Pity the Postmen and the Bin Men...

Do you know what? I feel sorry for Bin Men. You see my forgiving nature (re: A Woman Scorned) when they refused to take my bin because of one sad bit of paper lying in with the plastics and cardboard. No, I genuinely feel sorry for them when they have to cart away the heavy blue re-cycling box full of paper and magazines. We manage to do a pretty fine job of filling it with a daily news paper, but at this time of year it's the catalogues.
Yes! It's the catalogues that stream in daily, unsolicited. Yes, that's right: I didn't ask for them... Just because I happened to show a slight interest by clicking (sometimes inadvertently) on your web-site, I was browsing, what we used to call window-shopping in the real world. And now, damnit, you've gone and told your friends and now they are sending me catalogues. Acres, hectares, (if they're bigger- not sure, and if I look it up I will receive a tree catalogue for godsake, so I'd better not, as I only have a small garden) forests of trees are being destroyed. In vain. Because all I do, if you're lucky, (and don't count on it) is give it a quick flick and then I chuck it out. Yes, outski, where it may or may not end up by being pulped or possibly find itself in a Chinese landfill site. Who knows? So no more catalogues, please. Hello? Hello? The line's gone dead.
This morning Dearest set off with the Dukeshill catalogue. I noticed it, half-secreted between some files, he'd brought home. A foodie husband in charge of a luxury brand Food retailer's catalogue, is a dangerous combination.
I texted him:"When thinking Dukeshill, please think of reduced capacity fridge and freezer at Christmas and your wife's reduced capacity to squeeze a quart into a pint pot." Clear or what?
He has been warned. And I am on notice.

Quizzes and cocktails....

In my youth, I would occasionally do the Cosmopolitan quiz. Depended on how I wanted to delude myself, really, because the answers were always blindingly obvious. If I wanted to be a spontaneous party-gal, I would pick all the Bs, and reject anything that might confirm me as the feet-on-ground, totally-centred, homegirl that  I really am. Personality quizzes are silly and usually unsophisticated. I don't need a quiz or a test to tell me I am an introverted extrovert, or an extroverted introvert. I still haven't decided which, and hell, it doesn't matter a jot.
But old habits die hard and in the paper at the weekend, a headline caught my eye: "Want a loan? Then take the super power test."
I didn't want a loan, thank you, and I am not looking for another mortgage, but this was irresistable. And unguessable. And that surely was the point. This was a test for those poor souls who have been refused credit using conventional schemes. Seemingly, present systems are dependent on demographics rather than personality which means that a number of worthy candidates are consistently being failed by the system. It is a measure of emotional stability. There are no right or wrong answers (I just love tests like these..) The more sophisticated aspect of the test is that it records how long your mouse hovers over an answer which feeds back even more data for assessment.
So I am sharing some of the questions with you and my answers:
If you were a drink, which one would you be?
A cocktail
A cup of coffee
Fizzy pop
A cup of tea
A glass of water

Well, darlings, the altruist in me would be a glass of water but I would have to say cocktail. Makes me shallow, I know. Not that shallow... a really deep cocktail. And better company too. Been drinking a lot of water recently and I'm as miserable as sin.

What's your worst habit?
Shopping
Gambling
Untidiness
Spilling Drinks on carpets
Flatulence in lifts      (Never in a lift)
Nose picking

Hands up to untidiness.... Both hands while kicking undies under bed when Alarm man calls unexpectedly to service alarm.

Which super power would you give yourself?
The power to find a pot of gold at end of the rainbow
Invisibility
Extraordinary horticultural skills   (Blimey! Who wants to be the fastest hedge-cutter in the west? Hmm..but always fancied topiary)
Superfast runner
Superhuman strength
Mind reading
Such suppleness that your nose can touch your bottom

As I limp around the place, now with two feet on the ground, but one still bandaged, and move from chair to chair, I am what you might call, rickety-boo.  But as the inactivity for the past week has seized me up, it is like gazing into the future. So I would go for such suppleness that my nose can touch my bottom. Guess what? That answer would give me a splendid 5/6 stars for being a credit good egg. Defo time for a cocktail. Now where's the gin and glucosamine?  You could forget all about the tonic.
I frequently do.

I just had to sit right down and write himself a letter...

I am not given to writing fan-letters. The last one I wrote, aged 11, to an actor, Martin Jarvis, who was playing the lead in the BBC's adaptation of "Nicholas Nickelby." Even then, keen to find an angle, something that would make my adulation stand out from the rest, I told him that I loved his nose. Novel approach, eh? It got me a signed photograph but no special acknowledgement, which is what I'd really hoped for.
On Friday, I wrote my second fan-letter to the journalist AA Gill whose columns I have enjoyed for so many years in the Sunday Times. I, like many others, was shocked and saddened last weekend when he announced, in the same sentence, that he was getting married and that he has cancer. Not just some little tumour, but, as he described it, " an embarrassment of cancer, the full English." He wrote, "There is barely a morsel of offal that is not included. I have a trucker's gut-buster, gimpy, malevolent, meaty, malignancy." Until now, he has always made smile aloud, wincing at his excoriating wit, while marvelling at his eloquence. Severely dyslexic he writes nothing and dictates everything. For me, he symbolises a triumph over dyslexia. While he talks dismissively of the well-intentioned efforts of special needs teachers like myself, I am the first to admit there is no magic bullet for those who experience severe dyslexia.
So I wrote to him because the news weighed heavily on my heart and I had to write, to release the valve on pain which would not lift. So I thanked him and said how much I had enjoyed his latest book, "Pour me, a Life," an autobiography describing his recovery from alcoholism when he was thirty. I told him how I was one of the happy band of special needs teachers who'd done their best to make him better. It was important to me to say what I felt, because too often we miss out on opportunities of saying things that need to be said. So I wrote him a letter, a proper pen and ink job,  which I hoped would stand out from the hundreds of emails he would no doubt be receiving. I hope he reads it. It makes me feel better thinking that he might. 
I am sure he he will be happier that I praised his elegant prose and not his aquiline nose.

Preserving and Improving Family Heirlooms...

No pain. Well none to speak of. Tedious, yes. Spare room closer to the bathroom. So installed there, for time being. Just at night. Yesterday morning Dearest husband walks into spare room which I laughingly call his Dressing Room. A while ago, I decided to rationalise his dressing options to reduce the "Where's-my?" in my life.
"Jesus Christ!" he said, "I'd forgotten you were there!" Obviously not missing a wifely shape in the marital bed.
For someone who notices everything in fine print, a kitchen cupboard door hanging wonky, or a bathroom drawer that simply isn't straight, he is famous for missing the blindingly obvious. Like a grandfather clock delivered from Scotland (and no, it was not at the end of a baronial hall, but in a snug study) and now a mis-placed wife.
At the back of the wardrobe which sounds more like Narnia every time I make reference to it, I recently unearthed two dreary oil paintings. They had been painted by my late father-in-law over 60 years ago.  I was thinking of re-burying them when I was touched by sentiment. Perhaps Dearest would like these for Christmas, if I got them cleaned up. The frames were quite nice, after all. So I had a word with our artist friend, Anthony Wildig, who was prepared to do some work on them.
Last week they were ready. I couldn't wait for Christmas, I wanted him to enjoy them right now. So Anthony hung them and they didn't look bad at all. In fact, they looked considerably better.
It was twenty minutes before my Dearest husband noticed them. I put a clock on it. He was, however, very pleased.
What he doesn't know, is that Anthony, with my permission, had added little soupçon of colour to the clouds: brought them up lovely. The paintings were unsigned. If they turn out to be by JMW Turner, then I, no longer a smug thing, will have buggered the inheritance.
Now that really would be a pain.
                         

Raising the Blues...but Limiting the Rock and Roll

Don't step on my new blue (not suede) shoe!  With hair that remains resolutely uncurly, I have returned to my familiar domain with a foot held high and a toe with which I intend to point for Britain.
With instructions to elevate the foot for 96 hours (dividing by 24 is not easy for this mathematical retard ) I returned home to find myself disengaging two kitchen drawers which had managed to lock together in our absence between 7am and our return at 2.00. I don't know who breathed the deeper sigh of relief: Dearest to be relinquished from patient duty or I at being left to my own devices?
So it's hup two three four possibly five days... back to Boot Camp.
I was reminded of a delightful book by Eva Rice, written in 1975: New Blue Shoes. Thank goodness I have only one shoe..

Happy memories are made of this..

Very still life...

Foot note 5

I've dug out the old boot. What boot? Not the old Das Boot which was where this all started.. ? Yes indeed. I have rummaged at the back of my shoe cupboard and there it is. Age and dust have not withered its ugliness or reduced its consummate practicality. You might be wondering whether I have lost the plot or inadvertently gained a few extraneous marbles, but let me reassure you that there is method in my meandering.
Tomorrow is the day that I am getting my toe straightened. It is the one next to my almost perfectly aligned ex-bunion. Because of its increasing claw-like tendencies it is somehow preventing the big toe from touching the ground.
So hello again, Bunionistas, everywhere. So much jollier than Bunion people. I haven't mentioned this date because I feel rather self-conscious that after the much-heralded bunion op that I am yet again subjecting myself to surgery. But this is not cosmetic, I assure you. It is necessary if I am to walk squarely, without discomfort.
Burning question of the moment is: will getting my toe uncurled, make my hair stand on end?
In the interests of science, I'll let you know..

While Shepherds Washed Their Socks...

Well, I was on a mission this morning. Not just any ordinary mission. Not just any routine shopping expedition. I had been charged with finding a Shepherd's costume in our local town.
The school letter requesting a costume had most recently been unearthed at the bottom of a school bag allowing four days' notice. Just long enough to discard the idea of cutting three holes in a pillow case, but not long enough to get something off ebay. I offered to go on the hunt for a suitable remnant. It sounded comfortingly like my mother who would have been able to whistle up something magical with a little remnant. Could I rise to the challenge?
I went to the market where years ago there were always stalls festooned with rolls of fabric of every hue and texture. Nobody does dress-making any more. No such stall existed. I could have bought fresh fish, a Man United tea shirt for a five year old or a Jamaican sausage, but fabric there was not.

I went into a large toyshop and asked if they had any Shepherd outfits? The stable was bare. I went into Linens Direct to see what the pillow case and sheet situation looked like. I came across some dead cheap bathroom and pedestal mats in a brown chunky twist. For a moment I envisaged my grandson in a pillow case with a pedestal mat over his shoulders: it could have passed muster as a simulated animal skin with just a little imagination... but then the thought of burdening him forever as the boy with the bog-mat in Year 2 gave me reason to hesitate.

It was now all down to John Lewis. What offerings would they have in their remnants bin? Did they still have a remnants bin or am I destined to remain stuck in the eighties forever? But just before I got to JL, I saw Primark. And there was a stripy night shirt. I could turn in the collar and make it look like a grandad shirt (the sort that all self-respecting shepherds wear) and there was an ethnic looking wrap that could go over the shoulder, and a scarf that would sit better than any old tea towel would.
All ridiculously cheap.
Possibly not that cheap for a shepherd's costume.
And don't let anyone whisper to the little lad that we are dressing him up in women's clothing.

The best-dressed shepherd in Buckinghamshire... I think.

In Praise of Welsh Weaving...

I am not one to broadcast my Welsh roots. Until I open my mouth, that is, and the unmistakable Welsh lilt in my dulcets gives it all away.  Even though I was not born in Wales, and have never lived in Wales, I still sound as though that would be the likeliest explanation. However, my Welsh parentage, and holidays three times a year in Llanelli have imbued me with an innate sense of Welshness which only evaporates when I go to Wales and realise that I am merely an imposter, not the real deal. I  support the Welsh Rugby team, am moved to tears by singing at Welsh rugby matches, and I'm brimming up as I write this, with the Treorchy Male Voice choir singing Calon Lan in my head.
So when I had a big rationalisation of our bedroom this summer, I brought out the old traditional Welsh blanket that had come down to me from my grandma. I was never that keen on it, as a child, but now, fifty years later, it takes on an entirely different hue.

Looking good for another 50 Moth-free years.

A gorgeous company called Melin Tregwynt have been sending me their catalogues for some years. It is a Woollen Mill in a remote wooded valley on the Pembrokeshire coast. A mill has been on this site since the 17th century. So when I needed to re-cover the first piece of furniture we bought before we got married, a chaise longue (oh, the headiness of youth!) I realised that at last, I could become a customer. 

And once more return to my roots.

You Can't Beat Home Made...

Domestic Science is what it was called back in the day. A very useful subject which taught you how to make an apron or bake a cake. 

I made a Christmas cake in secondary school. Not so much as a whisper of a Kenwood mixer in sight : all done with a large wooden spoon. After half an hour of laborious mixing of fruited pebble-dashing, my hand was red and raw. My teacher harrumphed as she fetched me a plaster, "Can't have you bleeding in that!"

Next generation it was called Food Technology and my daughter brought home the definitive Sausage Casserole which has sustained us in the winter months for the following 20 years. My, it was a big one.. 

Then this afternoon, the third generation, our six year old grandson, brought home his offering. On this bleak wet autumn evening he announced,

"No need to cook tonight, Mummy, I've made Coleslaw!"

We raised a faux cheer as he opened  the Tupperware box. He stood on a step in the kitchen to get out four bowls. 

"And which of your friends helped you make this?"asked his mother.

"Ronnie," he replied.

"Oh great, " his mother said, with a tone that suggested that possibly it was not. 

We sat down to eat. 

"I've saved an extra large portion for Daddy," said my daughter.

We all started chomping. Conversation was replaced by extreme concentration, accompanied by noisy industrial-style chomping.

"This is disgusting! " spluttered the young chef, his mouth full of semi-chewed vegetation.

"I can't eat this.."

Everyone put down their knife and fork, with ill-disguised relief, and agreed that Daddy should get an an even larger helping upon his return from work. 

I didn't think it was too bad actually. But everyone else blamed Ronnie.  

The Chef's Dad puts in a damn fine effort...

On Being a Nivea Girl at Heart

I have never been one to be dragooned into buying any thing. Not even in my younger days, with children young and impressionable around me. They saw me on one occasion answer the door to A Man in a Fish van who'd driven down from Grimsby that morning with fish fresher than I could possibly buy in any supermarket. Sounded good. As he reeled off (like any good fish salesman) a list of fish: cod, salmon, sea bass... I said, "Ooh lovely.." Then he brought in these large boxes and put them down in my porch and said, "That'll be three hundred quid, love."
I remember saying, "But I don't want to spend three hundred pounds on fish!" He reluctantly took it all back and I bought a sea bass as a gesture of good will which he sold me, very churlishly, I thought. My children watched aghast. "Weren't you embarrassed, Mum?" Not at all.

So it was with some bemusement that on a quick trip to London yesterday that I found myself being approached by an attractive lady outside a ritzy-looking skincare shop. For once I wasn't in a blinding hurry and I really don't like ignoring people when they approach so politely.
"You have lovely natural skin,"  this young American lady said. "What do you use?"
"Fresh,"I told her. Not saying that the jar bought for me last Christmas was still going strong. Skincare is simply not top of my agenda.
"Come inside, I have something for those little lines around your eyes.."
And dear readers, I followed. There I received a very charming but full frontal sales pitch while she smoothed unguents on my compliant face. I could feel my skin tightening up almost immediately.
"Oh, can't you see the difference?"
"Mmm. Possibly, "I said.
"Let me put some of this on these jaw lines to soften them." Now you would need some pretty hefty weight-lifting cream to sort out wrinkle lines adjacent to the jowls... so I waited. In vain.
The cost of these serums caused an instant wrinkling of the sphincter muscle: three hundred and something pounds for the eye cream and slightly less for the face cream. But hey, it was a two year supply and it only cost six pounds a week. Bargainous. By now, my smile was incredulous. I would give it some thought and find out a bit more about Ora Gold before committing. I slid out of the shop with an inner glow of amusement and a curious sensation of wearing a face-mask.

On the way home, I read all about this company and the a number of interesting reviews which bore similarities to my own experience. There were many people who'd actually believed the hype, submitted to strong-arm tactics and bought the products.

Ah, but they had not had the benefit of practising on the Fish man from Grimsby first.

All that glistens......

My Personal Recipe...

For marital harmony. Buy a new television. What were you expecting? A recipe for Banana Cake? Well, I have a very nice one of those and with the way I am going bananas this evening, there will be plenty left over next week ... They have to be very ripe, you see...
And I suppose you could say the air has been very ripe this evening...  A new television.. driven by the need for better sound, as we have rued the day we bought a sound box for our previous television.
So today was the day that the new baby arrived. Big but certainly not bouncing. Several hours to install and a brief intro to the instructions which made this TV so simple to operate.
"I can't stand it when I am patronised by people who say it is SO simple!" First demi-rant from my Dearest and Best Beloved.
Netflix let us down, you see. Failed to deliver. Said (very nicely there was a fault). I check account online (find the monthly sub has gone up: more frothing...) and try playing The Crown online. No problem: we could see it on our computer.  Fuel to fire.
Ok, so we will watch something on the Virgin Tivo box. Ah, but it keeps saying we have a problem with Netflix. It is a message that will not make itself disappear despite vigorous jabbing and it is evidently impervious to bad language which is hurled like a nuclear weapon in the direction of the screen.
"I know we have  a sodding problem with Netflix!" Rising crescendo. " I will be on the phone tomorrow! This bloody doesn't work!"
I found the cricket. I clicked the button. Peace. I never thought I'd say this:
"Thank the good Lord for cricket." ( Ok, and Hendricks.Two large ones - easy on the tonic. For me, obvs.)
It could be a long weekend.

Enough to drive a saint to cake....

House of Cards...?

The world is still turning. President Elect Trump has rung our Prime Minister. She just made his top ten. ( Tenth if you're interested: well below Australia and Turkey... but who's counting?) And she got an invite to the White House... yeh! So maybe not such a bad thing after all, when you can get a bit of a trade thing going -obviously much needed after Brexit. 

So in our own particular political patch, we are busy re-calibrating and shuffling the pack faster than you can call Trump. Could make one cynical. Whilst our American friends are still reeling with the shock and fearing the ramifications, the groundswell of British people commiserate.

Peter Brook in The Times today

A Seriously Bad Hair Day...

Well, a cataclysmic victory took place last night. We did not have three in the bed.  At my insistence, Dearest left his i-pad downstairs. I did not want to hear about Donald Trump in the small wee hours.
Instead, Dearest got out of bed, sometime around 4am and came back to bed at five, saying with weary resignation, "It's a done deal".

In Britain we follow the American elections with a fervour that I'm sure is not reciprocated by our American friends, regarding our own. We struggle at times with the complexity, but we listen hard. Everyone we have spoken to has said, since the middle of summer that Trump's bid stood more than a chance of success. Nobody wanted to believe it. But when Brexit took place here, it seemed a unnerving possibility.

I am no political commentator, but I fail to see any positives today. All I can envisage is a field-day for political cartoonists who are so good at mocking what we fear most.

I Blame Eliza Doolittle...

So women are swearier than men, FFS! What a startling revelation in the Sunday press yesterday. Well, of course we are. We have been primed since birth, to be equal to our male counterparts which means healthy competition. And competition means sometimes we win. Even this dubious trophy.
Apparently our ability to swear like troopers curtails in the over 50s. I can only imagine that the appearance of grandchildren  encourages us to apply the filter which miraculously converts, in my case, the ubiquitous bugger into a little acknowledged Beatrix Potter character called, Buggerlugs.

These days I hear bad language wherever I go. Essentially, I have to tune  it out or I would be going around in a state of perpetual disapproval. "Who are these people who can swear louder and lairier than me?" Frankly, when it comes to swearing, I believe in context and knowing your audience. So I was amused the other day when I happened to be in Selfridges' young Menswear department (looking with increasing desperation for the Ladies' Loos) and saw this jacket.

Reading with my red marking pen in my head, I bridled at the mixture of upper and lowercase letters and the lack of apostrophe in No ones. For a moment, I read it to mean that  people were talking very nicely and not using sweary words at all, when, blow me down, I spotted a double negative.
I was further offended by the £675 price tag.
Shame. Would have sorted Dearest's Christmas present..

Action with the Pants...

You can call me Chi Chi, if you like. Just don't try and mate me with another Giant Panda, is all I ask.
You'll be thinking, but be too polite to say, that the old girl  has lost her marbles. Well, let me tell you, it weren't no marbles I lost yesterday: I almost got detached from my dear old schnozz. And how so, you may ask?
It was all because I did not want to hang my granny pants in full view of a friend who was visiting yesterday morning. I decided to hang them on my nifty little washing line (Hills Supa fold Mini Washing line - buy with caution) which hangs out of sight down the side passage. I erected it as usual so that it hung 90 degrees from the wall, and started to peg out my knickers. I was on the third pair when the metal bar came crashing down on my nose. Stunned I was. But upright. Only moving when the blood began to drip into my laundry basket. The mechanism for holding it up had obviously malfunctioned. I was lucky that blood and bruising was my only malfunction.
My friend arrived some ten minutes later. I told her my sorry tale.
"Some heavy pants,"she commented.
So when I got on the scales this morning, at Slimming World, and found that I had gained a pound this week, I realised she wasn't kidding.

I'm sticking to bamboo shoots from now on...

Raining in My Heart...

I spoke yesterday of rote learning. Chunks of poetry learnt in school continue to give many people of my generation immense pleasure. Partly it's prowess: look, I can still do this (Can't find my specs but I can recite John Donne, except that now I am "the busy old fool") and partly pleasure. Just proves a point that these activities become enmeshed in long-term memory because of the effectiveness of over-learning carried out decades earlier.
The other day Dearest was going on an outing with an old school friend to the Royal Airforce Museum in Hendon. Joy of joys... I begged to go with them because I love stroking an old Spitfire on a Saturday morning. You know me ..
They heeded me not, and I was left to more delightful devices at home. Jim arrived promptly on the most beautiful of autumn mornings.
We sat down to a coffee before they set off:
"The sun is out/ The sky is blue," he mused aloud.
"There's not a cloud/To obstruct the view," I joined in, with something resembling a tune...
We looked at Dearest who looked at us bemused.
"I never liked Wordsworth," he said.

 

The Confusables.....

How Many Times in a Table?

Learning by heart is better for brain. This was a headline that caught my eye yesterday in The Times.
Don't you just love it when something you have been banging on about for the past twenty five years, is picked up by someone who has clout and brings it to public attention? No, this is not a self-congratulatory post. Many, many of my contemporaries will be shaking their heads in disbelief that it has taken so long to come to this conclusion.
So-called Progressive education has done more damage to the academic standards of this country than anything else. I am thinking about education, not in terms of hoop-jumping examination grades, but in terms of basic numeracy, literacy and thinking skills.
"Pupils without the automatic and unconscious ability to do mental arithmetic, and those without facts at their finger tips are unlikely to progress to analytical thinking," said Dr Helen Abadzi.

I just hope there are enough Head teachers out there who can pause, a moment, from their budget-crunching bulldozing to reflect on her findings. Bring back rote-learning. It is not punitive; it is not archaic. The brain is the most precious and complex computer of them all.
Technology, unless we we are careful, will change the way in which the brain functions.
If we are careless we will end up the servant, not the master.

Never too old for a refresher course

Frying Green Tomatoes...

I've put away my broomstick for another year. Glad that Halloween has past.
This day sees me annually mourning the loss of  a beloved  mother, nine years ago, and strangely strange, our dear Aunt who also died a year ago.
I've always disliked the 31st October ever since my young children were traumatised by a witch mask peering in through the dining room window. So it intrigues me to see how trauma translates into tradition as my grandchildren scrape out the squishy innards of a pumpkin and watch as their mother carves out a gaping grin.  I smile, as I hear of them dressing up for a brief interlude of after-dark trick or treating accompanied by one bumblebee-costumed Cockerpoo.
Different generation; different times.
This afternoon I picked the only tomato in my vegetable-free garden. Some months earlier, Joseph and I planted some wrapping paper that contained tomato seeds.
It looks like a charming green pumpkin.