Any fool can be "in love".....

A customer in Mr. Books just asked if I could recommend a passage in a book for a wedding speech. A bit like that passage from Corinthians 13 which I've read once or twice, most recently at my niece's wedding last summer, it must summarise the very nature of this thing we call love. I think that this passage from Captain Corelli's Mandolin takes a bit of beating:

 From Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

Love is a temporary madness,
it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides.
And when it subsides you have to make a decision.
You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together
that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.Love is not breathlessness,
it is not excitement,
it is not the promulgation of eternal passion.That is just being "in love" which any fool can do.Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away,
and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love, have roots that grow towards each other underground,
and when all the pretty blossom have fallen from their branches,
they find that they are one tree and not two.

Is Tonbridge Cottgae Hospital now safe....

The new Chief Executive of the NHS, Simon Stevens, seems to be saying that the organisation will reverse the trend of cottage hospitals so that communities are better served. He says in a Telegraph report today that countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden and the USA have been showing us the way with smaller hospitals successfully helping to serve their local communities. Let's hope that this is good news for the campaign to save Tonbridge Cottage hospital. Long serving Tonbridge MP, Sir John Stanley, to give him his dues, has fought a long hard battle to save it from closure. It would be a great legacy for him if the hospital is saved for the next few generations

Help write TonbridgeBlog....

To keep TonbridgeBlog more vibrant and alive why not contribute yourself. This can be done, as many already do, by simply leaving short comments against any of the posts below. Better still send in longer posts and, provided they look decent, local and relevant, they'll be published on the blog. So come on let's all see some creative writing, poetry, incisive comment or even just a good old moan. It couldn't be easier to get yourselves heard. Post it in comments and I'll do the rest.....

Election fever hits Tonbridge....

TonbridgeBlog doesn't often do politics but it does seem very topical this week.
I hope everyone was able to exercise their democratic right and got out to vote on Thursday. You had from 7am until 10pm to cast you vote so, let's face it, you all had every opportunity. But what did you vote? It was only for the European elections after all. Not even the local council elections were held in Tonbridge. When the results come in on Sunday, if the council elections in the rest of the country are anything to go by, the country is in for another shock of the UKIP variety. If it isn't sending out a message to the main parties that people are fed up with the main parties and that the country is being led by a London centric elite then I don't know what will. It's going to interesting from now until the general election to see what happens and whether this wave of support will continue to surge into the one that really counts next May. If you're a student of politics, as I once was, these are indeed fascinating times. We've had the first official Coalition since the War, the first ever Liberal Deputy PM, the changing landscape that UKIP has brought, expenses scandals, the potential of permanent hung parliaments, a the real possibility Scottish independence. It's going to be a heck of an ugly fight I reckon. Does Cameron want to go down in history as the PM who lost Scotland and allowed the far right, or at least the well right of centre, party in Britain to gain real power and influence? I very much doubt it. The party machine will fight tooth and nail to avoid both of these happening. That's politics done for at least a month or two for TonbridgeBlog. But what do you all think????

300,000 thousand visits for TonbridgeBlog....

Just noticed that TonbridgeBlog has gone past 300,000 hits. (In fact it's far more than that because the blog was on a different platform for about two years before its present Google one.) Not sure how many that works out per day or even month or how many unique visitors and all that kind of stuff. All I know is that it does feel as though the site has, over the years, become reasonably popular locally. I can't really ask for much more can I even though Justin Bieber has about 30 zillion followers on twitter for coming out with a load of spillage!... Keep the site going by being an active reader. The odd comment wouldn't go a miss either. You can comment anonymously at the moment but it's much better to have a user name or "handle" as I like to call it. Say anything you like about the Tonbridge, the surrounding area or pretty much anything else. So long as it's legal, moral and decent of course....

Thoughts on appeasement of Putin....

Readers who like frivolous gossip about the soaps and celebrity cooking shows look away now for we're getting a bit political and serious. You see I do like to read Charles Moore's piece in the Saturday Torygraph. (I did even before he did a book signing in Mr. Books Bookshop, honest) This week he seems in particularly fine, and somewhat controversial, form. Stopping short of calling for us to take up arms against a belligerent Russia under Vlad Putin, he is certainly calling for a tougher stance. See the full article here There are always hundreds of comments under Mr. Moore's pieces and sometimes I feel like adding my twopenn'oth  This is what I said today:

"If the price of European/world peace is some Ukranian soil them so be it. What would you do Mr. Moore if you were in a prominent government position? Have a military stand off? Or might it be wiser to be pragmatic and try to control the situation as, largely, is happening. There are times when it's absolutely right to stand up to dictators but I'm not sure that time is now. If Russia invades a German of French speaking state then that would be totally different. But, realistically, it's not quite the time for us in Britain to sharpen the garden spades and pick up the pitch forks just yet!....

Smelling is believing....

I see it's been reported that Drytec has finally agreed to do something about the nasty pen and ink that drifts across Tonbridge Town from time to time polluting our nostrils. I'll believe it when I smell it!....

Great local businesses #4 Bespoke Home Improvements....

A special thanks to Chris at Bespoke Property Improvements on Quarry Hill Parade. I asked him about garage doors and, although they don't actually do them, he was extremely helpful by advising me what he knew about them and a recommended supplier and fitter. Now I ask you would you get that level of service from Anglian windows and the like? I very much doubt it. Give me a good Tonbridge, local based business any day of the week. In fact they were so helpful that I've asked them to quote for replacing two windows also, which again they were glad to assist with. Contrast that with Anglian who have plagued me on and off for about 8 years now and seem satisfied only if all the windows in the house are made of plastic not just the two that I want to be....

PS. Good luck in the Tonbridge Half Marathon in September Chris at Bespoke. I might even be joining you!!

A thought about passport applications....

At the main Post Office in Tonbridge you can renew your driving licence over the counter in a special, space age booth which takes your photo and checks your details. You even sign it there and then electronically on a light pad which sends it to the DVLA. They then post you a new licence, presumably having doubled checked all the details. If it works for driver's licences then what's wrong with extending it to passports. I dare say that not every passport application or renewal could be done in a similar fashion but I'd have thought that about 95% of them could be. So why not save us all the hassle and worry of having to do everything the old fashioned, and very slow, way?