How Strange the Change from Minor to Major?

Almost eleven years ago to the day, we were travelling across London in torrential rain. We were returning from a holiday abroad. Dearest received a phone call as we sat in a taxi that was beginning to resemble a boat. What rain! I listened to his end of the conversation. I could hear "water" and "home" mentioned. I grabbed his arm, "Have her waters broken?"
"No," came the answer, "We've been flooded at home." I breathed a sigh of relief. No worries then. Obviously totally chilled after a good holiday.
We arrived home to a receding tide. Our 9 month pregnant daughter and her paternal grandmother who was living with us at the time, were bailing out water, wringing out towels, orchestrated by my brother who, it has to be said, is someone you want on your team, in the face of a crisis. It had been knee-high but was currently, just a couple of inches. A flash flood. Thank goodness for the home team. It could have been a lot more miserable.
Last week the flood boards that we installed, subsequent to that last debacle, were severely put to the test as the final hours of voting took place. The heavens opened with an Armageddon of a storm. Pathetic fallacy or what? We were soon surrounded by a moat. However, it was not a good time to discover  the door to the Futility room,  replaced two years previously, had not been finished off properly. Water seeped in under the door frame itself. A visiting friend, Anthony (instant canonisation required) helped me on bended knees to mop and bail with every towel I could find, as water flowed over the partly-installed, underfloor heated (or not?) tiled bathroom floor.
You are wondering if I am going to make this into an analogy of some sort? Still not in the mood, actually.
Going to have to buck up, along with the rest of the country and make this thing work somehow.
In the meantime, I'm out to look for some new fluffy towels in readiness for the grand opening and of course, the silent self-closing.

Living with Builders....

I had to break the news that the heated towel rail was damaged in transit and would not arrive until mid July.
If the Brexit result did not go down well, you can only imagine what effect this news had. Dearest has been without a shower and a second toilettte for three weeks now. The strain of being a towel-clad Tarzan, crushed by the early morning rush to the bedroom (which is also being done)  is beginning to take its toll. With increasing speed and  dexterity he flings himself into his Changing room. I call it a Changing room, not because I have a mis-placed sense of grandeur, or in the hope that Someone emerges from it calmer and more rational,  but really because the adoption of my daughter's old box room is an attempt to contain all Dearest's schtuff so that he can get dressed with as little assistance from me (you know, avoiding the divorce-inducing, "Where's MY..?").
So when I said that we had to stick with this particular towel rail, as the plumbing had been done to this measurement, and nothing else would fit the knobs...
"What haven't the knobs fitted?' he cried. He never listens to me properly. If at all. But it is an indication that three weeks in of sharing our house with very nice industrious workmen is beginning to pall.
It happens to everyone in the end.

Graceful exits?

So that's it then. She's finally leaving. She's struggled to keep it together for many years. Strayed off track but ploughed on in the face of adversity. Last night was the devastating finale. It's over.
No, I  am not talking about Britannia, but the final episode of The Good Wife which concluded last night on British television.
As a series, it was initially very patchy. It seemed to have lost the cut and thrust that made it such a savoured treat of the week. But as it rolled to a close, it finally gathered momentum and finished with style, grace and hope.
If only I were able to talk about the result of last night's referendum in the same way.
I cannot.

Tales from the Opera....

We're going to the opera tomorrow night. Madame Butterfly. Never been to the opera in London before. It's all part of Dearest's health and culture ministry. Entrenous, I'm having difficulty keeping up. By the time I've washed out. ... Sorry, let's be clear here, thoroughly bio-washed to utterly destroy the three million mitochondria proliferating in his yoga pants ( yes, you read that article too?) he's found something else we really must see/hear/do. Two days ago it was Beethoven's Ninth at the Proms. Gotta go! I have to be honest. I'm having difficulty keeping up here. And I'm not entirely convinced that I need to hear a piece of music that I know so well I could probably hum along with it. But heigh ho, I'm keeping schtum, now and on the night, which is probably unusually wise of me.

The first time we went to the opera was to see La Boheme in Vienna. Long, but beautiful journey by train. Much anguishing beforehand about dress code. Two different changes of outfit before we left for the Opera House in good time.
When we arrived at this magnificent building, it was puzzlingly bereft of theatre goers at five minutes past seven. We'd arrived feeling pleased with ourselves as we had avoided the usual white knuckle ride to events, trains, ferries and parents' evenings that have shaped our lives and wrinkled our arteries. It very soon became apparent that we (me) had misread the tickets and it started at 7.00 not 7.30.  We were ushered four floors up in a small lift (one of us is not good in lifts) to a viewing room with a large television screen to join.... all the other naughty people who had also got it wrong. So there we sat, feeling absolutely awful while Dearest mutters to me, "The only bloody song I know from this and I'm watching it on the telly.."
Then, just as we were settling in for second best, it became clear that we had to race downstairs to deposit our coats in the cloakroom, and enter the auditorium during an interval.
"There is to be very fine timing in this:we have to move quickly," we were told in impeccable English that held more than a hint of "You English clots. What were you thinking of?"
So Dearest says, "I'll take the stairs," as I queued to take the very small lift. I thought I'd not see him again this side of the interval, but was calm, as I had the tickets. Amazingly, we were reunited in the cloakroom where we flung off our coats and followed the theatre staff who, by now, in the frenzy of the moment, had abandoned English niceties and were waving their arms, urgently hissing "Schnell schnell!"
Now, I read all my brother's Eagle comics when he was young. So my basic German, gleaned from them meant, Gott im Himmel, I understood that we had to move pretty damn fast here.
We stood at the side doors to the auditorium: one usher on either side, holding each door like waiters hovering with silver cloches over plated food. This was going to happen simultaneously, at the given moment, or not at all. The doors opened. The lights went up. Tumultuous applause met our arrival. We bowed graciously. No we didn't. We snuck into our seats, grateful for the interval. An opportunity to cool down, because my hyperventilation would surely have ruined the next Act.
Apart from that unseemly entrance, our introduction to opera was absolutely exquisite.
I'm planning to give Madame Butterfly slightly more breathing space....

Tomorrow is the Big Day....

I spoke to a friend on the phone this morning. She had just been subjected to a gastroscopy and and endoscopy. Simultaneously. That's the NHS for you. Buy one-get one free and just sniff on this hanky; it's sprinkled with laudanum. You won't feel a thing. Oops, did you? Bite on this. How are you chaps doing, at the top end?
For those unfamiliar with the particulars of scopes and are limited to knowledge of periscopes (hello, submariner!) and telescopes (well, hello, sailor! ) you are on the right track. The gastroscopy is, you're right, a tube with camera that goes down into the stomach, and the endoscopy is the one that goes up your end, so to speak. I could write mnemonics for student doctors, I could.
I exaggerate, of course, these procedures were not actually carried out simultaneously, but consecutively. All hail to the NHS. Everything was fine, and we were able to discuss what to do with the photographs which showed every bend and crevasse in her duodenum and assorted plumbing: upstairs, downstairs, but thankfully, not in her lady's chamber. I thought that the photographs would make a nice change from the usual snow on her Christmas Rose that she trots out each Christmas. However, I could hear she lacked my conviction.
But this brings me back again to the Body Politic. Not that old body again, you cry. Look, frankly, you can't get away from it. The Vote tomorrow is discussed in every newspaper, on every news programme. We have debates, slanging matches, statistics, and inflamed passions. And there's certainly not much humour about because this is serious stuff. When we wake up on Friday morning, I suspect we will all be feeling a little battered and bruised, like my friend, and not entirely comfortable sitting down. Whatever the outcome.

From The Times

Nevertheless, something I read today made me smile. In a small village in Ceredigion in Mid Wales, someone had defaced the Vote Leave poster and turned it into "Vote Beaver". It was subsequently sold on eBay for £53 for Air Ambulance Wales... As I said, humour is thin on the ground, but humanity isn't.

Differing Forms of Grief...

When my mother died seven years ago, I decided to learn the piano. It wasn't the form I'd imagined my bereavement would take. Of course, as a child I did what every child with imagination and a great love of her parents would do. I sobbed myself to sleep on some nights imagining what it would like to be orphaned. Coming from a family whose only manifestation of musical talent was my younger brother's self-taught guitar-playing, this latent desire of mine might have seemed strange.
I would never have found time for piano lessons while my mother was alive, because a great deal of my spare time was spent in her company.

Every day, whether it had been spent teaching, or on a film set, would be concluded by visiting my mother who lived just a five minute walk away. The time spent with her was both precious and pleasurable, and I can say that taking up an instrument never crossed my mind. Not even when we would chuckle over how my son, when aged 8, took up the trumpet for a whole term. When asked by his grandmother why he had abandoned his lessons, he replied, "Well, I've learnt that now."
So we bought an ancient church hall upright piano and I took up lessons. The time I would have spent with my mother was spent forcing my pudgy, reluctant fingers up and down scales. I could hear my mother's amused voice in my ear, "So I've been holding you back?"

My piano teacher was forged from the titanium that encases the soul ( and maybe the ears) of many piano teachers. She had to teach me how to read music from scratch. All those black bobbly notes all looked remarkably similar and it was a real intellectual challenge to bend my brain. I stuck at it for two years. It was a combination of discipline and humiliation. As I winced my way through Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I was told off for "gurning". As I failed to understand some musical notation, my teacher asked me if I had Special Needs when I was in school..
It was the moment I decided that I could go it alone.

I haven't gone it alone, of course. I still practice my small repertoire and have already forgotten my scales. When I read this week how many people are taking up the piano in their later life, finding that it's truly their forte, I sigh. Part of me says, "I've learnt that ", and part of me yearns to find a piano teacher with soul, who appreciates that all I want to do is make a joyful noise. Do you really need scales to do that?
Or do I need a shield of titanium to ward off the slings and arrows of outrageous sadism?

Turning One's Insides Out...

Well, it's hotting up isn't it? No, not the weather. The debate. Whether you're in or out, there's certainly an awful lot of shaking it all about.
As we rumbled down to Somerset this weekend for the most beautiful of weddings, we passed many posters saying "Vote Leave." Clear and unambiguous. So much better than a reference to Brexit. I hate these clever, cocky little names coined by the press or political pundits. No one refers to Breave which presumably is for the likes of me who is risk-averse and clinging to a raft that calls itself the status quo.
Who was it that said he had sat on the fence for so long  that he had splinters in his backside? I don't know, but he certainly summed it up for the huge numbers of us that sway and bend with each political debate, attempting to gain sufficient confidence to make a considered judgement.
Meanwhile, political knives are being sharpened so that no matter whether we leave or remain there will be great rifts in our government which will take years to heal.

So with all the turmoil around I should be seeking inner calm on the domestic front. No such luck. Frankly, I can hardly Breave here. One working lavatory shared by three plumbers and me. I tried liquid rationing to reduce the ebb and flow, so to speak, but found myself tripping over their parched tongues. Thank God I have a bladder like an elephant. I just wish that the lock on the bathroom door was a little more secure. So I have taken to singing loudly to broadcast my presence. It mostly works.

Work has also commenced on our bedroom. This seemed like a good idea in principle. Every other bedroom is jammed with clothes hanging rails and the detritus of thirty six years. I cannot believe that the renovation of two rooms in a house can cause such unutterable mayhem.
I have, however, placed an embargo on the increasingly frequent and increasingly desperate cry of "Where's my..?"  Thank goodness my uterus is an efficient tracking device.

I know that things have to get worse before they get better. It is a blinding demonstration of what lies ahead on the political front whichever way we vote next week.

A Narrow Escape..

Lots of women love buying clothes. I am not lots of women. I don't particularly enjoy it because I am lots of woman.
I know that I am not alone in this, so I will share with you my discoveries in Marks and Spencer this afternoon. Yes, this comes hot off the press. It certainly feels very much that way on this sweltering muggy evening that is an undoubted prelude to a spectacular thunderstorm tonight.

I remember buying my first pair of jeans. On advice of friends I lay down in the changing room (bigger rooms in those days) to pull up the zip.
Can't do that in a 2' square cubicle where the thermostat must have been turned to 80 degrees. And all I wanted to do was to lie down on the floor from sheer exhaustion. My tactical error, forty years later, was to select a jumpsuit to try on.

I can hear your cries of horror and disbelief. But wait. The bottom half slipped on with ease. The top half proved to be a totally different kettle of fish. At one point I was stuck like an Amazonian with one breast bared. I breathed deeply, thought of England, and encouraged myself into the second sleeve. Well, I'll have you know that once in it, I didn't look too bad. But if the effort of putting it on was awful enough, its removal almost proved my undoing. Or rather, not. I couldn't see a way of reversing the exercise. It was only the ignominy of seeking assistance from the luscious lady handing out discs at the entrance that kept me from having either palpitations or my first panic attack.

Dear readers, I kept everything in and eased the wretched garment from my torso. How on earth are you to manage all that in a toilet cubicle for goodness sake? Forget it. Unless you have a bladder like an elephant (which can hold 18 litres, by the way) then heed my words.
On the plus side, I found a little jacket which had the merest hint of shoulder pads. What a difference!
I have been waiting for these ever since Joan Collins took them to extremes in "Dynasty" and ruined them for the rest of us for the next thirty years. So it's about time for a revival. As soon as they come back, I'm stocking up.
Capsule wardrobe? I'll have the whole works. Not being caught out twice.

Dicing with Yoga (Bacteria-Hysteria)

Dearest has taken up yoga.
Not in any grand sense.  I don't find him engaged in a Lotus position on the living room carpet when I stagger down to breakfast in the morning. Rather, he has booked himself a course of ten sessions so that he will actually pursue this notion properly. You know, all part of  the health regime?
Well, he's done two sessions now. The first left him almost crippled for the whole of the weekend. The noise was so great that I insisted that he had a couple of large Nurofen.  With typical male bravura he refused my offer, 'til in the end I said that if he didn't take them I'd use them myself to plug my ears.The second session went way better. No Nurofen required. Merely an accentuation of the usual creaking. Low volume.

However, I was alarmed to read this weekend of the potential hazards that lurk on a yoga mat. Tests carried out by the International Antimicrobial Council in the States say that yoga leggings contain 747,000 bacteria, even after they have been washed in good quality soap powder. Thank God he hasn't gone for leggings, is what I say. But I did find myself picking up his post-yoga joggers (which looked fine to the naked eye) with a pair of barbecue tongs and I wore a surgical mask.
Better safe than sorry, that's my motto.

And as for the yoga mats... Dr Robert Lahita, a microbiologist and professor of medicine at Rutgers school of medicine, New Jersey, describes yoga  mats as " a very fertile source of infection, mainly because people sweat on them and they are rarely cleaned". Well, I almost fainted when I read this. I have been letting Dearest out unattended and allowing him to be exposed to Bubonic plague and the like, spread by other people's yoga mats. What's the chap doing? Trying to get us all killed?

It was enough to prompt me to forage constructively in the Under-the-Stairs cupboard (a bourne whence no traveller usually returns) to search for the two Yoga mats we bought and put away, after it was discovered, many years ago up a mountain in St Paul de Vence, that there was no earthly way a Sun Salutation could ever be imposed on my over- upholstered frame.
It was time well spent as the Plumber required access to the furthermost reaches of the cupboard to put in his pipework.
I offered him my old Yoga mat as a kneeler. The other I put to one side and started searching for a pint of anti-bacterial solution, and a strong alcohol rub.
Wouldn't mind one of those myself.
Day 7 without alcohol and I might have to do some serious sniffing... Or just give me a rub down with an oily alcohol rag.

It's all about the height...

Often at this time of year, I reminisce about the Edinburgh Festival of my student days. We took two productions to the Fringe in the late 70s. A musical version of Twelfth Night, and a theatrical presentation of The Wasteland by TS Eliot.  They were barmy, barking days rehearsing for the big event.  Newspaper publicity was part of the run-up and we were asked by the local rag to attend a photo-shoot in costume.
I  was looking at that photograph the other day. Six of us were asked on a count of three to leap in the air. Now, I have never included leaping in the air as one of my secret skills. Hardly now. Certainly not even in those gilded days of youth. So there I am, as every other of my fellows leaps in the air with gay abandon, I am firmly rooted on terra firma, bottom sticking out, knees bent as if I am an actor in search of a toilet.
So yesterday, as we investigated the best porcelain-ware that Hertfordshire has to offer, I was once more presented with the hard-to-be-resisted urge to sit on a wall-hung showroom model. I mentioned previously that our plumber is top-notch. He heeded my unspoken yearning and took us to a bathroom he had just finished renovating. There we were both able (not at the same time) to sit on a Subway. Perfection.
Do you know why? It looked quite normal, wall-mounted, but it was just a couple of inches higher than the standard height.
Dearest thought it was just an inch too high. I thought it was just right. However,  he is taller than me.
But it is something to bare-in-mind, if you are a short-arse like me....

Not totally to scale or entirely accurate..

Such a Game of Thrones.....

And how did you spend your weekend? Ours was pretty bog-standard really.

We went in search of the ultimate toilet. I say ultimate, not because I expect it to have bells and whistles on it, or a bottom-shining brush,  but because this time round, I want comfort. The one that presently resides in a skip outside, had a crack in it (not guilty: I do believe our previous cleaning lady, Jean, dropped a full bottle of Penhaligon's fragrance on it. We were too distracted by her rejoicing in the expensive wafts she'd created, with only the merest hint of an apology, to notice a small hairline crack in the rim.) Hard water can seal such a crack for only a limited number of years...

I never found that seat particularly welcoming. For me it was always the wrong shape. So yesterday I was intent on finding a better seat for my seat.

You would not dream of buying a bed without lying in it. You would not consider buying a bath without sitting in it (with matching socks, and no stray toes peeking through - experience speaking here..) So why, oh why do we look at a toilet and say, "That'll do me, guv." The stores line them up in full public view attached to walls, with not a dicky bird's chance of trying them out for size. Quite ridiculous.
So tomorrow morning we are going out early with our premier plumber in search of the Subway. Yes, that's the name of the model. Though why a lavatory should select the name of an international sandwich bar, I really have no idea. It will no doubt have one of those sophisticated self-closing lids. The last word in posh. However, in our house we are used to toilet lids coming down like the clappers. Sandwiching has become a common problem.
One we won't miss.

This didn't so much as go down the pan........

Will this be man enough for the job?

                                 

On Squeezing a Quart into a Pint Pot.....

I don't have delusions. Generally speaking.  Though I might have been having one yesterday when I forgot about the plumbers.  And I am not sure if a Bunion Blog Owner is the best authority on fashion. However, I feel impelled to share my joy at discovering that Bodies are back in! Yes, if ever there were a call for a shriek mark, it's at the end of that statement. Go to Marks and Spencer's without delay. I've been, and stocked up.
I have been waiting YEARS for the return of the body. Oh Lord, in every sense of the word. I really haven't looked after the last body I had, because I didn't know the supply would suddenly dry up. So it is very over-stretched, not much elasticity and very floppy in the gusset region. (I am still referring to the garment, in case you misconstrue..)  In fact, I am totally dependent on just one remaining snap fastener that prevents this once wonderful garment from whiplashing up my torso like a manic roller blind.
I cannot understand why they would ever have become unfashionable? They are such a practical item, (apart from the snap-fastening gusset which can become tricky if one is either inebriated or in a dark toilet, or a combination of the two). At the moment, as I grapple with a figure that insists on becoming more matronly as each month passes, I find that blouses ride up and trousers slide down. If I wanted to supplement my pension by joining belly dancers on a Friday night this would be an acceptable look. But now I don't have to. I can be tidy and all tucked in.
Absolutely marvellous.
Now you too can have a body like mine....


Make mine a dinky one....

Lamenting my Soft-boiled Head....

I blame Malcolm. I really do. It gets worse. Dearest's oldest friend. What can I say?

Malcolm's visits from his home in Northamptonshire have crescendoed of late.  He usually comes down for the cricket several times a year. This year, additionally, has involved a few hospital appointments, and an operation, pre-cricket season, and in London. More overnight stays.
So when we stagger back from a brief but glorious sojourn in Cornwall last night, feeling drunk from driving, and ate-lagged from the sheer volume of cream-teas, Dearest says, "Don't forget Malcolm is coming for the Old Boys Reunion tomorrow," I am underwhelmed.
I look at the explosion of crumpled half-worn clothes that stretch from suitcase to washing machine, the heaps of detritus and assorted crud you pull out of the car from the end of a seven hour journey, and sigh. Yes, I sigh. What else did you expect me to do? Leap up and spring into gear?
No, four days of being in a heavenly part of the Roseland peninsula, Veryan, have put me in Mediterranean mood. A strong case of the mañanas . I have another slug of Perrier to toast the commencement of a healthy-eating, no-alcohol regime, wade through the swathes of laundry and go to bed.
This morning I was just considering my first laundry load and idly contemplating whether Malcolm would notice that I had not changed his sheets from the last time, before deciding they had been admirably protected from dust by Dearest's cast-offs as he he tends to use that bed as a horizontal wardrobe, when there was a knock at the door. Nine o'clock on the button. My plumber arrived with his team to take out the downstairs bathroom.

It's on the calendar.  Surely a big day in anybody's calendar? Same day as the OB Reunion. No missing it. But I did.
So, as I said earlier, I blame Malcolm.


Or maybe too much loveliness weakens the brain......?