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.

Going away

We go on holiday tomorrow evening and I'm at that pre-holiday stage of feeling I can't really be bothered. But I'm sure it'll be nice when we're there. Having the cats makes everything so much more complicated. Our neighbour is feeding them for the first morning; then Daughter 1 comes for one night; then Daughter 2 for one night; then kind bloggy catsitters arrive for five days; then Daughter 2 and her actor bloke are doing the rest. I don't think that Cassie and Sirius are even particularly grateful for all this activity on their behalfs. They take it as their due.

Ridiculously, we'll miss the cats as well as the family. And the garden. I don't really like being away from the garden in the summer, when it's pretty. Apart from anything else, I leave it tidy but the weeds grow in our absence and so does the grass.

We're taking my mum with us but leaving my aunt with her carers. I feel guilty about this. It's not that we ever did go on holiday with my aunt, but I've been the one that the carers have phoned all summer if there's been a crisis.

I've now put her name down for 12 care homes. None of them has a room available at the moment. I hope they don't phone here in our absence and then, when we don't make contact, give the room to someone else. My aunt doesn't see the need for a care home, anyway. "I can look after myself," she says. But she can't. She's extremely forgetful, she can only shuffle about pushing a walker since she broke her hip and she's a bit incontinent. It's very sad.

Anyway, I haven't packed or even made a list of stuff to take yet, so I should really get on. Suffolk and Northumberland, here we come.

I hope you have a nice time in Edinburgh, kind catsitters!

Silly answer

I didn't get to the Botanics the other day but I did go today.

And then I came home and made the dinner while listening to "The Weakest Link":

Question: What element is given off by plants which is necessary for human beings and animals to breathe?

Answer: Pollen?

Love it.

What a woman wants

Daughter 2 brought her friend A to dinner yesterday. They were lying on a rug in the garden with the newspapers as I passed the open door.

Daughter 2 was reading out A's horoscope: "The beginning of the week will bring intense thrills".

"Intense thrills?" spluttered A. "INTENSE THRILLS? That's not what I want. I want - what do I want?" Then she finished triumphantly - "Naps on the sofa!"

Ah, they're getting old, those lovely girls.

Baby substitute

I was sitting at the computer replying to comments on my last post and feeling a bit sad. Then Cassie cat wandered into the study and leapt up on my lap. After turning round a few times to find the most comfortable position, she settled down, leaned back into the crook of my left arm and started purring.

She's a very pretty cat - rather small and very very soft. And I sat there rubbing her head with my right hand and she purred and purred and purred.

All this impeded my typing.

And I thought how odd it is that even modern human beings, with their sophisticated lifestyles, cynicism, technical abilities and knowledge of history and language and all that, can be comforted and completely charmed by a small furry creature weighing just over 3 kilos - 6 and a bit pounds - for no better reason than that it's beautiful, fluffy, dependent and trusting. And I'm sure the same sort of thing - or only slightly different - can be said for our relationship with dogs.

She's just returned to my lap and now I'm typing with one hand because the other is stroking her.

I suppose that we're hard-wired to protect small things and when we run out of small humans, we turn to substitutes. Which may be a bit pathetic but it's lovely. And very handy for cats and dogs.

Household tasks

I'm not being original when I say that the trouble with housework is that people only ever notice when you don't do it.

Every summer, I do a bit of a spring-clean - reaching the parts of the house that I never have time to scrub at other times. For example, the kitchen: I wash the curtains (there are three windows and therefore six curtains, which seems like a good idea apart from when I have to wash them); I climb up and wipe the tops of the kitchen cabinets; I clean the windows and tidy out the cupboards; and that sort of thing.

When I do the tops of the cabinets I always lay newspaper along them. It's not visible from below and means I can remove the paper each year and with it, most of the dust.

Tuesday was the chosen day for attacking the kitchen. It took most of the day and now it looks exactly the same as it did before I started. It's actually cleaner, but only I know this. And now you, of course.

I hope you appreciate it.

Actually, for some reason that I now don't remember, I didn't do the tops of the cupboards last year and have felt vaguely guilty about it ever since, though frankly not a single one of my friends or family has over the last twelve months climbed up to have a look, blenched with horror at the dust and reproached me for my slatternly habits.

But right enough, the date on the paper was 2008.

And I thought: would the world come to an end if I always did this only every two years?

We were at the funeral today of a lovely man who was slightly younger than I am. He's the third acquaintance of our age who's died in the last few months.

Life's so short and I don't really want to be remembered for my cupboards. But still, I'd like you all to know that though I'd rather have wandered round the Botanic Gardens, I spent that time balancing on a ladder. Maybe I'll go to the Botanics tomorrow.

We five

Today was a lovely day. Daughter 2 was staying the weekend with us since her flatmate's away, and our son came across from Glasgow for lunch. We always have the girls, our son-in-law and my mother over on Sundays but often these days our son's too busy - on duty or about to go on night shift or something. Unusually, he came by himself because his young lady's working this weekend. We sat in the garden for a while; then we had lunch; then we sat in the sitting room drinking coffee with the patio doors open while cats wandered in and out. Mid-afternoon, my mum went home and then our son-in-law, who'd come on his bike, also departed.

Much though I love my mum and our son-in-law, it then suddenly struck me as so lovely that it was just the five of us: Mr Life, me, Daughters 1 and 2 and our son. This happens so rarely nowadays, though obviously it used to be the norm. We sat reading the papers; we chatted a bit; we just relaxed. It was absolutely wonderful.

I don't suppose it'll happen much in the future either. All the offspring have significant others who are often, naturally enough, part of the package, and my mum is usually at family gatherings, talking a lot. But it was so peaceful, the five of us together, chatting in that second-nature family language, with no explanations necessary. Bliss. We felt caught up with our son's doings. He's been doing minor surgery - cutting out sebaceous cysts and - evidently the most fun - removing toenails. (Who would have thought?)

He's also a jolly chap and makes us laugh.

Usually when he goes away I'm sad, feeling that he's been and gone and we haven't really had much time with him. But today it really felt like being a complete family again. Very precious; balm to the soul of an empty nest mum.

Radio nonsense

On the way home from driving my confused aunt to look round various retirement homes this week, I’ve been listening to the radio.

One programme was about marketing. Various marketing gurus were pondering the power of slogans. “And yet,” said one chap, “do you remember that cat food that had a great slogan? But it didn’t become a market leader.”

“What was that?” enquired another chap.

“It was called ‘Miaou’,” said the first man, “and its slogan was: The food that 99% of cats ask for by name.”

Later on, I was listening to a recording of two oldish sports presenters who were watching the tennis at Wimbledon and chatting in an old-chappish way about how they’re no longer very good at tennis but just stand there, hoping that the ball will come their way. (There were sounds of balls being biffed vigorously.) “Look at these guys,” said one. “They tear about the court and yet they still have time to prepare their shots, unlike me.”

(BIFF!)

“They don’t do anything else, though,” said the other.

(BIFF!!)

“What, you mean they’re not brain surgeons in their spare time?”

(BIFF!!!!)

Pause.

“I’d be surprised if there was one brain surgeon among them,” mused the first chap.

Flowers, rain and things like that

On the way home from York we called in at Breezy Knees Gardens, a privately-owned nursery and garden which we knew about from a leaflet in the hotel. We were somewhat dubious because of the twee (but memorable) name and then when the lady asked for £3.50 a head, I did have a few frugal qualms - Edinburgh's beautiful Botanic Gardens are free, after all.

But Breezy Knees was a joy. Several acres of mainly herbaceous beds - my favourite - and I think we must have been there on the best flowering day of the year - there was colour everywhere. Lovely lovely lovely.


They had lots of alstroemerias, many of them short-stemmed so they wouldn't need staking, and a rainbow of fantastic colours.

Nice wide paths, mainly wheelchair friendly (we have a chair for my mum for when she gets tired).

Look at that colour! A bed of achilleas.

And the wonderful wide skies - the surrounding countryside is flat (hence the breezes) so there's a great feeling of space.

Some touches to bring a smile.

Mum, Daughter 1 and her husband.

To understand this notice, you need to know that gardens sometimes specialise in particular species and hold the national collection of, for example, lupins. This notice says: Please close the gates. We are custodians of the national collection of rabbits.

Driving home, we saw another notice on the back of this van: Caution. This vehicle may contain carpet fitters.

It's pouring today. The cats came in from their morning stroll all wet and spikey: small indignant porcupines.

What is the secret of happiness, do you think? Health and love and solvency are probably essential but the small things help a lot: flowers, a shared sense of humour and a furry animal to stroke.

I think that I shall never see...

Look! My old person's bus pass arrived today, entitling me to free bus journeys anywhere in Scotland. Another advantage of being 60.

Still, enough of this crowing. Who, you ask, looked after the catlets in our absence in York? Why, Scott of Scott's Abode, friend of Frogdancer of Dancing with Frogs. Do have a look at Scott's report on his visit - he managed to do an impressive amount and seems to have had a good time, despite having experienced what sounds a bit like Edinburgh's first ever tornado-cum-monsoon-type-thing. So sorry, Scott! The cats report that he treated them like royalty - thank you so much, Scott! I hope they behaved nicely for you.

Talking of the tornado-cum-monsoon, look at my little plum tree, blooming sweetly in April.

Here it is - now with its red leaves - late in the evening of the summer equinox.

And this is what happened to it during Scott's big wind. Sob.

Cat consternation.

Mr Life drags the corpse away.

Alas. We only had three trees. Now we have two.

Life is short indeed. I'd better start using that bus pass before it's too late.

Some facts about George Walton

At the risk of overemphasising the great age I've recently attained (thank you so much for your good wishes, including from blogless people whom I can't thank individually such as Widget and Brigitte) I thought I'd tell you a bit about the Waltonish nature of the celebration.

George Walton (1867-1933) was born into an artistic Glasgow family and was the brother of one of the "Glasgow Boys", Edward A. Walton. George set up a decorating company and worked in the distinctive Glasgow Style - Charles Rennie Mackintosh is the most famous proponent of this. Walton designed stained glass and stencilling, furniture, fabrics and fireplaces, carpets and cutlery, metalware, glassware and graphics - almost every area of decorative work. Later he moved to London and became an architect as well.

Our family became interested in him when Daughter 1 did a school project on him at the age of 15 or 16, and we visited York at that time to look at his interior work on Elm Bank, a house which is now a hotel. So for my birthday lunch, we decided to revisit Elm Bank and admire his stained glass, metalwork, woodwork and painted and mosaic friezes. which are still there.

For some reason I didn't take any pictures of the decoration this time except this one, which gives the impression that everyone was having a terrible time, hated each other and had just fallen out. I was really photographing the windows but it might have been an idea to warn these victims that they were also in the photo. Our son-in-law seems to be the only one aware of this possibility.

Here they all are moments later, smiling nicely. My brother is holding up our book on Walton, from which some photos below are stolen (but only to encourage you all to buy the book: George Walton, Designer and Architect by Karen Moon, published by White Cockade). I have to say he's not really smiling but then he recently broke his jaw.

To explain the cake....

This is a Walton window - not at Elm Bank but in the coach house of another house, The Leys, and I really love the colours and shapes. I hope the coachmen and chauffeurs appreciated it.

When we became Walton groupies, Daughter 1 adapted the design to fit our front door and we had it made up by a stained-glass maker. Hence Daughter 2's further reimagining in the medium of cake. I imagine George W would have been surprised. It was a very tasty cake; indeed, parts of it still are.

Lovely, don't you think?

And this - quite Mackintoshy. Or maybe Mackintosh is Waltony.

This is part of Daughter 2's birthday gift to me. (Her name isn't really Boot. Why we call her Boot is ... well, it's short for Scooshieboot, but that leads to a further question to which there's no real answer. "Snoof" means "look around". It's one of my dad's many invented words. The Restaurante de Hawthornden is her flat. We're going to see Tim Vine. Some of you may remember him: he's the chap who throws a pen and catches it behind his ear. We like quality entertainment.)

This is Daughter 2's card, again adapted from a Walton window:

this one.

Part of our son's gift. He hasn't interited our daughters' artistic flair, perhaps - also he's very busy - but the thought is lovely. (And he'd be better than the girls at diagnosing your gout, repetitive strain injury, gallstones or whatever, though I trust you have none of these).

Right then, I think that may be enough about my birthday. Now I must go blog-visiting.