I'm 59a and a bit

Bloggy friends with long memories and not too much to think about may remember that in July I became 60, or as I like to think of it, 59a. And Daughter 2 gave me this fine voucher for a day with her (she's Boot - though this is not her real name, surprisingly).

For various reasons which now elude me, I didn't actually redeem this voucher on August 28th (though we did go and see Tim Vine - very funny) so she decided that we'd do it today instead.
And it was absolutely LOVELY!!!

Would you care to come along with us?

First we went to visit my confused aunt, but then set off for the Botanic Gardens, consuming on the way a packet of Giant Chocolate Buttons - mid-morning snack. It wasn't as big a packet as it looks here. Perspective, you know.

The sky was a brilliant blue. (Eat your heart out, Australia,)

Sedum Autumn joy, living up to its name.

My little flower with some - um - heleniums, maybe?

Michaelmas Daisies making a fine show.

And nerines - I wish I could get them to grow like this.

Lots of colour for October - though any day, much of this could be cut down by frost. This somehow made our balmy day more appreciated.

The rock garden. It looks small here but it's really extensive and usually has small children running around it.

Daughter 2 kicks up some leaves in an autumnal fashion.

After all that natural beauty it was time for lunch.

The view of Edinburgh as we left the cafe. Calton Hill to the left, with the Observatory and Edinburgh's Disgrace (a half-built Greek temple built in memory of those who lost their lives in the Napoleonic Wars - the story is that the money ran out) - and Arthur's Seat, the hill to the right.

Saxifrage and monkshood.

A three-seater bike. We all ride them in Edinburgh. (No, not really.)

Having left the Botanics, we then walked beside the Water of Leith to Stockbridge.

This is it. It's quite a nice little area with interesting shops.

We walked up a side lane to see where it went. And then back again. Not sure where you'd park your car if you lived here.

Back in the main road, we looked over the bridge.

Having looked in the shops and bought a necklace for the warden of the sheltered flats where my aunt used to live, to say goodbye and thank you, we wandered through "The Colonies" and met a nice cat.

As we crossed the river at the end of the next street, we saw a heron.

You wouldn't think this was a couple of miles from the centre of the city. There are houses behind that wall to the right.

And then we set off home. (We were about to turn right, not to crash into this keep-left sign. )

We fitted in a bit of cat time. Then Daughter 2 produced dinner.

Later we generously allowed Mr Life to come with us to the theatre, where we saw Alan Ayckbourn's "Bedroom Farce", which was quite amusing in a slightly painful way and not really farcical at all, happily. Juliet Mills (Hayley's sister) was in it, looking rather old, though pretty, and so was that chap who played Leonard in "Butterflies" on television a long time ago. He looked rather elderly too. I haven't changed a bit, of course.

I don't know when I had such a wonderful day. The memory of it will warm my heart for a long time. Thank you so much, darling Daughter 2. Are you sure you want to marry your actor and go and live in London? Look how beautiful Edinburgh is...

Hurray for the human race

Like the rest of the world, or at least large chunks of it, we awoke this morning to reports that the first few trapped Chilean miners had been rescued. What wonderful news. I’m sure millions of us have been imagining with shuddering dread what it must have been like down there: fear, darkness, heat, dirt, boredom, loneliness, overcrowding – all these would be part of most people’s worst nightmares, I’d think.

Although it must have been an unimaginably horrific experience for the 33 men, it was uplifting to watch, as we rushed to get ready for work, the third man coming to the surface. I had tears in my eyes. And I’ve remained uplifted throughout the day - mainly because the men are safe, of course, but also because for once it’s a news item in which human beings are shown in a positive light. It appears that the miners have been impressively stoical; the rescuers have battled for weeks to bring off the very difficult technical feat of retrieving them from half a mile underground – and have been successful; and the families have been steadfast in their vigil at the rescue site. The result: much joy, many congratulations and lots of reunited families.

No doubt there will be less encouraging tales emerging in the next few weeks and months. It seems likely that many of the rescued men will be plagued by nightmares and panic attacks once the euphoria of rescue has abated – we’re not witnessing the end of the story when we see them emerge blinking into the light. But still – for once I feel quite proud to be a human.

One detail from this morning lodges firmly in my mind. According to this morning’s news, the rescue cage went down for the first time with a paramedic in it. Now, I realise that the miners had been stuck deep underground for three months; but they had no choice. What sort of hero would you have to be to volunteer to try out the cage (agh) and then to stay down in that pit of horror (ohh) until – presumably – the last man has been rescued? What thoughts would go through your head as the cage moved up and away, leaving you alone under tons and tons of rock?

He’s a braver man than me, that’s for sure.

**************

Meanwhile, one of my students writes, “I at last secame to temptation.”

There’s a logic there. If you think that you secome to temptation, then the past tense would be “secame”. Dyslexia rules, KO.

The weekend at last

Have you seen the YouTube clip of the silent "monks"? Sorry that I have again forgotten how to do the wee tv screen thing. Rather impressive, if a bit mad (the "monks", not me).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSk8h1oG8nY

Edited to add: stolen from Marcheline! - http://mrssplapthing.blogspot.com/


Below, you will see one reason why Mr Life is a fine fellow. He's been having trouble with the company that supplied 24-hour care to my confused aunt before she went into the care home. After many emails pointing out that they were charging us too much, he eventually got the following reply:

Following my investigation I can confirm that we have now amended all the incorrect invoices from 5th July.

As you had received previous amended invoices and credit/debit notes, we have cancelled any previous amendments that were made on the attached invoices and re-amended the invoices and have attached the final copies.

For example:

You originally received G1996827; this was then cancelled and replaced with G1996827-DN-1. Due to the errors on the invoices we have now cancelled G1996827-DN-1 and replaced this with G1996827-DN-2.

You originally received G2007172; an additional charge was then raised on G2007172Z. Due to the errors on the invoices we have now cancelled G2007172 and G2007172Z and replaced this with the attached invoice G2007172-DN-1.

I imagine that this actually makes perfect sense, but I think I'll just go and have a little lie down instead of fathoming it out. I'm sure Mr Life has it all under control.

In fact, my lie down will be in the bath, reading Diana Athill's Life Class - a more entertaining read than that email. Ms Athill was born in 1917, is still alive and these are her collected memoirs - she's had an interesting life and writes well and extremely honestly about it. My memoirs wouldn't feature so much event. In fact, none. Was born. Read lots of books. Got married. Wrote one book. Taught. Had three children. Read more books. Gardened. Three children grew up. A further chapter (I hope). The End.

Hmm. Maybe I ought to do something.

Dear Brutus

Well, my post about Max Beerbohm got remarkably few comments. Don't you like photos of literary chaps with handlebar moustaches? No?

Well, sorry about that. Here's another one, all the same: J M Barrie. How on earth would you eat porage with that decorating your face? Urgh.

I was musing the other day, as you do, about the things I haven't done. There are lots of these. I'm sure everyone knows the Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken" but the other writer who springs to (my) mind as having written about the alternative life someone could have had is Barrie, in "Dear Brutus". I haven't read it for some centuries, but as I remember, some chap gets to visit this other life and there he is with a daughter, whom he adores. At the end of the play, the dream-life fades away and with it his beloved daughter. Mind you, she ruins the pathos by calling out, "Daddy, Daddy, I don't want to be a might-have-been" as she dematerialises. But still, it's almost enough to bring a tear to my eye as I think about it, what with my beloved Daughter 2 being engaged to a chap who wants to live in London and all.

It's an intriguing thought, isn't it, what one might have done? I always quite fancied being a radio newsreader. I'm aware that lots of other people do, too, and I never did anything at all about it, partly from lack of confidence, partly because I had no idea how to go about it (be a reporter, presumably, and I wouldn't want that) and partly because teachers have such good holidays.

I wouldn't have wanted to be on tv - all that dressing smartly and doing hair - but I can string sentences together and read out loud. Possibly I'd have been too scared to speak or would have fluffed my lines. Ah well, we'll never know now.

And you? What's your might-have-been?

The Incomparable Max

I read far more non-fiction than fiction - I'm particularly fond of reading biographies, autobiographies, diaries and collections of letters. Not to say blogs. All this is partly because most of my reading is done in the bath at 1 am after an exhausting evening of marking and I keep nodding off, which makes it harder to follow a plot.

Anyway, I've recently finished the letters of Max Beerbohm, who was generally a much jollier person, I'd guess, than his photo above would suggest. And pursuing my recent policy of getting other people to write my blog posts for me, I thought I'd give you a flavour of his writing. This isn't exactly a letter; it's an inscription on his book of short stories, "Seven Men" (which I highly recommend, by the way). The Rev. C. Williamson had written to Max B. at his home in Italy to ask him to sign a copy of the book. And so he wrote on the first blank page:

Reverend Sir, I cannot help wondering what your Bishop would say if he knew that you had sent a man who has not the pleasure of knowing you a copy of a book by that man, "thanking him in anticipation" for signing it, wrapping it in brown paper, tying it with string, addressing it, taking it to the post office and posting it. I sign the book and send it back to you with such Christian charity as I can muster.

[And on the title page:]

To dear old C. Williamson - my companion in many a madcap escapade and my accomplice in more than one shady transaction, in the sad bad glad old days before he took Holy Orders.

[And on the next page:]

P.S. I remember hearing many years ago, that in the English countryside a tramp who was well-received at a house left at the gate-post of that house a cabalistic sign in chalk, whereby all subsequent tramps knew that this was a "good" house.

If you are in with collectors of a kind akin to your own, will you please warn them that any books they send me will be promptly chucked into the Mediterranean, where they can be dived for - or not, according to choice?

I like the fact that the Rev. C. kept the book - taking it, let's hope, in the spirit in which it was offered.

Lucy in the sky...

I've had to mark 80 essays since last Wednesday, annotating them in detail to show all the numerous errors in punctuation, spelling and expression so that the students can redraft them. My brain is somewhat frazzled.

I'm not alone in this, mind you. Below is what one student produced in the two-hour slot available to write this piece. He knew he was going to have to write the essay, knew the criteria and was supposed to have thought about it. It's not exactly a long essay, is it? But it does have a certain individual - um - tone.

Our streets are flooded with drugs, we are told. If this is true then society basks on the riverbanks of self-righteousness and misinformation scares those who would benefit from taking a swim. It seems so long ago that my veil was lifted and I married “the high” and began exploring a galaxy of experiences that society would rather I never had the opportunity to have. The majority of my relationship has been forced full of wonderful feelings and paradigm shifting relationships, love, laughter and happiness. But every relationship has its downs. Mine was the day I stumbled across MDPV.

Fairly conclusive proof, I feel, that mind-altering substances do indeed stir the neurons about a bit. Interestingly, maybe. But not necessarily in a way conducive to academic endeavour.

Waving to Alice Thomas Ellis

One of the sad and yet wonderful things about life (I find) is that words last longer than we do. I read a lot of published letters and diaries, and often I want to write to the person and say, Yes! I know exactly how you feel! - or, I did enjoy that! - and I can't because they're long dead.

When we were on holiday, I was in an antiquey/junk shop and found "Home Life Four", an anthology of "Spectator" articles by Alice Thomas Ellis. I was immediately charmed by them and Mr Life kindly Amazoned for me and acquired the other three in the series. They're more or less early blog posts, but from before the invention of blogging, and they detail the various events and non-events of her household. They're often funny, sometimes sad - she had five sons and two daughters, but one daughter died soon after birth and one son was killed at the age of nineteen when he fell through a roof .

Anyway, she died in 2005 so I can't write her that letter, but I thought you might like an extract from one of her articles. This is for my crafty-bloggy friends - I myself don't do much sewing but I do understand how twenty years can whizz by while one's meaning to get round to something.

I have just resurrected a piece of embroidery – well, appliqué mainly – which I began about twenty years ago. It represents Persephone and Pluto and is crammed with mythical characters.

Now I’ve forgotten who most of them are. The distraught-appearing piece of pink cotton in the middle distance must, I think, be Demeter searching for her daughter (I do know the feeling: the school hols find me constantly on the phone tracking my own one down) but I haven’t yet given her a head or hands. The three ladies in black on the right are almost certainly the Furies because one of them has got hair made of bootlaces (adders?). And who are the three ladies on the left wearing white and all so far bald?

I obviously chickened out of putting Cerberus in my picture. According to some versions he had three heads but according to others he had a hundred. Even three is too many for me and anyway I don’t think I’ve left room for him.

There are three streams of Lethe emerging from under the throne, which suddenly causes me to see this piece of furniture as a commode. These streams would be quite easy to unpick, so if I pulled myself together I could replace them with a horrendous three-headed dog. Maybe I could make him out of fake fur or would it look too poodly? I see Cerberus really as one of those sleek-coated, short-tempered hounds who tear you limb from limb before you can say “Good boy”. Velvet, I think. Black. Where am I to find a piece of black velvet without cutting up my good skirt?

There’s a nice little Doric temple made of white satin, but I’m not altogether satisfied with the clouds of pale grey tweed. I think I may replace them with a bit of foam from a shoulder pad. I have got less purist with the course of time. If I do start doing all this fine stitching again I shall have to cut my fingernails. I could paint the clippings white and use them for Cerberus’s teeth.

First I shall have to consult Someone [her husband] about the ins and outs of the legend and then I’ll have to ask if I can have most of his old ties to cut up and create fields of asphodel. I’ll probably lose the sight of my eyes with all this fiddly work but it would be satisfying to finish it. Twenty years is a long time to leave unfinished business.

Thank you, bloggy friends

Thank you so much for your kind responses to my pathetic demand for sympathy. They did make me feel better, though if you could please round up our offspring, tie them hand and foot and deliver them home, this would be very nice too. Actually, Daughter 2’s flatmate is away so she’s back with us for a week and we’ve been having lots of her company. Which is wonderful but – how perverse am I? – the trouble with seeing them a lot is that it reminds me of how lovely they are and how much I’ll miss them once I’m not seeing them so much again.

In the case of Daughter 2, London looms because that's where her actor chap is based.

As for those of the kind commenters whose children are in a completely different country or hundreds of miles away in another state – I just don’t know how you do it. Or, I do. You get up every morning and put one foot in front of the other. What choice is there? In fact we see Daughter 1 for a large chunk of most Sundays, Daughter 2 for a larger chunk – she usually stays Sunday night and often comes down during the week too – and Son every few weeks. So I shouldn’t grumble. But I do, as you may have spotted.

Anyway, let’s look on the bright side, like a lady at the bus stop the other day. “I’m glad,” she said pensively to her friend, “that we cremated her before burying her. It means that when it rains I don’t worry about her getting wet.”

I do actually know what she meant.

Sniff

This is an Edinburgh holiday and I'm sitting in a cold study making up schedules of work. If I finish this any time soon I shall go into the slightly warmer kitchen and do lots of marking and make up some lessons.

Outside, the sun is shining and the flowers are blooming, approximately as above. I would rather be there. Or almost anywhere.

I am feeling very sorry for myself, not only because of the above but because various things are a bit rubbish at the moment, mainly connected with missing our children and wishing they would all come and live the rest of their lives next door to us. Which isn't looking likely.

I know lots of people have vastly worse lives than I do and that I have no real justification for feeling particularly sad, but I do. So if you can be bothered, I'd like some sympathy.

Thank you.

Back to work.

Hard work

My my, teaching is hard work. But it can be fun. And one of the things that you learn early on is that there are many different kinds of intelligence. Knowing how to use a colon doesn't necessarily rank high up the list, though it's a handy skill from time to time.

This year I have a class of adults who, for one reason or other, slid through school managing not to attend very much. The other day I asked them to do a bit of writing. They were mainly rather anxious about this but gamely settled down to it. Some of them decided to use one of the college laptops, others pens. The laptops aren't in their first flush of youth and can be a bit slow to load up.

One of the students sighed in frustration: "This computer's taking ages to get going."

A large, tattooed young man with his legs crammed under an adjacent desk gazed sorrowfully at the few words he'd so far written on a piece of paper. "This pen," he muttered, "isn't awful fast either."

Gardens and guinea pigs

On Sunday, very unusually, we were childless: Daughter 1 on holiday in Northumberland with her husband and his parents; Daughter 2 in Nottingham with her fiance visiting his parents; and Son in Perth, where he currently works. So Mr Life and I took my mum to visit a garden open under the Scotland's Gardens scheme, where ordinary householders open their gardens to visitors to raise money for charity. Here are Mr Life and Mum having a bit of a seat in the sun.

The garden, while not big, was packed with plants which were kept well under control, unlike in my garden where the thugs are currently smothering the more genteel plants. I need to dig things up and thin them out, but this is going to have to be a retirement job.

Lush.

Lots of island beds. Clearly someone has lots of time to mow round them.

As I said, Daughter 1 and her husband are away on holiday this week and we have the alarmingly responsible task of caring for their three guinea pigs, Cupcake, Brownie and Pumpkin. Some bloggy friends may recollect that these furry little ladies are deeply beloved by their owners and that, when Brownie and Pumpkin got ill, much expense was lavished on saving their lives. Since then, their health and well-being has been a constant concern. So we’ll be relieved when we can hand them over, still alive and trotting about, on Saturday.

They have their own bedroom at Daughter 1 Towers and now at Life Castle. Their run is a palatial 4 x 6 feet and they have a cunning arrangement whereby instead of sawdust, their run is lined with a fleece on top of a thick layer of newspaper. The fleece acts as a wick for their pee and stays remarkably dry, while the dampness is soaked up by the paper. Because the run is so large, the proportion of pee to paper is small so that, amazingly, the room isn’t smelly and we have to change the fleece only every four days.

What we do have to do, morning and afternoon, is vacuum up the poo. Yes, you did read that correctly. They have a hand-held little vacuum cleaner which sucks up the little pellety poos amazingly efficiently. The guinea pigs aren’t particularly keen on our doing this but they do exhibit more fortitude than Sirius and Cassie, who vanish behind the sofa at the mere sight of our big vacuum.

Apart from supplying them with food and water, we also have to give them vitamin pastilles and cranberry juice with probiotic powder in it. Yes, this is a 5-star guineapiggery. According to our son-in-law, you put the one-sixth of a pastille on your finger and the pig will rush across the run to devour it. Well, sort of. I don’t think they trust us quite as much as they do their doting owners, so we have to get near enough for them to smell the pastille, whereupon they do consent to eat it, first having an experimental nibble of the outstretched finger. This may be easy enough for a 6’2” chap with long arms, but a 5’3” (at a stretch) woman can’t reach across the run (it’s 4’ by 6’, remember) so has to get into it and chase. (It’s all right, though, SIL. They seem to enjoy the pursuit.)

Then there’s the cranberry juice with probiotic powder. You mix this and then give them two syringefuls each. “They’ll run over and take the syringe in their mouths,” said SIL. Well, again, this is an approximate description of what happens. On my first try, I stretched as far as possible into the run, waggled it temptingly and one pig eventually came and had a suck. Then she took it firmly between her teeth and backed resolutely away.I gently scooshed cranberry juice while attempting to hold on to the retreating syringe and not to fall face-first into the run. Then, triumphantly, she pulled really hard, whereupon the syringe came to bits and the remaining juice spilled out. At which point I kicked over the supply glass of juice which I’d foolishly put on the carpet.

Revised method: what you do – should you ever need to – is to pick a pig up, tuck her firmly under your arm, and hold on till the juice is administered. And make sure you’ve put the supply glass on the dressing table out of way of flailing legs (yours). Or better still, get Mr Life to do it. His hands are bigger.

They also like treats such as cucumber.

Ah well, they’re very cute, THEY’RE FINE, son-in-law and we’re getting more expert every day.

You can't see them, can you, because they're HIDING? Well, I admit I took the roof off their little house for the photo. Must be cosy in there.

Birthday time

It’s the end of birthday season in our house and this is a self-indulgent little post to remind me of the last two. Starting with Mr Life in May, the five of us have a birthday each month till September. Son's and Daughter 1's were at the end of August and last Thursday. One’s children’s birthdays always make one remember their births and the joy that these brought – happy memories and yet rather sad ones as one thinks of the soft little faces and chubby limbs and the central part one had in their lives. It’s good that they’re all grown up and independent. And yet it was lovely when they came home for tea every day and we could tuck them in at night.

Still, they do come home - we see the girls at least once a week and the boy some weekends. Above and below, Son and his lady friend with his (apple sauce) cake.

Here they are smiling at Sirius, whose ears are just visible behind the plates.


Daughter 1 knits in the sunshine as the cake is cut.


Sirius has been captured. He's always a co-operative chap. As is Son.

Daughter 2 communing with her little brother.

The next birthday: Daughter 1. More cake. Plum.

Still in love, four and a half years into marriage. Aah!

Son couldn't be with us, mid-week, but here he is on the phone to Daughter 2 as we all sing "Happy Birthday" to Daughter 1. I take a photo of Daughter 2: singing, listening and showing off the not-very-impressive engagement sort-of-cake that I produced on the same day to celebrate her engagement to A the Actor. Multi-tasking on both our parts.

Yesterday: Mr Life is at the kitchen table, fiddling with a lock that he's about to take up to my mother's to put on her door as a replacement for a faulty one. "Do you want a cup of coffee?" I enquire.

"Oo..." he says vaguely, concentrating on his lock. "Don't ask me complicated questions when I'm doing this."

I feel this is taking to an extreme the rumoured male inability to multi-task, but never mind.

Ode to Autumn

It’s lovely September again, sunlit but poignant. Golden light bathes us by day and yet the sun has slipped down the sky: autumn and then winter lurk just round the corner, sickles at the ready. Those of us in our seventh decade (yes, look at that half-empty glass) are aware that if we’re still in the September of our lives, it’s the 30th. If not the 31st… or 32nd…

The poignancy is intensified for us teachers. Yes, I know we had six weeks of glorious holiday and you don’t really feel sorry for us. But six weeks is enough to slow down our pace of life. We do the whole crossword (well, with a bit of help from Mr Life). We sit in the sun while we drink our coffee. We see friends. And then – back to work. It’s like letting a prisoner out for the weekend and, just as he’s started to relax, clamping the chains round his ankles once more.

So here I am again, trying to attach 200 names to 200 faces in a couple of weeks (lots of Kimberlys, Kimberleys and Kymberlys this year).

Not that I’m exactly complaining. Work is work and one can’t reasonably expect to get paid simply for having fun. I’m lucky to enjoy my job well enough. But outside, September glows.

The tender plants which got such a shock when first left out on chilly May evenings have long ago toughened up and are swaggering now, exploding with colour and fizzing with blossoms. Begonias, busy Lizzies, fuchsias – the days are still long enough to encourage flowering. The plants don't suspect that slowly, slowly, the darkness is encroaching on the evenings and that one day in the not-too-distant future, frost will cut them down. Much like me.

I’m so tired! The first couple of weeks with of students pass in a whirl of smiling, photocopying, listening to problems, making up lessons, rushing to classes, fetching extra chairs to seat the extra students. I’m spending my evenings either making up schedules on my computer, or at my kitchen table, marking the same mistakes as I’ve been correcting every year since 1973. The youngest pupils I taught in my first year as a schoolteacher will now be forty-seven and they probably still get their apostrophes wrong.

Ah well, it’s the weekend. As long as I spend it most of it working, I might be ready when Monday morning rolls round again. And so the world keeps turning and, improbably to me, the cherry trees burst into bloom in Australia and New Zealand.

The perils of the glottal stop

On my walk home from work I pass Scotmid Funeral Directors, which got a new sign the other week. It was made of plastic-covered boards with letters sort of sunk into the surface and it was in several sections. They’d just put up the first section, which said SCOM. Three chaps were standing on the pavement looking at it and stroking their chins doubtfully.

I didn't have my camera with me and the next time I passed, it had been fixed, as above.

I imagine the signmakers were Sco'ish.

(I appreciate your kind and sensible words about our daughter and London but - no. It's 400 miles away. Not as good as 4 miles away, as she is now. Better than Australia (in distance, I mean - I'm sure Australia is a fine place). But - too far.)

Possession and loss

I thought our picture deserved a better photo and here it is. Thank you, Mr Life. The painter is Ian Parker. I love the way he's even painted a crack down the rim of the bowl.

My non-confused aunt and a friend have been dismantling the flat of my confused aunt, who's now in a care home. We took some of her things to put in her room, but it's felt awful to get rid of everything else. It's strange, is it not, how our stuff tends to last much longer than we do ourselves? The painting is with us only for the start of its life. We might have it for twenty or if we're lucky twenty-five years and then someone else will become its custodian.

Much the same can be said of children.

Daughter 2 will have to live in London if she wants to be with her actor chap. Which she does. And which we really, really, really regret. We know she loves us too, though, and we know that that's life. But it makes us very sad.

Value

Well, it was interesting to read your responses to the £795 handbag. Of the eighteen responses, sixteen boggled along with me, one had expensive-bag leanings and one, Linda, saw beautiful bags as craft items which are well worth the money. And I do see her point of view. It’s just that bags do nothing for me personally. Nor shoes. Nor clothes. Though I do like cloth, its colours and patterns and textures, and artefacts made from cloth.

It’s made me think about what I’m happy to spend money on and of course I do have my extravagances. Holidays, for example. We don’t go on terribly expensive ones, but they do cost more than that handbag and yet we manage to justify them to ourselves. The garden… I don’t spend hundreds at a time, but over the years it’s not been a cheap hobby. Maybe handbags feed some people’s souls as my garden does mine. And I do like pretty objects – as I said in a recent post, our house is not without stuff. If someone made me spend £795 or more on an object (and if I had anywhere to put it) I might buy a craftsman-made chair or table, a piece of antique furniture or porcelain or glass or a picture.

Last year when we were in Devon – it’s confession time - we bought a very expensive painting. Above you see a really rubbish photo of it. I must get Mr Life to take a better one Anyway, I absolutely love it. As you would be able to see if I had a better camera or possibly knew better how to use it, you feel you can reach out and touch the bowl, eat the cherries. I know some people would see this as too photographic, but I much prefer this to the sloshy-slosh school of art.

This painting cost – well, not twice the handbag, but not far off. I justified its purchase by thinking of all the birthday money my parents have given me for years that I haven’t spent. But while this is true, no one could say that we needed this picture. I wanted it. Not the same thing. And there are people starving in the world as I am only too aware.

So there we are. I suspect that a lot of the people who were of my mind about bags may have their own extravagances. Material stashes, anyone? Cats or dogs with the food/injections/insurance/beds that go along with them? Cars? Flowers?

Just as I was about to publish this last night, Daughter 2 phoned to say that she and her actor chap have got engaged. We're glad she's happy but we wish he had a steady job.

Handbag

We've been back to work for two weeks but the students don't arrive till Monday, so there have been a lot of meetings. I am not a fan of meetings. I sit doodling. This may be the reason why I have not risen to the heights of senior management, although another reason would be that I haven't applied for any such posts.

The meeting gave my colleague time to notice someone's handbag.

Afterwards she told us that this handbag was a Mulberry. "And I happen to know," she said, "that it costs £795."

WHAT????

How did she know? Because she'd bought her daughter just the same handbag as a graduation present.

GOODNESS ME.

Now, I was vaguely aware that such expensive items existed because I occasionally glance at the Style section of the Sunday Times. But I assumed that only models and film stars had so much money to spend on things like that. It never occurred to me that I might have met someone - two someones - who bought them.

You'd think that, having reached the age of 60 (yes, I know; hard to believe), I'd not be surprised by anything much. Wrong.

As I gaped and WHAT???ed, my colleagues reminded me of the sum spent by our family recently at the vet hospital on treatment for our daughter and son-in-law's two guinea pigs. Yes, it wasn't much less. And some people in the world would see a guinea pig as more of an hors d'oeuvre than a suitable destination for one's savings. But at least I realised even at the time that this was somewhat deranged behaviour. It's just that the young folk love their pets and my son-in-law suffers from depression and it seemed worth keeping him on an even keel.

My colleague had to order this handbag for her daughter from a posh shop. Then one day someone phoned from this shop and said that the handbag had come in and she could have it if she could be there to pick it up in ten minutes. Otherwise it might be sold to another customer.

My handbag, a neat little black cloth affair from Marks and Spencers, cost £7. I thought this was a good buy. Maybe I don't understand fashion.

Whew

I do hope none of my bloggy friends have been doing anything particularly fascinating recently because I'm so behind in my blog visiting and, especially, commenting. I will be back eventually.

When we got back from holiday, my poor confused aunt had deteriorated further and, in brief, we moved her into a care home today. What with that and the church magazine, which I edit and which is growing huger with every edition, there hasn't been a moment. Writing posts takes a matter of minutes. Reading and commenting takes a long time and it's a pleasure I'm looking forward to.

The relief of finding my aunt a home is enormous. I just hope she's happy there. At the moment, she's pretty confused, though endlessly polite and obliging.

I heard two girl students discussing a friend in the corridor the other day, Maybe he has the practical attitude that the rest of us might adopt, faced with life's little difficulties:

"The trouble with him," said one student to another, "is that he thinks the solution to every problem is to take his shirt off."

I'm not sure that would work so well for me.

Stuff

Whenever I’m in a holiday cottage, I marvel at the amount of stuff I don’t have with me. Don’t have and don’t need. I take books, paper, a few changes of clothes, nightwear, camera and that’s it apart from the furniture and kitchen things supplied by the owner of the property. Yet at home, I am very far from being a possession-free zone.

This feeling wasn’t so acute in our first cottage this year, which was old, beamy and filled with little knick-knacks of the pottery duck or Toby jug variety. But it came strongly upon me in the Beadnell house. This was much more fashion-mag-like. It had wooden flooring downstairs and what might have been seagrass upstairs (like some horrible endurance test on the bare feet but neutral to the eye). It also had white walls; striped curtains or blinds; and white furniture. No knick-knacks, though a couple of artificial plants, which I disapprove of on principle but which looked fairly realistic and decorative from a distance. And I thought: why don’t I live like this? (Not the fake plants; I refuse to go that far. But the clear spaces.)

Then we came home and I was aghast at the number of books, photos, paintings, bits of china and glass which ornament – or from another point of view clutter – our house.

Now, one person’s knick-knack is another person’s objet d’art and I like my stuff. I love each individual piece. But I think I need a rotation scheme. However, to institute that, I would have to clear out a cupboard, which would involve getting rid of such things as the rosy-posy tea-set that a friend of my parents gave us as a wedding present. I never use it but then again, I might some day.

Some of my bits are inherited, such as the vase (above) that my Granny’s brother gave her for a wedding present shortly before he died from the effects of being gassed in World War 1. Others have been given to me by my husband and children, who know my weaknesses. Others have been things I’ve fallen in love with and requested for birthdays. They’re all pretty and of course in the best of taste. Well, I would think that, wouldn’t I?

And then there are lots of family photos, which are even more precious now that the flesh-and-blood versions are no longer in the house. And far too many books. Every now and then we get more bookshelves and these immediately fill up with the books that were lying along the tops of the shelved tomes. In the end – like now – we revert to this horizontal book-stacking again. I need to have a clear-out because although I do reread favourites quite a lot, there are definitely some which I won’t. About ten, actually, but getting rid of them would be a start. There are lots of books belonging to Mr Life that I would quite happily dispense with, but you know - live and let live.

And plants… the trouble with real ones is that they drop little bits of leaf and petal constantly, like manna from heaven only messier and less edible. Some are genuinely decorative, but some flower only once a year and sit there glumly the rest of the time while I don’t have the heart to chuck them out, and others are cuttings which I can’t quite bear to put on the compost heap.

And let’s not even mention the study, which is… gah. Mind you, a lot of that belongs to Mr Life.

Maybe what we need is not less stuff but a bigger house…

Back in harness

Well, we're back from our sojourn in the South in the cottage above. Our catlets are intact, thanks to the kind ministrations of our next-door-neighbour, Daughters 1 and 2 and The Phoenix and L -
http://slightlysinged.blogspot.com/
- I used to be able to do the linky thing but in my present state of nervous collapse there's no chance that I might be able to remember this skill. Anyway, do check out The Phoenix's blog to read an account of her stay in Edinburgh and some pictures of our furry friends. Thanks so much, P and L!

I feel so out of touch with all your doings. Mr L did take his laptop on holiday but we had wonky internet connection. Also I can't work strange computers and anyway his laptop doesn't have my Favourites on it so I couldn't find you. Then I still couldn't blog when we got home because in a moment of madness, I'd got fed up with my computer (which wasn't behaving), summoned a chap to fix it and agreed with him that rather than spend £100 getting it mended I'd spend £450 on a new one. What was I thinking of? And I can't work strange computers (see above). Argh!

And anyway he wasn't coming to install the new computer till yesterday, so that was a blogless weekend. And then I completely forgot that he was coming and wasn't here to receive it at 4 o'clock, as we'd arranged. Double argh!

The reason I forgot to be here was that work started again yesterday. (Triple argh.) I wrote 63 emails in the course of the day and then started to mosey on homewards about 5, at which point I remembered about the computer chap. Of course he had, perfectly reasonably, gone away before I got home.

However, he came today and so this is my new computer. I hope you can sense the deep suspicion in every word I type. Kind Mr Life spent a considerable time making it fit for my incompetent and panic-stricken use and ... well, we'll see if it works in a minute or two. (Are you reading this?)

Here's the living room of our Suffolk house. It was an 17th century cottage, complete with low beams. Upstairs it had floors of a seasickness-inducing slopingness. This has cured me of any romantic notions of retiring to a cottage.

When I say low beams, I mean beams that even I (a short person) struck my head upon a few times. In the picture above, my nephew and Mr Life demonstrate how it was for them. My poor brother sustained so many injuries to his skull that I eventually hung up these elegant pieces of paper to warn of impending danger.

We visited lovely gardens such as this one at Bressingham.

Here's Aldeburgh, of Benjamin Britten fame. Not that I'm a huge fan of BB. Not very hummable. But the town was rather fetching.

Our Northumberland house was very different from the Suffolk cott.

Soothingly smart with not a beam in sight.

It was in Beadnell, very near this beautiful beach.

Here it is again. I love the sea.

We did lots more but I expect you've heard enough for the moment so here are some pictures of the cats. They were a bit sniffy when we got back, for the first few moments at least. They leapt to their feet and retreated under the table. We could see them saying, oh, for goodness sake, not another change of servants - you really can't get any continuity of staff these days. Then Sirius looked more closely and did a classic double-take: oh, it's you. However, the huffiness continued for a few minutes till they thought about it and decided that since packets of cat food are quite hard to open without opposable thumbs, they might forgive us.

As you can see from the photo above, the weather improved the moment we got back over the border.

My garden looks depressingly minute after the stately homes we'd been visiting, but this lily is flowering well.

And these yellow daisy things, whose name* once more escapes me, are even more rampant than ever.

I must stop this and email my confused aunt's social worker. Things are reaching crisis point and still there are no rooms in any of the 15 care homes where I've registered her. I think a hysterical rant is in order and, the way I'm feeling, that won't be difficult.

And now, to see if this will publish. If it doesn't, you'll hear a loud scream shortly...

*Yes, indeed, Persiflage, thank you. Coreopsis. They've now strangled my white Shasta daisies.