Variety

Ah, spring, lovely spring. The garden is very daffodilly. 

And a bit tulipy.

And somewhat drumstick primula-ish.

I planted blue scillas years ago and, perversely, they insist on marching out of the flowerbed into the driveway, from where it's impossible to dig them out. Why can't they seed themselves in the opposite direction? I do love them, though. 

We did a recce for a walk the other day, along a former railway line from Bonnyrigg to Penicuik. It was a sunny day but quite breezy, with the wind in our faces, which made it harder to walk. 

Signs of spring in these pussy willows. 

This community woodland thoughtfully provided a bench for the weary traveller. We sat on it. 

It was all very jolly, but it was also six and a half miles, so we were pleased to arrive in Penicuik and have a coffee, before bussing home. 

Penicuik, pronounced Pennycook.

Smallest Granddaughter was delighted when a greenfly landed on her hand the other day. I'm not myself a great greenfly fan; they eat my plants. Still, it's lovely to see the world through a child's eyes.

Talking of eyes, I discovered recently that Son-in-Law 1 doesn't know the colours of his (two) children's eyes. I was absolutely astounded. We discussed this a bit, and he said, well, it's not important. Which it isn't, but I still can't imagine not knowing - well, the colours of most of my friends' eyes, let alone my children's. As I climbed into bed later that night, I thought to check that my dear husband, whom I've known since 1964, knows the colours of our children's eyes. And he doesn't! (He was keeping that very quiet during the discussion.)

I then thought to mention this to two separate groups of friends. I thought they would all express extreme amazement, but on the whole they all nodded and said "Mmm". One remarked that she couldn't really say what colours her children's eyes were, and then said the same as my SIL: that it wasn't important. And I agree: it's not important. But still...

Now, I'm not claiming special powers - I haven't got much sense of direction, for example and am not good if my computer misbehaves. But on the whole, should I want to think of the colours of my friends' eyes, I just imagine their faces and look at the colour. I mean, it's not an infallible system if it's someone I've only met a few times, but if I know them, I know their eye colour and, come to that, the shape of their teeth and their noses and what their hands are like and so on. Is this unusual, o bloggy friends? Surely not?

 

The effects of time

A study...

in...

concentration.

She'll be 3 next month.

Where does the time go?

Blogger is being peculiar, as happens from time to time. My previous post turned out a bit funny-looking.

Thank you for your new-grandchild congratulations. I can't quite believe that Son, our youngest, is old enough to be a father. However, he'll be nearly 32 when he becomes one, in July/August, so I suppose I'm wrong. How time flies. (This seems to be the highly-unoriginal theme of this post.) 

And Terry Wogan has died, which feels equally unlikely. I fear that David Bowie meant little to me personally - his music never really penetrated my consciousness and probably wasn't my sort of thing - and I'm sure Alan Rickman was splendid but his face was only vaguely familiar to me from "Sense and Sensibility". But Terry Wogan!  That's very sad. On the other hand, I suppose that having a wonderful time till you're 77 and dying before you get dottled (a fine Scottish (I think) word which means confused) is no bad thing really.

I shall now stop musing and start practising the piano. I'm sure that I'll get a lot better at my piece before my lesson tomorrow morning. You think?

Edinburgh's child(ren)

Son and Daughter-in-Law came down yesterday and stayed till today. We all went with Daughter 1 and the grandchildren to the local playpark. It's particular fun in the playpark when your fit young uncle is prepared to go on the equipment with you.

I've just finished rereading a book I found in a second-hand bookshop a few years ago. It's called "Edinburgh's Child - some memories of ninety years" and it was published in 1961 when its author, Eleanor Sillar, was 92. She was born in 1869, not all that long before my grandparents (1880, 1885, 1893 and 1895). It's a series of essays about the Edinburgh of her childhood as the child of a Sheriff - a judge in the lower courts, as opposed to one who would deal with very serious crimes. I've just looked up the current salary of a Sheriff and it's about £130K. So her family was quite well-off. They had at least three live-in servants - mind you, there were six children and the mother died when the youngest was born, so they would certainly need help in the house.

Edinburgh as she describes it is clearly recognisable, though almost all of the shops have changed and the customs and attitudes are in some cases extremely different. As you get older, you realise how short a period of time a century is - if you remember 50 years back (and it doesn't seem such a long time ago) you are aware that 100 years is just twice not-very-long (and 1000 years just ten times that...). And yet she describes being a debutante - I never knew that Edinburgh people used that term - and going to balls at the Assembly Rooms. The Rooms are still there - I've been to a couple of dances there in my youth, but not with chaperones, candles and corsages as she describes them. And when she got home, at four in the morning, her nanny/maid was "awake and alert, ready to unlace me and to brush my hair, and eager to hear all about it. She pulls the flowers in my bouquet off their wires and puts them in water."

Eleanor writes very appreciatively of the three woman servants who were with the family for over fifty years. However, she writes that "they had been bred to think that to earn their living in this manner was their high calling". That doesn't feel too comfortable nowadays. She says that "our maids shared in all our holidays and outings" which sounds good, but adds "my memory pictures Christina weighed down with her enormous basket stuffed full of picnic fare and Ann wandering along, her arms laden with our discarded coats". Hmm.

Ann had joined the household when the writer's mother heard that she had had a baby by her betrothed, who had been killed in an accident before the wedding. The writer's mother, being a kind woman, immediately "sent for her, and kept her, earning thereby the selfless gratitude of a gentle being". But there's no mention at all of what became of Ann's child. This child had been born in Ann's mother's house so presumably remained there with its granny (no mention even of whether it was a girl or boy). When Eleanor Sillar married, Ann went with her to help with the next generation of children, not retiring till the age of seventy. I wonder how she really felt about all this?

But things were hard even in an affluent family. Two of the writer's brothers and her only sister died in infancy before Eleanor was born; her mother died in childbirth with Eleanor's younger brother; and her father died when she was thirteen. My grandfather too had several brothers and sisters who died before he was born; I remember asking him about them and he couldn't be sure even of their names.

In some ways it's not long ago. The buildings are much the same. I can Street View the addresses she mentions. And yet in other ways it seems a very long time ago. So interesting.

Stories

Why I like reading diaries and letters and biographies and autobiographies and memoirs - and of course blogs - is that I'm so interested in other people's lives. Nosey, you could say. Curious, I'd probably prefer. And you probably are too, or you wouldn't be reading this (unless you're Son-in-Law 1's relations, in which case you're hoping for pictures of the little ones). So while it's nice to see pictures of the daffodils in the Botanic Gardens, where we went yesterday with friends -

- and this blossom is very pretty too -

- I also took a picture of a bride arriving at her wedding and the piper playing as she got out of the car. It's a bit weird, I suppose, to think that she's featuring on the blog of a complete stranger; but unless you knew who she was (which I don't and I assume you don't) you'll never recognise her again. The sort of semi-permanent tent on the left of the photo was very full of guests and as we passed we could see the groom standing waiting inside for her to arrive and come up the non-aisle. So we looked for a few moments and I wondered who they were and how they'd met and whether the marriage would be a success. It's quite expensive to get married at the Botanics so they've started with the advantage of being reasonably well-off - unless of course they've spent too much on the wedding and that car and the flowers she was carrying and are starting in debt. We'll never know; but I hope it all goes well.

After walking round, we went to have coffee. What do you think of these people, then? The couple on the left look as if they've been married for a long time, don't you think? They were sitting looking out at the tables and benches and (though you can't see it in my photo) the interesting Edinburgh skyline. They were sensibly dressed for the rather chilly day and didn't appear to be making much attempt to impress one another. The other couple, though - she's leaning forward very attentively and he's showing her something on a piece of paper. An assignation? A business meeting? They're not young but they're both good-looking for their ages.

Actually, I know the woman slightly and we had a brief chat as she and her companion were leaving. She said that he was a friend and they were discussing a joint project. Which isn't quite as interesting as I was imagining... .

If anyone had been watching the four of us, what would they have thought? They'd probably have assumed (correctly) that we were two married couples. Would they have known which woman was married to which man? They wouldn't have known that B and I met on the first day of primary school, when we were five. Do B's husband and I look like the retired teachers that we are? I've no idea.

However, for the family in Worcester, here's Granddaughter escaping...

... and then playing peekaboo. Her story is very simple. So far.

Transport

Daughter 2 came home for a meeting, and thus a long weekend with us. She set out from London on the 7.30 pm train on Wednesday and was due in Edinburgh at 11.30 pm. However, England has been suffering from severe weather and because of gales which brought down the power lines for the trains near York, she didn't get home till 5 am on Thursday - on a train that had to scoop up the passengers on the 6.30 pm from the previous evening as well as the 7 and 7.30 pm trains. Not fun. Not fun for the poor railway employees who had to deal with this either.

However, after some sleep, she recovered enough to be sociable later in the day with her sister and niece (and the rest of us).

A smiley baby is a very jolly person indeed.

How nice to attract such universal approval as a baby does. If only all life could be like this.


Grandson's recent experiences of feeling that he's surrounded by idiots: Episode 1 

While Daughter 2 was catching up on her sleep, Grandson and I were on a bus, sitting beside an elderly lady. "Look," said the lady to Grandson, pointing to traffic lights. "Those lights stop the traffic. When the light's red, we have to stop and then when it turns green, we can go."

Grandson gazed at her. You could see him thinking: I've known that for - ooh - months and months. Traffic lights are more or less my favourite things. Well, and tractors. And trains. And little cheesy biscuits.

"So," said the lady, "there's a red light. What does red mean?"

"Stop," said Grandson, speaking slowly and clearly as if to someone slightly deficient in the grey matter.

"That's right!" said the lady, clearly pleased by her efforts to educate the young.

Ah, teaching. It's always hard to get the level right.

Encounter

Yesterday Grandson and I went to the park. Shortly after we arrived, a young mum got into conversation with us. She seemed keen to talk. She commented that it was cold (which it wasn't particularly but she was wearing a thin jacket) and said she had to be there for two hours because she was too early to visit someone in prison. (It was almost as if she was pleased - proud? - to tell me this.) The prison is a couple of miles away from the park - I don't think it's a high security establishment but I don't know much about it, not even exactly where it is. She said that she lived in East Lothian, which is a county just to the east of Edinburgh, and that her father had told her that the journey would take her much longer than it had actually done.

She was in the park to put off time and to let her little girl play. The child was three and a bit; nine months or so older than Grandson. She seemed a nice child. Grandson and she started playing in the same area, looking at each other and following each other about. Grandson chatted to me about her and what she was doing. The other child didn't say much but smiled and accepted her mum's suggestions as to what she should do next.

The mum told me that her little girl hadn't seen the man she was going to visit for some time because he'd been in prison, but the mum thought that he and her daughter should get to know each other again because he was hoping to be released on Friday. It turned out that the man was the mum's partner though not actually the child's father "but he's been like her father". She said that she hoped that the little girl wouldn't remember when she was older that she'd visited the prison. The child had also been there "when she was a baby, visiting my brother" but didn't remember this.

At this point I mentioned the East Lothian school where I taught from 1973-1979 and it turned out that this was the school that the mum had been to (not long ago, I'd guess). We chatted a bit about the school. She said that her father had been a pupil. I recognised his name though I don't think I actually taught him. It was, I fear, one of those names that was not greeted with joy when one saw them on one's register. I can't now remember whether he was a challenging boy or just a bit of a poor soul (I rather think the former). Then she said that her mother was also a pupil. Her name was familiar to me in the same way. I remembered quite well another girl with the same surname; sure enough, this was the young mum's aunt. The aunt had been quite a forceful character and not academic. In those days I was very aware that schools didn't on the whole cope very well with the full range of needs. I doubt if things are much better now. It's very hard to teach children who are not keen to be there for whatever reasons.

And I looked at the two children and their innocent, hopeful faces. Who knows how anyone's life will turn out? -  but I feel worried for the little girl, though her mum obviously loves her and wants to do the best for her. I felt that I ought to do something but... what? And then quite soon the mum decided that she was too cold and she would just make her way to the prison anyway, so off she went.

She left me feeling very thoughtful.

Never give up...

This fine motto was on a bag left behind by the tenants in Daughter 2's Edinburgh flat. We found it when we cleaned the flat in preparation for the next tenants. We rather liked its bizarre optimism and the interesting use of the comma.

Which links fairly tenuously with the subject of the remainder of this post: our lovely little African guests - in the end only two of them, with their chaperone (American; also delightful). We've hosted members of African children's choirs before and our previous children were also memorably engaging.

The children are all from poor families; some are orphaned and all would have been unlikely to get much schooling. Being chosen for one of the choirs means that they go on tour, singing and dancing, and the money raised will pay for their education up to university level. This choir is from Uganda and they've been on tour for sixteen months: they've visited 38 American states as well as Britain. Next week they go to Ireland and in November they return home. This sounds a bit Dickensian but as we've found before, the children seem to love it and adapt amazingly well to their strange (temporary) lifestyle.

P and S are 10 and 11 (approximately - they're not really sure) and are - I can't praise them highly enough - happy and enthusiastic and funny and clever and polite and affectionate and grateful and interested and tidy and organised and uncomplaining and curious and ... well, everything that's good. I remember our previous visitors as being just the same. P and S have been playing with Lego in our house and enjoying it so much. I asked them if they'd seen Lego before. "No," said P. "It's maybe in the shops but we can't afford things like that." She didn't sound in the very slightest sorry for herself; just matter-of-fact. And I looked at the huge pile of Lego that our children had and thought... hmm. Of course we're not allowed to give gifts to individual children because, apart from anything else, they'd have to carry them wherever they go.

They have lessons and rehearsals in our church during the day and we collect them at 5pm. They really want to learn (and I think guiltily of how I used to feel about school when I was a child... .) When we arrive, all the children are busy and very well-behaved; almost alarmingly so. Then they're told that they can go and they ERUPT into giggles and cartwheels and squealing and bouncing - and they're enchantingly normal again.

I'm really going to miss P and S. I hope so much that life is kind to them and they never lose their sunny outlook on life.

Rhadamanthine

On "Brain of Britain" on the radio today, a contestant was asked for the adjective meaning "uncompromisingly honest or just" which is derived from the name of one of the sons of Zeus.

Pause. Then the chap said drily, "Frank."

I love it. So much better an answer than the actual one, which is "rhadamanthine" from Rhadamanthus. Never heard of him. Heard of Frank, though.

Sic transit gloria mundi

 

This is, or was, Arthur Marshall. He lived from 1910-1988 and though 1988 doesn't seem very long ago to me, I suppose that it is really. I never did read his articles because I didn't buy the magazines he wrote for, but he was on "Call My Bluff" for some years and we watched that as a family.

 

He was quite a jolly chap - a giggler and rather avuncular - but I hadn't thought about him for years till I found myself using the "life's rich pageant" phrase. I remember him saying that it tended to get changed to "life's rich pattern" and he didn't think that was as good, or at any rate not the same.

 

I don't suppose anyone under forty has ever heard of him.

 

It's so odd, this living and dying thing. You're there and then you're not.

 

I watched a bit of a programme about the universe yesterday - with Professor Brian Cox, whom I quite like but someone in the family (is it Daughter 2?) finds smug. I think I'm ok with smugness as long as the smugger has something to be smug about, which he clearly has. Anyway, someone asked him what happened before the Big Bang and he said, well, either there was something or there was nothing - no one knows.

 

There are more things in heaven and earth .... etc.

 

The other thing I remember from this programme (I was making millionaire's shortbread at the time and not really concentrating on astrophysics) was that they showed us an infra-red telescope that was so powerful that it could pick out a bumblebee on the Moon. Not that there was one. But if there had been, it could have.

 

And now Cassie Cat has come and sat on my keyboard so I shall stop typing and go to do some piano practice. Deep thinking can wait till tomorrow. And even then we may concentrate our energies on getting the plumber back. Washing the dishes in the bathroom is becoming less fun by the minute.

 

PS Grandson is on antibiotics but is as cheerful as ever.

 

 

Blooming Blogger

Well, thank you, kind commenters, for your suggestions re my sudden inability to post pictures. I got Technological Daughter 1 to do what ShiftClick suggested but alas, it made no difference (though we didn't do the changing to Firefox bit because she had to go home. I might get Techological Husband to have a go at that).

Blogger told me some months ago that I'd run out of photo space (though it subsequently changed its mind) but it's not telling me anything this time.

So I suppose I'll continue the wait-and-see policy. Or possibly get Technological Son-in-Law 1 to have a go.

It is annoying when Blogger won't work, though since it's free I suppose one shouldn't expect anything too efficient.

Poor little Grandson is still pretty unwell: croaky, requiring frequent nose-wipes and a bit emotionally fragile, though in between times still jolly. He's had this terrible cold for ten days now. What a shame.

I was listening to Radio 4's Book of the Week last week, on and off. It was about this girl who decided to hike the Pacific Trail (was that it?) after her mother died and her marriage broke up. She was very inadequately prepared but, predictably for an experience that turned into a book, after many travails her feet toughened up and she walked herself happy. So that was all nice. Then she ended by saying that things became even nicer because she later met a good man and they married and had two children, a boy called Carver and a girl called Bobby. (Or possibly Bobbie or Bobbi. It was radio.)

And I, who had been feeling quite warm towards her up to that point, thought - Carver???? Why would you call your child Carver? (Not a huge fan of Bobb-whatever either, but at least she wasn't called after a knife or chair.)

Mr Life once had a colleague whose first name was Turnbull. Can you imagine anyone looking at a sweet little person with fuzzy hair and big puzzled eyes and saying, "We've decided that he looks like a Turnbull." Or indeed a Carver.

Well well. It is, as my granny used to say, a funny wee world.

.............................................................................................................................................

PS Aha. Have just found this on a Blogger help page -  might try it but must go and practise piano at the moment:

Katney - Blogger Top Contributor

22:09 (1 hour ago)

Other recipients:

Are you using Internet Explorer? The problem of the missing browse button arose in IE in the last couple of days. There have very few reports of something similar happening in other browsers. It happens in Compose, but the uploader in the html tab of the editor will work. You can upload using html, then switch to Compose to work with the pictures.

As it is not as likely to affect Firefox or Chrome, using one of those browsers is another option.

The problem has been reported and is now listed in the Known Issues. We hope for a quick fix.

The sea, the sea

This is Auntie Daughter 2 and Grandson by the sea yesterday in Joppa, the eastern suburb of Edinburgh where we go to church. What's he looking at?

This! The tractor that goes along the beach every morning removing any rubbish and smoothing the sand. Grandson is a great fan of vehicles. I think he must be a boy.

 
This is the same sea, but west of Edinburgh, ie up river (it's a tidal estuary) at South Queensferry, where I went today to visit a friend. You can see the famous Forth Bridge.

 

This is the main street, built before the days of cars.

The bridge is very much a presence in the town. Even where the shoreline has buildings along it, you catch glimpses in gaps between them. My friend's house is higher up the hill and her kitchen window looks straight out on it. I'm not sure whether it was thought beautiful in its early days but somehow we're so used to it that it's thought of as an attractive rather than blotlike.

At the bus stop on the way home, a chap asked me what the fare was to Edinburgh. I didn't know because, as an over-60, I get free bus fares now. I detected a slight foreign accent so I thought I should be friendly to offset the uselessness of my fare knowledge. "Where are you from?" I asked.

He frowned slightly. "Here, for 25 years," he said. (It seemed strange to me that his bus knowledge was nevertheless so insufficient, but I let it pass.) "I have another home in Warsaw," he added. "I commute."

"That's a long commute," I said.

"I have another in New York. That's even further," he said. And the bus arrived and we got on. He went upstairs and I sat downstairs.

South Queensferry, Warsaw and New York. I bet that's unique. I had a lot of questions in my mind but we'll never know the answers now.

A bit too much excitement for pensioners...

He lives! This was Mr Life's first outing since the lurgy struck him down. We went to Cramond, in the west of Edinburgh, with SIL 1 and his visiting dad, and walked along the river. I didn't realise that his dad read the blog to find pictures of Grandson - sorry, none today since the baby's in London visiting Auntie Daughter 2, but here's a picture of you instead, B.

"Stand there and try to look as if it's not raining," I said. Not sure if they quite succeeded. The bouncing raindrops on the river possibly give the game away. It had been beautiful in the morning, too!

The colours were lovely, despite the dull skies.

I know that posting photos of autumn leaves in autumn doesn't win any prizes for originality but what the pretty pictures don't show is that something dramatic had happened just before, while we had our lunch in the local hostelry in this respectable suburb.

Da - da - da .... (drum roll...)

We were sitting there quietly eating our macaroni/Thai green curry/gammon when a chap came in with a woman and she ordered soup. Then, without a word, the chap picked up a bar stool and hurled it over the bar. We weren't watching but there was a huge crash as the bar stool hit and smashed the optic bottles and some more bottles on a shelf. We turned and looked but in the first instant we didn't realise what had happened and assumed that someone had just dropped a tray of glasses (a very fully loaded tray?) The two newcomers were just standing there. Then the woman (who turned out to be the man's sister, or so she said) said, "He's mad. Call the police," which didn't seem to be the most useful or helpful thing she could have done. We were all just sitting there trying to work out what was going on, but the young chap behind the bar very composedly said to the chap, "Get out!" and then repeated it and the man did.

The sister said afterwards to the barman that her brother was schizophrenic, which is very sad.

I was very impressed by the young barman, who wasn't a big lad (mind you, neither was the stool thrower). While everyone else in the bar was just going "???" he took charge. Of course, he'd actually witnessed what happened so he wasn't so puzzled as the rest of us; but he must have been very shocked.

The barman called the police and the boss. The boss arrived, parked his BMW with its personalised number plate in the car park, leapt out, strode across the car park ... and then ran back and leapt in again because he'd forgotten to put on his handbrake. By this time his car had rolled back into another car, not improving either, especially the BMW. Again, we weren't looking until the young couple at the nearby table beside the window exclaimed as the car took off, so actually we missed the real drama once more.

I don't think it was the best day of the boss's life.

The young couple at the window had finished their meal. As they left, the young chap said to us, "Troubles happen in threes so we're going!"

There you are: you thought nothing exciting ever happened in this blog, didn't you?

Back to cats tomorrow, I imagine. I have a nice picture of Sirius licking Cassie's face. Bet you can't wait. Or I might tell you what happened in the theatre the other evening when we went to see "42nd Street"... .

When I'm Queen

 I popped into town today. The weather was lovely again, though not warm.

It was only 1.30 pm but look how low the sun is - not quite behind the Castle but not far off.

The shadows in the Gardens are already quite long.

And I sat on the little bench in the queue at the bus stop and wondered, as I often do, why some tall chaps stand on the non-queue side of the bus stop, blocking the view of the buses coming. Do they feel they're too cool to queue? I don't suppose they realise they're blocking the view but I wish they wouldn't. I have to keep bobbing up and down and craning my neck to see round them.

When I'm Queen, this will be a punishable offence. Haha. I have one or two other plans in mind for this time, connected with people who drop chewing gum on the pavements, those who say "I" when they mean "me"* and thin people who eat far more than I do and still remain thin.

And you? What's on your statute book?

* ... such as "He gave it to John and I". No he didn't. He gave it to John and me.

The return of Tony

A few weeks ago, water starting dripping through the study ceiling. We got roofers to replace some missing slates, which solved the problem, but there's now wallpaper hanging elegantly down from above our desks. We decided that we might as well redecorate the whole room and, having considered doing it ourselves, decided we wouldn't. There's so much stuff in the study that the thought of having it sitting round a spare bedroom while the job is being done slowly just didn't appeal.

Time to call Tony the Painter.

Long-time bloggy friends may remember him from a couple of years ago. He's a very nice Irish chap with a wonderful accent and good taste in radio programmes. He's also very slightly... how can I put this? - individual - when it comes to telephone calls.

I phoned him up, mentioned that he'd worked for us before and described the job. "What's your name?" he asked.

Since he'd consistently called me Mrs MacDonald (which isn't my name) I didn't know if there was a lot of point in telling him my actual name, but I did.

"Ah right," he said. "You live in Stocktonhall."

There isn't a Stocktonhall in Edinburgh but there is an area not far from us with a name that somewhat resembles this, so I agreed.

We fixed a time for him to come and look at the job. "That's grand, then," he said. "I'll see you then, Mrs Brown."

Nope. Nothing like my name. Though my maiden name was Smith.

Light and shade

Oh, what a joy this little chap is. He laughs like a Mr Man, with his top lip straight and his bottom lip U-shaped. You only have to make a silly face or balance a toy on your head and he rewards you with sparkling eyes and a lovely shrieky giggle.

Meanwhile a friend of Daughter 2 has just had a baby who seemed fine but was suddenly found to need a very serious emergency operation. Life is so rubbish sometimes. And so wonderful at others.

Easier to be a cat and just lie in the sun.







The other day I was queuing for a bus which was approaching. The woman two in front of me stepped forward to board it. A skinny lad directly in front of me didn't move. He was wearing a white hooded top, the hood on his head though it wasn't cold, and was plugged into music. "Excuse me," I said, not sure if he could hear me, "are you getting this bus?"

He half-turned and nodded. Then he pulled out his earpieces, gave me a cheery smile and said, "But - ladies first!" and waved me ahead.

Comical but rather sweet - even if it suggested that I was looking particularly ancient that day.

Identity

My friend D and I had coffee today in a bookshop. The coffee shop is run by a well-known chain and we were served by a young man with a big name badge on his lapel. "Good morning," he said to me. "My name is Bradley. What's your name?"
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"Don't tell him!" said D, who's a strong-minded person. "It's this new thing that they ask your name so that you think they're your friend."
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Bradley looked nonplussed. "I want to write it on your cup," he said. D gave him a further little lecture about globalisation and marketing and so on.
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They've up till now managed to unite me and my coffee without knowing my name but it didn't seem to be Bradley's fault so I told him my name, which isn't Isabelle and which, in the shortened form I gave him, has only three letters. It's not uncommon.
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"How do you spell that?" asked Bradley. We sorted this out. I can imagine that coffee queues must be getting longer all over the world if people called Phoebe or Mairi or Aoife are trying to buy coffee.
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Then he looked helplessly at D. "Just put her down as [my name] 2," I suggested. So he did.
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D and I sat down on two of a group of four armchairs and started chatting. She decided that in future she would just claim that her name was the same as the server's, even if this were Bradley.
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Very shortly afterwards, someone asked if the other two chairs were taken and, when we said no, this person sat down in one of them. I'm saying "this person" because it was very obvious that (s)he had started life as a man, but (s)he was wearing a shortish skirt and blouse, tights, high heels, pearl earrings and quite a lot of eye shadow. (S)he sat there for most of the two hours that we did, presumably listening to our fascinating talk about our children and grandchildren, about work (D still works at the college), holidays and so on. Eventually s(he) got up, smiled very nicely at us, said goodbye and departed.
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It struck me that D and I were not really taking full advantage of our freedom to dress in a feminine way. We were both wearing black jeans and flat shoes. I was wearing a checked shirt in green and black and D had a tee-shirt, though admittedly that was pink.
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After this person went, we had a bit of a chat about it all.
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Including that the fact that the name written on our companion's coffee cup was - as we were surprised to notice - Alan.