Spring has sprung in our garden pond!
family
Love in a vase
Last Sunday was Mother’s Day here in England. My twin daughters live at different ends of the country, and because of their, and my, schedules we were, to my dismay, destined not to meet up for the day. They were though, dutiful enough to send sweet and thoughtful mother’s day cards, and to my surprise and delight, also both sent the most wonderful bouquets. I wish I could harness the scent, which fills our living room, to share with you, but in the absence of smellyblog here are a few studies I took of the flowers.
What’s in the box… I want to believe…
With the return of the X files to our screens this week, I thought it might be a good time to reveal to you what is in this little box (I’ve put my lens cap next to it to give an idea of size).
My daughter made this in a woodwork class at school when she was about 14 I think. As I remember, the brief was to make a box with a surprise inside. As she was a big fan of X Files at the time, she came up with this neat idea. As you can tell, being meticulous in her work, she could (and still can when she has time and puts her mind to it), produce some pretty impressive results.
So… what’s in the X box…
an alien of course! Not just any old alien though, he’s a glow in the dark, alien on a spring so he wobbles when you open the lid. It still amuses me!
By the way, what did you think of the first of the new episodes? I thought it was a bit slow going, but I’m hoping it will pick up speed, and be as entertaining as the last series were soon.
The truth is out there…
Can she do it?
Well the New Year is underway. I’ve not made any resolutions as such, but as always have promised myself that I will get (and stay) fit, lose a few pounds, be happy, let myself off the hook now and again, and try and do my bit to make the world a nicer place.
Of course, all those things are more of a challenge than they ought to be.
At the moment I’m feeling like a bit of a blob, so I’m all enthused about the getting fit and losing weight bit. However, I do know from experience how quickly disillusion can replace that enthusiasm, and those carefully set goals seem unachievable and all that effort a waste of time. It’s so much easier to just accept your fate and eat another chocolate, after all, who really cares what shape this old woman is in? Does staying in shape matter as you get older? After all, no-one wants to look like a boney and haggard little old lady do they?
Actually, yes, it does matter. People might not worry too much about what I look like, hey, they might even like my huggable, soft, curvy shape. The thing is though, I don’t feel healthy. I’m tired carrying this extra load around. I still enthusiastically and regularly practice yoga but my forward folds are lately feeling hampered by that baggy belly. Everything is more of an effort. My clothes are getting tighter and that spare tyre blobbing over the top of my jeans is, frankly, not attractive. There you go then…. I’m definitely (yes folks, you heard it here) going to stick to my fitness regime this time!
Then there is the ‘being happy’. Well, it should be easy enough, I’m generally a happy sort. But then I get the doldrums. For no apparent reason I’ll wake up full of gloom and doom. Or I’ll be worrying about something. Usually something daft that really doesn’t deserve my time. Or I’ll be sulking over some slight that the person who said it is oblivious to (yes, yes, it’s my husband we’re talking here). What a waste of effort that is. So this year, I’m not going to go there. No glooming, no worrying, no sulking. Yes, well, I’ll let you know how that goes!
‘Let myself off the hook now and again’. Does everyone beat themselves up over stupid things or is it just me? My foot in the mouth moments, or letting myself down moments (see getting fit above!!) Am I naggy? Am I a cross sort? Am I fat? Should I work harder? Be nicer? Do more housework? Write more? Take the dog for longer walks? Look prettier? Be less of a slob? Be more interesting? Good god, the list is endless….
Last but not least, I will try and do my bit to make the world a nicer place. Well, that’s a bit beauty pagenty isn’t it? Vomit inducing? Yes, I can see you sticking your fingers in your throat and gacking. But honestly, I do think I can do this one. Ok, I can’t save the world (sometimes it seems beyond saving), I can’t even save individuals, but I could make the odd person smile now and again. I can recycle more, I can grow more flowers, spend less, point out the good things in life to anyone and everyone that will listen, laugh lots (the world is always a better place when people are laughing), support charities… I am not, and will never be, a full-bloodied campaigner, but I can sign the odd petition regarding ubiquitious injustices or things I’m passionate about.
Yep, reckon I can do the odd bit to brighten up this corner of the world. I only hope that if you take a look at my blog now and again, I can brighten up yours too.
Happy New Year! xx
A Loss? – Flash Fiction
Although the walls on each side were black and sooty, she could see the light in the distance beckoning her with the promise of safety. She expected to hear her footsteps echo, but all she could hear were her gasps of effort.
She couldn’t quite remember how she had got there, although it seemed to her that it had been quite a journey. She knew she wouldn’t have taken public transport, she hadn’t done that in at least fifty years. She remembered quite clearly her revulsion at having to sit on the filthy seats, pressed too close to grubby strangers when she was a student, and how, as soon as she could, she’d bought herself a little car. But she hadn’t been able to drive for a couple of years now, not since they’d taken away her licence. Bloody old age.
She’d felt ok really. Still had her wits about her although, in general, modern life was a bit of a puzzle. The youngest members of her extended family seemed to live on a different planet, what with all their gadgets and gizmos, and what rare communication there was with them always seemed difficult. That’s not to say she didn’t love them all, but there were just so many these days…
She wondered where they were now, and instinctively looked down at her hand where the gold band still glistened, though it’s pair had been long gone. It had been buried with him. His only bit of decoration against the best black suit that they’d put him in. She wondered if it was still there, in the ground, encasing his bare finger bone, and shuddered at the thought of how cold his touch would now be.
Ineluctably her thoughts turned to her son who’d made it big in the US and then came to grief with the help of chemicals and alcohol. She’d been mystified and heartbroken that her perfect boy had gone so soon. He’d been naughty as a child. A tease, with a cheeky chuckle, but he’d grown into a handsome man, broad and muscular with long dark hair that softened him and disclosed his gentle nature. She was so sad for his wife and their twin boys who had had to get along without him all those years, but they’d diligently kept in touch with her, emailing photos of special occasions, such as the boy’s weddings, and the babies births.
Looking ahead at the light, she saw she was progressing. It was becoming dazzling, and she closed her eyes, after all, she knew the path was safe. She could feel a slight breeze just brushing her cheeks like a gentle kiss, and for a second, thought she could smell perfume, the one her daughter Lillian liked that was hugely expensive and came in a fancy bottle. Smiling, she remembered her firstborn, who hadn’t been the brightest spark in school, but whose bright eyes and curves ensured that she’d married well. She’d lived in an impressive house, with a room for the au pair, and a paddock for the ponies, but had ‘downsized’ to an idyllic country cottage when the children left for university. They had said it came with a ‘granny annex’ but they had converted it for the cleaner to live in before they moved in. It was a shame it was so far away, she felt she barely knew her children, or their children.
And then there was Jennifer. Her youngest daughter, scrawny little Jenny with the mousey hair and crooked teeth. Always angry at the others, she was a loner who seemed content with her own company, so it astonished them when, in her fifties, she married a man 10 years her senior. A professor or something. He was a ramshackle widower, with umpteen adoring grandchildren always clinging to his hands. Jenny took them all on like a trooper. She became the perfect grandma, baking cakes and biscuits, letting the hoard have run of the house. It was good to see her happy though, even if it did make her forget her own mother sometimes.
Resolutely she strode on, picking up pace and as the light penetrated her lids, she knew she was close. Opening her eyes she grew accustomed to the brilliance enough to pick out dark shapes against it. As her excitement grew, her breath got louder in her ears and turned to an uneven rattle. She gasped her last as she saw the shadows become the two men she missed so much, waiting for her, there, as she reached the end of the tunnel.
This one’s for my mum
Hi Mum!
Surprise!! I know you loyally read my blog even though sometimes you don’t understand it, and quite definitely ‘don’t like poetry’. So when I came across this video this morning and knew that you’d love it, I thought I’d post it here just for you (and anyone else who might like it too of course). The music might not be entirely to your taste, but it’s worth watching for the dancing and the incredible way all the clips are put together in perfect timing.
When I watched it, it took me back to Sunday afternoons watching Fred and Ginger, Gene Kelly, or Busby Berkeley movies on the sofa with you and nan. You always did love dancing. I can remember, when I was very small, being told off for running about between peoples legs when you and dad took me along to one of your ballroom dancing classes, and as I got older, watching you being swept around the floor in a dazzling waltz on our annual visits to the holiday camp.
For a short while you sent me to dance classes. I don’t remember why I couldn’t do ballet, I think I wasn’t the right shape or something, but I did a bit of tap and modern, well, until my sister refused to take me anymore because she was embarrased by my (alleged) naughtiness.
So, I’ve never been up to scratch with the dancy dancy. That’s not to say I don’t do it, blimey, I even admit to dancing about on my own on my ‘about’ page here! But it’s probably just as well that no one is watching.
You and I both enjoy watching Strictly Come Dancing at this time of year, and I’d love to be on it. I bet in your day you could’ve beaten the pants off of any of them! Wouldn’t it be great to be all dressed up in those glittery frocks and being swished around the floor by a proper professional? Of course, this programme is the new and improved incarnation of ‘Come Dancing’ that we used to watch together years ago too.
Anyhoo, enough of the reminiscing, have a look at the video and enjoy. I hope it cheers you up as much as it did me this morning – but don’t try any of the moves, well, not unless you’re hanging on to your ‘trolley’ 😉
lots of love
k xx
The Fast Life
Writing 101, day 10. ‘Let the scene write itself’.
When I was forty we moved ‘up North’. The year flashed by in a flurry of finding homes and schools, and settling in and seeking friends. A comfortable and smooth suburban road, my fortieth year was fleeting. But on reflection… Forty was slow.
In my fiftieth year I celebrated a half century of living. Working full time, the decade hurtled along. Motherly fussing over A level angst, and woefully watching my girls turn to women overnight. And then they left. My nest was empty. I studied and worried and filled that gaping gap with grief. My fiftieth decade passed so quickly on that bumpy B road. But on reflection…. Fifty too was slow.
Now, it’s over sixty years since my birth. I grasp life, clinging to my youth with white knuckle fear of declining body and mind. Years roll by as fast as miles on a motorway. Long stretches of similarity so often give way to curves and corners in my world. I expect the unexpected – a sudden ‘slow down’ or ‘obstruction in the road’. I’m flying along in the fast lane.
But what of seventy? Dare I look beyond? Do I inevitably set out, slow moving, on curling country lanes? A pedestrian? Or perhaps fork out for a Ferrari, put the pedal to the metal, and speed away?
All I want is a room somewhere…
Writing 101 day 6 – Where do you write?
Generally I reserve time in the morning to write. A couple of hours dedicated tapping on my laptop. I could of course, spend all day, but that ends with my having a guilt trip about not getting the housework done or the dinner ready, so I try and limit my absorption.
Of course, some days my mind is a blank. There is nothing, nothing, to write about. My life is dull, my imagination run dry. I think it is with these days in mind that I choose to sit on the sofa in our sitting room when I’m writing (yeah we have a study, but who uses one of those for goodness sake! I’d have to climb over the mountains of paper an’ everything).
We are very lucky to have two comfy rooms with sofas. One, which I tend to call the living room, is where we sit in the evening and watch TV, or loll about and read the newspapers on a Sunday morning. It has a bay window overhung by our very old oak tree at one end, and French windows looking out across the garden at the other. I treated myself to a chaise longue when we decorated and that is in front of the French windows. It’s where I drape myself to catch winter rays or watch the rain in summer, it is most definitely not made for working from. The sofa in here is facing the fireplace not the window. And there’s the rub.
So… it would appear that I write sitting on the sofa in the sitting room because the sofa faces the large picture window which gives me a view of the garden (this is news to me too… I’ve never really thought about it before!). We have a pear tree just in front of the window, which is where I hang the bird feeders. All manner of birds come to get their share of nuts, seeds, insects (yuck, those dried ones…) and fat balls. In fact, I have my own little viewing gallery right there. The room is always bright and cheery, and in the finer weather I can open the door onto the patio and hear the birds bickering while warm breezes circulate.
However, lovely and entertaining as the view is, there are I think, other subliminal reasons why I use this room.
In the sitting room I’m surrounded by memories. I have cushions scattered about that I have made from tee-shirts bought as reminders of holidays but never worn (right now I’m leaning against a huge gold picture of Mickey Mouse bought as a tee-shirt at Disney in Florida nearly 20 years ago) Photo’s and souvenirs from trips to distant places, a selection of LPs from my youth which we can’t play ‘cos we don’t have a turntable, plants that are growing way too big, in fact just about everything ‘wot I like’.
This room is also the room where we play board games at Christmas, huddled around the coffee table, snacks and drinks on the floor, yelling at each other with frustration or glee when we win or lose or get totally outmanoeuvred (to be truthful its usually only me that that happens to). Where we sit quietly in our ‘oingy boingy’ chairs from Ikea and get stuck in a novel, or where we work out whether or not we can afford that next holiday. It’s a room for parties – push back the chairs and there’s a good space for a boogie, and for yoga practice – its got a perfect wall for practicing handstands against.
I never thought a room could be inspiring, but with my selection of oddments and memories right here with me, and my wild garden only a glance away, I doubt I’ll ever completely run out of things to say!
Just in case I do though….
We’ve been asked by the wordpress fairies to ask our readers for suggestions on what to write. I don’t know any more than that at the moment, but if you’ve got any ideas just let me know by commenting below, for now… I’ll think about a contact page later 😉
Have a good day!
I say ‘tomato’…
Writing 101, day 5. Use a quote as inspiration.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
On the surface, my husband and I are two very different creatures. He is academic, one of the clever ones, who shone at school and studied at Oxford. Me, well, I was a thickie. Someone who really didn’t achieve, who hated school and left as soon as possible without any further education.
However, when we met at an AmDram society, and he was my leading man, we clicked immediately. Laughing at the same things, talking endlessly about nothing in particular. The rest, as they say, is history.
Over the course of the last 34 years he has encouraged me when I wallowed in self-doubt, to the extent that I ended up gaining an Open University degree, and being comfortable enough (just about) with my writing to publish poems and short stories on my blog. He pushed me to apply for jobs I didn’t feel good enough for, yet got anyway. I feel he believes in me.
On the other hand, I think I have taught him to let go of his serious side once in a while, and be silly (equally important in my opinion), relax and enjoy life and see the funny side whenever possible. I’ve done my best to support him in some life-changing decisions, for instance, when we upped sticks and moved our little family ‘up North’.
Even after all this time, we remain individuals. I know he categorically fails to understand my love of technology, or for that matter, my dedication to yoga practice. But then, I’m bored to tears by the endless history programmes he enjoys. He likes cooking, I do it because I have to. I like loud music, he tolerates it. We are opposites in many ways, but opposites that complement each other – I can fix his laptop, he can make delicious meals for me!
Of course, we have joint interests too, which together with our shared experiences of parenting, homebuilding, travel, joy, doubts and sorrows means we will always have common ground. Things to reminisce over in our rapidly approaching old age.
I don’t like to talk about it much, but he is my second husband. I was liberated from the first one nearly forty years ago, so it seems irrelevant. But I understand and appreciate the deep truth of the quote above particularly because of the experience of my first marriage. That man was extraordinarily possessive and jealous. I was very young and didn’t really realise it initially, but he treated me like a possession to be paraded and put back in a box. I wasn’t allowed out on my own or allowed to wear make-up to work in case I attracted attention. I naively believed that it was because he loved me so much. In reality, it was a destructive, humiliating, and one-sided ‘marriage’.
That has all passed, and though it is a life lesson that has not been quite forgotten, at least it’s been overwritten by happier times. By marriage to a good man who is happy for me to make my own weird stamp on the world. Who, in cheesy Hollywood speak ‘completes me’, who is the yin to my yang, the broadband to my laptop. Ok, we may bicker occasionally, sometimes we need our own space, but that quote above says it all ‘we quiver to the same music’. We have true love and for that I am deeply thankful.
Doll
Writing 101 day 4 – Using a picture for inspiration
We used to rock and roll
Her dyed black, tied back hair swinging
as we jived through young life
Swerving around corners
eating up the straights
on silver machines
that throbbed and roared
as we sat carelessly astride
Together we played at grown-ups
We nestled and snuggled
our restless souls settled
our bikes rusted in the backyard
where herbs and flowers grew
encouraged by her tender hands
Then her belly swelled
I watched her move to the
dance of motherhood
her face, lit by a thousand smiles
glowed in soft focus
while babies suckled
then grew strong beside her
Bereft she cried in my arms
as we watched them go
Reflections of our younger selves
Caught in the moment
I saw her face, it’s soft valleys
and newly formed crevasses
denoting worry and wisdom
Those last few months when
floury fingers baked biscuits
and dusted memories on the mantel
When her tied back hair was grey
and her frowns replaced the smiles
adventures curtailed
she waited
And the call came
As I sit in this echoey place
Where the candles flicker
And memories are shadows
Where I carried her like a doll
Boxed
With her silver hair loose and free
I remember
We used to rock and roll
Rebooting 