The book of gold

It still says that comments on my blog will be moderated - I don't know how to remove this - but they won't be. Though moderation worked all right to begin with, it became a great nuisance because I kept being notified of all these idiot scammy things on ancient posts, which I then had to delete both from my emails and my comment list - and they hardly matter, really, because they're so old and I don't suppose anyone looks at them. But also, marking things as spam didn't stop the same names appearing again - presumably from a different, um, address. And then my computer started refusing to delete them from my comments list. So all in all, sorry if you come across stupid comments urging you to do illegal things. Don't do it. 

That was interesting, wasn't it? (No.) 

In pursuit of organising the archives, I came across this citation giving the reasons for my father's award, at the age of 21, of the George Medal - a highly prestigious thing. He was presented with it at Buckingham Palace by George V1. Honestly, we later generations have had it so easy. So easy. I don't remember seeing this piece of paper before. I was aware that he'd defused maybe one particularly interesting bomb to win the medal. But this - well... . He was a brilliant and multi-talented man and could be great fun, but he could also be very difficult from time to time and I wish now that I'd made more allowances in my judgement of him on those occasions. 

In my infinitely less worthwhile life, I picked the Edinburgh Two up from school, admiring the view of the hill from their playground. 

We walked in Saughton Park, admiring the late summer flowers. 

And we went up to Son's to celebrate his 37th birthday (my baby!) with the Edinburgh Two and their parents. We had a lovely day, walking up the hill, 

ploutering in the burn (the children, not me)

and enjoying the sunshine. 

Medium and Biggest Granddaughter enjoyed crafting together (aww), 

while Son allowed Big Grandson to mow his lawn and paid him £2 for his efforts. Big G was delighted!

So it was all very pleasant but I feel that Dad will have a more impressive entry in the afterlife Who's Who than I will, with my gardening, cake-making and quilts. It's somewhat depressing, though I suppose some of us have to wash the kitchen floor and do the dishes. Dad certainly didn't.... .

 

Life is so full of a number of things, if not precisely the things one would choose

Life is full of activity, despite what you might expect from two pensioners in lockdown. This was the part of the study behind me as I type - after Mr L had cleared his desk and the filing cabinet, and then various things had got put on the desk because it was a convenient empty surface, the way that things do. Then we got someone to come and take away the cabinet and someone else claimed the desk but wasn't coming to get it yet, so Mr L disassembled the desk and put it into the sitting room so that he could assemble the new bunk beds. 

Then I started sifting through my dad's archives again and found this - Edinburgh University Student Handbook, 1946. Why did you keep this, Dad? As you can see above, hints for students may have changed slightly in tone since then, though the advice is sound enough in general. What did girls do in their spare time?

Oh, this. This is from the section on the Women's Union. Let's forget about being ambitious, girls, and rejoice in our womanliness. Well, why not? 

I rather like this, from the Congregational Students' Society. Inactive but varied. 

Our lives are fairly varied - within limits. For example, one can pick a nice little bunch of flowers from the garden

and go to the Botanics, which is full of rhododendron frilliness. 

Meanwhile, Mr L satisfied himself that his measuring was correct and he would indeed have to move the four (narrow) Billy bookcases one inch to the left. (This is one end of the new bunks.)

While in my own archives, I came across this newspaper photo of my friend Dorothy in a report of her death in Brussels at the age of 23. She was walking along a pavement and a car swerved and hit her. She was one of my best friends from the age of 5 and I often think about her, and about all that she's missed. Another friend had been killed in a car accident the previous year, also aged 23, so that was a grim period and a fairly early lesson about the frailty of life. 

Back in the study, Mr L - and to some extent, I - emptied the bookcases, which made the sitting room look like this for a while. Thankfully, someone collected the desk and now the contents of the bookcases are back again, some of them having been disposed of in the meantime. 

While Son-in-Law 1 helped with the final stages of putting the bunks together, I took Big Grandson on a tram ride - very exciting for this public-transport-addicted 9-year-old who's had to go cold turkey for the past year. We rode out to the airport, which was deserted. 

I bought him a packet of crisps from a vending machine. He read the slogan. "Come on, crisps," he said. "Impress me." Then we rode back into town and got a bus home. Woo hoo. 

And look - bunks in place of the desk and filing cabinet. Not so useful for doing one's paperwork, but more useful for storing grandchildren. 

One can dream. 
 

Generations

We went to visit Son on Tuesday because it was the day before Middle Granddaughter's birthday (and Tuesday is Son's day off). She's now 3! How did that happen? Above, you can't quite see her at the Dundee Science Centre, where we had fun with them.

And here you can't quite see Little Grandson, being held by his father and admired by his grandpa.

 I brought a cake and Middle blew out the candle like a pro. She also ate a slice. She likes cake.

 Looking through an old album belonging to my parents, I was reminded of this occasion, in 1951, when my dad hit the (Scottish) headlines for making and demonstrating a computer. The newspaper didn't have a name for such a strange device - "reasoning machine" was the best it could come up with. I remember Dad saying way back in the sixties, when computers were regarded by many as efficient adding machines, that they could in fact do far more than that and, in the future, would do so.

How young he was: 31, in fact. He was a very brilliant chap and also extremely hardworking, and though my brother and I did fine, I suppose we were probably a bit of a disappointment to him, though he never said so. 

He died 12 years ago. He would have been so interested in the technological developments that have happened since then. Not to say his great-grandchildren, none of whom he ever saw.

I'm missing this little person but at least I have her photos on the fridge.

Notes

These were delicious chocolate truffles yesterday, thank you, Daughter 2.  There's one left over which has been promised to Grandson next time he's here. I wonder if he'll remember? (That's a rhetorical question.)

 

We just ate these ourselves today, since the grandchildren didn't visit. Yum.

 

Grandson likes to sit at the piano, bashing away experimentally. I wish I could play well enough to fascinate him with my brilliance and thus, possibly, inspire him to play an actual tune. (Mind you, my father could play brilliantly and this didn't inspire me other than in an I-wish-I-could-play-without-bothering-to-learn-and-practise way.)

Yesterday, however, he drew these notes. I was quite surprised; my music is open on the music stand bit of the piano (does this have a name?) but we'd never discussed it. Granted, they're not on a stave; but they are recognisable notes. He then proceeded to sing us the song that he said it represented: this was meant to be a carol, I suppose, which began "Baby Jesus didn't fall down" and continued for a while. He is a hoot.

The notes reminded me of my dad. Because he was very musical, people tended to send him birthday cards with musical notes on them, and because he was also a bit - hmm, well - critical, it would irritate him if they were just random notes, as above, rather than a piece of accurate musical notation. Card manufacturers, are you listening?

A picture of the cats as kittens and a bit of a tag thing

They're bigger than this now.

One of the problems of posting every day is that I have less time to visit and comment on other people's blogs (and I do have rather a lot on my Favourites list) so I'm having a minor catch-up tonight and discover that I've been tagged by Libby on http://d-scribes.blogspot.com/2012_02_01_archive.html (can never remember how to do the proper linky thing). I'm a bit hesitant about doing this because my bloggy friends probably know too much about me anyway. However, I have nothing much else to say so here goes.

The instructions are to:

* post 11 random facts about yourself
* answer 10 questions
* make up 10 questions for the next tagee
* suggest 10 people to tag

Some facts :
1. When I was a little girl I had a ball on an elastic string and I pretended that it was my dog.
2. I would like to go to Iceland.
3. I've wanted to go there since doing a year (or was it two?) of Old Icelandic at university - reading the sagas in the original language.
4. Unfortunately I've forgotten a lot of it. Who am I kidding? Most of it.
5. A strange boy told my friend Dorothy and me the facts of life when we were 12 and picnicking on Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh's city hill. Actually, she already knew. But I didn't. I was very surprised.
6. He offered us half a crown to do it with him. We weren't tempted.
7. I invented bungee jumping (the general idea - it needed some refinement) as a punishment for my horrible maths teacher. I used to imagine shoving her off a tower block with elastic tied round her ankles. I should have patented the idea (this would be about 1965.)
8. My granny used to have a square of asbestos in her kitchen - she put in on the gas flame and then put the teapot on top, to keep the tea hot and stewed, the way my grandpa liked it. This doesn't now seem like a good idea but they lived to be 86 and 89.
9. My friend Dorothy was killed when she was knocked down by a car at the age of twenty-three. Another friend died at the same age, a year earlier, in a car crash. I often think about all the life they missed. And it had a great effect on me too. You never quite recover from such events.
10. If I lived on my own, I would possibly never cook again. It doesn't seem like a good use of time (unlike this, of course...).
11. Not all that long ago I wrote a little hello email to my dad's email address. He died nearly 5 years ago. I thought it would bounce back but it didn't and I know it's silly but ... I found that slightly comforting. Yesterday was his birthday. I haven't forgotten him.

Ok, that's enough. I'll do the rest tomorrow.

Life and death

Today would have been my father’s 90th birthday. But he died nearly three years ago.

When he was in his 80s he was seen by a heart specialist who told him that his heart was in good condition. “You’ll live till you’re 90,” the doctor rather unwisely predicted. And therefore my dad, half-seriously, believed that he would do so, “- though, “ he added ruefully, “when you’re 83, that doesn’t sound such a good deal.”

That feeling that the dead are just in the next room is such a potent one. My father was a brilliant man with a forceful personality. Where have all that intelligence and fire gone? Surely not into the heap of dust that we scattered under a tree in Perthshire?

Paradoxically, when the “children” aren’t here, I almost feel as if I’d dreamt them. It was a wonderful dream, filled with love and purpose: I created these lovely young people from my imagination; and now they’ve vanished into the air. I suppose that maybe my dad is so real to me because he was around forever, whereas the children came along half-way through my life. They arrived and now they’ve gone. It seems that they were with us for such a short time.

To combat this illusion, Mr Life and I went to Glasgow on Saturday to spend time with our son. Here he is wearing a Santa hat in the kitchen of his (rented) flat. Not sure why he keeps it there but I’m bidding for the record of posting the first picture this year of someone wearing Christmas fancy dress.

Here’s the view from his sitting room over a bowling green.

We walked to the Botanic Gardens (nice enough but not up to Edinburgh’s standard…) and wandered round it and into the Kibble Palace. This would sound to American cats like a good place, I suppose. ( It’s a very large glasshouse donated by a Mr Kibble.) Then we had lunch and walked back to the flat, stopping for coffee on the way. He regaled us with interesting stories about bowel operations (he’s on Urology at the moment). It was lovely to see him. But where is he now?

On Sunday, the rest of us all went to Daughter 1 and Son-in-Law’s house to have dinner. There’s something very soothing about being fed by one’s children. I suppose it’s like returning to childhood oneself – being nurtured – with the added satisfaction of watching one’s child being efficient and able to provide for itself. Daughter 2 was there too, so at least we had the reality of two offspring. And they’re not in Australia or anything. (Not that I’m suggesting that Australia is a bad place, you understand. It’s just a bit far away. From here.)

Anyway, happy birthday Dad. We’re not forgetting you.

Gosh, life is brief. (Yes, I like to end with an original remark.)

Cats, cake and other profound thoughts

I’m sure there was no mystical significance to my dream about my dad, by the way. I’d been thinking about him and feeling a bit sad and this no doubt translated into my dream. He was a difficult man in many ways – very brilliant but not very empathetic and not, in our later relationship, very huggy. But when I was a little girl he was great fun. He made up stories and drew funny pictures and invented words and phrases that have stayed part of our family lexicon. A “fluggy”, for example, is a generalised word for a mythical animal of the monsterish variety, and “wurfles” is another useful term for any part of one’s anatomy (eg “I have a pain in my wurfles”). Even when he was dying in a geriatric ward, he still had that spark at times. At one point the nurses tried to get him walking with a Zimmer (walking frame) and he would say, “They had me Zimming around the ward today.”

When are we truly ourselves? Is the twenty-year-old person, full of health and vigour, the real us? Or the slightly creakier but possibly wiser forty-year-old? How about the sixty-year-old, the eighty-year-old? Ah, questions, questions…

Daughter 2 and her actor boyfriend are in Pickering, Yorkshire, for a non-stag weekend. (A stag party is a party for the groom and his friends in advance of the wedding. But this is a weekend for male and female friends, hence a non-stag party. The groom has an ambition not to spend the weekend naked, tied to a lamp-post.) Daughter 2 and actor boyfriend were out on Thursday evening and when they came back, she decided to make a cake for the event, which began the next day. She is known for her cakes.

It was chocolate, iced with chocolate butter icing, and then they made a road sign for the top – based on the one warning motorists of deer, but with a line through it. If this version existed, it would mean “No deer permitted”. (I have no idea whether any of this is self-evident to non-British people. Or even non-mad people. And I never know how carefully you're reading. No deer = non-stag. Yes?)

It was a work of art. (Daughter 2 is an architect. ) The kitchen became very sticky. So did they. Daughter 2 changed into the bottom half of her pyjamas for some reason connected with stickiness.

It was one in the morning before they finished it, put it in a cat-proof plastic box and went to bed.



By breakfast time, our son had left a little note on the box.

(He was joking.)

Remembering Dad

I'm not one for ascribing great significance to dreams but I had a very strange and vivid one this morning just before I woke up.

I was at some sort of function and went into a room to find my father - who died on April 1 last year after a sad decline - standing leaning against the wall on the right, looking at me. He was an old man, as he was before his last illness. But then, standing behind him in a line were different versions of him - slightly younger each time. I walked down, just looking at them all. The last one in the line was him as he was when I was little, with his hair slightly ruffled as it is in a photo we have of him standing in the garden. He would be in his early thirties.

When I got to the end of the line I put my arms round this youngest Dad, and we stood hugging, not speaking, though I had my head turned away into his shoulder and couldn't see him.

Then I woke up. I have tears in my eyes as I type this, but it was actually a nice dream. "Nice" is such a feeble word but I can't think of a better one. Comforting, maybe. But also sad.

Happy Anniversary, Daughter 1!

A year ago today was such a happy day: the wedding of Daughter 1 to her lovely young man. They spent the day with us today, which was very pleasant indeed. These are our three beloved children on that day. They are such nice young people: kind and loving and funny.

My dad wasn’t very well, but as you can see, he got to the wedding all right. Here he is with my mum. Isn’t she glamorous for a nearly-84-year-old? Unfortunately, I don’t look very like her…

Very good memories.

Dad and other observations

Thank you so much for all the kind comments.

Yesterday I registered my father’s death. This seemed a very grown-up thing to do. Of course, one should be grown-up at my age.

I had to stay in the house in the morning for the gas man to come and try to stop our heating system sounding like an aircraft taking off. Then I went up town. As I got to the top of our street, there was a nice shiny van belonging to a car-valeting service. It was parked half on the pavement, near to a hedge, so I walked round it on the road. The side of the van announced that the company was “commited to excellence”. Though I was in a bit of a daze, I obsessively proof-read this in my English-teachery way and wondered vaguely if it said the same on the other side. Popping my head round between the van and the hedge in pursuit of this thought, I came face-to-face with a startled young man, the car-valeter.

Me (feebly): Oh. I was just looking at the spelling on your van.
SYM (looking at writing): Is it not right?
Me: Umm. Well, “committed” should have two “t”s.
SYM: Should it?
Me: The way it’s written would be pronounced “co-might-ed”.
SYM: That’s my designer’s fault.
Me (wishing I’d never started this conversation): Well, I’m sure your car-valeting is excellent, anyway. That’s the important thing.
SYM: Thanks. (Pause) What does “co-might-ed” mean, then?

It was a lovely sunny day. There were lots of tourists on the bus. One tourist looked at Donaldson’s School for the Deaf – a beautiful, castle-like building - and asked a fellow-passenger what it was. “That’s Fettes College,” she replied confidently. I considered putting her right but then decided I wouldn't.

The registrar was lovely. She must have to register people’s deaths all the time, but she sympathised, asking what Dad was like and how Mum was coping. She told me that her father died when she was 11, and that she was the oldest of six children. Wow. But they had a happy childhood, she said, and have all done well. I asked her if she liked being a registrar and I admired her neat handwriting. She said that it was an interesting job, and that she’s careful to sign the certificates legibly, because she likes to think of people in the future seeing her signature and wondering who she was and what she was like.

Very nice, that’s what she's like. I wished I could add a bit on to the certificate to tell this to any future researchers into our family history.

And then I came home. The sun was still shining. Later we noticed that, since the gas man’s visit, we no longer had any heating or any hot water.

Dad again

My dad died in the early hours of yesterday morning. We were summoned to his bedside on Thursday morning but he held on for several days. His heart was very strong; not always a good thing. It was horrendous seeing him struggle for breath all that time; though he was on morphine and apparently unconscious.

We’re all a bit dazed by the rapidity of his descent from not-very-well to dying; and by lack of sleep; and by sadness. He could be very difficult; but on the other hand, he could be really good fun as well. He was an original; full of good ideas for entertaining little children. And I thought about all this while watching him over three long days.

He was 87 so of course it’s not surprising that he’s come to the end of his life. But it’s still very sad. Life is too short.

Thanks so much to all of you who sent good wishes. It's much appreciated and very kind. I will be back in due course.

Dad

My father, in hospital since September, took a turn for the worse on Wednesday and has now been unconscious for more than two days. We sat by his bedside all yesterday and today; I'm currently having a little break to organise a meal and check emails. I've been absent from work yesterday and today. Luckily it's the last day of term today and we had no students. I must now return to the hospital, where I've left my brother and mother. It's just a matter of waiting till the end. My dad is 87, had little quality of life left and has had what might be called a good innings. That's easy to say. But it's harder to feel. It's all very emotional. Meanwhile, his heart beats firmly on.