Past and present

Daughter 2 sent me this photo the other day, which made me reflect about memory and the way it retains and discards things. As you can see, this is a small plastic skeleton, and I got it in a cracker at the Royal Scots Club when I was probably about ten, so about 63 years ago. I remembered this, but not giving it to Daughter 2 (not really sure why this happened). My grandfather fought with the Royal Scots during World War 1, and used to go up to the club to play snooker with friends; and for a few years he used to take us there for Christmas dinner. All that, I remembered. But I'd forgotten until the daughters reminded me that before opening the cracker I'd said something along the lines of wondering what was in it - maybe a skeleton? And then... ta da... there it was. I have no idea why I said this - it's hardly a typical cracker gift - and also have no idea why I forgot this part of the story. It would be more interesting if I could claim psychic powers from then on, but sadly, no. 

This is not a skeleton. It's a needle, and the best thing that happened this week is that I came to the end of daily injecting myself in the stomach with blood-thinners. Hooray. Not my favourite part of getting a hip replacement. 

The house is now looking fairly festive. 

Ho ho.

I would not claim to be completely ready for Christmas, however. 

The weather in Edinburgh has been very wet recently, so it was lovely to drive to the south-west today and find sunshine. 

Sadly, we were on the way to the funeral of one Mr L's cousins, but as often happens at funerals, we had a nice time chatting to various family members at the lunch afterwards. 

Some of them were cousins on the other side - the deceased cousin was the son of Mr L's uncle, while these cousins are related to the uncle's wife. They were very pleasant and it was quite a jolly event. But one always feels slightly guilty that the main player in the occasion isn't there to enjoy it. 

Having no cousins myself, I'm always happy to meet up with other people's. Mr L had eight of them, though sadly he now has only five. But we're in contact with them all, which I like. My family was very small - parents, one brother, a granny and grandpa who lived nearby, two childless aunts who lived far away and one widowed granny who also lived far away. I would have liked (so I tell myself) to have had more siblings and a gang of congenial cousins round the corner. Not going to happen now, though.