44 years ago today... and now...

Today: two little notebooks. For notes.

Another penguin and another part of the message. Thank you again, Daughter 2.

It's amazing to think that the last time we decorated the Christmas tree, Mr Life and I didn't even suspect the existence of Grandson. And here he is, looking up at the coloured baubles.

He came to visit today while Daughter 1 went Christmas shopping. We had him for about four hours - by far the longest that she's ever been parted from him. We took great care of him. He met this Santa, which I bought when Daughter 1 was only a few months older than he is now.

He liked Santa.

Of course we had to put Santa's hat on him.

Son tapped on our bedroom window at about 8.30 this morning, having driven down after taking his young lady to work. (He couldn't get into the house because there was a chain on the door.) So that was a nice surprise. Here he is, feeding Grandson with milk that Daughter 1 had expressed for her baby. The pair of them just sat there, relaxed, having a nice time together. I found it very sweet. If odd.

It's 44 years today since Mr Life and I first went out together. Who knew that it would lead to the above...?

Life is sometimes a bit astonishing.

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.)

Wildlife

Grandson visited today. He can look coy...

... or not. (He's learnt to stick out his tongue.)

Today's gift. Can you guess?

One more penguin, this time with a teeny vase just to add interest to the picture. (Or a huge vase, from the penguins' point of view.)Yes, you're right: the animals are... I don't think I should say. Yes, I will. I'll really concentrate. A giraffe and a lion. The lion shall lie down with the giraffe as appropriate for the season.

You could almost believe that this was an African landscape with that intense sun just sinking beneath the horizon. They're at an oasis, drinking at the pool: the rhino, the giraffe, the... gorilla, the hippo, the lion and the ... bear.

(No, Thimbleanna, we haven't been to the zoo to see the pandas yet. But yes, it's open and the pandas are reported in "The Scotsman" to be settling in nicely.)

Tomorrow we fetch the Christmas tree from the Highland forest (Asda carpark) and Mr Life is going to put it up with a merry laugh, lights and all. Aren't you, dear? And then I shall start festooning the house with sparkly things.

Cassie's heat lamp

And still the penguin drift westward continues. An Antarctic hedgehog wanders across to see where they're going.

A message is beginning to emerge.

Mmm.

We love you too, Daughter 2 (and the others).

In the evening, Cassie discovered the principle of the heat lamp.

She decided that she really liked it.

As I may have mentioned, I occasionally watch daytime tv while doing some boring household task such as making soup. I quite like those antique programmes which involve auctions. Auctioneers' styles seem to vary: persuasive, formal, charming etc.

Today's chap was rather assertive. The bidding was slow. "Come on now!" he barked. Then a little later, "Now madam, make another bid - it's only money." And finally, "Only £80! Good grief!"

Advent 14

Another penguin rises to face the day. And his right (our left).

There was also an envelope.

It contained...

... a tree.

Put them together and we have a nice Antarctic landscape...

I visited Grandson yesterday. He smiled.

He was wearing his new Santa trousers.

We dressed him to take him out in the cold. He smiled even when we put his hat on.

And his jacket. Oh, he is such a jolly boy.

The thirteenth gift and a present from the cats

Today, the featured variety act in the penguin drama is a completely irrelevant knitted elfy thing, which, no, I didn't knit. (He has a body. He was just lying down so as to get his face into the photo and add a splash of colour to the chilly Antarctic scene.)

And the giftie was chocolate Christmas tree decorations. We can hardly eat them just now, can we? We haven't even got the tree yet, let alone decorated it. So they're spared for a while.

This is one of the Christmas cards I'm sending out. (Consider it sent to you, all kind Bloggy readers.)

When I looked at the back I was mildly surprised to see that the picture is called "Westward Leading". I recognise the quote from "We three kings of orient are" but if I'd been drawing them, I'd have made them face to the left because on the compass, west is left. Yes, yes, I can see that the painter is actually imagining herself standing on the ... pause for thought... north side of them. But it seems a bit counterintuitive to me.

(My brother can leave me a comment about the physics of this. If I get muddled about which way penguins are facing then I may have got this wrong too.)

Earlier today, I was approaching the glass door that leads into the living room and saw through it a mysterious something on the carpet, while the cats sat on the sofa looking innocent. They occasionally - very rarely but it has been known - bring in a bird or a mouse. And I am a very squeamish person. I don't do dead things. That's Mr Life's job. So I thought, "Oh no! It's a dead bird!". Then I looked gingerly at it and thought, "No, it's not a bird. It's a dead frog! Urgh!"

But it wasn't. The cats continued looking innocent. I forgave them.

And it's the twelfth

The bear is just adding interest to the photo. The penguin march continues towards the west. (Let's not confuse ourselves with left and right... .)

Two pens today.

They work!

It occurred to me the other day that, post-teaching, I never now speak to anyone of a different race; not even to someone of a different nationality. This isn't deliberate - it's just the way things are. My friends and neighbours are mainly Scottish, only a few even anything as exotic as English. At college, in contrast, we had lots of foreign students. Now I'm living in a little bubble of white Scots. A very little bubble.

This struck me the other day when there was a chap called Mohammed interviewed on the news, and I thought of some of the very many Mohammeds I'd taught. And lots of other students from all over the world: Poland and Slovakia and Zimbabwe and Malawi and Germany and Brazil and Russia and Japan and China and Malasia and ... not many Americans and I don't remember anyone from Iceland, but such a diverse selection of students over the years. And I felt rather sad that it's all over; and yet very privileged to have met and talked to and taught them all. They taught me a lot too.

They were mainly, though not exclusively, young people. And apart from the family, my daily life is currently pretty short of young people as well, or at least reasons to talk to young people. It's not that I have anything against those who aren't young. But my world has narrowed. We had many students with disabilities, too: some in wheelchairs, some with sight or hearing impairment, some with learning difficulties. Again, there's no one like that in our little street and again, I feel very blessed to have taught them and maybe helped them a bit. I feel immeasurably enriched by the experience.

I really didn't appreciate all this quite so much while it was happening as I do now. I took it for granted. But now I think - wow, how lucky, how interesting.

I've always been amused, though, by those who scoff at the narrowness of the outlook of someone who's gone from school to university to teacher training college and then spent a life in teaching. You meet huge numbers of people from such a vast array of backgrounds if you're a teacher in public education.

Life's simpler now in many ways. But duller.

11 penguins a-swimming (well, 9 and 2 icebergs)

The penguins (or, Marcheline, shall I call them ostriches?) continue to march to their right. Will the solitary Labour supporter ever be joined by another like mind? Or will he defect? Keep reading the blog to find out... .

And do these Cadbury's Wishes still exist?

Ah, questions, questions.

Here's another question: how much are you a slave to fashion? I like to think that I'm not. Indeed, if you saw what I'm wearing (black trousers, blue and white striped shirt, black jumper) you would realise that I wouldn't make the pages of "Vogue". But how about in the home?

As I've possibly mentioned before, we retired folk - well, I anyway - occasionally ... quite often... watch the odd bit of daytime telly. I only do this, you understand, while doing the dishes, washing the kitchen floor, wiping down the surfaces and so on. I'm never idle. Neverish. Anyway, one of the programmes I occasionally watch is "Homes Under the Hammer", in which people buy houses or flats in serious need of renovation, do them up and sell them or rent them out for lots of money. It's so restful to watch because you never see them doing any of the work. The house is bought and ten minutes later - hey presto, a wonderful house, magnoliaed to the rafters.

Discouragingly, about 50% of the "before" versions of the houses have these kitchen cupboards. Yup - our kitchen cupboards. And the presenters always say, "Now, you're going to rip these out, aren't you?"

Our kitchen is in an extension at the side of the house which we had built over fourteen years ago. So we chose the cupboards. And they weren't from the most glamorous kitchen shop, but (I think) MFI - a relatively cheapo kitchen/bedroom warehouse place, now defunct. And they weren't bang up to date even then. I was aware that, since this design had been around for a while, we possibly shouldn't get them. But I liked them. So we did.

And in a way, I still like them. I like the colour of the oak, the cupboards are as solid as the day we bought them and - well, there's nothing wrong with them. Which is why it annoys me to find myself sometimes imagining what the kitchen would be like with different units like you see on the telly, or maybe just different door fronts. And different counter tops. Etc. It annoys me to find myself thinking this, because they're all fine, and I'm not really shallow enough, rich enough or wasteful enough to think it's right to junk things that function perfectly well just because they're not bang up to date.

It's ok, Mr Life; I don't want a new kitchen. (Reasons above.)

I wonder if, now we're in the biggest recession (double-dip recession?) since Noah moored the Ark, that it may become less fashionable to change things for reasons of fashion? But then I suppose we need to buy stuff to get the economy going again...

Actually the 10th. See the lords leaping (is it?)

Ignore the date at the top of this, which I think will be the 11th. I was busy uploading photos at nearly midnight on the 10th when this photo of Daughter 2 arrived by email from her friend and I got distracted and loaded photos in the wrong order. When I realised, I just got rid of the post to start again and then noticed that it was 00.01. Drat.

Anyway, this is Daughter 2 in London having a Christmas crafty evening with her chums. Not sure what that mini balloon is in her hand.

A smaller iceberg made its appearance today.

And another card of mysterious shapes.

Mr Life sets his mind to the problem.

Sirius helps.

Sirius gets bored. You may notice that we have another helping of that nasty white stuff on the ground outside. Both cats strongly disapprove.

Look: those traditional friends, the hippo* and the polar bear, have a chat before trotting off to the manger.

*You're entirely right, Marcheline - it is indeed a rhino!! And despite your charitable interpretation of the situation, no, I didn't get it wrong to see if anyone was paying attention (though sadly, you were the only one who was - except Mr Life, who has just this minute come in to point out my error). At the age of 61, I seem to have discovered that I suffer from dysanimalia or at least dysbiganimalia. Clearly I don't watch enough David Attenborough programmes...

Sirius is squeaking at me (distracting me from my animal identification abilities, presumably). The next stage in his campaign to get my attention is scratching the chair and if I ignore this, he takes a flying leap on to on my shoulders. This can be quite painful. I shall go and administer the prawns which he knows are in the fridge.

Ow!!! Too late.