In this life

Smile for the camera

2012-01-31T23:40:00.003Z

There is no doubt that one way to be popular...

... is to smile a lot, be agreeable and say nothing.

Maybe we all ought to remember this more often. (I include myself.)

Mr Life was up in Perth yesterday helping Son to assemble his Ikea furniture. Today he was a bit stiff. I enquired what was wrong. "Flat pack syndrome," he said, massaging his right shoulder. Poor old chap.

Idleness

2012-01-30T21:31:00.004Z

This is a picture of central Edinburgh. In front of the Castle you can see the art galleries and underneath the right-hand one, with windows looking out on to the gardens, is a restaurant.

Here's a closer photo of it.

And now we're inside.

I met a friend here today, a retired teacher like me. We sat for quite a long time, she drinking tea, I drinking cappuccino, both of us nibbling shortbread. We discussed many things, including the beauty and sweetness of our grandchildren. We looked out at the Edinburgh skyline. She said meditatively, "Do you know, I think this is probably more fun than teaching."

I think she may have been right.

Off again

2012-01-29T20:21:00.006Z

Today we went out to lunch to celebrate Mr Life's retirement. Daughter 2 was up from London and Son came down from Perth. Daughter 1, Son-in-Law 1, Grandson and my mum were there too.

For a short time, Grandson sat in a high chair. He hasn't really worked out about solid food yet but he gave a rice cake a bit of a lick.

He seems just as happy with an empty spoon. And Daughter 2 was happy to cuddle him.

As was Son.

Then I took Daughter 2 to her train while Son and Mr Life went to Ikea to buy furniture for Son's new house. They came back for a cup of tea before Son headed back up north. (The rather horrid green they're leaning against is a cat-proofing blanket rather than my chosen upholstery colour. We remove the blanket when cat-allergic relations are visiting.)

Daughter 2 has recently texted from the train that they've made an unscheduled stop in Newark because the train in front hit a shopping trolley on the line.

(These cable-pinching, trolley-on-line people, I'm trying to tell myself, probably had deprived backgrounds, not enough love from their parents, too much tv or sugar or alcohol and not enough vitamins. But but but but... .)

I prefer cats to (some) people.

2012-01-28T22:17:00.007Z

Well, Daughter 2 didn't get into Edinburgh till 3.05 am, thanks, it seems, to idiots who stole the cabling from seven signals on the line. This meant that eight other trains from London to the north were queued up in a batch with her train and had to be signalled manually through, one at a time. She was thus three and a half hours late arriving in Edinburgh. And think of all the other people inconvenienced too... .

I went up to meet her and had the unusual (for me) experience of sitting in the car beside the entrance to a night club at 2.55 am while I waited for the train to arrive. It was quite entertaining, watching all the smokers chatting away and interacting on the pavement, and it was nice to have company of sorts.

So we're a bit weary today. Daughter 2 went to bed at 9.30 pm. (She needs her sleep.) I have some things to do (I don't need so much sleep) but will go off earlier than usual.

Cassie was tired too. She and Sirius sat up with me while I read my book, waiting to go up to collect Daughter 2. Actually, to be more accurate, Cassie went to sleep on the sofa. Sirius, who could clearly tell the time, stayed awake and kept looking at me. "Come on," he kept saying. "It's bedtime. Why are you still sitting there? Where are our bedtime Dreamies?"

So today Cassie rested in the sun, pretending to have four front paws.

Later, the two of them did their conjoined cats impression.

(Grr, Blogger's doing its won't-give-you-paragraph-spaces again.)

Things that take longer than expected

2012-01-27T23:43:00.006Z

This is a totally irrelevant picture of Cassie. I have nothing particular to say this evening since I've spent most of the day editing the church magazine. This is in addition to the hours I spent on it yesterday and the day before and the not inconsiderable time that Mr Life spent doing some of the technical stuff earlier. I would like to think that people will go "Wow! Impressive!" when they get it... but I suspect that they won't. It's astonishing how long it takes to footer about with things to get them looking right(ish) and to find suitable little illustrations to cheer it all up.

It's quite fun, though.

Less fun is what we're also doing, which is waiting for time to pass. Daughter 2 was supposed to arrive for the weekend at about twenty to midnight but her train has been delayed - as have lots of others - because someone has vandalised the signals on her route. Currently she's in York, which is some hours from here, and the train that she's been transferred on to isn't moving yet. The information suggests that she may get in about 2 am, but I imagine that this is a bit speculative. Since she has to go back down again about 36 hours later, this is all very trying. Ho hum.

Smiley boy

2012-01-26T22:35:00.003Z

A year ago, we were only just getting used to the idea that this little chap would be joining the family. Indeed, we didn't know that he was going to be a chap. Now look at him - he's finding his feet in more ways than one.

What a smiley boy. I hope that he retains his sunny disposition. Meantime I take every opportunity to cuddle him. One of those years, he may not be so amenable to this.

This afternoon, he and I went out for a walk. He chatted a lot. Mainly he said, "Aaaaa."

Mr Life, retired accountant

2012-01-25T22:23:00.006Z

This was Mr Life's last day as a working man. (Well, apart from the nice little list of retirement tasks I have for him.) Here he is, coming back from work for the final time. Look at that smile on his face.

His assistants had laid on a little extra leaving do, consisting of wine and nibbles. This may have contributed to the slightly glazed look.

The cats have decided to retire in sympathy.

I'm feeling very odd. I can convince myself I'm experiencing a sort of extended college holiday but Mr Life has never had those, poor chap, so this seems a bit different. I need to get used to the fact that we're both retired. And not on huge pensions, either.

Definitely on the home straight now.

(Thank you for all the comments about comments. I'm deep in doing the church magazine at the moment but will digest them in due course.)

Grrr

2012-01-24T16:47:00.005Z

Listen, bloggy friends, am I the only one who's having problems commenting on some blogs, and does anyone have a solution? Last time this happened, I could see the comment box but my comments didn't save, and the answer was not to stay signed in. That worked. This time, the comment box flashes up for a millisecond and is then replaced by a blank screen. It doesn't happen with most blogs but does with some of my favourites, eg Being Me, Slow Lane Life and Bronze Wombat.

I know one shouldn't be ungrateful to Blogger, since he gives us everything free, but I'm feeling a little peeved. I've given him a week or two to sort himself out and he doesn't seem to have done so. What with that and the slates off the roof, the dishwasher developing a fault never seen before by dishwasher menders, the non-working tv, the car's serious illness and now my computer screen, which keeps freezing... . Mutter, mutter... .

Still, looking at Grandson in his new hat is very cheering.

More bargains

2012-01-23T21:50:00.008Z

It was Mr Life's retirement do today. They gave him a cake, some books and a cushion - which all feature engines or railways - and a cheque and some wine, which don't. And lots of cards, some train-related and some not.

And they gave me flowers, which was very nice, though I don't feel I've done anything to deserve them.

On Saturday, we had friends for the day - they brought roses.

And yesterday Daughter 1's lovely in-laws visited (hello, Nanny and Gramps) and they brought tulips.

The house is wonderfully floriferous.

Bargains

2012-01-22T22:14:00.009Z

Two bunches of tulips...For £5.

And Grandson...

... came free!

The Johnsons

2012-01-21T19:58:00.004Z

Two recent snippets from the radio.

Snippet 1:

Paul Johnson was on “Desert Island Discs” yesterday. He’s an 83-year-old journalist and a fairly opinionated old buffer. Kirsty Young enquired how many words he wrote per day. “At least 1000,” he said. “On a good day, I can manage 5000.”

“I believe that Jean Paul Sartre could write 20,000 words in a day,” observed Ms Young.

“Yes,” agreed Mr Johnston. Pause. Sniff. “Mind you, he was writing in French.”

Snippet 2:

Ulrika Jonsson was on a live programme this morning. She’s a blonde, glamorous, much-married Swedish television person who lives in England.

Someone texted the radio presenter, remembering another interview of Ms J's. She’d been asked whether she knew what existentialism was. She’d said, “No, but I can tell you why not in seven languages.”

Silhouettes

2012-01-20T19:55:00.009Z

The sky this morning, pretty in pink.

Sometimes, when I've been up late blogging and Mr Life has gone to bed, I can't find Sirius to put him to bed in the kitchen.

Can you see him at all?

Oh yes.

There he is. Holding paws.

The car's whiny noise has changed to a sort of low moan, with just a touch of death rattle. I'm hoping that it's just being a bit melodramatic. Sort of car-flu.

Whining

2012-01-19T23:26:00.006Z

One of the great advantages - for the cats - of my having retired is that I am often on hand to turn a tap on, so that they can have a drink. They do, of course, have a nice bowl full of fresh water, conveniently situated on the kitchen floor quite close to the door from the dining room, the room in which they spend most of their time. But they don't like this much. They much prefer nagging one of us till he/she gets up and provides running water for them.

Today has been a little trying and it's salutory to remember the days when I didn't have time to do any of the things that I've found difficult today. For example, when I was working I wouldn't have been able to have a second dishwasher chap come to the house, scratch his head in cheerful bewilderment - "I've never seen a dishwasher with this fault before" - and depart, saying that he'll need to order a part. At least he had a cheerier outlook on life than the previous bloke. Time will tell whether he's better at getting the thing to work. It might have been cheaper just to buy a new machine.

And, if working, I wouldn't have had the time to watch the kitchen tv while tidying up after breakfast, and wouldn't then have discovered that it said "No Signal" - a bit tedious, since we got the aerial chap to fit a new aerial last week. He comes back again tomorrow, though of course the tv was working again at lunch time, though saying "No Signal" later on again. What's the betting it'll be fine when he comes to call?

Nor would I have had time to take my mum to her lunch with the Probus Ladies' Club, from where she was supposed to phone me to retrieve her. I think we've now established that she can no longer remember how to work her mobile phone. Or at least, she phoned me all right but I think that she wasn't holding it to her ear because though I could hear lots of conversation, I couldn't hear her and she couldn't hear me. This situation took quite a while to resolve but I got her back in the end.

However, when I was still employed I might have been driving the car to work, in which case I would still have noticed the whiny sound that it's developed. This became apparent just after I dropped my mother off for her lunch. In my experience, car whiny sounds are not good. And are expensive. I'm taking the car to be investigated next Wednesday. I hope it manages to stagger on till then.

I know, I know: some people don't have dishwashers, televisions, mothers, cars. It's not that bad. But, you know. It's not that good either.

At least we do have cats.

The excitements of the retired life

2012-01-18T23:34:00.004Z

Oh, isn't Grandson cute?

Second Zumba session today. We had a different teacher: not the lean, lithe impossibly fit-looking girl of last week, but a ... how can I put this? ... really fat girl. Goodness knows, I'm not thin but you could have got about two of me out of her. Well, one and a half at least, with a bit left over to make a toddler.

She was very dancey, I'll admit. She wiggled around and twinkled her feet and waved her arms just as impressively and confusingly and fast as last week's teacher. She said that she was taking it a bit easy since this was the second of six (six!) Zumba classes she was taking today, but she still seemed to throw herself into it. And I thought: if she can exercise like this for six hours and still be spherical, then Zumba does not work. Unless she eats a box of chocolates between each session. Anyway, Son came down to see us today and he, Daughter 1, Grandson and I all went to Ikea. Yes, we can organise a fun family outing. He needs to buy furniture for his new house, Daughter 2 wanted some boxes and I wanted a lamp. Amazingly, I managed for the first time to go round Ikea and not buy anything I didn't previously feel I needed. (The pot of daffodils doesn't count. We all need daffodils.)

At tea, Son offered Grandson his first piece of potato. Grandson wasn't impressed.

Families

2012-01-17T22:10:00.003Z

Sometimes it's nice just to snuggle up to your sister, give her face a good lick and then settle down, nose to nose.

I don't speak personally, mind you. I have no sister, which in many ways is a great grief to me. On the other hand, if I had had a sister (and she would of course have been the ideal sister, endlessly supportive of my views and understanding of my foibles) I'd have been very upset if she'd gone and lived elsewhere. (Cf my feelings about children.) I do have a brother and was sad when he left home, never to live in Edinburgh again, when I was 22.

I have no cousins either. I think my ideas about cousins were formed by much reading of Enid Blyton's "Famous Five" stories, which featured children (Julian, Dick, Anne and George) who were siblings / cousins. My fantasy cousins would have been about my age and very pleasant and funny and would have lived round the corner. And now, I suppose, they would have children and grandchildren and we would all be one big jolly family.

Actually, I suppose that life is complicated enough as it is. I'm happy to say that our three children and my brother's two get on very well, though they don't see one another all that often, since his two are in Cambridge and our three in Edinburgh, London and Perth. (Though Niece was at Daughter 2's for dinner tonight. Happy Birthday, Niece.) And by the time you factor in their significant others and, in due course, possibly more of the next generation, there will be quite a lot of us.

I'd still have liked that sister, though.

Time

2012-01-16T19:54:00.010Z

Today I gave Daughter 1 and Grandson a lift down to the baby group in Joppa. He wore his stripey hoodie. While they were there I went for a walk in the frosty sunshine. We used to live in Joppa; in fact, I lived there most of my life. Our current house is on the other side of Edinburgh but we may well move back some day. I miss the sea. It was just after 1pm, but you can see how low the sun is in the sky by the long shadows on the beach. Just out of sight to the left, there was a middle-aged, sturdy-looking woman jogging slowly along the sand, about to run into the picture. Very commendable, I thought, but she's never going to keep it up for long.

The sea is there, all right, but there was a low mist concealing the skyline.

We moved to the west side of Edinburgh nearly 22 years ago for the sake of the children's schooling but we still drive down to Joppa most Sundays to go to church. However, I haven't really walked around the district much since then. (22 years slips away very quickly; how can it be that long?) Here I am standing in the Quarry Park, which used to be at the end of the street we lived in when the children were small. Well, the park and the street are still there, but to my surprise there's no longer a path through. Houses have been built in the place where there were garages and a gap in the wall.

So I walked up to the main road and down and round into "our" street. I'd looked along it often enough while driving past it over the years but I don't think I've ever walked along it since moving - it's a short cul-de-sac. Today I wandered along it, remembering all the people who lived in it when we were there. Quite a few of them are dead, sadly: Miss Mackenzie and Miss Oliver and Miss Kerr as well as Sandra, who was younger than me. And other neighbours have moved away. I don't think anyone is left whom we knew.

I stood in front of "our" house and noticed the front path. When we arrived, it consisted of rather cracked concrete and we spent quite a lot of money (at least, it seemed a lot to us, in our rather impecunious state at that time) getting it neatly paved. The paving slabs were alternately pink (or was it green?) and cream. When I looked at them now, I was amazed to see that they were dirty grey and no longer flat: roots must have lifted them over the years. They looked as if they'd been there for centuries. Yet to me it seems no time since we left. I couldn't believe that this could have happened. I felt like - I'd like to say Sleeping Beauty but maybe Rip Van Winkle would be more appropriate. Some evil fairy seemed to have come and done horrid things overnight to our tidy path.

She's not really improved me either... .

Looking round the street, I felt it was just the same and yet totally different: a very weird sensation, as if I could blink and the wrong colours of the doors (ours is now black), the easy-to-maintain landscaping of Miss Oliver's garden and the smart railings on Darrell and Bill's wall would all disappear.

When I walked back down to the beach I took a photo of the sturdy lady: still doggedly running along the beach - in the opposite direction - an hour after I'd seen her before.

(Grr, Blogger's done for the paragraph spacings again. And I can't comment on Fran's or Rachel's blogs. Come on, Blogger, stop mucking about.)

Two reasons to be cheerful

2012-01-15T20:56:00.005Z

Any day - for example, today - is improved by a visit from this little chap. He is so yummy.

And then in the evening I went to a concert which featured (among other goodies) Boyce's 4th Symphony. It's one of those pieces of music that I know perfectly well - could have sung along to - but couldn't have identified. It's SO GOOD - very cheerful and brisk and no-nonsense - just the sort of thing to make one feel that the human race has a lot going for it, despite all the dire news.

I didn't know much about Boyce apart from the fact that he was an 18th century English composer but have just Googled him. In Wikipedia's picture, he looks a bit like a combination of Dr Johnson and Robbie Coltrane, but more stolid. Not a beauty, then, but what an achievement to create something that over 200 years later makes people (such as me) beam all the way home on the bus.

Arran

2012-01-14T22:56:00.007Z

We've just booked our holiday on the island of Arran. It's possible that we won't be seeing the mountains from quite this high up.

But the view's good from lower down, too.

My grandmother's mother came from Arran. Judging from photos, she was very pretty. She left the island as a young woman to work in Glasgow. On the ferry one day, when she was coming back to visit her family, she met a young man who was going to visit his sister, married to an Arran man. They fell in love and got married. Her family didn't approve because this meant that she settled in Glasgow (and I think they thought that she was marrying somewhat beneath her station). The young couple had one child, a boy, and then another two, my grandmother and her little sister. Sadly, though, the wife, my great-grandmother, fell ill with TB (caught, her family always felt, in the Big City). The youngest child was also infected.

When my granny was five, her mother died; the little sister lingered on, always unwell, till the age of fourteen.

Granny used to spend many happy holidays in Arran with her aunts and always talked of retiring there (but never did). She used to say with a smile that people always said when they met her, "Ah, you're a bonny lassie but you're no' near as bonny as your mother." (But in an Arran accent: "Ah, yir a pohny lassie but yir no near as pohny as yir mither.")

The churchyards there are full of gravestones with this family's name, going way back in time.

I love islands and, if many things were different, would live on one. Indeed, I'd live on Arran, surrounded by this particular set of ghosts.

This post illustrates various of the reasons that I can't imagine emigrating.

(Don't know what we're doing about the cats when we're there, though. Hmm.)

(And I don't know what Blogger's doing with my paragraph spaces.)

Goodness me

2012-01-13T20:07:00.004Z

Well. That was very interesting. And here was me thinking that I never got many comments any more... .

I should perhaps have made myself clearer: I can see that some people have quite definite reasons for emigrating to another country - love being maybe the most obvious, these days, or job opportunites; poverty, lack of employment perhaps being cogent reasons in the past. Maybe a sense of adventure both in the past and now. But on the tv programme I'm talking about (and I realise that tv programmes are perhaps not the most reliable sources of analysis of the human heart and its motives) there doesn't usually seem to be any particular reason like that. The participants just seem to feel that they want to go.

Of course, I've no idea whether any of them actually do emigrate. Maybe they're just after a free holiday, paid for by the tv company.

I'm intrigued at Frogdancer's comment, that life in Australia "seems so much better". I wonder if it's true. I think that many of us - not those in my programme, obviously - believe that our country is the best in the world. Maybe we're kidding ourselves because that's where we are and are likely to stay. I certainly think that there's nowhere more beautiful than the Highlands of Scotland - and of course I'm saying this despite never having seen the Alps, the Hindu Kush ... etc. (I have seen the Rockies and they are pretty nice, though.) And I think that, for a city, Edinburgh is lovely (though I don't really care for cities as such; it's just that Edinburgh has hills and lots of green spaces and old or elegant buildings and a castle on a rock). And I like the climate: it's never much too hot, seldom very cold, we're not bothered much by flood or drought or earthquake. And we have all this history. I like to think of my ancestors walking around breathing this air... .

I do awfully admire parents such as Avus and others who can say that they've let their children go because that's what you have to do. It's a wonderful attitude. I wish I could be like that. I can see that it's the right way to be. But you can't make yourself feel that way. You can say it, as the parents on the programme often do, through their tears. But you can't change the way you feel and it would be very difficult to act happy for the rest of your life if you felt miserable because you didn't often get to see those you loved most in the world.

Anyway, your comments have been most interesting; thank you for them. And, as I said, it's just as well that we're not all like me. Though some commenters clearly are... .

Going away

2012-01-12T22:16:00.006Z

One of the morning television programmes that I occasionally watch when faffing around in the kitchen is about families who're considering emigrating from Britain to Australia, or occasionally to New Zealand. The programme makers whisk them off to some sun-soaked, beachside city and they spend a week there investigating Antipodean life.

It's always warm and sunny. They stay in a spacious, open-plan house with a pool. They live the outdoor life most of the time but also investigate job opportunities and the price of houses and the cost of living. At the end of the week, they decide whether they would like to emigrate or not. Very often - since these are people who have been thinking of making a new life down under for some time - they decide on Australia.

But then they're shown a recording of their families and friends back home, saying (usually) how much they'd miss them and how they don't want them to go. The parents sometimes say nobly through their tears that of course the family must do what's best for them and if they feel that the opportunities are better in Australia, then they must go. But it's obvious that everyone's terribly upset at the idea. And you see the prospective emigrants, sitting on their Australian sofa in the lounge room, weeping also.

But after some wiping of tears, they go back out into the sunshine and say that they're going anyway.

I find this bewildering. While I realise that sunshine is nice, we do have good weather here too sometimes, and beautiful countryside, and interesting places to visit. I'm sure Australia and New Zealand are lovely. But why would anyone want to leave their families and friends to go so far away? This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one.

Quite a few Australians and Americans read this blog and presumably they're mainly descended from emigrants. I wonder if you have a genetically inherited spririt of adventure? I myself am a deeply cautious person, which is doubtless a flaw, and would never leave the people and places that I know. But more than this, I could never have done it to my parents. And yet there are emigrants in my family - my grandmother's sister went to America before the First World War and my grandfather on the other side was all set to go to Australia, as I've mentioned before, only his mother begged him not to.

I tried to instill this spirit of homebodyness into my children in the attempt to make them stay by our side, though this hasn't worked terribly well, with Daughter 2 in London and Son in Perth (in Scotland). But I really don't think they would go to live at the other side of the world. It would break my heart if they did and they know this. And so I watch these people - very pleasant-seeming people - deciding that their loved ones' feelings don't matter*; and I am astonished.

(*Yes, RR, this was badly put and I apologise. I suppose I mean that their loved ones' feelings do seem to matter (hence the tears) but not so much as the benefit that they feel they'll derive from this new life. And I'm talking about whole families going - taking the offspring and grandchildren of two extended families - for no obvious reason (or, not obvious in the programmes): not love, not really employment, not poverty: just a yen to go somewhere with more sunshine. I can quite see that some people do have genuine reasons for going abroad, like falling in love. But these people don't seem to have. In fact, they usually find that house prices are higher, the cost of living is also higher and pay isn't any better. But they still seem determined to go. Of course, it's a tv programme and there may be lots of reasons behind the scenes that we don't see.)

I know, I know: it wouldn't do if everyone was like me. We'd all be living in the same cave and it would be getting very crowded.

But - could you do it? Did you do it? What did it feel like?

Why I feel a bit weary

2012-01-11T19:33:00.004Z

The dishwasher chap came back. Good news? Well... .

But first, Zumba. In my pursuit of doing something rather than footering around during my retirement, I decided to add Zumba to piano lessons. I had an idea that I might be equally unskilled in both areas. I was right.

My friend Anne has been doing Zumba for a few months so I went along to her class today. (I had considered the one down the road but peeked in and saw lots of toned 30-year-olds in Lycra. No.) Anne's class is full of pensioners - much more suitable. It was quite fun and not as exhausting as I thought - or at least it wasn't till a couple of hours afterwards, when I suddenly wanted to lie down.

The teacher is a very nice, cheery girl: lean and muscled and an excellent advert for Zumba, though I imagine she Zumbs more than just the one hour a week. As Anne says, it's not just your body that gets a workout but your brain, as you try to follow the things the teacher is doing with her arms and legs. Anne hopes that it'll stave off dementia and make us more alert, though judging by the performance of the ladies who've been doing it for a while, I wouldn't put any money on this. The trouble is that the things that the teacher does with her arms and legs are a) moderately complicated, b) confusingly different from each other and c) quite fast. And then each sequence lasts only a maximum of four bars of music before it changes to something else, which means that you no sooner get the hang of something than it's time to do something else.

I kept getting the giggles at what we must have looked at to the teacher as she danced slenderly away at the front and watched twenty substantial ladies lumbering in various directions in the attempt to copy her movements. "Very good! Well done!" she kept calling out. Positive reinforcement. But lies.

Then I went home to the dishwasher chap, who reluctantly returned after my third phone call. He is not a cheerful man. Nor an optimistic one. To do him justice, he did once more unscrew the front, though his gusty sighs didn't inspire confidence. Nor did the way he shook his head and uttered the words, "Piece - of - junk!" as he gazed into the innards. He put it back together. It still wouldn't switch on. He said various things which don't belong on my ladylike blog. He took it apart again and put it together once more. It switched on!

"Ah," I said, "well done! You've worked your magic." (Positive reinforcement, you know.) He snorted. "Dinnae even ken whit I done." (ie "I don't even know what I did.") Hmm.

He hung around a bit. "I cannae switch it off now." Well, it's always been like that - once it's on, you can pause it but you can't switch it off till it's finished its cycle. This has never bothered us too much. He sighed deeply. "Does it always make that HMMMMMMM noise?" I thought it did. To be honest, I don't spend much time listening to my dishwasher. "It shouldnae make that noise," he mourned. He gathered up his tools and departed, clearly unconfident. "Let me ken if that disnae dae it," ("Let me know if that doesn't do it") he said as he walked towards his van.

Every line in his frown made it quite clear that he never wanted to see me, my dishwasher, any piece of kitchen equipment or probably any human being ever again.

Well, it did work, if by "work" you mean going through a cycle (granted, with no dishes in it, but I didn't have any dirty dishes at the time). But once the cycle had finished, it wouldn't switch off without our unplugging it at the wall, which involves pulling it out from under the worksurface.

Big. Sigh. I know there are people in the world who don't have dishwashers, indeed who don't have dishes or food to put on them, but, you know. Umm.

I post the picture to warn you off this particular model of dishwasher. I'd better not tell you the gloomy chap's name. He did his best. I think. But now what?

Slightly less stress - I think

2012-01-10T23:36:00.003Z

Well, today was a better day, though the dishwasher chap didn't get back to me. I can live without a dishwasher but it's only a bit over a year old and it shouldn't have broken down in the first place.

And I didn't even mention it yesterday among my other complaints, but on Sunday I noticed that I'd lost a diamond from my engagement ring. This is particularly tedious since I lost a different diamond about eighteen months ago, had to have it replaced (at not insignificant cost) and specifically asked the chap to check the settings of the other ones.

Gah gah gah gah.

Still, on the positive side, my piano teacher is LOVELY, which is a piece of luck since I picked her more or less randomly from the internet, really only because she said on her website that she teaches pupils from 7 to 70, so I felt wouldn't be her very oldest pupil. Also her website seemed well-phrased. Of course, I made a bit of a mess of the tune I'd been practising (so as to show her that I was a worthwhile student). But I knew I would since I was, stupidly, rather nervous. And it didn't really matter.

And Daughter 1 and Grandson came and had coffee with me afterwards (piano teacher lives above a coffee shop, conveniently) and then we came here for the afternoon. He is so delighfully squashy. His t-shirt says, by the way: Ihr seid grosser* aber ich bin lauter (ie You're bigger but I'm louder - his dad has a degree in German).

* Sorry, don't know how to do umlauts on the computer.

And then, also on the positive side, my mum's neighbour phoned up this evening to say that Mum's conservatory door was open, and we all rushed up there expecting that burglars had broken in, smashed the glass, tried to gain entry to the rest of the house etc etc. And it was all fine. The door was indeed open but the lock was locked, leaving Mr Life to conclude that when he'd locked it on Saturday he hadn't actually had it properly clicked shut first. (It's a bit of a funny door.) And it had just swung open but nothing nasty had happened. What a relief, especially since this all made Mum much more cheerful than she'd been before the whole situation arose.

Oh, the excitements of the retired life.

Stress

2012-01-09T21:29:00.004Z

On days like this, one looks back fondly on the calm waters of a teaching day. One is completely deluded, of course. One has just forgotten temporarily the horrors of classes which are too big for the rooms and for the numbers of chairs provided, of photocopiers that eat one's carefully-prepared handouts, of students who announce at the beginning of class that they have a visual handicap and really need all handouts double sized and printed on blue paper, of nervous students who need to sit next to the door at all times... .

But today - well, today I phoned the fence chap about coming to fix the second of Mum's fences that have blown down in the gale. Then I phoned her upstairs neighbour about the continuing saga of the roof repairers who do not come to repair the roof. Then I phoned the dishwasher repairer for the second time to ask him to come and look at the dishwasher that he repaired two weeks ago and that has now broken down again. (Guess whether he's got back to me. Oh, you think he won't. Hmm.)

And then in the afternoon the aerial chap came to improve our television pictures and he was here for AGES, in the three rooms that the cats usually inhabit, and they were NOT HAPPY. Whenever he went into the room in which they'd taken refuge, they fled. They did that creeping thing, stomachs brushing the carpet, towards the door and then sprinted into another room. And then he would follow them and they had to do it all again. And he kept telling me stuff that I didn't understand. "I've just put a splitter on it and spliced the groyner to the dibber... etc etc." Oh, the stress. And my mum kept asking me questions about her roof and her fence and her next Probus meeting and so on while the chap was giving me "simple" instructions on how to use the telly. Gah.

The picture above illustrates how Mr Life plans to spend his retirement. A model railway layout and cats, possibly not simultaneously.

And now I must go and do my piano practice because I have my first lesson tomorrow. Argh.

A post for Nanny and Gramps in Worcester

2012-01-08T21:44:00.007Z

Grandson continues to be very jolly. Look at his hair - it's visible now. Kind of. And he has good eyebrows - much better than those of his Edinburgh Granny. He enjoys playing with his rattles.Surprise! He can sit up by himself! (Though not for all that long.)

Still doing it... .

But it tires a chap out, being so jolly and energetic and grownup. So a short nap was in order on the way back to his own house.

I'm sure he's looking forward to seeing you soon, Worcester Nanny and Gramps.

(Thanks to all those who visited Daughter 2's blog!)

More glass

2012-01-07T20:38:00.004Z

Left piece of glass: handmade and sold moderately expensively in a craft shop. Middle piece: I've known it all my life; it was, I think, a wedding present to my parents. I'm sure it wasn't new then. I've had it for over thirty years. Right hand piece: bought in a charity shop for £3.

I like the rich colours.

Now: Daughter 2 has, somewhat to my surprise, started a blog. Daughter 1 has one too - indeed, she had one before I did and was my blog mentor, but she doesn't update it much. I think she spends more time on Ravelry.

If you have a moment, do pop over and say hello to Daughter 2 sitting in her London flat, streaming with a cold. (She and I seem to be competing (not intentionally) as to how many consecutive colds we can suffer from.)

She's at http://allchangeb.blogspot.com/

(Not that I want her to change at all - apart from improving her immune system.)

And another site to visit - I've just come across this. There's an organisation that teaches prisoners to sew - embroider, quilt etc - and this is the website that sells their work. It's really lovely. And amazing. And heartwarming. Do have a look. www.finecellwork.co.uk

Glass

2012-01-06T20:58:00.004Z

I have very little interest in clothes or handbags or shoes. I fear that no one could accuse me of being a naturally elegant person. But I do have a weakness for glass. (And china. And chocolate... .)

I love the transparency or translucency of glass and the way it glows under a light; I love the brightness of colour that glass can have; I love the sinuous shapes that can be formed in it. I love the feeling of it: smooth and cool and solid. I also marvel at its relative cheapness.

I enjoy grouping pieces together, moving them around from time to time, even dusting them. (How sad is that?). The three pieces above, for example, were bought at different times and from different places and I only recently put them together.

My family indulge my fancy by kindly giving me pretty bits of glass for Christmas and birthday presents. But I now really have quite a lot and have to rotate my collection, keeping some in cupboards. Which is good because it makes me look at them and enjoy them anew once they come out again.

I'm trying to think of how to describe my wish to own glass objects. It's not an obsession (too strong) or a mania (much too strong). I suppose it's an urge. It's not an admirable trait but I think it's harmless enough. The habit's more or less under control. More or less.

It's funny, isn't it, what we like to have around us? One person's ornament is another's clutter. I have a very very minimalist friend who, after years of having nothing on her mantelpiece (nothing! I could no sooner have nothing on my mantelpiece than go out in my bare skin and let me tell you, I'm not going to do that) - anyway, after years of naked mantelpiece she put a plain, clear, glass decanter on each end of it. Impressive in a way, but ... not for me.

So - are any of you minimalists? Do you think it's inborn or learned or developed?

Hello, by the way, to the friendly lurker who commented the other day, and to the other blogless commenters whom I can't visit. Waving to you!

Baby worship

2012-01-05T20:05:00.004Z

I know he's just an ordinary baby. One among millions and millions. But he's so lovely: his big shiny eyes and his petal-soft skin and his big, thrilled beam.

Daughter 1 and I took him for a walk. He enjoyed it. Ah, how simple it is to be a baby. (Just as long as people aren't trying to put your arms in sleeves. We don't like sleeves.)

I'm becoming one of those people who say that they don't know how they had time to work. I phoned the roofer this morning about the slates that flew off the roof during the big wind the other night, and the aerial chap about the tv picture that tends to collapse into noisy slices of itself, and then tomorrow I must phone the dishwasher chap about the dishwasher that he fixed but which has now unfixed itself again.

Today started rather suddenly when Cassie leapt upon Mr Life's stomach at 5.20 am. The cats spend the night in the kitchen but my mother had gone through to get a glass of water and... well, she swears that she didn't let Cassie out. But let's put it this way: someone did. Offended by the less-than-ecstatic welcome she got, Cassie immediately leapt off again but then she had to be apprehended because she really enjoys scratching our bedroom wallpaper. At least, she swears she doesn't but let's put it this way: someone does and I don't think it's Sirius.

Mr Life adores the cats but cat-catching makes you more alert than you really want to be at 5.20 am.

Still looking for cat-sitters... (see post of two days ago). What? You mean you don't like being jumped on in the early hours?

Colour

2012-01-04T19:43:00.003Z

I've just posted this picture of Sweet Williams to remind myself about summer, flowers and colour. Because here in Edinburgh today it's cold, grey and windy. The garden is mainly a heap of sodden brown leaves and twigs. Various slates lie on the ground, blown off by the gales we suffered on Monday night. (Fortunately they just missed the car. That would have been expensive.)

But one advantage of retirement, I'm finding, is that you do see a bit of daylight even in the winter. Here in Edinburgh at this time of year it's still pretty dark at going-to-work time and very dark at going-home time, and in my teaching days I never had time to look out of the window in between. Now, however, I can do things like - oh, today I went to the dentist (such fun) - and January doesn't seem so bad.

In the summer, in contrast, we have these long, light nights when you can still see to do gardening well after 11 at night. So, to me, the dark days of winter are amply compensated by the light nights of summer.

On the other hand, my Californian bloggy friend Paul tells me that Carmel is rather nice at any time of year...

Talking of the summer and indeed the spring - if you haven't read my previous post about the cats, please do.

Cats for hire

2012-01-03T20:01:00.004Z

Now then. If you're a long-term bloggy friend, you'll have seen this request before. The thing is this: we have two black cats - exhibit A (top), Sirius, very goodnatured if a bit dim, and exhibit B (above), Cassie, slightly more strongminded but basically friendly. And we're rather soppy about them, so that if we go on holiday, we don't like to put them in a cattery. Indeed, we've never done so.

Five times now, we've been very fortunate and have had kind bloggy friends who have come and stayed in our house when we've been away. They've got free accommodation in Edinburgh and our cats have been fed and kept company.

I wonder if there might be anyone out there who would like to do this, this year? This very much includes any return visitors!

The first dates are a few days in April: the nights of Friday 20, Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 April. The whole family, including my brother and his wife and offspring, are going for a long weekend to celebrate my mother's 90th birthday.

The second occasion is likely to be two weeks from Sunday 15 July (our son is getting married on the 14th so we can't go away till the following day) - until Saturday 28 July. We haven't actually booked anything then but will certainly try to go away for the first week and possibly the second also. I have friends and neighbours who would fill in the odd gap if necessary.

I know this seems like a long shot, but it's worked before so I thought it was worth trying. (Cats do make life difficult at holiday time. I have friends who would pop in and feed them, but we'd rather have live-in catsitters.)

The duties aren't onerous - to keep their dishes filled with cat biscuits and water and (ideally) to shut them in at night and let them out in the morning. There's a closeable cat flap and they come and go during the day.

Our house is not palatial but is comfortable, in a quiet street but only a short lane's distance from buses into the centre of town. The journey into the centre takes about ten minutes. We're also easily accessible from the station and airport. We have various bedrooms, tvs, etc. Edinburgh is a historic city with plenty of cultural attractions.

Obviously this suggestion is open to bloggy friends or their friends and family rather than passing burglars. Do think about it and let me know if you might be able to help.

On another topic: I'm currently suffering my fifth cold since retiring, six months ago. Up till then, I was lucky to keep fairly good health. But since then, I've just recovered from one when I get another. Currently I'm at the stage when it wouldn't surprise me if my ears exploded, I keep sneezing, my poor old nose is wearing away with all the blowing it's getting and my eyes are streaming attractively. It seems very odd. I don't think I really believe this - but it's almost as if when I was a working woman I was living on adrenaline, moving too fast for infection to take a hold. And now that I've slowed down, all these germs are attacking me. Is this possible, I wonder? (No, Son, I don't suppose it really is.)

Little piggies

2012-01-02T21:55:00.004Z

Alas, today Daughter 2 went back down to London on the train. Not such an excellent day.

I shall try to concentrate on Grandson, who in this photo from yesterday was momentarily distracted by the camera from sucking his toes.

I myself am no longer as bendy as that.

An excellent day

2012-01-01T21:24:00.002Z

We had Daughter 1 and her husband and the baby and Daughter 2 (and me and Mr Life and my mum) most of today. Which was lovely. We played "Balderdash" - which I recommend - it's good fun. Daughter 2 is a very doting aunt. Grandson has been brought up with so much love from his parents and us and our other offspring and all his Worcester relations - it makes one conscious that not all babies are so wanted and cherished and that not all parents are able to keep their babies warm and comfortable.

Thank you for all your good wishes. I've now posted for something like 60 consecutive days and have enjoyed it. It seems a bit self-indulgent, though, and no one could claim that I have anything much to say. But has that stopped me?

Daughter 2 goes back to London tomorrow to rejoin her husband and to restart her work and her Real Life. I shall miss her; she knows this. (Remember the excellent times; remember the excellent times... .)

(Clarissa - how lovely to hear from you! I hope you're well and things are good with you. I occasionally check your blog but there are still only two entries, both now a long time ago. I'd love to read more!)

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T21:24:00.010Z

On the last day of the year, we went to Perth to show Daughter 2 and Son-in-Law 1 the house that Son and his future wife have bought (they'll be at his young lady's family home tomorrow, so not with us). They haven't moved in yet. Grandson showed Son his new t-shirt. It features a computer joke. (It says, "I'm still in Beta." I had to have it explained.)

Grandson sucked Son's thumb. Large and apparently tasty.

Then we went out for lunch. I did try to post a picture just like this except including SIL 1, but I couldn't persuade that photo not to go sideways.

Apart from the wonderful advent of Grandson, it hasn't been a good year (for me and Mr Life). A bloggy friend recently emailed her thoughts about sadness, which I've found comforting: "I try not to look at my life as linearly as it seems to be in Real Life - there were excellent times in my past and there will be excellent times again - just not this year."

So here I am with my boys, trying to concentrate on those excellent times. (Pity I didn't comb my hair.)

I hope that all my bloggy friends and friendly lurkers have a splendid New Year with lots of excellence.

The world's worst photos?

2011-12-30T23:17:00.007Z

Well. The second last day of the year and I have... very little to say. So I was trawling through my photos for inspiration and found - these. I have no idea why I took these photos and certainly no idea why I bothered to keep them. The one above - I can't even work out what it is. Are these feet to the left? I can see the reflection of an umbrella and - ah, that wheelie thing is a button, in close up. So the blue thing is my coat. Mmm.

This is clearer. Two pots of crocus and one of daffodils. But not exactly a great image. Possibly the most boring botanic photo I've ever seen.

Ok, getting more confident here. This is Cassie. The famous noseless cat.

And finally, this is our kitchen table. I think I can see half a rather toasted-looking sausage, a slightly burnt cake, some yellow pepper, some grated cheese... . Why did I take a photo of it????

New Year resolution: go through my photos and edit them. Starting with these ones.

I wonder if anyone can surpass these pictures for sheer awfulness? I'm throwing out this challenge... .

Things to read

2011-12-29T23:29:00.003Z

Sorry, Son, but I felt that the world needed to see this picture of you on Christmas Day, modelling the t-shirt we gave you (it's lying on your legs) and the oven glove and tea cosy given to you by Daughter 1 and her husband for your new house. I'd never seen you as gnome-like before but here, it must be admitted, you're only missing the toadstool.

These were my presents, almost exclusively books. Two of them were blog-influenced: "The Gauntlet" is the one that you may remember my asking if anyone recognised from my faint childhood memories. Jane of "Jee and Me" told me that her husband said it was this book. And it was. I've now re-read it and enjoyed it, though it's not as good (I now think) as my other youthful favourite, "Tom's Midnight Garden". "The Gauntlet" is filled with probably well-researched information about mediaeval times - clothes and buildings and battles - but it now seems to me a bit heavy in such details. As a child, I didn't think about what seems to me now a big snag: that the main character, Peter, who is whisked back into mediaeval times, has no difficulty in communicating with anybody - which of course he would have, since the language has changed a lot since then. (I don't quite know why I'm cavilling at that, when I seem to accept that he put on a gauntlet and then travelled through time! But there's some attempt to explain that, whereas the language thing is ignored.) Still, I enjoyed it and remembered it for fifty years, so maybe it doesn't matter.

The other book with blog relevance is "Country Boy", which was recommended by Avus of "Little Corner of the Earth". I haven't read this yet.

And "London Belongs to Me" was serialised on the radio and sounded interesting, though in fact I strongly disapprove of London because my brother, my best school friend and now my beloved daughter all went to live there, thus depriving me of their company and seriously depleting the joys of my life.

The King and We

2011-12-28T23:41:00.006Z

A photo for Son-in-Law 1, to demonstrate that the guinea pigs are well and happy. Brown Pig is hiding in the shadows somewhat, but merely to get a better grasp of the hay sticking out of the log.

Thank you for your kind congratulations on our anniversary. Our darling Daughter 2 came home today for New Year. It was so good to see her, though she has a nasty cold.

She and I took my mother to see "The King and I" at the Festival Theatre. (It's so hard not to say "The King and Me" in this sentence.) It was rather tedious and piffly, I regret to report, especially since it was also rather expensive.

Oh well. The songs were good. Pity there weren't more of them.

Daughter 1, SIL 1 and Grandson get back tomorrow. It will be lovely to see them too.

Anniversary

2011-12-27T20:25:00.008Z

This is what we did this morning.

We went to Stockbridge and...

had coffee.

Then we walked along here...

... and into the Botanic Gardens.

By contrast, this is what we did 38 years ago today. (The furry stuff is feathers, not fur, by the way. The dress and muff were borrowed from the daughter of my mother's chiropodist.)

Where does the time go?

The book problem

2011-12-26T23:02:00.004Z

I decided to post every day in December - having missed two days at the beginning of November and therefore not having fully completed NaBloPoMo - so I'll continue to do so despite having nothing much to report. (Sorry.) Christmas Day duly happened, bringing lots of lovely books. The only snag is: where on earth am I going to put them?

Alexander McCall Smith has been wondering recently on the radio how people arrange their books: alphabetically (nice in principle but then you'd need to shift them all along every time you got a new one); by colour (no good unless you're positive that you remember the colour of every cover of every book you might want to find and anyway a bit silly?); by genre (that's the one I sort of adhere to); by author (yes, within the genre I put all the books by one author together). I don't think I heard the beginning of his broadcast but I do remember that he has a "guilt pile" of books that he feels he ought to read, but doesn't.

I do have one of them from time to time. It lives on my bedside table, though doesn't currently exist. (That's a bit of an impossible sentence, isn't it?)

I think I'm going to have to be firm and Get Rid of Some Books. Because even after I did this not all that long ago, the spaces soon got filled up and now we're down to the horizontal-books-on-top-of shelves phenomenon. (But I like my books.)

Yes, I do have a Kindle. And this would be the solution. (But I like real books. Though I feel I should - might actually - grow to love the Kindle.)

Anyway, Son came down to lunch yesterday, thus reducing the average age at the table by - can't be bothered working it out, but quite a lot. Which was nice. (The girls were with their in-laws in the Deep South.) But today has been v-e-r-y q-u-i-e-t. At least, it was quiet in Life Towers. Mr Life drove up to Perth in a van to take some spare family furniture to Son for the house that he and his wife-to-be have recently bought and to help him to assemble a bed . But here - I dusted and tidied a bit and changed the bed and did some washing and suchlike thrills. Zzzzzzzzz.
Here's a picture of Son, not yesterday but a few days ago. Cassie is on his back.

I do sometimes think that maybe I shouldn't post pictures of him because suppose you read my blog and then found that he was about to treat you as a doctor. Would that be odd? Would you trust your doctor less if you'd seen photos of him with a cat on his back or standing in the kitchen wearing his sister's wedding tiara?

And that's probably all I have to say. Till tomorrow. (Don't interpret this as a cliff-hanger promising exciting events to come. Though you never know... .)

On the first day of Christmas - three guinea pigs

2011-12-25T10:31:00.005Z

The manger scene, slightly non-standard.

Pumpkin, Cupcake and Brownie - a photo for my son-in-law to reassure him that all is well.

One, two, three.

The flock is complete.

Christmas wishes to all. And now I must get on!

Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T21:14:00.004Z

No one has time to read this so I won't burble on but will post it just for the sake of completeness. Today, a third penguin turned towards its left.

And the little gift was a tree, which.... drum roll...

... I assembled. Yes, two things to slot together and I managed it all by myself.

And that's the end of the Advent gifts, though there's one more flap to lift tomorrow. Judging by its shape I think it might be a - penguin.

I hope those of you who check up on my witterings enjoyed sharing our Advent gifts - thank you so much to our lovely Daughter 2, who went to all that bother.

Have a lovely Christmas, all bloggy friends, whether commenters or lurkers. (I'm assuming that the lurkers are friendly too.) I wish you all the blessings of the season.

I've done the wrapping at last. Hooray.

Another penguin arrival ... and a departure

2011-12-23T19:36:00.006Z

The penguin assembly is nearly complete now. Various huge Antarctic hedgehogs have come to inspect it. Fortunately the two species don't eat each other.

On the other hand, it's more than possible that Mr Life and I might eat these Christmas trees later this evening. Thank you, Daughter 2!

This morning was taken up with ferrying our lovely Son-in-Law 1 to our house with his and Daughter 1's guinea pigs and all their equipment. You know how you would never believe how much you need to take with you when you have a baby? Nothing to these piggies' accoutrements... . I now have the dauntingly responsible task of keeping them in the pink for six days.

We then returned to the D1/SIL1 house to collect Daughter 1 and Grandson, to take them (and lots more stuff) to the station. Grandson was his usual jolly self. I'm not going to see him for six whole days (every two days has been the norm so far) but I don't grudge him a visit to his Worcester relatives and am sure he'll have a lovely time. He evidently enjoyed his first train journey and entertained the passengers with his cheery beams.

We do have cats. Here is Sirius this afternoon, investigating a box. As cats will do.

Still haven't wrapped anything. Must. Happy Christmas to anyone who won't be back before the big day!

An elephant joins Rudolph

2011-12-22T23:06:00.008Z

I'm having great difficulty getting myself into a Christmassy mood.

Daughter 1, SIL 1 and Grandson are going down south tomorrow to be with SIL 1's family, which is perfectly fair since his (very nice) family don't see so much of the three of them as we do. Also it was our turn to have them last year. But it means that they won't be here for Christmas. (Last Christmas Mr Life and I didn't know that we had Grandson sitting at the table with us. And I am so dumb that I didn't even notice that Daughter 1 wasn't having either wine or coffee. She was sure that I would notice this, and would put two and two together. Nope.)

Daughter 2 is going with her new husband to be with his parents, also in the Midlands of England. Again, reasonable enough but we'll miss her. We should get her next year. Son thinks he'll pop down from Perth for Christmas lunch, so he'll probably be here while his young lady sleeps, after administering Accident and Emergency overnight treatment to those of our nothern compatriots who're about to fall over, stab their thumbs with the carving knife, walk into lampposts or develop appendicitis. Still, we'll be a very small party, without even my late aunt, who had Christmas with us every year since 1982, I think. Just Mum, Mr Life, Son and me.

Still, on we plod. Sirius volunteered to add interest to the penguinscape today. "Would you like me this way?" he enquired.

"Or this way?"

More animals for Mr Life to assemble. (He's the assembler in this marriage.)

Look: a reindeer (we're getting Christmassy at last) and an elephant. Presumably a baby elephant, suitable for greeting the baby Jesus. Or I suppose the reindeer might be a giant.

I should really wrap some presents. At least I've iced the cake, though Daughter 2 used to do it so much more artistically. But it's done. And the whole kitchen is sticky so I shall go and deal with this.

The forests of the frozen south

2011-12-21T23:45:00.003Z

Look at the front of the penguin flock - another left-facing one! (or right, from our point of view).

Oh, one should never attempt ponderous little witticisms - I do know, of course, that there are no trees in the Antarctic (see previous post and an earlier one). Not that I'm an expert in chilly areas; I don't watch David Attenborough programmes very much in case they're a bit red in tooth and claw. I wouldn't like, for example, to see a penguin being eaten by a polar bear. (Joke. I know ...)
Of course, to be strictly accurate, Santa doesn't belong in the Antarctic either since as we all know he lives in Lapland. (Or does the southern hemisphere think differently?)
Here are two Scottish Santas. I wonder if they might get eaten any time soon. I fear it's possible.

I went out to dinner with my ex-colleagues today to celebrate the end of term. It was really lovely to meet them all again and hear the college news. I was puzzled when I turned up at the restaurant at 1.30 this afternoon to find that none of them was there. This is because the booking was for 7.30 this evening, as I found out after texting them all to ask where they were. I fear retirement may be allowing my brain to decay even faster than I'd thought.

How to make a blog out of very little

2011-12-20T23:10:00.007Z

Nothing much happens when you're a retired person. Or at any rate, nothing much is happening to me. I apologise, therefore, that the blog is a bit short of startling incident. I sometimes feel a bit sorry for myself because I would prefer to be doing more in the way of fun things - circumstances make this difficult at the moment. But then today I got an email from a still-working colleague, who said The workroom is slaughtered with the marking for the Folio essays and all the run-up/run down to the end of the module block. Only the end of term will put a stop to it all. And I felt less sorry for myself and more sorry for my friends.

There's still only one penguin facing to his /her left. I added some trees to the Antarctic landscape. They're quite small - hardly bigger than the penguins - but presumably they're stunted by the freezing winds howling over the icy wastes.

Giant Santa, however, clearly thrives in the cold.

Today's little gift from Daughter 2 was initially a bit daunting - a very complicated-looking maze. The words at the top are "Start" and "Goal".

However, it turned out to be rather simpler than it first appeared.

What Cassie did and what Cassie did next

2011-12-19T21:13:00.011Z

Mr Life enjoys his breakfast. Cassie complains that the kitchen is a bit chilly so she'll just share his body warmth. Maybe she also feels that the cupboards are a bit old-fashioned to set off her elegant fluffiness.

Look, another small iceberg (at the front left).

Some chocolate Christmas puddings. Very delicious, thank you, Daughter 2.

Cassie finds a kitten. Is she going to be motherly?

She gathers it towards her. Aww!

She licks it. I choose to interpret this as affectionate behaviour rather than as a preliminary to eating it.

Nothing much happened today (oh, you guessed?). I went up town and had difficulty finding things that I was sure would be good Christmas presents so came home with only two books for Grandson. That's one of the problems of having grown-up, scattered children - they probably need stuff but it's hard to know what.

Still - another five days to go. Maybe inspiration will strike...

44 years ago today... and now...

2011-12-18T23:43:00.010Z

Today: two little notebooks. For notes.

Another penguin and another part of the message. Thank you again, Daughter 2.

It's amazing to think that the last time we decorated the Christmas tree, Mr Life and I didn't even suspect the existence of Grandson. And here he is, looking up at the coloured baubles.

He came to visit today while Daughter 1 went Christmas shopping. We had him for about four hours - by far the longest that she's ever been parted from him. We took great care of him. He met this Santa, which I bought when Daughter 1 was only a few months older than he is now.

He liked Santa.

Of course we had to put Santa's hat on him.

Son tapped on our bedroom window at about 8.30 this morning, having driven down after taking his young lady to work. (He couldn't get into the house because there was a chain on the door.) So that was a nice surprise. Here he is, feeding Grandson with milk that Daughter 1 had expressed for her baby. The pair of them just sat there, relaxed, having a nice time together. I found it very sweet. If odd.

It's 44 years today since Mr Life and I first went out together. Who knew that it would lead to the above...?

Life is sometimes a bit astonishing.

Santa Sirius

2011-12-17T22:30:00.008Z

Cat among the penguins...

Chocolate among the Anne Tylers. (Thank you, Daughter 2.)

Sirius is decorated.

So is the house. I don't feel very festive, however.

The pandas in Edinburgh Zoo are more important news than a security alert.

They seem a bit camera shy. Wisely.

How is your piano playing plan going, Isabelle, you ask? Well, this is the stage I'm at. Yes, yes, I know it looks very easy. All right, it is very easy. But I'm still not terribly good at it. Sometimes I can play it and sometimes - just as I'm thinking, "Well, this is going quite well, if I do say so myself" - I play a wrong note.

However, I have now contacted a piano teacher and am going along to discuss the possibility of my taking lessons with her. I assume she wishes to assess the level of my incompetence. Scary biscuits, as we used to say when I was little. (Why?)

(I can't remember who asked, but in a spirit of pure scientific enquiry I bought a Cadbury's fudge bar the other day and ascertained that there was no gluten in it.)

Wildlife

2011-12-16T23:20:00.008Z

Grandson visited today. He can look coy...

... or not. (He's learnt to stick out his tongue.)

Today's gift. Can you guess?

One more penguin, this time with a teeny vase just to add interest to the picture. (Or a huge vase, from the penguins' point of view.)Yes, you're right: the animals are... I don't think I should say. Yes, I will. I'll really concentrate. A giraffe and a lion. The lion shall lie down with the giraffe as appropriate for the season.

You could almost believe that this was an African landscape with that intense sun just sinking beneath the horizon. They're at an oasis, drinking at the pool: the rhino, the giraffe, the... gorilla, the hippo, the lion and the ... bear.

(No, Thimbleanna, we haven't been to the zoo to see the pandas yet. But yes, it's open and the pandas are reported in "The Scotsman" to be settling in nicely.)

Tomorrow we fetch the Christmas tree from the Highland forest (Asda carpark) and Mr Life is going to put it up with a merry laugh, lights and all. Aren't you, dear? And then I shall start festooning the house with sparkly things.

Cassie's heat lamp

2011-12-15T22:50:00.009Z

And still the penguin drift westward continues. An Antarctic hedgehog wanders across to see where they're going.

A message is beginning to emerge.

Mmm.

We love you too, Daughter 2 (and the others).

In the evening, Cassie discovered the principle of the heat lamp.

She decided that she really liked it.

As I may have mentioned, I occasionally watch daytime tv while doing some boring household task such as making soup. I quite like those antique programmes which involve auctions. Auctioneers' styles seem to vary: persuasive, formal, charming etc.

Today's chap was rather assertive. The bidding was slow. "Come on now!" he barked. Then a little later, "Now madam, make another bid - it's only money." And finally, "Only £80! Good grief!"

Advent 14

2011-12-14T23:21:00.011Z

Another penguin rises to face the day. And his right (our left).

There was also an envelope.

It contained...

... a tree.

Put them together and we have a nice Antarctic landscape...

I visited Grandson yesterday. He smiled.

He was wearing his new Santa trousers.

We dressed him to take him out in the cold. He smiled even when we put his hat on.

And his jacket. Oh, he is such a jolly boy.

The thirteenth gift and a present from the cats

2011-12-13T20:09:00.010Z

Today, the featured variety act in the penguin drama is a completely irrelevant knitted elfy thing, which, no, I didn't knit. (He has a body. He was just lying down so as to get his face into the photo and add a splash of colour to the chilly Antarctic scene.)

And the giftie was chocolate Christmas tree decorations. We can hardly eat them just now, can we? We haven't even got the tree yet, let alone decorated it. So they're spared for a while.

This is one of the Christmas cards I'm sending out. (Consider it sent to you, all kind Bloggy readers.)

When I looked at the back I was mildly surprised to see that the picture is called "Westward Leading". I recognise the quote from "We three kings of orient are" but if I'd been drawing them, I'd have made them face to the left because on the compass, west is left. Yes, yes, I can see that the painter is actually imagining herself standing on the ... pause for thought... north side of them. But it seems a bit counterintuitive to me.

(My brother can leave me a comment about the physics of this. If I get muddled about which way penguins are facing then I may have got this wrong too.)

Earlier today, I was approaching the glass door that leads into the living room and saw through it a mysterious something on the carpet, while the cats sat on the sofa looking innocent. They occasionally - very rarely but it has been known - bring in a bird or a mouse. And I am a very squeamish person. I don't do dead things. That's Mr Life's job. So I thought, "Oh no! It's a dead bird!". Then I looked gingerly at it and thought, "No, it's not a bird. It's a dead frog! Urgh!"

But it wasn't. The cats continued looking innocent. I forgave them.

And it's the twelfth

2011-12-12T19:30:00.004Z

The bear is just adding interest to the photo. The penguin march continues towards the west. (Let's not confuse ourselves with left and right... .)

Two pens today.

They work!

It occurred to me the other day that, post-teaching, I never now speak to anyone of a different race; not even to someone of a different nationality. This isn't deliberate - it's just the way things are. My friends and neighbours are mainly Scottish, only a few even anything as exotic as English. At college, in contrast, we had lots of foreign students. Now I'm living in a little bubble of white Scots. A very little bubble.

This struck me the other day when there was a chap called Mohammed interviewed on the news, and I thought of some of the very many Mohammeds I'd taught. And lots of other students from all over the world: Poland and Slovakia and Zimbabwe and Malawi and Germany and Brazil and Russia and Japan and China and Malasia and ... not many Americans and I don't remember anyone from Iceland, but such a diverse selection of students over the years. And I felt rather sad that it's all over; and yet very privileged to have met and talked to and taught them all. They taught me a lot too.

They were mainly, though not exclusively, young people. And apart from the family, my daily life is currently pretty short of young people as well, or at least reasons to talk to young people. It's not that I have anything against those who aren't young. But my world has narrowed. We had many students with disabilities, too: some in wheelchairs, some with sight or hearing impairment, some with learning difficulties. Again, there's no one like that in our little street and again, I feel very blessed to have taught them and maybe helped them a bit. I feel immeasurably enriched by the experience.

I really didn't appreciate all this quite so much while it was happening as I do now. I took it for granted. But now I think - wow, how lucky, how interesting.

I've always been amused, though, by those who scoff at the narrowness of the outlook of someone who's gone from school to university to teacher training college and then spent a life in teaching. You meet huge numbers of people from such a vast array of backgrounds if you're a teacher in public education.

Life's simpler now in many ways. But duller.

11 penguins a-swimming (well, 9 and 2 icebergs)

2011-12-11T20:44:00.005Z

The penguins (or, Marcheline, shall I call them ostriches?) continue to march to their right. Will the solitary Labour supporter ever be joined by another like mind? Or will he defect? Keep reading the blog to find out... .

And do these Cadbury's Wishes still exist?

Ah, questions, questions.

Here's another question: how much are you a slave to fashion? I like to think that I'm not. Indeed, if you saw what I'm wearing (black trousers, blue and white striped shirt, black jumper) you would realise that I wouldn't make the pages of "Vogue". But how about in the home?

As I've possibly mentioned before, we retired folk - well, I anyway - occasionally ... quite often... watch the odd bit of daytime telly. I only do this, you understand, while doing the dishes, washing the kitchen floor, wiping down the surfaces and so on. I'm never idle. Neverish. Anyway, one of the programmes I occasionally watch is "Homes Under the Hammer", in which people buy houses or flats in serious need of renovation, do them up and sell them or rent them out for lots of money. It's so restful to watch because you never see them doing any of the work. The house is bought and ten minutes later - hey presto, a wonderful house, magnoliaed to the rafters.

Discouragingly, about 50% of the "before" versions of the houses have these kitchen cupboards. Yup - our kitchen cupboards. And the presenters always say, "Now, you're going to rip these out, aren't you?"

Our kitchen is in an extension at the side of the house which we had built over fourteen years ago. So we chose the cupboards. And they weren't from the most glamorous kitchen shop, but (I think) MFI - a relatively cheapo kitchen/bedroom warehouse place, now defunct. And they weren't bang up to date even then. I was aware that, since this design had been around for a while, we possibly shouldn't get them. But I liked them. So we did.

And in a way, I still like them. I like the colour of the oak, the cupboards are as solid as the day we bought them and - well, there's nothing wrong with them. Which is why it annoys me to find myself sometimes imagining what the kitchen would be like with different units like you see on the telly, or maybe just different door fronts. And different counter tops. Etc. It annoys me to find myself thinking this, because they're all fine, and I'm not really shallow enough, rich enough or wasteful enough to think it's right to junk things that function perfectly well just because they're not bang up to date.

It's ok, Mr Life; I don't want a new kitchen. (Reasons above.)

I wonder if, now we're in the biggest recession (double-dip recession?) since Noah moored the Ark, that it may become less fashionable to change things for reasons of fashion? But then I suppose we need to buy stuff to get the economy going again...

Actually the 10th. See the lords leaping (is it?)

2011-12-11T00:01:00.013Z

Ignore the date at the top of this, which I think will be the 11th. I was busy uploading photos at nearly midnight on the 10th when this photo of Daughter 2 arrived by email from her friend and I got distracted and loaded photos in the wrong order. When I realised, I just got rid of the post to start again and then noticed that it was 00.01. Drat.

Anyway, this is Daughter 2 in London having a Christmas crafty evening with her chums. Not sure what that mini balloon is in her hand.

A smaller iceberg made its appearance today.

And another card of mysterious shapes.

Mr Life sets his mind to the problem.

Sirius helps.

Sirius gets bored. You may notice that we have another helping of that nasty white stuff on the ground outside. Both cats strongly disapprove.

Look: those traditional friends, the hippo* and the polar bear, have a chat before trotting off to the manger.

*You're entirely right, Marcheline - it is indeed a rhino!! And despite your charitable interpretation of the situation, no, I didn't get it wrong to see if anyone was paying attention (though sadly, you were the only one who was - except Mr Life, who has just this minute come in to point out my error). At the age of 61, I seem to have discovered that I suffer from dysanimalia or at least dysbiganimalia. Clearly I don't watch enough David Attenborough programmes...

Sirius is squeaking at me (distracting me from my animal identification abilities, presumably). The next stage in his campaign to get my attention is scratching the chair and if I ignore this, he takes a flying leap on to on my shoulders. This can be quite painful. I shall go and administer the prawns which he knows are in the fridge.

Ow!!! Too late.

Feel like dancing, ladies?

2011-12-09T22:11:00.009Z

The penguins continue to face to their right apart from that one. A bit like Britain, possibly - the only one of the European Union countries not to sign whatever it was that about the Euro that the other 27 countries signed today. I know I ought to pay more attention to politics but it's all so depressing that I can't bear to. In addition, I've spent the evening doing my mother's Christmas cards for her and trying to dissaude her from telling me every detail she knows about the recipients - details that I already know and which make the card process five times as long. The good part of this is that I didn't have time to watch the news.

I occasionally imagine historians of the future coming across blogs like mine in cyberspace and wondering if the writers had no idea of the problems in the world. Very little mention of politics, economics, famine, war... did these people live in a bubble of contentment, cats, patchwork and flowers? they would ask themselves. So just in case you're reading this in 200 years (hello! - have you invented non-fattening chocolate yet?) - alas, we do know about these things. We just don't like to dwell on them.
That Galaxy chocolate was memorably good, Daughter 2. It had soft toffee in the middle of it. And I'm sure it was packed with vitamins and flavenoids and anti-oxidants too. It was definitely the best thing to happen today.

This has been one of those days when it's hard to achieve anything. (Most of my days are like this at the moment.) It's not my mother's fault, but somehow her doings take up a lot of my time. Today, for example, I checked her flat, phoned her doctor, went to the surgery to collect a prescription, was given the wrong one, went back again, was given the right one, took it to the pharmacy, waited 20 minutes, was given only some of the medicine because they'd forgotten about the other part, took Mum to the hairdresser, collected her, phoned her burglar alarm chap, received a phone call from him arranging when he's going to fit a new burglar alarm, phoned her bank to try to persuade it to send her new cheque book, was visited by the council removing the bath board, cushion and mattress cover that she doesn't want... not to mention the preparation of various meals and cups of tea and coffee and the discussions about Christmas cards, Christmas letters, change of address announcements, the state of the world, the state of her innards...

These are some of the reasons why I haven't made a patchwork quilt recently. Or at all.

And they're some of the reasons why I'm blogging. It's nice to make contact with the rest of the world, or at least a select portion of it that writes about cats, dogs, gardens and smiley things.

What you do on a windy day instead of going outside

2011-12-08T20:33:00.007Z

Today has been very windy. The cats have had a sofa day.

There's still just one dissident penguin.

No sofa day for me, though. I made the Christmas cakes. It's the sort of thing that we retired people can do mid-week.

Mix, mix, I went. British Christmas cakes are made with lots of fruit, like traditional British wedding cakes. I wonder if this is true in other countries too.

And there they are.

Now for the cards. Then I might have to think about presents. Ho ho ho.

(Veg artist - yes, we did throw away the wrappers and the bin men came at 8 this morning - sorry! I do wish you had a blog so that I could read about your cat/chores/weather etc. An idea for 2012??

Christine Thresh - I wonder why you think we keep our houses cold in Britain. Maybe we do, though I don't think so. Our (hall) thermostat is set at 24C but then we sometimes have extra heat in the room we're in at the time. The room my mother's in is usually about 40C, or so it feels. Global warming, here we come.)

No swans

2011-12-07T23:24:00.006Z

It's rather chilly here. The snow has gone but it's been replaced with a bitter, damp wind. The furry friends are not amused. They don't like to stay outside for very long and they prowl around the house, trying to work off some energy.

It may be sunny outside but it's not warm. However, inside it's rather too warm unless you're a cat (or my mother, in which case it's probably not quite warm enough, despite our best efforts).

Yum. We enjoyed our fudges, thank you, Daughter 2.

The left-facing penguin is still on his own. No coalition for him. (Or her?)

I bought the Christmas cards today. No, we haven't got the tree, decorated the house, bought presents, made the cake... . And if you've done all these things already, kindly keep this information to yourself for the moment. I'll get there in the end.

Geese a-laying?

2011-12-06T21:38:00.006Z

On Saturday, I took the daughters' (high) school kilts and blazers into their school and donated them to the thrift shop - where parents can buy second hand uniform items. Yes, Daughter 1 is 32 and Daughter 2 is 30. There never seemed to be a free Saturday morning in the last 14 years until now... . Well, better late than never. On the way out, I noticed this still life, by a pupil, in a corridor and stopped to admire it. It was initialled and dated - I think the date was 10.9.11. Then, to my distress, I read the framed transcript of a letter underneath it, which was from an air force officer to the young painter's parents, telling of his death and the circumstances which led to it. I was amazed that I hadn't read of this death in the papers. Then I read further down the letter, found out that he was shot down by Von Richthofen and realised that the lad had painted the picture not in 2011 but in 1911.

Very sad, of course, whenever it happened - somebody's lovely boy. How astonished he would have been to know that his painting was on the school wall 100 years after he painted it.

I took our lovely boy out for a walk today. It was cold - but he's now equipped for winter in a fleecy cocoon. He was wearing gloves too, though he couldn't manage to extract his arms.

The sixth day brought another penguin. Can you spot the difference, however? Yes, he's facing right. Or, from his point of view, left. A Labour supporter, then, or possibly just a penguin with independent views. Or no sense of direction, much like me but not like Mr Life or Daughter 2.

Today's haul: a teeny notebook and some sticky notes with clock faces, to remind one of the day's appointments.

Gold rings?

2011-12-05T20:41:00.006Z

I didn't mention it yesterday because I didn't want to encourage it. I hoped that if I ignored it, it might go away. But I suppose that I'd better admit that yesterday - we woke up to snow. Look at that nasty white stuff in the garden.

We're all hoping that this isn't the start of a winter like the last one, when it snowed at the end of November and we weren't free of it till mid-January. So far, there isn't much of it but we're a bit anxious. We live at the bottom of a little dead-end road, downhill, and the street up at the entrance to ours is also on quite a steep hill. Neither street is ever cleared by the council since it's a quiet, residential area. Last year, Mr Life and I could at least get places by walking but this year, we have to be able to ferry my mum around or she's stuck in the house. Though in fact she's fairly stuck anyway since her digestion is still very ... well, I won't go into details. She needs to be near a loo, anyway. Sigh.

Today's present was five chocolate coins each. Note the past tense.

Now, if you've been paying attention you'll have been expecting penguin number 5. Ha! Fooled you - an iceberg instead, today.

Thinking about how I used to produce little gifts for the children every day during Advent (not such good ones as these, I'd have to admit), led me on to smiling at how the roles in a family change over the years. Nowadays, when I'm with the offspring they occasionally treat me (in the nicest possible way) like an old lady. This is perfectly justified in the context of technology, of course. I can work a computer (see, here I am doing it) but I wouldn't claim to be good in a technological crisis. But, for example, Daughter 2 tends to take my arm when we're crossing the road, I sometimes notice Son speaking slowly and clearly when addressing me and I'm relying on Daughter 1's advice if I ever clear my brain and time enough to consider doing any patchwork.

When I'm with my mother I'm the young, fit person who leaps up to fetch things, carries stuff in from the car and can occasionally make the television work. When I'm with the kids I sometimes feel like a silly old duffer.

With the cats, though, my function is as it's always been. I'm one of the staff.

December 4

2011-12-04T17:08:00.011Z

I seem to be blogging every day in December too, partly because I've got into the habit and partly because there's a new Advent giftie from Daughter 2 to open every day. Keyrings today. I'll leave you to guess how gender-specifically we divided them between us.

Up sprang the fourth penguin.

Yesterday, for the first time (I think) since Daughter 2's wedding, we had all three offspring here together. Well, actually all four, as you can see. I apologise for including so many pictures of them, probably of minor interest to the world (but then the world is possibly not all that interested in cats, penguins and the difference between a giraffe and a gorilla, either.)

A sofa full of loved ones.

A different sofa. Grandson and Son have a chat.

Sorry, Mr Life. This photo gives the impression that you're a bit simple, but it's just that you've got a saying-"Ah!"-to-a-baby expression on your face. Grandson is good at smiling for the camera.

And for his Great-Granny. There's an 89 years, 2 months and 8 days age difference between them but their communication is fine so far.

It was lovely to have them home. The trouble is that it's so unlovely once they've gone away again.

Third day of Advent

2011-12-03T23:59:00.005Z

Not sure if this will squeak into December 3 - might have just made it by midnight. It's been a busy, but lovely day. This mysterious set of shapes turned into...

... a hippo and a gorilla, well-known in manger scenes everywhere... .

(I originally typed "giraffe" instead of "gorilla". Silly me. As if you'd find a giraffe in a manger scene... . Sorry. I was rushing to get the post done before midnight.)

Cassie inspected them.

The third penguin popped up.

And now it's bedtime.

The second day of Advent

2011-12-02T23:30:00.005Z

The second penguin arises.

Sirius looks with suspicion at two chocolate hedgehogs.

The paper smells good, he thinks.

Grandson remarks that his mother has pulled out the pointy bits of his new hat particularly far. "Don't you think I look a bit silly?" he enquires. (Not at all, darling little N.)

Daughter 2 has come home for the weekend! O joy!

Happy Advent

2011-12-01T22:05:00.007Z

Oh dear, this daily blogging thing is a rather hard habit to break.

Yesterday, Mr Life and I received a parcel, above. (The stones are simply there to hide our address in case you're a burglar who would like to steal our parcel. I'm sure you personally aren't and wouldn't.)

It was from Daughter 2. It said on the back, "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 01/12/11!"

So we didn't. Then, when we did, we found 24 little parcels or envelopes, one for each day of Advent.

Today's had a little penguin advent calendar in it.

She's such a sweetie. She knows how much we miss her.

Guest post by Grandson N

2011-11-30T21:46:00.010Z

I must say - that Granny person turns up at our house a lot. She seems to like me. Mind you, everyone seems to like me. Which is handy. So I smile at them all. Look, I'm growing my hair back at last.

Granny and I went out for a walk. It was rather cold and windy so I had a hat and a hood on. Granny wanted me to keep my hands under the blankets but I wasn't having any of that.

Mummy says we'll have to get me some gloves. She knits very well, so maybe she'll knit me some. I don't guarantee not to suck them, though. I like sucking my hands. They did get a bit cold and my nose got slightly red, but I kept smiling.

Granny pointed out that the houses in this street have a good view of the hill. She says that she would like to have a view of a hill from her house.

She crossed the road to get a better picture.

My interest in hills is a bit limited so I took a brief nap. You can see that Granny tucked my hands inside the blanket while my attention was diverted.

(She wonders if it's cheating to get me to guest-post her final NaBloPoMo piece but since she missed out a couple at the beginning before it occurred to her to take part in it, she reckons that it doesn't really matter.)

Some roads not taken

2011-11-29T20:03:00.006Z

(I know some people might have scanned these photos in rather than taking new photos of them lying on the carpet. But I'm ashamed to say that I've never mastered the scanner and Mr Life is busy watching "Grand Designs". Above, you see my mum as a girl.)

After the First World War, my maternal grandparents were going to go to Australia. There were very few jobs available in my grandfather's trade - he was a printer. My mother was a baby. They had booked their passage, made various arrangements - and then my grandfather's mother, who was a widow, begged them not to go. Though she'd had lots of children, several had died in infancy, one son had been killed in the war and the two others were unmarried. Therefore my mother was her only grandchild. So my grandfather said that if he could find a job in Edinburgh, they'd stay. And he did. If he hadn't, I certainly wouldn't exist.

Some years later, they moved to a new house. My mother met a girl at school who suggested that Mum should go with her to Guides at a church about a mile away from the house - which was not the nearest church. So this happened, and my mother became very friendly with a girl named Jean, and a long time later - after World War 2 - my mother and Jean's brother got married. If my mum hadn't had this conversation with the girl at school - who wasn't a particular friend - my parents would probably never have met.
Jean was my (latterly confused) aunt and her brother was my dad.

Mum and Dad on their wedding day.

Why did my father's parents live near this church? Well, when they lived previously in a flat in town, my other aunt fell and broke her arm. My grandfather, her father, decided that swimming would strengthen the arm, so they moved down beside the sea, where there was a swimming pool on the promenade. If my aunt hadn't broken her arm... .

During the war, my dad was in bomb disposal. If a bomb had gone off while he was defusing it - and it might well have done so, especially the new one that no one knew how to defuse - well... . He defused it successfully and was awarded the George Medal. Glad you didn't have shaky hands, Dad.

Meanwhile, again before their marriage, Mum was working in London, during the Blitz. I wouldn't be sitting here nearly at the end of NaBloPoMo if a bomb had landed on her.

Years later, my parents put in offers for various houses which they didn't get. Then they bought one in which they were to live for over 30 years, including my growing-up time. The one they bought, unlike those they'd hoped to buy, was in that same area near the sea. So we continued going to the same church. Some years later, Mr Life's parents started attending it also. They didn't live near this church at all, but in the small town adjoining this seaside district. An acquaintance had recommended our minister.

So if my parents had been successful in their bid for an earlier house or if Mr Life's parents hadn't had that conversation with their acquaintance.... none of our children would exist.

And if Daughter 1's Latin teacher hadn't suggested that she apply for the specific Oxford college that she, the Latin teacher, had attended, Daughter 1 wouldn't have met Son-in-Law 1 on the first day there, and then where would Grandson be?

Etc.

And all of our lives are governed by these twists and turns: roads taken or not taken.

History 2

2011-11-28T22:37:00.004Z

As I was crossing the road today I was musing vaguely about “A Pageant of History” and its English-centricity. (Why do I only ever muse vaguely, since I retired, I wonder? I really must start using the brain again one of these days.)

What I was musing about was whether Wales or Northern Ireland got much of a mention in this book. And the answer is: Wales got two whole pages (out of 348) and Northern Ireland got – none. And you can maybe see that the two pictures in the chapter on Llewelyn ap Gruffydd are: 1) the creation of the (English) Prince of Wales in 1911 - the future King Edward VIII (though the authors didn't actually mention him by name, since he didn't turn out to be a great British success story) and 2) the emblem of the Prince of Wales. Neither of these seem the Welshest possible illustrations that could have been chosen.

The rest of the world did get occasional mentions via explorers or poets, while Some Famous Dwarfs got four pages.

The book was written somewhat before the age of political correctness. The last paragraph of the "Dwarfs" chapter reads: “Meanwhile a perfectly proportioned midget is worth far more than his weight in gold to the showman today. For modern audiences are just as fascinated by these intriguing little people as were the kings and queens of old.” Can you believe that this was written in 1958?

As for the chapter on David Livingstone, “The man who opened up the dark continent”…

It's so interesting how attitudes change. And no doubt in 2060, people will be laughing and cringing at our way of looking at the world.

History

2011-11-27T22:36:00.009Z

This was one of my favourite books when I was a child. I think I got it when I was about nine, as a Christmas present. It was published in 1958 (and I was born in 1950). It has the grand title "A Pageant of History" and it's mainly - though not entirely - about English history. I read it and reread it - you can see how it's falling apart. It never struck me as odd that I, as a Scottish child, was reading about "History" as if England were the most important country in the world.

Reading it now, I can see that it very much presents a picture of Britain... well, England really... as a splendid place which had just won a war, had a new young Queen and was going to march with dignity into the second half of the century.

The introductory chapter is called "From Victoria to Elizabeth". The final paragraph ends: "When Queen Elizabeth mounted the throne in 1952, it was felt and hoped that... a new Elizabethan age would dawn, matching the first Elizabethan age for glory of achievement. ... Nothing is achieved without struggle and hard work.... Let us be worthy of that challenge."

I'm not sure that I have been, really.
Then we go right back to "England before the Norman Conquest" and trot through the centuries, reign by reign. However, every now and then there are chapters about a wide variety of other people or events: Julius Caesar ("financed by his friend, the very wealthy millionaire, Crassus"); St Paul; the Marbles Championship held every Good Friday outside the Greyhound Hotel, Tinsley Green; Alfred Nobel; Captain James Cook ("the brilliant explorer and navigator, who always remained simple and unassuming" - good to know); pottery and china; Vasco da Gama... .

We learn that Shakespeare would wait on his parents at table at lunch time "and when they were finished he would start. He would always address his father as sir".

I can't remember ever reading this... fact... anywhere else.

Scotland does get a tiny look-in with Mary Queen of Scots. Indeed, her chapter finishes: "In the end, however, Mary did triumph over Elizabeth for when the English Queen died, she was succeeded by James, the son of Mary and the ill-fated Darnley... ." (A satisfactory thought for a young Scot.) The writer then ruins it by waffling to a close: "Mary ... is an eternal mystery whose solution has been sought by a great many writers of all nationalities and will, in the future, be investigated by many more."

The whole book ends with the Second World War, predictably from England's point of view, though America does get a wee bit of credit in the final paragraph: "So Britain had once more saved Europe by holding, alone and unaided, the last bastion of freedom till the time arrived when Russia and the United States marched forward with their saving power."

Oh, it's easy to mock. But there's a lot of good stuff too: it's a broad sweep of mainly factual history and because I read it so much I knew the order of the kings and queens, their main conflicts and achievements and disasters, and also acquired some basic knowledge about Hadrian's Wall, Edith Cavell, Dante Alighieri, Raffles of Singapore, Father Damien, Mary Slessor, David Livingstone, Albert Schweitzer, the British Army, how we got our parliament, the Duke of Wellington ("His once weakly frame had waxed tough and wiry") ... and more .

So - thank you, Gareth Browning (who wrote about a third of the 80-ish chapters), Rowland W Purton (almost as many), Edward Boyd (quite a few) and the others who contributed one or two. I don't know who you were and you might have got the odd thing wrong and we can giggle a bit at you now, but I loved your book at the time and find it quite an interesting historical document now - though not entirely in the way you may have intended.

Drawer

2011-11-26T23:26:00.014Z

This is my left-hand desk drawer. It contains a very random selection of items - some more or less useful, such as the staple remover, the treasury tags and many things for holding bundles of handouts together (all of which I used to use daily when I was a teacher and now... not so much).

(Edited to add... those things were bought by me, not pinched from college, I'd like to make clear. On the other hand, I don't know why I didn't just give them to someone at work. Am I ever going to use most of them?)

A lot of the contents, however, are not useful at all and have ended up in the drawer because... who knows? They were tidied there at some point and I've never moved them. For example, this little book that I made for my children when they were small.

It's about Santa coming to visit the house that we lived in then. I made it very late one night to fit in the Advent chimney, which had little boxes for the mother to fill and the children to open every day of Advent (which seemed a good idea at the time of buying it...).

Here's a postcard of a 1937 design by Ben Nicholson, printed on cotton, which I got at an exhibition at York many years ago. I just liked the cheerful animals. I still do.

A cat brooch made by Aileen Paterson, the writer and illustrator of the Maisie Cat books (well-known in Scotland). I bought it at a craft fair long before the Maisie books were published. Clearly I liked black cats even then.

This used to be a key fob of Mr Life's but it broke. I couldn't bear to throw it away since it's a picture of Daughters 1 and 2.

Who knows why I have these photos in the drawer? - me aged about 20, my dad in middle age and Daughter 2 a few years ago.

The hospital bracelet from Daughter 1's baby wrist.

The children at a birthday tea.

The children and ET in Florida Disney. Or possibly Eurodisney?

Perhaps I should throw some of this away. But not yet.

What we did

2011-11-25T19:35:00.003Z

What I did today: made lots of cups of tea and coffee and various meals; did lots of dishes; edited the church magazine, toning down one or two of the less tactful articles, spreading it out to cover the right number of pages and inserting lots of pictures; took my mum to the hairdresser and then to her (as yet unsold) flat; did some cleaning.

What Mr Life did at lunchtime: took photos of chaps in Princes Street who either had LOTS of balloons or who were dressed up as sparkly birds.

Each to his/her own.

Views

2011-11-24T22:37:00.009Z

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans.

I went to Daughter 1's house today and took Grandson for a walk so that she could wield the vacuum cleaner in peace. I'd forgotten the way that babies look around when outside: his little head swivels and his eyes go from side to side, building up a picture (presumably) of the world. Then after a while, he went to sleep. It was a windy day so he was well wrapped up. I continued walking, admiring his perfect little face as he concentrated on sleeping.

I wandered along the road and, after a while, into an industrial estate that I hadn't known was there. It has a rather fine view over a golf course and on to Arthur's Seat, the biggest of the hills within Edinburgh. I would really like to have a view like this from my house (cf post about the tile a couple of days ago). You'd think that people would pay quite a lot for such an outlook.

This is what has the benefit of that view. Good bit of town planning there...

Haydn might agree

2011-11-23T21:39:00.005Z

At choir tonight, we sight-read the next movement of Haydn's St Cecilia's Mass. It wasn't wonderful.

"Don't breathe between In excelsis and Deo," urged our conductor. "I know it's a long phrase, but the Deo is quite short. You won't die if you don't take a breath till afterwards."

Then, as he so often does, he continued in a murmur (and with a smile). I could just hear him: "Frankly, I'd rather you did die. It's all about the music."

I love him. I mean, I don't love him. But I love him as a conductor.

Buttons

2011-11-22T20:27:00.009Z

This may seem to you as if it should be accompanied by the sound of the bottom of a barrel being scraped, but take comfort - only nine more days of daily November posts to go... . Today's post is about my button collection. Or at least, the ones that live in the blue bottle. I have other buttons but they're all everyday ones, suitable for sewing on to shirts, and they live in my sewing box. The ones in this post are what I consider to be my more interesting buttons.

Now, you may spot that there are a lot of little red lions among them. The lions aren't actually buttons, but - well - plastic lions. I may well have the world's largest collection of these. My dad used to have lunch every day in his company's management dining room, which served fine food and alcoholic drinks, including one drink which had a little lion attached to the bottle - to the seal, maybe? I think the drink may have been gin. (I wonder if they were offered cigars as well? And doesn't it sound like a different world?)

Anyway, my dad used to bring home the lions for me and I still have them. And since one doesn't really have an obvious place to keep lions, they live with my fancy buttons.

When I was a little girl in the Fifties we didn't have many toys (cue violins) and I used to play sometimes with my mum's buttons, which she kept in a rather strange, thick, blue plastic bottle. I have no idea where she got this bottle. Years ago she was going to get rid of it and I claimed it.

I thought that my children would play with buttons too. But they had lots of exciting toys. And anyway, Daughter 1 was - well, she claims that she was never actually a button phobic. But she didn't like them and really is still not very keen on them. (Strange!) I even bought some extra buttons such as those above,

to make my collection interesting for her, before I realised this.

Here's the bottle. It's really solid, weighty 1940s (maybe?) plastic.

Look at these beautiful mother-of-pearl ones - probably wrested from some unfortunate shellfish (sorry, shellfish). But lovely - though not if you rub them together, when they make a fingernails-on-blackboard sound.

Somehow I don't see Grandson as a potential button aficionado. But you never know.

Tile

2011-11-21T22:51:00.011Z

This tile hangs on our bathroom wall. I'm very fond of it. This is partly perhaps because I would like to live in a house with those elements: a geranium (got one), a cat (got two) and an uninterrupted view of hills (alas, no). And sunshine (we get that sometimes - or perhaps it's the moon). I quite like the spotty curtains as well. Don't you think life would be so nice and simple if you lived in that house among the hills?

We bought this tile over thirty-two years ago. I know this because I was very pregnant with Daughter 1 at the time and so it was one of our last outings as a childless couple. I think I was very aware of this fact, but like most prospective parents had no understanding at all how totally and permanently our lives were about to change. But this is another reason why I'm fond of the tile - I associate it with the joy of young motherhood.

Also I just like the look of it. We bought it at Traquair (pronounced tra-kwayr to rhyme with prayer) House, which is in the Border country, some way south of Edinburgh. The house's origins date back to 1109, though most of the current building is only about four hundred years old. It was once a hunting lodge for the kings and queens of Scotland. There's a story that the gates at the top of the main avenue, installed in 1738, were closed after a visit from Bonnie Prince Charlie (the grandson of the deposed Stuart king, James VII and II), with the vow that they would never be reopened until a Stuart king was back on the throne of Scotland. Thus they remain shut.

Anyway, in summer 1979 Mr Life and I had a happy day at Traquair and visited various craft workshops in the grounds, at one of which I bought the tile. I have no idea who made it - presumably I knew at the time - and have never seen anything quite like it.

Jane kindly told me who wrote the book I was asking about the other day (it was "The Gauntlet" by Ronald Welsh). I suppose it's a bit unlikely that the maker of the tile is reading this - but if he or she is...

Beard

2011-11-20T22:38:00.005Z

At about 10.15 this morning, Son and his future wife appeared at the door. "Didn't you get my text?" he said. "I texted you when we left Perth to say we were coming." And so he had, but I hadn't been in the same room as my phone. So it was a surprise - a nice one.

He's growing a beard for Movember. "Are you not just supposed to grow a moustache?" I asked.

"Well, yes, but that would look silly," he said.

Actually, he did shave it off ten days ago or something because he had to go to the GP practice where he'd worked some months ago and thought that he might be teased. But it's doing quite well again.

Grandson didn't seem to notice any difference. Son thinks he'll shave it off quite soon.

As you can tell, I have nothing tremendously significant to say, but this isn't allowed to stop one during NaBloPoMo, is it?

Red dungarees

2011-11-19T22:07:00.008Z

So what were the highlights of today? I went and collected Daughter 1 and Grandson, arriving when the lad still had on his pyjamas. Big boy pyjamas with a jacket and trousers! - with pictures of moose on them. Very stylish.

The three of us walked up the road (well, the boy was in his pushchair) to the Christmas fair at the school which our children and I all attended. I mused that when I was a pupil there, it never once occurred to me that I might one day be in the school hall with my grandson in my arms. It would have been unimaginable ever to be that old. Daughter 1 felt the same about being there with her son.

We returned home. When we first came to our current house, 21 years ago, this road, which is on our way home, felt more or less untouched by the last hundred and fiftyish years. It doesn't really lead anywhere apart from to the very large houses set back from the road. You could more or less imagine Jane Austen (had she ever visited Edinburgh) strolling up here to visit one of her friends. Then they built some modern flats in the grounds of the big house to the right and now there are great building works happening in the grounds to the left. Which seems a pity.

We bought Grandson some red dungarees at the fair. They're a bit big for him at the moment but he's growing fast. Hard to remember that only just over four months ago, we'd never met him.

Time passes; things change; children grow up; people grow old.

Mr Life prepares for fun

2011-11-18T19:37:00.003Z

You might remember that a few weeks ago Mr Life decided in the middle of his evening meal to put in his resignation at work the following day. And did. And is therefore retiring at the end of January to spend more time with his mother-in-law. (Possibly this wasn't quite his motivation but it's likely to work out that way.)

I think this decision had been simmering for a while, but it came as a surprise to me, at any rate.

Now he's been sent, one day a week for four weeks, to a preparation-for-retirement course, starting yesterday. They had various chats in the morning and then in the afternoon they went to the Scottish National Gallery. He had a lovely time. Next week they get a tour of the Central Library. The following week they go to the recently restored Chambers Street Museum and finallly they go for a guided tour of the High Street.

Was it tactless of me to enquire when they're having an afternoon preparing to tidy out the garage, blitz the study, trawl price comparison websites to find out the best deals for changing the electricity provider...?

I remember reading...

2011-11-17T21:51:00.003Z

When I was a little girl, people didn't have nearly as many possessions as we have now, and that included books. I loved reading and I had books which I read and reread, but a lot of them were by Enid Blyton. I enjoyed them, but even then I think I understood that they weren't particularly original. I liked the familiarity with the same situations, the predictability of the characters; but I wasn't particularly inspired by them. Mallory Towers, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven - they were pretty formulaic and that was fine. They were soothing. But they didn't fire the imagination.

The ones that I remember really loving included "Five Children and It" and others by E Nesbit, "The Cuckoo Clock" by Mrs Molesworth and "Thimble Summer" by Elizabeth Enright. They all described worlds totally unfamiliar to me: the past (with a sarcastic magic creature); the past (with a magic cuckoo clock); or America (where rain was longed for and there were exotic and never- explained things such as Kewpie dolls and slickers).

And then there was perhaps my favourite: Philippa Pearce's "Tom's Midnight Garden. That's Philippa Pearce in the picture, and till I typed the previous paragraph it had never occurred to me that Tom's situation in it is rather like Griselda's in "The Cuckoo Clock".

I did own the Nesbit, Molesworth and Enright books but I got "Tom's Midnight Garden" out of the library. As I grew older, I always remembered the title and the story (of the clock that strikes 13 in the middle of the night, which Tom goes to investigate, discovering a garden which existed in the past and a little girl who played in that garden) but I didn't remember who wrote it. It was long before the days of the internet, which makes such things easy to discover. But I found it in a shop when I was in my late teens, bought it and loved it just as much as I had when I was a child.

But there was another library book that I also really enjoyed as a child and would like to reread. I've never come across it again or spoken to anyone who remembers it. I don't recall the title but it was about a boy who - I don't remember how - is transported back into the past and finds himself in a mediaeval castle, under siege. The plot is lost to me but I remember various scenes, as I imagined them, of this boy among strangers who think he's one of them, and how bewildered he is by this.

Does this ring a bell with anyone?

"Tom's Midnight Garden" is recognised as a classic, I now realise. It may be that if I reread the castle book, I'd think it was piffle. Possibly my critical faculties weren't that good when I was nine. For example, I don't think I considered that a twentieth century boy would have some difficulty understanding the English of the mediaeval inhabitants of the castle. But I'd still like to read it again. So if anyone recognises the description, do let me know.

Learning and teaching

2011-11-16T22:06:00.005Z

Nothing of any interest happened today until the evening, when I went to choir and we attempted to learn Kyrie II from Haydn's "Mass for St Cecilia". This is fiendishly hard but potentially lovely. It wasn't lovely as we sang it tonight but our rendering of it did improve slightly.

So instead of recounting how I made cups of tea and went to the supermarket, I thought I'd blog about Miss H, my primary 5 class teacher. We were 9 years old. There were three new girls in the class and I was assigned to look after one of them - W. Miss H was just giving an introductory spiel when W whispered a question to me. I think it was, "When's lunch?" Whatever it was, I whispered a reply and Miss H heard. She got me to stand up, asked me my name and then said, "I can see you're going to be a troublemaker."

And for the rest of the year, I was convinced that she thought I was indeed a troublemaker. Which I wasn't. I'm not saying that I was a saint, but my sins were discreet and never noticed.

I realised long ago that, in fact, Miss H probably never gave her assessment of me another thought after that moment. I don't suppose that she did really think I was a troublemaker even as she said it. And yet, 52 years later, I can remember the room, and where I was sitting, and where W sat at the desk to my left, and the exact tone of Miss H's rather posh English voice.

Now, I'm not claiming that my childhood was completely warped by this experience. I wasn't even terribly traumatised that year, though I was wary of Miss H because of what she'd said (and, I assumed, what she thought of me). But it was a lesson to me that a teacher can do a lot of damage by an unconsidered remark. She was actually rather good fun (if a bit sarcastic) most of the time.

I imagine that most people have such experiences; and I just hope that I don't feature in a similar role in any of my pupils' or students' memories.

It was a year ago exactly that our darling Daughter 2 went to live in London. This has been very much not the best year of my life - though lovely Grandson does bring a warm glow.

A guest post from Sirius and Cassie

2011-11-15T19:23:00.007Z

Now then - we're cats. So, as you'll realise, we're energetic, loyal, unselfish... the list of our virtues is endless but we're too modest to detail them further. And all we ask in return for all these fine qualities is that we're allowed to have a quiet life.

A bit of sofa time, that's what we like. Well, a lot of sofa time. Preferably on, or beside, the legs of someone who's watching television - usually Mr Life. We're cool with television as long as it's not too loud.

However.

Recently, a Noisy Thing has entered our lives. To be fair - and we are careful to be scrupulously fair (we're cats) - the Thing is not always noisy. Sometimes it just sits there; sometimes it goes "Ah, gah, bah"; often it gets carried around and simply looks about the room. But sometimes it goes "WAAAAAAA!!!!!"

And everybody leaps to attention and gives it what it wants.

Now, we may be partly to blame. We have, admittedly, trained our servants to jump to our commands. But we are furry, handsome, purry, quiet. (We do attack the furniture at times: those fine claws of ours require to be kept razor sharp.)

Anyway, this is a formal warning. We do not approve of the Noisy Thing. We're not going as far as saying that someone has to go - either it or us. We're reasonable cats. But we won't stand for our peace being disturbed. Think on this, O servants.

(At least the Thing doesn't seem to be able to move about and chase us. Thank goodness. Just imagine what life would be like if it could.)

Weather and stuff

2011-11-14T22:33:00.008Z

British weather (ah, the final resort of the NaBloPoMo person who's running out of things to say?) is very variable. Above, you see our front garden last Saturday. And below...

... you see our front garden on November 30 last year. Somewhat different, and I'm here to tell you now that I prefer the coloured version.

I couldn't claim that the garden's looking its best despite the lack of snow, but some things are still flowering, such as this tuberous begonia...

... and this fuchsia, with a feebly-flowering lobelia and some polyanthus which thinks it might be spring. (Wrong.)

Today my lovely friend J came to lunch. Because my life has been centred round hospital visiting and sick-bed nursing for some weeks, it was such a boost to see her, with her enthusiasm for life and her tales of college (where she still works, three days a week). And then I took Mum to see her surgeon, who thinks she's doing awfully well considering her "hUUUUge" operation and her age - 89 and a half. I don't think Mum is really convinced of the splendidness of her state of health but the surgeon was so delighted with her that I hope some of the delight rubbed off on her.

And I also trust it doesn't snow any time soon because Mum certainly wouldn't like that. As it is, there have been several times recently when I've said what nice weather it's been and she's responded, "I hope we don't pay for it later."
True British optimism.

Botanics with Mr Life

2011-11-13T19:41:00.011Z

Another mild, sunny November day. Presumably it was like this when Keats wrote "Ode to Autumn":
"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun"
and all that. Another thing that makes me think of Keats is my persistent hacking cough. Anyway, we went to the Botanics, as we often do, and I wondered why I can't grow nerines like the ones above.

This is quite impressive for November, but I don't know what it is. (Anyone?)

This is even more impressive, and a salvia. I sort of knew this but it had a label, which helped. Possibly the other one is a salvia also.

And this one certainly is - again, labelled. Colour does my heart good especially at this time of year.

Mostly, though, the colour was in the trees.

We climbed up the paths on the rockery and looked over at the city skyline.

It was 3.05 pm but see how long our shadows were. Days are short at this time of year, as I said yesterday.

The dishevelled look is so beautiful so long as you're not the person responsible for sweeping up the leaves.

On the road outside, these roses defied gravity and winter to burst over this high wall.

The skyline again, as we looked over Inverleith Park towards the Castle on our way back to the car.

I can't imagine living somewhere where skyscrapery buildings are the norm.

Cramond in November

2011-11-12T23:41:00.007Z

This afternoon Mr Life and I went for a little walk at Cramond, which is by the sea on the north west side of the city, about ten minutes from where we live. And we wondered, as we always do on such occasions, why we don't go there more often. We actually intended to set out earlier but got sidetracked. It had been a beautiful day and was still sunny and mild, but the sun was quite low - it sets early in Edinburgh in November.

Lots of other people were there too: cyclists, parents with children on little bikes, parents teaching their children to ride these little bikes, parents carrying the little bikes that their children no longer wished to ride, parents with children on scooters, people with dogs of all shapes and sizes. And a few older people like us.

Many of the trees are bare now. Winter can't be far off, which seems strange when it's so balmy.

This is new since the last time we walked along here.

In the distance is Cramond Island, that has a causeway over to it at low tide. People occasionally get stranded when the tide rises.

The clouds were pretty. In fact it was all much prettier to the eye, which could take in the panorama, than my photos suggest.

And then we came home. And I'd better post this quickly or it won't be Saturday any more.

Precious furry friends

2011-11-11T19:38:00.005Z

Ah, the subjectivity of pet owners. Our cats are obviously lovely: furry, cuddly, highly intelligent and ... loyal. All right, perhaps the "loyal" bit is going too far. But they're happy to live with us, eat the cat biscuits that we buy and sprawl on our furniture. And we love them.

I suspect that our neighbours, keen gardeners and bird feeders, may not view our fluffy friends with quite the enthusiasm that we do. They never say this - they're nice people. But they never admire Cassie and Sirius either.

And I passed this notice in a shop near the hospital. It has a certain tone, don't you think?

Boring

2011-11-10T20:45:00.007Z

I have just written a post of such all-surpassing boringness (mirroring my life at the moment) that I deleted it. Posting every day for NaBloWhatever is all very well but I decided that I couldn't inflict quite that much tedium on you. So instead I decided to embrace the unexciting, and write about neutral decor, as illustrated above. (That is not my sitting room.)

In my somewhat restricted life at the moment, I quite like those daytime telly programmes in which people buy run-down properties and transform them to sell or rent at humungous profits. I tend to make soup or wash the floor while such a programme is on, to justify my keeping an eye on what they're doing. And they always use neutral colours.

Now, I quite understand this and would probably do it myself in those cirumstances - a blank canvas and all that. And in some people's houses, I do rather like the effect. It's just that I could never manage to restrain myself in such a way in my own home. I like colour. I'm fine with cream or white as a background but I don't really go for decor with fawn as its main theme. Fawn and brown were fashionable in the 70s, when we were setting up home, and I didn't like them then either. Maybe I feel that way because it was also fashionable in the 50s, when the war was just over and it was hard to buy anything. Fawn was king.

It always amuses me when I read articles in such magazines as "Good Housekeeping" in which the writer waxes lyrical about neutrals and lambasts the taste of previous generations. At the time, however, avocado baths or frilly curtains or wallpaper borders were thought just the ticket, and I'm sure that in ten or fifteen years, today's neutral schemes will have scorn poured on them in much the same way.

Could you live with that sitting room above? Or would you be impelled to add some patterned cushions, a stripy rug, a few pictures? Is it tasteful? Or just a bit boring?

Rather like this post. Sorry. (Just imagine how yawn-inducing the deleted one was.)

Gather ye begonias while ye may

2011-11-09T22:12:00.008Z

The weather is very mild again after a couple of days of very slight overnight frost. See this begonia, still flowering away outside the front door.

And a nice lilac plant whose name escapes me, spreading happily out from this pot. And another begonia beside it.

And look at this lovely rose, encountered the other day on my walk.

But the leaves are falling quite rapidly now from the trees and painting pictures on the pavements. I should really wander round the garden and decide which tender plants I want to rescue before it's too late. Oh, for a heated greenhouse. I'll put some of them in Son's old room, attempting to check them for slugs before I do so. It's not that nice to encounter slug trails on the carpet and have to hunt them down.

As you'll gather, nothing much happened today. Except that I went for a walk, made up three beds, took a downie (duvet, doona) to the cleaners, made eye check appointment for Daughter 1 and me, made a chiropody appointment for me, spoke to a gas man on the phone twice, spoke to Daughter 1 on the phone once, Daughter 2 twice and Son twice, visited my mother in hospital, wrote a 70th birthday card and several emails, herded cats in various directions, reorganised a vase of flowers, washed the kitchen floor, went to choir even though I can't sing ... and stuff like that.

PS Happy 64th, big brother - or as you would consider it, 59eth. By the time I got back from choir, I decided it was a bit late to phone you and anyway, I can't sing at the moment (see above).

Singing, or not

2011-11-08T22:17:00.004Z

My time at the moment is somewhat taken up with visiting Mum in hospital twice a day, but today I did also manage a visit to Daughter 1 and Grandson. His jumper/sweater was knitted by a Ravelry friend of Daughter 1. I feel myself that the pink in it is a trifle girly, matching (I've only just noticed) the pink trim of his jogging bottoms. But he doesn't seem to mind.

Last night I watched the programme about Gareth Malone and his army wives' choir. This young chap is a choirmaster about whom various programmes have been made, documenting his efforts to get choirs started - in deprived areas, in a boys' school and so on. I love singing, so it's interesting seeing the uplifting effect that singing can have on people who had mostly never thought of joining a choir. He's such a sweet, enthusiastic young man (the sort you would want your daughter to marry) and I find his programmes so uplifting. I was in tears last night, watching the joy on these women's faces as they made a lovely noise and distracted themselves from thoughts of their husbands in Afghanistan. I suppose that he, and the producers of the programme, were probably milking it somewhat by featuring emotional songs of love and loss, and of course this made me more lacrymose, thinking of my departed children.

I've had a cold followed by a separate cough for about three weeks now and currently sound, when I sing, like a frog eating a grasshopper. Which is very frustrating because I normally enjoy bursting into song around the house. (Mr Life is a tolerant husband.) At choir at the moment we're learning Haydn's Mass for St Cecilia and I'm having to just stand there listening.

More Novembery things

2011-11-07T22:44:00.005Z

My life is so thrilling that I'm a day behind in recounting our amazing doings: these are photos that I took from the car on our way to church yesterday. They're not perhaps of prizewinning quality, but then we were tootling along at 30 miles an hour. This park is known as The Meadows and I really love it, even though this bit is just a flat green space with trees. But even flat green spaces are so welcome in the middle of cities. This is in the student area and in warm weather it's always full of young people having fun, which is so nice. Yesterday, though beautiful, was chillyish - Edinburgh's weather has suddenly changed from unseasonably warm to a more normal November temperature, though with more than usual sun.

The trees are briskly shedding their leaves and the shadows are long, even late in the morning.

I wonder if the architect of that horrible building is still alive and if he or she ever wakes in the night and wonders whether he or she got it right. I expect the university, which owned the building, didn't let him do what he/she really wanted. It somewhat mars the view of Arthur's Seat, our mini-mountain.

And this is a slightly better view of the hill, though the street furniture doesn't improve the scene.

When we arrived at Daughter 2's house on the way to church, Mr Life remembered that the shoe box which I'd carefully covered with Christmas paper and filled with gifts for someone in Eastern Europe was still on the dining room sideboard seven miles away. The church collection for the shoeboxes was happening that day. I must take it to another collection point tomorrow. Silly me.

Mum, though greatly improved, is still in hospital.

I imagine that it's the sort of story that may have gone round the world as an end-of-dire-financial-collapse-television-news humorous filler item, but if you haven't heard about it: in a little Scottish town called Oban, they had a Guy Fawkes fireworks display at the weekend that went a bit wrong. It was a professional show, and the townfolks had paid their money and gathered to watch it. The fireworks were set off electronically, but the timer didn't work properly and all the 30-minutes' worth of fireworks went off in 50 seconds. It was quite spectacular, if a trifle brief:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6QtigLJD_4

Friday morning

2011-11-06T21:23:00.019Z

So, Isabelle, you ask: what happened on Friday morning before your mother took ill?

Well, since you're so polite as to enquire: the day was going rather well. Mum had a shower and then decided that she felt strong enough to get her hair done, which was a great advance, so I phoned the hairdresser and took Mum along. I then went for a little walk, rejoicing in the fact that Mum was feeling more positive and that I had half an hour to myself when someone else was chatting to her. So I walked along the road above, enjoying the mild air and the autumn colours.

This is a road about a couple of miles from our house, along which I've frequently driven but never walked for any distance.

I came to this sign, which I'd never noticed before. Fantasising briefly about starting up my own little business (type not decided) in Prestigious Accommodation in a Castle, I walked up the drive a little.

It was pleasant.

Though there was this big, forbidding notice.

In a pioneering spirit, I walked a little further, but chickened out when a lady got out of a car up by the castle and looked at me.

Anyway, if I worked at the castle I'd have to get rid of that orange wall.

This is what it looks like on the internet. Not an orange wall in sight.

Returning to the road, I passed this field, which usually has horses in it.

As you can see, houses are gradually encroaching on the fields, which are presumably doomed to be built on eventually. Which seems a pity, but then I like living in a house, myself.

The estate is quite leafy and tasteful.

Then I came upon a second notice. Finding the spelling and punctuation somewhat painful (and what is a "herrus fence"?) I decided to have a look at the "ongoinging works", which seemed to be happening up a path, nearer the hill.

My phone photo doesn't really give the impression of the startling nature of these works, but in the middle of all these nice white houses and flats, huge - HUGE - HUGE excavations are taking place. It's like a scene from Dante's Inferno - those flats at the top look as if they're built on a precipice of mud, and lots of diggers are shovelling vast quantitites of earth hither and thither. It's all relatively near the peaceful road and I'd had no idea it was happening.

I walked up the path a bit and aimed my phone at the fine-mesh green netting which screens the full awfulness from the passer-by.

Well, goodness, I thought to myself. Fancy that. This is the most surprising sight that I've seen for some time. Certainly this is this month's most unnerving event.

But I was wrong.

Remember, remember the 4th of November

2011-11-05T20:28:00.007Z

Someone asked what NaBloPoMo is (I got it right this time) and since I didn't know the name properly I looked it up and found this page:
http://www.blogher.com/blogher-topics/blogging-social-media/nablopomo
which was a surprise, because I didn't realised that you registered for it and there were prizes and things. I haven't done more than glance at this because I'm exhausted, but I will at some point - it's all to do with blogging every day for November, though. Anyway, I'm not doing it properly because I've already missed some days.

To continue from yesterday - I'll not write about the morning (castle and enormous building site) just now but skip on to the afternoon, when Mum suddenly took very ill at about 3. Her main symptom was almost complete incoherence apart from saying over and over again things like, "I feel terrible." She could manage short repeated sentences - she said, lots of times, "Can anyone help?" - but most of the time she sounded as if she was talking (with remarkable fluency) a different language that sounded a bit like English, but wasn't. I can't remember anything precisely, but she was saying things like, "Cart oval fring sporn fallt premmed." And she would gaze at me expectantly, waiting for the answer, as I played this over in my head, trying and failing to make sense of it.

Anyway, in short, I called an ambulance and she was taken to hospital, where we spent many hours in a receiving ward, she getting more and more ill and agitated and unable to communicate and me talking to various rather baffled nurses who ran tests on her. We all wondered if she'd had a stroke but she also seemed hot and uncomfortable while shivering and shaking, so she seemed to have a temperature though in fact, according to the thermometer, her temperature was only slightly raised. She also had a urinary infection, but she'd had this for a few days with no apparent ill effects.

Eventually, at 10, she was taken on to an assessment ward and given more antibiotics and I came home, very worried. If there one thing that my mum wouldn't like - and neither would any of us, but maybe especially my mum - it's not being able to talk.

This morning Dr Son, who has just finished 8 days of night duty during which, as you will perceive, he didn't shave (hmm) came down from Perth for the day to visit us and his granny. When I phoned the ward, however, I was told that she was much better, which cheered us up. Here he is, unshaven but cheery.

"An old lady [patient] told me that I was a hunk," he informed me. "She didn't seem to notice that I hadn't shaved. She said that if she was 40 years younger, she'd marry me."

Cassie ran up Son's front, an operation not entirely without pain for him, and sat on his shoulders. You can just see Mr Life's toes in the bottom right hand side of this photo. He was lying on the sofa in his pyjamas, with a rug and Sirius over his legs.

So Son and I went to visit Mum and she was pretty well fine. Slightly muddled as to what had happened even today and unable to remember much about yesterday, but basically back to about 90% of her usual ability to speak.

I went back this evening and she was again fine.

I'm not a person who gets very tired on the whole but right now I am, as I said before, exhausted. But very very relieved. Urgh.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day, British people.

No picture but a day of contrasts

2011-11-04T23:47:00.003Z

Well.

It occurred to me this morning that I'd vaguely thought I might do NoPoGoFlow or whatever it's called but had then forgotten about it. I know that starting now is a bit of a cheat. But I thought I would anyway. Only it's been a bit of a mixture of a day and it's too late to go into it in detail. But it started with a castle and a huge building site in the morning and featured a hospital for much of the afternoon and evening.

No one is dead.

So - apologies for a seriously rubbish post but I need a long, bubbly bath.

Back tomorrow.

Some rather random blog thoughts and a bit of Grandson

2011-11-03T20:08:00.004Z

These are the igloos that the cats sleep in at night, when we meanly shut them in the kitchen. During the day they prefer to lounge on a living room sofa. The other day, I was impressed to note that they'd abandoned the sofa and were presumably outside, getting fresh air and exercise on a lovely autumn day. Then I peered into their igloos and noticed that they'd returned to bed.

One has days like that, when one would prefer to curl into a ball and retreat.

However, it's just as well that it's not an option for most of us. Things to do, places to go, people to see.

Don't you wonder, sometimes, why people whom you've got to "know" quite well, suddenly - or gradually - stop blogging? I can only think of one person who actually announced that she was stopping - and did. Which was fair enough, though slightly frustrating. Otherwise people tend to drift away. Not many, actually, of the bloggers whom I read have done this. But a few. For example, one of the first blogs I read, called "Yo Heave Ho", dribbled away and ceased. Granted, its writer, Zara, had just had a second baby. (I can never understand how people with small children have time to blog.) But I would still like to know that she's ok. And she was a very entertaining writer as well as an engaging person.

Still, it's a funny thing to do, sending thoughts out into the ether; and every now and then I'm seized by the what-am-I-doing-this-for? feeling. When I started, over 5 years ago, I didn't imagine that anyone I knew would read it, but of course all my family do now and some of my friends. Which makes it a slightly different creature. And I suppose that even if we fancy ourselves to be anonymous, we all present only an edited picture of ourselves and our lives. Though some people, such as Fran of "Being Me", don't really even do that. She refers only obliquely to her husband and children and never posts pictures of her pets, cushions, garden or whatever. She's really funny instead.

Such a variety of blogs.

I'm glad to say that in those 5 years, none of my bloggy friends has died. But several have been widowed. And I'm occasionally sidetracked on to blogs of people with terrible illnesses who have since died. And yet their blogs hang on in cyberspace... As presumably will ours...

Anyway, I seem to be in a rambling frame of mind. To return to normal life: Grandson came visting today, fully restored to his sunny self. So delicious! Daughter 1 and I took him out for a walk. I love to see his face turning from side to side, his eyes swivelling as he takes in everything that's visible from his supine position: leaves, sky, gates, people. He has such an interested look on his face. What a pity that we can't ask him what he's thinking about.

Autumm leaves and girning

2011-11-01T21:44:00.012Z

It's been such a beautiful autumn. In fact, I don't really have any clear idea of what autumn is usually like, since for so many years I've been stuck inside, teaching, with no time to look out of the windows; and at this time of year, there was so much marking to do at home. But this year... well, I've been tied down to the house a lot with my mother, but have at least been able to go out into the garden or for short walks.

Today, however, Daughter 2 was working at home and could keep an eye on Mum (who's gradually getting better, thank you all) so Daughter 1, Grandson and I went to our beloved Botanic Gardens. It was so mild that we didn't need jackets. Because of the time of year, the sun was low so that the light slanted and the shadows were long. But it was bright and the colours seemed particularly intense.

Grandson slept.

We walked. It was lovely but we wished that Daughter 2 was with us too.

No wind; very few ripples on the pond.

Stripy shadows.

Quite a few autumn flowers bloomed on.

Pink!

More pink!

Intense blue.

Grandson wasn't quite himself today - he wasn't as cheerful as usual, though he did smile politely in between the complaints, or girns as we'd call them in Scotland. Maybe he's beginning to teeth?

He gazes, big-eyed. It was one of those days with babies that you just have to live through and hope for a better one tomorrow.

But tomorrow, alas, darling Daughter 2 goes back to London, taking our hearts with her.

Hallowe'en

2011-10-31T21:01:00.007Z

I think - do correct me if I'm wrong - that English people didn't really use to celebrate Hallowe'en much. We did celebrate it in Scotland when I was little, but we didn't do the trick or treat thing that seems to be coming in from America. We did "guising" - the word's from "disguising" and nothing to do with Guy Fawkes' Day, a completely different event. Children dressed up and went to their immediate neighbours' houses and sang songs or recited poems, and were given a reward of a small amount of money, or more often just apples and nuts. The dressing up wasn't necessarily ghost- or witch- or skeleton-related, but could be just anything out of the dressing-up box, though the songs and poems tended to be witch-related. Certainly no costumes were ever bought. And this was just the same when our children were little.

Please don't think that I have anything against America and its traditions, but I am slightly sad that Hallowe'en here seems to have become a bit Americanised, presumably through the influence of films and tv. Not that I've ever heard of anyone actually doing the "trick" bit here. But the media seems to refer to "trick or treating" as if it were a British tradition, which it never was.

Another thing we used to do at Hallowe'en was to make turnip lanterns, not pumpkin ones. I tell you, it was very energetic work, hollowing out a hard turnip - it used to be the father's job because only he had enough muscle power to manage it. You never saw pumpkins in our shops in those days. I would admit that pumpkins are much easier, though a tiny bit of me thinks it's a bit feeble to do it the easy way... The other disadvantage of turnip lanterns was that they smelt revolting if they got a bit singed, as they tended to do.

At Hallowe'en parties in my childhood, we used to "dook" (duck) for apples - I wonder if modern children do this? My brother and I used to do this sometimes at my grandparents' house and sometimes at ours. There was a zinc bath that got filled with water, and apples from our or my grandparents' apple trees - none of this buying-them-at-the-supermarket nonsense - and with nuts, which we never had at any other time of year except Christmas. Then the apples and nuts were whooshed round and you had to kneel down and use your mouth to extract an apple or a nut or two when it was your turn. We did this at Guides as well, and the more obstreperous Guides would sometimes shove your face under the water as you struggled to bite into an apple. We also had a jammy or treacley piece (sandwich or scone) on a string and you had to try to get a bite, again without using your hands.

Innocent fun. I feel slightly uneasy when I see lots of Hallowe'en costumes and decorations in the supermarket and I never did like skeletons and ghoulish things. But there we are. Times change.

Happy Hallowe'en.

Another day

2011-10-29T20:26:00.005+01:00

Was there ever a more relaxing life than that of a cat? Cassie and Sirius enjoy lying in the sun.

And we enjoy seeing them so unconcerned about things. Well, apart from the ironing board - they don't like that. Or the vacuum cleaner. Or the mop.

Meanwhile, my poor little mum is taking a long time to get over her operation. She's still in a lot of pain at times and has no appetite. And for someone who's about six stone (84 pounds) this isn't good. She's often awake during the night because of the pain (and wakes me to see if I can do anything, which I can't, really) and so she sleeps a lot during the day. But I don't. So life is a bit difficult at the moment.

I'm not an enthusiastic cook - I mean, I don't hate cooking but it doesn't interest me. And cooking for a carnivore (Mr Life), vegetarians (the girls and me), a gluten-intolerant, nut-allergic pescatarian (Son-in-Law 1 - he's happy with vegetarian food but I always feel I should feed him something nutritious since he's built like a blade of grass) and a mother who doesn't really fancy anything... isn't really very rewarding. The worst bit, as I'm sure many women feel, is trying to think what to cook. In many different pots and dishes.

Anyway, Daughter 2 is home for a long weekend, which is lovely. We went and visited Daughter 1, SIL 1 and Grandson this morning and Daughter 2 indulged her auntly instincts.

Who's a nice nephew, then?

Up in the air!

Big cuddle.

Lend a hand and play the game

2011-10-26T23:19:00.006+01:00

I saw this the other week, in the grounds of the hospital where I was visiting Mum. I've never seen one before. According to the world of Internet, it's a Fly Agaric and it's only mildly poisonous though somewhat hallucinogenic.

I didn't eat it. It was too like the toadstool that we used to dance round at Brownies. Though smaller.

Amazing what you see at this time of year when you're not spending all of your life marking.

I almost miss the marking on a few mad occasions, one of which came yesterday when my ex-colleague (who's still working in college) emailed me the first line of a poem that a student wrote for her:

"The qualmless quiver of the waft rewinds around the strain.....".

Raisiny

2011-10-25T14:58:00.008+01:00

Look, Grandson can play with a toy now. What a talented boy. And what a joy he is in our lives that are a bit iffy at the moment. My mother is home from hospital with us, but is requiring a lot of care. She's getting better, but slowly, from what the GP described as "a massive operation" to remove the bit of bowel that had the tumour on it. Mum is 89 and a half so it's no wonder that she's not leaping about, but I don't like to leave her alone in the house so this has pinned me down more than somewhat. Also, Mr Life has been very fed up at work - far too much to do in far too little time - so has decided to retire a few months early, immediately after the turn of the year - which will be interesting. I'm not sure how he'll take to being tied to the house.

Anyway, who wouldn't be cheered up to have this smile flashed upon them?

Son came down on Sunday and rebonded with his nephew.

Mum got up and bathed in his smiles.

Son used Grandson to improve his upper body strength.

But as if life (aside from the baby) wasn't tedious enough, there's a chap who's just won the Times crossword championship by doing three of its cryptic crosswords in 24 minutes. Mr Life and I enjoy a cryptic crossword but it takes the pair of us working as a team about as long as that to finish one such puzzle, and that's on a good day when we do manage to complete one. This chap had difficulty with only one clue: "Often pouring cups one's filled with dried fruit". The answer is "raisiny" and I'm frustrated because even knowing the answer, I still can't explain the clue!

Leaving aside the question of whether "raisiny" can really claim to be much of a word (hmm) - I can see that "often pouring" is "rainy" or maybe just "rain", and "one" is "i" and so "one's" could be "is" - but what do "cups" have to do with it? I'm sure it's obvious to someone out there, so could you explain it to me, please?

Edited to add: Thank you Freya! As she points out, "cups" means "holds" so it just means that "rainy" and "is" are held together to mean "raisiny". I still feel thick but at least I no longer feel frustrated.

In my defence, I've got a streaming cold together with sore eyes, throat, bones etc so what with being up during the night to accompany Mum to the loo, my brain isn't perhaps in top gear. But still. Grrr.

The quality of mercy is not strained...

2011-10-19T20:52:00.007+01:00

My nephew and his friend have set up a Twitter account (http://twitter.com/#!/IambYourFather)
to retell the plot of Star Wars in blank verse, as used by Shakespeare and others. You will remember that blank verse involves iambic pentameter, the rhythm of which goes de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM - ie 5 de DUMs).

Once you get this particular beat into your head…

It’s hard get iambics off your brain.
It’s getting late and I must go to bed,
Though first I’d like to eat a piece of toast
But – woe! - I am already fat enough.
I wish I could be skinny like my mum.
I wonder why I look more like my dad?

Blank verse is easy - since it doesn’t rhyme.
No wonder Shakespeare churned out such a lot,
Though unlike me, he made his language soar.
(He also wrote of envy, lust and death,
Which added to the drama, I suppose,
But I have no desire to do the same).

The Bard did put rhymes, sometimes, at the end
Of scenes, which on the whole I can commend.

Hasn't he got lovely eyes?

2011-10-17T22:52:00.004+01:00

One difference that I find between being a mum and a granny is that I'm very aware of Grandson as a little bundle of potential. I think that being less involved with his day-to-day care allows time to speculate about what he might turn out to be. When we were parents of little ones, the days whizzed by but it was hard to imagine them being any different from what they were at that moment. And yet in retrospect they seem to have grown up in a flash.

I do have vivid memories of wondering what they'd be like. When they were little, I used to imagine walking along a road behind them as grown ups and willing them to turn round so that I could see their faces. But I could never make them do so, not even in my imagination. I don't think I ever speculated about anything but their appearance, though. I don't remember imagining careers or spouses or children for them.

The cats don't bother speculating, which is perhaps wise.

Opposites

2011-10-16T22:52:00.003+01:00

This is a picture of the older part of the hospital where my mum is being treated. It used to be a private house. Can you imagine sweeping down those steps in your crinoline and into a carriage?

It's set in quite extensive grounds and this is the view over Edinburgh to the Pentland Hills.

Not a bad life, I'd think. As long as you were the lady of the house and not the scullerymaid.

Daughter 1, Mr Life and I were in the car together the other day and we were listening to Classic FM on the radio. An advert came on for some dating agency or website - I wasn't paying much attention. The last sentence of the advert was "... and you can find someone just like you."

Mr Life and Daughter 1 exclaimed simultaneously, "Oh, I wouldn't want someone just like me!" and I laughed because I'd been thinking precisely the same thing.

Not that there's anything very wrong with any of us. But I need someone who can do d-i-y, can deal with birds which kill themselves flying against our windows, can work technology, can reach high shelves and is brave enough to drive on motorways - none of which is a talent I can claim.

Tubes and boots

2011-10-14T08:52:00.008+01:00

Well, my mum's op to remove the tumour from her bowel went well, evidently. All the doctors and nurses seem very cheerful about it, though as my mother says, they might be a bit less cheerful if it were their middle that had been chopped about and sewn together again.

She's still a bit confused. Yesterday she had the fixed idea that the problem had been with her liver.

Various remarks through the day included:

"They've taken my liver out."
"It's sore where they took my liver out."
"They thought they might have to take my liver out but they didn't."
"The doctor took out - what was it? - my liver?"
"Why do I keep thinking that they took my liver out?"

So that shows progress, I suppose.

Though I've spent much of the week at her bedside in the high dependency unit, she doesn't really remember much about it. Which is just as well. I don't think it's been much fun. Being a squeamish person, I haven't found it much fun either (in a lesser way). I have to focus my attention on Mum's face rather than the various drips and drains going in and out of her. I'm particularly phobic about ... can't even type it, really... the pink stuff that we're all full of: bl--d. Gah. And she's needed some extra units of this, going down tubes (argh) into her.

Moving on... I had an afternoon off yesterday to accompany Daughter 1 and Grandson into town for her to buy a few things. These included boots. We were in a shoe shop when a girl came in wanting black boots. The shop had the right size in the ones she chose, but only in tan, so she tried them on. She liked the fit.

"We could order them in black," offered the assistant.

"Hmm," mused the girl. "I'm not sure what they'd look like in black, though."

I'd have thought... much the same but... black. But I'm not known for my stylish dressing so maybe I was missing the point.

The girl bought the tan boots. Daughter 1 got her boots too. And I got to hold the baby, who is much more interesting than footwear of any colour.

A chilly seat

2011-10-10T21:10:00.004+01:00

We were up at Mum's flat today, collecting things for her to take to hospital for her operation tomorrow. We looked in a cupboard in a spare bedroom. Among other delights we found a china bedpan. The heating's not on in the flat so this item was very cold.

I had never seen it before. Where has it been for the past 60+ years?

"I'll take it to a charity shop," I said.

"Oh no," said Mum, "I might need it after my operation."

Hmm. I don't really think so. Can you imagine being unwell in that department of your anatomy and having to sit on a very hard, cold, shiny device like this? I now realise that this is why plastic was invented.

Plant pot, anyone? Available in a charity shop in Edinburgh from tomorrow.