life – Page 12 – Filed words

Politics

Partner is away at the moment doing a dreadful course in Yorkshire which will teach him how to deal with a nuclear holocaust. He can pick me up from Greenham on the way back!

Not much has transpired since we last communicated (except the Falklands war!!!)

Oh, think of the boredom of an election – can’t say I am keen on any of them really and the radio will be full of speeches and rant.

…and in the process of freeing up the ‘wage freeze’ which the former government had in force, and so this round everybody is trying to catch up for about the last three years…

We continue to be regaled daily with snippets about the Rainbow Warrior affair – of which one of the nicer ones was a report from Paris of official indignation about the conditions under which the two French Army officers were being kept on remand awaiting trial. ‘As though they were common criminals’ was the complaint. I don’t know what the French think arson and murder count as in the criminal code.

…when I asked X what she thought, she said honestly enough, ‘I came with a closed mind, and I’m going away with a closed mind’.

There is so much fraud and mismanagement in Government it is frightening. Government hospitals and health services are in a sorry state but there is always money to show off and host conferences… One thing they are good at is throwing a party… I’m stuck here, there is nowhere to go. I can only do the best I can and trust I don’t get raped, robbed, hijacked or murdered. (No exaggeration, all are very real possibilities). Funny, but I manage to live my life without fear. We have our lovely weather, good shopping, movies and theatre and I still have a job and a roof over my head for which I am grateful.

There has been factional fighting in the council for a long time, with some members accusing others of just using it as a way to self aggrandisement etc. etc. Now the mayor is in the middle of a public scandal relating to some shady personal business dealings in X. The public bone of contention is that he used council phone and fax facilities to the tune of several thousand dollars for these business dealings, and also that he sent personal business correspondence on council letterhead. He doesn’t see that he has done anything untoward. So, once again, we wait for the mud to settle before we can see what’s what.

Our trials and tribulations of the past 4 months contain enough material for a long-running ‘Asian soap’. We have been under surveillance from Special Branch, ordered to leave the country and goodness only knows what else… but we are still here and alive to tell the tail! oops tale!

Money

I happen to be the most useless person in the world at keeping track of my finances (there are as yet undiscovered African tribesmen who could maintain a bank account better), and at the time of the wedding – and many times since, I’m embarrassed to say – I was seriously wobbly in a fiscal sense.

I have just vented my spleen on the local hospital management as a protest at the monstrous charges we have to pay under the reformed, streamlined, user-pays, homogenised, de-humanised health ‘service’. I’ll probably have to pay in the end but I guess a protest on the way won’t go amiss! I recently heard of a person who wrote to say she wasn’t paying on principle. The bill was handed to debt collectors. Their fifth letter contained the information that they had ensured that she now had the lowest credit rating possible and that in future no business in the country would lend her money, allow hire purchase or give her a mortgage.

I am very interested in the Heseltine-Thatcher quarrel, as Westland shares are one of my few remaining English investments. Obviously whoever wins the quarrel, I have lost most of my money in the company already – but at least if their future is worth squabbling about, presumably they are not going to be left to go down the drain without trace, and might one day get back to paying dividends and being worth more than the 2 1/2p that they are proposing to write the shares down to at present!

She seized half his capital and all the furnishings of his house. She then refused all his many offers of maintenance for the offspring and insisted on fighting it out in the courts at a cost in lawyers of some strange amount to each party. Then the judge by some miracle awarded her much less than X had offered her in the first place so she is ever skulking around sniffing for more!

I am alarmed at your state of having 2 mortgages and no job… I never have enough money – who does? – so for the past 8 months I have been taking in a student lodger… It has worked quite well – but of course it meant a lot of heaving around of stuff from one bedroom to another and the loss of privacy.

X wrote to me and said he was in S.E. Asia again until March. He must be about 90 by now. I hope if I live that long, that I’ll be able to get about like him at that age. (Silly idea really – I certainly won’t have enough money.)

I moved into X’s house… He’s on leave… As soon as I moved in I found an unpaid electricity bill, I paid that and was pleased to have averted a crisis. Then I found an unpaid water bill and paid that. There was still water in the tank, so I didn’t know the water had already been cut off until the afternoon of 24^th December.

Entertaining

As usual at 7.15 with us arriving and getting organised we started worrying that no one would come – but then half an hour later we worried if we had enough food/drinks.

It’s the village party tonight… As the noise is so terrific it doesn’t matter much who is there – conversation is all but impossible.

The old boy patron of the society (who opened the Exhibition) had obviously been wined and dined too well by X – was so embarrassing – really quite tiddly.

If you want to come you can have the camp bed here but I know that only a night or two is possible without me suddenly going mad. Such a creature of habit am I too.

… and then we had afternoon tea at the Vicarage for a select few – ugh – but it wasn’t too ghastly and I just survived. ‘Being social’ is just NOT my strong point – but then you know that.

She made a super rich cake and put it where the dog can’t reach it. X moved it to a place that was a gift to the dog who ate about 1/8 of it but wait – after nearly giving up with rage – she made another and filled it with layers of cream and put cherries soaked in brandy on top and put a throw-over over and SHUT doors … sudden scream from X – the dog got in and had pulled cover off bring the cake to edge of table – spoiling top cream only…

She would be very happy for X to come and stay there – she is quite firm that he would be more comfortable and better fed there and I rather agree! She has ‘turning out of her room’ down to a fine art… she is worried about putting Y out of his routine of sitting in the armchair in the kitchen and watching TV… He finds it hard to admit that he is older. Oh dear, what a mouldy old lot I make us out, but we really are rather dull and set in our ways and I do feel two or three days would tell X all he needs to know about our insular views. Old memories are all very well but when the names are all missing the conversation tends to be ‘Oh, of course you know who I mean – dear old so-and-so with the wife’ and the audience has to guess until we get the right person or all give up in disgust!

[After a memorial service] X had got a bun fight ready at the house which was for the family, relations, friends and village people who remembered him. So it was all a bit mixed as the village method of having a tea is to take their cup and plate and pile the latter with all the grub it will hold and then retreat to the available chairs and bad luck to those who come later – which inevitably would be the relations and friends!

Telling it how it is

X remarked how well we all looked: retirement must be good for us, and he really must try it some time. I said, ‘What a good idea’ and hoped afterwards that I had not sounded too enthusiastic. But it is really high time that he did – he’s sixty-nine, and so conservative that John Bull would look liberal pink by comparison – and by and large he’s about 80% responsible for whatever failings in morale there are among the staff locally.

You said you thought I might be too young to see the hang-ups, I can see the hang-ups and aren’t blind to them but if a person grows up looking at what they might be getting out of life had they done something else they wouldn’t enjoy the decisions they have made. Anything works if you try. If only you could be here to see… you’d understand. I am young but am really quite grown up too and I like to look at things in a positive sense ‘cos if I always think negative I’ll be a negative person when I’m older.

I proposed an amendment which supported the declared intention to help poor people … I wasn’t allowed to get away with ‘poor people’ – it was variously described as Dickensian, patronising, etc. and ‘lower income groups’ wormed their way in instead.

That reminds me of a decorator that was here just before we moved in. He was meant to re-varnish the windows which were heavily water stained and badly neglected; so what does he suggest? ‘You’re wasting your money on these windows – you’ll never make them look good. Why not re-paint the kitchen instead?’

In the course of the day I managed to drop my old glasses, and broke the frame, which was convenient in that it saved any question of trying to use the frame again (which I did the last time I had a change of prescription). The nice young optometrist looked at it and said it had been a nice frame once – all the rage about the time he was starting work twenty years ago.

Men are wonderful inventions – X gaily went off leaving the refrigerator full of an odd chunk of bread and a bit of cheese and various jugs of orange and milk – I suppose he hoped Y would deal with it, or perhaps he imagined it would keep for a month. The house seems to be having the clean-up that can’t be managed when he is there, and the sheds have lost a lot of treasures by my unkindly hand. 16 old tobacco tins for storing hypothetical screws and nails went quite firmly… I hope he doesn’t notice that a pair of waders that had rotted over the bunion spots have gone from the shed as I am sure they were very treasured but weren’t ever used judging by the spiders and cobwebs surrounding them.

Foreign parts

We are not far from the Limpopo physically, but centuries away from Kipling’s (?) description (in a manner of speaking). That’s what is so disappointing after my other trips and stays in Africa.

You seem set to come to Portugal but I wonder if you realise it’s gloomier here in winter than at home. Although it’s a bit warmer, people don’t have heating in their homes, and this high-rise flat in the suburbs is obviously built with the heat of summer in mind (i.e. lots of outside walls, no carpets). It rains lots too and is very windy. If you think you don’t mind all that, do bring umbrella, waterproof shoes and a couple of sweaters, but most of all don’t forget a sleeping bag. [This did not prove – with further off-putting remarks – to be an irresistible invitation!]

Last weekend our class hired a car and went to Sesimbra and then to Evora. It’s there that they have the Chapel of Bones that X talked about. My friends couldn’t understand why I was so keen to see this gruesome room with walls made of thigh bones and skulls.

There was a gale blowing and high waves, so, with coral reefs on each side of the entrance and the most vicious sharks to be found anywhere, we decided to head up north and try to land on the lee side of Madagascar.

The two other people who’ve arrived came from Zamboanga on one of the regular boats which nearly sank because it was overloaded. (One sank a couple of weeks ago and 100 people were drowned or eaten by sharks.) After that our journey seems safe by comparison.

I do have a separated ‘room’ to myself in the house at the moment which is very nice. The pet parrot is demolishing the straw divide little by little.

Voluntary work

Our Bring and Buy sale yesterday achieved its aim of buying yoga mats for the members of the Day Centre who have a course going every year. And it made a good bit more too for other occupational therapy things, so that was amazing and good. We had our usual junk on the stall and sold quite a lot, and the prices were a bit lower than sometimes which was good. I managed to get away with not buying things I didn’t want and came out with 2 tomato plants, a box of tissues and 3 squashy bits of flapjack which were over-greasy and leaked everywhere on the way home!

Our room [for volunteers] in the main hospital has been an annexe off a store in which all the stuff from one of the wards was housed while it was also being redecorated. An old gents’ ward and the chairs and beds all give off the most penetrating smell!! I will leave the rest to your imagination, but I am thankful that it hasn’t been too warm, as the window won’t open and I should have died.

[re care home] We had a lovely Garden Party there in July – not meant to be a money-raising concern, but the 2 or 3 stalls, tea and raffle brought in something short of £2000!!

We have the Mothers’ Union coffee evening at the house and a local fete, and now face a 50/50 auction in the village hall this weekend in aid of the church. Some very queer objects going from me, and I hope others are giving more valuable possessions than I am.

I will cut down on my voluntary activities as I found last year I was just pushing the children away to make this phone call and that. I am President of the Parents’ Association which I formed along with another lady last February. I am not a Guide Leader this year although I am taking my camping certificate.

Good luck with the cake stall – I like those as the goodies always sell well – at the most ridiculous prices! I did the handicrafts at the hospital WI’s garden party on Saturday and found myself facing a mass of rather badly made articles of uncertain origin and mainly covered with dog’s hairs! Made by our VSO who is most worthy and inventive, but not madly careful in execution! Anyhow nobody came really, except for the few members who were not involved on stalls and any of their friends they could snare, so there were few sales of my goodies – and a good drenching downpour ended it early! On Monday we had a jolly day trying to dry off all these dreary, slightly smelly, woollen objects strewn all over the office – in preparation to packing them away for the next fund-raising concern!

Wedded bliss (not)

It was a disastrous marriage in a way – they were ‘given’ a farm – and then had constant orders on how to run it by in-laws who knew nothing about it. X could do nothing right as in-laws thought she should sit at home and ‘play ladies’ which she had no intention of doing… she got so fed up she said it was to be her or the in-laws so he gave the farm back and they went to Australia…

Like you, my one hope is that if the separation becomes permanent, which looks likely, they will both manage to pretend they are adults – although I know that’s hard when you are only in your 40s and your ‘ex’ is totally unreasonable, insensitive, a bastard, and wrong to boot. Ho hum: I don’t really envy either of them.

Has X managed to sort out her love-life? The joys of marriage!! I think we are better off. I must say I envy a ‘two salary: two can live as cheaply as one’ set up. But there is a price to pay unless you get very lucky. I think I’ll always opt for independence and being poorer!!

I guess she took the attitude that eventually he would be living his own life and felt she had to grab her happiness while she could. Hope it worked out for her.

I gather X has turned out a quite hopeless case. And is married to some girl who refuses to join in any family gatherings, be it Christmas or whatever.

New acquaintances

I’ve also got myself a visiting job – a doctor who has fairly recently lost his sight. I was told he could do with someone to read to him from time to time. We started on the newspapers, and have now progressed on his suggestion to the Book of Revelation – but we don’t generally cover much as we slide off into mutual comment and anecdote!

I found her very kind, interesting and easy to get on with. It was difficult she spoke so quietly and I hear so quietly – if you see what I mean! but I trust we didn’t talk at cross purposes too much. One we discovered – I thought she was speaking of Russia and she was in fact speaking of Sweden – I was quite amazed at some of her statements!

A real time waster today was a call by X who dropped in on his way home and effectively filled the time between lunch and tea with talk. He touched among other subjects on stress in the halfshafts of Land Rovers, the method of construction adopted for the interior walls of his house and its relationship to the problems of fitting sliding doors and extra power; plus common misunderstandings of the rates system and other equally enlightening subjects. In fact, he is a crashing bore. A pity, since he is obviously a kindly man, and it is very friendly of him to look in on us.

We were invited next door… She has a very loud voice, and is a great talker, so X was sitting there for about two hours trying to keep her finger in her ear on that side without it being obvious. I was feeling battered at one remove by the end, so it must have been very painful for her. Every now and then we tried to make it a conversation by starting off, ‘That reminds me of…’ – but not with much success.

I liked him better than her really – but a few words at the top of ones voice in the middle of a party is not much to judge on.

However she’s quite pleasant, and he is, but is very outspoken if he feels like it and calls a spade a b. shovel: last week we missed Bridge and evidently he and our ex-president flared up (he’s a Union man and a pain in the neck) and X raised a fist and asked him to step outside – X retired with a heart and last year had a triple bypass op. and Y had a stroke earlier in the year, and both well into the 70s – it must have been quite a show!

Hobbies

My bobbin lace making has come along a bit… I have made very little though. I had a vision of making everyone a lace edging for a handkerchief and giving them away at Christmas. Then it got to bookmarks. So far I have made about 1/3^rd of a very thin lace edging for a handkerchief. I shall start earlier next year.

I found one shop with one kind of Jap. paper, white with lots of strands in it, it cost the same as going over the Opera House, so I gave away the Opera House! I walked all round the outside, and don’t really go for looking over places anyway.

I have started back the painting lessons, trying to be a bit more creative, a bubble inside which stands a horse and his cavalier, taken from a photo of a horse-show from my neighbour’s son. I am painting two, at the same time, but the reproduction of exactitude is lacking. We’ll see the ending whole, not doubt excellent. [Modesty!]

I’ve never spent that much on material but as it was 60 inches wide I didn’t need much. Having cut it as the Vogue pattern suggested – making the waist size 18 and the all below size 16 – I got in a panic when I thought I couldn’t get in it – but once pressed all was well – tho’ sitting has to be thought about!

I’ve finished my set of chessmen, knights and all! (One of the dark ones still looks remarkably like a rampant boar, but that wood splinters easily, and I decided against trying to make it more equine.) I don’t think any two of the pawns exactly match and the white king is about a quarter of an inch taller than the dark one, and one of the white bishops almost as tall as the queen – but who wants standardisation?

One of the things I saw at the Creativity Workshop was painting with a balloon. Have you ever tried it?

My knitting machine has a half-finished sleeve dangling sadly from it, where it has been for about three months. However I do hope to do something about that soon.

‘Lather’s Lung’ sounds horrid. I shall be much more careful with my mask in future!

Grand kids

“Enjoying being with the family but had forgotten how tiring making sand castles could be.”

“We were so lucky when we were young to know a different world. True we had the War aftermath and other things but not terrorism in our midst. It is scary trying to explain guards and police to young children.”

“We asked him if he was going to Las Vegas in the hopes of paying for the reception, but he came back quickly with ‘No, to buy a house’! I hope it was a joke!”

“She is a born comic. I felt really sore from laughing when I went to bed about an hour or so later. She’s a complete extravert. Her hair has grown about 1-2 inches since she had her 2mm cut, all over, apart from a long bit in front, and dyed red/auburn, and looks gorgeous.”

“[re some photos] I’m sure we’re the only ones on earth to have grandchildren who are a throw-back to crossing with a possum or straight from Mars!”

“X is more creative verbally, I think. Pumpkins-with-8-legs-who-steal-your-knickers are still in vogue, by the way. He wanted to spell it out with wooden letters one day. He found a 5 instead of an 8. We asked where the other 3 legs had gone – Grandpa decided a Brussel sprout had them – it’s a pity about this family!”