How is your adult literacy student? Last time you wrote you said you were rather concerned about her as she was in hospital cheerfully accepting all sorts of dreadful things without question. Mine is young and quite healthy but not interested. I think Father is the prime mover in what is supposed to be voluntary, and makes sure that poor X is here on the dot of 7.30 p.m. … The rest of the family is quite successful: only X seems to have missed out, and I think he feels he is the family failure. Father sees me as someone to bring him up to scratch. Altogether a bit of a pickle.
A nice friend sometimes asks me to go over and help with typing for a ‘tapes for the blind’ charity, and I enjoy going but feel an awful fraud as I type so slowly and badly on a manual machine now that very little gets done in an afternoon. But he is always very grateful so I suppose I get down to it better than some of regular volunteers. A good thing to keep in with, as I may want the service any time myself- but I have read most of the books they can offer I think!
I am enjoying doing the library trolley once a week at the new general hospital…. we do our best and giggle a lot and lose our way frequently as it is a most confusing hospital. The corridors have little coloured men on the walls to guide you the right way. Gynae is pale green and where the trolley is kept there are 5 little men showing, so one goes on until it is only one little man disappearing into a door and that is the ward!
Actually X plans to work in NZ next summer. She has worked in Oz so can’t get another work permit for Australia so NZ is the place! Did you hear that Y’s [totally unrelated person to previous] husband committed suicide last New Year – a terrible time for them all.
It’s best to be there when they begin to hatch in the night to keep the crabs off the baby turtles. Mrs. X ailing, so I may not be here for my whole 2 years.
We are hopping
[from child] We used to have 2 rabbits but one ran away, and we are hopping [sic] to find her the one that ran away was named Thumper and the other is named Midnight. I better go know because I are going to help mummy tidy my room.
My favourite dinosaur is Apatasaurus. I got a sellotape for Christmas.
He had a career choice dilemma which he solved thus: ‘On one side I’ll be a fire engine driver and on the other I’ll be Father Christmas.’
I wish I was better at living alone and that people would stop telling me what fun it must be looking at Sainsbury’s! [Flat is in block opposite the store.]
He’s very nice (well, obviously I would think so). He’s very outgoing and has a good sense of humour and is a very caring sort of person too. He gets really involved in what he’s doing and will try his hand at most things. If he’s playing a game he’s quite competitive.
…she was never an amicable woman and made his life a misery and I do not know why he stayed with her at all.
Marriage troubles were pending I knew; finally I slept in the flat for 6 months and threatened my husband ‘we see a counsellor, or move out!!’ Anyhow we have had a breakthrough, although at present I wait for friends to arrive as he won’t see the counsellor any more.
comparing negatives
I found he had cigarette stubs by his bed again. She says she’d rather he smoked than get fat.
We set off after the first night of Club Pairs which I’m playing with a v. pleasant woman this year as X and I seem to be out of step bridge-wise. I think we both do too many psychic bids as we know the other one won’t mind!
X had his hair cut and looked much more presentable – said he was getting a complex as everyone was commenting! It was not I might say at his family’s behest but his girlfriend’s – he sounded quite worried at how obedient he was being!
She is into a great romance with a nice bearded young man who runs a very large property for his father (who is horrid) and will no doubt inherit eventually. Do you think I am very mercenary? But I do like to think of my little darlings being in a stable financial situation and not having to fret over electric bills etc. Of course it may come to nothing!
… two nights with the old 93-year old cousin, full of woe as the family home has to be sold and she is miserable although she can’t live there without a ‘keeper’ as she will keep falling down on her arthritic legs.
Scottish Dancing is his passion in life which she cannot do because she has a back, or something. [We know what you mean!]
Yes, how X needs a break… I remember her as the Golden Girl with everything going right for her.
A good resolution for the winter will be to type for 20 minutes each day to make my fingers work right, but I may have left it too late and I shall never get out of the habit of using the wrong fingers when the correct ones bend the wrong way! But if I could make them a bit more pliant it would help.
I seem to be getting the rheumatics in my shoulders and arms and my hands look pretty peculiar and some fingers leave go of things at the wrong moment and although my toes are permanently numb and blue they don’t actually seem to be falling off.
A thorn in my side this year has been my temporary assistant. The present occupant works about quarter time at best. She is always ‘sick’, and never even apologetic or worried about it. Personally I think a good shaking would do a great deal to improve the situation, however it doesn’t feature as a motivator in any of the personnel manuals. .. We are unable to terminate her employment as she continues to bring certificates.
It is a bore and very ancient-making to be crawling everywhere like a decrepit crab instead of stepping out!
I’ve pretty much decided to give up on teaching for a career. I like teaching, but I’m not very good at the crowd-control side of the job.
I’ve been doing a month’s relieving 45 minutes drive away. It went OK I suppose but it was a bit hairy in parts – the last 4 weeks of a 15-week term is not an idea time to take over an undisciplined class! However. It’s a shame for the kids having 3 teachers in a year actually – especially as there’s not much else that’s stable at home for many of them around the school area.
engineer au pair
This change of plan meant X had to get her au pair a little earlier than expected and a lady from Turkey arrived just a few weeks ago. She has just finished University and is now an Industrial Engineer. Her English is limited but, being a very clever lady, is improving every day. She hopes to stay here for a year whilst her fiance is doing his National Service.
X continues to be a complete mystery to me. Programmers really are on a different planet from the rest of us humans but, nevertheless, he is successful and enjoys what he does. No parent can ask more than that!
I’m supposed to find which diseases the butterfly caterpillars (which we export as pupae to live butterfly displays in UK and USA) die of and prevent them…
I am in a bit of a quandary at work. My boss is not managing as coherently (I can’t think how else to phrase it) as he was. In fact, I think he has got steadily worse over the last two years. During the last couple of weeks he has behaved quite irrationally on occasion. As there is no one much to observe this who can advise him to take all of that leave which is owing to him, I think I may have to take a rather drastic step and go and talk to someone about it. I don’t want him to have a breakdown. I feel like a tattletale.
Your new regime sounds ‘challenging’ if very hard work and I hope it won’t wear you out, particularly with a bossy boss. How I loathe the type who send peremptory notes and I do hope I wasn’t like that in the days when I ran a department! To [our family], who are always right, it comes hard doesn’t it?
Employment here is very bad, except if one has specific qualifications and experience e.g. mining engineer, accountant and top-level managerial experience. I have an interview for a job next week. The job is assistant archivist. I don’t know why they are even interviewing me, but perhaps there weren’t many real archivists who applied.
I muddle along as best I can. It’s a real case of ‘do what you can where you are with what you’ve got’!
It seems that as usual my out-of-date fantasy about having very little work in August and doing things like going home early and tidying the desk drawers, is indeed a fantasy, as I have to write the Annual Report by the end of August, complete with graphs and appendices etc., write various bids, re-vamp part of our education service, and finalise a whole range of service advice leaflets and programmes.
Your last letter relayed all the health problems you ended up with after the row with your boss. Wasn’t worth it, was it? I developed a back problem I think as a result of long hours and too much SITTING, SITTING, SITTING!!! Fortunately it came right on its own, or with the help of the change in jobs. I was so miserable in my work I think my mind was looking for ways to put an end to the stress if you know what I mean.
This year I have been prescribed my first set of reading glasses. I can read quite well without them, however at the end of the day I have to say the world did have very fuzzy edges. So, off I went, and was told that many people required glasses by middle age. How very cheerful. My eldest sister is 60 tomorrow. I have to say that the realisation of this made me pull up with a real jolt. I never thought it when she turned 50: even though I am somewhat younger, that didn’t sound anything like 60 sounds – sort of aged. So there, you have another 10 years of being young.
I am glad that you are doing new things.
new ventures
I have to say that as one gets older ones group of friends seems to dwindle, or you see them less often, or something. I too have felt the need to do something different and meet new people.
I must admit I also worry a little about how quickly the years seem to be going, the birthdays coming around much more quickly than they used to and the realisation that middle age is not so far off! However I always think of X who bought and started a sheep farm at the age of 50. She is in her mid-70s now, with the farm quite successful… How one avoids or copes with the bodily ills rather than those of the mind I don’t know.
…a year since we set off from Southampton. It is amazing that time can go so quickly. I keep thinking of what we were doing a year ago – getting up and having rolls on deck, having dinner with that dreadful man (remember the sardine appetiser?), charging up and down B deck.
I surprised everyone, and not least of all myself, by having a stroke in middle of June. At least I was sensible and was able to rest and recover lounging in the garden – I felt like the last of the Colonial Empire – laying back under the trees for hours on end. Don’t be shocked at being 50. I was 70 this year – whatever next!
X’s surviving brother, 89, came over from Spain in the summer and while here did two stints on television – one in ‘The Bill’ and one for a new series of ‘As Time Goes By’ with Judi Dench – great for his morale but stressful.
I thought I felt old when the children of friends started getting married, but it’s even worse when people my age announce that they’ve retired or are thinking of retiring. Where have the last fifty-two years gone to? X’s father died just two days after his eighty-seventh birthday. Although he’d been suffering from Alzheimer’s for several years, and his death was, in fact, a happy release from his torment, X and I were suddenly acutely aware of having moved up a generation, as it were. It’s not that we feel any older (or wiser!), just nearer to the other end of our lives.
[Gift of a kite may explain – or not] Thank you for the kite. I flew it after we went roller-blading today… Sorry the letter is late. There wasn’t enough wind.
Thankyou for the blundiebus mirror, and the milky peewees (I bet you think I’ve lost my marbles!) No, seriously, they’re choice and so is the marble book and that impossible jigsaw puzzle.
fliers
thanks for the fun fliers. Live is going well apart from cofs and senezos. School has bene going well a part from sume upsets in th second turm.
Thank you for the money. School is beter than I thort. In Fact it is MUCH better than you thort. I am olso having drum lersons. it is cool. I Will pobebly get a c.d. ore a vido with my present. PS Thank you. by X
& somewhat older:
Thank you very much for the money you sent for my birthday. I didn’t actually buy a drink with it, I bought a hacksaw which I was in dire need of so thank you very much.
No way can I tell you how greatly I enjoyed the wonderful afternoon you gave me. Best of all seeing your splendid little house and charming garden and now being able to visualise what goes on in your busy life!
Thank you for giving me such a lovely day at X again. I’ve never not had a splendid time with you but this time was best of all.
“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!”
knickers stealer
“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!”
“I have been entertained by X. Her questions have kept my brain ticking over: seven or eight questions on the trot, I am about losing the plot and forced to answer the original one and then managed to change the subject… But, the process starts all over again with the next lot!”
“They came at 3 p.m. and left at 7 so think that was a success – v. pleasant couple. He has something terrifying wrong, with internal bleeding of the brain at intervals when he’s rushed to hospital.”
“…the garden is tiny too and even if far nearer to neighbours than I like I shall have the consolation of being able to shout for help if in despair, and would be heard.”
“I tried to give my brain a brush down and went to Oxford for a residential week. I did a course in Literary Criticism and lived in Somerville College. Quite wore me out…”
“Oh I do wish I had your ability to like living alone.”
“…most of whom I hadn’t seen since we left X [14 years ago]. Many of them were sprightly early-retired in those days; and it was rather strange to see them again after this gap, all looking distinctly elderly. (I of course haven’t changed a bit!)”
distinctly elderly
“How is the homespun jersey going? Shall hope to see it on you one day if I ever brave the stairs again – I got so comparatively-able-to-breathe-deeply during the summer, but I think I ought to live in the South of France or somewhere as I am panting again now and appear to be developing asthma or something sinister every time I try to ride up a slight incline on a bike. The answer is to walk of course and I can pant more gently then!!”
“We heard from X… I got a nasty shock to hear he’s 80 – it’s almost into-the-chasm-sounding, rather than over-the-mountain.”
“… about a year ago I wrote saying (more or less), ‘nice to have known you, goodbye’. He wrote back, having recovered from his latest bout of rigor mortis, saying he was bird watching and going off to Italy!”
“It was such a sudden and tragic loss that I suffered when partner passed away.”
“She was happy at his ‘easy’ end, and I can attest to that as husband was in and out of Hospital Emergency for 17 years before he died – and it was awful to watch it all – and of course more awful for him.”
[re bout of rhinitis] “…and those pills were the ones I didn’t bring. I reluctantly bought some quick relievers – which did work praise be. Horror story of X’s about a visitor who did the same and they didn’t go with some other medicine he took and he died within hours made me a little apprehensive!!”
“I was to and fro all the time and mother died last month just before I arrived back in X. It has all been too depressing for words. I know it was all for the best but it still knocks you for six.”
“Unfortunately X’s grandfather was hit by a car recently and he died a few days later. He was 80 years old so would not have been around much longer anyway but it was not a nice way to go.”
[re X’s garden after her death] “X had lovely iris stylosa – they are gorgeous but I haven’t been out to croon over them for about a fortnight. They made me burst into tears anyhow so perhaps it is as well to leave them uncrooned over.”
Filed words 