life – Page 12 – Filed words

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!”

Going, going, gone

“I hope your parents are as well as age allows – it is hard to see loved ones fall apart.”

“I can appreciate how you miss your parents, I have had two husbands, but my mother meant more to me, and it is so natural to wish we had done better for them.”

“… I miss X a great deal – in a very strange way. And this year I have found more letters which she had written to me. I do not know why I kept them because I am not a ‘keeper’ at all. But of course I know that you must miss her in a very different way and that it cannot be easy for you. It all seemed to happen so suddenly. I think that she found it difficult to cope without X as she had always been dependent on him. And of course all the time she was seriously unwell – a matter she never mentioned and which I sort of forgot about I am ashamed to say.”

“We are going to have to try to talk to my father about selling his house, which won’t be a very pleasant task. He is permanently hospitalised…”

“Yes, I understand how you feel having lost both parents. I also have regrets of not appreciating them fully and of things left unsaid and undone which should have been expressed and put into practice. But that is life.” [And death!]

“Partner is getting old and a bit senile, but in a beautiful setting!”

“We’re kept pretty busy, partner endlessly repairing the house and me trying to keep the garden under control. We love the house, and so here we stay, despite the family thinking we should move to something more convenient. In fact they’ve given up, and we have more help, particularly in the garden.

Everyone has a book inside

“You are not allowed to laugh or grin, but I am trying to write a Mills and Boon-type historical romance. I have finished the first draft, and am having a rest for a few weeks so that I can go back to it with ‘fresh eyes’. The historical imprint is longer than some of the other imprints, and there tends to be more story (it is still a romance, though) and whether there is any, or how much, of the physical is up to the writer. [!]…My manuscript isn’t very long – only about 77,000 words – but it has been instructive writing it. I have enjoyed doing the research.”

“I love hearing from you and always have such a good laugh at all your stories. Have you thought of writing a book? Your command of the English language is very good and you express yourself so well. Go for it!!”

“The book died, I am afraid. I put together an assorted 45,000 words. Then, of course, during the summer, everything became very difficult. Two publishers said that, although it was not without interest to a limited readership (damning with faint praise), such books simply would not sell unless they had a minimum of 70,000 words. That either meant rewriting or padding out what I had written, or else thinking out new angles which might be of interest – and that would mean research, if I was to get the facts right, and, in all the circumstances I could not face up to it. Somebody, some day, might find it interesting, but I fear that the hour is past.”

“I find that just getting my book published is all I care about. Vanity and not money is my main motivation.”

“I’ve finished typing out as a book the stories I used to tell to families there because a few of the people go on asking when I am going to publish them. It is however noticeable that none of the children have asked the same thing, so probably the book will never get accepted.”

What some do for fun

“We can concentrate on our training… we start at 8 a.m. day one and partner rides about 60 kms to where I am waiting and I run 23 kms over a mountain range. Then we sleep. Day 2 partner kayaks 67 kms down a river and I ride 70 kms. We’ll be tired at the end of it!!”

“We went to see this really funny movie called ‘Crocodile Dundee’, which is about this guy who lives in the Australian outback, and this female New York reporter comes to him because his leg had been bitten off, and he crawled to the hospital, and she wanted a story. Anyway, it ended up him coming to New York, where some really funny things happened, e.g. this robber stole this woman’s purse and ran off with it in the street, but Crocodile Dundee picked up a tin from the woman’s dropped grocery bag and threw 20 metres to hit the robber on the head. Anyway it was a choice film.”

“… 80 of her friends came [to the 21^st party] – I was most impressed that none of the 80 smoked. Without exception they were all into rock-climbing or tramping or diving or … other disgustingly healthy pursuits!”

“We have been visiting friends. They spend about 3 months in the old goldfields prospecting. They stay in Tarnagulla which is a town of about 100 now but was approx. 70,000 during the gold rush. The trees have grown back and it is v. peaceful with the birdsong… [re postcard photo of Great Ocean Road] There are now only 8 apostles left. One crumbled into the sea, captured by amateur video, quite recently.”

“They had a little boat and the weather was good… One snag for him was that she caught lots of fish including two big ones they brought home and are now in the deep freeze, and he only caught 2 trout that weren’t big enough to keep!”

“I’m also playing rugby again this year and Mummy’s paranoid I’m going to get mortally injured. So much for family support!”

“… a man came in the other day who was 199 kg!! and he went bungee jumping! – they had to give him 2 bungee cords because one would have snapped.”

“The weekend was really fun, we played games the first evening, lazed around and played beach cricket the next morning, had a few deep and meaningful discussions interspersed with racing around the sand-dunes, games in the afternoon, dinner, then a bonfire on the beach for a large portion of the evening while we talked about direction and our lives and roasted marshmallows. (We ate the marshmallows, not talked about them!)”