Rushing around

Our visit to Daughter 2 was dual-purpose: to see her and Littlest Granddaughter but also to visit again my aunt, who's now in a care home in rural north Norfolk in the south of England - which is not at all handy for Edinburgh.

Up till November 30 my aunt, now 93, was living independently and having a lovely life, but on that day a Tesco employee, pushing a large container on wheels instead of (as is the rule) pulling it behind him so that he could see where he was going, pushed it into her shopping trolley and knocked her over, breaking her hip.


She's had a partial hip replacement but is now scarcely able to walk and is permanently in a care home - never having been able to go back to her own home to sort out her things. Fortunately she has very good friends, including one who thinks of her as his big sister, and who has done so much for her. But the fact remains that her life has been ruined.


To make things much worse, she's extremely deaf and totally reliant on hearing aids - and one of these got lost at the rehabilitation home she was in after being in hospital, so till she gets a replacement she's more or less cut off from the speaking world. And she's hardly eating at all and is now very thin. I think she's really given up. Of course, she's 93 and many people don't get that far. But there's no comparison between her life now and her life less than three months ago. It's so sad.


She has no children, but my brother's family and mine are all very fond of her so have been visiting her when possible. It's quite a faff to get to her from here, and even from Daughter 2's home in London it's not that easy. Daughter 2 kindly said she'd come and bring the baby for Auntie to see again, so we hired a car and drove there, staying overnight in the village so that we could visit both days. It's very hard to think of things to say to someone whose life has shrunk so much - and who can't hear you unless you bellow in the ear that has the remaining hearing aid. Luckily my brother and my niece live not so far away and are able to visit more often - but it's still quite a trek to the village. I write to her every second day because she can still read.


So that took up two days of our five days down south. Another two were spent travelling down and up again. On Tuesday, however, we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum because Daughter 2, though she's on maternity leave, had a meeting that she wanted to go to since it might provide work for the company and she knew more than her colleagues about what this might entail. The meeting was at 2, so we went to the V&A for lunch, she fed the baby and set off, while Mr L and I wheeled the (fortunately sleeping) baby round the museum.




Look at this! It was carved out of rock crystal about the year 1000 and I WANT IT. I shall put it on my Amazon wish list.

And this - made about 1545. It's quite large but I'd find a place for it easily.

And this - about the same date. Another lady was looking at it with me and we admired it. She said that she wanted it. I didn't like to tell her that I saw it first so obviously it was mine.

Now, of course no one approves of ivory but wow, the workmanship on this.

All these teeny pieces!


At this point, Daughter 2 phoned to say that the potential clients had rung at 2 and postponed the meeting till 4! So she would come back and feed the baby again.

While waiting, we admired this dress, made out of hand-embroidered fabric.

Look! How many weeks would that take to do???


Daughter 2 reappeared, fed the baby and rushed back to her meeting, and Mr L and I battled through the hot, crowded London transport system and returned to the flat. Luckily Littlest Granddaughter's feeds are supplemented by bottles, so we were able to keep her going till her mum returned.

How lovely she is.

Including when she's asleep.

And now Daughter 1 and her family are down in London visiting Daughter 2 and family, so we don't have any grandchildren around. Mr Life is quite enjoying the peace for now, I do believe... . But I'm missing them all.

Baby baby

We've been down in London visiting Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter.

And now we're back. Leaving them doesn't get any easier.

To be continued...

Quotable quotes

I've been piecing a quilt for Biggest Granddaughter - using the same design as I used for Littlest Granddaughter's, only there are going to be triangles in one of the borders. (Possibly. I've never done triangles so we'll see.) I'm intrigued by how the pattern is achieved, which I, not being a person with much spatial awareness, wouldn't have thought of. You make nine-patches, as above, and then cut them down and across, thus:

and then rearrange them thus. (Don't look too closely.) And then sew them all together and so on. I'm sure it's a common patchwork technique but I'm easily impressed. Her favourite colour is yellow and she wanted lots of animal fabrics, including guinea pigs.

I've got quite a long way to go yet.

Daughter 1 and I took her and her brother to the Camera Obscura on Saturday. There were lots of optical illusions to amuse them. It's such fun to be a reasonably large part of their lives.

I said sentimentally to Grandson the other day, "I hope that when you're a big boy, you'll remember coming to our house to play."

He looked at me in amazed dismay. "Can't I still come here when I'm a big boy?"

Of course you can, my darling boy!

I do love the things they say. The other day, Grandson looked in the cupboard in what used to be Son's room and discovered the Lego trainset. He bore it downstairs and said with warm satisfaction, "You never know what you'll find in a good cupboard."

Meanwhile biggest Granddaughter played with Lego pirates. "The pirate raft," she murmured to herself, "sailed elegantly past the railway."

And on Tuesday, she and I went to the Botanics. It was rather chilly but then the sun came out. "That's nice," she remarked. "I can feel myself relaxing already."

Oh, they're such a joy!

Granddaughters

On Tuesday we went up north to visit Son. We had lunch out with him and Middle Granddaughter. As you can see, she's getting bigger.

It was wet on the way up and VERY wet on the way down, but we were able to go to a park during a dry spell. Middle Granddaughter enjoyed splashing in the puddles.

She also enjoyed feeding the ducks. She does this quite often and isn't at all frightened when they crowd round her. They even allowed her to stroke them.

The ducks are very tame - here they are eating out of Son's hand. They're also quite plump, not surprisingly.

The sun came out for a while. It was so nice to be with Son and Granddaughter.

 Today I went over to sit with Biggest Granddaughter, who isn't very well and is off nursery. She perked up after a while. We read lots of stories and then she did some drawing

She tried out a French plait but didn't really approve, so we reinstated her bunches,

which she seems to feel are an essential part of her image.

Granddaughters are the best. Well, along with grandsons. And offspring in general.

Snow babies

We don't get a lot of snow in Edinburgh, or even a lot of seriously cold weather, but it's chilly just now - freezing-ish. Yesterday the children played in the garden. Here, Grandson makes a snowcastle with a bucket and spade from the sandpit.

And so does Oldest Granddaughter. Then -

she JUMPS on it.

Playing in the sand is quite a common activity here - we're on the coast - but playing in the snow is a novelty.

Predictably, Grandson makes roads.

We combine forces to make an extremely small and somewhat sinister snowman.

And Oldest Granddaughter, who has a heart-shaped bucket, makes a snowheart.

Such fun.

Things you see when you're walking

On Saturday, Mr L and I did the recce for our walking group's next walk, which we're leading. The weather was very nothingy - not cold, not bright, not windy, not wet. It was pleasant enough walking - from the Water of Leith Centre at Slateford - yet it's the time of year when things are a bit grey and one is pleased to see some colour in the ivy and the dead beech leaves.

When we got nearer town we saw this plaque, which we'd never noticed before. We were impressed that someone had remembered from 1848 to 1948 where Chopin had stayed for (maybe?) only one night. I myself have difficulty remembering where I went on holiday last year... .

See how still the water is.

After seven and a half miles we got to Leith. This area has been very much gentrified in the past twenty years or so, with lots of cafés and restaurants. We identified the all-important café big enough to take 15-ish people for coffee and cake at the end of next week's walk. Then we got the bus home.


When we walk locally, as we often do, along a former railway line - now a cycle/walking path on the embankment - we often look down at a garden in which a chap has built himself a model tram, complete with lots of signs, labels, bus stops, a Belisha beacon and so on. One day a few weeks ago we got into conversation with the man and when I said how much Grandson appreciated his efforts, he invited us to bring Grandson to see it. So on Sunday, Son-in-Law 1 and I did. Grandson was VERY HAPPY. The man, John (who's a bus driver) also gave him photos of his tram, some timetables of the sort that go into bus stops, a model tram and two bus magazines. He was such a kind chap. I think he was very pleased to find a kindred spirit in Grandson, who was very appreciative of all the detailed lights and buttons and so on with which the place was equipped.

John has also built himself a Tardis (that you can't see from the cycle path), with a K9 and a Cyberman and a control panel with buttons and a television that plays old "Dr Who" episodes. Grandson doesn't know a lot about Dr Who but he really liked the set-up all the same.

Then SIL 1 and I took Grandson on a real tram into town and got the bus home again - all of which amounted to a very satisfactory afternoon for Grandson.

And so life goes on. I do love being a granny.

Descendants

It's been a busy but lovely time in the last week or so. On Friday, Son-in-Law 1 and I took the Edinburgh grandchildren to the museum. Here you see them admiring some train (I think) traffic signals. Look at how long-legged Grandson is getting. I thought back on the first time I took him there - below. Now he's six and a half.

Then, hooray hooray, later that day, Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter arrived for a five-day visit. Littlest Granddaughter is so lovely (totally unbiased opinion). She's now looking round a lot and smiling, which is so nice.

I do love babies: their soft skin and round eyes and bouncy faces. She's very wakeful during the day (mostly) but does sleep at night, so Daughter 2 is finding motherhood very fulfilling and much less hard work than architecture. I found that myself: one tiny person to look after instead of 100+ potentially stroppy teenagers who needed to have their writing marked. Babies are extremely hard work - I'm not denying that - but their needs aren't complicated and they're very cuddly.

However, alas, they went home this afternoon and I'm missing them a lot.

Son, Daughter-In-Law and Middle Granddaughter came to stay at the weekend and the Edinburgh family were here too, so that was exceedingly good. Middle Granddaughter was very dubious last time about her parents paying attention to Littlest  Granddaughter, but this time she was absolutely fine. They even had a bath together, with Son washing his niece, and Middle Granddaughter didn't object at all: in fact, she "helped" to bath the baby.

We warned Grandson that Middle Granddaughter (17 months) would probably play with (ie rearrange) his elaborate rail layout (which is always constructed on the sitting room floor) and he was very good about this. However, when Son and DIL had packed to go home on the Sunday - but Middle Granddaughter was still picking up bits of the railway - Grandson said to DIL, "Did you say you were leaving?"

She laughed and said, "Would you like her to stop playing with your railway?"

He hesitated, clearly wondering how truthful to be. Then he said cautiously, "Yes." Pause. "But she's very cute."

Tactful. Ish.

Snow, no snow

And so it's 2018. Since my last post, we had some snow which lay a couple of days. Grandson, down south with his other grandparents (where there was no snow), mourned, "It always doesn't snow where we are."

The ice froze on Inverleith Pond, which must have been annoying for the ducks. When I was at school we had to play hockey near here (I was never fond of team games; why would one care who won?) and once, when the ground was too frozen to play, we were taken here to slide on the ice. Granted, this was when the world was a colder place but all the same it's fairly unbelievable now. I'm not sure what would have happened if the ice had cracked. It's not a deep pond but we'd have got very wet and muddy.

And then the grandchildren returned and enjoyed playing with their new toys - and I enjoyed watching them. Grandson has remote control trains for his Brio and REALLY likes them.

Happy 2018, everyone. Let's hope for a more sensible year.

The turning of the year

It transpires that when the family isn't here... nothing happens. Well, Christmas happened, and that was perfectly pleasant even with just Mr Life and me - or it was for most of the day. By the evening I was feeling rather unwell and spent the next day intermittently throwing up. I can't imagine that it was anything I ate - we had the same, except that when he had turkey and the trimmings, I had marinated tofu and a few of the previous day's baked beans. Yes, fine dining. I was just cooking the vegetables in the final run-up to dishing up his meal when it occurred to me that I hadn't done anything for myself, so I looked in the freezer and there were the marinated tofu pieces, which I microwaved with the beans. Should you ever come to a meal, please be assured that I'll try harder for you.  I'm not very interested in food; I mean, I quite like eating (as you can see when you look at me, alas) but never feel it a subject worth giving much thought to when it comes to my own food. People often ask vegetarians what they eat and I try to think of an interesting answer, when the truth is often an omelette. And lots of vegetables.

So possibly someone had sneezed on the tofu pieces in the factory - I threw out the rest of the packet, just in case - but I suspect it was just a bug, which I'm happy to say I didn't pass on to the old chap. Or not yet... .

We blame this for what happened last night. I sat down at the computer about 9.30 pm to write a letter to my aunt, glanced at the date on the screen and realised that it was our wedding anniversary. Oops. Forty-four years married and we both forgot (for the first time ever, I'd like to point out). To do him justice, Mr L was able to produce both a previously-written card and a wrapped little gift, whereas I ... um... I did look at cards a few weeks ago and none of them seemed right. Plenty of time, I thought. Sorry dear!

So we walked up town today and had a coffee to celebrate. He even had a brownie but I'm still feeling very slightly delicate.

We watched the passing throng, many of them wheeling suitcases, and wondered again why people come here in December. I mean, it was a nice day, if a trifle chilly. But June, people! Long, long days! The chance to take your jacket off! The opportunity to let the warm breeze riffle your hair, the sun kiss your upturned, unfrozen face! Just saying.

I'm writing to my aunt a lot because, sad to say, someone knocked her over with their shopping trolley in the supermarket at the end of November and broke her hip. This is the 93-year-old (or, she will be on January 1) who lives in Norfolk and who was up till that point in very good nick. Now, alas, though she's had a partial hip replacement, she can walk only a few steps, with considerable pain, and the painkillers are making her sick so that she's not keeping food down. We went to see her while we were at Daughter 2's before Christmas but Norfolk is a long way from Edinburgh. Fortunately my niece and my brother and sister-in-law are much nearer, and visit, and she has a very good friend who visits her more or less daily. But still, it's not at all good.

I've been uncheering myself up by going through my millions of photos and deleting many of them. Why did I take so many pictures of our beloved cats, most of them very similar? I've kept quite a few nice ones but no one needs hundreds of identical photos of much-mourned furry friends who died very young of genetic lung disease. Nor so many of my garden, which is still there, outside the house, should I need to look at it - though it's also somewhat depressing to see plants which mysteriously disappeared some years ago. And then there are pictures of my parents... can't delete any of them.

And I've still some years to go before I reach the birth of the first of the grandchildren, where I'll again find lots of more or less identical photos. However, I don't expect to find that so dejecting - just difficult to choose between them. So that'll be all right.

Anyway, I've also started cutting out a quilt for Biggest Granddaughter, which is more cheerful, isn't it? Lots of happy timewasting lies ahead of me while I do that. And we've passed the shortest day, so summer is on its way here - sorry, Australia and New Zealand. And the Edinburgh grandchildren come home on Saturday, hurray hurray, bringing their other, delightful, grandparents with them. So if we don't meet again this year, O bloggy friends, I hope you have a lovely New Year celebration and a wonderful 2018.

Love

Our Edinburgh grandchildren came for a sleepover last night before going down to Worcester to their other grandparents for Christmas. Here they are having a lovely time bursting the bubbles in bubble wrap. I love their intent concentration on this important task.

They departed this morning and have arrived safely. They've now met their newest cousin - cousins are arriving thick and fast at the moment - on their daddy's side. This baby, born at the end of November, has now supplanted Littlest Granddaughter as their youngest cousin! (though he's not Littlest Granddaughter's cousin, if you follow.) Grandson was delighted to acquire his first boy cousin.

So today we went up north to visit Son and DIL and sweet Middle Granddaughter, the unbloggable one. As you can't see here, she has huge hazely-green eyes and is very pretty and perfectly adorable. We hadn't seen her for an unusually long time (mainly because we've been up and down to London to see Littlest Granddaughter; also because of my two choirs' carol concerts) and I thought she'd be very shy of us, but in fact she wasn't. Which was lovely. We should see her again in a couple of weeks so I hope she keeps remembering us.

Here she is having a walk in the park with her parents and us. Her hat had a red bobble.

Meanwhile, Littlest Granddaughter is with her parents and Nottingham grandparents for Christmas. These grandparents are both great knitters; here she is modelling the lastest creations. Now, that's a hat.

And our house is quiet, which is how it will remain till the first wanderers return on the 30th. Mr Life, who enjoys a bit of peace, is quite happy about this. I'm ... ok. Of course the children should see their other grandparents. We'll survive. In my ideal world, all grandchildren should live round the corner from all their grandparents and should see them every day. It would be a lot easier for their parents, too, I would think. Alas, the modern world isn't arranged like that.

Pathetically, I also miss my parents, somehow especially at Christmas. Dad died 10 years ago and Mum 5 years. How they would have loved to see the little ones.

And, as I've said before, it's so strange how fast the house empties - from the days not very long ago when it bulged at Christmas with parents and aunts and uncles (actually only one uncle) and their foreign friends - now all gone - and our children - now scattered. Next year it'll be full again at Christmas, I hope, with our descendants and also my brother and his family. It's like in Philip Larkin's "An Arundel Tomb" (such a good poem) - "the endless altered people came". Life goes on. We eventually don't.

However, grandchildren are such a joy, and WhatsApp photos keep us in touch with their doings when we can't see them so it could be A LOT WORSE!

Have a happy Christmas, everyone, particularly those who make the effort to comment  - and an especial hello to Avus - lovely to hear from you again!