Towels: Fluffy and Metaphorical...

New towels didn't go down well with Husband-on-a-short-Fuse. I haven't bought them yet. I only casually mentioned them in a "New bathroom-new towels!" jaunty aside. Do you know, it's remarkable, isn't it, that you can be talking about things of great note and it is all white noise to your other half... Then you decide to mention new towels and suddenly, there's an awful lot of humphing and grumphing. I ignore it. Can't spoil the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar, I say.
I blame Brexit. And why not? Everyone else is blaming it. For everything. Politicians are mud-slinging on a monumental scale. It makes soap opera look tame. Wildly entertaining, if these morons were not in charge of our country. So Husband-under-a-black-cloud has nothing to do with my towel colour choice. (I am drawn to the green. But then you can't beat white.)
Someone else arrived under a black cloud last week and that was my Polish help, Ewelina the Magnificent. She has been in the country for nine years. She and her husband are settled and their only child has started nursery. She was worried about the way the vote had gone. She said she hadn't known how much the British hated the Poles. She had been reading the paper and was very upset. I did my best to explain to her what was going on, and how I felt sure that she still had a future in this country, but I was very upset on her behalf.
Our house has been renovated by a team that included three Polish workers. Their work ethic is exemplary and the quality of their work, second to none. Most people in this area appreciate the contribution to the work force made by the Polish community. Sadly, it is not the same everywhere in the country.
A few weeks ago I decided that I would offer a weekly lesson to Ewelina to improve her English. Her command of English has plateaued because she does not get to speak much during her working day.
Even when I engage her in conversation she is almost running on the spot in her desire to get back to the job in progress. So I am taking her in hand.
I might have thrown in the towel as far as working in a school is concerned, so I am very happy to be picking up a new one.

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?