Sunday 21st December

Well I'm not going to write anything about Mum, because it's all personal kind of stuff. We're still all coming to terms with it, and trying to cope with the very idea of Christmas which frankly feels odd. We're having it at home, in Mum's home that is, the last time we'll have a 'family' home to have things like Christmas in. Anytime after this, it's going to be celebrating at a specific family member's home, rather than the family home, so it's sort of momentous and incredibly sad. Yet I'm determined not to get swept away by all this, life is for living and I think also Mum would get very upset if she thought we couldn't cope with this. After all, she spent so much of her life trying to bring us up to cope with anything life might throw at us, and ok, the big test thing is here - now we are all truly adults, we have no parents left and it leaves you feeling quite strange. I feel stupidly small, for all that I'm fifty years old.
Anyhow, just to throw something else into the mix, this year, fate has seen fit to give me - yep, you guessed it, a winter bug. Not the vomiting variety, no ho, I almost feel I could cope with that. No, it's the other variety, which means I've not been able to get out of the house for any time, or distance since about three weeks ago. Or at least that's what it feels like. Every one's Christmas presents have been grabbed off a shelf in Sainsbury's in a flying visit - either that, or off a website of some kind (happily everything has arrived!) and I have stuff from the doctor to use in extremis. So come either later on Tuesday, or Weds, my sister and I are going to go do the Xmas shopping - the food shopping that is, at a nice local supermarket with facilities! Now I know you're all out there, shaking your heads at that appalling thought - I'm intending to buy food and cook it whilst suffering from this? Well yes. I've spoken to the Doctor. I've checked it all out. I have the largest quantity of germ destroying hand sprays, cleaners and wipes that you can imagine. I've also been assured that whatever bug it is that I've got, it's of low infectivity. And my family are all healthy adults. So I feel it's safe to pick up stuff that's wrapped in plastic, boxed etc, and if I can't cook it, then I'm sure that we'll come to some sort of arrangement. And the one blessing of all this is that I can still eat, in fact I actually think if I couldn't I'd be in the local hospital by now. I've been very careful to keep myself hydrated, over the past couple of weeks barely a moment has gone past without my having a cup of something to hand - and whoever it was at Birt and Tangs who came up with their Ginger tea bags, thanks. I've really enjoyed them over the past while! Ginger tea, Blackberry and Nettle tea, ordinary tea - what a wonderful thing tea is. Yay, lets here it for tea...

Tuesday 4th November

Well I went back to work yesterday. It's been a very hard couple of weeks, and at the moment I sort of feel that the really hard bit is still to come - when a parent dies, you're so busy running around and organising things that the business of grief and mourning almost gets suspended whilst you accomplish those necessary tasks. I still find myself thinking of Mum as if she was still with us, and getting that concomitant shock when I remember she's not - yesterday I had a short walk through Bristol's new shopping centre, and looking at stuff thinking oh that would be good for Mum at Christmas - and she's not going to be there at Christmas! Some days are better than others, you know?
Anyhow I kind of also feel a need, a huge need, to get back to some sort of normality. It was important to get back to work, and very luckily I have a couple of weeks of very short shifts, which is an excellent way to do it. It's nice to see people too, every one's been very kind. So this is a sort of equal stab at getting back to normality - a blog. We're doing ok, all things considered.

Mum

25 August 1923 - 20th October 2008

Saturday 18th October

Well all told it's been a difficult couple of weeks or so - mum had a fall, and is recovering, but not as quickly as we might have hoped for. So that's taken a lot of time, and to be honest, blogging isn't the first thing that comes to mind under the circs!
Still things are beginning to ease up a bit - finger's crossed. Luckily, I'd scheduled a lot of listings onto Ebay, so those go live without any help from me. And I've been taking a few photo's here and there - so I managed to finish off my Flickr Monthly Scavenger Hunt list - and work has been very understanding about the shifts I've had to miss. So I'm kind of hoping that things will get back to normal.

Saturday 4th October

Well I've just fished a crumble out of the oven - plum and pear - which I'm taking over for Sunday lunch with the family tomorrow - it seemed to take forever to cook! And needless to say, considering I'm taking it on the bus for a considerable distance, I've made it in my heaviest cooking pot. I really don't know where my heads at sometimes. It's 'cos it's the only pot I've got left with the lid still intact!
So.. here we are on a Saturday night. Despite being off work, I've been busy today - listing stuff on Ebay, tidying up the end of the month lists, then rushing off to Sainsbury's, dashing back - sometimes I feel like I never stay still for more than ten minutes at a time. I've been doing more night shifts this week, and this afforded me the opportunity to watch the Vice Presidential Debate. Now contrary to expectations, this wasn't the car-crash tv that the presenters had been seeming to have expected - I have to say that I wasn't expecting to see a melt down performance by Palin either. Whatever you think about her, she must be a bright intelligent woman, and just because one doesn't agree with her views is no reason to trash the woman. And, above all, as a European, I don't expect to understand the full nuance of American politics. To use a culinary analogy, I may catch the scent of it, I may even taste the flavours, but it's never going to be the full Sunday roast. So when Mrs Palin says that she feels she can give a lead to a world on Environmental matters, I have to believe that's she's not up to speed on the state of environmental politics, because otherwise she wouldn't make such a statement in public. Unless, of course, what she means is she's going to lead the rest of the world into drilling into the Arctic Circle, no doubt expecting us to be merrily tripping along behind her. I really can't quite figure it out. And there's no doubt she was trying to hammer home the idea that Wall Street etc are actively corrupt. She had to have mentioned that at least three times.

Now it's very easy of me to sit here and abuse foreign politics, like some old style Anglo. But the truth of it is that our politics is just as weird - did you see Mandelson on the box after his comeback?? Third time lucky??? Is he serious???? It's almost exactly like the presentation given by Mrs Palin, it's doublespeak. For Brown, it's a very clever move. You're threatened by the gathering forces of Blairites, and the old style labour apparatchiks. What do you do? Divide and conquer. Strike a deal with one or the other, and you've bought yourself enough time for the financial crisis to have become a debacle and in six months time, it's unlikely anyone will be asking questions, they'll all be too busy falling over each other to stab someone else in the back. You can see it coming, check out the gleam in Cameron's eyes. Check out the pause before he speaks, gravitas, looming doom, unspecified promise for the future, gleam of deep unalloyed satisfaction. You know the truth of it is, it doesn't matter who's in number 10. At the end of the day, it really doesn't mean a thing. The world will go it's own sweet way, and nothing or no one can stop it. Remember Black Monday? Now there's a thing. Nigel Lawson was Chancellor back then, ever noticed him be reticent about his abilities? I watched one of the news programmes the other day and believe it or not, there was Lamont acting like some wise old man. Now I'm not saying he isn't, but look at his comeuppance. Yep, the day we crashed out of the ERM.

Essentially I believe it's all pretty pointless. It doesn't matter who you vote for, in the end they all fall apart. The Thatcherites believed that they were the Masters of the Universe, then they fell apart. Cameron will do exactly the same. It'll happen to him because it's destiny - it's the way of the world. He'll try and tell himself he's different, he'll try and tell you that he's different. But you know different, because you have the ability to look back and learn. He could win the next election, he could win the one after that, and even maybe scrape through the one after that. But at the end of the day, there'll be a young whippersnapper who will creep up behind him, metaphorical knife in hand. Just as the simpering boy wonder is doing now with Brown, just as Brown did with Blair, although I find it hard to believe that Brown could a) simper or b) sneak up behind anyone unheard. I guess that's part of the point, they don't have to sneak, it's politics. It's part of the job description. Personally, I feel it's time we re-wrote that job description because these people are more interested in their own ideas than the reality of any given situation. It's all me, me, me, my ideas, my party, my chance to be in the spotlight. I'd say the very fact that anyone wants to be in politics ought to be reason to bar them for life. Politics, government, it should be done by people who don't want to be doing it, who aren't interested in having their photograph in the papers. People who don't want to be top of the tree, who have to be wrenched away from their lifes' work in order to undertake it for a short period of time. People who are educated and know something about what they're talking about rather than because they happen to have an idea. And above all, no government should be allowed to serve for three terms. Now I agree that you may feel this is difficult under our system, but it's relatively simple - no MP should be elected for more than two terms. Cut the ground out from under their feet, bar them from any form of company directorship, or in fact, any form of corporate employment. Two terms as an MP max, and then they go into public service in an obscure position. If they want to run something, fine, give them a single hospital to run, a single prison. Limit any opportunity for further public prominence. Disallow anyone from being both the leader of their party and a member of the Cabinet. Automatically rotate top civil servants every 12 - 15 months, not within a department but out of departments, and move them to another city. 12 months in London? You're going to Leeds man. Or Norwich. Or Liverpool. Anywhere but an influential position in the upper echelons. And more than anything else, we need to find a way to inculcate the idea of the greater good back in to public life. We need to find a way to make kids understand and espouse self-sacrifice for that greater good. And we absolutely need to do it without the aid of religion. We need to absolutely split religious groups of all kinds out of public life, because these are more people who want to tell you what to do. I read this thing recently where someone was suggesting that everyone, but everyone starts off thinking they can make things better. They can't. In the end, all they can do is tell other people what to do. And when no one listens to them, they start shouting. And when still no one's listening to them, they start to force things. Therein is the road to dictatorship.

Ok, it's getting kind of late at night here, and I'm saying some daft things here. Blame it on the late cooking! But seriously, we do need to do something about all this. Not what I say, but something.

Thursday 25th September

Well... doing a night shift last night, and come the very wee small hours, I had the pleasure of catching President Bush doing his "We are on the verge of total destruction" speech. Now Bush isn't my favourite among world leaders, but right now he's doing a lot better than the German Finance Minister, who made it to the small box by blaming the US and guess who, of course, the Brits, for the current state of his own country's economy. It seems to me (and I ain't no expert) that whatever, we're in for a long recession.
Now my experience of previous recessions indicates we should all get ourselves ready. This means a sudden and unexpected return of Walton chic - layered clothing including pinafores, in cheesecloth, perfect for digging up the front garden to plant a crop of - well whatever you'd like to plant in your front garden. Anything we planted in ours is only likely to give us toxic poisoning of some variety given the traffic past the front door - in the course of last night I also learnt that when Beluga Whales die in the St Lawrence Waterway, the Canadian Government has to dispose of the carcass as being toxic waste, such is the level of pollution in the said waters. Poor little things, they're not doing anything different from what they did before, it's simply that we've adopted their home as the worlds busiest shipping lane.
Anyhow, recession also means you'll need to paint everything brown. Or a shade of brown. This is what we did in the 70's - you'll be out there working so hard to maintain any grip on your overdraft you won't have time to clean. Brown, grey or some shade thereof, will prevent embarrassment when the neighbours drop round for that essential glass of homebrew. Yes, the lurking menace of a home based brewery experiment will also return, threatening life and limb every time you open the cupboard under the stairs. I'd warn you about the smell as well, but - well some people like the tang of mashed hops.
Recession also strikes me as renowned for men wearing velvet jackets. Now the navy blue one's weren't that bad, but brown? No, no, no. Recession is also a time where what was a casual act of financial stupidity - such as the one I've just made, pitches you into financial disaster. What have I done you ask? Well there was this jacket on Ebay that I rather liked the look of, and when I last looked at it, looked as if it was going to fit and be lovely - but the listing had expired, and when it was relisted of course I hurled a bid on frantically without reading the item specifics. Now I learn it's at least four to five inches too small around the bust. Ah well, hopefully I will be outbid... if not I may be going in to the second hand clothing business. Another aspect of recession you may need to become overly familiar with. Knitting for example, will move from the charming hobby that you can carry with you, to the essential task for next school term, and where the hell has it got to? Yes kids, the home knitted school sweater is bound to make a come back, let's just hope things don't sink to the point where your mum needs to unpick last years and match the yarn in to this's. You'll love that feeling of tautness around the armpits. However bad it makes you feel it will be as nothing to the embarrassment of your smaller siblings having to grace the beaches in a home knitted swimming costume. And remind me one of these days to explain the arts of home-shoe repair. You wondered why we wore platforms and wedges? Why we tottered? It had everything to do with the fact you couldn't actually wear a platform sole through.
Anyhow I have to go. John Boy is tap tap tapping on the window ledge and the foreclosure men are at the door. Recession is here for the foreseeable future, and I wonder what joys it's going to bring with it this time.

Sunday 14th September

Well here we are, another week has gone by, and you'll just have to excuse the feeling of mild panic that's gripping me firmly by the throat. Yesterday, you see, I spent some time looking at all the stock I've put up for Christmas to sell in my Ebay shop, and parcelling it up into what's to be loaded in which week, and counting up the weeks to a safe date to post for Xmas and reach it's destination - and my only feeling since doing this is HELP!!!!
Still all in all, I feel I've made a positive start. I've got the bag with the next two weeks worth of bookmarks sitting right by the computer, I've photographed a good half of them, and I've even got about 15 scheduled listings. All to go live over the next two weeks. Fancy having an advance look? Here we go:
















These are just three of the collection I've made over the last nine months! The pink pendant bookmark is part of a group that feature wonderful glass pendant pieces made by Shoozles, who makes the most wonderful glass art. Check out her photo's on Flickr;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoozlesfusesglass/
She does some wonderful work.
Anyway apart from all this, normal work continues - I still have to do my normal schedule, including night shifts!

I recently wandered on to a great website. http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/ is a brilliant site, where you can find tips on how to save food, and recipes to use up leftovers. I'm going to eat well tonight, and use up the left over hunk of a loaf of granary bread, half of an onion I used yesterday, and the end of piece of cheese. Sounds ghastly doesn't it? But in fact these are the primary ingredients of a Garlic Soup - go check it out on the website. I've adjusted mine a little from the recipe, but essentially when I got in this morning I cut the bread up into cubes and popped it into the oven to dry at 75degrees for a couple of hours whilst I slept. This afternoon, I sauted (or fried if you prefer) the finely sliced onion, and three cloves of finely sliced garlic in a little butter, and added about a litre of chicken stock - no reason why you can't use a vegetable stock! Then you crumble in the bread cubes, reserving a few to serve, and simmer the broth for 15 to 20 minutes. I'll float the cubes on the hot soup, and sprinkle over the grated cheese before I sit down to eat, and I have to say the aroma of this soup is just fantastic. And I feel really pleased with myself, because frankly the bread was heading for the bin, and probably the cheese too in a couple of days. You know what it's like when you have one of those tiny little cubes of cheese in the fridge - it inevitably ends up being thrown out when it's green and mouldy because you can't think what to do with such a small piece of cheese. And it's such a waste! So I'm pretty chuffed with this new site, you can look up recipes by clicking on an ingredient, so if you had - for example - part of a cauliflower left over, you could click on the cauli icon, and hey presto up comes a nice recipe for left over cauli! Cool or what?!

Saturday 6th of September

I'm still mid-nightshifts, although not tonight thank god. I was watching Shrek and just dropped off to sleep - terrible, and it was only what, half past five? Shocking. I do hate it when it happens to be honest, because you don't sleep properly later on. But then my sleep pattern's shot to hell anyway!
I had rather a nice message waiting for me when I logged on to Flickr today - one of the photo's that I'd loaded up after coming back from holiday had been seen by a group admin, who attached an invite to add it to their group. Nothing so very unusual in that you might think, and indeed not, but this particular group is the "Along the Piddle Valley" group! This will really not mean a great deal to you unless you happen to be living or visiting Dorset regularly - or unless you're my age, and spent a part of your youth watching Carry On films. The very idea that there should be an actual River Piddle is just too - well it's a slight snort of amusement at least. Not exactly fall over and roll around type laugh, but a well, whatever next type squeak. And then to find out that Flickr have an entire group of people who photograph this lovely area - and if you ever make it to Dorset, seek it out is my advice, you really can find anything on Flickr. And check out the group page, it's well worth a look. Find it at http://www.flickr.com/groups/772586@N21/

My but there's been a lot on BBC 4 about this Cerne Accelerator business. It seems we've a deep mine where they're doing more or less the same thing at half the risk - they're due to fire it up in a short while, and apparently there's a reasonable chance that they might actually create a black hole on the Earth itself, which will proceed to eat us all up. And I have no doubt my tax pound will have paid for this privilege. Now look, I've spellchecked that, but it still doesn't look right to me - priviledge? privelidge? Whatever, the spellchecker insists. I've probably used the American spelling.

Yes, mm. Talking of things American, I was on a night shift when the Republicans held their convention, and I saw more of it than I cared for. I have very mixed feelings about all this - firstly, it's not my place to comment on American politics. But I'm a rational European, and I can't help but say it - how can these people, who would like to suggest to us that they're intelligent, rational people, possibly even consider voting for such an appalling woman? What woman presents herself as being fit for public office by carrying onto a stage a five month old baby with a disabling condition, to be howled at by an assembled mob - that poor child was clearly rigid in her arms, and probably terrified. Let alone what's happening to her elder daughter. It's almost as if she's exhibiting the girl as some sort of specimen that suggests - well God knows what she thinks parading this child around at what must be one of the girl's most difficult times will achieve I really can't say, because frankly it escapes me. But don't let her fool you that she's some kind of caring individual, because she clearly doesn't have the nouse to put herself into her childrens' shoes that's for sure. I'm afraid I've always been one of those people who judge by people's actions rather than what they say, or at least I try to be, but clearly this is someone who is far more me, me, me than I want to keep my children protected from the public gaze. She's entitled to her views on whatever her views are - I don't agree with them but she's entitled to them. But the way she behaves where her family are concerned puts her beyond the pale as far I would be concerned.
The other thing I'd like to know is exactly what it is that the Americans have got against being Liberal? Clearly it must have an entirely different meaning from that the word has here, but every time they speak the word, all I can think is how offensive they're being. There are entire political and philosophical traditions built on the concept of liberal and liberalism, and every time they speak the word with their clear intention to insult those who aspire to it, they proclaim their inability to be tolerant of other people's views. These politicians like to proclaim their allegiance to the American tradition, the causes of the founding of America and all that goes with it, but in more or less the same breath, they want to decry the aspirations and beliefs of a large part of the rest of the world. It almost makes me wish that the Liberals would win the next General Election (oh how I wish they could pull that off, it'd be such a slap in the face for Cameron and his ilk) and they'd have to deal with it. Head on. A Liberal Prime Minister. Ok, a LibDem Prime Minister, but what the hell.

Anyhow, on a happier note, here are this weeks' 365 days of the next year photo's. For those of you who don't know, this is a set of photo's I'm compiling which will provide a record of my 50th year - I started on the day of my birthday - so far I haven't missed a day!

As you can see it's been quite a dull week, weather wise - in fact pretty torrential rain over the last day or so. Horrible! If you want to check out the rest of the set, find it at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunspark58/sets/72157606563939959/

Thursday 28th August

I started out writing a whole screed of stuff about something that irritated me earlier today - piles of it there was, but you'll be pleased to know that I've deleted it. Now you won't have to be bored by my going on about something that doesn't bother anyone but me I expect - but it kind of leaves me at a loose end as to what to blog about!
But then I do have something to talk about. Firstly, I met up with some old friends this week - Sonia, Georgie and Vanessa. We all worked at the Box Office of the Theatre Royal, must be going on twenty years ago now. It was a nice night out, great to see them all again. It's great to catch up, find out what's going on in each other's lives.
I spent today making bookmarks for the Xmas box - I have a small box of things I've put away for the Xmas market. It's a fair part of my investment in my little micro business, and I was thinking, what am I going to do if no one buys anything this Christmas! All this credit crunch stuff, it's frightening when you think about it. Fingers crossed though.
Anyway it's going to be a busy weekend, working right the way through and a good part of next week. There's fun for you. So I thought I'd blog early for the weekend!!!!

My week in pictures!

Sunday 17th August - went over to Winsley for lunch. Mum was having a good day, and posed for a few photo's - took these on my camera phone, so the lighting's not very good!










Monday 18th August - got back from the shops to find that this parcel had arrived from Amazon!









Tuesday 19th August - A good dinner puts you in the right frame of mind for the night shifts to come - this is a lean chicken breast on a bed of rocket and baby beet leaves, with a lemon & chive dressing.







Wednesday 20th August, a little bit of sunset over Arnos Manor Park.













Thursday 21st August - a lovely day, full of bright sunshine, makes a walk to the post office much more enjoyable. This is Sandy Park Road, in Sandy Park Brislington, where my local post office is.









Friday 22nd August - woke up late following my last night shift of the week, and wasn't up to much beyond sitting and watching the Olympics whilst I made a few bagcharms!









Saturday 23rd August - I went into town as I needed to do a little shopping, and I met a friend for coffee. This is Colston Circus in the middle of Bristol and this apalling round thing with sails on it is apparently the city council's idea of a modern sculpture. I have to say I love sculpture but I think this thing is a huge disappointment.

Sunday 24th August - One of the books from my Amazon parcel! So far I've read, what three of them? I got into Henning Mankell's very good Swedish detective books whilst we were on holiday, where someone had been wonderful enough to leave Before The Frost behind for other's in need of a good book!

Saturday 16th August!

Now that exclamation mark above makes me feel I'm presenting myself here as being bright and alert, all that sort of thing, when frankly the exact opposite is true - yep, another night shift takes it's evil toll of me!

Still, that's the last of them until next week - tomorrow I'm off over for a little Sunday lunch with the family, which will get me out of bed pretty well bright and early, so that might get me back onto a normal sleeping track. That'll be just about in time for my next night shift I reckon!

Still one positive thing about doing night shifts at the moment is the grand opportunity it's given me for watching the Olympics streaming on the Beebs website. Flicks off at the touch of a button if a call comes in, yet it keeps you bright and awake when they don't. I think I've seen just about every swimming heat that you could possibly want to see - enough to suggest that swimming is having difficulties attracting people from the ethnic minorities anyhow. And dear God, at about what, 4.30, 5 am this morning I was watching what I think was a 100m heat for women, which had a British entrant in it, and the poor girl was wearing one of those bikini style running get ups. She's running in the full harsh sunlight of the Birds Nest Stadium, and for an appallingly long period of time the camera seemed to focus on this poor kids stomach muscles. Nothing wrong there, she had the requisite musculature and all that, but the white pastiness of her skin..! You'd think she'd have 10 minutes to slather on some of this self tanning moisturiser or something. It was not unlike seeing the unroasted flesh of a ready to cook chicken out there on the track rippling in protest at being prepared for the oven. I couldn't tell you who this unfortunate woman was, because not 2 minutes later she was replaced by another British athlete, similarly affected. So it could well have been some unfortunate camera aspect, but if it was, frankly I'd sue. If not, the British Olympic Association should be rushing an emergency flight of self tan spray out there, because a more unhealthy look you've never seen in your whole life. It looked like the BOA had been locking its athletes away in a cupboard for the last 12 months and not letting them out in to daylight. And given the results, I regret to say that a pact with the devil is clearly not the cause. Not in the athletics anyhow. And somehow I don't see Bradley Wiggins or any of that ilk cosying up to the parchment and blood inked quill either!

Anyhow, on a totally different subject, I've started this new set of photo's on Flickr - 365 days of the next year. The point of this is to take a photo every day of the next year, and to have a visual record from one birthday to the next - so I have a weeks worth of photo's to produce a little diary of the last week! I won't bore you by reproducing them here, but zip on over to Flickr and check them out. But I do want everyone who reads this to have a bit of a look at this:

This thing lives on the table we have out in the car park at work. It was dug up by our building manager when he was making the little garden that we have there, and it's clearly some kind of root or tuber. It's incredibly light, but tough as hardened steel - you can't force your finger nail into it, although clearly some sort of root has been broken off one end of it. It's dead, we think, because it's not shown any signs of growth. Have you ever seen anything like this before? It's got the most incredible whorling on it, almost like the whorls on fingerprints. I don't think my camera's very good at picking them up, but you can sort of see the indications of them on the photos.

If you know what this thing is, I'd love it if you could email me. There's a whole building full of workers who want to know what it is!

7th August 2008

Well, I'm taking it easy this morning because I've got a night shift tonight! Got to shoot off to work a bit earlier than that for a team meeting as well, so it's going to be a moderately busy day.
The birthday went very well - we ended up not visiting the nursing homes that we'd planned on, but no doubt that'll get itself sorted out in due course. Things usually do.
I just feel a bit cross with myself because I've had to turn down an offer of work. This is jewellery work, to make wedding favours, but the quantity is just way to much. 250 pieces - I've been working for what 8 months or so now, making stuff for Christmas and I only have 170 odd bookmarks. No way could I fit in 250 without it affecting the time that I use to make all the other stuff for the shop, and I don't want to loose that. But I hate having to turn something like that down! It's very frustrating. Mind you, making pieces in that quantity does tend to turn in to a bit of a production line, because there's not much variation in what you do. I like making the things that I do because they're varied, they depend on what beads I can buy, and how I choose to put them together. And not to mention that I've got a job to do as well!!
And talking about fitting things in, I've got to go to the supermarket as well today - I spent most of yesterday waiting for the plumber, and then working on making some bagcharms. I made six, which is good going. Mind you, I'm waiting for some new bookmarks to arrive from the supplier, I'm running out of the blanks.
I also thought, this being my 5oth year, that I would run a little project on Flickr. I thought I'd try to take a daily photo - my mother always said that I was born in time for tea, so I thought I'd try to take this photo as close to 3pm as I could. It'd make a pictorial record of the year, which'll be fun for me even if not necessarily interesting to anyone else! Click on the link over there on the left, it's called 365 days of the year, see what's there!

Saturday 2nd August 2008

Long week - back from the family holiday last weekend, and back to work Monday - only to get really rather sick on Wednesday. I can only assume I picked up a bug down south!
Well - the holiday. We went to this rather lovely little cottage just outside of Wareham, in Dorset - Isolation Cottage it was called, which was a originally the isolation ward of the local hospital. The National Trust bought them, tore them down and re-built them - just as well, as it had formerly been where the smallpox patients had stayed. And, no, it wasn't smallpox!!! We had wonderful weather, and we think Mum enjoyed herself - it's just a bit difficult to tell.

Anyhow as a result of her failing health, we've decided to look for a nursing home for her. It's very distressing, but at least the holiday allowed us all to see how increasingly necessary this has become. We're going to see the first on the list on Tuesday - without going in to any details here, Tuesday is my birthday. I think given the circumstances, it promises to be one I'm not likely to forget for a while!
Dementia is the most terrible of diseases. It takes everything away from the victim, all shreds of dignity, even personality really. For instance, Mum quite enjoys watching a programme on tv called MonkeyWorld (or something like that, I've never seen it, so I couldn't actually say.) It turned out that the place that this is made was near to Wareham, so we took her. It was quite an adventure, Mum, me, Martin and Nick - we'd arranged it so that Jo & Ken got a day off - we packed up the wheelchair and off we went. Admittedly, we should have thought a bit more carefully that the monkeys might not be at their most active in the middle of the day! However, we did push her round, and looked - the monkeys are all rescued from all over the world, mostly from labs, and they have the most wonderful enclosures and houses. Some of the houses have walkways through them so you could see them inside their shelters - which is where a lot of them had gone too! A good few of them were enjoying having a good look at us. It must be rather confusing for them, sitting there and watching this endless parade passing by. There was a large orangutan who definitely gave me the impression this had all been organised for his benefit!
Thing is it was hard to know how much of it Mum had actually taken in. When we got home she didn't seem to have any memory at all of having been there, and whilst she did seem to enjoy herself whilst she was there, I'm pretty sure she probably doesn't even remember having been away for the week now.
I can remember going to look at nursing homes when Dad was ill, and they were thinking of discharging him from the hospital to a nursing home. I have to say it was one of the more distressing experiences of my life - some of them are just dreadful. But like all in life, some of them are really good too, packed full of good staff, who take an interest in their patients. The one we're going to look at is new, which I think is a positive thing. Still we'll see.

Sunday 13th July

Well after all the cooking yesterday, I took it easy today - ham sandwich for lunch! It was really good, funny how something simple can just take your fancy.
So what have I been up to today? Cleaning mostly, I've got the gas board coming tomorrow, and I want the place to look well at least half way presentable. I'm also off on holiday soon, so I'm busy making up bagcharms and bookmarks to list for when I get back - oops, repeating myself there I think!
I've been re-reading an old book recently, the Helliconia Trilogy by Brian Aldiss. There's no doubt that this book is one hell of an achievement, way up there with things like the Dune books, and I highly recommend it if you've not read it - it's about a world - the eponymous Helliconia, which owing to quirk of astrophysics has a small star in orbit around it, and a big star they both orbit. A wanderer star that turned up sometime back in the past, and has given this world two years - a great year, and many small years. Over the course of a great year, the planet goes from ice age to global warming, and I can't say that I noticed much seasonal variation over the small years. There's a satellite world as well, sent there by the humans of Earth, who after scouring the galaxy for ages have only found this one single world bearing any other meaningful form of life, and send this satellite, the Avernus, to record everything that happens on Helliconia. There are three books - one set in the spring, one in the summer and the other in the autumn of the great years, and the way this ecology affect the races that live on the planet is fascinating. But in some respects they're odd books - for instance in the summer book, the story is focused on a king - JandolAnganal, (excuse the spellings I don't have the book in front of me as I type!) and his queen, Myrdemingalla. Jan, to shorten his name, sets out to divorce his queen, who is much beloved by her people (apparently for her beauty, although this isn't really focused on) and marry the daughter of a neighbouring kindom, Borlien, for political reasons. The story focuses quite closely on these people, but seemingly presenting the Avernus' view of what's happening, because at the end of the book, the queen is riding away with a small cortege and that's it, you never find out what happens to her. Beyond the fact that Jan has gone to Borlien despite the murder of the girl he was intending to marry, and marries her sister instead, and that the pair of them found a joint monarchy Borlien and Olderando then becoming a single country - yes, I can tell by this point you're feeling very confused.
It's an extremely long book - I have one volume with all three books in it, and the tendency is to sit down and read the whole thing at one go. I have quite a good mental image of the stories in my head, but the details are so prolific, and so complex that frankly you just can't keep them mentally for any length of time. What really does stay with you are the immense vista's this book presents you with - the herds of flambreg (a sort of cattle) so tortured by flies that they race eternally from one end of land to the next driven mad by the flies. The Wheel at Kharnabar, literally rowed through a mountain. Embruddock, surviving the ice age with the help of the hour whistler (a geyser) where the battle of the sexes is re-fought to the personal tragedy of it's combatants. The Avernus and it's mobile pudenda (you really have to read it for this, I'm not going in to the details!!!), and of course, the fall of Earth following the much avoided but finally occurring nuclear holocaust. It's an amazing book, whose images live inside my head - even if sometimes I wished they didn't. There's a sadness about it, a sense of decay over time and the inevitability of that decay. It's well worth reading I'd say, but you need some stamina to get through it!

Saturday 12th Extra - Stuffed Courgette!

Right, the stuffed courgette. Let's start off with the ingredients!

Clockwise r - l we've got - Goats Cheese, Mushrooms, Peppers, Leek, the Courgette and some cold ham. I also added a clove of garlic - but needless to say, I'd not got an onion in the house!!!

First thing is to wash everything. If you wash it all first thing you do, you don't forget to do it later, and the water gets a chance to drain. Next slice your courgette in two -

Make sure it sits nice and flat. Next thing you'll need to do is use a sharp knife to run around the seeds in the middle of the courgette, but use a teaspoon to lift them out. They're quite firm, you'll need to use a bit of force, but be careful not to put the teaspoon through the base of the courgette.

(Sorry this photo's not too good - flash effect!)

Put your courgette halves into a flat baking tray. This one's a non-stick, but it's not essential. You might want to drizzle a bit of oil over them at this point as well, and it's no harm in giving the outside a bit of a rub over with oil as well.

Put the tray with the courgettes to one side.

Next thing to do is to slice your leeks - cut them in four, and then cut them to small tiles of leek - I'd give them another quick wash at this point because leeks harbour dirt as they grow. There's nothing worse than gritty leek!

Put the leeks into a pan of boiling water for a good five minutes - this is 'blanching' or pre-cooking the leek. Drain them well.

Chop the remaining vegetables. In my case today, that means the mushrooms, pepper and the garlic, but I'd have chopped the onion as well and frankly when I taste the result, onion is not something I'll be leaving out on a regular basis! If I was going to add any herbs I'd be putting them in at this point as well - you can add anything you fancy, but I'd not necessarily put in anything too strong. Italian or Mediteranean herbs are what this needs.

In a frying pan, I've heated a bit of oil, and fried up the vegetables. Add the ham last, and crumble the cheese into the veg when the pan is off the heat.

You can see on the above right that I've added the well-drained leeks to the pan after the peppers and mushrooms are softened. I cooked them well for about five minutes - on a low heat so they don't take any colour.

Next I added the ham, and then after the pan was off the heat, I crumbled in the cheese.

You then take the mixture and fill the courgette halves - I find it's best to use the teaspoon for this. The mixture is prone to falling out of the halves particularly when you're piling it up on top, but I find this doesn't really matter if it's just a few pieces. Just pop them back on top.

Drizzle some more oil over the top, or put on a pat of butter. Season them, and pop them into the oven for about 25 minutes.

Here's the baked courgette as it came out of the oven -

I'd love to show you both of them, but I'm afraid I had to stop about half way through this blog to.. yep, you guessed it!

Saturday 12th July

Well here we are, mid July already! I'd love to be able to say we're basking in glorious sunshine - and it is true that there is a bit of it outside, but when I was at the bus stop earlier, needless to say without an umbrella, what happens? Happily for once the bus turned up on time and I didn't get too wet.
I was browsing the Guardian website mid-week, and came across this great little story about a German website that I went to have a look at and really - well, have a look for yourself. pundo3000.com puts up photographs of the sorts of things we all end up buying at some time or another, no matter how much we tell ourselves (and others!) that we don't eat processed food. There'll come a day when we're tired, hungry and end up grabbing the nearest thing off the shelf at the supermarket, get it home and take it out of the pack... this website puts up photo's of the packaging - those glorious shots of wonderful looking food - and the stuff that's inside the packet. It's German so there's a lot of sausage, which I'll admit I don't eat a lot of over here (Great Britain) but you can recognise the brand names on a lot of this stuff. You really should go and look at it, and I feel like I need a print out of it to take with me to the shops! The original Guardian story is at http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2289879,00.html
I reckon I'm going to be keeping a look out for this gallery of theirs, should be interesting to see what revolting concoctions we Brits are shovelling down our throats!
I can hear you saying now, ok, so why aren't you out there taking a photo Tess? Truth is (and I swear this is the truth) yesterday I ate meatballs made from minced pork and various spice mixes, with some rice, and today at the shops I bought some really lovely looking large courgettes, which with the addition of some leeks, peppers, onion and some goats cheese, I intend to bake. I'll take a photo of the result to prove it! In fact whilst I'm at it, I'll put up the whole kit and kaboodle, you can check out my version of a baked courgette. I was listening to Saturday Kitchen before I went out, and they have this food heaven, food hell thing for the guest - it was John Craven, who my lord has gone totally white in the hair department, there's age for you - who's idea of food hell was stuffed marrow. As a kid, my parents grew marrows in the garden, and we'd have them stuffed with mince and tomato, with cheese sauce, and they were absolutely delicious. When I saw those large courgettes - it's a bit early as yet for marrow at the supermarket, I thought yay! Stuffed Courgette. And there's enough there for a little courgette to be left over and have as vegetable with another meal.
I just popped out to put the oven on, I'm going to make a small fruit loaf cake this afternoon - it's the weekend, and I'm partial to a bit of cake with my cup of tea on weekend afternoons. I don't promise to photograph this because I'm still getting used to my new loaf tin, and the last couple of times I've used it the top of the cake has ended up getting burnt. But if it comes out nice, well what the heck, I might photograph that too.
It's been a night shift week - well feels like a couple of weeks, because I was night shifting it all of last weekend, and then again in the middle of this week. But not to worry, because I have no more night shifts for a couple of weeks now - and I'm off on holiday too, so that's good. Mum's not been too well recently, in fact she's been in hospital for a bit over the start of last week, so everything's been up in the air - but we seem to be coming down to ground a bit. I will freely admit that I've been feeling a bit down about it all, the thought that whilst she's ok now, the fact that this will inevitably happen again at some point and we'll all be put through it again. So a bit of a holiday will do me the world of good.
For those of you who've been checking out the old shop, no I haven't put enormous quantities of new items on sale this month. I have in fact been building up a nice little stash of bits and pieces to be listing when I get back, and I have been doing a roaring trade in bookmarks - I think people are starting to buy ahead for Xmas! I did a 'stock check' of my pre-Xmas bookmarks last week, and I've managed to put together about 160 so far - I've rather astonished myself! Oh well I'm off to make cake and check out the days' stage in the Tour de France - ah, alas a positive drugs test. You know what with Dwain Chambers, the cyclists, the Olympics coming up, I'm beginning to think rather than have the assumption people won't take drugs, why not go ahead and let them? We could make them read out a list of everything they've taken to get these silly medals, and with each drug name, make them read out a list of the side and long term effects. Here you are, here's a medal for being the person able to run fastest in the world in 2008, now tells us what you're going to be experiencing in 2028. Organ failure? That's nothing in comparison to the glory of running a micro second faster than the chap who came second. It's a different kettle of fish for the kids that are being sucked into these so called sports though. When you've got a kid who's spending three quarters of their entire life trying to run that little bit faster, and you've got someone sidling up to them and hissing in their ear, here you are take this and you can run faster than you ever dreamt, well that's when it all turns rather sick. It's those people who need to be found, caught and prosecuted. Some one's pushing this stuff. It really shouldn't be any different from your neighbourhood drug dealer, if the police haul them in, why aren't they hauling in the people shoveling EPO and whatever down a young athlete's throat? And come to that, has anyone found out what the Chinese are going to do with someone caught doping in Beijing? I presume it'll be the same as at any other Olympics, they'll be hauled up in front of the press to try and explain themselves, then flown away. Thing appears to be that whilst these are illegal according to the sport authorities, they don't appear to be illegal to the legal authorities. You never here of anyone being prosecuted for possession of anabolic steroids for example. Well if they have I haven't heard of it. If, as a society, we really wanted to stop this, it would be illegal to possess these drugs and probably a reasonable number of athletes etc would think again about taking them. Mind you, I don't know what I'm blathering on about, I know nothing about drugs in sport. And I did say I was off to cook cake - better than anabolic steroids anyday!

P.S.Here's the cake!

It's a pretty standard Victoria Sponge - 2 eggs, with a couple of handfuls of sultanas, and half a handful of walnuts!

Tuesday 1st of July

Well, hospitals are figuring large in my thoughts today - Mother is in one, and a colleague at work is expecting her first grandchild today - great day for a birthday eh? Mum isn't too bad, although it wasn't an anticipated visit. She's had a few stomach pains and is having some tests and so on just to make sure there's nothing wrong. But with someone of Mum's age, and her state of health, no visit to hospital is entirely without risk.
In fact, to add to the general air of poor health, and health related topics, Jo's not in too good shape either - she had a bad fall a week or so back, and has torn all of her shoulder muscles. Poor old Jo eh?
But I should say that yours truly is in very good health. Positively bounding as they say. All set for a trip to the local post office later on - yep, the hills the hills. (It's up a small hill!) And it's a lovely day, nice sunshine, bit of breeze - you couldn't ask for better. So yep, got the sunhat fixed up just in time! What more could be guaranteed to bring on the forecast thunder storms early!!!

So apart from a trip to the post office, what else is on the cards for today? I have a chicken carcass sitting in the fridge, surrounded by a stock made the day before yesterday - I had hoped to use it to make a broad bean soup, but would you believe that Sainsburies aren't selling frozen broad beans at the moment? I couldn't believe it either. They've got them in the fresh veg section, and yep, I'd love to use fresh, but when I went to have a look, they had small bags of them - you'd get maybe a serving and a half out of them, having spent a heck of a time podding. I was cross about it. I spoke to a man in the green grocery section, who was really quite amusing. Oh I've only been here 4 days, he said, I'll look into it for you, I'll get something done. (Our Sainsbury's is a training store.) Good luck I said, which for some reason he seemed to find funny. I didn't find it funny. That store's run for one purpose only and thats to train up the staff that they send to other shops. They don't seem to give a toss about what their customers might want - and the state of the place. Price labels missing, empty spaces - hopeless. I mustn't get started!

Sunday 22nd June

Hello there!
I've a nice cup of ginger tea steaming gently beside me, and whilst I wait for it to steep, I thought I might blog... I've been watching the football - Spain have just beaten Italy in one of the more boring games of the tournament, ended up in penalty shoot out, but in personal terms I'm still devastated by the exit of Holland, who I thought played wonderfully well and I had real hopes of this time round. Alas for the curse of being picked as the Guardian's team of the tournament! Anyhow since Holland have bitten the dust I now have to pick a new favourite, but this becomes problematic as I've no real favourites left. We'll see.. perhaps in a day or so I might be able to bring myself to go for the Russians.
Right now we're experiencing another bout of bad weather - I know it's a La Nina year, with the currents going counter clockwise or some such, rather than an El Nino, but you'd think what with yesterday being midsummer day and the longest day of the year that we'd have a bit of continuous sunshine to say, yep it actually is summer! No such luck. However, in preparation for my summer holiday I've been attending to my sunhat, which was in need of a bit of care - it has a wire running through the brim to make it go in whichever way I push it to keep the sun off my face, and the wire needed replacing. To be honest, even as I was doing this, I thought why am I bothering, but then, don't do it and we'll have a month of continuous blazing sunshine, so best to get it done. We've been threatened with some kind of high wind storms or some such, so I think it'll be safe to say I'll be leaving the sunhat at home, but heck you never know.
At some time over the next week, the council's coming to attend to the trees in the park over the road. I love those old trees, they're really big and spreading - and probably do need attention if we're going to have high winds - but got to admit that I'm a bit concerned about what's going to happen. For the most part, the letter says, they're going to be pruning, but apparently a few of them are to go. Fingers crossed these are the trees at the back, and not the ones I look straight out to.
I've been working 4 - 9's for the past week or so, it's a bit of a funny shift. I get hungry when I come home, so I've been making myself lunch, and keeping a bit on one side to heat up and have when I get in - today's was burger & salad - ok, chips as well, but only a small potato's worth! Let me tell you, burger doesn't reheat well. Avoid it is my tip of the day. Overcooked, dry and pretty tasteless was my experience, and that's from home made burger. Tomorrow, I shall choose something else to have for dinner. Beans on toast maybe, haven't had beans on toast for ages. See, that's the funny thing about this weather. You find yourself wanting winter style food in June.

Weds 18th June

Ooh time for a quick blog...
I'm just back from work tonight, we've been really busy and rushed off our feet. Luckily I'd planned dinner before I left, so I was able to get home to a nice salad, a proper dinner. If I'm working late in the evening, I need to think about dinner or I fall prey to the Burgerking I have to go past to get home - fatal, and frankly, this month fatal to my bank balance. Happily I had a box full of salad stuff in the fridge, including a couple of carrots and an apple - grated them up and mixed with a bit of mayo, and hey prest, carrot and apple slaw. I can remember Mum making bowls full of this stuff when I was a kid, and it's just as tasty now. And it keeps quite well I find, although you have to give it a good toss if you've made it a while before you eat it. I find a ratio of two carrots for every apple is good, and I like a crisp apple for this - although Coxes are very good in season.
I had a pack of cold meat to add to this - one of those mixed salami packs. Has anyone else noticed the near total disappearance of garlic sausage? Have I missed some dreadful announcement of some apalling health scare over this? Or has it just simply disappeared for some unkown reason? Whatever, I do miss it, I like a bit of garlic sausage.
Anyhow MOTD has just started so bye...!

Saturday 14th June

Gosh I can't believe it's Saturday already! And what's more, looking outside, it's a hot sunny day - according to our weather forecasts it's supposed to be overcast or raining or something. Mind you it's only 12 midday, frankly that's enough time left for the downpour to end all downpours! There are actually people out lying down in the park, reading, sunning themselves - you may be wondering why I don't join them. To be honest, if I did I'd be in for one of the more unpleasant nights of my recent experience. I've always characterised it as an allergy to sunshine, but it's more of a low threshold for sunstroke really. Ever since I was a kid, sunshine has made me feel very upset - my temperature seems to go through the roof, I get migrainous type headaches and terrible patches of prickly heat. And if I don't get out of it or cover up at that point, I start to feel very nauseous. So to be honest, whilst everyone else goes round saying isn't the weather wonderful, I just either nod or make a joke about how I wish it was the middle of winter. In all seriousness, one of the things that most appealed to me about going to Glasgow Uni was the idea (which I have no idea where I got, because it's utterly untrue) that it might be colder up there. It was - in winter, nice real snowfalls and all of that kind of thing, but come the summer it's every bit as hot in Glasgow as it is anywhere else in the country. And they do have the most beautiful early autumns up there, hot and sunny, with the leaves starting to turn - and the tang of bonfires in the air. Lovely city.

Anyhow it's been a busy week. Work, of course, got to do the old work thing, although I managed to pick up a stomach bug from somewhere - do excuse my apparent fascination with illness, it's becoming a theme! But you know what it's like if you've not been well, it becomes a sort of state of mind! I'm well on the way to recovery anyhow, so no more sickness mentions!

I've done my usual post office bit this week - had a bagcharm to send off airmail to Australia as well, always a bit of a thrill. I do love sending things off abroad, you get a feeling of real wow, they want me to send my little thing all that way, they must really like it! And to contrast with this, I'm just back from the post office having dispatched a little something to Trowbridge, a town I know well, not 35 miles away. I even lived there for a while, and I feel deeply guilty about posting it, I feel I should rush round there with it and deliver it in person! If I'd been going over to Winsley I probably would have, but alas, I'm not so in the post it goes.

Recently I've been making some necklaces. I've got some in the shop on Ebay now if you're looking for something nice - have a look!

The top one is a turquoise coin bead, hung on red copper chain, with Swarovski crystal bicone beads in a deep oceanic blue, and copper flower charm, - both of these necklaces are on auction and starting off at £6.99 - a real bargain if you ask me! The one underneath is also on red copper chain (both of them have stick and toggle clasps) and has a huge citrine quartz facetted bead, with two smalller smooth round beads in smoky quartz, and a copper plated flower bead. If you want to go and look at the listing, there's a link to the shop - Sunspark Sparks Jewels, on the left hand side of the top of this page.

One other thing I was going to mention. This morning I was woken up by a convoy of lorries going past the front of the house - these barmy fuel protesters were having one of their slow drives through Bristol. These people are absolutely a joke. The racket they made was unbelievable, and they think by breaking the sound barrier they are attracting sympathy for their cause. They've just been on the midday news with a spokesman claiming they're doing this on behalf of all motorists. When will motorists realise the world doesn't revolve around them? When will they get a grip on the idea that they're actually really, really lucky to be living in an age when they can drive a car or a lorry at all? And above all when will they understand that the cost of all this is actually the planet, not the tax on the petrol?? I sympathise with them on one level, it's very expensive to fill up a tank. But the answer is quite simple - either you brush up on your chemistry and physics, and engineering skills and go out there and invent a better engine, preferably one that runs on water, or you leave the car in the garage every other day and get the bus like the rest of us. I have a brother who's one of these mad personal driving obsessed individuals, who won't even contemplate the idea of getting a bus. Whenever I've suggested to him that it might benefit him to catch a bus or a train, and that personal ownership of cars isn't a practical way to organise transport, he complains the bus won't take him to the doorstep of his office. This, mind you, from a man who's hobby is walking! What does he do? He takes his car to wherever he's going walking, parks it and sets off for his recreational walk - he'll go considerable distances mind, I'm not talking about a stroll in the park. Yet the idea that he might walk half a mile from a bus stop to an office - ridiculous!

Friday 30th May

I feel I could almost subtitle this blog as 'disgruntlement' but I won't, and instead of moaning, I feel I should make a huge effort and be bright and cheerful. Well I can try. Do you ever get that? You're feeling - not down, just not up, and you want to snipe away at the world, but that makes you feel worse, so you feel you must make an effort to be bright and cheerful because - yep you guessed it, this will make it better. It doesn't - or at least it doesn't for me, but I can live with it.

So, what's new in life? I ordered my new glasses, and I go to pick them up tomorrow. This is the amended pair of new glasses - I'm a wee bit apprehensive about it, as you would expect! I'll let you know how they work out! The glasses aren't the only thing that seem to have turned out to not be quite what I expected - I ordered a new pair of sandals from The Shoe Tailor, and I can't tell you whether I made the mistake when I ordered them, or if the computer messed it up or whatever, but the wrong size has turned up and they have to go back. I'm not wildly thrilled about this!
I went to see Indiana Jones with my friend Abby, yes, well, it's ok I suppose, but nothing to write a blog about. Perhaps that says it all. Actually it's a dvd film, great for a wet boring afternoon. Just not the sort of thing you'd leave the cinema thinking Oh I'm so glad I spent £7.00 watching that. No it's not that bad. It's worth seeing. It's just not leap up and down great. And of course it's got the inestimable bonus of Harrison Ford, who's pretty well worth the money every time.
So anyhow I can't think of anything else to blog about, just thought I'd touch base and all - I'll do better next time promise!

Tuesday 20th May 2008

Oh the unbelievable experiences I'm having with my new glasses! When you have a prescription that's as complex as mine is, there's always a possibility of trouble, but to be honest, I hadn't really been prepared for what I'm experiencing.

I've reached the age when I need to start thinking about things like reading  glasses. Until now, one prescription has always been enough, and it's always been distance vision that I've had difficulties with - ok, like I can only see clearly to just before the end of my nose, but heck, that's distance of a kind. The truth be told that my sight is so bad that uncorrected, I'm registered as being partially sighted. So anyhow, as soon as I ran into trouble with the close work, and the distance vision, I felt the time had come to consider varifocal lenses.  Off I trotted to the opticians, I get the test done, order the new glasses, and in due course collected them, and off I went. I had all of the talking to from the opticians - they'll be difficult to adjust to, there might be problems, etc etc, but truth be told it wasn't a problem. I took it easy over the first few days, didn't rush anywhere and paid attention to where I was putting my feet.

 

The first real hint of trouble was when I got to work, and found that reading the database wasn't as much of a breeze that I thought it was going to be.  And, truth be told, doing the jewellery work wasn't that different to working with the old glasses, I was still moving them up and down my nose to achieve the focus I needed. I was a bit surprised by that.  Then slowly, I started to notice other things that weren't going particularly well - firstly I wasn't anymore able to read at distance than before. Then I started to get what I call a sub-headache - you know the sort of thing, not bad enough to take  a pill, bad enough to make you notice it.  Then on Monday, frankly things deteriorated. I noticed that in Sainsbury's, I couldn't read the signs on the ceiling. I could read the first line, but that was it. Then when I got home, I couldn't read the tv guide that the cable brings up. That was the final straw, I phoned the opticians and went in this morning.  Whilst I was doing that I tried on my old glasses, and found - hey presto - I could actually see better with them than with the new ones.

 

Firstly, they were very nice about this.  They could have just told me it was trouble with the varifocals and that would have been it really, not much I could have done about it. But they did take the trouble to listen, and to re-test my eyes. And that was when we discovered that the prism that I have in the one lens is actually in the wrong lens, that the distance prescription needs to be increased and the reading prescription lessened.  End result is I need an entirely new pair of glasses, which they are going to do for me free of charge - just as well really, because if they hadn't I'd've been trotting off to see what else I could do about this. You don't pay £200 + to get a new pair of glasses that last you for three months.

 

On the other hand it doesn't fill me full of confidence about how long these one's are going to last me...

Tuesday 6th May

Gosh I've been waiting for the bank holiday to be over and done with so I could dash down to the post office and pick up my latest offering from Amazon. I found this by reading a review of it in the Times, flashed over to Amazon and bought a copy in a shot - needless to say, I then had to wait for the whole of the bank holiday weekend to get my hands on it - all because my postal delivery person doesn't ring the bell and try to deliver stuff to us. No, they just put cards through the door, and I then have to wait more or less a week to get my sorting office to deliver it to the local post office where I can collect it from. I'd be more inclined to go and pick it up myself if it actually opened for normal office hours, but no, they don't seem to be able to manage that.


Anyhow here it is -
It might look like a romantic novel or some sort of trash like that, but I promise it's a biography. So far I've read about three chapters - it opens with Dorothy's account of Williams' marriage. Interestingly, she didn't attend the ceremony herself, but stayed at home in a state of some collapse - laid upon her bed. It's Frances Wilson's (the author) contention that this marked a pivotal point in Dorothy's life - which of course it must, from which her life spiralled downwards towards madness. Mind you I say this, and I've only read three chapters so far. It's packed full of exciting ideas about Dorothy's life, and of course, Wordsworth's too. In fact, so many ideas that I'm hard put to list them here - they're all still bubbling away in my head. If you're interested in it, I'd google the book, and look for the review in the Times a few weeks ago, because it was excellent, although of course as the permeation goes on inside my noggin, no doubt I shall spill some of my opinions onto this blog!!

I have been doing a bit of thinking about what I was writing below, the Patricia Wentworth book. It occurs to me that I've been quite unfair to it, probably because I didn't really care for it, but nevertheless I feel I should revise some of my opinions. Firstly, the central character, Hilary Carew.
Given this book was written in the late 1930s, she's pretty unusual. In fact, it may well have been a pretty good portrait of a new sort of woman that must have been beginning to appear in reality back then. It's not fair to say that she goes and does nothing unless she's being rescued by the stolid fiance. She does actually set off to some strange and outlying village in search of information, and hires a bicycle to go off searching for a cottage that might have been rented by the Butler and wife who may (or may not) be the villains of the piece. Needless to say she runs into trouble, and gets run down by the villains in a car and has to make her way on foot across some fields. Essentially she's not helpless, in the way you would have expected a woman to be helpless say even ten years before. At that point female characters would simply be cyphers for the male action to revolve around - Hilary does take decisions for herself. Having escaped being run down by rolling into a hedge, and forcing her way through it, she then returns to the main town, goes to the local hotel where she then telephones the aforesaid stolid fiance, who turns up to rescue her. So I'm in a quandry as to exactly how helpless Hilary is. But I'm reasonably sure that you could see her as a forerunner of a female action figure within the crime genre. She's not a "Yes Henry" girl, she's a girl who undoubtedly loves Henry, and misses him - at the commencement of the story they've had an argument and parted. But she absolutely isn't crawling back to him, she's absolutely determined that if she has him back it will be on her own terms. She has an interesting phrase for women who aren't capable of sustaining themselves with fortitude - dreeps. At the start of chapter 14, Hilary outlines her thoughts on dreeps, having had another argument with Henry the stolid fiance, who doesn't believe that Geoff, the cousin in prison, didn't commit the murder.
"If she once let Henry down her, her spirit would be broken and she would rapidly become a dreep. Like Mrs Mercer. Like Mrs Ashley. Horrible and repellent prospect. They had probably started quite young and pretty - the Ashley daily help certainly had - and some man had downed them and trampled on them until they had just given up and gone quietly down the drain. She could imagine Mercer breaking any woman's spirit if she was fool enough to let him, and the other woman probably had a husband who trampled on her, too. That was the matter with Henry - he was a trampler born and bred, and burned right in. But she wasn't going to be the person he trampled on. If he wanted a door-mat he could go and marry a door-mat, and it wasn't going to be Hilary Carew."
Nevertheless of course, after all this sterling declaration of independence, in the very next paragraph, Hilary is regretting her thoughts. She puts the argument down to the fact that Henry has probably eaten breakfast, whilst she hasn't - in other words, although she doesn't say it, she takes the blame for the argument onto herself. She blames this on Henry for not feeding her - taking her out to lunch -thus leading to her being unable to do anything but argue. Hilary goes to get a bun and some milk for lunch, whilst Henry dines more substantially, thinking over the second argument.
"He felt a kind of gloomy satisfaction in having held his own. Once he let Hilary think that she could take her way without reference to him and in disregard of his opinion and of his advice, and their married life would become quite impossible. {sic} The trouble about Hilary was that she always wanted her own way, and just because it was her own way it had to be the right one. "
Henry goes on in this tone for a good page or so, until he finally gets round to admitting that there's something fishy in the story that Hilary has told him, and that it would be best to investigate them.
I guess what I'm really going on here is that this is pulp fiction, mass produced at the time for the mass market. Many many people would have read this, and taken it into their consciousness. It must have reflected the thinking and feelings of the time. Here in this common or garden little book is evidence of the changing of the times, the emotional connotations that would fuel the numbers of women shortly about to work in armoury's and manufacturing whilst husbands brothers etc went to war. I'm sure a good number of them would have read this book, probably during the war too, and it would have been lying in the subconscious when the war ended and all of them at the time (or a good number certainly) willingly gave up those jobs and made an attempt to return to their pre-war lives. These were the mothers of the girls born in the fifties - my mother. My mother expected to spend her life looking after her mother and aunt, and had a typing job locally to where they were living until the war broke out. She joined the Wrns, and ended up being posted out to India of all places - so she had five or six years of a reasonably independent life. She was expected to return to looking after her mother and aunt on returning to the country - it's no wonder she took a leap of faith and decided to marry my father. (He proposed to her the very night he met her and she accepted.) I don't think there was any blinding flash of love or anything ridiculous like that. I think there was a blinding flash of this is my way out of that. I think it was a calm and practical decision. It was a way out of dreep-hood!