New Year,new Blog

I have decided to have a go at resurrecting this blog as I had a few reproaches amongst the Christmas cards and I had been feeling guilty about it. I have no idea how many bother to read it.  But it feels as if is a good discipline for me to sit down and write a few paragraphs, perhaps once a week.
So I am starting today, New Years Day, and the beginning of my eighty eighth year.   
I went to a nice party last night with games and lovely food, and came home through deserted dark streets just after midnight.    (When I got up this morning at 7am it was still dark all around with curtains drawn.)  I wish  there could have been a wild party going on with everyone outside doing the 
Hokey Cokey.

Apart from writing this, I am making no resolutions. I shall try to live for the moment. This time last year, I resolved to lose weight as I kept seeing gruesome programmes about diabetes and losing toes, feet and ultimately legs, so I made valiant efforts, until about August when I went on holiday and then I lapsed back into hot buttered toast and full fat Greek yogurt, and I think I will carry on the same. Whilst staying with son in Winchester last week, I surveyed myself  in a full length mirror ( I haven`t got one at home) and realised that though not  fat, I am a very odd shape, so there`s old age for you, you can`t win.

Today, I am having a neighbours tea party. I put the invitations on the Christmas cards (we all send them to each other here) but said` don`t answer this, just come if you can`. I am sitting here wondering if there will be a stampede of elderly people arriving at once, dropping their sticks and trying to balance cups ot tea plus mice pies and crumbly Christmas cake.    By using (damp) garden chairs, piano stool, kitchen stool,  I can seat about  twelve people in this very small bungalow, but what if they all come?  Or none of them, and I am left with piles of uneaten scones and cakes?   I had hoped to have thirteen year old granddaughter T here as she is good at crowd control, but she is going to the Football with her dad. But luckily daughter J will be here.   And if no one comes we can sit and play Scrabble or watch old black and white films on Channel 81 on the TV  I have  only recently discovered this wonderful  device.  It is very addictive.

 
 

Whatever the weather....

Oh dear, I am getting so lazy about writing up this blog, but one reason has been that I was without any internet for about ten days due to my changing from BT to Talk Talk which was a right pallaver. There were long conversations with an unintelligible bloke in South Africa, and though I tried every whichway and enlisted the help of many people,  I ouldn`t get it to work. In the end an engineer came from Burgess Hill and took five minutes to connect it just by changing a filter thing. In the meantime I had completely got used to no email and had gone back to writing letters and using the telephone.
Now I cannot get the printer to work and battle daily with it, so I  have been unable to print off the Guardian cryptic crossword and my brain is getting addled.
My life consists of struggling with technology and visits to the Hearing Aid place, the eye hospital, the dentist, chiropody clinic and organising my general physical maintenance.   It all doesn`t leave much space for nice times with family and friends, and intersting outings.  But luckily, brother P is coming next weekend to stay and we are going to two concerts with Brighton Early Music Festival: a performance of Pygmalion by Gluck and another of early string quartets.    No doubt we will have poetry breakfasts, fierce Scrabble matches and nice meals together.    We will try not to discuss our health problems.
Dear grandson Rob is going off again on his travels next week, Cambodia this time to meet up with his girlfriend and then they are going to Australia. He has saved up from working very hard as a chef in Hove for the last few months. We will miss him.
The weather is very worrying at the moment: red skies from the Sahara last week and then hurricane Brian which made me think of the dear cats Brian and Shirley.  But really nothing has been so bad as the Great Gale of 1987 when I got back from work at the Winchester hospital to find my the windows blown out in Chesil Street and  devastated trees everywhere.  My mother always used to say that she didn`t notice the weather and I must try and do the same.  

My eighty seventh birthday is looming up, but as so many of my friends and neighbours are well into their nineties, I still  feel comparatively young.

There are various jollities planned, including a family get together a gala improv night, and a sedate tea party for some of the Dumbrellites with the bone china cups and saucers gleaned from the Winchester dump aka the Recycling Centre years ago.

It is also Quaker Week and I foolishly volunteered to organise a coffee morning at the Ditchling Meeting House and I doubt if any punters will turn up.     It will probably be us local Quakers eating the home made cakes and chatting to each other.It is difficult  to think of ways of drawing in the populace as the Quaker image is still of women in funny bonnets and men wearing hats like the ones on Quaker oat packets.

Brighton is abuzz with the Labout PartyConference at the moment and there are Fringe events with people queuing up   and a general air of excitement.    Our Jeremy is doing well and it is something to feel cheerful about amongst all the direness of Trump and Brexit and the rest.

I still feel quite confident  driving round the Sussex lanes (and into the outskirts of Brighton where I catch the bus) and having watched the programme on TV about centenarian drivers including one who was still proficient at 105,  I hope I can continue to do so, but I am infuriated by the fact that all the meters round here will not take money any more   You have to have a smart phone which  85% population now have.    But I can`t hear the instuctions in busy traffic, and can`t read them if it is dark and I can`t do the keypad easily either, so I still rely on my ancient mobile phone and seethe with rage when I cannot park near the hospital, or even outside daughter J`s house.   

I have just seen the film Victoria and Abdul and thoroughly enjoyed it as I love Judi Dench and a lot of it was filmed at Osborne House in the dear isle of Wight. It is a bit of a pantomime with all the courtiers getting infuriated with Victoria`s goings on but apparently true.    Hard to imagine our dear old Queen behaving in such a rebellious manner.