Monday 22 September 2014

Dog days....

B.Wiggins did a really awful thing on Sunday. A very kind person offered to look after him while I was at choir and he chewed a huge hole in a travel rug on her sofa. I was mortified. But we had a subsequent nice outing to a National Trust shop nearby and bought a replacement and I have decided that having a dog is a bit like owning a car. Every now and then you get a parking ticket or have to buy a new clutch. 
I am so enjoying the Indian summer and I am out every afternoon picking blackberries on our walks. B.W. takes a dim view of it as he likes to Get On so he sits looking annoyed watching me pick.   I have also been given lots of windfall apples and people round here put vegetables like runner beans, tomatoes and courgettes outside their gates for free, so walks become foraging expeditions.
I have just had another nasty internet experience. I became convinced that the man on the help line I got on to when I was unable to log into my email, was a heinous crook  I tried to put a stop on my online banking and they said `I think you are overacting Mrs Darling` Daughter J then said`let me have a go, Mum`and she instantly solved the problem. I think old persons like me are sitting ducks. We pretend we understand technology but we don`t really and then we panic.
The improv group is ten years old, (daughter J was a founder member but I have only been in it for five years)   It does us such a power of good as well as being hilarious. It is totally free and just needs someone`s front room or kitchen, and it meets every week. It is good for all ages; we have two ten year olds and there is another old girl about the same age as me.  
My tips for old age: Get a dog, for the exercise (even one that chews things up) and do improv on a regular basis.

Thursday 11 September 2014

Back to School

Good to be back at the Infants yesterday. Teacher gave me the job of taking a photo of each of the children and handed me on of those IPhone things. Oh what a hash I made of it. Several of some children, none of others, weird expressions, arms, heads, missing. I had to do most of them again. The trouble is that so many gadgets with screens are ultra sensitive and I am not good at the gentle touch and tend to give the thing a hearty wallop.  I wonder if I should acquire on of these tablets or IPhones but I don`t really want to do my emails sitting on the bus so perhaps I won`t bother. But on the other hand I feel i must keep up with things...
The new class are a joy, but as ever I struggle with learning the new names which are unfamiliar ones, like Harrison, Hatton, Macy and Delilah.
I have just been to have my hearing aids checked. What beats me is the extraordinarily complicated high technology of these small beetle like appliances, but no one has has yet come up with an efficient way of getting the wax out of your ears. `I shouldn`t wear them if I were you `warned the bloke, `You`ll just push the wax in further`The health and safety conscious nurses round at the Drs don`t like syringing ears and tell you to put oil in which makes me deafer than ever.
The other Bradley Wiggins is cycling through Ditchling and Brighton on Saturday/ BW and I will be there at the roadside waving him on. 

Wednesday 3 September 2014

mists and mellow fruitfulness......

Very misty on my early morning walk today and fruitful too as I picked some nice ripe blackberries to eat with my breakfast yogurt.  But the sun is coming out now and I love these autumn days. 
I went to Winchester at the weekend (for yet another Memorial Service) and had a walk with son T and B.Wiggins along the water meadows where Keats wrote the famous Ode.      On the path by the river Itchen, I met someone whom I hadn`t seen for well over forty years and we recognised each other!  He used to come to the Quaker Meeting with me as he did not like going to the Chapel services at Winchester College where he was a pupil, so he got some sort of dispensation. He would push baby daughter J there in her pram.     
Son T has now gone to India for three months to teach English to Tibetan refugees. What with grand daughter G teaching English in a remote village in China, and grandson C doing the same in Thailand  I wonder where the Darlings will go next?   I am full of admiration for them all for being so fearless and adventurous and doing something useful too.         One of the difficulties about being old is not feeling very useful most of the time. 
Anyway I am off to look after ten year old Tiger while her parents are both at work today (she goes back to school tomorrow) so I suppose that is a bit useful. I thought I would check that she knows her twelve times table as that was one of the crackpot notions I heard on the news yesterday. All four year olds should understand fractions and year sixes their twelve times. I shall give her a test and a prize.