I arm myself with the necessary equipment.
Puffed down body warmer
Long warm cashmere fingerless gloves
Rubber gloves
Reading glasses
Spare sealable freezer bags
A biggish box to hold temporarily removed items.
Somewhere in this bottomless chest freezer in the outside shed is a joint of beef bought at Christmas for possible family visits. Well that isn’t going to happen, is it, and it needs eating up.
Right, I’m going in...
I may be some time..
I catch myself, too often, paying attention to my own breathing, in, and out.
Sunday, 3 May 2020
Tuesday, 21 April 2020
Proof of age may be asked for...
Contemplating the eagerly awaited easing of Lockdown. (Does it warrant a capital ‘L’?). I call one of the other in-laws, whose birthday it is today. He is finding it more arduous than most of us, but unlike the rest of us retired ones, used to spending days pottering with ‘projects’, he, at 76, still works in his own business. And quite hard physical work too - no way is he ‘vulnerable’.
We agree a big get- together celebrate will be on the cards ‘once this ridiculous L thing is over’.
But will it be over for us? As small shops, then businesses, then Primary schools gradually open, as young families are released from their cramped flats and doll’s house starter homes, will the over 65s be told they should still Stay Home Stay Safe and paint a rainbow on their downstairs window?
Time to look online for hairdye peeps, and a bright lipstick, some new narrow jeans some new sunnies. Cross fingers that the daily exercise has encouraged the dropping of a few pounds and - come on folks, get dolled up and try to pass for 55, so we can strut to the pub. Pray that you don't look like Private Godfrey in that Dad’s Army episode where the platoon had to look younger, I forget why, where they ended up looking like Robert Smith but not in a good way. (The Cure). Choose a pub with a garden, pick a shady corner and send the youngest person in for the drinks. Don’t order sherry, babycham or a pint of mild, go for a bucket sized glass of pinot grigio or a pint of eurofizz. One hopes the bartender won’t squint suspiciously over the bar and ask to see proof of age. Just don’t proffer your bus pass.
We agree a big get- together celebrate will be on the cards ‘once this ridiculous L thing is over’.
But will it be over for us? As small shops, then businesses, then Primary schools gradually open, as young families are released from their cramped flats and doll’s house starter homes, will the over 65s be told they should still Stay Home Stay Safe and paint a rainbow on their downstairs window?
Time to look online for hairdye peeps, and a bright lipstick, some new narrow jeans some new sunnies. Cross fingers that the daily exercise has encouraged the dropping of a few pounds and - come on folks, get dolled up and try to pass for 55, so we can strut to the pub. Pray that you don't look like Private Godfrey in that Dad’s Army episode where the platoon had to look younger, I forget why, where they ended up looking like Robert Smith but not in a good way. (The Cure). Choose a pub with a garden, pick a shady corner and send the youngest person in for the drinks. Don’t order sherry, babycham or a pint of mild, go for a bucket sized glass of pinot grigio or a pint of eurofizz. One hopes the bartender won’t squint suspiciously over the bar and ask to see proof of age. Just don’t proffer your bus pass.
Saturday, 18 April 2020
Lost in Music
Drifting through another Lockdown day, hunting for a lost cd. Yesterday evening, between ‘Masterchef’ and ‘Taskmaster’ we watched another episode of ‘West Wing’. (On our second ride through its 7 Seasons and wishing the fairytale of intelligent, principled US politics could come true,). The title of the episode was ‘Somebody’s going to emergency, somebody’s going to jail’. What a track, what an album that is, I thought. Find it and play it tomorrow.
Of course, I find every Don Henley album that I have, sitting correctly between Hendrix and John Lee Hooker, except The End of the Innocence which is the album I need. So what was left of the morning was spent checking through the cds on Billy, re-filing a couple, removing two more for the charity shop, (Razorlight and Wet Wet Wet fyi), wondering who Moriarty are and planning to play it later and putting last night’s Craig Charles’ programme on bbc Sounds to listen to whilst doing some minimal am housework. Then ordering that cd from Amazon.
A pretty typical morning I’m afraid, but hey, it’s Saturday, I am truly retired and apparently vulnerable, so it’s all guilt-free. Although the choc-hazlenut croissant from lidl, saved from yesterday, and about to be eaten with a coffee, won’t be.
Of course, I find every Don Henley album that I have, sitting correctly between Hendrix and John Lee Hooker, except The End of the Innocence which is the album I need. So what was left of the morning was spent checking through the cds on Billy, re-filing a couple, removing two more for the charity shop, (Razorlight and Wet Wet Wet fyi), wondering who Moriarty are and planning to play it later and putting last night’s Craig Charles’ programme on bbc Sounds to listen to whilst doing some minimal am housework. Then ordering that cd from Amazon.
A pretty typical morning I’m afraid, but hey, it’s Saturday, I am truly retired and apparently vulnerable, so it’s all guilt-free. Although the choc-hazlenut croissant from lidl, saved from yesterday, and about to be eaten with a coffee, won’t be.
Tuesday, 27 February 2018
Brrrr
I have just bought another bag of mealworms while I was out. The robins and blackbirds hoover them up, leaving more of the other food for the other birds. By ‘eck, petal, it’s cold. But the, it is winter, isn,t it? And local farmers are hugely relieved that fungus and crop diseases are being killed off. Who are the people shutting schools, cancelling trains, saying “ah well, it’s not worth investing in winter machinery any more.
What machinery did we have in the 50s and 60s when winter was a normal phenomenon? Gritters were two blokes on the back of a council flatbed truck with shovels. More council workers cleared crossroads and zebra crossings while car owners put onwinter tyres and got on with it. Householders did their bit by clearing paths and spreading cinders; everyone had coke stoves and open fires then. (And upstairs, no heating, frost patterns on windows and extra eiderdowns.)
Schools never closed unless the toilets, outside of course, froze up. If the boilers broke down you wore your coat in class. Although most PE Games sessions went ahead, the class in knickers and aertex shirts shivering in ice playgrounds which we had polished with slides during breaktime, sometimes it was just too snowy. Then you did wonderful Music and Movement inside, or country dancing, us Sarf Lunnon kids barefoot on bits of squished cabbage. The big coke stove in the corner of my primary school never broke down. Its heat barely reached us, it warmed our wet gloves draped on its guard, adding the smell of steaming wet wool to that of the gently souring milk. A crate of frozen bottles, with strange white laminated worms with tinfoil hats poking out of them, was placed by the stove to thaw; the unfrozen coke- warmed milk was drunk by all of us, with screwed up faces.
No school buses, everyone walked anyway, I let the red bus go to play snowplough while I save my 4d fare and waded throgh snow which filled my wellies. I do remember my dad being late to and from work sometimes as the trains from Waterloo suffered something called ‘iced up points’.
The winter of 63 turned the whole of Shirley into a playground. Perhaps we did get some time of school then? Parents got to work somehow and Granny turned us out of the house into a white world of wonderful freedom, romping over Shirley Golf Course (usually policed and forbidden to us kids, ) and the gardens of the big houses that backed on to it, their hedgerows, fences, gates totally covered by feet of snow. We did no damage, just explored these usually hidden inaccessible properties, leaving footprints and space snowmen to show we’d trespassed.
Now snow comes down and some people seem to just wait for someone else to deal with it, shovel, lay a cloak, whatever, after all, we all pay our taxes, don’t we? Although the despised public servants who helped everyone smooth their lives have long been made redundant and where does our local council charge, whatever it’s called, go? < shrug > and clean off my shovel.
What machinery did we have in the 50s and 60s when winter was a normal phenomenon? Gritters were two blokes on the back of a council flatbed truck with shovels. More council workers cleared crossroads and zebra crossings while car owners put onwinter tyres and got on with it. Householders did their bit by clearing paths and spreading cinders; everyone had coke stoves and open fires then. (And upstairs, no heating, frost patterns on windows and extra eiderdowns.)
Schools never closed unless the toilets, outside of course, froze up. If the boilers broke down you wore your coat in class. Although most PE Games sessions went ahead, the class in knickers and aertex shirts shivering in ice playgrounds which we had polished with slides during breaktime, sometimes it was just too snowy. Then you did wonderful Music and Movement inside, or country dancing, us Sarf Lunnon kids barefoot on bits of squished cabbage. The big coke stove in the corner of my primary school never broke down. Its heat barely reached us, it warmed our wet gloves draped on its guard, adding the smell of steaming wet wool to that of the gently souring milk. A crate of frozen bottles, with strange white laminated worms with tinfoil hats poking out of them, was placed by the stove to thaw; the unfrozen coke- warmed milk was drunk by all of us, with screwed up faces.
No school buses, everyone walked anyway, I let the red bus go to play snowplough while I save my 4d fare and waded throgh snow which filled my wellies. I do remember my dad being late to and from work sometimes as the trains from Waterloo suffered something called ‘iced up points’.
The winter of 63 turned the whole of Shirley into a playground. Perhaps we did get some time of school then? Parents got to work somehow and Granny turned us out of the house into a white world of wonderful freedom, romping over Shirley Golf Course (usually policed and forbidden to us kids, ) and the gardens of the big houses that backed on to it, their hedgerows, fences, gates totally covered by feet of snow. We did no damage, just explored these usually hidden inaccessible properties, leaving footprints and space snowmen to show we’d trespassed.
Now snow comes down and some people seem to just wait for someone else to deal with it, shovel, lay a cloak, whatever, after all, we all pay our taxes, don’t we? Although the despised public servants who helped everyone smooth their lives have long been made redundant and where does our local council charge, whatever it’s called, go? < shrug > and clean off my shovel.
Wednesday, 6 December 2017
Gratitude
On the last day of my sixties, I am thinking about how I feel at reaching 70, (assuming I get through the night...) and it is gratitude. Seventy is more than either parent was granted, and I still feel deeply disturbed anger about that. My father, packed off to war aged 19, away from home and girlfriend for six years,(his r’n’r spent in Alexandria; he was unable to eat figs for the rest of his life!), returned to become a lively committed member of his community, a principled and dedicated parent, and did not deserve that bloody cancer and death in his fifties. My mother, also a firm supporter of society, volunteer, community worker, recoiled from a lifetime of small c Conservatism after she saw how the people she worked with were devastated by Thatcherism, also should have had longer to enjoy the travels she looked forward to in her retirement.
What a privileged generation we post war baby boomers still are. Benefitting as we have from the hugely brave political decisions taken in the late 40s, free NHS, education, foreign policies, many of us are appalled by the sacrifice of all the progress we have enjoyed, by a couple of carelessly casual elections and a referendum. But I am grateful to have survived long enough to feel such despair at the state of our country, its betrayal by those who, wrongly, consider themselves fit to govern us.
Perhaps the angst is a symptom of my age, anyway. Great-Grandchildren who my parents would be thrilled by, (Dad never saw his grandchildren,) are excited and enthused by the world, they will cope with it having known nothing different. Although what are we handing them, a degraded environment? Species collapse? Ecological imbalances that are a threat to every natural living thing, especially the human species? P more than despairs, it is flippant to say he is more like Victor Meldrew every day, unkind to smile at his “Dad Rants” as son calls them surruptitiously filming them on occasions. He thinks, worries, analyses all the degredations of our current political scene, appalled by the sheer inward-looking selfishness of the referendum vote, the incompetence of those determined to go ahead with it rather than bravely challenge the attitudes that caused it, the cruel judgemental opinions of some of the louder mps.
Grateful is what I am, though, I can ignore those ignorant self serving politicians and go for a walk. We live in a beautiful county, the river our town sits by is beautiful at all times of the year, with otters and fish visible in its clear waters from local paths. The sea, coastal nature reserves, rolling cliff-tops, wonderful beach cafés are a short drive away, as are dramatic hillforts with wide inspiring views from their tops.
And breathe.
Next time I talk to you, I will have to acknowledge that I am, officially old.
What a privileged generation we post war baby boomers still are. Benefitting as we have from the hugely brave political decisions taken in the late 40s, free NHS, education, foreign policies, many of us are appalled by the sacrifice of all the progress we have enjoyed, by a couple of carelessly casual elections and a referendum. But I am grateful to have survived long enough to feel such despair at the state of our country, its betrayal by those who, wrongly, consider themselves fit to govern us.
Perhaps the angst is a symptom of my age, anyway. Great-Grandchildren who my parents would be thrilled by, (Dad never saw his grandchildren,) are excited and enthused by the world, they will cope with it having known nothing different. Although what are we handing them, a degraded environment? Species collapse? Ecological imbalances that are a threat to every natural living thing, especially the human species? P more than despairs, it is flippant to say he is more like Victor Meldrew every day, unkind to smile at his “Dad Rants” as son calls them surruptitiously filming them on occasions. He thinks, worries, analyses all the degredations of our current political scene, appalled by the sheer inward-looking selfishness of the referendum vote, the incompetence of those determined to go ahead with it rather than bravely challenge the attitudes that caused it, the cruel judgemental opinions of some of the louder mps.
Grateful is what I am, though, I can ignore those ignorant self serving politicians and go for a walk. We live in a beautiful county, the river our town sits by is beautiful at all times of the year, with otters and fish visible in its clear waters from local paths. The sea, coastal nature reserves, rolling cliff-tops, wonderful beach cafés are a short drive away, as are dramatic hillforts with wide inspiring views from their tops.
And breathe.
Next time I talk to you, I will have to acknowledge that I am, officially old.
Thursday, 23 November 2017
Ah ha! At last! Finalement! Hooray
2,000? and!? Mr G plants over 2,000 spring bulbs every year in his delightful, interesting but not large Leicestershire garden. Well, not him personally, not all of them, although I bet he pokes most of the holes with his stick. Kate will point to the site, he will dib the stick and ‘Garden Boy’ will do the planting, that’s how I see it.
And there I was standing in Homebase while P selected gate latches wondering if a bag of 20 would do plus some crocii, (although would not dream of buying them from Homebase but would go up the lane to Langton Nurseries), I felt obliged to add a nought to that number, but with no time to buy that day as we were off to Frome with fruity mince and apfelküchen to do school runs and feed team T, O being in St Louis at the time.
It was days before we made it to the Nurseries, a messy disorganised heap of a place full of treasures. That day’s haul included local honey for 4 quid, suede garden gloves for 3, mealworms for the robin, loads of cyclamen that have brightened the house for weeks, that I have just planted outside in a freezing wind, and as well as nowhere near 200 bulbs, some paperwhites to plant up for Vik.
Last night we saw Alice Roberts at the Tivoli Theatre talking about her latest book, Tamed, 10 species that changed the world. Despite abysmal lighting and just a few slides on a big screen she interested and intrigued us all with digressions on wolves and wheat, horses and apples, and of course, the human species, mentioning also cats, bees and Michael Gove. (And has there ever been a species quite as weird and destructive as Gove?) She paced about in her usual plumage of Desiguel, silver rings and boots and we were quite star-struck.
This is nothing to do with the title above. This is not what those faithful Round Robin followers shouted as they heard I was about to post after months. No, it was me, punching the air in triumph after tearing my hair out for three days trying to work out the system Google+ is using to confound the users of blogspot since they took it over.
Bloomin’ non-tax paying geeks put on earth to frustrate us.
And there I was standing in Homebase while P selected gate latches wondering if a bag of 20 would do plus some crocii, (although would not dream of buying them from Homebase but would go up the lane to Langton Nurseries), I felt obliged to add a nought to that number, but with no time to buy that day as we were off to Frome with fruity mince and apfelküchen to do school runs and feed team T, O being in St Louis at the time.
It was days before we made it to the Nurseries, a messy disorganised heap of a place full of treasures. That day’s haul included local honey for 4 quid, suede garden gloves for 3, mealworms for the robin, loads of cyclamen that have brightened the house for weeks, that I have just planted outside in a freezing wind, and as well as nowhere near 200 bulbs, some paperwhites to plant up for Vik.
Last night we saw Alice Roberts at the Tivoli Theatre talking about her latest book, Tamed, 10 species that changed the world. Despite abysmal lighting and just a few slides on a big screen she interested and intrigued us all with digressions on wolves and wheat, horses and apples, and of course, the human species, mentioning also cats, bees and Michael Gove. (And has there ever been a species quite as weird and destructive as Gove?) She paced about in her usual plumage of Desiguel, silver rings and boots and we were quite star-struck.
This is nothing to do with the title above. This is not what those faithful Round Robin followers shouted as they heard I was about to post after months. No, it was me, punching the air in triumph after tearing my hair out for three days trying to work out the system Google+ is using to confound the users of blogspot since they took it over.
Bloomin’ non-tax paying geeks put on earth to frustrate us.
Sunday, 19 February 2017
Incoming.. chukachukachuka..
That's me, I'm the sausage....
Feel a bit of a sausage, having almost abandoned the Round Robin now it is no longer in France. Many episodes have been written in my head since the culture shock of the return, some made it into my diary, but even that outlet suffered during the coping months in the rented house, the struggling months of the house purchase and travails with a British builder, the adjustments to almost-town dwelling. And since last June my mind races through themes, topics, opinions, wails, but my hand never wrote them out.
I gave up facebook in despair after so many discussions/arguments with people who didn't use reason or logic, just invective. I look away from the shouty headlines that crow at me from the newspapers racked by the supermarket entrance, peddling myth and ignorance so shamelessly. I have to look elsewhere to recognise the country we left and missed; I'll get there.
Feel a bit of a sausage, having almost abandoned the Round Robin now it is no longer in France. Many episodes have been written in my head since the culture shock of the return, some made it into my diary, but even that outlet suffered during the coping months in the rented house, the struggling months of the house purchase and travails with a British builder, the adjustments to almost-town dwelling. And since last June my mind races through themes, topics, opinions, wails, but my hand never wrote them out.
I gave up facebook in despair after so many discussions/arguments with people who didn't use reason or logic, just invective. I look away from the shouty headlines that crow at me from the newspapers racked by the supermarket entrance, peddling myth and ignorance so shamelessly. I have to look elsewhere to recognise the country we left and missed; I'll get there.
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