{"id":1001,"date":"2021-01-31T22:01:15","date_gmt":"2021-01-31T22:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/livingstones.blog\/?p=1001"},"modified":"2021-01-31T22:01:15","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T22:01:15","slug":"some-stars-shine-too-brightly-to-be-hidden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/livingstones.uk\/?p=1001","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Some stars shine too brightly to be hidden&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was sorry to learn today that Guido Castro, the partner of Dame Maureen Lipman for the past twelve or thirteen years has passed. I have long been an admirer of Maureen\u2019s work, and immediately remembered her speaking about the death of her husband, Jack Rosenthal, some seventeen years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She is a lady whose work my wife and I have followed for more years than we would now care to remember, so, what I have to state now doesn\u2019t come from a light or flippant heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Everyone still knows and refers to her as \u2018Maureen Lipman\u2019, and those who have benefited from her wisdom and wit also know that the lady is no fool. Who among us has forgotten the iconic \u2018Mrs Jones\u2019 &#8211; \u201c<em>so, you\u2019ve got all of the colours in all of the sizes<\/em>\u201d..?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We must therefore assume that allowing the details of Guido\u2019s passing to be publicised was no error on Maureen\u2019s part. Maureen must have wanted the rest of us to know..<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Without wishing in any way to add to her or her friends\u2019 present sadness, the report of those circumstances does raise certain questions and provoke some comparisons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>It is reported that Guido had lately been living in a \u2018care home\u2019 .<\/li><li>Also mentioned was that he had received the vaccine to counter the present medical emergency &#8211; identified as Covid-19.<\/li><li>Apparently, Guido was already suffering with other medical issues.<\/li><li>It was good that Maureen was able to be \u2018with\u2019 him when he passed.<\/li><li>It is not clear from the public information whether Guido died inside the \u2018care\u2019 home, or whether, perhaps, he was in hospital.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In either case, there would appear to have been some divergence here, from the somewhat draconian regime under which we, the plebeians, are expected to behave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Allow me, without going into too much detail or calling for any special attention in our own family situation, to humbly make some comparisons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>My lovely lass has suffered for the past seven years with a distressing combination of mental issues which has been thrown under the general heading of \u2018vascular dementia\u2019.<\/li><li>Because, on several occasions, she was putting herself at serious risk of physical injury and putting me through the \u2018wringer\u2019 in trying, at pushing 80 years, to keep her from killing herself, greater minds than mine decided that she should be detained under the Mental Health Act 2005.<\/li><li>She went into \u2018dementia care\u2019 at the end of March 2020, at just the same time as yet greater minds decided that the world needed to be cleansed by an unstable bacterium (<em>about which nothing needs to be added here<\/em>), which has meant that, for the past ten months, I have not even been allowed over the threshold of the building to see what her accommodation is like.<\/li><li>My lass has also recently been given the \u2018vaccine\u2019, against my advice, to which I know that she, as devout homeopathic disciple, would <strong><u>never<\/u><\/strong> have acquiesced, were she still of sound mind.<\/li><li>My lass is also suffering with a number of what, should she pass now, might just be entered on the \u2018Death Certificate\u2019 as \u2018co-morbidities\u2019.<\/li><li>It\u2019s clear from the enormous amount of social media comment that none of the plebs are being allowed to even hold the hand of our dear ones as they pass.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, there are many thousands of us under the same restrictions, but, with the greatest respect for our \u2018Maureen\u2019s\u2019 national recognition and stellar status, I would like to ask our esteemed present leaders the question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Is there one rule for brightly shining stars and another rule for us plebs?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was sorry to learn today that Guido Castro, the partner of Dame Maureen Lipman for the past twelve or thirteen years has passed. I have long been an admirer of Maureen\u2019s work, and immediately remembered her speaking about the death of her husband, Jack Rosenthal, some seventeen years ago. She is a lady whose&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/livingstones.uk\/?p=1001\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8216;Some stars shine too brightly to be hidden&#8217;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","without-featured-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingstones.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingstones.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingstones.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingstones.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingstones.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/livingstones.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingstones.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingstones.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingstones.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}