Tiger time

Ten year old grand daughter Tiger is here today while her mum is at work. I made a list of possible activities and we are working through them.   First was cleaning the windows as I don`t like going up ladders and she does, secondly was doing all surfaces  with squirty polish, then she made a trifle which involves messing about with jelly, and lastly some bread (with a cheating breadmix)   She thoroughly enjoyed all those.   
Next I got her to organise me into doing Twitter on my laptop and now we are planning to go for a swim but I slightly dread the pool in the school holidays with the alarming waves and whirlpools and splashing. But I will try to be brave.
We may go blackberrying later as I noticed that they they are already ripe when I went on my early morning dog walk. Blackberries in July!   
I had a lovely visit last weekend from an ex resident from the Meeting House and her partner.  So many shared memories, we never stopped talking.   
The only other event since my last blog is that B.Wiggins went to what is grandiosely called Brighton Pet Spa to have a complete makeover, wash and blow dry, ears, nails teeth and trim. His legs look much longer now. He is very pleased with himself.   

any old iron,any old iron.........

I forgot to mention in my last that B.Wiggins went round the Whitehawk estate in Brighton recently on a rag and bone cart drawn by friend Mary`s pony (daughter J and dog Jumble were also on board) It is a wonderful scheme: unwanted broken irons and kettles, TV`s, computers furniture, are collected regularly and taken to The Green Centre which mends or recycles them. B.W. sat up bravely as they clip-clopped along.

I sadly said farewell to the Year Two`s on Wednesday, all the Jaydens, Haydens Brendons, Rubies and Rosas. It has been another lovely year , but hopefully I can go back next term and will then have to learn a new lot of names. Teacher helpfully always puts a big chair out for me, as if I sit on an Infant`s one, I cannot get up again.

I went to friend P`s ninetieth birthday party last week. I realised that I have known him for sixty years, longer than almost everybody there.. It was also P`s wife and my dear friend J`s 87th birthday    It was a really good do and I met up with many old friends in various stages of decrepitude and I include myself in this category. P`s grandson, who is a chef cooked delicious food and it was a beautiful.day. What a treat.

I have got some new hearing aids after complaints from my family (and  I also had written a letter of condolence to the wrong person as I misheard a name on the phone)    I now hear BW snoring which I never noticed before and turning on the taps to wash up, sounds like the Niagara Falls.    

In Flanders Fields...

I went to Poperinge near Ypres with seven other Quakers and even though I had read a lot about the 14-18 war and seen TV programmes and pictures and films, it still gives a shock when you go there and experience the sheer scale of the awfulness of it all. So many young men dead in these endless huge cemeteries and also the tens of thousands of names of men who have no known graves.  Just before I left I looked up Uncle Henry,`s death, my father`s brother, on line and saw that he died near Ypres.  We passed his cemetery on the way from Calais. It was difficult to find the grave among the thousands but eventually there it was, poor Henry Vickers, who died in December 1916, I do not think anyone in the family had ever seen it before.
We stayed at Talbot House founded by the Rev Tubby Clayton as a refuge for battle weary soldiers and now a museum as well as a simple B and B. We held our Quaker Meeting on Sunday in the chapel up in the attic. We trudged round the German cemetery, the Island of Ireland, the Pool of Peace and the impressive Flanders Field museum in Ypres, and we heard the Last Post at the Menai gate which is sounded every night at eight oclock. We all felt really glad we had made the expedition together.
Grand daughter G has gone off to China for nine weeks to teach in a remote rural area.  How brave.