only aren't we good enough to live here but they're not bothering to help us either

All that being said at time of writing there have been no further viewings of the house. It's of course early days but I'm getting the view that people are keeping their wallets tight after Brexit. There is a sense of uncertainty about everything since the referendum result and there is a sense of holding back until you know exactly how things will pan out. We shall see,

I've finished The Greatest by Muhammad Ali (ghost written by Richard Durham). I liked this book. It is important first to realise that it was written in the seventies when he was undisputed world champion and before being dealt the blow of Parkinson's disease.

That said it's an important book. After all not only does it show the life of a man who is one of the great icons of the past sixty years but also think what his encompassed. Not just boxing but growing up in the racial tension of America in the nineteen sixties. If there is a quibble I have with this biography I would have liked more when he was world champion for the first time before his ban from boxing for not fighting in Vietnam. So for example his fight with Henry Cooper lasts just a page.

But to end as I began this book also discusses why Muhammad Ali became a moslem. He was a proud of his faith but a proud American as well. To those people who think that you cannot love your religion and your country he was the answer. Throughout his life, including when he battled Parkinson's disease, Ali truly was The Greatest.

Until the next time