{"id":1471,"date":"2022-03-18T12:55:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-18T12:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/?p=1471"},"modified":"2025-06-06T19:33:27","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T18:33:27","slug":"the-week-according-to-peter-rosengard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/?p=1471","title":{"rendered":"The week according to Peter Rosengard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday 11:41 am <\/strong><\/p>\n

I get on my Vespa and zoom over to Harley Street to test my new \u2018How to Delay Dementia\u2019 theory out on my brilliant GP friend Dr Adam Hazell.<\/p>\n

\u2018 You have to make 1000s of instant decisions a minute riding a Vespa around town-all the time you\u2019re looking for kids running out from behind buses.. old people suddenly walking out into the road, crazy SUV drivers turning right without signalling. I’ve always read that to delay the onset of Dementia you have to keep your brain active. Correct?’
\n‘It certainly helps.\u2019 He said.
\n‘So how about \u2018 Ride a Vespa to Beat Dementia !’ -What do you think!? ‘<\/p>\n

\u2018Hmmh! ..a very interesting new theory Peter -the only problem is with thousands of 80 and 90-year-olds suddenly racing around on Vespas – let alone when they get on 1000 cc Ducatis and Harley Davidsons – the number deaths of old people on Vespas will go through the roof!\u2019<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t thought of that.<\/p>\n

Monday 11.32 pm<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m woken up by the bleep of a text message.<\/p>\n

Who calls or texts at this time? It must be an emergency! My daughter in New York? I spend the next two minutes in the dark, desperately looking for the phone and finally find it under my own pillow<\/p>\n

I look down at the text message on my phone \u2026\u00a0 it is from Juan the window cleaner. It says: \u201cI want to buy life insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nobody ever calls me to buy life insurance \u2014 even though that\u2019s what I do \u2014 let alone at midnight!\u00a0 He could have given me a heart attack! Is he stuck 20 floors up on the outside of a City skyscraper?\u00a0 Hoping he doesn\u2019t fall off his ladder, I go back to sleep.<\/p>\n

Tuesday 12:30 pm<\/strong><\/p>\n

My phone bleeps. You spent 15 hrs reading\u00a0breaking news stories yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n

So little?<\/p>\n

10 pm-12 midnight\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I watch BBC News at 10, ITN News, Newsnight and CNN, all the time clicking on the BBC and Guardian, CNN and NYT live breaking news updates on my iPhone .<\/p>\n

Wednesday morning<\/strong><\/p>\n

l I have a great idea. I am going to start Mobile Phones Anonymous \u2014 a 12- step recovery programme for phone and news addicts. \u201cHi, my name is Peter, I\u2019m a compulsive phone news addict. I haven\u2019t looked at BBC News, the Guardian, CNN or the NYT for one whole week, and not even sneaked a peek at the Daily Mail.\u201d Just then I get a breaking news notification bleep.<\/p>\n

Wednesday 2.15 pm<\/strong><\/p>\n

I turn on on the radio: \u201cThis afternoon we\u2019re talking about poo. Dog and cat poo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPoo\u201d is everywhere these days. Whatever happened to good old \u201cfaeces\u201d or\u00a0 \u201cexcrement\u201d? Those were the days! The whole world is up to their ankles in \u201cpoo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Would HE be where he is today if it was spelt \u201cPootin\u201d?<\/p>\n

Thursday afternoon<\/strong><\/p>\n

I pop into the Apple store in Regent Street to buy a new iPhone. I dropped mine in the bath yesterday \u2014 trying out my new under-water reading glasses that I bought on Amazon during lockdown. The glasses work perfectly but\u00a0the iPhone now does not.<\/p>\n

Three hours later the young assistant is still transferring my pictures from the old iPhone.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got a lot of pics,\u201d he says. \u201cSeventy-three thousand, nine hundred and twenty-one. It could be a world record.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut only half of them are selfies,\u201d I point out. \u201cDid you know\u00a0that selfies are now one of the biggest causes of accidental death among young people?<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo hundred and fifty have died over the past 11 years falling off mountains \u2014 let alone cranes and sitting on the edge of suspension bridges \u2014 taking selfies to post on Instagram.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s without \u2018selfie death while driving\u2019 \u2014 they\u2019re just recorded as car accidents,\u201d I tell him.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly 35,282 to go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I ask his name.<\/p>\n

\u201cLester,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cL.E.S.T.E.R?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, like Leicester,\u201d\u00a0 he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo \u2014 not where are you from? What\u2019s your name?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cLeicester\u2026 LEICESTER!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo\u2026 what\u2019s your name?\u201d<\/p>\n

This went on for quite a while\u2026 for at least another 20,000 pics.<\/p>\n

Friday 10 pm<\/strong><\/p>\n

After dinner at my local Italian I\u2019m about to get on my Vespa to ride the whole 100 yards back home, when my scooter keys fall through a hole in my trouser pocket\u00a0down my trouser leg, bounce off my shoe and go straight through the manhole grille into the drain I am standing over. If you tried 100 times to do this it would never happen.<\/p>\n

I leave the Vespa and walk all the way back home.<\/p>\n

I think God is trying to tell me something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday 11:41 am I get on my Vespa and zoom over to Harley Street to test my new \u2018How to Delay Dementia\u2019 theory out on my brilliant GP friend Dr Adam Hazell. \u2018 You have to make 1000s of instant decisions a minute riding a Vespa around town-all the time you\u2019re looking for kids running […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff-written-by-me"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"timeline-thumb":false,"portfolio-thumb":false,"portfolio-one-thumb-xxxlarge":false,"portfolio-one-thumb-xxlarge":false,"portfolio-one-thumb-xlarge":false,"portfolio-one-thumb-large":false,"portfolio-one-thumb-medium":false,"portfolio-one-thumb-small":false,"portfolio-one-thumb-xsmall":false,"testimonial-thumbnail":false,"blog-two-thumbnail":false,"project-image":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"xCulture","author_link":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/?author=1"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Monday 11:41 am I get on my Vespa and zoom over to Harley Street to test my new \u2018How to Delay Dementia\u2019 theory out on my brilliant GP friend Dr Adam Hazell. \u2018 You have to make 1000s of instant decisions a minute riding a Vespa around town-all the time you\u2019re looking for kids running…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1471"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1477,"href":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions\/1477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosengard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}