tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303103407331224862024-03-13T08:16:27.727+00:00Relatively RetiringRelatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.comBlogger202125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-80770880350917375202023-03-10T11:35:00.000+00:002023-03-10T11:35:33.995+00:00And now there are four............<p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Here is the youngest of them,</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzq9fooDPu6E-ukqKhKmcU5U9r_WiYj0BE4gKtzCkXxzXISKoHjI48Q9fjJaQ18_4W7ClGsMZGql299OuJ0-RQQbyXttxKt5WcTZkhDGoD8GE3xoELf09lTYHwRuZQz6EKoQxm05iCiRA8-mMdEdp2mx9Rkq7gqVd9xqeYVinHCaHwMOJLrV7lkSYSQ/s640/Mila%20smiling.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzq9fooDPu6E-ukqKhKmcU5U9r_WiYj0BE4gKtzCkXxzXISKoHjI48Q9fjJaQ18_4W7ClGsMZGql299OuJ0-RQQbyXttxKt5WcTZkhDGoD8GE3xoELf09lTYHwRuZQz6EKoQxm05iCiRA8-mMdEdp2mx9Rkq7gqVd9xqeYVinHCaHwMOJLrV7lkSYSQ/s320/Mila%20smiling.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>some time ago, demonstrating one of her first smiles. She's a bit older now and she has more hair and lots more coordination and a good amount of chatty babble, but there's something special about this early smile. Surprise and joy! How wonderful to be so new, so fresh, so delighted by what you see for the first time.</p><p>We still haven't met, little M and I. She and her three year old brother live in Austria, amid mountains and clean alpine air and lots of snow. When the snow melts and the Alpine flowers start to emerge I'm hoping to visit and meet my fourth grandchild, second grand-daughter. Each son's family has a boy and a girl, and their ages now range from ten years to four months.</p><p>This is the loveliest part of my ageing life, to know that the four of them are there, healthy and loved in their different locations.</p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-87275270784417929292022-04-18T12:03:00.002+01:002022-04-18T13:11:32.324+01:00Not Really My Friend.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmCl1lRihSeXtzIBIRS2Fpz4Q5ybLgKjec0UKMVj_q1eMBAuoK4fT6ObiUZBlBgUdpfeX3hczjKQrNpKCY_to3eUJQTS_8zqZ0QTB-zkv7LK9l9R-BMzqMs6ML4crGwYKnyOPAlL0SEFOi0PE3BycUUV7vuPvRoASgtZn7Gr6S13LfVFpX8GMOztlBQA/s3072/Robin.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmCl1lRihSeXtzIBIRS2Fpz4Q5ybLgKjec0UKMVj_q1eMBAuoK4fT6ObiUZBlBgUdpfeX3hczjKQrNpKCY_to3eUJQTS_8zqZ0QTB-zkv7LK9l9R-BMzqMs6ML4crGwYKnyOPAlL0SEFOi0PE3BycUUV7vuPvRoASgtZn7Gr6S13LfVFpX8GMOztlBQA/s320/Robin.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><br /></p><p>The robin, or perhaps two robins are flitting around with so much stuff in their beaks that they can barely see where they are going. They are scarifying my near-by lawn, possibly saving me from the trouble of doing so, ripping at fragments of dried grass and moss. They want to go into the thick hedge of ivy, but I am sitting too near it. </p><p>I am sitting on the new stone patio area, enjoying the warm sun of this Easter Bank Holiday, making a slow recovery from the brain-fog and other discomforts of Covid. I am appreciating the new area of the garden, mildly speculating about its development, listening to the constant humming of insects (or maybe it's still the Covid tinnitus). Anyway, the robins want me out of it.</p><p>This is their chosen place. They need to fly from the lawn to the back of the garden chair, and then, after looking all round, make a swift hop into the ivy with their load of building materials, but now I'm sitting on the chair they have appropriated as a landing stage. How infuriating is that?</p><p>It is infuriating enough to make at least one of them dive so close to my head that I flinch. Prior to this they have shouted at me from some distance, then hopped along the garden table to where my arm is resting in order to shout at me in close-up. One of them has come perilously close to my hand, its bright little eyes gleaming, its head tilting speculatively from side to side. Is any portion of my hand edible? Does it contain food or building material? Can it be shifted by sheer robin will-power? I remain immobile. I'm comfortable in the sunny warmth, and I'm interested to see just how far they will go to get rid of me.</p><p>People often say they have these incredibly friendly robins in their gardens. Robins who perch on the handles of their tools, who follow them around the garden, singing to them, just wanting company. Little friends. Charming robins of the sort that feature on Christmas cards, bearing good wishes.</p><p>The robins in my garden also zoom in as soon as I go out, not to be friends, but to see what I can unearth for them. I am a useful provider, as the wild boar used to be in an Anglo-Saxon forest, which is probably where the robins learned to follow creatures who could dig up grubs. Any minute now they will make me go and scarify the lawn for them, and possibly put the scarifications near to where I know they are building their nest.</p><p>I admire them for their determination, tenacity and strength in protecting what they most firmly believe to be their territory with all its resources. Their strength is such that they will kill one another if necessary, and their tenacity enables them to drive away a great lumbering giant who is seriously interrupting a vital bit of their survival process.</p><p>The lumbering giant goes back to the house to make a cup of coffee.</p><p> Friends we are not - but I do understand.</p><p><br /></p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-22397964672758697742022-03-26T10:12:00.004+00:002022-05-13T09:12:10.286+01:00What Could be Better?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-pTu82HYjIJhj6PQYW_xP5KgMqmZqtlVGYEKbd70A_FhtZFT7GXKa6A3p2UDE5ZDReAWp2hvjQEvn2A04EwbsIrY9neu0pkm4GxO31JyfAv-jQfV5IUClNmCCTyo_2p9O9vMxDRsuhvAeL-8-XBKYKkkYFnPWuuGNAlb_gGhgEVS3oYC722g_FNDxoA/s2049/Bristol%20March%2022.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2049" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-pTu82HYjIJhj6PQYW_xP5KgMqmZqtlVGYEKbd70A_FhtZFT7GXKa6A3p2UDE5ZDReAWp2hvjQEvn2A04EwbsIrY9neu0pkm4GxO31JyfAv-jQfV5IUClNmCCTyo_2p9O9vMxDRsuhvAeL-8-XBKYKkkYFnPWuuGNAlb_gGhgEVS3oYC722g_FNDxoA/s320/Bristol%20March%2022.JPG" width="240" /></a></div> <br /> <p></p><p>Three grandchildren, playing together in the sunshine. What could be better? This is only their second meeting, their first being nearly a year ago because the youngest lives in Austria, but now they begin really to know each other and to communicate.</p><p>Travel becomes possible, even if something of a challenge with an active two year-old and all his equipment. My elder son passed his pre-flight CPR test in Austria and got to England for a weekend with his brother's family. The sun shone, toys were shared, gifts were given, everyone was happy and well. What could be better?</p><p>After that my elder son and his son travelled by train to stay with me for a few days. The sun was still shining. Then next morning my son felt a bit unwell and used a lateral flow test. To his considerable surprise it was positive. </p><p>Never mind! I had a big freezer full of food, we had lots of toys and books and there was a garden to explore, birds to feed, lots of interesting things to do at home.</p><p>Later that day small grandson became unhappy, restless, clingy and obviously infected too. Still never mind, We could all be comfortable here. I asked a kind neighbour to buy us some extra large paper tissues though. Extra paracetamol too, because by the next day I was also producing two red lines.</p><p>Never mind, not even now! We were here, together in the sunshine. We had a week more than any of us thought possible, still in the sunshine, in the garden, developing skills on a plastic motorbike (well, one of us was) digging in the sand box, doing a bit of biscuit-making (two of us), sampling the results and giving the remainder to the birds. There were bumble bees and ants to study. There was even frogspawn in the pond.</p><p>For a two year-old unlimited time and attention from caring adults is wonderful, as is unlimited time to look out of a window, to study a leaf or an insect, to run about freely in a safe space. It's extremely valuable for an 82 year old granny to do it as well - except for the running about bit.</p><p>What could be better for all of us than this priceless time? And we were boosting our immunity as well.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-45288831396088706202022-03-10T12:36:00.005+00:002022-03-10T19:01:05.209+00:00Carry on Learning<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhEd-93I-kzz3kfg3QxCwxqmdhvGEaguhjmBPVGABz--Ada-WGGELfg5Wv-gowBqtgNInt4lxU3vUrXNxKqJFmu5oIQ4wiumZ0v3N0BNh57B8Wx6pG6z_n7cfxjSn-KQL0ssIQOQz-5O9EMylJzwV43p-xVIjLBwBOG11nklAdqBGlCtm8Vy5wzqqZCHQ=s3648" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="2736" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhEd-93I-kzz3kfg3QxCwxqmdhvGEaguhjmBPVGABz--Ada-WGGELfg5Wv-gowBqtgNInt4lxU3vUrXNxKqJFmu5oIQ4wiumZ0v3N0BNh57B8Wx6pG6z_n7cfxjSn-KQL0ssIQOQz-5O9EMylJzwV43p-xVIjLBwBOG11nklAdqBGlCtm8Vy5wzqqZCHQ=s320" width="240" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Here I am, nine years old, about to fail in learning to swim; a failure which has remained with me for the next 73 years, and one that I can at last recognise as a failure to learn to trust. This photograph was taken in the tidal swimming pool at Lynmouth, North Devon. Two years later Lynmouth was devastated by flooding. I remember my distress when the news finally reached us, realising for the first time how precarious the whole business of life could be.</p><p> I had slight memories of War, of spending time in an air-raid shelter, but in a time before television I knew only what I had been allowed to hear on radio, or via the illicit reading of a newspaper. I was protected from knowing the realities. There was no personal involvement, but the destruction of a pretty village where I had spent a holiday was an awakening that changed my childhood. A river had done that. A river that I had walked along, paddled in, watched fish and fishermen beside. River water, amplified into raging torrents by prolonged rainfall, had burst open stone cottages, torn bridges apart, flung great rocks and whole trees into houses and caused the deaths of more than 30 people, some of whom were never found. Yet this was a natural disaster, quite different from my limited experience of war, and totally unlike what we face today. More than enough to make me feel that I could never trust moving water again though.</p><p>My dislike of and failure to achieve any sort of competence in swimming remains, despite several intensive swimming courses and an amount of reassurance that I can actually swim. Perhaps I can, but if I can I can't breathe at the same time which puts me at a disadvantage, I suppose. My older grandchildren, now nine and five years old, are good or better than good swimmers, and now the two year-old can do it as well. I'd really like another try at swimming with a two year-old and I should make myself have another go. But I am not at all confident.</p><p>The learning that is so infinitely more important is learning to trust, not just water, but life itself. It seems so vital at these moments of man-made turmoil, conflict and corruption that we can somehow hang on to a trust that the world is full of good and honourable people; that other drivers on the road will be careful, that people who say they will deliver your groceries will do so, that the vast unknown population is basically well-intentioned. Even more goodness comes from people who drive public transport, doctors who prescribe, surgeons who cut and remove bits, pilots and air crew who take you thousands of miles in a metal tube. You don't know them, yet you put your life into their hands You have to trust them. You have to trust the contents of boxes and bottles in the shops, that they contain what it says on the outside, even to the amount of calories (well, do you really?). You have to trust the people who teach your children and grand-children, who feed your cat when you're away, who stop their vehicle at a road crossing when the signal tells them to. Then there people who are vital in your life, family, friends, neighbours, colleagues without whom life would be meaningless and empty. Too many people to number, all of then good, kind, caring and essential. We must never let the turmoil of an often regrettably reactive life devalue them or diminish their importance.</p><p>We are all enclosed in a great bubble of trust and goodness, and we need it as much as air itself.</p><p>Living and swimming are acts of trust.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-51473837274120520352022-02-04T20:05:00.007+00:002022-02-26T20:00:19.513+00:00Long-Buried Treasure.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYJ8vgWMEa3bWcYMh07ndyJQJfvMzTr0Yjd_oUBb90EEdLhFR02dn0QJqanydVqnj8AG9C6fIBW5km6HFb2Ih1SnlXW9X3r1LJlXA6QDcXcJhF0EazU0d_masOwIyqPDuW5hMwET4-PObtwOkKZ_LJ2o0XXwml5mnTRn3fCGw5izgeqUCyGDfA5L0yUQ=s3648" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYJ8vgWMEa3bWcYMh07ndyJQJfvMzTr0Yjd_oUBb90EEdLhFR02dn0QJqanydVqnj8AG9C6fIBW5km6HFb2Ih1SnlXW9X3r1LJlXA6QDcXcJhF0EazU0d_masOwIyqPDuW5hMwET4-PObtwOkKZ_LJ2o0XXwml5mnTRn3fCGw5izgeqUCyGDfA5L0yUQ=s320" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p><br /></p><p>I have not been idle during the long, Covid-laden break from blogging, and neither has Jenny Woolf whose posting today on <a href="https://jennywoolftravel.blogspot.com/">her lovely blog</a> has inspired me to reveal some of my own recent preoccupations and diversions.</p><p>For me, the paper-sorting seems endless. My husband died many years ago, and still I have boxes of his writing, collections of relevant cuttings, letters, souvenirs, photographs and other relics of a life lived with books and documents. Then, just when I thought I had seen almost all of his archive, a bundle of records of family life appeared from within a fat folder of theological papers: home-made cards, petitions, letters of thanks and requests, postcards and drawings by our sons from the age when they could first clutch a crayon. I must have seen most of them at some time, but I didn't know that he had kept them.</p><p>This is something I wrote and that he pinched and hid among the theology, probably thinking that I wouldn't bother to keep it among the confused welter that was my desk in those days of family chaos. This special bit of paper brought sunshine into my day this morning.</p><p> I recorded verbatim a bit of a Sunday morning in church with sons aged three and six. I never knew that he thought it was worth keeping. I hope we managed to have a laugh about it at the time.</p><p><i><b>In church</b>.</i></p><p><i>*=repeated at least three times in crescendo.</i></p><p><i>E: (aged 3) There's Mrs. Evans. *Hello, Mrs.Evans.</i></p><p><i>H: (aged 6) Why doesn't <b>Mr.</b> Evans come to church?</i></p><p><i>Mother: (age not specified) I'll tell you later.</i></p><p><i>H: Why?</i></p><p><i>Mother: Because it's a long story.</i></p><p><i>H: Why?</i></p><p><i>M: Shhh.</i></p><p><i>E: Why? What you talking about? Eh? What you and you talking about?</i></p><p><i>Both parents: Shhhhh!</i></p><p><i>Both boys read books. E comments loudly throughout.</i></p><p><i>E:* Let's sing now!</i></p><p><i>M: Shhhhh. No! Not yet.</i></p><p><i>E: Yes! Let's have a sing now!. (Sings loudly.)</i></p><p><i>Both parents, unison: Shhhhhh.</i></p><p><i>People in pews behind and in front; "Shhhhhh!</i></p><p><i>H: Mummy. Mummy. I have to know something.</i></p><p><i>M: Just wait a bit. Please!</i></p><p><i>H: Just tell me if there are people buried under this floor.</i></p><p><i>E: Eh? What? <b>Where </b>people under the floor?</i></p><p><i>H:<b> And </b>I need to know why aren't there any gravy-stones outside this church?</i></p><p><i>M: Shhhh, just wait until we get outside.</i></p><p><i>H: It's important. It's in my head and I'm thinking about it <b>now.</b></i></p><p><i>M: Probably because it hasn't been consecrated as burial ground. Wait and ask Father A. afterwards.</i></p><p><i>E:* What? What you talking about? What under the floor?</i></p><p><i>H: Well, where do people get buried then?</i></p><p><i>M: Ask Father A. afterwards. Try to listen now.</i></p><p><i>E slides to floor: What under floor? Nothing under floor?</i></p><p><i>H: slides to floor: Let's looks for gravy-stones, E!</i></p><p><i>Both parents, unison: GET UP!</i></p><p><i>Boys restored to pew after relevant scuffling, threats and protests.</i></p><p><i>H: <b>Why</b> doesn't <b>Mr.</b> Evans have to come to church?</i></p><p><i>E:* What?</i></p><p></p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-12315611383333090322021-07-24T14:07:00.005+01:002021-07-24T15:29:19.515+01:00Very Important Places.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXjOayopUTOKqX0eQTvcR0oh9B_dLFG6LHTAIZbylLteHEBKlMfJVpUrmFhnk_bxcVZu8JOT6sov7xPlzKGYz-OvhzJ2BITCM08uF065sGRweKo1YrkvyelReWDVil0jWq-utrq6RQq-c6/s2016/Alison24.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXjOayopUTOKqX0eQTvcR0oh9B_dLFG6LHTAIZbylLteHEBKlMfJVpUrmFhnk_bxcVZu8JOT6sov7xPlzKGYz-OvhzJ2BITCM08uF065sGRweKo1YrkvyelReWDVil0jWq-utrq6RQq-c6/s320/Alison24.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This is the place where I last sat with a dear friend. Quite recently. Now it will be enshrined in memory.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Many others will sit here, and we will have afternoon tea, as we did then. Tiered cake-stand in fine bone china, patterned most appropriately with forget-me-not flowers. Home-made cakes and scones, of course. Cucumber sandwiches, of course, and there will be honey still for tea, but I doubt if anyone else will make a special request for sticky jam sandwiches. I doubt if anyone else could face death with such bravery, compassion and thought for others. Forget-me-not.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEn0dVZPgFi3TyCDDd6XnBMEmrqD9EwkJxJxJD_vVfke7Lo5oA9cZ-1GuVCz8xXONiZini5Jqehh3qefPhBlx0xDs_ob1hfdiRwBT5AcvfAuVzHAwp-l9Gkv-LCt8I-_DvHSHXscHxgSDp/s2016/Bridge+%25282%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEn0dVZPgFi3TyCDDd6XnBMEmrqD9EwkJxJxJD_vVfke7Lo5oA9cZ-1GuVCz8xXONiZini5Jqehh3qefPhBlx0xDs_ob1hfdiRwBT5AcvfAuVzHAwp-l9Gkv-LCt8I-_DvHSHXscHxgSDp/s320/Bridge+%25282%2529.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>This is the place where people can walk into a new section of garden, cool, quiet, fern-filled. Soon there will be a special table for outdoor meals (as well as for me to do a bit of potting up). Children will need to watch out for frogs and possibly trolls under the bridge. But the trolls will have to be small, and certainly not of the breed found on the internet. The lower support rail of the bridge is formed from the adventurous and successful growing of a giant Echium last year in my front garden. I was so proud of it. It reached my bedroom window with its great spire of bee-filled blue flowers. It eventually blew down in a gale, and the stem was like a tree-trunk. I couldn't bear to throw it away. So it was incorporated into the bridge.<div>The small ginger curly head crossing the bridge is not a grandchild, but a very charming poodle visitor who has just been on holiday here and approves of the garden.<div><br /></div><div> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcpgCzAiP94LhXEQkGyCDaXfzFgJx8gi_z8Th8mjKdGpXF6GIN6qfuxgMf85rzwOemYLxxlGlwvuRLx0hgI1KRkTOvFGTg2KfB3APGpWtrHrTZZ40PqywwX4AgZFBXFB7pEVH3iNs06Tdk/s2016/John%2527s+door+%25282%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcpgCzAiP94LhXEQkGyCDaXfzFgJx8gi_z8Th8mjKdGpXF6GIN6qfuxgMf85rzwOemYLxxlGlwvuRLx0hgI1KRkTOvFGTg2KfB3APGpWtrHrTZZ40PqywwX4AgZFBXFB7pEVH3iNs06Tdk/s320/John%2527s+door+%25282%2529.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This is the place where my husband created a door many years ago. The door is still there, but the summerhouse that surrounded it has gone. It's a suitably eccentric door with glass panels, one of them painted by our son. The door opens on to a totally overgrown and inaccessible railway embankment, but my husband fixed a 'Private' notice on the outside just in case (or perhaps because he had it and needed to fix it somewhere). It's all still there.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I found it difficult to lose the hard work my husband put into creating the summerhouse. But it had to go. The door didn't.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> Every garden needs a door into another secret garden.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPB_ZsrmPHw6yubCQoMhsqAL_8Jn0QVvwUWUEWg1UeuY74p29MJVhu-1C7dwuCr4iRVPHkYIUh-Z0RQOTLc2X-4JqNyMvpv3fyCVEli2jGVb8XZBmOh0PWnfzScIKeDs6n_FuO96GElBru/s2048/Alison1.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPB_ZsrmPHw6yubCQoMhsqAL_8Jn0QVvwUWUEWg1UeuY74p29MJVhu-1C7dwuCr4iRVPHkYIUh-Z0RQOTLc2X-4JqNyMvpv3fyCVEli2jGVb8XZBmOh0PWnfzScIKeDs6n_FuO96GElBru/s320/Alison1.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This is the place for a different sort of door - a fairy door of course, with solar-powered lighting and a staircase inside the opening door. It's positioned so that it may be checked at night from the bedroom where the fairy-watchers sleep. It has been built into the dry-stone walling by the team of stone-masons who did the garden reconstruction work recently, as was the very rustic bridge, created from special timbers. They seemed to quite like it, but they could just have been humouring me.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The fairy-watchers haven't found it yet. I hope they haven't already out-grown it. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The garden will grow, new memories will be created.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But old ones will be treasured, as will the people who created them.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>Special thanks to my bridesmaid of some decades ago, Hellen, who took the photos when I wasn't looking.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p></div></div>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-50745657041906607302021-06-26T10:32:00.003+01:002021-06-26T10:41:01.572+01:00All Changing.<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSAkayBNIg6T89Ls8nwFoh556llmzx1bIvfoPhPRcGRIth8lz6oNgkx9iI9PlK5DPAKxjdvzbOJXUTtrl_1q7RF1iWGFdloXjNHkXsMX4QsTMMJ4B-6KAD-wMooRVnTMixdl1rc_jDqmuT/s2048/Troll+bridge.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSAkayBNIg6T89Ls8nwFoh556llmzx1bIvfoPhPRcGRIth8lz6oNgkx9iI9PlK5DPAKxjdvzbOJXUTtrl_1q7RF1iWGFdloXjNHkXsMX4QsTMMJ4B-6KAD-wMooRVnTMixdl1rc_jDqmuT/s320/Troll+bridge.JPG" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p>Still in the middle of change, but last week great progress was made in this garden. This is the result of my long time of isolation which resulted in lots of thinking time and a realisation of what is really important for my hopefully remaining years. I have realised how much I hope to be able to remain here.</p><p> In my house which is large for one person, but not large enough if all the family should want to be here together. </p><p>In my garden which is complex and needs a lot of maintenance, but which is a wonderful place for friends and family, especially smaller ones.</p><p> In my neighbourhood, which contains many friends and which is ideally located for good local shops and local rail and road transport, even though I have not used any form of public transport since the pandemic started.</p><p>Before Covid struck I had regular help with both house and garden, but since then I had to manage without anyone entering the house, and now I find that I'm able to continue alone.</p><p>The garden needs a lot of attention, so it seemed to be time to simplify things. The greatest need was for repair of the crumbling walls, built by my husband from reclaimed stone. Another need was regrettable but necessary; the demolition and removal of a summerhouse, also created from reclaimed materials and now in a sorry state fourteen years after his death.</p><p>So last week it all began with a firm called <a href="http://www.colwallstone.co.uk/">Colwall Stone</a> who came to do not only the stonework but also some other tough jobs; removing old fencing and replacing with something different, as well as demolishing and removing the summerhouse, replacing it with a stone patio.</p><p>This firm does beautiful precise work with stone, but here they have been asked also to create a rustic bridge suitable for Hobbits, to incorporate a fairy door into a dry-stone wall, to make a stepping-stone path from the bridge to the new patio. And to be completely fair, they not only picked up my ideas but they ran with them, suggesting and finding the rustic materials for the bridge, and also finding a stone arrow to point to where the new family-and-friends dining table will be (so that none of the grandchildren will get lost in the bamboo jungle). They have also been asked (not to say nagged) about respecting some of the planting, and one team member is learning rather more than he wants to know about alpines. I hope the regular deliveries of tea, coffee, biscuits and occasional cake help. It's small return for all the cheerful consideration and extra care that is given.</p><p>There's more work to go, but I am so encouraged by the results so far that I can look forward to all the planting work to be done as my part. I'm so thankful that I had the time to sort out what I actually needed to do, and that I've found a team who can do it, no matter how eccentric it may seem. All it needs now is family and friends to come and enjoy it.</p><p><br /></p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-50110648977785612962021-05-23T11:58:00.008+01:002021-06-11T18:25:08.431+01:00A Cat's Tale.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="481" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSfZ_HbNNnP6pim1s1FKImDdBqMQcyvYikdzRn2vchNGzDT2iLRW8Ja_7Rl6qJYsw2Y6FI7TiQ3BNY3EBScQS6TEP6NzZoBNPzY79j7AUWnfHoYgV6Tmp6go5KZqAM9mrjVJOQWyZu8bkE/s320/grumpy.webp" width="320" /></div><br /><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p> Not everyone wants to be saved from their current life-style. Some could be quite well adjusted to living in a manner that others may think is not ideal for their best physical or (heaven help us) mental health. Hoarders, for instance. Feral cats for another instance.</p><p>This is not a portrait of the cat that has recently been moved into my neighbourhood. He is reluctant to pose for a portrait during his very frequent visits to my garden, despite the fact that he's spending so much time here. He glowers through the windows at me as he scampers past on his way to the killing fields at the bottom of the garden. If he had fingers I'm sure he would raise a couple of them in my direction. However, I think the portrait sort-of sums him up, a shifty-looking loner. I hope I'm not being too hard in my judgements, but if I am it's because I have good reason.</p><p>He's a townie, a street-wise city cat; a thieving, murderous cat. Or at least he was until he was rescued by a well-intentioned neighbour. He's oldish, sexually active, an enthusiastic hunter, a fighter and has probably been fed by numerous other well-intentioned people in the city centre, such as those very kind ladies (usually) from the Cats' Protection League. Or he's a skilled scavenger. Or possibly he knows about cat-flaps and how to get through them when they are left unattended. Or all of these in combination. But he's survived independently, lived a busy life, may well have numerous children of all sorts of sizes and ages.</p><p>But now he's been brought to live here, alongside many other cats who have their own devoted owners and their own cat-flaps which open and close in conjunction with their own microchipped shoulders. Not much chance of a nifty raid on someone else's supper dish. Not even much chance of a dustbin raid during the night. Everyone has those massive wheelie-bins, and if a cat falls into one of those he won't get out again. I expect he knows that. Even less chance of a quickie with a local girl. The local girls have their flaps locked in the early evenings. They stay at home, watching television programmes about wild-life, or just sleeping comfortably on a cushion or a lap while being stroked. Not even the chance of a fight. The local boys don't go out after dark either. They have all met with the local Vet.</p><p>During the day he can run across the road, causing vehicles to swerve, and go hunting in a garden full of dear little fluttering birds. Some of them can hardly fly and are just a mouthful. There are all sorts of birds that he won't have met in the town-centre. There are great hiding places, and easy pickings. The only problem is that he now knows there's a rather fearsome white-haired old lady who's recently spent about £40 on bird-food and who is very much against the continuation of massacre.</p><p>What he doesn't know, and what the white-haired old lady knows is that he has an appointment with the Vet coming up soon.</p><p>Ha! </p><p><br /></p><p><i>P.S: He's had his treatment from the Vet and is recovering in his new home. It seems that he's realised his new home could have benefits, because he hasn't been seen in my garden since Operation Day. My neighbour says he (the cat) is completely different. The birds and I wait and see.</i></p><p><i>P.P.S. </i><i>Oh no he's not!</i></p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-3317713569060095692021-05-13T10:19:00.002+01:002021-05-13T10:34:34.974+01:00Letter to a Fairly New Grandson.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8A_FpOkua3hH7sOCSI1hApYfdFsMAKR_r-kNR1RgGI2MKARGvNmP-2_s-tE9jBKmVHxPssQSu5RS7rNH8et6SB9Q7KFalQvGINQJPQzKQlLq9I4gcqFyrl9zW387uvtxnuYUgiWGt3TuY/s640/H%2526M+in+Norwich.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8A_FpOkua3hH7sOCSI1hApYfdFsMAKR_r-kNR1RgGI2MKARGvNmP-2_s-tE9jBKmVHxPssQSu5RS7rNH8et6SB9Q7KFalQvGINQJPQzKQlLq9I4gcqFyrl9zW387uvtxnuYUgiWGt3TuY/s320/H%2526M+in+Norwich.jpg" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><br /></p><p>Dear Smallest Grandson,</p><p>Such good news!</p><p>You arrived in England, coping well with a long drive into Germany and a shorter flight across to London and have stayed on for a holiday. You have met your English Granny, your Uncle and Aunt, your two cousins and even a few of your parents' friends. It has been a very special time for us all, and I think it has been for you, too.</p><p>I hope you will have some memories of it because your parents managed to organise such a lovely location for our meeting (and went through all the necessary isolation and testing processes needed for travel). You did it, they did it, we all did it. Even the weather was kind to us.</p><p>So you have met us all, not as the baby we've seen on Skype, but as a walking, very aware, fully interactive toddler, full of curiosity and specific interests.</p><p>Music! Yes! (A specific musical toy handed on from your cousins which has been used an <i>awful </i>lot.) Birds! Oh yes! Any birds, large or small, anywhere. Good on water, good on grass, good zooming about overhead, good but a bit frustrating to chase. Food! Usually enjoyable, always interesting at so many levels (literally; on the plate, on the floor, on the face and hands but being manipulated with increasing skill into the mouth). Your Daddy's and Uncle's 40 year-old toys; I'm so glad I have an attic large enough to store the best for you and your cousins. (Well done, Fisher Price.) Textures, especially the giant bear called Ollie Gark, and the sheep-skin rug that your cousins think is a polar bear.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiZUsdT0ZScz0gFby4bUIblPxechG2xF7YKu_GUiWsgkk1mnB2vkc1WhiOg0cUQfNRKltnV_LGpPFYHs-ayI6htiJxGR2-aoRuXeFQLID-SQGNsH1TjF1_hTbkJw2WIKOUpoNvNTIim3NK/s2048/Marcus+likes+sheep+skin%252C+May+2021.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiZUsdT0ZScz0gFby4bUIblPxechG2xF7YKu_GUiWsgkk1mnB2vkc1WhiOg0cUQfNRKltnV_LGpPFYHs-ayI6htiJxGR2-aoRuXeFQLID-SQGNsH1TjF1_hTbkJw2WIKOUpoNvNTIim3NK/s320/Marcus+likes+sheep+skin%252C+May+2021.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div> (<span style="font-size: x-small;">And you've had a smart London haircut since this photo was taken!)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>You enjoy your bed, too. Even an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar place. You settle into it at around 7p.m and sleep, peacefully sleep for nearly twelve hours. What a wonderfully calm and happy toddler.<div><br /></div><div>You came, you saw and you certainly conquered, Little One,</div><div><br /></div><div>With lots of love from Granny.<br /><p><br /></p></div>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-89975415283605606772021-04-05T20:28:00.001+01:002021-04-11T11:12:42.134+01:00I Didn't Intend This to Happen.<p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQH3HeNhiBIM5WM_NmTbAMjdl8UyRKP7m7nQxhzTpD4OMgiuD3aN_k11_ck97ae7_S1Tdng03MJChTuJ5maek7IE9EZxCQ6RSi98R-fo9-AuNwTPw3t4PcBWYBc-3vTzQs6VJmkmhwQwbW/s2048/Easter+Monday.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQH3HeNhiBIM5WM_NmTbAMjdl8UyRKP7m7nQxhzTpD4OMgiuD3aN_k11_ck97ae7_S1Tdng03MJChTuJ5maek7IE9EZxCQ6RSi98R-fo9-AuNwTPw3t4PcBWYBc-3vTzQs6VJmkmhwQwbW/s320/Easter+Monday.JPG" /></a></p><p><br /></p><p> Easter Monday, and the near-by hills are veiled in mist, low cloud and swirling hail-stones. Yesterday their sky-line was dense with silhouettes of walkers, cyclists, runners, and the sky above them swirled with multicoloured parachutes and their dangling navigators. </p><p>We live with unpredictability, all of us, and sometimes see safety being sacrificed to opportunity - the chance of a crowded get-together in the sunshine versus the risk of infection, the chance of airing the parachute versus the chance of a freak gust of wind. Sometimes it feels quite like the Good/Bad/Dangerous Old Days; a bit of 'let's grab the opportunity', 'let's do it before Someone stops us again', 'it's going to snow tomorrow - let's do it today'.</p><p>In my younger days (a long time ago) I valued opportunity and generally went for it at full-tilt and occasionally at some risk to myself. I had a few somewhat alarming experiences and never mentioned them to anyone, knowing I might be prevented from having such adventures again. Health-and-Safety and Mental-Health were not on anyone's agenda in those days. No one knew such things existed, let alone tiptoed around the mine-fields that they have become. Risk assessment? What was that? Looking back I'm quite surprised that I'm still here but I have no regrets about any of my past adventures. Well, hardly any. I still haven't told anyone though.</p><p>What I didn't see coming was caution, concern, a low-level anxiety, even a small measure of what can only be called timidity. How truly awful; how cramping of the life-style. And now I have to think, 'what life-style?'</p><p>I'm so fortunate, so appreciative of having had two doses of Pfizer. Genuinely fortunate, genuinely appreciative, and still the kind, caring, sheets of information come, signed by Matt (Hancock) who is fast becoming my most faithful and regular correspondent. I feel cared about, protected, thought about - and fearful. Still hugely appreciative, but also aware that I am no longer able to be true to myself.</p><p>This is a time like no other. I have very vague memories of War Time. I was born shortly after The War started - the Second World War, that is. But my memory tells me that shops were open, cinemas too. I went to see <i>Snow White</i> and <i>Lassie Come Home</i> and had to be removed from both in floods of noisy tears by my embarrassed mother, making vivid memories of an afternoon in 1945. There was rationing, there were no bananas, no new clothes, the only toys were homemade. But we, my small gang of girls and I were free agents when out of school, and never once was there a term-time weekday when school wasn't open. Bombs fell, people died, bad things happened but life went on for some of us in the most unbridled and adventurous way.</p><p>It was never on my horizon to become an anxious old woman but that's what seems to be happening. As the external situation seems to be improving my internal one splutters and fails. My anxieties are all for others, a category now constantly referred to as 'loved ones'. I've been vaccinated but I know that I could still infect others, unknowingly, stealthily dangerous.</p><p>I have been informed many times that I'm in a position of extreme vulnerability and now I'm afraid that I feel it, and I don't know how to escape from it. The Shielding Category officially ended on the first of April, but not for the shielded who are advised to continue as far as possible.</p><p>I really didn't intend to become old and anxious.</p><p>Sorry, Loved Ones!</p><p><i><b>P.S. The cure for timidity seems to be driving on three motorways twice each (for completely valid and essential reasons). Encountering hurtling lorries seems surprisingly good for Mental Health.</b></i></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-35509143374113856122021-03-16T18:31:00.002+00:002021-03-16T20:04:03.063+00:00Just About a Year.......<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6HdUQmUni3Mrh-VIJ0De1F-seKvkOFJrlfZOrJZcWZ-Yvxvz4jl3Z9AOkYce47z8VsbAtZhlOoJbagOFCtG9VZn8whuKO4INxGPK4cR-ZkaLKtVlXse9t282vwn-QrFJ9qpqKXcn1sAme/s2048/stained+glass.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6HdUQmUni3Mrh-VIJ0De1F-seKvkOFJrlfZOrJZcWZ-Yvxvz4jl3Z9AOkYce47z8VsbAtZhlOoJbagOFCtG9VZn8whuKO4INxGPK4cR-ZkaLKtVlXse9t282vwn-QrFJ9qpqKXcn1sAme/s320/stained+glass.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Just about a year of near-isolation. Shielding. Initially being told not to leave the house, then not to leave the premises, being allowed out a bit, but then back in again, now to remain shielded until the end of the month. Then what?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">A project, that's what.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Just about a year of sorting out house and garden. Everyone now has sacks and boxes and bags full of amazing STUFF; unwanted, outgrown, outdated STUFF, and no one can donate it to the charity shops. For a long time no one could even take it to the local rubbish dumps. We've all been living with it and now we really want to live without it. I am resolved to need considerably less, and I never needed much to start with. Not really. Books, paper, pens, cooking things, a few clothes. It's interesting to find how much I've been able to do without this year. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">My garden has been my refuge. It has protected my sanity....or has it? I was having help with it, but initially I was not able to continue that. I lost weight and, surprise, surprise, I could cope without help. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I bought myself a Christmas present on-line. Ratchet, telescopic long-handled loppers. I could cope. I could do almost everything from ground-level but not heavy building and deconstruction work.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So now there's a project about to start.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This garden is complex and labour-intensive, made even more so by my husband's determination to use only recycled materials for his projects. He died fourteen years ago, and the garden had remained as something of a memorial to his skill and persistence. The stained glass portrait above is a rather surprising likeness of him on a bad day. It's supposedly of Saint Luke, but there's a resemblance. He placed it above the door of his second home-made summer-house. The rest of the summer-house is built from old timbers, including doors which his grand-daughter is always hoping will lead to Narnia or somewhere involving Harry Potter. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There are magical play-places, but increasingly risky play-places as old and rotting timbers and much more ancient stone crumbles away.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There is a great deal of stone and grandchildren love climbing on it. There's an area they call 'Flower Mountain', partly built of stone removed from a local church during restoration work. You can see exactly why the stone masons needed to remove and replace such stone. It crumbles away, disintegrates in frost. It's trying to get back into earth. It is no longer safe for small scrabbling feet and hands.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Quite soon there will be different stonemasons working here to restore and stabilise Flower Mountain so that it can be climbed safely, but Saint Luke and his rather warped surroundings will be leaving the garden and will be replaced by a new patio area.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I find this difficult because I think I know what my late husband might feel about my actions. It's really hard to do this, to change something that has the nature of a memorial, but I've had a lot of solitary thinking time this year. I may need to be somewhere else while Saint Luke is taken down though, shielding or not.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Fourteen years after a death and the moving-on can still be difficult, but during this extraordinary year we have all changed. My husband never met his two daughters-in law, nor his three grandchildren. Who am I to say what he would be thinking? He would possibly have been prepared to tear down his garden structures with his bare hands in order to keep them safe. Or to get them climbing ropes and make them do it properly.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Saint Luke will be safely rehomed within the family. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Perhaps the children will make him look more cheerful.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And I will be here, keeping busy and waiting to see what might happen next.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /> <p></p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-81444930443544849752020-11-11T09:22:00.010+00:002020-11-11T11:54:26.065+00:00Keeping the Rules<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3sl2FpTAhyphenhyphen-k2Z-wS8V42UH8smNd3BVTw5m1PGaxttevGFt5pPPxz8q7os09NUwf5f7OCYFc0l1kNdahGLN3ofFOWZiOVvgEri1jRLU8BXH_3nxdJwzZezCS9i2wKU35zL_y7S94CgMAd/s855/Sparrowhawk.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="568" data-original-width="855" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3sl2FpTAhyphenhyphen-k2Z-wS8V42UH8smNd3BVTw5m1PGaxttevGFt5pPPxz8q7os09NUwf5f7OCYFc0l1kNdahGLN3ofFOWZiOVvgEri1jRLU8BXH_3nxdJwzZezCS9i2wKU35zL_y7S94CgMAd/s320/Sparrowhawk.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p>I went out for my permitted walk yesterday, and returned to find this, photographed through the vine leaves by my neighbour. I thought there had been a sudden snowfall on my lawn, but there was a magnificent Sparrowhawk, being a Pigeonhawk and doing some socially-distanced outdoor eating.</p><p>She was keeping the rules, just as I am. ('She' because she is so much larger and more powerful than the male. Please note that this is a fact and not a sexist comment, and this girl was huge - even more huge when she tried to take off with a pigeon-filled crop.)</p><p>Although the very difficult 'shielding' situation has been lifted, people in my situation of extreme vulnerability have been advised to return to isolation with the exception of being able to meet one other person outdoors to go for a walk.</p><p>In recent days this has been good, in sunshine and with magnificent autumnal colour surrounding us all. In rolling mist it's not so good, but still possible. In wind and rain it's <i>still</i> possible and it has to be, otherwise my legs will drop off. </p><p>What is not possible is travelling to meet people far away, or even relatively near. Not even going next door to say thank you for the photograph.</p><p>How I wished that my <a href="http://pohanginapete.blogspot.com">nephew</a> was here to photograph this beautiful bird, but he's in New Zealand in Southern hemisphere spring-time. He has created so many superb photographs of birds (and many other things). However, two days ago we managed to talk via Skype, in the evening for me and the next day's breakfast time for him. As we concluded our talk another Skype call came through. It was my elder son and my youngest grandson, playing in a sunny room at mid-day on the same day as here. They were stacking wooden bricks and grandson was chewing on a plastic giraffe in front of huge windows with views of sky-scrapers and distant snowy mountains. Not their usual views in Austria. Grandson is in Canada for his parents' wedding tomorrow and the distant mountains are the Rockies.</p><p>I've not yet been able to meet my nine-month old grandson, I won't be able to attend my son's wedding, I haven't properly talked with my nephew for a long time, but I genuinely, genuinely feel a very fortunate old biddy.</p><div style="text-align: left;">I'm still here, and there is now some hope of this solitude changing. In the meantime technology enables me to reach across the world, over time-zones, through night and day, into tomorrow and back to yesterday: to see and talk to people who are so important to me, to have virtual suppers with grand-daughter and grandson senior, to witness the development of a baby and to have some form of attendance at a wedding half a world away.</div><p>We keep the rules in the huge hope that they, and the possibility of vaccines, will work.</p><p><br /></p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-82360210092417545592020-09-21T11:41:00.004+01:002020-10-14T09:25:28.971+01:00Migration<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY7B25f0ry96eck4W26cSzKjmTKKv-lLhxAG4shlzumAfaVkHNIJ9N-s66nem3uohzsuhamDG1R-AJLRrg1watMRwBUA8Xf5yXoKgpRvnPUO8m7XCb07LCU15zok01VUN6lCTLOtoOdF88/s2048/IMG_1107.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY7B25f0ry96eck4W26cSzKjmTKKv-lLhxAG4shlzumAfaVkHNIJ9N-s66nem3uohzsuhamDG1R-AJLRrg1watMRwBUA8Xf5yXoKgpRvnPUO8m7XCb07LCU15zok01VUN6lCTLOtoOdF88/s320/IMG_1107.JPG" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /> <p></p><div><br /></div><div>They come and they go, leave and return, sometimes travelling huge distances, scything through the air before arriving at a familiar site, arriving for food, warmth, safety and comfort. They are mysteriously drawn to the place they knew first, where they learned to fly, to swim, to crawl. They can travel through darkness, cold and heat. Then, in this place of ancient memory their offspring are imprinted with the knowledge of the same journey and will be able to navigate the same complex route, following the patterns of the stars, the smell of the rivers, the temperatures of the changing seasons, the many other chemical and geo-physical factors involved, most of them still mysterious. Here, in this special place they too will realise the importance of familiarity, the value of sanctuary. In turn so will their offspring. And so on, through the generations.</div><div><br /></div><div>I live quite close to the river Severn, near to a place where a special route is being created to enable returning salmon to continue their journey from the cool waters of the Atlantic ocean, upstream to their spawning ground in the middle of this country. There, often in the exact place where they hatched, they lay their eggs. As the eggs develop into infant smolts the tiny fish leave their freshwater spawning grounds. Their bodies develop the ability to live in salt water as they begin their journey back to the sea. A form of adolescence perhaps? After several years of travelling huge distances in the oceans many adult salmon return to the exact location of their hatching place. Where they die creating more life, but I don't need to emphasise that bit.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes, not quite so often in the last few years, I can watch and hear the screaming aerobatics of house martins, swifts and swallows who have flown thousands of miles to raise their families here, then to return the youngsters to warmth for winter. In turn their off-spring will make the same annual journey from the heat of Africa and Southern Europe to raise their own young in the cool, damp, insect-rich British countryside. They have left now, as the nights grow cool at the equinox. Not all of them will make it back to their warm holiday homes, many will die, young and old during the course of their extraordinary and perilous travelling.</div><div><br /></div><div>The frogs hop back to the garden pond where they were hatched. They know where they are in the garden. They know the good, soggy hiding places. They know all about the Spring Frog-Fest, the noise and spluttering excitement, and the tadpoles know too. They come back and join in the next year or so. Those that the heron and the grass snake haven't met.</div><div><br /></div><div>The family raised in the house come back too, equally attracted by familiarity, comfort, memories and usually at least three puddings at lunch-time. Their offspring are (and hopefully will be in the case of the yet-to-be-met little one) familiar with every bit of this house and garden. They know where their parents' old toys are kept, the best hiding places, the incline where a plastic motorbike can roar down-hill, the warmth of the stone seat beside the pond, and where all the really good books are (answer: in every room).</div><div><br /></div><div>Like the swallows and martins and swifts, their visits have been diminished this year, and the little one hasn't been here at all. But migration is a part of life for all of us, and the going is as significant as the returning.</div><div>Part of life and death.</div>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-84000195257595206822020-08-28T16:36:00.006+01:002020-08-28T18:22:12.196+01:00Coming Out<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirN87U8abCAGYcO6hNNTRqsWqa50RHbFyekEeoWLl07WYuzZLQTLs4Xwa0reDPgvw3XlWsH4EslFiOgeqKTtPcJe5Z_c-FnJqMRmUQECHty2h1WFqXuQZIqIyYoyFRga-MuJ0qDbFdhMDU/s2048/IMG_1105water+lilies.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirN87U8abCAGYcO6hNNTRqsWqa50RHbFyekEeoWLl07WYuzZLQTLs4Xwa0reDPgvw3XlWsH4EslFiOgeqKTtPcJe5Z_c-FnJqMRmUQECHty2h1WFqXuQZIqIyYoyFRga-MuJ0qDbFdhMDU/s640/IMG_1105water+lilies.JPG" /></a></div><br /> </div><p> </p><p>Rain drips steadily in the garden, although sometimes it thumps down. I have been steadily dripping inside the house too, also coughing and feeling unwell and miserable and alone and wishing someone, anyone. could come and make me a cup of tea. But they can't. So I do it myself and not tea either, but one of those lemon-type drinks with various medications that help you feel a bit better. Eventually.</p><p>I haven't really ventured out of my rather rigid degree of isolation, and now I'm back in it because I realise that I might be infected and infectious. Then I also realise that any time any of us gets a common-or-garden cold we are going to think, 'This is it! The end is nigh! One of those dreadful things with prongs all over it got through the holes in the face mask even though I have never been closer than a metre to anyone since this whole business began, let alone for more than fifteen minutes.'</p><p>Coming out of lock-down is hard to do. Harder than going into it, because at least we all knew where we stood on that. I don't want to know how long it has been, but I can measure it by the age of my youngest grandson, and he is now a bit more than six months old. We have not been able to meet yet. In earlier times I was sort-of joking about hoping to meet him before he starts school. That wasn't funny at the time, and now it's even less funny because it becomes a realistic situation.</p><p>There was a fragment of chance a week or so ago, but it evaporated rapidly because I got very cold feet about going through Heathrow and getting on a plane. The cold feet are not for my own sake, but out of a deep mistrust of almost any of the so-called safety conditions in this country. I am in the much-at-risk category, and my fear is of picking up infection during the journey and transporting it to members of the family who are otherwise safe and well in a country where rules are clear and (mostly) obeyed. In England they are neither.</p><p>This account is not strictly true, either. There have been two occasions when family members in this country have visited here for the day, and one recent occasion when I visited them and stayed overnight. All these visits were made after much thought and discussion, and with young children firmly in mind. We needed to see each other, and I had been self-isolated here for weeks on end so that I would not pose any risk to them.</p><p>As an accredited at-risk oldie I think it is my duty to be as well-informed as possible about the risk factors, and then to make the best decision I can in any situation. There are risks in close contact with young children who are at Nursery and playing with a variety of other friends, but what are the risks to them of not seeing their only grand-parent or, much worse, thinking their only grand-parent may not want to see them?</p><p>The only way to stay safe may be to stay in lock-down isolation, disinfect every scrap of food and wash your hands every time you touch anything. Being born is probably the most dangerous thing we ever do because the whole of life from then on is beset with perils, some much worse and more likely than others. Perhaps instead of wishing each other to 'take care' we should be saying 'take risks', small ones that we've thought about and balanced against the other odds, but risks all the same.</p><p>And then we should go out and dance in the puddles, socially-distanced and silent.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-6206554730389472922020-08-09T11:21:00.006+01:002020-08-09T14:19:16.769+01:00Notes from a Very Small Corner.<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPxjBvmGRjgTkS6_R3wWhIUuhUZZ_r1MFj7qBFAAEm6-hzYlIcIjhdLPjbtP60wUldfhRG1ZR8dOZly9Cix9XuyevCVMJjCGEEm30mwqJJ8Be5qIihnz_-kereJY-LCPhODHCf8OOINeuA/s2048/Red+sky+at+night.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPxjBvmGRjgTkS6_R3wWhIUuhUZZ_r1MFj7qBFAAEm6-hzYlIcIjhdLPjbtP60wUldfhRG1ZR8dOZly9Cix9XuyevCVMJjCGEEm30mwqJJ8Be5qIihnz_-kereJY-LCPhODHCf8OOINeuA/s2048/Red+sky+at+night.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPxjBvmGRjgTkS6_R3wWhIUuhUZZ_r1MFj7qBFAAEm6-hzYlIcIjhdLPjbtP60wUldfhRG1ZR8dOZly9Cix9XuyevCVMJjCGEEm30mwqJJ8Be5qIihnz_-kereJY-LCPhODHCf8OOINeuA/s2048/Red+sky+at+night.JPG" style="display: inline; padding: 1em 0px;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPxjBvmGRjgTkS6_R3wWhIUuhUZZ_r1MFj7qBFAAEm6-hzYlIcIjhdLPjbtP60wUldfhRG1ZR8dOZly9Cix9XuyevCVMJjCGEEm30mwqJJ8Be5qIihnz_-kereJY-LCPhODHCf8OOINeuA/s2048/Red+sky+at+night.JPG" style="display: inline; padding: 1em 0px;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOvEcS74samLPaPeKh4On7yci4FgWaariDguWDTWFEB09f3jR2xRctMU-jdp2wAMtyk_ze_w2CLK-juYH5MPdnhJAABrHjoUL11ihj5rK7yJ5MS0f0qgNJP8FkGa5I1mfbUMmIEO2b-aYq/s2048/Red+sky+at+night.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOvEcS74samLPaPeKh4On7yci4FgWaariDguWDTWFEB09f3jR2xRctMU-jdp2wAMtyk_ze_w2CLK-juYH5MPdnhJAABrHjoUL11ihj5rK7yJ5MS0f0qgNJP8FkGa5I1mfbUMmIEO2b-aYq/s640/Red+sky+at+night.JPG" width="640" /></a></div> </div><p><br /></p><p>Surprisingly early in the evening the light begins to fade. The little puffs of cloud balancing above the hills turn pink and apricot before they melt in the haze. The hills darken to deep lilac.</p><p>What happened?</p><p>I've only just had lunch, with a friend, in the garden, socially distanced, behaving properly, keeping the rules....and another day has gone, whizzed by, apparently almost empty yet full of very small, mostly unrelated incidents. It is a recognised fact that the perception of time changes with age. It speeds up. It really does. </p><p>For the next week or so I'm following a regime of eye-drops every four hours. This is for the second life-enhancing cataract surgery. I do the eye drops, go out into the garden, look at some things growing, watch a few birds sunbathing unwisely on a slate roof in 30 degrees of heat, go back in, top up the water-baths in the garden and indicate to the birds that they should use them, make a cup of coffee, look at the clock.....and it's time for the eye drops again. What happened?</p><p>Nothing and everything hasn't happened, and goes on not happening here in Middle England. Here most of us are keeping the rules (when we can work out what they are), wearing masks, washing our hands, sanitising ourselves and not cuddling each other. The heat may have made some of us reckless, but not me.</p><p>Being good is not all it's cracked up to be. I have ventured into two shops now that I'm allowed to do so. I've been into the cafe in M&S, partly because I can, mostly because I'm hoping to see another elderly, rule-abiding citizen attempting to drink a large filtered coffee while wearing a mask. No luck so far. You have to find your entertainment in very tiny doses these day. I do, anyway.</p><p>In this small corner of a small town near to some large hills I like to see the avoidance techniques on my daily walks. The sashaying on and off narrow pavements, the darting into the nearest gateway, the dilemma of eye contact - wanted or not? The protocol of the mask, worn when driving alone in the car? Worn above or below the nose? Removed in order to speak to someone wearing a hearing aid? Kept available at all times by being round the neck? Not worn because you say you don't like it and you can't breathe properly? Neither can infected people, strangely enough, but perhaps you haven't thought of that? Designer-made, home-made, reusable, colour co-ordinated? I await the arrival of sponsored masks bearing adverts.</p><p>When I'm not venturing out, looking for diversion of the very mildest Covid-controlled form I'm at home, watching my vegetables. I have not grown vegetables previously, and now I have four plants, given to me as small, helpless infant seedlings by a neighbour on a suitably distanced and sanitised day in early Lock-Down.</p><p>Four! Two different tomato plants, a cucumber and a courgette. I cossetted them into adolescence and then I watched their adult struggles for space in a small border. If I could do this on a time lapse I would see the fights, the pushing and shoving and elbowing of each other. The thuggery that goes on in a vegetable plot. The fight for light, for food, for life from any source, at any expense to anyone else. Gosh, it's powerful stuff! The cucumber is making a desperate climb up the fence, hauling itself out of the melee with its initially soft tendrils that can cling like metal within a few days. The courgette had experienced a death-defying struggle against a determined and destructive enemy until I found one huge viscous and vicious invader tucked beneath its prickled leaves, ready to pounce as darkness fell. But I got there, just in time and the slug and its bloated orange under-belly met a sticky end. Ha! How satisfying a squelch was that!</p><p>Now that I appreciate the emotional impact of vegetable growing I shall need to do it again. Until I've finished the eye-drops I mustn't bend or lift, so other parts of the garden are getting a bit over-run, but with my new brilliant eyes and action-packed fleeting days I can do a great many other satisfying things. Sorry about the slug to those who care about such things, but all is unfair in love and gardening.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-37466697414667300772020-06-14T16:10:00.004+01:002020-06-16T08:47:26.358+01:00Back in the Saddle?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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After so many, many weeks of being a virtual Granny there is at last some chance of being a real one: a Granny with hair like a gone-to-seed dandelion, but one who can still cook and read stories and make people laugh. One who can also hide miniature picnics in unexpected places, find (and possibly even write) notes from fairies and, more importantly, keep the house and garden entirely familiar for children who haven't seen the place for a long time.<br />
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Cheerful, noisy, happy life returned just for the day yesterday. In no time at all the garden buildings had become a den, a shop and a stable. The whole garden became a village, a farm, a jungle, a road down to a different village and a pond-side exploration place.<br />
"The sound of this little fountain is so relaxing", said Grand-Daughter as she scampered past. Towards the end of a long play session the rockery, now a carpet of wonderfully scented English Pinks, was also discovered to be somewhere you could relax for a few seconds and think about anything you liked. Secret paths, hiding places, concealed doors leading to even more secrets were rediscovered and invented.<br />
Grandson Senior remembered his plastic motor-bike and roared down an adrenaline-boosting slope with his knees under his chin. He has grown a lot in recent weeks. Then he mastered my sound-system in order to play his nursery rhyme CD, and had more fun than seemed possible, washing his hands with extremely slippery soap.<br />
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All the work of maintaining this time-consuming place becomes so wonderfully worthwhile. What else has there been to do in the last three months, and how incredibly fortunate I am to have such a place. Even more fortunate to have the grandchildren to let loose in it.<br />
Some day Grandson Junior will come and have a go too, but at the moment he's having his first holiday beside a lake in Austria, where hotels are open and people have much more freedom to move about.<br />
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Some things I didn't get right. The rabbit who unexpectedly came for her birthday party was not provided with a carrot cake. I didn't know it was the rabbit's birthday. How un-Granny-like is that? But surely even a toy rabbit should be able to understand that I can't just go shopping, that I haven't been shopping for three months, that I wouldn't even know what you're supposed to do in a shop these days.<br />
Have I got carrots in the garden? No, I've got raspberries though. Rabbits like raspberries. Have a bowl and pick some raspberries. Oh, your brother has eaten them, and your Mummy has scoffed a few as well? Oh dear. But as a special treat in warm weather have some frozen peas in your bowl. Yummy!<br />
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I'm still not getting it quite right. The horse who has been left in my care came with a list of feeding, grooming and exercise instructions. You can see it lounging about over the stable door. I haven't fulfilled all the requirements, but the horse hasn't either. I needed the manure for the garden.Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-79636443831952265332020-05-10T11:57:00.000+01:002020-05-10T16:39:20.106+01:00Letter to a (nearly) Three Month Old.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Dear New Grandson,<br />
Not quite so new, but we haven't met, and it will be some time before we manage it.<br />
You are a long way away, but it doesn't seem like it because your parents are so good at keeping in touch by e-mail, Skype and telephone. So I saw you a few minutes after you were born and I saw you having your first cuddles with your parents.<br />
Your Canadian Granny came to meet you and was able to go with you to your new home in Austria, but then this pandemic (which I hope you'll never need to know about) also arrived and changed all our lives. Canadian Granny had a complex and stressful journey back to Canada to rejoin the rest of your family there. And I, who should have been walking in Alpine pastures with you now, can't go anywhere.<br />
All that matters is that you are safe and well, amid blue skies and snow-capped mountains and both parents with you. An especial bonus for you is that your Daddy, who normally spends a big part of his life in extensive business travel, isn't able to go anywhere either, so the three of you can spend lots of time together.<br />
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It's Mothers' Day in Austria today, so guess what? Your're going on a sunny walk in your sling, and you'll all have a picnic somewhere beautiful. You'll be so full of clean mountain air that you'll sleep well all night - and that's an excellent Mother's Day gift. What a good job you've got your new sunglasses. The light is strong and clear up in those mountains, and those splendid specs can be used when you start skiing, which will probably be as soon as you start walking.<br />
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All your English family will meet you as soon as it's safe to do so. Your three-year-old cousin will be so pleased to have another boy in the family. He looks at your photos and says you are just so cute. I wonder if he's seen this one, taken yesterday? He's going to want sun-glasses just like yours, and I think he'll be keen to ski, too. There will be a time you can do it together. For good measure you can teach both your cousins here to speak German, because you'll be doing that as well. You can bet they'll come and see you as soon as they can.<br />
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You'll be off to Canada. You'll be travelling all over the place,<br />
So much to learn, so much to do, so much adventure and happiness in store for you. In the meantime stay safe and content in your peaceful little life.<br />
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I'll really see you one of these days.<br />
With love from Granny.<br />
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<br />Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-83302966423073973432020-05-03T11:06:00.000+01:002020-05-04T08:02:53.319+01:00Challenges and The Joy of Paper-Shredding<br />
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Here I am, at the start of the seventh week of a total isolation from the world outside my house and garden, I thought I knew these places better than I have ever known anything - every unfurling leaf of ground elder, every uneven stone slab, every bit of chipped paint. Then I find a lost world in the back of a very roomy wardrobe, hidden beneath the flowing skirts of evening dresses. Evening dresses? Will there ever be a world in which one dresses up to go out in an evening? Was there ever such a world?<br />
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Yes, there was once such a world where people dressed up and went out, really went out beyond the front gate. Went out into the road, round the corner, under the bridge, up the hill, into the town. How intimidating is that? When you are put into a category labelled as 'elderly vulnerable' perhaps you start to believe it. You can believe it or you can go out and spend a couple of hours heaving compost from one bin into another and then get out the step-ladder and start pruning.<br />
I choose the latter option.<br />
I also move some furniture and explore the four big metal document cases in the back of the<br />
wardrobe. It's a struggle getting them out. And then I remember why they are there. If I don't sort them now, who will?<br />
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Many years ago, shortly after my husband died, I attempted to sort the many, many documents in these cases. I couldn't face it at the time and so I put them well out of sight, underneath the long dresses and waxed coats and even one of my husband's suits.<br />
Last week the prolonged spell of glorious weather gave way to cool and welcome rain, so I spent the greater part of three days sorting, classifying and shredding huge quantities of paper, hand-written, printed, drawn on, formal, informal. Records of lives that are over and cannot now be revived, but also some things that should be preserved for family, near and far.<br />
We will all change during this strange period. I will have a different sort of garden, a tidier house, a clearer mind, however tough it may be to achieve. So many challenges.<br />
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My grand-daughter and I set each other challenges via Skype. A couple of days ago we played a new board game. One of us was a virus, the other a bar of soap. I was the soap. I won. Thank goodness for that!<br />
We played Hangman, which was not easy as one of us is not very good at spelling more complex words, and that's really tricky with Hangman, ("Are you sure you've got seven letters with only one vowel?" "Oh, wait a minute I'll ask Mum......actually there's an 'A' there and an 'E' at the end." "That makes a bit of a difference!") Then we tried some Origami. Skype is not ideal for Origami, at least not when you're seven (and a half).<br />
My three (and a half) year old grandson sets me challenges to read <i>Postman Pat</i> books via Skype until my voice gives out. He lies back on the sofa, a nice soft blanket to hand in case he fancies a nap, a snack also to hand and says, "Go on Granny. Read <i>Postman Pat's Messy Day</i> next." I set him a challenge not to simply switch me off when he's had enough, but to say goodbye first. Switching off Granny is a powerful thing!<br />
And now eleven-week old grandson sets me a challenge to ensure that I remain well enough to meet him, hopefully before he's walking, and certainly before he starts school. At the moment he can smile and possibly wave at a snowy haired blob on the screen, which is a great achievement.<br />
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Change for us all, with special thanks to Skype, Zoom, family and friends, and paper-shredders everywhere.<br />
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<br />Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-52271835020196020442020-03-27T14:19:00.000+00:002020-03-27T14:25:56.835+00:00Staying as Positive as Possible..<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Unfortunately I've had the official document informing me I'm in the top risk category for being very ill indeed if I contact the corona virus. I thought I'd escaped that level and although being self-isolated I have been enjoying daily walks in the sunshine, Now I can't leave home for twelve weeks at least.<br />
So I think 'thank goodness for my garden'. I can go out there to exercise, to read, to sit and make phone calls, to pull up weeds, to sit and stare into space, to listen to the birds. Thank goodness for a safe isolated space.<br />
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Thank goodness for the technology that enables me to be in contact with my family. Yesterday we managed a three-way Skype between Austria, Bristol and here, so that we could all see children and adults and hills and mountains and Austrian goats and a naked three year old Grandson leaping about in his paddling pool. (Yes, it's been as warm as that in England.)<br />
My Grand-daughter and I can set each other daily challenges and tasks, and I can read stories to the<br />
three year-old when he is not in his pool. (He won't be after today. The weather is about to change).<br />
My new Grandson will probably be crawling before we meet, and this is a considerable sadness. But I must not let it be that. All that matters, for all of us, is that we can stay safe in the hope that we will meet again eventually.<br />
Thank goodness for my friends and neighbours who so kindly think of me and offer so much support with shopping. Community, friends, neighbourhoods are the building blocks of life. I realise it more every day.<br />
I realise I appreciate everything more. There's so much more time to think. My natural inclination has always been to work from silence, and now I have an abundance of it. I turn back to writing - not that I've ever turned away from it, but the silence feeds creativity.<br />
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So my garden sits here, in today's sunshine. Always I find something to do. I go out there with a cup of coffee, notice a weed and before I know it an hour has passed enjoyably and beneficially. If it's raining there's the summerhouse with comfortable chairs and still more reading material. In the house there's a modicum of housework, both by inclination and because there's only me in it. There's cooking which I normally enjoy, and must try to do so. There's music, there's excellent service by BBC radio. Oh, yes, there's television too.<br />
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In addition to this I have offered to return to do support work for the local Hospice. I retired from there last summer, but I want to do whatever I can from home by telephone to help again. They are struggling and the struggle will get worse.<br />
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Coping with such severe restriction is a challenge, but so is the whole of life for almost all of us in these unexpected and frightening times.<br />
I am following the rather daunting NHS document fully, including the instruction to pack a hospital bag and have it ready to go. This form of isolation is the most positive thing I can do, not for self-preservation as is so often thought, but to prevent an eighty-year old from needing equipment that a much younger person might need.<br />
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The motto throughout the country is to stay at home, support the National Health Service, save a life.<br />
We must all do it.<br />
And stay positive.Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-62693165133881660402020-02-21T14:27:00.000+00:002020-02-21T18:22:36.743+00:00Under the Quilt.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Here is my very new grandson; four days old, newly arrived home in Berlin and tucked up under the quilt. It seems to be working well, as is he. I like to think he's smiling, but my son doesn't think so, not just yet. Many other people are though, in several continents.<br />
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This little one is half Canadian, with a Canadian mother and a whole family of grand-parents, aunts, uncles and a baby cousin in parts of Canada, including Alaska. He has a British family, an uncle, aunt and two cousins, plus a Granny who might turn out to be an Oma because he'll be mostly living in Austria and will be bilingual. He has lots of relatives in New Zealand too because his father has dual nationality.<br />
I am deeply grateful for Skype and e-mail, because he will be a widely travelling infant; a citizen of the world already. Apparently his passport is on its way.<br />
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<i>A digression - what about those infant passports, issued before teeth emerge and valid for so many years? I remember airport officials being bemused by grand-daughter a couple of years ago, receiving a passport showing a glumly suspicious, wispy-haired baby and being confronted by an all-singing all-dancing little girl with a cascade of golden curls. Confusing for the authorities?</i><br />
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Three grand-children, how amazing. What a wonderful bonus in the life of an eighty year old.<br />
Some time ago I almost arranged to have a tattoo reading (DNR - Do Not Resuscitate) in a conspicuous place. (Possibly also PTO on the reverse in case I was found the wrong way up). I didn't do that, but I did wear a bracelet with the same message when I was driving on my own. I had some medical issues and an absolute dread of being a nuisance to the family.<br />
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I don't wear it any more. I don't even know where it is.<br />
I'd rather like to stick around a bit longer and see what happens next.<br />
Thank you, grand-children for giving me a whole new reason for living.<br />
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Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-62721345965640192832020-02-01T15:06:00.000+00:002020-02-01T16:24:40.133+00:00Let there be Light!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What a good job I finished this quilt for my new grandchild while I was still very, very short-sighted.<br />
I used my shortsightedness to the maximum, sitting with the needle and thread almost touching my nose. It kept me occupied while I couldn't drive. I couldn't see in glare or low light levels, couldn't see as far as my feet (I'm tall) so that I fell over quite a bit, couldn't see unless there was really sharp contrast, couldn't distinguish colours.<br />
This had been happening slowly over a long time, so I didn't realise how bad my sight had become until a few months ago when it suddenly deteriorated a great deal, leaving me in the gloom of an English winter.<br />
Cataracts, slowly creeping and clouding both eyes, cutting out the light, distorting the vision.<br />
But so insidiously.<br />
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Three days ago I had the first surgery on my worst eye. My optician referred me to a new Eye Hospital in Birmingham - <a href="http://www.spamedica.co.uk/">this one</a> . It does work for both the National Health Service and private patients, and there are several SpaMedica hospitals in the UK.<br />
I was very squeamish about anything to do with eyes, especially my own. I couldn't talk about what was happening, what was likely to happen. I couldn't even think about it.<br />
Please note the past tense<br />
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Had I been referred to a local hospital there would have been several months to wait for the assessment, and a great deal longer to wait for surgery, by which time I think I would have had little sight left. SpaMedica gave me appointments for an assessment in three weeks, and surgery six weeks after that.<br />
Everything was explained so clearly and carefully, the web-site and booklets they produce were so informative, the people I met during assessment so friendly and positive that I was no longer gibbering about eye-balls<br />
I came home and finished the quilt in semi-darkness. I fell over again in the garden, and tripped on an invisible obstruction on a busy pavement. The car was immobilised and my son came and took it for a ride the top up the battery. I told people what was happening and was able to describe the surgery to interested Granddaughter. The time went quickly.<br />
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Just three days ago I returned to SpaMedica. I was there for about four hours, much of the time being taken up with eye-drops. Then I had surgery which lasted fifteen minutes .I felt a very small amount of pressure, but nothing more than that. I saw bright light and a bit of swirling colour from under the plastic shroud over my face. Then I had a cup of tea and was brought back home with a party bag of eye-drops and sterile gauze.<br />
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Next morning my vision was blurred. By the next day it was blurred but brighter. On the third day.....WOW! My bedroom walls are bluish-white, not the sort of yellowish-beige I've lived with for a while. I had no idea my dressing gown was <i>that</i> colour. I could see the floor. I could see birds in the trees, neighbours in their gardens.<br />
Outside I could see where the pavement ended and the road began - always a useful thing to know, but something that had eluded me in recent weeks. I could read car number plates.<br />
I walked to the optician and had one lens removed from my spectacles. I have to keep the other lens for the untreated sepia eye. I booked my post-op examination, and I'm hoping for referral for the second eye as soon as possible.<br />
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Years ago patients were immobilised after cataract surgery, their heads fixed by sand-bags for weeks.<br />
Today this procedure is one of the miracles of modern surgery, changing lives, restoring dignity and independence to those who could so easily lose it.<br />
My most grateful thanks to all those involved in this process.<br />
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And I'm just waiting for someone to go under the quilt now.Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-86880743931760815382019-12-31T12:12:00.003+00:002019-12-31T12:12:51.439+00:00Happy New Year.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The party's over!<br />
Not just Christmas, but a three-day event to mark a milestone for me - an 80th birthday. To have a separate birthday celebration is a wonderful thing. Those born just before or just after or even exactly at Christmas will know what I mean - the combined Christmas and birthday presents, the excuses of the shops being too full or empty or closed. Galling for a child, understandable (of course) to an adult, but how lovely to have a special day for oneself. Even tougher for me as a child because no less than four generations in my family shared the same birthday, Great Grandfather, Grandfather, Uncle and me. Whatever was going on nine months earlier in this family?<br />
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Both my sons were born in January, both in the midst of severe and prolonged snow storms, so we tried to ensure that they had mid-summer celebrations with half a birthday cake each.The midsummer celebration was reintroduced this year by my elder son, and may be continued in 2020. However, the January birthdays remain an excellent example of family planning as the things they had hoped for at Christmas were so often half-price in the January sales.<br />
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I had a very happy gathering of friends and family for my 70th birthday, which seems only a couple of years ago. The one thing I never appreciated until now is that how ever crumbling the external body appears the inner person remains at an optimum age. My optimum age is 28 and I'm still there inside, even when I struggle to get out of a chair or fall over in the garden.<br />
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My grandchildren know my true inner age and give me huge encouragement in being silly, making up ridiculous songs and poems, telling nonsensicle stories and generally acting as if I'm closer to their age than my own. This birthday was with family, coming from far and wide, including a soon-to-be born grandchild whose rest was disturbed quite a bit by cousins wanting to feel a kick and to invite him/her to come out soon. In beautiful weather we all went up on the hills here, and I haven't done that for a long time. Back at home I did no washing up at all Three-year old Grandson entertained us (and probably a few neighbours) on his drum kit (thanks to Uncle) and some of us might have snoozed slightly in front of a log fire.<br />
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Now they are all back in their own places, or almost so for the long-distance ones, and the year slides into a misty end and into a future that is likely to be as messy as my kitchen.<br />
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Muddles can be cleaned, confusions can be clarified. For all of us apparently small things, encouragement to get up the hill and a hand wielding a tea-towel can mean a very great deal.<br />
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Happy New Year to all with the real hope for peace and goodwill.<br />
<br />Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-48087243765517452292019-09-12T12:33:00.000+01:002019-09-12T16:55:50.484+01:00Pirates in the Kitchen (also Mermaids).<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(<i>A bedtime story for grandchildren who are now three, about to be seven, and getting ready to be born next year.)</i></div>
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Far away where the mermaids sing the pirates sailed their raft. It was made of clear glass, and it was round.</div>
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The pirates, three of them, shouted a lot and waved their weapons about and pushed each other and nearly fell off their little glass raft. They made a great deal of noise and fuss.</div>
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And deeper under the raft the mermaids saw an awful lot of agitation and heaving about and wafted themselves over to see what was happening. Mermaids swim slowly, wafting their tails up and down. They are not built for speed, like a shark, and they usually carry their hairdressing stuff and a small mirror so that they can be sure they are looking lovely all the time. </div>
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When they (there were seven of them) got near to the churning whiteness and heard all the shouting they said, 'Oh dear. Pirates again!' and they flopped themselves up on to the glass raft. They took out their combs and brushes and little mirrors from their vanity cases and sat there, combing their hair.<br />
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The pirates were shocked into silence, mostly because their raft was tilting heavily to one side, with all the mermaids sitting there.<br />
Ivo, the pirate with the silver sword cleared his throat.<br />
"Ahem, ladies," he said. "Would you mind spreading out a bit? You're making our raft tilt, and we don't want to fall off ."<br />
"Can't you swim?" said one mermaid. She had long fair hair, just as mermaids should.<br />
"That's not important," Ivo said, and all the mermaids laughed. All seven of them.<br />
"Not important?" said the blonde mermaid. "Not important? Not important? Are you mad? Fooling about on a little glass raft, pushing each other, shouting and fighting - and you can't swim?"<br />
And all the mermaids combed their hair and tossed it about and laughed and laughed.<br />
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Now there's something that pirates really don't like, and that is being laughed at. Mermaids don't like it either. Well, no one does really.<br />
"Swimming is not important," said Ivo. "What is important is not falling off the raft, because if you fall off....."<br />
But he didn't have the chance to finish, because all the mermaids hooted with laughter and shouted, "You'll drown, you'll drown! The fish will eat you!"<br />
"How can you drown on the kitchen work-top?" said Ivo, and this time all the pirates hooted and laughed. Peg-Leg the politically incorrect pirate laughed so much he lost his balance, fell off the raft and slid down the back of the storage jar on the kitchen work-top.<br />
The mermaids.put down their combs and mirrors and looked around.<br />
"Oh!" they said, all of them. "Oh, oh and oh! We didn't see this one coming!"<br />
"It's ok" shouted Peg-Leg from behind the storage jar. "We're all going to a birthday tea. Two birthday teas actually. One for pirates, one for mermaids. It'll be fine."<br />
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Just then Granny came into the kitchen. "I'm sure I had three pirates for the top of the cake", she said. "Who's messing about now?"<br />
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And early next year there will be another birthday, a day of birth, and the eaters of this year's birthday cakes will have a new little cousin to join the celebrations, someone to teach about dinosaurs and stars and beetles, never mind pirates and mermaids.<br />
Such a lot to look forward to, for all of us.<br />
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Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-15260265990061338942019-06-10T08:01:00.001+01:002019-06-12T20:14:08.972+01:00Letter to a Grandson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Dear Grandson,</div>
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You last appeared in this blog sitting in your high chair, waving a piece of asparagus around before eating it. You're still likely to be doing that, because the exploration of food in all its forms is one of your favourite activities. But you've done so many other things, of course, during the past two years. The rate at which you're racing along you'll soon be able to read this for yourself, so here's something for you. </div>
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We had breakfast together yesterday, while your parents and big sister caught up on some sleep. You gave me your suggestions, "Hoops and milk, and strawberries? Yes, strawberries. On the Peter Rabbit plate. Yes. And milk in my cup. Yes?"</div>
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I said, "I haven't got Hoops. I've got other cereals, look".</div>
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You looked in the cupboard and said, "That one, and that one - oh, and that one".</div>
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"Choose just one", I said, so you chose with an air of disappointment, and scooted across to the fridge.</div>
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"Cheese!" you said, opening it. "Just a small snack. Cheese!"</div>
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We settled on cereal, strawberries, milk in a cup, with toast and marmalade for me.</div>
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"Granny, the same as Paddington Bear!" you said, while slurping cereal. "Ha, ha, ha. That's funny!"</div>
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Things are indeed funny, and often cause robust, hooting mirth. You throw back your head and roar, ROAR with laughter. My ears ring with it. While we eat we attempt to watch the infant sparrows being fed by their parents on the bird table. When you see them land you shout, "BIRDS - out there!" and laugh as they take off. The infant sparrows have a meagre breakfast.</div>
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Other members of the family appear, and you shout to tell them what you're eating, what you might eat next, what you might do next. When you've finished the second and third courses of your breakfast you climb on your stool next to the sink for me to more-or-less hose you down. I wash your tummy and your back for good measure. This is hilarious and you nearly fall off the stool. This is so funny, so uproariously funny that you can hardly stay upright.</div>
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You go off into another room, where the toys your sister played houses and families with are now marshalled into an army. The little people and even the dogs ride motor-bikes with enormously vocal engines. They are packed into the cars and boats that your sister used to take them for holidays, but now they are roaring around the floor, colliding and tipping.</div>
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Your sister joins you and makes a pet show on the roof of one of the houses, carefully arranging animals in size order. But the army helicopter takes off, one low swerve sending the animals spinning away. There are screams and tears and adult intervention.</div>
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Recently there was a dispute about whose Granny I am. You shouted, "MY Granny", and she said, "Actually, she's my Granny first because I was born first." "I'M first!" you said, and the argument went on for some time until I intervened and eventually we all went out into the garden.</div>
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Your relationship with your sister is wonderful for you both, although it may not always seem that way to you. She encourages you in the sort of behaviour she finds hilarious, she teaches you so much, she occasionally puts boundaries in place for you, and of course, there are real disputes at times. You always want to know where she is, what she's doing, and are concerned if she's not available. It's mutual. You teach her how to share, how to understand differences, how to make allowances, how to weather the storms.</div>
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Luckily you love books and music almost as much as you love food. You can curl up with a good book by yourself, and you love to be read to, knowing many of your favourite books and joining in the key phrases. You know how to relax, and you love a dose of comfort. You spread yourself across my big bed, sinking into a pile of pillows, hands behind your head, legs crossed at the ankles. "Aaaah, comfy." you say. </div>
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Your whole family does yoga.</div>
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So here you are in my garden, on top of Flower Mountain. Flowers are not really your sort of thing unless they have big fat bumble bees in them. Another bit of the garden that you call 'The Jungle' is your sort of place. It has been made like a jungle specially for you and your sister. There are tall bamboos and tropical looking plants and a tractor tyre which was going to be a sandpit, but you have decided it's a boat. Yesterday you rowed the boat in the jungle and told me you found monkeys and parrots and elephants and tigers. </div>
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What a great world you inhabit, Small Grandson.</div>
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Enjoy it all,</div>
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With love from your AND your sister's Granny.</div>
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Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430310340733122486.post-86081749737693826152018-12-18T12:08:00.001+00:002018-12-18T12:14:23.651+00:00Not Always on the 25th.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We flouted convention yet again this year.<br />
Christmas celebrations happened here at the weekend, with turkey (and vegetarian options) stuffings and sauces and sprouts, lots of puddings with brandy cream, smart crackers (the sort you pull) full of good jokes and gold hats and really useful things like teeny screwdrivers and measuring spoons. There were flashing lights and tinsel, clementines and good cheeses, mince pies, pigs-in-blankets and there is a Christmas cake that I had completely forgotten, still sitting there.<br />
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Father Christmas managed to deliver during the afternoon via the very small Victorian fireplace in my bedroom. The smaller members of the family had some great gifts, including a very surprising toy lobster. Older members played with the new toys, read the new books and built a spectacular marble run.<br />
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In the evening half the family went back to their new home, having moved into it last week and needing to unpack a few dozen more big boxes. The other half, who had travelled huge distances to be here, stayed on, built an even bigger marble run and also ran themselves up the Malvern Hills. They left after another couple of days to help hose down elephants in Thailand - among other wonderful things.<br />
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My husband would not have been happy with this flouting of church routine. His life was largely controlled by such concerns and we all supported him in this. But this is another change in my life since his death that I totally accept. Life in widowhood presents so many changes, and my family members lead very different lives. I have also experienced different Christmas celebrations at different times, including a Russian Orthodox Christmas on January 6th. I try to stay flexible in every way.<br />
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So I am here, home largely alone, while so many others are panic-buying in the retail park. It's a warm and comforting feeling that I've done my best for the family and if I fancy a cheese sandwich for Christmas dinner I can have exactly that.<br />
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Very happy, peaceful Christmas to you all, where ever and when ever you celebrate.<br />
<br />Relatively Retiringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07648407316162715318noreply@blogger.com19