An article in the Sunday Times  magazine today suggests reading Philip Larkin's  'The Mower'.   I have just read it - it is only short but beautiful, simple and food for thought (as I think all poetry should be).   It fits in nicely with what I intended to write about today.   Do read it on Google.

Tha article was about the loss of a loved one.   Most of us - in fact I could almost say all of us - have had that experience - a parent, a husband/partner/wife/child.   We learn to live with the experience, to deal with it, to try and live on - for the sake of our remaining loved ones as much as for ourselves.   But the sense of loss doesn't go - it fades, it stays in the background getting fainter and fainter - my first dearly loved husband died thirty two years ago - it seems a lifetime; my farmer died six years ago in a couple of weeks.

It's marsh marigold time = the most poignant reminder for me of my farmer.   I shalln't see them this year - I can no longer get to the beck where they grow - but Thelma reminded me of them in a recent post.

My first husband was a painter and some of his paintings hang on my walls, along with other paintings by friends and also a nicely framed print of Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Ear-ring' which he bought me for my twenty-first  birthday and which hangs in my hall where I look at it every day. (we always called it 'Girl in a Yellow Turban' and I still think of it as that).  But thirty odd yeas seems a lifetime - almost another life.

But six years is no time at all.   My memories of my second marriage are much nearer and very different.    Getting into bed - laying on our backs and going over the day and its happenings, thn turning on to our left sides for a cuddle, then over on to our right  sides to go to sleep.  Odd now that - after my new hip - I can't do, as I have to sleep on my back.

My computer table used to be in a cubby hole at the bottom of the stairs,  in the front hall.   I used to do the farm business (accounts, Cattle Movement Service and such like) on my lap top often while he was showering.   When he came downstairs after his shower he would always stop and pop a kiss on the top of my head.   I miss that still (don't miss the CMS - fiddly chore as I am sure all farmers would agree.)

But some things are common to both marriages:

Have you seen my glasses?

Could we have a night when we don't watch the News?

Where shall we go on holiday this year?

What's for dinner?

I could go on, but I won't - we all have a list in our heads don't we?

But I know one or two which would crop up now were either of them still with me.   Top of the list would be

Please do not speak of Prince Harry again.  (he is in our Newspapers again, baring his soul again - does he not realise that 'grown ups' have internalised their childhood traumas (both of my husbands had them but did they talk about them? no -they had largely learned to live with them.

The last 'verse' of Larkin's 'The Mower' says it all.

"We should be careful of each other, we should be kind , while there is still time".

If we can say we have done this then we can live with our memories and enjoy them. 

Are you trendy?

 Do you read the Fashion Magazines, or the weekly 'Fashion' day in your newspaper?   What about furniture?   Do you follow the latest trends  - for example it does seem as though'Three Piece Suites' (remember them?) are now more or less de trop.When I was growing up (1940s and 1950s) everyone 'needed' a three piece suite - a settee and two armchairs.   My parents had one in their 'front room'.   I can see it now - covered in a sort of bronzy-coloured, velvety material- not particularly comfortable.   It 'sat' in our front room, along with our 'radiogram' and as far as I can remember the two records they possessed,   (One was 'We are the Queen's Navy' - can't remember what the other one was but it was of the same ilk) and my piano.  I spent hours playing the piano even though it was always freezing cold in there.

We only went in the Front Room on Christmas Day and New Year's Day and if someone 'special' was paying a visit.   The curtains were kept semi-drawn to stop the sun fading the suite.   (when I married the farmer in 1993 his parents had the same kind of front room except for piano read china cabinet with glass front and best china only used when 'important people' visited.)

Does anyone live like this any more?

And what about Fashion?   My mother favoured what she called the costume.   By the time I came along it became 'the suit'.   For any special occasion it was necessary to have a new suit.   I have photographs of her and my father when they were on a week's holiday - staying in a Boarding House in Llandudno.   My mother is sitting in some kind of summer house/hut half way up the Great Orme - she is wearing a suit!   And similarly my mother and two of her sisters sitting in deck chairs on the sands - in suits!

I do remember following Fashion when the mini came in for the first time (early seventies for a guess) and I had a gorgeous yellow mini skirt which I wore with a navy blue silk shirt blouse with the top two buttons open and the sleeves rolled up almost to the elbow.  (very daring).   But compared with today's mini skirts it would have been considered almost long.

Now if I see some chair I like I would buy it - making sure the cover didn't clash fiercely with any other piece of furniture I owned.

But as for clothes - I look (probably with the astonishment - or even horror) at today's fashionistas and think 'never in a million years would I wear that'.   Apart from anything else - I used to have good legs - I am 5ft 9in (in old money) and my legs were worth looking at boys.   But now my arthritic knees are best kept under wraps, seen only by me and by my carers.   It is trousers all the time - I no longer possess a skirt apart from a full length woollen plaid skirt I can't bear to take to the Charity Shop - I love it too much (and yes it would hide my knees but I can no longer fasten it at the waist!)

If you are someone like the gorgeous Dame Judi Dench (almost as old as me) you can develop your own fashion.    She cuts a dash in the same kind of clothes always - and I am sure she has many outfits.  They always look divine on her.

As a final parting shot - I think the mini had been 'in' earlier than that.   My sister who was 22 years older than me (same parents) always liked to dress fashionably.   When I was in my early teens and played the organ at the Methodist Chapel  my family attended, my sister asked who the preacher was one Sunday morning just as I was setting off to play.   When I said his name she gave a roar of laughter - he was by this time a Bank Manager in Lincoln - and she related how once she and her friend were walking down the street in Lincoln (they would be in their mid teens) and he, with a group of young pals, had shouted across the road, "Look at Vera Smithson lads - she's got legs right up to her bum!"

I never saw that preacher in the same light again!

See you tomorrow.

Credit where it is undoubtedly due.

 People do complain a lot about our NHS and I am sure a lot of the complaints are well justified.  Nurses are striking because they are not paid (or appreciated enough) for their caring and often exhausting work.   Ditto Ambulance Drivers and Junior Doctors;  waiting list are too long; operations are often postponed at the last minute.   I could go on.   But I won't. 

Last night I watched a programme on BBC2 - past my usually early bedtime - and how pleased I was to have watched it.   It restored my faith in Human Nature and showed me all that is still Good with a capital G in our NHS.

The Hospital was Leeds General Infirmary and the patient was Jamie - an early middle-aged man I would guess.   He was remarkably good-natured and up beat and - a single dad whose Mum seemed to look after his two delightful little girls - was obviously adored by all three.   He had lost both hands and both legs in an Industrial accident and was suddenly presented with two new hands donated by some kind and thoughtful man who had left his body to be used where possible when he no longer needed it.  Obviously time was of the essence and he was called in urgently.

What followed was (for me at any rate) an hour long programme devoted to the operation - with explanations here and there as to why other operations had to be postponed (two lovely young boys with cystic fibrosis - the first op took much longer than anticipated and the second boy had to be sent back home with a promised date a month later - both he and his dad took the explanation without complaint.)

But the compelling part was the ten hour operation - which had a team of 40 staff - to give Jamie new hands.   The operation was done by a charming and obviously deeply caring man (he even popped back to see Jamie mid-way through his six week holiday period to check on his progress and make sure things were going well ("I was worrying about him.  I'm a bit clingy to my patients").   His name was Professor Simon  Kay.   An ordinary looking chap - the kind you pass in the street every day and without a second glance.   Here, in his working environment, where those 40 folk working with him knew - and indeed saw - precisely what a fully remarkable man he was I would hazard a guess he was viewed almost with awe -and rightly so.

At the end of the hour we saw Jamie, after six weeks, going back home and greeted by his Mum and his two daughters 'squealing with delight' and jumping off the trampoline in their back garden (a safety one I hasten to  add) and he able to hold their hands and hug them.

Truly awe inspiring from beginning to end.   All I can say really is good luck to Jamie in the future.   As to Professor Kay - there are no words I can think of to express my admiration for this truly remarkable man.

 

Oprimist or Pessimist

 Let's look out of the window here in The Yorkshire Dales on the first Day of March - the first day of Meteorological Spring.   Sounds good doesn't it, but most of us - in the UK at any rate - think of the first day of Spring as March 21st and judging by the weather outside the said window it doesn't look much like Spring.   It is either a bright sunny day with frequent heavy showers, or it is a very wet day with now and again a burst of bright sunshine.  which ever way you look at it - if I had to  go out today I would have to get my M and S Duvet coat out of its hibernation bag on the wardrobe shelf and wear it, detachable hood and all.  It would be the first time it had seen the light of day this winter.   And it is forecast to get much colder next week.

 And the hundred or so crocuses I can see as I sit here - I think they are optimists too.   Do they snuggle down in the soil waiting for a warm day?  Do they pussyfoot!   They say (or they would if they could talk) - 'to hell with the weather, it's the first of March so come on lads and lasses, let's get going, let's show that lot out there above ground that come what may we think it's Spring, so they had better pull up their socks and get going.

We all know folk who will always search for some 'doom and gloom' side to every story/event, just as there are those who will latch on to some glimmer of hope, pleasure or happiness and broadcast it.   And I know - and so do you I am sure - which type makes us feel happier (even if it turns out not to happen).   Some King (may have been George V) is reputed to have said, 'I am feeling a little better today' on the morning he died.  And I bet for a while he made everyone feel optimistic.

So - the Weather is set to be much colder here in the UK next week.   Let's all be Optimists - let's not say  - get out your wooly hats and gloves, put the snow shovel by the garage door and fill the coal bunker.   Let's all shout - (all together now) - in four week's time it will be glorious April.

Have a happy March - it hasn't come in like a lamb but neither has it come in like a lion.   It will be totally at the whim of the Jet Stream - and long may it remain so.

This and that

 Sorry about my absence but Rachel recommended a new author (new to me) - Olivia Manning.   I nipped over to Amazon and bought her 'The Levant Trilogy' and enjoyed every word.   I am ashamed to say that I had no idea where The Levant was and had to look it up in my Atlas.   It is the countries of the Eastern Mediterranian and the three books are about that region during the Second World War.  I have just e mailed Rachel to tell her how much I have enjoyed the books.

Now \(|it is the month end and I allow myself a set amount to spend each month on books and before you  ask what is wrong with the Library - I am housebound, the library only opens on certain days and is run by volunteers and  I would have to get a taxi to get there.   The taxi is expensive so nipping to Amazon Prime is not much more expensive and the book comes through my letter box the next day.)

I was intending to buy Olivia Manning's The Balkan Trilogy but having looked at my World Atlas to look at the area where the Levant book was set I realise just how out of date the Atlas is.   It still has Yugoslavia in it and of course the area around there was carved up a few years ago (with, as usual, many lives lost).   So now I have a problem - do I buy the Olivia Manning this month or do I replace my Atlas?

 

To other things.   Did anyone manage to catch a glimpse of last night's Northern Lights display?  As is usual here in North Yorkshire - whenever this is forecast we have dense cloud cover.  Interestingly there was an expert on Breakfast this morning saying that the wonderful Reds showing at the moment are nothing like as intense when viewed with the naked eye.   Apparently the camera enhances the redness.

Have any of you ever seen the Northern Lights?  I haven't and I have been above the Arctic Circle quite a few times.   It is on my Bucket List but there are quite a few things still on it and I presume I have not all that much time left.   (some days you could almost (but not quite yet) replace 'presume' with 'hope' but with Summer on the horizon and the garden looking inviting, it is more a case of 'hang on a minute'.   My pair of blackbirds are back - Mrs B is standing on the hedge top and Mr B on the fence is serenading her.

And, while on the subject of relationships (!) for want of a better word, my "lover" has gone (if you don;t know who I am talking about scroll back two or three posts and you will find a  photograph of him sitting on my knee) back home with his owners who have returned from Thailand.   I am waiting for my friend to let me know whether he was happy to see them or not.  I shall miss his visits.

Until tomorrow dear bloggie friends.

Addiction

Many  years ago, before  the farmer and I were married but when we were 'skirting around each other' neither of us actually saying anything but both within ourselves thinking that perhaps we had something worth developing in our friendship, we both belonged to a walking group.   It fell upon me to organise the next walk so of course I had to do the walk to make sure I had it right - (nothing worse in a walking group, believe me, than getting lost when the leader for the day is supposed to have planned it down to the last blade of grass).   The farmer said he could come with me on the planning walk after the Sunday morning milking.   So off we set.

I undertook to make the picnic lunch and he said he had a rucksack he would bring to carry the sandwiches and the flasks.  ('Never have a dog and yet have to bark yourself' as my mother would have said).   Off we set - I had my map-reading skills well-oiled and the walk (and the picnic ) went off without a hitch.  

As we sat in the car (we had left it in the village car park) finishing off the flasks before returning home, I noticed we had  parked beside a red telephone box - not many of those around these days).   I pointed it out to the farmer saying that it was a long time since I had seen one.   He looked at me in astonishment, pointing out that there was still one in the village where we both lived.   

I was  sure he was wrong - I had never noticed it (these days we are almost all on our own phones so why should we need to notice one?)   So sure was I that I bet him the very largest bar there was of  Dairy milk Chocolate that I was was right.   We drove home and on the way to drop me off at my house we stopped in the village - at the red telephone box!!

I knew he loved dairy milk chocolate.   He put the bar on the window sill next to his chair.   It took him almost a year to eat it - one square at a time - now and again offering one square to his young nephew who always came on a Sunday.

I also love chocolate (what's not to like?) - I would have had a job to make that bar last a week.   Self control - that's what I lacked.   At Christmas this year I bought two boxes of chocs - one for me at home to offer to callers along with a sherry and one to give a particular friend if she called.   She didn't but by New Year's Day (when she did call) I had finished off both boxes single handed more or less.

The moral (for me at any rate) is do not buy chocolate unless you want a spreading waist line.  I am weak-willed where chocolate is concerned.   I allow myself one cup of hot chocolate a day (made with water - just a touch of milk) - I buy one tin of the mixture each week on my Tesco order and when it has gone it has gone,   Too bad if I fancy another mug of hot choc.

A rather silly story about a rather silly addiction but believe me addiction is no laughing matter.   I have a friend of more than forty years who is addicted to alcohol.   I haven't seen him for a couple of years until this week.   To say he has gone down is an understatement.      My heart bleeds for him and the fact that things have obviously gone far too far and there is nothing left for him and he knows it.  I said nothing when we met - what is there to say.   When he went I cried = for a life governed by alcohol.   The alcohol had won - as it always does.

 

Crises!

 Yesterday was a bit of a Crisis day - nothing that wasn't laughable afterwards but I kept getting a bit 'flustered' shall we say.

First of all - last week I bought two new pairs of trousers.   Most of the day I sit in my chair (with forays to keep me mobile -even into the garden weather permitting).  I don't wear my 'best trousers' - they are kept for the rare occasions when I go out.  They arrived (I ordered them on line - Special Offer from 'Chums' - and the order went through easily, the trousers arrived promptly - they were just right and easy for me to manipulate when no carer is around (believe me this is vital - wearing 'nappy' type protection is horrible without going into detail) and they fitted to perfection.   I decided to order two more pairs in a different colour.  I went on line yesterday morning and it was one of my 'shaky days' as I call them (I have Benign Essential Tremor) and on such days it is hard to hit the right key.   When I got to the check-out I was ordering 8 pairs rather than 2!  So I decided to telephone my order,  I have to say I got through to an absolutely delightful salesman.   I explained I was 90 and very deaf.   He kindly steered me through - repeating everything as often as I requested and I had confirmation they will be on their way today.  I intend to e mail Chums after this post telling them how good he was.

In the afternoon one of the two lights in my kitchen went off.  My lack of electrical knowledge means I can't explain them but they are wonderful LED lamps and there are no visible bulbs - the whole unit has to be replaced.   I rang my electrical contractor who only lives at the end of the road - he came immediately, dismantled the whole thing, read and noted the code for replacement and went off, promising to return when the right parts arrived (he ordered on line).

Ten minutes after he left my evening carer arrived - she put out the recycling bags (kept in the garage) and then came into the sitting room to report that the garage door (up and over) wouldn't close! I rang the electrician again and he came immediately - it was the batteries in the  bottom of the door.   Luckily I had two left over from last time they went off and soon that was repaired too.

It was good to sit down with my corned beef, cheese and onion spread and mayo sandwiches and a cup of tea.

Still -silly little things which I would have dealt with in my stride ten years ago.   But all's well that ends well!

Have a good day.   The lady that cleans for me is here - we have had a good chat and now I can hear the cleaner buzzing away.  After lunch I shall have a stroll into the garden if the sun is still shining.

Goodbye Jack.

My friend J took a photograph 

of my "lover" (I posted about him the other day) sitting on my knee.  I have managed  to put it on here.   J  has fostered Jack (a Border Terrier) for six months while his owners were in Thailand.   They are back and are collecting him next week - I shall miss seeing him.   J is bringing him to see me once more before he goes.

Memory

 Memory - at least short-term memory - seems to go the older one gets - but I understand begins to fade around the age of sixty.   I will hazard a guess that all of you over sixty can relate to the idea of going into the kitchen, sitting room or somewhere and then standing in the doorway and thinking 'what have I come for?'    Yet the self-same people can usually recall events that happened in their childhood (but maybe not with the accuracy they think - if they ask another person involved in the same incident memories are often very different.)   We remember what we want to remember really - or what we particularly notice at the time.

I love clothes - always have done - and can remember outfits from very early in my childhood.

But memories are precious aren't they - even if they are not altogether accurate - and especially precious if the people involved are no longer with us.   They may not be altogether accurate but they are like mental photographs and do recall precious    moments.   Here are a few of mine - many only perhaps a couple of seconds long.

My mother:   always slightly in awe of her inlaws, her father in law (my Grandad Smithson) died and his funeral service and burial took place in our village.   I was too young to go to the funeral so stayed with a neighbour and she provided me with a stool so that I could stand by the window and watch the funeral procession go by.   The coffin with the flowers all round went past on the hearse and then came the mourners in the funeral cars.   As the car carrying my parents passed my mother looked out of the back window of the car.   I waved frantically - she gave me a very disapproving look.   I can still remember that look.

My father:    Loved poetry and knew a lot of it by heart having gone to school in the days when it was 'fashionable' to learn poems by heart.    One of his favourites was Robert Southey's 'The Battle of Blenheim' and I can still clearly hear his voice saying ''tis some poor fellows skull said he, who died in the great victory."

My sister:  twenty two years older than me (same parents) lived in the same village.   Even at a very young age I played the piano.   I remember sitting at her piano in the sitting room one day.   My favourite fruit in those days (sound, healthy teeth of course) was apples and their Cox's Orange Pippin tree in their newly planted orchard had fruited (8 apples) for the first time that year.  All eight sat in an orange Shelley bowl on the small table by the piano.   As I played away I also ate my way through all eight apples, leaving just the cores in the bowl.   I was not popular.

My brother:   For a time my brother and I worked for the same company in different offices but easily contacted by phone.   One day, when my first husband and I had been married for five years , he rang me from his office to say that the family had been talking and that he had been asked to ring me on their behalf to suggest that they thought it was time we 'produced a family'.  I was already pregnant at the time but had no thought of telling him until we were ready to do so.   From then on he always assumed that his 'pep talk' had produced results.

My first husband.   One of our favourite places to visit and not all that far from our home in Wolverhampton for many years, was Stokesay Castle in Shropshire.   On one visit we admired a plant in full flower in the small but perfectly formed garden.   My husband asked the curator what it was but he didn't know.   When we got home my husband looked it up in one of our many gardening books - it was Osteospermum and I wrote a postcard telling him.   Several years later we visited the Castle again and my husband asked him if he had got the postcard - he was delighted to at last know who had sent it.   Since then I always have an Osteospermum in my garden - it reminds me of the occasion.

The farmer.   One very bad winter when there had been a lot of snow we went round the fields one afternoon, walking along the side of the stone walls a feature of The Yorkshire Dales, to see if any of our sheep had been sheltering during the snowstorm and had got buried where the snow had drifted against the wall.   We didn't find any but as we walked along, close to the wall, we saw a stoat - not its usual brown colour but the pure white - ermine - the colour a stoat's coat changes to during very snowy weather.   It was the first - and indeed - the only time the farmer had ever experienced this and he never forgot it.

Just a few snippets of memories - can you recall any to share with us?

 

memories

 Sometines when I read something in the paper memories come flooding back as they did the other day when I read of disgraceful breaking of the laws governing wildlife protection and the breaking of them by folk who should know better.

There was The Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981

The Hunting with Dogs Act of 2004

and even earlier The Protection of Wild Birds Act of 1954 and yet still crimes against the countryside persist. 

.

The local hunt came over our farm land every season for as long as my farmer could remember but they rarely caught anything - even when it was legal to do so - and then of course the rules changed and they did trail hunting.

We did have an old dog fox.   I don't know how long foxes live but he must have had the life of Riley because once the worst of myxymatosis had passed our land had a good crop of rabbits.  He didn't know the rules and I suspect he had a nice rabbit supper most nights.   We often used to see him going 'home' at dusk, keeping largely to the hedgerow and only crossing the field where necessary.   Our farm cats (Blackie and Creamy) never needed feeding during the rabbit breeding season - each morning the farmer just needed to clear the barn floor of baby rabbit skins (only the skins were left - the rest was eaten, bones and all).  The farm dogs (including Tess) used to chase them but I never saw them catch one and on the rare occasion that myxy struck again, the farmer would quickly despatch any rabbits with it - they were all too easy to catch and it was necessary to put them out of their misery (a terrible disease).

All a far cry from the days of my childhood when it was all too common to see a string of all the gamekeepers had caught strung up for all to see: moles, rats, mice, stoats,  weasels, rabbits, crows, raptors - all dead and strung up:  awful.

And amongst my earliest memories are those of the annual Rook Shoot which took place in the Rookery opposite the house I grew up in in a Lincolnshire village.  Rooks often fell dead in our gardens and when I was around three my mother caught me sitting on the lawn sucking the beak of a dead rook! (maybe that accounts for my love of them now!)

And to end - still on the subject of wildlife - when my carer made my bed the other morning she moved the pillows and underneath the bottom one was a gigantic spider (from the way her hands indicated it I suspect she was exaggerating its size!.)  In horror I asked what she had done with it (hoping she would say she had used what Ronald Blythe called the 'glass and postcard method) she said she had used the toilet paper and loo flush method.

My mothed used to say

'If you want to live and thrive, 

Let all spiders run alive.'

But I must say in this instance I was relieved that it had completely disappeared from under my pillow when I went to bed the next night.  The only spiders I am happy to live with are what we used to call 'money spiders'  I haven't seen one for years but then they are so small I suspect my eyesight isn't good enough any more to see them.