Grandson mainly sleeping

The weekend featured a lot more adoration of the Grandson because he's so delicious. SIL keeps putting him in this hat because he thinks it makes Grandson look like a little fisherman. We suggest that it has more of a gnome-like effect (a very lovely gnome).

Grandson napped on Mr Life.

He and Daughter 2 cemented their relationship.

SIL cuddled him while Daughter 1 took the opportunity to knit some (more) socks.

Grandson then took a nap on my knee. Daughter 1 was kneeling beside me and I couldn't resist the urge to take some of her very long hair and drape it round Grandson.

"He looks like Rab C Nesbitt," said Mr Life. (If you're not Scottish, you probably don't know who this is. Be grateful.)

I can't be having that, so I tried again. Better. He doesn't look his best with his face all squashed. Neither would the rest of us.

One shouldn't take advantage of innocent children. Sorry, Grandson.

Festive rain

Daughter 2 is up in Edinburgh for the weekend for a wedding dress fitting but also to see her family (including her nephew) and her actor husband-to-be, who's up in Edinburgh for three weeks to perform in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (while she's down in London - yes, quite).

The morning was quite sunny but then it deteriorated. Above, you see our local hill, Arthur's Seat, swathed in mist. Very seasonal. After the fitting, she met up with her chap and they got very wet. Later we picked her up and all went to see Daughter 1 and the baby.

They bonded.

He napped in a somewhat melodramatic attitude. "Ah," said Daughter 1, "the Death of Chatterton pose."

I can see what she meant.

Daughter 2 tried on Daughter 1's veil, with a view to borrowing it. Her jeans were still somewhat damp so she had rolled them up. "My bottom's wet too," she mourned.

"You need a better fitting nappy," suggested Son-in-Law.

Then things got a bit silly.

Knowledge

I just included this photo from last weekend for the benefit of our son-in-law, who's doing semaphore in the background. I'm not entirely sure why he was doing it. He seems to be signalling Q. It's a long time since I did semaphore - in the Guides - and it's never come in handy till now. Or come to think of it, not even now. But I'm fond of the lad and it's nice to see his smile.

There are quite a few things that I've learnt and never used. Algebra, for example. Geometry. Well, most school things, I suppose: the imports of France and the date of the Reform Act and the Latin for "My girlfriend's sparrow is dead." ("Passer mortuus est meae puellae.") And I suppose that knowing what metaphors and similes are isn't vital for one's continuing existence either. It's quite satisfying to know about these things, though, as a sort of compendium of vaguely familiar knowledge. However, there are lots of things I don't know that other people probably consider rather important. Who was in Status Quo; what colour an earth wire is (everyone ought to know that but alas, all I remember is that it's not brown - which is the obvious colour for it to be, in my opinion); how to change a tyre (well, I think I know that in general principle but I wouldn't attempt to do it); how a computer actually works; who the Home Secretary is (I might remember after a while); most stuff about well-known films.

I've just come in from a pleasant evening hour in the garden, driven in by tiny biting beasties. That's something I don't know: what's the point of tiny biting beasties? Yes, yes, to feed birds. But could birds not eat tiny non-biting beasties?

Mislaying one's head

Am exhausted with various minor tasks and crises. Am beginning to think longingly of a nice desk with some nice simple marking on it and some nice cheery students to teach.

Still, I did manage to pop into Daughter 1's to have a little fix of Grandson. I don't know why the room seems to be at a very severe angle. What can I say? Art photography.

While Daughter 1 and her son admired each other, SIL (you can see him in the background) wrote thank-you notes for baby presents. He's a New Man. He also tidies, does washing, shops, cooks etc. He's impressive.

Not being Lang Lang

Thank you for all your helpful piano-related comments. Actually, I've just had another little go and it went better. My playing was a touch on the halting side - well, ok, it limped along - but my hands operated independently for much of the time. Not necessarily independently and correctly. But if I made mistakes, they were different mistakes for each hand - which is progress.

I need distraction from the sadness of missing my son and daughter and of dealing with my mother's constant outpourings of her worries. I feel that the only solution is to find something new in my life. Well, there's lovely Grandson, but I can't expect the little soul to rescue me singlehandedly from my slough with his tiny little starry hands. So my retirement hopes - I wouldn't call them ambitions because I don't feel any confidence in being able to do any of them - are to try to learn the piano and maybe, if life ever becomes less complicated (suffiently uncomplicated to be able to strew the house with bits of fabric and to wrestle with a sewing machine - I am not good with machines either) to do some patchwork. Or at least something creative. Which might involve writing something more than a blog. Or might not.

The piano is the only one that I feel I have time for at the moment. The odd fifteen minutes, creating no mess, is just about do-able. And I must say that I quite enjoy it, in a feeble and incompetent sort of way.

I must stop blogging, or at least posting, every day! It's fun but doesn't exactly move my life forward. Though actually, fun is useful for cheering one up.

All cows eat grass

No, alas, I haven't seen Grandson today - not since Sunday. I must remedy this, though life is currently a bit full of thrills such as booking a coach for guests at Daughter 2's forthcoming wedding, taking my mum to the hairdresser, hearing her various woes, arranging for a chap to come and unblock her downpipe and so on. Tomorrow features the dentist and getting Daughter 2's oven cleaned in preparation for her tenants.

In between, I've been having a go at teaching myself to play the piano. I'm not impressed with my progress.

I have various problems. One is that I'm not good at reading music - though I can read it a bit. Many years ago, at school, I played the violin, but was never really taught any music theory. I know about the length of the notes and what sharps and flats are and, if I think about it, which lines/spaces signify which notes. But the notes I know best are the ones of the violin strings - GDAE - and of course these are all in the treble clef. Though I've sung in choirs for most of my life, being a soprano hasn't necessitated any great familiarity with the bass clef either. Both in playing the violin and in singing, I've relied a lot on my ear and my memory - the music is a great help but really I need to hear the piece first and then I can read the music. I don't really think that this is reading! It's more following.

However, I think I can learn this all right. It will just take practice and a book - which I've bought. But the thing I find really difficult is getting the two hands to do different (but similar) things at the same time. I'm sure everyone finds this problem. I just wonder whether there are some people - maybe including me - whose brains find it particularly hard to divide themselves into two. Or if you practise enough, does the breakthrough happen?

I only started last Wednesday and haven't practised every day so it's not suprising that I'm not at concert standard yet, and I am getting slightly better at playing the little tune at the beginning of one of my children's old piano books. Maybe it's a mistake to start with Book 3, but we don't seem to have Books 1 and 2. And I can play the hands separately - neither is difficult. It's the co-ordination! I'm okay for a few bars but I keep falling apart.

However, I often think that, if I couldn't read words and someone told me about it, it would sound like an impossible accomplishment. But it's easy. Touch typing sounds hard but can be learnt within a few hours. And piano playing (with both hands) can't be impossible. People do it. Children do it! My children used to, though none of them practised enough to become particularly good. My father was very good, though, as are my brother, my sister-in-law, my nephew and my niece. But they're all scientists. I wonder if this is relevant. Maybe my arty brain isn't up to it.

I'm going to have a go for a few weeks and if I feel there is hope of ever achieving even modest skills then I'll probably find a teacher. I just don't know whether I'm going to live long enough to train those hands to work independently.

Is there anyone out there who has succeeded in learning the piano at my advanced age?

A baby-free post

This is answer to someone's enquiry as to what was happening to our old plates now that I'd got new ones. It's hard to throw out perfectly good tableware, isn't it, even if you're reduced to fewer than you need when the family come round?

Apart from in the early years of our marriage, when our everyday plates were Melamine, we have had, for daily use, the pattern you see above. As someone said, I like blue! The pattern is called Indies and John Lewis used to keep it, so that whenever I needed to replenish the supply I just went and got more bits and pieces.

Eventually, John Lewis stopped stocking it and a few years ago I thought perhaps I'd go a bit more minimalist and get a plainer design instead. By this time, the children were beginning to leave so we kept the remaining bits of Indies for when it was just the two or three of us, but for bigger family gatherings, I chose Nil from Habitat.

This is it. I'm not minimalist by nature and now think it's nice but perhaps a bit plain (for me) but the real problem with it is that it chips very easily and because of the blue line round the outside, even the smallest chip shows up, as you can see in the photo. I was contemplating throwing away the chipped ones and buying some more, but was reluctant to buy more (because it chips...) and then Habitat went bust and that was that.

So: I've thrown away the worst-chipped Nil and am using the remainder together with the remaining bits of Indies for Mr Life and me, while using the new stripy/spotty china, padded out if necessary with the plainer unchipped Nil, for family lunches. Mix and match, you see. Thrift. Or something.

Anyway, enough of that. Would you like to see what I made for pudding the other day? We were having friends for lunch and since we've been having them for lunches for the past ... oh, nearly 40 years, I keep having to find something different to give them. In this case, Toffee Truffle Bombes. Not a vitamin in sight. Sorry, the picture above should be lower down.

First, you melt toffee or fudge in milk. Then you whip cream and fold it and some fromage frais into the toffee mix, and freeze the result.

Then you beat it and put it in your Nil cups, making a hole in the middle of your toffee mix.

Then you melt chocolate in cream (as in the saucepan picture), put this in the holes and freeze it again.

Later you unmould them, and - I forgot to take a photo of this bit - decorate them with toffee or whatever.

They're quite filling! But delicious. Not exactly healthy... though we did have them with strawberries. That's got to help. Or not.

Here's the recipe. Sorry if it's not in the right terminology.

Toffee Truffle Bombes

150 g (3 oz) toffees or - I recommend this - fudge (see note at end)
150 ml (quarter pint) milk
150 ml (quarter pint) double cream (ie thick)
75 g (3 oz) plain fromage frais (I'm sure you could use thick yogurt)

Chop up fudge, put in pan with milk and heat till fudge dissolved. Cool. Whip the cream but only until it's thickened a bit, add the fromage frais, mix into the chilled fudge mix and then freeze in a shallow container for an hour or two. Take out, beat enough to soften a bit and then spoon into six cups, spreading it up the sides to make a hollow in the middle. Pop cups in freezer.

Filling -
150 ml (quarter pint) double cream
105 g (5 oz) plain chocolate, chopped

Place the cream in a pan, bring almost to boil, add chocolate, leave to melt a bit for a few minutes, beat till smooth, allow to chill a bit and then spoon into the hollows in the cups. Put in freezer for at least two or three hours.

Remove from freezer about 20 mins before you want to eat them and put in fridge to soften slightly. Unmould by putting them in bowl of warm water and then fighting them out with a palette knife. They should now be chocolate side down.

Garnish -
2oz chopped fudge, fudge sauce or whatever.

Note: the recipe said to use toffees: to put them in the freezer for 30 minutes before you started, to make them more brittle, and then to chop them into little bits to facilitate dissolving them in the milk. Mr Life happened to wander through the kitchen just as I was about to wield the knife and he kindly offered to do it. Some considerable time later, when there were little bits of toffee flying around the kitchen and he was covered with fine sticky toffee dust up to his elbows, we decided that fudge would have done just as well. In the interests of science, I tried the fudge version the following week and it was fine, much quicker and about 1000% less sticky.

A bit more of the same

Some people blog about politics or current affairs or deep philosophical matters. I sometimes find it a bit embarrassing when non-bloggy friends, on hearing about my blog, say with wonder, “What do you blog about?” and I say, “Um… the cats… the garden… the family… funny things students write… nothing very much, really.”

However, as you may have noticed, the blog has been even less wide-ranging recently, and has rather emphasised Grandson and other family members. I apologise for those less fascinated than I by this (or maybe any) baby. It’s partly at least to show the offspring who aren’t in Edinburgh how Grandson is doing but mainly, I suppose, just because I am a typically besotted Granny.

Son and fiancée came down from Perth this morning and we all (except, alas, Daughter 2, who’s in London) had lunch together. And a bit of cat time.

Oh, and some baby-admiring time.

Son’s washing machine in his rented Perth flat has broken down, so he came to do the washing as well as to admire his nephew. He and the young lady are having to change jobs and hospitals mid-week so while I prepared the lunch, she read about Accident and Emergency work as he mugged up on Orthopaedics. (He’s just finished a 12-day-on-the-trot stint on the current, completely different, job and is about to embark on night shift.) There will some young doctors who will have done less preparation for their new jobs. Look after yourselves with some care, Scottish people, while the changeovers take place in your local hospitals. Avoid having As or Es, for example. You might not be seen by Son's beloved.

Grandson caused his parents a bit of worry earlier this morning (not for the last time, I fear). He became rather wheezy - he has a bit of a snuffle. The midwife advised them to put him in a steamy atmosphere, which seemed to do the trick. All the same, Son gave him a bit of a check-up. He looked for intercostal or subcostal recession. (?) Happily, he didn’t find it.

Look! A smile! It wasn’t quite a real one, of course. He was just going through a repertoire of expressions while sleeping. But he’ll be beaming away soon enough, I hope.

He’s a fortnight old now. And we all feel that we’ve known him for ever.

More baby worship

Guess who popped in for a visit today? He's being held by his other uncle, brother of his dad, up from Worcester for the weekend. I was so touched by his adoration - he who has always professed not to like babies. "He's very special," said W Uncle, clutching Grandson tenderly.

This was from last weekend: Daughter 2 and SIL with the young master.

This was last weekend too. I love the funny little faces that small babies make.

I wonder who he'll take after. His German-graduate, computer-expert, general-very-clever-person dad? His English-and-French-graduate, archivist, knitting-sewer mum? His various doctor relatives? His teacher granny and great-great-aunt? His engineer, very clever great-grandfather? His very sporty great-great-grandfather? Or any of his other relations?

Of course there are traits that we don't want him to inherit, such as my dad's choleric tendencies, a certain strain of eccentricity on my side of the family (or indeed, maybe both sides), a tendency to footer around (again among my relatives - and in the past, me) and not get on with things - and the sporting gene seems to have got fairly lost apart from maybe in our son and the Worcester uncle. And I wouldn't like him to have my sense of direction.

Or will he just be himself? Actually, a plumber would be rather handy in the family. Also I would recommend him to be tall and slender like his dad.

It's funny to think that it's all there already - bar a bit of tinkering from life and his relations and friends. All that potential for whatever he's going to be, packed inside that little downy head.

PS - Ok, commenters, he could indeed grow up to be an accountant like Grandad Life. Or have Grandad Life's beautiful blue eyes (though Daughter 1 says that this isn't possible, genetically) or his lovely thick black glossy hair, or his height, or his good nature, or his sense of direction, or his practical skills... etc.

Plates

This post is mainly for Thimbleanna, who loves plates, but also for my children, who haven't seen them yet. Mind you, if Thimbleanna can't see the photos again today, then it will be more frustrating for her. Sorry, Anna!

Anyway, a second box of crockery arrived (o me of little faith) later in the day and now we've got it all.


Playing with new plates is so much more fun than doing other, more laudable things, don't you think?

And finally - this picture has two minor differences from the previous one. Well, three, I suppose. Cassie got off me. I stood up. And Mr Life pointed out that I'd missed one mug from my mugs-in-front arrangement. Oh, and someone must have moved the flowers for some reason, so that's four differences.

I think that possibly exhausts the blog potential of my new tableware. I like it, though.

Some of the things that retired people do

Well, we couldn't have a blog post without a picture of Grandson, could we? - cuddled at the weekend by Daughter Auntie? It took me a while to figure out what the flying saucer was behind Mr Life's head. I think it's Daughter 1's pregnancy exercise ball, though what it was doing there, I couldn't say.

The day before yesterday I took the car in to be serviced. The car place is beside a canal and if I'd got my phone out more quickly you'd have been better able to see the two swans floating ballet-dancer-like through the water. As it is, you may manage to perceive a white blob making a bit of a wake.

Not sure that this is where I would have decided to site a whole lot of car showrooms, but I suppose car salesmen deserve a bit of beauty when they're stuck in an industrial estate.

Yesterday, for the third day in a row, it was warm and sunny (I was standing perspiring in the shade when I took the above photo) and we went with our friends to Craigmillar Castle, built in various stages from 1420 onward and now somewhat roofless in parts.

Look! There's a curtain wall and some sunshine.


I was persuaded to go up on a portion of roof that's been reinstated. I'm not a person who trusts heights, and I was particularly not keen on the spiral staircase, made of lots of bits of big heavy stone stuck into the wall at one side and apparently attached to nothing but other bits of spiral staircase at the other. I prefer architecture to which I entrust my person (not to say the persons of Mr Life and some of our oldest friends) to be somewhat more recent than 14something and to involve steel beams and safety certificates.

Anyway, the view from up there was good and as you can tell, the building didn't collapse.

Again, call me picky but I wouldn't have given planning permission for those high rise flats (above) in Edinburgh's skyline. I know people have to live somewhere and I'm sure the flats have a terrific view, but... no.

There's the sea in the distance. Look at that blue sky? Set fair for several days, wouldn't you say?

Round the other side, you see (again not exactly pretty, but at least flattish) the Royal Infirmary where Grandson entered the world.

The de Prestons, who owned the castle originally, had a fish pond dug out in the shape of P for Preston. It's not a pond any more but the shape can be clearly seen and it's much bigger than it looks here. I decided that I wouldn't care to have been one of the diggers but then I decided that in fact this would be greatly preferable to building the castle with all those huge lumps of stone as one was balancing, presumably, on wooden scaffolding held together by hand-made ropes. Urgh.

Today it's cold and rainy - well, it's the reason for our nice green grass, not to say all the moss in my nice green grass. I've been waiting in for a delivery of John Lewis's mix-and-match stripy and spotty tablewear. My kind colleagues gave me money as a parting gift and this is what I decided to buy. It arrived. I said to the man, "Goodness, did it all fit in a box this size?"

Can you spot my error? That's right. I should have said, "Goodness, it couldn't all fit in a box this size. Just hang on while I check that it's all there."

It wasn't. Only half of it was. (You may notice the preponderance of stripes over spots in the photo.) A long phone call later with a nice lady from Glasgow and she's looking into it. It's hard to prove that I haven't just hidden the rest of the stuff under the bed, but I haven't. She did agree, though, that everything I ordered wouldn't fit into the one box that the delivery chap said, when asked, was all he had.

Still, it made a nice bed for Sirius. Cassie then came in all wet and stood on my lap gazing affectionately into my eyes for just long enough for her feet to dry nicely and then did a bit of turning round and lying down so as to get all the rest of the rain off her fur and on to my trousers.

It's good to be of use.

(PS I'm sorry if, like my first two commenters, you can't see the pictures. They're not that remarkable so you're not missing anything worldshattering - a castle and some views from the top. Oh, and some plates. They're all perfectly visible when I look at my blog.

I wonder if I did something funny by going into the Compose thing to try to get rid of some of the huge spaces between the paragraphs? It didn't even work to any impressive extent. Note to self: don't meddle with things you don't understand.)

Baby sleeping

We haven't seen him since Sunday. This won't do! But we'll see him today.

It's funny how an adult lying asleep with his/her mouth open doesn't really look his/her most attractive. But at four days old, it's quite sweet.

What's he dreaming about?

What is this life if, full of care...?

Some of us are born to work. Others aren't. Cassie is among the latter.

It's an irritating thing about retirement (I also used to find it about holidays from work) that somehow, though I work quite hard at tidying the house, it doesn't remain tidy without constant vigilance. I must stop doing things. I need to achieve a state of immaculateness and then just sit there, reading.

Not today, though. Friends are coming to lunch tomorrow and I must decide what they're going to eat and then buy the ingredients and fashion them into something palatable. And then do the tidying thing again.

Icarus

So – it’s been a dramatic week, totally apart from my family’s little arrival. It’s hard to deal with mixed emotions. We’re besotted with little Grandson; meanwhile people are starving in large numbers in Africa, those horrific killings have taken place in Norway and Amy Winehouse has died.

I don’t really know anything about Amy Winehouse except what one hears. The only song of hers that I’m aware of is that “Rehab” one and nothing about it seems interesting to me, especially her raspy voice. But Daughter 2 saw her in concert when she (AW) was about 20 and was very impressed, so what do I know? And anyone dying at 27 is a great tragedy, obviously.

I can’t help, however, comparing her to the boy in a documentary, A Life Fast Forward, that I watched on Friday night. His name was Alex Lewis and I think he became 22 in the course of the programme. Four years before, he’d been diagnosed with cancer and it was now terminal. And you’ve never seen a more lively and enthusiastic person. He didn’t dwell on his illness but was bent on extracting every possible ounce of joy from his remaining life – travelling abroad, skydiving and so on. In the course of the documentary he fell in love with a girl among his group of friends. Her name was Ali and she fell in love with him too. They got engaged and, just at the end of the documentary, married – though by that stage he couldn’t walk and could hardly talk. Five days later, he died.

It wasn’t only Alex who was enchanting – his whole family, his set of friends and also Ali and her family were absolutely lovely. Whereas I think I might have warned my daughter off getting involved with a boy who was about to die – however delightful he was – both families were just so happy for them and it seemed absolutely right. And we also saw them some months after his death, having a barbecue and talking and laughing so fondly about Alex and his exploits.

It was terribly sad, but so touching and heart-warming – made me feel better about humanity. And also makes me feel even more the waste in Amy Winehouse’s life. He had no choices, poor lad.

I may have blogged before about Auden’s poem Icarus – but since I can’t remember, probably neither can you. Anyway, it’s a poem I used to enjoy teaching, especially since the advent of electronic whiteboards, which allow you to put an image of Breugel's painting up on the huge screen and let the class see it. It takes them a while to spot Icarus in the corner, falling into the sea, unnoticed by the others in the picture, and of course that’s Auden’s point in the poem: individual tragedies are just that – disasters for those involved, but for the rest of us – either we don’t know about them or we do but we just have to get on with things. However sympathetic you feel, you can’t let yourself be destroyed by every tragedy in the world. But it’s hard to forget Alex; and of course the terrible events in Norway have certainly horrified us all.

Compared to all this, the Murdochs and phone hacking and the cream pie throwing don’t seem quite so important. But I suppose it’s all a matter of opinion.

Here he is again

Naturally, I can't spare you from seeing the moment that Auntie Daughter 2 met her nephew.

How easy it is to be popular when you're nearly a week old.

And how quickly the time passes and they're all grown up. Daughter 2 and I spent time today getting her Edinburgh flat ready for tenants, which she needs to find so that she can pay her mortgage and also her London rent. It wasn't the most fun I've ever had, though it was lovely spending time with her. I did love seeing her settled in that flat, which she'd made so much her own, and I do wish she hadn't now moved so far away.

Not hoovering

You see, the thing is: no one else has ever had a grandchild before so I have to post pictures of mine. I particularly like the one above, illustrating the optimism of the newborn on his second day of life as he attempts to extract nourishment from my boy's rather scratchy chin.

And this is just such a sweet photo. Can you imagine Grandson ever having hairy arms like Son? I used to think this when Son was that size - how can a tiny scrap ever grow up to be a big hairy man like Mr Life? (Though actually SIL is not particularly hirsute, so possibly Grandson may take after him.)

Anyway, to prove that I occasionally do other things, here's a fine picture of a traffic cone (why did I make this the main feature of the photo?) in the village of Gifford, where I went for lunch with some teaching chums earlier in the week.

I'm always vaguely looking for somewhere rural but convenient to retire to... oh, yes, I am retired now, but you know what I mean. Somewhere to spend my twilight years. How about this? The garden's nice. A lot of work has gone into that stripy lawn.

Mind you, we then passed this house, which I have to say I prefer. I'm sure I could improve the garden.

This is all displacement activity. I'm really in the middle of (no, at the beginning of) cleaning the house prior to going to the supermarket. Off I go.