My Village

The little enclave in London where I have lived for 46 years has always been a pleasant area to live in and houses a population of about 45,000. It has always had a peaceful village-y feel to it - a small sleepy High Street, old churches, a village green, one cinema and lots of pubs, yet it boasts nine railway stations and a tram stop connecting us within 15 minutes to all the major hubs in Central London. We are a ten-minute drive from the Kent countryside too, so have the choice of either visiting busy inner London or picturesque Kent villages, depending on our mood. We also have two enormous parks in our midst - one quite wild with an 18th century mansion and woodland; the other more cultivated with a lake. Greg and I chose this area for all those qualities. Greg came from rural Lincolnshire, so was not happy living in the hubbub of inner London. I had been raised in Lewisham - a multicultural inner London borough which because of its proximity to the docks had been badly bombed during the war and very much a place of deprivation in the 1950s and 60s, so I welcomed the village-y feel as an upgrade.

Since the arrival of the internet, where many people shop online, the high street shops began to close gradually and in their place coffee shops and restaurants sprang up. In the space of 800 yards, I can probably count at least five Turkish restaurants, three Italian, a Greek, a Lebanese, two Thai, a few Indian and two kebab shops, a West African restaurant, various pub chains, a dessert shop, an ice cream parlour and at least 15 cafes. Sadly the number of shops where you can go in to buy a gift for someone or browse has fallen dramatically. The only shops where you cannot get a service online are hairdressers and nail salons, so many of these have sprung up too. We have four of the major supermarkets still here, but all the banks have closed to move to a neighbouring suburb, so we can only get banking services at the local Post office in which the queue spills out into the street because of the demand. It has meant that the High Street is quite quiet during the day, but comes alive at night when the restaurants and pub chains are heaving.

As I say, until recently, it has been a sleepy village sort of place, but in the last few years it has changed. We have gangs going around stealing cars (I am advisedly informed to take to Eastern Europe) and stealing tools out of workmen's vans to resell at car boot fairs. There's been quite a few mobile phone snatchers riding bikes. In addition, because we are sandwiched between two relatively deprived areas, we have trouble with warring gangs and there have been quite a few stabbings, They are almost becoming a weekly event and so much so that nobody bats an eyelid. This week a completely innocent person was walking past a supermarket minding their own business and was set upon randomly by someone who proceeded to bash them on the head. The poor victim died in hospital a few days ago.

It is quite concerning how life has changed recently. I do not want to be one of those people who constantly say "in my day, we used to ....", but it seems life has changed quite a bit over the last twenty years alone and not necessarily for the better.

Flight or fright

There has been a Channel 4 series on TV (see here) where a clinic in Amsterdam can cure people of their phobias. Apparently getting people to confront them until their fear is right off the height of its scale and then giving them a single beta blocker renders them perfectly OK to face their phobia the next day with no problems at all. 

It is amazing what people have phobias about.  Quite common on this programme were spiders, snakes, frogs, birds and mice. Less common and in some ways difficult to comprehend were balloons and clowns. One really intriguing one was a fear of dachshunds. The man hated the little short legs and long body. He didn't have a problem with other dogs, but dachshunds caused him to go into extreme panic.

The trigger for phobias usually starts way back in childhood when a parent passes on a phobia (say, a child seeing its mother freak out in the proximity of a spider, which then ingrains into that child the fear that spiders are horrible and to be avoided). It can also originate from a personal experience someone has that then induces the fear of that reoccurring. 

I can't say I personally like spiders or snakes, but not enough to be terrified of them and if I find a spider in the house, I tend to dispose of it myself. My mother was terrified of stag beetles and to this day I cannot bear to be outside in May when they fly about at dusk. It's the size of them and the fact they tend to bump into things that worries me. We tend to get a lot in South London and Kent and I am always glad when June comes and they are gone forever.

Male stag beetle

My biggest phobia, however, used to be eating out in public. I was fine until I was about 19. Then one evening when I was at university, I went out for a meal in a restaurant with a boyfriend. As the meal was served, I took a few mouthfuls and then came over all hot and faint. I found I couldn't swallow and felt everyone was looking at me. Of course, nobody was, or, if they were, probably just glancing across the room rather than AT me. My heart was pounding and I felt sick. I was forced to stand up and rush out of the restaurant for fresh air and never went back to finish the meal.  After that, I was unable to eat out in public for many many years. I would avoid invites to weddings and work business meetings, where I knew a meal was involved. The very thought of it would make me feel sick. I'd make all manner of excuses. This phobia remained with me for a good two decades after that, including my own wedding, which caused no end of problems and extreme panic leading up to it.

It was really only after Greg died that I had to put my big girl pants on and face the fact that sometimes I had no choice. And to my delight, I managed to overcome it in time. Now, I don't think twice about accepting invitations to dine out and have no problems at all.  In fact, at Kay's wedding, not only did I sit at the top table and face 80 people while I ate, I also took on the Father of the Bride speech in front of them all with no qualms at all. 

When I think back, the trigger probably originates from when I was at secondary school. We used to have school dinners, six pupils to a table. We used to help ourselves to the main course from tureens on each table. Only once we had finished eating that, would the kitchen staff take those tureens away and then bring the dessert tureens to each table. One day, I had helped myself to  one too many boiled potatoes for my main course and had left one on my plate. Our history teacher was on lunch duty, came and stood over me making me eat it while everyone watched, eager to get on with being served the dessert. The potato was cold and dry and difficult to swallow, but that teacher still stood over me until I had eaten every last bit. Only then would she give permission for the main course tureen to be taken away and the dessert tureen to be served. I swear that was most likely what caused me such anguish for those twenty odd years I suffered that phobia. Being a teacher is a very respected profession, but do they realise what damage they can do? I bet she never ever realised what harm she was doing me but what gave her the right to force-feed me? She probably won't remember me, but I have never ever forgotten her.

Solid as a rock

Earlier this week, I decided to educate myself and join the posh classes..... I went to the opera. In my lifetime I have only been to a few operas, mainly when I was in my twenties and living in Germany, but have not been to any since. One I have never seen is Madame Butterfly, so, as it was on for one night only in my local theatre, I decided to go along.

A friend, who is a massive opera fan and was a regular visitor to the English National Opera at the London Colosseum, before she became housebound at the age of 90, advised me to a take a box of tissues with me as the story is quite sad. I got there way too early as I had left the car behind and travelled by bus, but settled into my seat and watched the hordes of people coming in clutching glasses of wine and in some cases food!! When did that become a thing in the theatre? The opera, written by Puccini was sang in Italian but thankfully there were surtitles above the stage with the English translation projected,  so it helped to know what they were singing about. I had studied the synopsis of the plot, so had a vague idea of what was going to happen. I was well prepared when at the very end, Madame Butterfly stabs herself to death which was quite dramatic.

At the very end the cast came on stage one by one to take a bow and the audience clapped and cheered as each of the main characters brought up the rear. But that was not the end of it. The opera had been played by the Ukrainian National Opera Company (both singers and orchestra) and they began to hold up an enormous Ukrainian flag whilst singing in Ukrainian. The surtitles projected the English translation about them loving their country and fighting for freedom. I kid you not, every one of the audience, well over 800 of us - myself included - took to our feet and clapped wildly and cheered. It was so emotional as we obviously all wanted to show our solidarity to them in the light of what had happened in the last week or so. They in turn seemed stunned by our reaction as maybe they don't usually sing that patriotic song at the end of their performances or, if they do, maybe the audiences don't normally react so demonstratively with a standing ovation. Either way, it was THAT that brought me to tears rather than Madame Butterfly. I think everyone felt the same, namely that we wanted to show the Ukrainian people we stood shoulder to shoulder with them.

The irony of it was that Madame Butterfly had fallen in love with an American naval officer who toyed with her emotions and then discarded her. Even when he knew she had a son by him, he proposed to take the son back to America with him and be raised by the American woman he was now married to. It was the ultimate cause of her suicide of honour. It just goes to show you can't trust some Americans, I thought, as I made my way out of the theatre. There's one I can distinctly think of right now.

Fifteenth anniversary

This week on 6 March sees the 15th anniversary of Greg's death. For me, fifteen years as a widow. 

Last week some choir friends and I went to see the latest Bridget Jones film. I won't give too much away, but in the first few minutes you learn that Bridget is now a widow and that her Mr Darcy was killed whilst out in Sudan on a humanitarian mission. She is having to cope with raising two small children. Her friends are urging her to get back out there and find someone else. It was hilarious in places and my friends came out buzzing with excitement. I didn't want to spoil the mood, so said I had thought it lovely too. In reality I found it hard to watch as it touched so many raw nerves.

It is true it gets easier as time goes by, but the grief never entirely fades away. It is just different. I still yearn for what could have been, what we could have done in our retirement together - places to see and things to do. It is just not the same on your own. I try to keep busy (sometimes too busy) with things that distract me - volunteering for foodbank, the park, gym, choir - but it never gets easier, when you come home to an empty house, climb the stairs and turn out the lights on your own. Night after night after night. Not easy when everywhere you look you see so many elderly couples still full of the joys and holding hands.

It's not been good for him either. He's missed out so much on the world news he loved and worked for - goodness, what he would have to say on the current world situation; he's missed out on the success of his daughter at university and becoming a medical doctor; and he's missed out on her falling in love and marrying a wonderful man.

His death was of his own making which also makes it harder to accept sometimes. If only he had stopped drinking. But addiction is hard to overcome and I guess in the end, he was too troubled and too far deep to stop. For those caught up in addiction, look here for how things could turn out if you don't stop. It doesn't make easy reading, but it may turn you against what will happen, if your addiction takes hold. If it helps one person, this blog will have proved its usefulness.

Wooden carvings

Yorkshire Pudding's recent blogpost about wood carvings he had seen in a church gave me an idea for this post.  My daughter Kay and her husband bought a house near me two years ago. It was in a pretty bad condition as it had been lived in by a little old lady for many many decades and was still in a sort of 1960s time-warp. She had a thing about water and had several ponds (including one in the tiny front garden) and many ugly water containers up the side of the house all linked together to collect rainwater. The house - a small modest end of terrace Victorian house - needs a lot doing to it and is a work in progress. London prices are extortionately steep and it cost well over half a million pounds (more than 4 to 5 times its value elsewhere in the country), so there is not a lot of money to spare to renovate it. I'm helping them where I can. (Incidentally Kay has just read this and thinks it looks like I'm boasting about the house price. I mention it purely because property is so expensive in Greater London compared to elsewhere and it always seems unfair we can barely afford the house and certainly can't afford to furnish it, compared to other parts of the country.) Rewiring, re-plumbing, new windows (there are mushrooms growing in the current ones!), new kitchen and new bathroom are just some of the projects to be done, not to mention re-landscaping the garden as the ponds take up the entire space where maybe lawn should be. Kay and her husband regard this as a ten-year project as their busy jobs also take up any time to do it themselves quickly.

The little old lady was a bit of an artist and we have found hidden under the undergrowth in the garden many metal animals, which she must have crafted, now sadly rusted and only fit for the rubbish dump. However, one thing they are keen to keep are the carvings on the bannisters on their staircase. They are quite unusual and, we think,  probably carved by the old lady, but Kay has fallen in love with them.

an owl

a squirrel

Not sure if this last one is a rabbit or a nun!

Spring is on its way

The weather here in London has been very wet for weeks and weeks on end and, with the windchill factor,  very cold, although temperatures have been mostly above freezing. The greyness has been the worst I have known for a long time and the sun is rarely to be seen. However, one little bright sight in my garden is the appearance of snowdrops. Against all the odds, they struggle through the hard soil and are a joy to behold. Hopefully spring is just around the corner with brighter, warmer days ahead.

Wicked

The choir I go to does some very challenging pieces which is why I like it. Very often when we start the term's rehearsals of the new songs, I don't necessarily like what we are singing,  as the songs are sometimes discordant or just plain difficult to learn.  But over the weeks, as we rehearse and fine-tune them, they grow on me until I find myself humming them or, worse, going over them in my head at 3am in the morning when I am trying to sleep!

Last year, we did the entire repertoire of Wicked, the musical. At a concert with 3 other choirs, our choir was voted the best, which pleased us all no end. A few weeks ago, some of our choir members invited me to go with them in a group to see the film version of the musical which recently came out. I have not been in a cinema for decades. I have hearing problems which means I would normally sit through a film only hearing a fraction of it. Hearing aids are all very good, but only make people, who mumble, mumble more loudly. It's the clarity to make out words from a string of meaningless vowels and consonants that is a problem. I much prefer to watch DVDs with subtitles to catch up on modern films. As this was mainly a musical and I knew the vague story from the research I had done, I agreed  to go along to the cinema with the group.

Oh my goodness. Not having been to the cinema in so long really was a culture shock. Our local cinema had 8 different screenings of which Wicked was just one. The foyer was like an airport lounge with different food stations in a circle - popcorn, sweets, drinks, ice cream, coffee etc. The cinema itself was full of about 150 leather armchairs (ten rows of 15 seats) which could recline so it was almost like you were lying in bed with a small table to swing over you to place your drinks and food. At least, if I don't hear anything, I can nod off in comfort for a couple of hours, I thought. I know this is not something new for most of you, who do regularly go the cinema, but I was like a kid in wonderland!

Fortunately, the volume was so loud, I think I would have heard it a few miles away and the film so engaging that the 2 hours 40 minutes flew by. My group was so tempted to sing along with the songs, but we bit our lips and sang along to them in our heads. 

The sets were mind-blowingly amazing and must have cost billions unless they are computer-generated. I came out buzzing. I don't think I'd manage with a non-musical film as the dialogue was still a little hard to hear at times, but it was quite an experience just for the cinema alone.

This is an extract from some of the Wicked repertoire our choir sang in 2023.....

I shall never ever forget

I am publishing an old post this week, as today's date means a lot to me. You'll see why.....

I suspect, should I ever die and they need to perform a post-mortem on me, they'll find the First of February 2001 etched in my brain like a stick of Brighton rock.  It is a date I shall never ever forget.

In mid December 2000, I had been told I needed an urgent hysterectomy operation. I had developed a large mass in my womb. If I lay face-down on a hard floor playing a board game or doing a jigsaw with Kay, I could feel it digging in to me. The consultant gynaecologist I went to see was fairly hopeful it was a benign fibroid but because of its large size, could not rule out it was something malignant. He needed to open me up and see for sure, but did not want to leave it too long. However, with the Christmas and New Year period in the way and therefore an obstacle both from my and the NHS point of view, my operation, although urgent,  was fixed for the 2 February 2001, some six weeks away.

However over Christmas, it became apparant my father was very ill. I have written before here about how special he was to me, how close we were and how upset I was when he died, untimely ripped from our lives by leukaemia and (cruelly) to have two kinds of the disease at the same time: one which he could have lived with for many many years and, apart from the occasional blood transfusions, would have caused no problem, but the second type was more aggressive and by mid-January 2001 revealed the diagnosis that he had but a few months if not weeks to live and he was too weak for chemotherapy. Not certain when exactly he would die, I was nervous to go ahead with my operation, but my father begged me to carry on, as it was much needed and he would not be happy if I postponed it.  He argued that I still had my life in front of me and would be recuperating by the time he grew worse, so we stuck to the schedule.

A few days before my operation, Greg, a nine-year-old Kay and I drove the sixty-odd miles to stay with my parents for the weekend. We visited my father who was by now very weak and in hospital. The consultant haematologist told us that Dad was rapidly fading and that his blood was showing more of the killer leukaemia cells day by day. Again I protested that I ought to cancel my operation, but again my father insisted I should go ahead and be all the more stronger to deal with what would happen to him later. At our parting, I hugged and kissed him and could not bear to let go or turn the corner out of view from his bed in the ward, all the time trying to keep a brave front for Kay who did not really understand or suspect what was going on.

A few days later, it was Thursday 1 February 2001: the day before my operation. I had been told to report to the ward at about mid-afternoon. I was to have a bath at home beforehand and to have brought a case full of stuff to last me a week in hospital. The hysterectomy and removal of the "mass" would take place on the Friday morning. I was at home busy preparing myself and making sure that Greg and Kay would have enough to be fed and watered during my 7-day absence. I was also packing a case and getting ready to have a bath after lunch.

At about 12:50pm the telephone rang. It was my mother in floods of tears. My father had suddenly passed away ten minutes before. I froze. Now what to do?   I was all for rushing to be with my mother but Greg wanted me to have that op so badly  as he was nervous it could be bad news and to postpone it was madness. However I could not leave my mother to cope with Dad's funeral on her own and in any case I did not want to be incapacitated for it either. I decided to cancel the operation. I rang the hospital and left a message with the consultant's secretary. I rang around my circle of friends and relatives telling them the grave news.

I was in a daze. I could not think straight. There were a million and one things to think about, not least of which was how we were going to break the news to Kay. The phone kept ringing.  Then in the late afternoon my consultant rang me back. He said he sympathised with my position, but he would seriously urge me to reconsider the operation for the next morning. "Your father can no longer be saved, but YOU can", he said. He also said he could not guarantee that putting it off for a few weeks would have a good outcome if the mass was malignant. He begged me to think about it and ring him back with my decision. Meanwhile people were ringing me saying much the same thing, that my father would want me to go ahead with the operation. My mother even rang to say she had been taken by close friends to collect the death certificate and the funeral could be arranged for three weeks hence by which time I would have recuperated. There was nothing else for me to help her with, so even she said I should go ahead with the op.

Thus it came to pass that on the evening of 1 February 2001, Greg delivered me to the hospital and then rushed off to collect Kay who had gone back to a friend's house since leaving school that afternoon. I found myself sitting up in a bed in a large old Victorian  gynaecological ward of twenty beds or more, ten down one side and ten down the the opposite side. I sat listening to people laughing with and chatting to their visitors, while the tears rolled down my cheeks. My beloved father had just died;  I sat all alone surrounded by people; and I faced major surgery the next morning. A day I would never ever forget.

Twenty-four years on, I still miss him.

Working from Home

I recently saw a programme about working from home. Since the covid pandemic, when people were more or less told to stay at home and not mix with others outside their family bubble, working from home took off. With most people having computers or smart mobile phones, it made working from home a reality that could be implemented. It would probably not even have been possible back in the 1990s.

Suddenly everyone was jumping on the bandwagon and, even when covid restrictions were lifted, many continued to work from home, including those who work in large organisations and government offices. This meant procedures that usually took only a few weeks then took months. I knew this to my own pain, when I tried to apply for Power Of Attorney and the whole procedure was frustrating (see here) and took nearly a year to process.

For the employees, this is ideal - they can stay at home in their pyjamas and work in their lounge, bedroom or kitchen. They don't have to pay travel costs to get to work (which in London can be horrendous) or add hours onto their day by the commute. They can be with their children or closer to schools to pick them up and manage their day to their own timetable. The programme I watched even showed one office employee working at a computer in his local golf club and playing a round of golf when he needed a break!

The downside of this is that many workers are cut off from their colleagues and the usual banter and mentoring that goes on falls out of the window. It has led to a huge increase in mental health issues, as staff grapple to work in isolation. Meetings via a computer screen are not the same as being able to socialise and swap ideas and information in person round a table.

Of course not all professions lend themselves to working from home. Hospital doctors, firefighters, train/bus drivers, beauty salons, dry-cleaners and restaurants/cafes immediately spring to mind.  Many of these have apparently seen a decline in their businesses, because of home-working. 

Some unions are taking up the baton to make it an employee's right to work from home. I am not sure I agree with that and would love things to return to how they were pre-Covid, as it only seems to complicate matters and reduce efficiency of the service the organisation provides. Not to mention having a huge impact on mental health. What do you think?

One Life

I mentioned in my last post that we had recently watched the DVD of One Life. My hearing is not so great to watch films in a cinema so I always prefer to watch them at home on DVD, when they come out, as I can use subtitles. Darcy had bought me this DVD for my birthday as he knew I would be very interested in this film, given my family history.

The film portrays the life and work of Nicholas Winton who bravely masterminded the evacuation of 669 children from Prague to England at at time when the Nazis were about to invade Czechoslovakia in 1938. It  alternates between following Anthony Hopkins playing a 79-year old Winton reminiscing on his past, and Johnny Flynn as a 29-year old Winton who successfully helps 669 predominantly Jewish children to escape the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia and the threat of living in ghettos or facing concentration camps, just before the beginning of World War II.

It was a very emotional film on various levels and I won't go into any more detail to spoil it, in case you do want to see it. Although my father escaped Nazi Germany in early 1939 (not through the help of Nicholas Winton but with the help of English Quakers via the Kindertransport), there were many similarities, such as the children arriving at Liverpool Street station in London with labels round their necks to match them up with the English people who would look after them. My father had also arrived at Liverpool Street Station at the age of 15, not able to speak more than ten vital words of English. Seeing it as a film, it drove home to me what it must have been like for my father, rather than just the sketchy hand-me-down stories in our family history. 

Anthony Hopkins looked remarkably like the real man. I recall as a young woman watching the That's Life programme on television which featured at the end of the One Life film. It brought shivers down my spine to see it again. 

He was awarded an OBE and later a Knighthood for his humanitarian work and many more accolades, including a statue of him in Prague railway station. He died in 2015 at the age of 106. What a man. What a hero. 

Anthony Hopkins in the film as Nicholas Winton

The real Nicholas Winton

Back to normal

This week has seen me getting back to normal after the month of December had virtually seen all my usual activities cancelled because of flu and lack of energy.

On Sunday, I did a shift at out local park information centre. It is run by Friends of the Park. We sell calendars of the park, notelets of the same, pens, notebooks, tree guides, bird guides, duck guides, and food for the ducks and squirrels. We also try to answer any questions the public may raise about trees or ducks. Unfortunately it was pelting down with rain and was very cold. Suffice to say we had no visitors at all and took no money at all.

On Monday I went back to a gym class for the first time in a month. I normally have no problems doing this class but on that day I find it hard. Even the class instructor singled me out in front of 25 others and asked if I was OK.  It was quite embarrassing.

On Tuesday I visited an old work colleague of mine, whom I haven't seen since last March. She has a beautiful show home - puts mine to shame - beautifully decorated and tastefully furnished. We had a lovely morning catching up on all our news including of course Kay's wedding. 

On Wednesday, I attempted another gym class which thankfully went much better. I rushed home to shower as that evening I went out with four of my choir friends for a pub meal. Snow and very low temperatures were forecast, and, as the pub was some 4 miles away, I was a little hesitant whether I would get there and back safely. It was snowing as I drove there and it was settling on the roofs of cars. We had a lovely convivial meal exchanging stories of our individual Christmases. Fortunately, the snow had turned to rain and by the time we left (or rather were thrown out as the last people to leave) at 10.30pm, the rain had washed all the snow away and I got home in one piece.

On Thursday, I went to a U3A (University of the Third Age) meeting about Charles Dickens. It was very interesting as it was seen through the eyes of the man himself..... what he himself had written about his own childhood and adult life and how that compared with what had appeared in his novels. In the evening I again risked an icy drive to go to a choir party. After our Christmas concert, there was little time before Christmas itself to get everybody together for a social evening rather than a singing evening, so it was arranged for this day. It was lovely to have longer chats with people I know by sight but not always by name.  I was determined not to stay within the comfort zone of my usual friends and mingled with people I had never spoken to before. We had been asked to provide either food or drink for the party and I made a double batch of crispy cheese cookies - a recipe I had recently acquired from a fellow gym user. They went down very well and at least 5 people asked me for the recipe.

On Friday, I did a foodbank shift. The church that runs it also offers a sit-down cooked meal held in the church hall. This leaves little room for bags of food to be handed out inside, so we do this outside. Knowing the temperatures were barely going to be over freezing and I would be standing on the spot for over two hours handing out food, I donned five layers on my top half and tights under my jeans on the bottom half. Not to mention hat and mittens. All in all I survived without turning into a block of ice. I then scurried home to cook a lovely meal for Kay and Darcy who were coming to visit for the evening. I cooked chicken cobbler,  pigs in blankets, red cabbage, mixed vegetables, roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes, followed by Christmas pudding and custard. After that we tried to stay awake to watch a DVD Darcy had given me for my birthday (more about that next week).

I am now home alone for this weekend and catching up with admin and a general potter around the house. As I said, back to normal.

New Year resolutions

I try not to make new year resolutions, as half the time I forget what I vowed to do and invariably most people break them by February anyway. However, I have been somewhat lacking in posting regularly and, while I don't have enough time or content to post every day like some, I do intend from now on to post once a week and probably on a Sunday when I have more free time. It remains to be seen, whether I can stick to that and produce 52 posts by this time next year!

At New Year, I always feel a bit strange. I posted about this back in 2013 and will repeat here what I said then....

I always see the new year as a looming cliff before me. Starting in January at the foot of the cliff, I climb upwards and ever higher, grabbing rocks and stumbling along,  making my way through all the annual anniversaries, birthdays and events during spring, summer and autumn to my own birthday in November.

This is then swiftly followed by Christmas, where I stand at the top of the cliff exulting in my success after the long slow climb, enjoying the lovely food and warmth that Christmas brings. Suddenly before you know it and before you can say "Last of the Christmas Leftovers", it is New Year's Eve again. Now I find myself on the very pinnacle of the cliff  (standing on tiptoe on a big rock admiring the amazing view, feeling exultant that the year has by and large been a success). The clock strikes midnight, the fireworks shoot into the sky and there is much hugging and celebrating. However I find myself projected within seconds into the 1st January at the bottom of the cliff once more, having to start the long slow climb yet again. Far from wanting to make resolutions and looking forward to the year ahead, I  am slightly annoyed that I have got to start all over again. Does New Year do this to you?

Happy New Year

Well, that's another Christmas gone. I am always surprised by the amount of build-up to it and then the speed with which it passes. For months beforehand, I'm planning what presents to buy for whom, what meals to cook, food to buy etc and then suddenly it's the 25th December and it rushes past in a blur. Although this year was considerably different.

Traditionally I have always hosted Christmas, since my parents were too frail to do so, which is probably around the 2001 era. Even as a child, there were never many of us. Just me and my parents with the occasional sprinkling of grandparents, but certainly never more than 5 of us at any one sitting. It was usually the traditional turkey with all the trimmings and Christmas pudding, then an afternoon and evening filled with watching all the TV favourites. I took over Christmas hosting when my father died in 2001 and the tradition pretty much followed on. When my husband died in 2010 we were down to three and when my mother died in 2017, it was just down to Kay and me trying to make the most of it together.

This Christmas was entirely different. Kay is now married of course and had received an invite from her in-laws to go to them for Christmas.  They have three grown-up children altogether. They thought this year might be the last chance to get them all together, before they pursue their own careers and relationships. Two of them doctors and one a dentist, so they might even have to work over Christmas, although this year was not the case, hence the chance to grab at them all being free. This meant of course that I would be celebrating Christmas alone, so they very kindly invited me to celebrate with them.

This meant of course that I did not have the need to plan what food to get in or cook the meals. It felt very strange indeed. On Christmas Eve, Kay and her husband Darcy drove me to the in-laws in deepest Kent. There were six of us to start with and the seventh joined us by late evening. On Christmas Day, Darcy and his father did a park run first thing, apparently beating Dame Kelly Holmes, who was there, in timing, then we all went to their local church for a service which was both relaxed and led by a hilarious vicar, who used all sorts of props such as a fire extinguisher, jug of water and lifebelt to illustrate his sermon. The church was packed and there was almost a full orchestra up by the altar.  

The rest of the morning was spent peeling vegetables and all joining in with the food preparation. Lunch was my starter of brie and cranberry puff pastry parcels , then roast duck with a cherry and sherry sauce which was absolutely delicious. I had provided red cabbage made to my German grandmother's recipe which was received with praise. Then chocolate and pear sponge pudding. We swapped presents and played many games during the rest of the day and evening right up until midnight. 

As an only child, with a father who had a day job and also worked in the evenings as well to save up for a mortgage, it just left my mother and me for a lot of the time, so I grew up not playing games at all. It was therefore very novel not to be watching all the Christmas favourites on TV. (Fortunately I had recorded what I wanted to see so that I could catch up once home). Boxing Day was very similar but with different meals and we were joined by one of the sibling's girlfriends, making us a party of 8 altogether. I realised just how much living on my own has made me rather reclusive, as it was difficult to get a word in edgeways at times. That is not to say I did not enjoy it, but merely an observation of how cut-off I have become.

We returned back to London early on Friday 27th and they dropped me off. Kay has a very important (and stressful) exam to do in a week's time, so wanted to get back to continue revision. She has to go to work tomorrow and next weekend , so needed to grab as much free time to revise as she could. So I am back to being on my own again, which in itself seems strange after seeing so many people over the last week.

My best friend is coming to stay overnight with me on New Year's Eve, so I am looking forward to that and in the throes of planning food and entertainment. This year has been a very special year in that Kay got married and Darcy and his family joined with ours. I look forward to what 2025 might bring and wish you all a happy and healthy New Year.

Happy Christmas

With just over a week until Christmas, I thought I'd make this my last post before New Year.

Unfortunately the flu has knocked me somewhat sideways and the first two weeks of December were well and truly cancelled - all my volunteering work, gym classes, choir rehearsals and a trip to see the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery were scrubbed from my diary, as I battled with a temperature of 102F. Once that was down, I felt as if someone had pulled my plug. I have not left the house in 2 weeks. Finally this morning, with slighter milder weather, I decided it was high time to kick-start the old girl into life and I managed a 30-minute walk from my home around a large block. I am trying to get some semblance of strength back before our choir concert tomorrow. Wish me luck on that.

I did manage in a calmer moment to decorate the Christmas tree I'd hauled out of the cellar and to send off all my Christmas cards, so nothing more to do for the moment. I plan to be more organised next year and post once a week, rather than irregularly as has been the case of late..... New Year resolutions and all that.

A Happy Christmas to all those who visit my blog and many good wishes for 2025. 

Addy

A birthday present I didn't want

Don't get me wrong, I had a lovely birthday last week. A nice day out and lots of lovely cards (I counted 25 in all) and presents. But. There was one present I could well have done without. The flu! Whether I caught it from Kay, as she went down with it on my actual birthday, or whether I picked it up somewhere in Greenwich, I'll never know, but I went down with it last Monday and have been suffering ever since. I don't use the word 'flu' loosely. Don't you just hate it when people say they have the flu when they mean a bad cold? I can recall only ever having had flu once in my lifetime, but this week made it twice.  I tested in case it was Covid, but that came back negative, so I was left to conclude it must be flu.

I have been nursing a temperature of 102F all week - and that was after multiple doses of paracetamol each day. I ached in places I didn't know I had places and even every tooth in my mouth ached.  I was shivering despite the heating being on full.  I felt so wretched I could not stomach any food and had to force spoonfuls of soup down to keep up my fight against this virus from hell. Finally yesterday the temperature came back to normal but I feel exhausted and keep dozing in my armchair, wondering why the programme I am watching on TV has just gone off when I had only started watching the beginning minutes ago! The current phase is that I am now coughing for England. I had to cancel two things I was committed to this weekend as I could not face leaving the house and also did not want to pass this on to any unsuspecting person near me.

I am now well behind with what I planned this week and still no energy in me to do it next week, not to mention a Christmas concert I am appearing in on 16 December. I had the flu vaccination in October, but news reports in the last few days say that the vaccine this year has not been very effective and there are many flu cases in hospital. Fingers crossed this doesn't see me in hospital, although it was touch and go during the week!

Yet Another Birthday

Friday saw yet another birthday on my calendar. The years seem to rush by. It doesn't seem all that long ago, I was lamenting becoming 70. This year saw me become 74. I don't feel that age and people tell me I look 20 years younger. I am slim, fit, and try to remain so. But the calendar doesn't lie nor my birth certificate. It's no good passing myself off as 21 again.

Kay and Darcy had taken the day off and were determined to give me a lovely day. I was asked many times in the weeks leading up to it, where I would like to go or what to do. The trouble with a November birthday is that you cannot guarantee the weather will be warm or even dry. Visits to stately homes or gardens are not really a good idea as this time of the year the gardens don't look their best and we have already covered most of the major museums and art galleries in London, just by living here all the time.

In the end, I decided on a visit to Greenwich. I haven't been there for decades. As the crow flies, it is not that far from where I live in South London, but transport links are not good and parking a car in that area is almost impossible. Not only that, when I last was there - probably some 25 years ago- the area was still run down post-war. Now it has become somewhat gentrified and more worth a visit.

We caught a bus from the end of my road and ended up in Blackheath - a very expansive heath with grand houses and bijou shops. We walked into Greenwich Park (one of the Royal parks) which houses the Royal Observatory and the Meridien line - the centre of the world.  The view from there is amazing and, as luck would have it, the day was unusually very sunny for November, as you can see here. The view down to the Royal Naval College, the Thames and the City skyscrapers beyond is absolutely stunning. 

Greenwich taken from the Blackheath end of the park

Walking into the centre of Greenwich we found the indoor market which contains numerous stalls selling antiques, clothing, jewellery, and more with shops on all four sides selling expensive paintings and prints. There were also a number of food stalls and we lingered for a while to eat some gooey cakes drenched in custard and chocolate sauce.

Hand-made chocolates in one of the indoor market shops

By the time it was two o'clock, we had not reached the main reason for our visit which was to board the Cutty Sark - a tea clipper built in 1869 to trade tea and opium with China. After my recent experience on old ships in Portsmouth, I thoroughly enjoyed being "afloat" again, even if it was in dry dock. I had never before considered why the ship was so called but apparently it was named after the poem Tam O'Shanter by Robert Burns, which is about a farmer chased by a witch wearing a cutty sark. "Cutty" is old Scottish for "short" and "sark" is a "nightshirt".

The Cutty Sark

After an interesting wander round the ship, by which time it was getting dark and chilly, we called in at the Gypsy Moth pub for a glass of mulled wine, before heading home on a Docklands Light Railway train to Lewisham and then onwards further south by bus. We ordered a Chinese takeaway (a luxury for me, as it always seems too much to eat on my own) to finish off the evening.

Unfortunately Kay was brewing a virus all day (the cons of being a doctor on a respiratory ward) and was suffering by the end of the evening with a raging temperature and cough. Two days on it looks like she may have flu. Bless her, she battled on through my birthday to give me a good time but was punished badly for it, as she is really quite ill this weekend.

Not banking on it

The other day I went to the bank to get some cash. There are just some things you cannot pay for with a card, although that seems to be the trend these days. Cards and online transfers. Since Covid, cash seems to be dirty word.   Both at the foodbank shop and the park information centre where I volunteer, customers invariably pay with a card. However, I cannot pay the window cleaner with a card or bank transfer, so need the odd bit of cash for things like that or for parking machines. My bank in the local High Street has closed down, so I drove 9 miles today to another part of London that does have a branch. I withdrew £100 in notes from the cash machine and then asked if I could change one £20 note into £1 coins to  be told "we don't have coins here".

Think about that for a minute. A bank does not have coins. I was so flabbergasted, I retorted "What?" and then "what has become of banks these days?" The poor woman offered a solution - I could either try the Post Office or buy something small in a supermarket and ask for coins as change. When I tried the Post Office, the initial response was they wouldn't be able to help, but someone else in the queue joined in to support me with the same tale of woe and the post office counter girl relented, went out back and returned with a £20 bag of coins for me.

We've had coins for over 2000 years, but I can see in years to come, my grandchildren asking whether we really used to pay for things with bits of paper and metal and making me feel like a dinosaur. 

Always the same

I was out with eight friends yesterday for lunch, celebrating my birthday two weeks early. There's a little artisan cafe near me, which also doubles as a florist and we often meet there to celebrate someone's birthday. I met most of the girls when Kay was a toddler and we used the same kindergarten. We only meet about six times a year when it is close to one or two of us having birthdays.  I call the group The Birthday Girls when I note the date in my diary. My birthday is towards the end of November, so it often doubles up as an excuse for us to exchange Christmas cards. I therefore have already received the first eight of my Christmas cards for this year, together with my birthday cards.

There's one thing on the menu I love having when I am there and always order it each time - crispy bacon, brie and cranberry toasted sandwich. Yesterday the girls were laughing that yet again I had ordered it. The melted brie just drips down the side of the toast and the crunchy bacon and sweet cranberry just completes the delight.  There are so many other yummy things to choose from including some amazing gooey gateaux, which I also order as a dessert.  What is your favourite when you eat out?

My grandfather

The photo above is of my maternal grandfather William. He was born on 19 April 1895 in East London to a relatively poor working class family and was the eldest of ten siblings. I am not certain when he left school but it would have been in early teenage and he got a job at a bank  (Comptoir National d'Escomte de Paris) in the City of London as a junior working his way up. In 1914, as a 19-year-old, he was called up to the Royal Horse Artillery in the First World War. The photo is of him in his uniform.

As a child, I used to hear him speak of Mons, Ypres, the Somme and Passchandaele, but it meant very little to me until I grew older. All I know is he fought in all those battles and must have seen many horrific things, but rarely spoke about the detail. He preferred to practice his French on me, when I started learning it at school, saying that he had learned it as he passed through Belgian villages asking for food.

In the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, he was badly wounded. He had a leg wound and lost an eye. He used to speak more of his concern for the gun carriage horse Smiler who was killed by the blast alongside him. He was moved back to England and into a military hospital until he recovered. He had a glass eye - his original one apparently donated to a museum in Northampton (so I am told). I used to have terrible trouble as a child knowing which eye to look him in, when I spoke to him, as it didn't occur to me that the glass eye was the one that didn't move. 

After the war, he returned to the bank in London to take up duties there again. However, he had to add up long columns of figures (no calculators in those days) and the strain on his good eye made it hard. One day, walking across London Bridge, a piece of grit flew into his good eye and he got a very bad eye infection which made things a thousand times worse. In the end the bank had to dismiss him, as he could no longer do the job. It was the early 1920s and the economy was not great. He moved his wife and small child (my mother) to Essex, where he set up a small-holding with goats and chickens, hoping to sell the eggs for a living, but times were hard and they often had no money coming in at all. Eventually he worked in his younger brother's electrical firm earning a pittance as a storeman. I recall he used to get very bad headaches as the shrapnel moved around his body and he was as thin as a rake. He never earned enough to afford his own home, so rented until the day he died in 1977 aged 82.

I always think of him on Remembrance Day and the sacrifices he and so many like him made. But for them, we would not be living the life we live now. 

Lowest of the low

I regularly help out at the local foodbank. It opens three times a week and  we see over 400 families a week. Fridays (when I volunteer) are probably our busiest day of all as not only do we hand out food, but also provide a 2-course sit-down meal. We have advisers  who can help with benefits or housing problems, counsellors for issues with mental health and the occasional visit of a dentist or optician to check teeth and eyes for those who cant afford the normal NHS routes.  There's also a cafe to provide hot drinks and cake on all three sessions.

I get involved with preparing the bags of food to hand out to the guests and actually handing them out to the long queue that forms. People start arriving an hour before the foodbank opens in order to get at the front of the queue and get the best pick of fruit and veg on offer. Since Covid and the general economic slump, the number of guests has swelled alarmingly, whereas the number of donations has relatively dwindled as donors pull their own belts in. We have a shipping container in the ground of the church which once was full from floor to ceiling with crates of donations, but that dwindled to a very sad few crates in no time. 

Just over a year ago, it was decided to open a charity shop in the local high street, all profit going to the foodbank to buy in bulk things like pasta, toilet roll, tins of soup and beans, shampoo, nappies and anything else we were low on. The shop has been a godsend and I help out with that too once a week. Sometimes I sort donated clothes, books and toys, price them up and put them out in the shop. Sometimes I help on the till. A paid manageress and deputy manageress divide the shifts between them and, apart from electricity and rent, all profits are ploughed back into providing food for the foodbank. We don't put any old rubbish in the shop and pride ourselves on being the sort of shop people love to spend time in as they know they will find quality items in there. Anything past its best (full of holes, snags or stains) still makes money as they are bought by a ragman for so much a kilo. Anything in between -that is too good for the ragman but not good enough for the shop - goes into a pile which is given to the foodbank itself for guests to rummage through for free. A lot of local people use the foodbank shop as they say it represents good quality compared to other charity shops in the neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, there are some unsavoury characters who think it is OK to shoplift. We have installed CCTV cameras to spot the culprits, although we have been told not to get involved in an argument in case these people carry knives or get violent.  We just make sure, if we see them again, we ask them to leave and say why. There are also some people going round deliberately getting rid of fake £20 notes too. We know how to spot the fake notes now, so again, we have to keep our eyes peeled. I really do despair of the human race sometimes. They are the lowest of the low to shoplift from/or con a shop trying to buy food for a foodbank. 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Many of us will already know this poem TO AUTUMN by John Keats. It is a celebration of autumn when the mists descend and the land is swelling with over-ripe fruit, winding down to winter. He finds pleasure in almost everything he sees or hears. For me, it is a season I hate. I do not welcome the long, dark, cold evenings when I cannot get out into the garden and feel less like going out in the car in the dark to get to choir rehearsals. I don't enjoy seeing leafless trees or being battered by the strong winds. The clocks went back an hour yesterday. It will now be dark at 5 in the afternoon. and my body clock will be all over the place for days to come.  "Roll on Spring" is all I can say. But John Keats will no doubt disagree.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
     To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
  Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
     Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
  Steady thy laden head across a brook;
  Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
     Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too –
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
     Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.