Waving

This isn't going to be my last ever post, but I'm seriously considering whether I'll stop blogging quite soon. The main reason is that my blog is largely a record of our family life, for my own - what? - pleasure? interest? sense of continuity? - probably all of these. And maybe for my descendants in the future. Mr L keeps suggesting that we should get it printed so that, if they wanted to, they could find out what the family was doing at the beginning of the 21st century. It's quite a good idea. (Mind you, it would be quite a long read.) 

Because I can't post pictures of Middle Granddaughter and won't be able to post them of the forthcoming Smaller Grandson, this makes it a much less satisfactory record. 

Also, I increasingly feel that the older grandchildren, now 7 and nearly 6, shouldn't appear in a recognisable form in a public blog, so I mostly post pictures of them from behind and so on, whereas I would like them to appear (for history's sake) in more meaningful photos. 

So I won't stop writing this account of our lives, but it might be better from the photo point of view just to write it as a Word document with clear photos, and print it for myself. After all, there are so many lovely photos in my computer, but how many of them will actually survive changes in technology? - not that many, I'd imagine.

I've been blogging for, I think, 12 years now, and almost all of my original bloggy friends have fallen by the wayside as far as blogging is concerned. One has died. Some have faded out. Some of them are now Facebook friends. But Facebook, though I do enjoy it, isn't the same. It's too easy to post a few photos and make jovial remarks about them - rather than to compose a longer, sometimes more thoughtful piece. I had a real sense of connection in the earlier days, with lots of comments to and fro and a feeling of sharing people's lives. 

Most of those who do still blog do it increasingly rarely. You know who you are! So I keep hopefully going to their blogs and - finding nothing to read. Though I will continue to do this for the occasional happy surprises. 

Part of me feels that I should therefore stubbornly continue; that blogging is (was?) a valuable thing and that I shouldn't join the defectors. But there are few comments on my blog nowadays and I don't feel I know who reads it - a fair number, I think, but who are they, and why would they want to know about my grandchildren? 

However, the main reason for stopping is my desire to keep a record of our family life, complete with photos of all our grandchildren. I've always felt the need to record things, to write, to communicate, and now I'm thinking of the communication with - hopefully - my descendants once I'm no longer here. 

Meanwhile, here are two of my darlings - Biggest Granddaughter playing with the dolls' house

or deep in books.

Grandson arranging his Brio into layouts

and drawing trains with excellent restaurant cars. 

Wistfulness has also been fostered by going through my parents' effects. This photo is of my parents in 1996. Mum was 74 - she really doesn't look it. That was the natural colour of her hair - it only started turning grey when she was in her late 80s.  Dad was 76 here. It's nice to see them enjoying the sun in Portugal but it makes me sad too, of course.

Anyway, things change. I can't quite bring myself to stop this very weekend. But that's the way I'm thinking.

Old and new

Fourteen years ago, we got new sofas and rug for the sitting room. The rug was from Ikea and was very cheap but we decided that it would do for the moment. But recently it was getting rather scruffy so we got a new one, which was delivered on Saturday. We chose it to tone in with the covers of the sofas, which are a navyish blue. The sitting room has French windows which face south and we were aware that the sofas had faded slightly - not really enough to warrant new furniture, and anyway, they have loose covers which could be replaced, if they were bad enough and if we could be bothered.

So we put the rug down and it was fine. It's blue, not lilac as it looks in the picture and it goes quite well with the sofa covers.

But then I decided that we should... Mr Life should... go into the attic and retrieve the very heavy cardboard box which has been there for fourteen years because it came free with the suite and contains a spare, cream, set of covers. For some years I've vaguely wondered what it would look like if we put them on instead.

They were very crumpled and not easy to iron, being somewhat unwieldy and not a regular shape, but I did my best. Mr L removed the navy covers (frankly, they were very overdue for a wash, though they looked ok because they were dark) and replaced them with the cream ones. This took him some considerable time and he's possibly not going to be very keen to do this again in the particularly near future.

It is, as my mother would have said, a wee change.

It's not at all practical as a colour, is it? I'm not sure that it's a permanent look, though we don't use this room all the time so it won't be sat on every day. It's where the grandchildren mainly play, however!

The new rug no longer matches it, of course, but the Ikea cushion goes rather well so that's all right... . I need to do some more ironing of the covers by lying on the floor and doing the best I can without taking them off.

I still haven't actually washed the navy covers, since I need a good drying day (and the biggest bits will have to go to the laundrette because they won't fit in the machine).

Talking of things that have been going a long time and which then change, I've realised that my blog has passed its ninth birthday (gosh, how did that happen and why have I not achieved much in the past nine years?). Since I no longer have students who might (though almost undoubtedly never did) stumble on it, I've decided that it's about time to stop being Isabelle (which is my middle name) and declare myself by my first name, which is Pam. I've never really liked the name Pamela but it was a very popular Fifties choice. Pam is marginally better but both are rather jolly-hockey-sticks. Anyway, there we are. Hello.

Now I must see if I can change the name on my profile.

Some rather random blog thoughts and a bit of Grandson

These are the igloos that the cats sleep in at night, when we meanly shut them in the kitchen. During the day they prefer to lounge on a living room sofa. The other day, I was impressed to note that they'd abandoned the sofa and were presumably outside, getting fresh air and exercise on a lovely autumn day. Then I peered into their igloos and noticed that they'd returned to bed.

One has days like that, when one would prefer to curl into a ball and retreat.

However, it's just as well that it's not an option for most of us. Things to do, places to go, people to see.

Don't you wonder, sometimes, why people whom you've got to "know" quite well, suddenly - or gradually - stop blogging? I can only think of one person who actually announced that she was stopping - and did. Which was fair enough, though slightly frustrating. Otherwise people tend to drift away. Not many, actually, of the bloggers whom I read have done this. But a few. For example, one of the first blogs I read, called "Yo Heave Ho", dribbled away and ceased. Granted, its writer, Zara, had just had a second baby. (I can never understand how people with small children have time to blog.) But I would still like to know that she's ok. And she was a very entertaining writer as well as an engaging person.

Still, it's a funny thing to do, sending thoughts out into the ether; and every now and then I'm seized by the what-am-I-doing-this-for? feeling. When I started, over 5 years ago, I didn't imagine that anyone I knew would read it, but of course all my family do now and some of my friends. Which makes it a slightly different creature. And I suppose that even if we fancy ourselves to be anonymous, we all present only an edited picture of ourselves and our lives. Though some people, such as Fran of "Being Me", don't really even do that. She refers only obliquely to her husband and children and never posts pictures of her pets, cushions, garden or whatever. She's really funny instead.

Such a variety of blogs.

I'm glad to say that in those 5 years, none of my bloggy friends has died. But several have been widowed. And I'm occasionally sidetracked on to blogs of people with terrible illnesses who have since died. And yet their blogs hang on in cyberspace... As presumably will ours...

Anyway, I seem to be in a rambling frame of mind. To return to normal life: Grandson came visting today, fully restored to his sunny self. So delicious! Daughter 1 and I took him out for a walk. I love to see his face turning from side to side, his eyes swivelling as he takes in everything that's visible from his supine position: leaves, sky, gates, people. He has such an interested look on his face. What a pity that we can't ask him what he's thinking about.

Words

In a comment on my previous post, Marcheline http://www.blogger.com/profile/11201825708442679157
(oh, must write down how to do that linky thing) said that she thought that a picture is worth a thousand words.

I don't really agree. Yes, there are some things that are better seen than described. A rose, for example. A baby. A house, maybe, especially if one's planning to buy it. But not a person, definitely not a person.

We have photos of various ancestors - great-grandparents and the odd great-great grandparent. And it's lovely and interesting and intriguing to have them. But they don't really tell us much. I'd so much rather have their words. Words give a far better impression of the person, don't you think? I have only one piece of writing from my father's father - who died a few months before I was born. It's a letter that he sent to my grandmother, his future wife, saying that he hoped to see her again. I have not a scrap of writing from that grandmother. I have two plates from her wedding china but that's it. (And quite a lot of her genes, I suppose. I look a bit like her.) I do have a few letters written to me by my other grandparents and they give at least a flavour of their personalities.

But I feel I know a lot about Samuel Pepys and Anne Frank and Nella Last and Virginia Woolf and lots of other people whose diaries I've read, and about Philip Larkin and Noel Coward and all the Mitford sisters and Joyce Grenfell and lots of other people whose letters I've read.

And then there are blogs, of course. Our children and grandchildren, if the blogs survive, will know a huge amount about us and our lives. And what an archive for historians - if our journals don't disappear when we do, or shortly thereafter.

What do you think? Words or pictures? If you could only have one of them?

Hurray for the human race

Like the rest of the world, or at least large chunks of it, we awoke this morning to reports that the first few trapped Chilean miners had been rescued. What wonderful news. I’m sure millions of us have been imagining with shuddering dread what it must have been like down there: fear, darkness, heat, dirt, boredom, loneliness, overcrowding – all these would be part of most people’s worst nightmares, I’d think.

Although it must have been an unimaginably horrific experience for the 33 men, it was uplifting to watch, as we rushed to get ready for work, the third man coming to the surface. I had tears in my eyes. And I’ve remained uplifted throughout the day - mainly because the men are safe, of course, but also because for once it’s a news item in which human beings are shown in a positive light. It appears that the miners have been impressively stoical; the rescuers have battled for weeks to bring off the very difficult technical feat of retrieving them from half a mile underground – and have been successful; and the families have been steadfast in their vigil at the rescue site. The result: much joy, many congratulations and lots of reunited families.

No doubt there will be less encouraging tales emerging in the next few weeks and months. It seems likely that many of the rescued men will be plagued by nightmares and panic attacks once the euphoria of rescue has abated – we’re not witnessing the end of the story when we see them emerge blinking into the light. But still – for once I feel quite proud to be a human.

One detail from this morning lodges firmly in my mind. According to this morning’s news, the rescue cage went down for the first time with a paramedic in it. Now, I realise that the miners had been stuck deep underground for three months; but they had no choice. What sort of hero would you have to be to volunteer to try out the cage (agh) and then to stay down in that pit of horror (ohh) until – presumably – the last man has been rescued? What thoughts would go through your head as the cage moved up and away, leaving you alone under tons and tons of rock?

He’s a braver man than me, that’s for sure.

**************

Meanwhile, one of my students writes, “I at last secame to temptation.”

There’s a logic there. If you think that you secome to temptation, then the past tense would be “secame”. Dyslexia rules, KO.

A little blog adventure

You would think that a teacher on holiday would have lots of time to post fascinating items and to read others’ equally fascinating posts, but the trouble is that holidays are the times when teachers catch up with their social lives, so that’s part of what I’ve been doing this week. The other parts have been viewing flats with Daughter 2 - who’s considering buying one (very exciting and stressful) - and not doing some (but not enough) housework.

Let me tell you about Tuesday. Tuesday is when I met up with Rachel of Slow Lane Life (http://attica-slowlife.blogspot.com/) in Berwick, which is just over the border between Scotland and England.

As those of you who’ve done this bloggy-meeting business will know, it’s a strange and lovely experience. You start a new friendship but at the same time it’s not so new. You know things about people that their real friends may not know: not necessarily the secrets of their hearts, but what they had for dinner yesterday, the colour of their new cushions or how they feel about their next-door neighbours. And you know they like to read and write – always an indication of a noble and admirable disposition – and are friendly enough to comment on strangers’ blogs.

So I was pretty sure that Rachel would be nice as well as funny and clever (which I knew she was). And she was indeed all of these things. I had suggested that we meet up in Berwick-on-Tweed, which is kind of half-way between Edinburgh, where I live, and Newcastle, where she does. So we both got the train and set off, texting as we went. For the first time in my life I travelled first class, since there was a cheap offer. This was a very splendid and roomy experience, though I demonstrated my actual second-class nature by buying a Times newspaper at the station so that when the girl came round with a free Times for the first class passengers, I was already reading mine. Then I wasn’t quite sure if I could eat the shortbread biscuit provided on the table without being charged for it (I could) or drink the fizzy water as well as the coffee that was brought round (I could). Goodness me: I’m 59 and still looking sideways at other people to see what they’re doing so that I can copy them.

We met at the station and apart from the fact that Rachel, who claims to be 60, looks about 40 (she needs to start selling the secret) we recognised each other immediately from the photos we’d sent and set off round the town. While I’d never set foot in Berwick – only come through it on the train from London – she had actually lived there, so greatly to my advantage, I had a built-in tour guide who told me about her life in terms of various Berwick landmarks. (I also talked. Try stopping me.)

We walked round the tops of the city walls as in the photo above. I assume these were to keep out the marauding English or Scots, depending on which nation owned Berwick at the time – it was much fought over. Then we went for lunch, during which two people – granted they were mother and daughter – came over separately and exclaimed with pleasure at seeing Rachel after all this time. Then we went to a lovely shop selling pretty things, and I started my Christmas shopping. Go me!

Then, and fatally, since we had a little time before our trains, we popped into a second-hand bookshop, which resulted in our buying a few volumes (oh, how I don’t need any more books in my house!) and nearly missing our trains. We had to run (like, as Rachel accurately noted, “women who don’t really run”) with our bags of books banging elegantly against our thighs. My train was then late, so that I could have strolled. But I’m sure the run worked off my broccoli and cheese quiche, don’t you think?

This is a little Berwick street. The shop on the right announces that its proprietors are the "sole makers of the original Berwick Cockles" - little pink and white boiled sweets - but alas, it's now empty. Clearly Rachel left the town and stopped buying Cockles.

This is a house. I was too intent on our conversation to take in its name, but there was a sign nearby with a picture of it in a derelict state, and it's clearly loved now, which is nice.

A somewhat Wizard-of-Ozzie-looking lion guarding the house.

A row of houses. Great for looking into the front rooms (sorry for my nosiness, owners).

I did take other photos but they have Rachel in them and for some reason, though I did warn her I was about to take them, she's looking a bit startled so I won't post them. Take it from me that one of them showed someone's very pretty garden at the foot of the town wall, conveniently on view to the passing blogger.

Hope to see you again soon, Rachel!

Why do I blog?

Daughter 2 was having a nice early night with a book. Then she got up to fetch something. Guess what had happened by the time she got back?

I’ve been out of the blogloop all week and indeed hardly in it at all for several – all due to ridiculous busyness.

Thank you for your answers to a couple of posts ago: why you blog. These had some points in common but were interestingly different in other ways.

Like Tanya and others, I do it partly because I’m a compulsive writer. I enjoy putting words together; trying to make them say exactly what’s in my head; getting the rhythm right.

I think I also do it because I’m quite a shy person. My son doesn’t believe this, because these days I hide it fairly well most of the time and I no longer worry all that much what people in general think of me. And of course my job involves talking to large groups of students, which is different. But I do sometimes lack confidence in my complete fascinatingness – who doesn’t? – and in social groups will sometimes notice myself speaking quite fast so that others don’t have to listen to me for too long. Blogging is such a good medium for shyish people. No one has to read you and you never know if someone has got bored and stopped reading half way through a post.

I suppose there’s a self-selection process: almost by definition, people who read your blog are likely to be interested in what you have to say and to share your sense of humour and outlook on the world. Unless they’re only looking for pictures of cats.

And comments, however brief, are indeed a bonus. Every time you post, you step out of the shadows and shout, “Listen to me!” You feel less silly if someone replies.

I read one or two excellent blogs that get hardly any comments. I imagine that this is because they don’t comment on others’ blogs and so not all that many people know they’re there. I rather admire this. Presumably they don’t need confirmation – that reassurance that yes, other people know what they mean, like how they write and occasionally feel the same way.

And of course blogland is a community. Like the rest of you, I do have actual friends, though none of them knows about my blog. Blog friends are… just very pleasant. They tell you things that sometimes your real friends don’t. You get an insight into their daily lives, sometimes many thousands of miles away. You may even get to meet some of them – a sort of internet dating without the anxiety that they may not find you attractive.

Lastly, of course, it’s so much more fun than cleaning the oven. Or, in some of your cases, than doing your paid employment. Hello Salford!

Blogging. And cats.

Why do you blog?

It fascinates me that so many people do. Who would have thought that so many of us were starved of this facility to communicate with complete strangers and get feedback from them? I get the impression, from the blogs I read, that most of you are jolly people with friends, interests and hobbies – not introverted souls with no one to talk to.

(Except perhaps the Person from Salford and such like hoverers in the background. No, actually I reckon the Person from Salford is just very, very bored at work. I was a bit horrified, by the way, over Christmas to find that my statistics had plummeted – till it occurred to me that a lot of you must read blogs at work. You’re not so interested in other people's lives as to waste precious holiday time reading about them, but working time is a different matter. No wonder the economy’s going down the drain.)

What will eventually happen to all our blogs? They must be on some huge server somewhere – I can’t imagine such hugeness, but surely it will one day be full: choked with all our deep thoughts about vinyl and sewing and cats and weather and plants? One day, I suppose, Mr Blogger will shout “No more!” and delete us all.

Or will it remain, an enormous bank of material for future social historians? But there’s so much of it! How could any researcher trawl through the vast heap of words to extract the gems? The first blog I ever read was that of someone I was at school with – she mentioned it on her Friends Reunited message. Then I clicked on Next Blog and found Paul, a wonderful chap in his 80s in California. Which was such luck, because from then on, Next Blog led me only ever to crowds of illiterate teenagers rambling on about their college room mates and the movies they’d just seen.

Why do they blog? Why do I? Why do you?

Look how little they were!

Hello Salford!

It occurred to me this morning that yesterday was my blog’s first birthday. And I'm a year older too. Obviously.

I’m very ashamed to say that, despite starting out a year ago with good intentions (again) of losing weight, I didn’t.

I’m sitting here more or less the same weight as a year ago. A little of it has been lost and then regained.

Hmmm.

Still, to cheer me up in my shame, how about commenting on my blog, some of you people who show up in the site meter but who lurk furtively in the shadows? For example, someone at Salford University (I assume it’s one person rather than a vast horde of occasional readers) regularly has a look. Hello. Who are you? How are you? Are you having a nice day? And how are you, person in Amsterdam, Noord-Holland? Has it been sunny with you?

Four people in China tuned in yesterday – very unusual, and four, in different towns? How did that happen? I’d love to go to China.

I used to wonder how it was that so many people turned to my blog for 0 seconds, but then very recently I read the site meter FAQs and discovered that unless people go to a second page, the meter can’t tell how long they’ve been on the one page, and so this counts as 0 seconds. This is quite cheering. I myself often have a quick peek at blogs to see if there’s anything new and go on my way if not, but I couldn’t ever understand how anyone could do this in no time flat. (I did admit a few weeks ago that I had a habit of not reading the instructions unless there was no other way of working things out.)

I’ve been spending some time today saving my early blogs for posterity, in case Blogger decides to delete me. (Like Sheepcat.) Goodness, it’s been boring, and I’ve only done March, April and May last year. I suppose I should save them as I write them. Maybe I will in future. I ask myself precisely why I’m saving them, and I’m not sure. Poor old posterity will actually have far too many of my words of wisdom when I’m gone, since I write a lot of letters and have also been writing a diary – not every day, but quite often – since I was 15.

I’m off to read “Slaughterhouse Five”, lent to me by an insistent student. The title’s very offputting, but then so is “Pride and Prejudice”.