farewell

This is my farewell blog. I think I have been writing it, firstly, as Crumbs on the Aga and then Ditchling Daze, altogether for about ten years.      But the gaps are getting longer and I find that I am becoming more and more repetitive as my life is largely a round of appointments at the Eye Hospital, visits to outpatients, going to the chiropodist, the dentist, the hearing aid place or driving other old folk from Dumbrells Court for the same sorts of things. Otherwise sitting on the sofa watching the squirrels. Well, that is not really true as I do go out every day. This morning it is my music group when I inexpertly play my cello with four other musicians, tomorrow is the choir and improv group in the evening,  on Wednesdays I work in the Charity shop and Thursdays,  it is the Nibbles and Scribbles writing group, and Quakering on Sundays, quite apart from seeing my lovely family from near and far.
     
I hope some of my followers may read daughter Josie`s blog, Plot Partners. She writes about her allotment and also her writing life and it is a good read.

I do love Tracey Emin`s Art Installation in St Pancras station.   Big pink letters saying:  I Want My Time With You.   That is what we all want and need: time to be with friends and family,   time to do interesting and creative things with other people.    
( I much prefer it to her Unmade Bed.)

The following is something we sang at the Choir a few weeks ago, a sort of Goodbye Blessing:

May the long time sun shine upon you
May all love surround you
and the pure light within you
Guide your way on.

I`ve Got a Little List.....

To my consternation, I see that a big chunk of the my last blog has disappeared. Apologies for its rather abrupt conclusion.  I imagine a pathetic group of words floating about in cyber space trying to find where they are supposed to be.   


I am just listening to Saturday Live on Radio 4 and it is all about Lists. I am an inveterate list maker, sometimes more than once a day. I even write things down on lists that I have already done just so that I have the pleasure of ticking them off.    I write lists for the day, the week, the month, and the year and sometimes they are practical, like `Buy washing up liquid` or they are more philosophical,like Do Something Creative Today though theses days that often only means marmalade or a pie.  Apparently Leonardo do Vinci was a great list maker, also Einstein, though one of his consisted of ways his wife could improve her behaviour.


I have really enjoyed the snowy weather, firstly because I have spent a lot of time just watching the birds through my sitting room window. I have never been a bird person and usually there are just very pushy crows, pigeons and magpies out there plus the squirrels of course. But I have been tipping Lidl`s muesli ( I dont like it) on the patio and I have been amazed: thrushes, blackbirds, nuthatches ( I looked it up! ) robins, bluetits, sparrows, and other inrecognisable ones have been flocking down. Also it all looks simply beautiful, especially when the sun shines on the snowy fields and hills. The other nice thing is that there has been the most heartwarming kindness from neighbours and friends in Ditchling calling in and phoning to make sure I am all right.    It is quite amazing. 


Anyway, the snow is melting today and I am off to Burgess Hill to the Hospice Shop.   I do not suppose there will be many customers, but it will be nice to go out rather than sit on the sofa as I have been doing for the last four days.     

I am writing this whilst sitting (fully clothed) for the Grey Ladies Life Drawing class in Ditchling. They gather every Wednesday in the Meeting House, but they used to meet in a house in the village called Grey Ladies,hence the name.        I am quite happy to sit still for a couple of hours as it is what I do every Sunday, well for an hour at any rate.    The wind is howling outside and it is deluging with rain so it is nice to sit here in the warm on a bleak January morning.

This afternoon I work as a volunteer at the Hospice charity shop in Burgess Hill which is in a rather chaotic state still after Christmas. I try to tidy one small coner each week but it doesn`t last.  Every five minutes someone comes  with several bulging black bags of mostly unsaleable stuff. Often it is the result of their clearing out a  beloved parent`s home so we have to be sympathetic, but we often feel in despair as to where to put it all.  It goes to an enormous warehouse to be sorted and some of it can be recycled hopefully ..I get more and more anxious about rubbish and all the plastic bags.    How is it going to end I wonder.

I am pleased that the marmalade making season is here. Grand daughter T is coming round after school to make the first batch.   We alternate chopping and stirring with games of Scrabble. Though only thirteen she is a formidable opponent.

I went as a volunteer to do a Memory test the other day. It was for a charity for people who had sustained a head injury and they wanted elderly people who were `normal`  though I am not sure that I fit into that category. It lasted just over an hour and I thoroughly enjoyed it.   I did well at  the word questions (due to all the Scrabble perhaps) but I was not so good at the shapes and pictures. There was no marks or pass or fail at the end as far as I know and I was given ten quid which I happily spent at Waitrose.

On Monday it was my monthly stint at the Eye Hospital. No wonder the NHS is running out of cash with us oldies having these expensive injections and scans. The place was, as always, absolutely packed . What is odd is that nobody else ever takes anything to do, they just sit there for hours staring into space. I always take a good supply of books and crosswords etc. The doctors and nurses all look exhausted.             It must be overwhelming, the sheer numbers of us. The encouraging thing is that my sight is better than it has been for years and I was actually playing the cello in my music group and realized that I was not wearing any specs.   It may have been partly due to the fact that grand daughter G`s boyfriend has just installed a much brighter light in my sitting room and that makes a huge difference.

We had a talk after Meeting last Sunday by Tony Tree about allithe Quaker skeletons found in the Pavilion Gardens in Brighton    The original Meeting House and burial ground were there in the late 17th century but had to be moved eventually to its present location in Ship Street in 1802 because the home of the Prince Regent`s mistress, Mrs Fitzherbertfelt  was overlooked by the Quakers.The skeletons are now going to be reburied up in the cemetery. What a palaver.

In the bleak mid winter....

I really mind the cold theses days.    I never used to, but I suppose it is because I sit about and loll on sofas more than I should. The cold goes right into my bones.       I wish we would have a proper fall of snow which would at least look beautiful instead of these grey dark days.
The old folks tea party went well in a fairly chaotic way.  They all came in the afternoon but everyone could sit down, and it was very jolly.   I enjoyed it anyway.   Perhaps I will do another one for Pancake Day.
I have been away for a few days staying with brother P and we also met sister J at Stansted after her Christmas trip to her daughter in Germany. Brother P has just got his driving licence back after a year, now that he has a pacemaker. He steered us very efficiently along motorways and roundabouts. But we did have one of those Moments, trying to get out of the Short Stay car park in the dark. He had not pre paid in the airport and the machine was swallowing up the ticket plus credit cards and not raising the dreaded guillotine to let us out.    But the Help button reached a kind man who eventually let us out without paying a penny, he obviously could not cope with the three of us bewailing our predicament on the end of the line.   Anything to do with carparking gets more and more difficult for the Old, I find .
It was good to get back to the lovely choir this morning after the Christmas break and I`m off to Improv tonight.    I am so glad to be back into the old routine after all that Christmas jollification. 
 

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.

Deaf Sentence

I re read Deaf Sentence by David Lodge last week while on holiday, it was on a bookshelf in the house we rented at Freshwater Bay. Last time I read it I was not deaf myself, but it really struck home this time.  It is about an elderly linguistics professor who gets into an embarrassing situation due to not hearing what a woman says to him at a party.   My deafness is at its worst  in a large group especially when it includes small children and I constantly have to guess, usually wrongly, what has been said, with or without my hearing aids.     It must drive the rest of the family barmy, but they were very patient.    
However, it was a great holiday in a really comfortable enormous house,with plenty of bathrooms and huge sofas.   It was near the beach so the more energetic of us could nip over the road for an early morning swim.    The Island is still as beautiful,  and wonderfully unchanged.   It is so reassuring to find that there is still the shop on the corner selling `ham on the bone` and slicing bacon up on a machine,  (though we ate neither as we are all mainly vegetarian these days)  There were about eighteen round the table for most meals and we took it in turns to cook and shop.    Having the three little boys, my great grandsons, was a joy and seeing them running in and out of the sea at Compton Bay as my kids used to do was lovely.          
It was a week with hardly any mobile phones (no signal)  radio, or television, and lots of swimming, walking, cycling, Scrabble and other games, and talking (though for me only the last two)    Coming back here to Dumbrells Court, it seems so quiet with all of us oldies.   And boringly neat and tidy too.
Unfortunately when I got back, I discovered to my horror that I had inadvertently turned off the fridge freezer when I left  (absentmendedness or senility?) so I was faced with a mountain of rotting food  including all the blackberries and apples I had squirrelled  away for making crumbles later and quiches and pies for future Quaker bring and shares. What a disaster.    I felt really guilty when I went to the dump with my black bagged load, as if I were disposing of a body.
How I love these late golden days of summer.    In spite of dodgy knees,I can still walk up Lodge Hill accompanied by an imaginary Bradley Wiggins and I had better start blackberrying again to replace the last lot.

Blackberry time

I love picking blackberries,wild cherry plums too, and they are both plentiful round here. Also kind people put free windfall apples outside their front gates to go with the fruit. I made eight jars of hedgerow jam and several jars of bramble jelly and also made crumbles and put them in the freezer. So satisfying.  I am very keen on jam making though I eat little of it myself. I just love to see a row of freshly filled and  labelled jars in the kitchen.

Some of the Darling family are camping in the Isle of Wight, where they go every year to a specially beautiful, quiet place on Shalfleet Creek which is always known as The Land.    I have never been a devotee of camping, but next week the campers and more of the tribe and I are renting a large house at Freshwater Bay.  There will be four generations there, with me as the eldest and three of the great grandboys will be the youngest.  We always try to congregate in the Island for Julia`s birthday on 21st August. We did it during her lifetime, and have done so ever since. We read some poems and perhaps have a bit of singing and dancing too.   We are like swallows and swifts who go back to the same spot each year.

I am going to travel on my free bus pass: Brighton to Portsmouth and then Ryde to Freshwater, but I will have to fork out for the ferry.   I am just doing because I like a challenge.   I always sit and read the Guardian on Saturdays, and then do the prize Cryptic crossword.  (Sister J does it as well and though  we sometimes have to appeal to son T for the really impossibly hard words in the end, we keep it going for days.) So I will just do the same as usual but on the bus.  I often have really interesting conversations on the buses too.       Having a bus pass has really enriched my life.     It is far more enjoyable than driving around in a car, but sadly there are too few buses in Ditchling, so I often have to drive to Brighton first. 

I am just waiting for the mobile library which only comes every three weeks now due to the cuts.   It is always a treat to climb up the steps into the cosy booklined van. I will need a good supply  for the holiday as I will not be able to scramble down cliffs or swim in the sea or go for long walks as I used to do, but can sit happily reading instead.           



  

What happened to June?

May is over and I hope for the best.....

I went to a gospel choir concert last night in Brighton,. What an experience. Well over a hundred singing their hearts out, and not only singing but waving, clapping swaying, jumping up and down. The huge hall was packed with families, babies, old grannies,   All very different from the sober choral events that I used to take part in at Winchester Cathedral in the old days. I went to it with a sober Quaker friend who used to belong to the Gospel choir. She said she loved it . I was amazed.   It was rather hot and loud for me but I enjoyed the exuberance of it all.

I had just recovered from my sleepless night on Thursday.  I didn`t intend to stay awake all night but I got so caught up in it all. I watched it on BBC4 , the alternative version with Richard Osman, David Mitchell and Paxman and it was hilarious.  I wonder what will happen now. I have begun to feel almost sorry for Mrs May, everybody is being so nasty about her. But it was such a joy to see our dear Jeremy vindicated and treated like a hero.  I was sad that the Greens didn`t do better but at least Caroline Lucas got in for Brighton with an even greater majority, she is the only one that talks any sense in my opinion.

I have been meeting up with my Syrian refugee friend every week, and trying to help her with her English homework.    Next Saturday, she has asked me to a party to celebrate the end of Ramadan, which is being held at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, and she is allowed to bring a guest. A benefactor is paying for it all.    Daughter J is going too. I feel totally unworthy because I haven`t fasted for a month and also I have done so little for the refugees anyway.    I am trying to think what to wear as they will all dress up to the nines and they love a bit of glitz.  I am hoping I will find something at my charity shop where I work on Monday afternoons.   I so enjoy my job there and can manage the till now without ringing up £100 instead of 10p  which I did at first, causing chaos with the cashing up.

I am organising a garden party for the residents here on Midsummer Day, 24th June. Brother P has done a lovely invitation for me on his computer (with colour pictures of strawberries and teapots) as that sort of thing is now entirely beyond me.    I was going to ask them all to bring a garden chair, but have now realised that none of us could actually carry a garden chair as far as the lawn. So I am hoping for help from grand daughter T and her friends. I now just pray for fine weather.   The gardens here are looking particularly splendid so I hope for the best.   

Summer is icumen in...at last.

Summer seems to have come at last. The roses are out at Dumbrells Court in all their lusciousness, the birds are singing fit to bust and the view from my sitting room window is heavenly. The only trouble is that I love just sitting on my sofa looking at it, and reading a book, when I know I should be out and taking more exercise.   There is a sort of collective guilt when you are an Old Person like me.   I mustn`t be a drain on resources and the NHS by becoming feeble and helpless so I must eat healthily, lose weight and keep moving.     In the meantime, Mrs May and dear Jeremy are handing out inducements in their manifestos to do more for us oldies but there`s also a sting in the tail with the dementia tax and the pinching of our winter fuel payment.   It is all very worrying.

Last week Daughter J and I went up to London to celebrate grand daughter M`s twenty-fifth birthday. We met for lunch in Hyde Park where later M and her sister G had a swim in the Serpentine in the rain but they said it was lovely. We wanted to see the horses as M has a new part time job at the Hyde Park Riding Stables. She leads rides with immensely rich celebs and others along Rotten Row and canters about in the Park.    To counteract this she has another part time job with Camden Council  teaching very deprived kids to ride bikes in Somertown near Kings Cross.   She also has a day job with an environmental project so her life is full of interesting contrasts.

The Brighton Festival is in full swing. Last week I went with son in law D to hear Jeremy Hardy.  D and I often go to stand up shows together. It was in the Theatre Royal, a huge theatre, absolutely packed,and he spoke for about two hours of brilliant mostly political satire. I don` know how he does it.   We really enjoyed it.  I also went to a film with J called Collisions where you had to wear goggles and head set and it was an` all round experience`.    It was about the effect on an Aboriginal settlement of a nuclear test in the Australian bush,   You felt you could touch the people, it was quite eerie.   Today I am going to hear a jazz singer Julie Roberts plus Herbie Flowers She is performing at the Quaker Meeting House in Brighton,  I have heard her before and she is amazing.

Later in the afternoon I am going to funeral at the crem of a Quaker Jewish woman who was part of the Kindertransport as a child.She was a member of our Ditchling Quaker Meeting and she was a remarkable woman.

I saw the film I Daniel Blake at our Film Club in the Village Hall last week. I was deeply affected by it.  I do feel that all politicians should see it and also anyone who works for the Benefits system.     

On Your Bike...

I am fed up with the cold weather. I have been walking around with a hot water bottle stuffed up my jumper.   I suppose one more drawback to being ancient and decrepit is that the cold gets into your bones.   Also of course I do not get enough exercise due to the lack of a dog.    I am thinking of getting an exercise bike and pedalling away whilst watching the telly, which is what brother P does. I have been staying with him for a few days to celebrate his ninetieth birthday, and he was looking positively rejuvenated due to his energetic cycling twice a day.   Sister J was there too so we three old siblings had a very good time together being provided with delicious meals by his family, and also he cooked up a full 
gravy dinner for us three on Sunday as well.   Not many nonagenarians could do that.
We had our usual fiercely contested games of Scrabble too and did not argue too much about debatable words with obscure meanings.
But as always it was lovely to come home to my cosy bungalow with no stairs. Though brother P has two stair lifts I always feel decadent gliding up and down in a queenly manner.

The election is such a worry.  I am glad to see that almost every home in Brighton has a Caroline Lucas Green Party sticker in its window, but not much chance of a Green in many other places
In the Guardian today there`s a picture of Jeremy Corbyn holding an anxious looking baby, Tim Farron cuddling a large dog and Mrs May surrounded by men in suits, none of them inspire confidence.   
I have just been to a history lecture in the village on The Edwardians, and though we may grumble about the state of the world now, it really was worse then, with the upper classes leading the life of Riley while everyone else worked their fingers to the bone in deadly fear of the workhouse.   And the meals they ate!

Hot Cross Buns

Today is Julia`s anniversary and also grand daughter T`s thirteenth birthday.   Daughter J and family plus friends are walking over the Downs from Brighton to Ditchling (seven miles) for lunch and birthday cake and then we will read aloud some of Julia`s poetry and share memories.  J and I always feel a bit tearful and odd at this time of year so it is good to get together
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Tomorrow I am having a Hot Cross Bun party to which I have invited all the Dumbrellites.  As my sitting room is small I am holding it at the Meeting House,which is five minute walk down the lane. This has caused great consternation amongst some who on reading the words Quaker and Good Friday on the invitations seemed to think that it was a Quaker indoctrination ceremony and they felt unable to come, so I fear I may be left with forty hot cross buns and a large uneaten Simnel cake, but never mind, they can go in the freezer,

On Easter Sunday I am planning a picnic and egg rolling down Lodge Hill in Ditchling after \Meeting though the weather forecast is not good. I remember doing this on St Giles Hill in Winchester many times over the years. There is something about chucking painted eggs down a grassy slope and running whooping along behind them that I find very exhilarating in a ritualistic, heathenish sort of way.

Then at the end of next week, we are celebrating brother P`s ninetieth birthday with a sibling get together and also a family do.   .Sister J and I are struggling to write an Ode but we have used up all the best lines on his seventieth and eightieth, plus a few in between.

I have just read the latest Sebastian Faulks novel: Where my Heart Used to Beat. It is a bit reminiscent of Birdsong and is really excellent and very thought provoking.

Syrian Mothers Day party.

I have not written this blog for over a month, and I expect I am doing it into nothingness as everyone will have given upon me, but I went to such a heartwarming event last night that I felt I had to write something down.     The Syrians celebrate Mothers Day on 21st March as a national event.  Daughter J and family have been involved in fund raising for the refugees in Brighton and we were invited to the party. There were masses of children in their best sparkly clothes, adults too, (the Syrians do like sparkly) I felt a bit underdressed.   There was amazing live music,dancing and tasty food.    It was a great party.  I was so glad to be there and see how well they were coping with the difficulties and sadness in their lives    There were many Brighton people there too also who had taken refugees into their homes and and it was working out really well.  I wish I could, but no one under fifty five can stay in the old folks complex where I live.     

Ditchling has been celebrating the hundredth birthday of its oldest famous resident this week, Vera Lynn. She and her daughter Virginia live just up the road from me -in fact I used to go to Virginia for a foot massage, so I was particularly interested in all the shenanigans. I loved the programme on TV last Saturday with dear Vera looking very sprightly and enjoying life. She really is a splendid woman, going off to Burma and dangerous places to sing to `her boys` . And the songs, though sentimental do speak to the heart.
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Dear brother P  is just about to celebrate his ninetieth birthday, and that will be the next celebration, we are all getting so blooming OLD.  

More Museum Tales.....

It is half term and the Brighton Darlings are spread far and wide. Daughter J and Tiger are walking along the Cotswold Way with a group of friends,, doing about 12 miles a day and probably covered in mud at this moment, but texts say `its lovely` Son in law D is on a Mindfulness Retreat in \Devon, Grand- daughter G went to Guernsey to play in a Rugby match, and grand son R frequently phones from Vietnam where he is teaching a class of 5 year olds. I enjoy hearing of all their adventures, but glad to be sitting at home on my sofa watching the squirrels. 

Many of my usual activities are on half term too, but not the Museum Tales creative writing course which has started up again. I am far and away the oldest, but I am enjoying the punk rock exhibition which is on at the moment.  It is 30 years since that burst upon the scene. My children were teenagers then but it strangely passed me by. We are bidden to write about Rebellion` and that appeals to me as I have always had a rebellious streak.

I am enjoying my afternoon working in the hospice charity shop and have more or less got the hang of the till now and only occasionally ring up a thousand pounds instead of ten pence.     I am so pleased when customers find a garment that really suits them or a book that I have read and recommended.   There is a lovely atmosphere among the helpers.

I am on one of my frequent trips to the Eye Hospital this afternoon, always a difficult manoevre as there are no buses from Ditchling to Brighton so I have to drive and hope that the drops in my eyes wear off quickly so that I can see to drive home.    I try not to mind the injections and they don`t hurt but there is something scary about having a needle stuck in your eyeball.  Still I am so lucky to get it done at all and I love the NHS and have always had wonderful treatment.

I have just read Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleve and  found it an excellent read. It reminded me of when I was ten or eleven and living in North London during the Blitz, cowering in the cupboard under the stairs when the bomb fell outside our house. It did not explode and as far as I know it is still there.   We all had to go and live with a Mrs Tickle in the next road until it was declared safe.    But the book was about about the real horrors of the blitz and the war on the lives of ordinary people, and also of racist attitudes which were appalling. 
   
I have decided not to write about D.Trump or Brexit. It is all just too awful for words.

Getting the Cold Shoulder....

I have been without a car recently. My ancient Nissan Micro ground to a halt on the M 23 on a perishing cold afternoon and I was stuck on the hard shoulder for quite a while.. Not a good experience especially as I had dear brother P with me who is even older than I am. However we survived,  thanks to mobile phones and the very kind A A man, and in spite of a worrying time being towed along the motorway, I got home safely.   The car needed a new clutch at vast expense but it seems as right as rain again now.
       
P. had been staying for a few days and we had our usual poetic breakfasts and scrabble, which was lovely,  and now life is back to my old routine, except that I have a new weekly activity: I am working at a hospice charity shop on Mondays.   I am not very good with the till, having never used one before. I keep putting too many noughts so that it registers hundreds or thousands instead of just one pound and it took the supervisor ages to sort it out when cashing up at the end of the day but I have only worked there twice, and I hope I will improve.   Apart from that I really love the job and they are a friendly lot. It is nice to start something new.

I saw a brilliant film at the Village Hall last week: Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance. It was so exciting, and really brought back memories of that Cold War time and the Berlin wall and everything.  It was a true story too.   With all the news being so worrying at the moment, it is quite comforting to remember how bleak it all seemed in the sixties and seventies and we have nevertheless survived.

This Friday, the day of the presidential inauguration in USA , there is a campaign to hang banners on all the bridges in U.K (maybe elsewhere?) saying `Build Bridges not Walls` which is a quotation from Martin Luther King.    Some of my family are involved in this and I am very glad about that.
The combination of Trump and Brexit is a bit overwhelming at present.

I am off now to try and find some Seville oranges and do some marmalade making. That is the best way I know of  cheering up these dark winter days.

Bollywood Brighton

It is time that I registered the fact that I am still alive,and sound in wind and limb   .I have been very dilatory of late and am uncertain whether to continue with this blog or if I should abandon it altogether though I do find it a good exercise to put down on paper some of what is going on in my life, as I do not keep a diary.

Well, Christmas in now safely over ` with no wrecks and nobody drownded, in fact nowt to laugh at at all`   as Stanley Holloway said in the Lion and Albert.    By that I mean that we had a nice time and no one landed up in A and E and we all stayed fit and well, thank goodness. Highlights were: a pre- Christmas visit to brother P in Hatfield and a meet- up there with sister J down from Newcastle and we three ancient siblings having a get together. P and I exchanged gifts and found that we had bought each other identical poetry books : Being Human, the most recent Bloodaxe collection, and as we had both secretly wished to keep it, we were well pleased. Sister J gave me the latest Margaret Drabble novel The Dark Flood Rises,  and I got into it straight away, brilliant writing and very much on the theme of old age which is just up my street.   

Then Xmas Day started off with the usual Quaker Breakfast in Ditchling Meeting House. Five members of my family came plus their Taiwanese lodger who obviously now thinks that all English people celebrate Christmas with a slap up breakfast at a long table in a bare room, followed by sitting in a silent circle for a while and then shaking hands.  I  spent the rest of the day in Brighton and son in law D and granddaughter M cooked the vegetarian dinner whilst the rest of us sat by the fire playing scrabble and doing jigsaw puzzles  Dear Indian friend W, who is a dance teacher came later with her family, and all twelve of us did a Bollywood Workout and worked off our huge meal. We did more singing and dancing. I could hardly move the next morning but it was worth it.

J and I got up early and drove to Fontwell to pick up brother P. (don`t ask why we were picking him up from a racecourse at 9am, it is too complicated to explain)  and he is now staying with me and we are enjoying breakfast poetry reading and fiercely contested games of scrabble, in between reading our new books and dropping off to sleep on the sofa while watching television  

I liked the Queen`s little homily on Xmas day- just gaining inspiration from all, the surprisingly imaginative, good, kind  and small things that ordinary people get up to . It is no good worrying and dwelling too much on all the rest, as I cannot do much about it apart from being mindful.     I must now write my New Year resolutions, which apart from the usual ones about losing weight, writing just One Good Thing, and more exercise which I put down every year but have not yet achieved, I will take the dear old Queen`s advice and try and do something small but useful.   
  

 

Kale and farewell.....

Here we are, in the first week in Advent.  Stir up Sunday has come and gone and I haven`t made a Christmas cake or pudding as it seems so self indulgent.  Last year I ate most of the cake myself right up to the end of January and it does no good for my expanding waistline, worse now that I no longer do dog walkies twice a day.

I am still spending much time at the Eye Hospital, sitting waiting glumly in silent rows, all bleary eyed from the drops they put in..I joined the Macular degeneration society so I am now officially a DEGENERATE.  One of the things they recommend is to eat kale. I bought a big bag of it in Waitrose, but it was an effort to get the rubbery stuff down even after it was well cooked.

Son in law  D took me to the Dome Theatre in Brighton last night to a stand up show, a German comic  called Henning Wehn who is often on the radio and television and whom we both like. It is so brilliant, the way one chap can hold a huge audience for a couple of hours with clever satire on
Germany Brexit, British plumbing, Trump and immigrants in such a hilarious yet gentle way.
I realised I was at  least twice the age of everyone audience if not more.

I was very impressed by the fact that the GP phoned and invited me round to check that I was OK  `Do you need help with anything?`she enquired.    It is so different from the tales you hear of people not being able to  get  an appointment with the doctor for weeks, and the NHS going down the drain. I tried hard to think of any ailments I might be worried about,but luckily could not think of anything except a large unsightly wart on my hand which she is going to see to.

I have decided that all present buying, wrapping, card writing, the lot, I am going to leave till the last minute. I just can`t stand the thought of things like Black Friday, and frantic online ordering and buying. I shall just have a mad panic in the week before Christmas. No mince pies, tangerines, or
 chocolate Santas will pass my lips till then.

The LastTrump

What a horrible blow to wake up this morning to the news that the loathsome Trump is to be the new president of USA , its like Brexit all over again. What is going on?      Walking cheerfully and looking for that of God in the likes on D.Trump is hard,  even for a Quaker but we will just have to try.

On a more positive note, I had a lovely half term trip to Rye and Hastings with daughter J as a belated birthday treat.   Tiger came too and really got into the hotel experience with a request for Scrabble to be brought up to our room and cheese and pickle sandwiches from room service, and very nice too. There was also a lovely swimming pool and wonderful buffet breakfast. And I do love hotel breakfasts.  We then went to the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings which is ideal for me as it is quite small, with just enough nice pictures to look at and lovely views of the sea and the fishing boats in the Old Town    I hate places that are huge, which wear me out.      Also plays, films, operas, concerts, that are too long which I find is often the case.
  
I am writing this blog as I sit as a model for the `Grey Ladies` life class which is an art group in Ditchling.    I hasten to say that I am fully clothed   I do not know why the group are so named as they are neither grey haired nor always female.  I have done this many times and I enjoy it as it is peaceful sitting for a couple of hours in the morning though sometimes we chat so it is a good way of hearing the village news.    I never look at their pictures as when I did once I was horrified by the many versions of  a wrinkled old crone, though they are very good artists.

We have two good films this month: last week it was Theeb, a dramatic film set in the desert among Bedouins in 1916 and though I had my eyes tightly shut and fingers in my ears for several frightening bits, it was a brilliant film. Tonight we have The Dressmaker which looks promising. And next week the Am Drams are doing Noel Coward`s Blithe Spirit.   Never a dull moment in Ditchling.   
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