Argh

On Tuesday we went up to visit Son and family. This was lovely, but I'm not allowed to post pictures of the children so you'll just have to imagine them: Medium Granddaughter is now 5 and at school, an enchanting little wiry fairy with blondish hair and hazel eyes. She's very loving towards us, which is unbelievably wonderful considering that she doesn't really see us very often. She gave me a red balloon which she blew up all by herself. Little Grandson, 2 and a half, is a beautiful, smiley little person with big blue eyes. He's a bit more wary of us - chats away but doesn't offer cuddles as his sister does.

Mr Life helped Son to put up monkey bars in the garden. I suppose it's partly genetic - Son and DIL are energetic types - and partly that the children are taken to playparks a lot, but both the children are very physically agile. They've both been able to jump high on trampolines for a long time, and Medium Granddaughter is very good at swinging herself hand-to-hand along the monkey bars. Her little brother tries his best to copy everything she does. 

It's so awful, really, just to see them every few weeks, as visitors. However I realise that we're also lucky to have them. I love them so much. I just hope that we live long enough to establish a real relationship with them that they'll remember when they're grown up. It's not very likely, though, since we're 71 and 73. Ah well. 

We're still in the toils of decorators - mainly just one, a nice Lithuanian chap called Egis. He's been working steadily and has now finished the hall and stairs and is working on our bedroom and the downstairs bathroom. The house is in chaos. Even in the hall/stairs/landing we normally have a chest of drawers, a set of shelves with various doo-dahs on them, a grandfather clock, four child's chairs, a dolls' house, a large bookcase and quite a lot of pictures and plates on the wall. All of this is now either in an upstairs bedroom or in the sitting room. (Fortunately we have a second, smaller, living room also.) But now all the contents of our bedroom are also in the sitting room, including all of our clothes (the fitted wardrobes are getting painted), as are various things from the bathroom - essentials such as bathrack (bookrack), pictures, a glass paperweight and duck... . 

Of course when we staggered through with all of our clothes, it was brought to our attention that there are lots of them that we no longer wear, even though they're quite wearable. These are mainly left over from our working days, which I have to admit are ten years ago now. I might wear these smartish skirts and blouses again but - let's face it - I've spent the last ten years not really doing so. So we swear that we're going to have a sort out and not just put them all back. But - argh - it's going to be so much work just getting the house back to rights again without making stern decisions as well. And then there are the books! It makes sense not to keep more books than will fit on the shelves (or than we'll ever have time to reread). But which to take to charity shops along with those redundant clothes? And which day to summon up the resolve to do so? I'm exhausted at the thought, but am trying to tell myself how much better we'll feel once we've done all this. 

In three weeks' time, I'm telling myself, we'll be in a tidy, slightly decluttered house, with pictures back up on walls and nice fresh paintwork. That will be very nice. At the moment, however: ARGH.

 

Complications

There have been strong winds recently, and some cold weather which caused the road bridge between us and Son's house to ice up, so that lumps of ice fell on (I think) eight cars, smashing their windscreens.  This is the new bridge - the further away one you can see in the photo above, taken from the train. The new bridge is only a couple of years old, built at a cost of £1.3 billion, and as you can imagine, there is some consternation that this should have happened. Ice, in Scotland in winter - fancy. And they don't seem to know how to guard against its happening again. Anyway, the bridge was closed for a couple of days, which prevented Son and family from coming down to visit while Daughter 2 was here.

It's not icy any more but as an experiment, Mr L and I decided that on our next visit to them we would go by train, over the rail bridge, which doesn't accumulate lumps of ice. Son and family live out in the country, so we joined a car club so that we could pick up a car from near the station and drive the few miles from there to Son's house. We also thought that, as Mr L isn't getting any younger, it would be better in the long run not to have to drive all the way to Son's, on busy and tedious roads.

This didn't work quite as smoothly as we'd hoped, since the car we'd hired wasn't actually in the indicated location, and then when we tracked it down the instructions for driving it (it was an electric vehicle) were somewhat inadequate. However, we got it all sorted out - well, Mr L did; I just sat there making soothing noises - and think we might do it again in the future.

We met them at the park and, as you can't see, the Little Unbloggables had a nice time on the swings and things.

Small Grandson is at the stage of walking while having his hands held. He's a beautiful little chap with big eyes and lots of hair.

Here they all are.

And here's a picture of all of us. Middle Granddaughter is a lovely little thing who greets us with enthusiasm, which is so nice. Small Grandson is considerably more suspicious, but at least we have some confidence that once he can remember who we are, he'll be friendly too. I do wish we saw more of them but there we are. You can't have everything. 

A couple in one of the choirs I sing in has this dolls' house, which they show for charity from time to time, so we went to see it the other day. My photos don't do it justice, but it's amazing. The wife made all the soft furnishings, which means that she embroidered the carpets, the bell pull here, the chair coverings, the place mats and napkins, the fire screen - they're all minute. The husband did all the wallpapering and installed all the joinery.

Look at the bedspread - again, hand embroidered. And the sampler - hand stitched. It's all tiny! There are three working clocks and the silverware on the dining room table is actual silver, which of course requires polishing.

And the stair carpet - hand stitched. All astonishing. Sadly, they have three sons, all uninterested, and three uninterested daughters-in-law, and their grandchildren are all too young to understand the work involved in it, so they're not sure what to plan for its future. It's museum quality, so they're thinking of donating it ultimately to somewhere that would display it permanently.

And these are some of the recent complications of life.

Walking in the sun

It's been glorious weather recently - too hot for serious walking really, at least for weedy Scots. (In the 20s! or mid 70s!). But on Monday we took a load to a charity shop in Stockbridge. We're forever doing this but still seem to have far too much Stuff. Still, we will continue trying to purge our possessions, at least a bit, and try not to acquire too much else for the offspring to deal with once we're gone.

Then we had a walk along the river bank.

The pink campion was particularly pretty.

And then yesterday was Mr Life's birthday so because everyone else was busy, we took ourselves out to lunch at Swanston. Then we went for a walk up the hill, past the village.

Swanston means Sveinn's tun (enclosure or farm) and first appears in documents in 1214.

I don't imagine that it was as tidy as this in 1214.

The gorse, or whin, was a blaze of colour

Edinburgh isn't far away - there it is, with the hill, Arthur's Seat, sticking up and the sea in the background. But if you turn your back on it, you could be deep in the country.

It was hot, though, so after a bit we turned back and went back downhill to the car.

He's 71 now. His father died at 64, his mother at 71 and two months. I was always keen to get him past 64 (success) and now I want to get him past 71 and two months (and I'm fairly confident). After that, it's all a bonus.

Days off

On Saturday we took ourselves on a little train trip to Berwick, just three miles over the border into England. Berwick was fiercely contested between Scotland and England for many years. It's been English since 1482, when Richard of Gloucester (the rotter) captured it from us. It has fairly intact medieval city walls - built to keep the Scots out. We had a pleasant walk around these.

I like the way the town has been built haphazardly, with things at different angles to one another.

The walls had rooms built into them but I think it must have been fairly chilly in there as they kept guard.

Berwick has a harbour, which I suppose is what made it desirable to both sides. I like the name of the boat. (Leith is in Edinburgh.)

Then today, back home, we went to the museum - without children (for once) - and were able to look about more than usual. These scent bottles are displayed at the cafe and I took time to read that they're part of a collection of 300 belonging to Ida Pappenheim, who was born in 1867 and lived in Vienna. She died in 1938. Her bottles were stored in a cellar during the war and most of them survived. Her daughter Marianne came to Edinburgh in 1945 as a translator and donated the bottles to the museum in 1971. I wonder why. Did she have no children, or did she have children who weren't interested in them?

I think they're very pretty, but 1971 was before the revival in the fashion for eighteenth and nineteenth century things - which are now unfashionable again, though I still like them. (But then, I'm no longer young.)

We inspected the two recently-opened galleries, from which I would like this plate, please. It claims to have been made about 1430 and is in stonkingly good condition - not a chip. Personally I would have estimated 1985, which is why I wouldn't get a job as a museum curator with my current knowledge about ceramics. But it would look lovely in my sitting room anyway.

Possessions

Playing is such a serious matter...

... when you're two, or four. The little ones don't do much sitting and staring into space. But then, neither do I, I suppose.

I'm glad we kept those toys from our children's childhood.

There's been a lot of publicity recently about a recent book on decluttering. I wouldn't say that we live with clutter, but on the other hand, we're not minimalist. For example, you can see a shelving unit behind Granddaughter that has completely useless items on it. But I like them, my bits and pieces of glass and china, and from what I gather, the decluttering lady guru says that's all right - if they give you joy, which they do. There are, however, items of clothing in my wardrobe that I seldom, if ever, wear (there's a bit of fantasy involving being able to fit into things that I haven't fitted into for some years). I should probably discard some of these.

Is it impressive or embarrassing? - I can't decide - that we're going to the wedding in May of a young man whose parents' wedding we went to 25 years ago, and I still have and occasionally wear the blouse and jacket that I bought for that occasion. The skirt acquired a tear some years ago and I did throw that out.

I think I might not bring these items back into service for the approaching wedding.

Furniture and such like

In early summer, I planted up these pots beside the garden bench from cuttings I'd taken from other pelargoniums. Spot the rogue plant. I should label my pots of cuttings.

The pink really doesn't go with the red - even though the red isn't actually quite so scarlet as it looks here. My aesthetic sense (such as it is) is offended by my mistake.

In other furniture news - not news at all really, since I've mentioned this before - it's pictures like this that make me mildly embarrassed by the ancientness of our tables and chairs. This table - bought in 1975 at a junk shop for £4 - makes an excellent (pretend) boat when required. The little chair behind it belonged to the infant Sunday school class at our church and used to house my infant behind. The coffee table behind that was given to my grandfather about 1980 by a friend who'd bought it at auction and then changed her mind; Grandpa didn't want it so we took it. We thought it would be useful till we got something better. And the chair in the top left hand corner used to sit in my grandparents' sitting room. We gave it a home when my granny died and my grandpa came to live with my parents. It's of great sentimental value but since I remember it all my life and it certainly wasn't new in my childhood, it's not of any monetary value.

But I guess we'll just keep them all. They've become old friends.

Great Grandpa's painting

Bloggy friends may remember that last month (16 November) I wrote about the indenture binding my great-grandfather, James Smith, as an apprentice painter and decorator for 7 years. I reflected that all we have of him is his signature on this document and, inwardly, I marvelled how little of us remains when we die.

And then, in the middle of last night, I remembered this oil painting. Painted by him. And sent by us to auction when my mother moved in with us.

I've known the painting for most of my life. I assume that it was in my grandfather's house (the painter's son) but he died in 1950 and a few years later my grandmother moved to England with my aunt. She must have taken the picture with her. It ended up back in Edinburgh with my parents when my grandmother, who had dementia, went to live in Pakistan with my other aunt, who was a doctor there.

It's a competent amateur painting, but not terribly exciting. I always knew that it was painted by my grandfather's father but hadn't quite put him together in my head with the person in the indenture. I'd always vaguely imagined the painter outside with his easel on the hillside, maybe in his retirement. But actually, having studied the family tree, I now know that he died at 40 in 1893, the father of seven children. So where and how did he come to paint this, and how did he find the time? There was another painting by him (yes, also sent to auction) - a copy of The Laughing Cavalier. It wasn't wonderful - a bit more sinister-looking than the original. But on the other hand, Great-Grandpa couldn't exactly have copied it from Google Images. How on earth did he, a painter and decorator in Kirkcaldy, see this painting in the Wallace Collection in London? I don't think he can have done so. But did he have a book with illustrations? Did he also copy the landscape? Could they have been on biscuit tins or something?

At the time of the auction we were terribly busy. My mother had a large flat full of belongings to do something with and she was not a minimalist. I felt bad at the time not taking the paintings, but was aware that if I did, in a few decades or less our children would have them to deal with along with all of our possessions (and I am not a minimalist either). I was already taking quite a few family things: a chess table, a grandfather clock, a bureau, china and so on. So I hardened my heart and left the paintings to be taken away by the auction house. I imagine that someone bought them for the frames.

And then there's my other grandparents' brass coal box, also in Mum's flat. I nearly took that too, not because I liked it but because it reminded me so much of them. At the time I decided that it would be just more stuff to cause problems to the children when they need to clear our house. But I think of it in the middle of the night too, and wish I'd kept it; and then am glad I didn't.

Stuff. We have so much of it. How sentimental should we be about it? Do I regret not taking at least one of the paintings? Yes. And no.

Ah well. Too late now.

Future shock

The day started all right. I picked some flowers - granted, slugs have been crawling up the stems of some of my daffodils (such as the pale one above) and eating them, but that's life.

Then we went up town and bought some books and walked down to Princes Street.

That was fine. The sun was shining.

We looked at people lying on the grass in Princes Street Gardens and thought, how nice.

Then Mr L said casually that we could just pop into a phone shop and discuss getting new phones. Mine is a bit wonky sometimes but it usually works and is nice and simple. His is coming to the end of its contract and he likes new things. I should have been more wary. Instead I looked idly at the ornate plaster ceiling in the phone shop and wondered who put it up and who decided on the patterns and what they would have thought if they'd known about mobile phones.

And then I found myself agreeing that I should probably embrace the 21st century and get a smart phone. Most people can manage them. Surely I could?

This turned out to be a big mistake.

We wandered on home, glaring at the horrible tram wires for our new, so far passengerless, trams, as illustrated above.

Then Daughter 2 texted me and Mr L showed me how to text back and it was HORRIBLE. I  hadn't realised that it would be a qwerty keyboard and yes, I'm using one now, but I'm touch typing. I don't know where the letters are. My fingers know, as long as I type fast, but my eyes have no idea. And my fingers are also much too big for the teeny wee letters. Look, there's my enormous little finger. Well, yes, it's a lot smaller than Mr L's forefinger, which he manages to text with. But - arrgghh.

I wish people would stop inventing things.

Do you remember that book called "Future Shock" that was written by Alvin Toffler in 1970 about how there was too much change in too short a period of time for us to cope with? Yes, well. I'm suffering from it now - delayed future shock. I've just looked Toffler up and he appears to be still alive and aged 85. I imagine he's coping fine with his smart phone.

Eight glass dishes sat upon a stall...

Thimbleanna asked what I bought at the antiques fair. I shouldn't really have bought anything because we have enough stuff already; but I do have a weakness for Things. Not handbags, not clothes, not meals out; but Things. I particularly like old things with some history attached, as long as they're not too scruffy.

In the picture above is a glass bowl that was in my mother's house and I think was my grandmother's originally. I imagine it was part of a set. I think it's from the 1920s or 30s. Anyway, I really liked its plain shape and little round feet and I liked floating a flower in it. But alas, it came to grief a few weeks ago when something fell on it in a cupboard. So I was kind of looking for a replacement, though not expecting to find it.

To my delight, we came across a very similar bowl at the fair, though its feet are green instead of colourless. I couldn't resist buying it. Here it is, with three early polyanthuses in it.

 

There was, however, a snag. It was being sold in a set of 6 and I only need one (though as Mr L says, we have spares against the next time he's getting things out of cupboards and has an accident).

 

Worse, it turned out that 2 similar though slightly different bowls came with them as a job lot. These ones have engraving round the sides, which are vertical instead of sloping.

If anyone in Edinburgh would like a bowl or two, just let me know! I could of course use them for desserts but I really don't need any more dishes. I shouldn't really have bought them but, well... .

We also bought two Thomas and two Peter Rabbit plates to be used by visiting small people.

We didn't buy this chair, though it's relevant to what we did buy. When I was a little girl, this chair and others like it were used in our Sunday School for the three-year-olds. Thirty years ago, they were replaced by chairs that stacked, and these ones were sold off. I managed to buy one (they were popular) and now Grandson sees it as his chair.

This slightly bigger one was also from our Sunday School and bought at the same time. I'd always thought that I'd like a third, so that each of our children could have one for their grandchildren in due course. (I like to plan ahead.)

So of course when I saw this chair at the antiques fair, I had to buy it. They're used as plant stands just to keep them out of the way. Once we have more than one chair-sitting grandchild they can be brought into service.

I didn't of course need any of these things.

I blame Shakespeare. We studied "King Lear" in our final year at school and one of Lear's speeches has always stuck in my head:

O reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is as cheap as beast's.

As far as I remember he was talking about servants; but it applies just as well to glass dishes. What is life if you can't have a bit of stuff you don't strictly need? And applying William Morris's beautiful-or-useful principle: my glass dishes are pretty (maybe not exactly beautiful) and could be useful; the children's plates are useful; and so is the chair. So it's fine!

Numbers and letters

The small person and I went to the Botanics yesterday, as we often do. I go for the plants and for the pleasure of his company - the enormous pleasure of wandering along beside him as he chats away: "Big tree... lotsandlots of leaves... fluffy flowers... Grandpa in Granny's house... ." Grandson goes for the tactahs.

He is very good indeed at identifying cars of the same make and model as ours: "Granny's car!" he announces. I, less talented, peer at it, read what it says on the back and agree. He's always right. His other skill is identifying numbers 1-9 - on buses, gateposts etc. (But - "How many feet do you have?" - "Fee four five!")

He hasn't got his colours yet, or not reliably. However, a career as a mathematician might be more profitable than one as an artist, anyway. Or he might be a car salesman, though I think being able to tell a red car from a black one might be useful there.

We watched the tactah digging a hole in the corner of what had been grass. The driver then cleared it of some bits of root and deposited them carefully on the path. Then a van came along with some other broken roots and stones in the back. Its driver jumped out and with a shovel, shovelled them into the hole. No, I have no idea why. Still, they seemed pleased.

I am currently also pleased at having got satisfaction out of Hotpoint regarding our dishwasher. Its history is: we bought in in October 10, it broke down in Jan 12, we got it expensively mended and it broke down again two weeks ago - same fault (dodgy switch). Of course it was out of guarantee even the first time it broke down but we feel that 15 months of working followed by another 19 months is a bit feeble. So I wrote to Customer Services asking what they thought. Silence.

So then one evening I emailed the managing director of Hotpoint UK.

The next morning, someone from Customer Services phoned up, apologised and said that an engineer would come and repair it, free. And he did.

The next day, a snotty letter arrived from Customer Services - sent, of course, before my email to the Managing Director.

This tactic - writing to a managing director - is one that I have employed before. The first time was when we were not long married and bits kept falling off our vacuum cleaner - which was again just out of warranty. As a result of my letter, an engineer was sent and he replaced all the broken parts - they were plastic - with metal versions. Again, free. A few years later, tiny Daughter 1 used to delight in pushing her feet against the plastic rain cover of her buggy / stroller and unpopping it, so that she got wet. Another letter to the MD, pointing out this design flaw, produced a replacement  cover - redesigned, with loops instead of poppers. In more recent years when Daughter 2 was studying in Sheffield, she couldn't get the electricity company to send her and her flatmates a bill, despite many emails. Eventually I wrote to the MD - the bill was waived.

I don't do this all the time - four times in nearly 40 years of marriage - but I commend it to you. It works!