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?

Choo-choos and things

This is the hall where we sang on Sunday. There was an audience by the evening, you understand. My photo was taken at the rehearsal. I've sung in it a few times now, starting with school concerts when I was, I suppose, 12. Hmm. Nearly 50 years ago.

I giggled a bit at the variety of comments about my piano wails. Gina may well be right that I should give up, but I want to be able to play the piano. And I can play it to some extent, which is enough to make me feel what it would be like to be better at it. It's just remarkably hard to coordinate the two hands while reading two lines of music and thinking about the dynamics as well. Sometimes I can do it.

But then if I couldn't read words and someone described reading - being able to recognise thousands of words very quickly - I would think that was impossible. And I'm really good at it! I suppose it took me a few years to become fluent and fast.

We took Grandson to the bit of the museum which has trains. He was VERY interested.

Mr Life pointed out the salient features of this engine. Grandson seemed amazed at its size.

There were buttons to press to make wheels go round - handily at Grandson level. Here he is, pressing away.

How lovely to be one and a half, when the world is so full of a number of things and you can assume that everyone adores you.

Where are those angels when you need them?

There are definite signs of spring (though these are supermarket daffodils, not flowers from my garden, apart from the polyanthus) and I actually did some gardening today: cut back lavender and clematis. I do love lavender. Even at this time of year, the scent of the cuttings reminds me of summer days with bees buzzing and soft air. I also did a little forking of the earth, though this didn't remind me of summer at all; indeed my fingers got cold through my gloves. Still, it's nearly March, which is good.

Unlike my piano playing. I know I probably don't practise enough, but I do practise and I find that:

1. at first I can't play my new tune and then
2. I get better and can sort of play it and then
3. I start getting worse again.

How can this be? It's SO frustrating. I think it's partly because, as I get slightly better, I start to speed up and that makes me get worse again. But anyway, it's really discouraging.

I actually wouldn't mind if angels descended from the sky, took me gently aside and broke the news that I would never be able to play the piano with any reasonable level of ability. I could accept that. Then I could stop the lessons and just occasionally have a wee twiddle to myself. But I keep hoping that I'll improve a bit more, to the extent for example that I don't keep having to work out what the notes are - dash it, I know what the notes are but I keep forgetting, mid-tune - and can reliably play some simple airs without making mistakes.

Anyway, our choir had its concert last night in the Usher Hall. We sang the Verdi Requiem and the Te Deum from Verdi's Four Sacred Songs, both of which are quite difficult in bits but WONDERFUL. It sounded quite good. Unlike my piano playing.

I'm sorry to have added the annoying verification thing but I've been getting spam from people who appear to think I'm organising a wedding or have a dog. No and no. However, the wonderful Thimbleanna has pointed out that you don't have to type the numbers correctly, just the letters - which does make the whole thing less of a palaver. You just type any number (a single one) and as long as the letters are right, it's fine. So wurfle2956 can be wurfle9 or whatever. Isn't that odd, but good?

No Volume 2 yet. Drums fingers... .

'Tis the season to be ... jollyish

It’s a funny thing, grief. At first when Mum died, I think the relief at her being out of pain and discomfort lessened my sadness that she was dead. But now weepiness overcomes me from time to time. It’s not the old-lady Mum that I miss so much – though she leaves a big hole in my life because I was very involved for the last ten years or so in looking after her, to an increasing degree. But more and more I remember what she was like when I was a girl. We were very close and used to laugh a lot together. I miss my younger Mum.

 

Today I went through the cards and letters we were sent when she died. There were 65 of these, which is quite a lot for a 90-year-old most of whose long-term friends are already dead. It was interesting to reread them – I really didn’t take them in at the time – but it was upsetting too. I’ve kept a few - the ones that said insightful things about her - but have firmly thrown most of the ones that just (kindly) expressed sympathy. We’re trying to cut down on clutter.
 

Part of the difficulty of this sort of grief – grief for someone of her age – is that it feels unreasonable. Being orphaned at the age of 62 is not exactly headline news. I was lucky to have her that long. But it’s more complicated than that. I’m sad because I miss her but also because she was still interested in life and didn’t want to die and also because of the sad fact that we must all die. It seems a poor system, though – yes – better than the alternative, I know.
 

And missing one’s children (sorry Anon, if you’re still reading) hurts because it’s unreasonable too. Of course they must fly the nest and of course they must be independent because Mr Life and I going to die one of those days and it would be terrible if they couldn’t cope on their own.
 

Well well. I like to spread a bit of Christmas cheer. (I think this has come on partly because of the imminence of Christmas without Mum. Also, we got delivery of a double bed today for the room that was Daughter 2’s and then Mum’s and now is just another spare room. Which will of course be useful when most of the family comes for Christmas. My brother and family used to stay with Mum and now will be with us – and that will be nice. But different.)

 

 

Meanwhile, more jollily, here's Daughter 2's gift to us today. Ho ho ho. 

 

 

 

And here's ours to her. Why the match? (It's actually a pen.) Does she smoke? No, but I thought it was mildly amusing. Much like a gingerbread man wearing a Santa hat.

 

Now back to the piano practice, which as ever is driving me nuts. Why am I doing this? I could be lying in a nice warm bath reading a book and eating chocolate instead of making a big hash of Silent Night, which my teacher probably thought would put me in a Christmassy mood. Ha ha ha.

Coffee with Granny

 

This is the coffee shop right underneath my piano teacher's flat. Usually I get there too early for my lesson so I go and have a coffee and read the paper thoughtfully provided by the coffee shop.

My mother used to take my granny into town for coffee every Tuesday but there are various things that would astonish Granny if she could come to this (or indeed any) coffee shop with me. (And how lovely that would be. She died in 1980 and I still miss her.)

1. The coffee - all the different concoctions that are available now. I like cappuccino and this coffee shop serves it with a little foam heart on the top.

2. The comestibles - there are scones, tray bakes and so on which are all about three times the size they were in my granny's day. I don't actually eat any of them because it would make me three times the size of my granny, which would be undesirable.

3. The chairs and tables - they're shabby chic and don't necessarily match each other. I imagine she would think this odd in a café.

4. The walls have been stripped back to the stone in some places. (I imagine she'd think that building works were in progress. I don't really care for it myself.)

5. The newspapers - never provided in the past but a jolly good thing, in my opinion.

I wonder what cafés will be like in another 32 years. When I'm 94... .

Botanics with the Bro

My brother came up from down south last night and we went together to see Mum in hospital both last night and this afternoon. Then he went home again. This morning, however, he and I were together. Mr Life had gone to Perth to visit Son (and a model railway exhibition). Brother and I went to the Botanics. Edinburgh seems to have been one of the few places in the country not under five feet of water at the moment, though you couldn't describe the weather even here as impressively sunny.

It struck me that this is the first time since - oh, I've no idea - that my brother and I have spent more than a few minutes alone together. We don't see each other that often because he lives near London, and when he's here or we're there, our spouses and usually offspring are around too. I tried to think of when we'd spent eight hours with just each other and came to the conclusion that it was probably - never. When we were children, we got on well but had different interests: he's a scientist and I'm much more into the arts. He's also two years eight months older than I am, which seems quite a lot when you're little. So we co-existed amiably but on the whole separately. Then he went to live in America when he was 23 and some years later he moved to England.

It's odd and (to me) sad that brothers and sisters, who share such a lot of their childhood experiences, are often apart for most of the rest of their lives.

Anyway, it was nice to chat and spend time together.

He played my latest piano piece. He's been playing the piano for over fifty years compared to my six months and I was at first pleased that he made a couple of mistakes. "Aha," I thought, "no wonder I find it hard if even Brother doesn't play it perfectly" (though he was sight-reading, and did add twiddly bits that Bach hadn't quite thought of). And then it occurred to me that if Brother couldn't play it perfectly, I with my 20-minutes-a-day of practice have little chance of dazzling my teacher at my lesson on Tuesday.

In fifty years I would be a hundred and eleven. I fancy I shall no longer be playing the piano by then.

Grandson and me

I paid a visit to Daughter 1 and Grandson this afternoon. I shouldn't have worn beads. But look - a tooth! Well, the beginnings of a tooth.

There's that tooth again. He's still smiling even though the necklace has been whipped away from him. (He could be a girl in this picture, don't you think?)

.

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This is how my piano-learning is going:

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Tuesday. I have my lesson, play my little tune, the teacher makes encouraging noises and then plays me the next tune in the book. It sounds simple and lovely. I have a go, one hand at a time, and it's not too difficult.

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Wednesday. I have another go, one hand at a time. Easy.

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Thursday. I try both hands together. Rubbish.

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Friday. Still rubbish. I think: oh woe is me. Why did I ever think I could do this? I'm wasting my time and money. I'll never be able to do it, especially BY TUESDAY!

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Saturday. Things improve a bit.

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Sunday. Actually, I'm getting better at this tune.

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Monday. I can play it, though make the odd mistake from time to time.

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The following week: process repeats itself.

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Currently it's Friday.

Pom POM, pom

Mr Life and I went to the Botanics this afternoon and strolled around in a retired sort of way. The daffodils were very pretty.

As were the hellebores.

And the camellias.

And here's pretty Mr Life in front of some rhododendrons.

Then we came home and he sat at his miniature railway workbench to ... not very sure ... make little holes in bits of plastic, or at least that's what he was doing when I took the picture.

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And so another day passed. Oh, and I did quite a bit of piano practice (well, several lots of ten minutes) because my lesson is tomorrow. My teacher told me last week to practise my ragtime pieces of music and "make them into party pieces". Hmm. Not sure I'd invite anyone to this party, but I'm improving.

Sigh

My anemones are nearly finished now, but their jewel brightness has become almost transparent - very beautiful.

We visited Daughter 1 and cuddled Grandson. Here he is with Daughter 2. He was a bit less cheery than normal if not entertained.

This is him looking a bit thoughtful and thumb-sucky. Maybe he was also self-conscious because he was modelling the hat that Daughter 1 has just finished knitting for herself.

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In the evening, his first tooth began to appear, which I imagine accounts for his unwonted solemnity.

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I'm feeling thumb-sucky myself because Daughter 2 has returned to London. Also Sirius Cat is sitting on my right hand, which makes typing and mouse-use rather tricky. So I shall go and practise my (very difficult) ragtime piano music. Might as well be thoroughly miserable. (Well, it's difficult for me. Scott Joplin could probably have played it with cats sitting on both of his hands.)

Admiring things

After my piano lesson today (why do I always play so much worse for my teacher than I do for myself, in the privacy of my sitting room? - remind me not to be a concert pianist...) I wandered down beside Bruntsfield Links and admired the crocuses.

Also the view over towards Arthur Seat, our city hill.

I met up with Daughter 1, Grandson and Mr Life for coffee in a bookshop and then we went to our house and spent the day admiring the baby.

My anemones are coming out nicely.

Retirement's not so bad.

Sunday with the Lifes

Son came down today from the north to have lunch with us and reconnected with his nephew.

They went for a little walk in the garden and sat on the seat in the sitooterie (the place where one sits oot). Now that I look at this picture, I'm reminded that the sitooterie could do with being painted. Add it to your list of retirement tasks, Mr Life... .

Grandson's a cuddly boy who loves his mum. (This photo makes it look as if one of his ears is enormous, a bit like that mouse with an ear shape grafted on. Not so.)

Someone asked how my piano learning was going. Well, I can play these things above fairly well - the right-hand page was this week's homework.

I had a little try of this - the following page - this afternoon and found it surprisingly difficult, though it looks easier at a casual glance. In fact it looks simple. But I didn't find it so. I suppose that after five lessons I can't expect to be tremendously good but it's a pity. Effortless brilliance would be very pleasant. My dad was the sort of pianist who could play anything at sight or without music and could transpose things into a different key on request. But I suppose that I'm remembering him when he'd been playing for 40 years. So maybe when I'm 101 I'll be able to do that.

I do enjoy it, though.

(Oh no, the paragraph spaces have gone again. Shame on you, Blogger!)

Slightly less stress - I think

Well, today was a better day, though the dishwasher chap didn't get back to me. I can live without a dishwasher but it's only a bit over a year old and it shouldn't have broken down in the first place.

And I didn't even mention it yesterday among my other complaints, but on Sunday I noticed that I'd lost a diamond from my engagement ring. This is particularly tedious since I lost a different diamond about eighteen months ago, had to have it replaced (at not insignificant cost) and specifically asked the chap to check the settings of the other ones.

Gah gah gah gah.

Still, on the positive side, my piano teacher is LOVELY, which is a piece of luck since I picked her more or less randomly from the internet, really only because she said on her website that she teaches pupils from 7 to 70, so I felt wouldn't be her very oldest pupil. Also her website seemed well-phrased. Of course, I made a bit of a mess of the tune I'd been practising (so as to show her that I was a worthwhile student). But I knew I would since I was, stupidly, rather nervous. And it didn't really matter.

And Daughter 1 and Grandson came and had coffee with me afterwards (piano teacher lives above a coffee shop, conveniently) and then we came here for the afternoon. He is so delighfully squashy. His t-shirt says, by the way: Ihr seid grosser* aber ich bin lauter (ie You're bigger but I'm louder - his dad has a degree in German).

* Sorry, don't know how to do umlauts on the computer.

And then, also on the positive side, my mum's neighbour phoned up this evening to say that Mum's conservatory door was open, and we all rushed up there expecting that burglars had broken in, smashed the glass, tried to gain entry to the rest of the house etc etc. And it was all fine. The door was indeed open but the lock was locked, leaving Mr Life to conclude that when he'd locked it on Saturday he hadn't actually had it properly clicked shut first. (It's a bit of a funny door.) And it had just swung open but nothing nasty had happened. What a relief, especially since this all made Mum much more cheerful than she'd been before the whole situation arose.

Oh, the excitements of the retired life.

Santa Sirius

Cat among the penguins...

Chocolate among the Anne Tylers. (Thank you, Daughter 2.)

Sirius is decorated.

So is the house. I don't feel very festive, however.

The pandas in Edinburgh Zoo are more important news than a security alert.

They seem a bit camera shy. Wisely.

How is your piano playing plan going, Isabelle, you ask? Well, this is the stage I'm at. Yes, yes, I know it looks very easy. All right, it is very easy. But I'm still not terribly good at it. Sometimes I can play it and sometimes - just as I'm thinking, "Well, this is going quite well, if I do say so myself" - I play a wrong note.

However, I have now contacted a piano teacher and am going along to discuss the possibility of my taking lessons with her. I assume she wishes to assess the level of my incompetence. Scary biscuits, as we used to say when I was little. (Why?)

(I can't remember who asked, but in a spirit of pure scientific enquiry I bought a Cadbury's fudge bar the other day and ascertained that there was no gluten in it.)

Furry friends

This post is mainly for my Son-in-Law. He, Daughter 1 and Grandson are down in Worcester so that Grandson can experience the other half of his genetic heritage and meet his extended family and friends. So we're guinea-pig-sitting. Brownie, Cupcake and Pumpkin are the most carefully tended guinea pigs in the country, with their diet scientifically controlled: it features supplements of vitamins (multivitamins and extra vitamin C), probiotic powder and cranberry juice. We take our responsibilities seriously and are following the detailed instructions to the letter. Look, SIL, here they are, capering about and perfectly happy. And yes, they're drinking. I've seen them.

We're also enjoying a flying visit from Son and his young lady. So far, they've eaten mainly toast.

And it's - well, not positively raining, but dull and damp. This summer's been the dullest and dampest since 1929 or something (this may be slightly inaccurate but 1929 came into a newspaper report somewhere). Anyway, it's been fairly rubbish. I met some nice people from Wisconsin yesterday and they said that their summer's been terrible too - so hot and dry. Truly the world has its variations.

And here's Sirius having a drink.

Having mastered (well, sort of...) my first tune on the piano, I've now started to practise "What a friend we have in Jesus", picked more or less randomly from the hymn book. Well, I did make sure I chose one with only one flat. But each hand has two simultaneous notes!! Very tricky! Chords, I suppose you'd call them. I haven't quite mastered this.

I recently read an article about Benjamin Grosvenor, a young British pianist, in which he said he practised for eight hours a day. This might explain why I'm not so good as he is. Possibly ten minutes every three days isn't likely to have the same effect. And I dare say I ought to be practising scales or something. Still. It's quite fun - in a very frustrating sort of non-fun way.

Not being Lang Lang

Thank you for all your helpful piano-related comments. Actually, I've just had another little go and it went better. My playing was a touch on the halting side - well, ok, it limped along - but my hands operated independently for much of the time. Not necessarily independently and correctly. But if I made mistakes, they were different mistakes for each hand - which is progress.

I need distraction from the sadness of missing my son and daughter and of dealing with my mother's constant outpourings of her worries. I feel that the only solution is to find something new in my life. Well, there's lovely Grandson, but I can't expect the little soul to rescue me singlehandedly from my slough with his tiny little starry hands. So my retirement hopes - I wouldn't call them ambitions because I don't feel any confidence in being able to do any of them - are to try to learn the piano and maybe, if life ever becomes less complicated (suffiently uncomplicated to be able to strew the house with bits of fabric and to wrestle with a sewing machine - I am not good with machines either) to do some patchwork. Or at least something creative. Which might involve writing something more than a blog. Or might not.

The piano is the only one that I feel I have time for at the moment. The odd fifteen minutes, creating no mess, is just about do-able. And I must say that I quite enjoy it, in a feeble and incompetent sort of way.

I must stop blogging, or at least posting, every day! It's fun but doesn't exactly move my life forward. Though actually, fun is useful for cheering one up.