A sonsie dish

In the midst of the weekend's trauma (is trauma too strong a word? well...) of our failing to find Daughter 2 a wedding dress, she provided us with a smile.

In her research, she came across a range of wedding dresses called "Sonsie". Now, this is probably funny only to Scots, but "sonsie" is a Scots word which means "solid" or "chubby". It's admittedly not inappropriate for this comely young lady, but it's not a word that a Scot would aspire to be called. One would really not be tempted to buy a wedding dress thus labelled.

My darling and beautiful Daughter 2 isn't sonsie at all.

You might have come across the word in Robert Burns's "To a Haggis". This poem starts:

Fair fa' your honest sonsie face,

Great chieftain o' the puddin' race."

In other words:

Blessings on your honest solid face,

Great leader of all the puddings.

You will probably know that a haggis is a savoury dish made of unmentionable bits of animals mixed with oatmeal and stuffed inside a sheep's stomach. Not quite the connotation I'd want for my big day...

Edited to add - many thanks to Loth, who has reminded me in her comment that the poem goes on to describe the haggis further - Your hurdies like a distant hill. Hurdies are... well, buttocks.

No - still not doing it for me.

Preparations for various vital events

Up town today with Daughters 1 and 2 (up from London for the weekend), trying to find a wedding dress for Daughter 2. Complete failure. For the second time. (The picture above is not her and neither is it her dress.) She doesn't want a strapless one (that's 98% of the available dresses ruled out) and nor does she want a plunging neckline (that's 99% of those with straps. And she doesn't like the other one).

"So," she said to her sister, changing the subject, "are you organised for the baby yet?"

Daughter 1 considered. "Mum's bought him a book and a cuddly Moomin."

"That's the essentials covered, then," said Daughter 2.

PS - Did you notice that Daughter 1 said "him"? She had her 20-week scan this week and he seems to be a boy.

Christchurch

Oh dear. Poor Christchurch. Poor New Zealand. How very terrible. I do hope that my bloggy friends and their families are as all right as anyone could be in these awful circumstances.

Pushing on up the hill

Life is rather trying these days. I know we’re not suffering from famine, flood, fire, earthquake or terminal illness and I’m glad about that and extremely sorry for those who are. And we have the grandbaby to look forward to, which is very nice indeed. But apart from that… things are grey. We no longer have the jolly young people around much (which leaves a big gaping hole in our lives) but have a lot of responsibility for the older ones. There’s my poor confused aunt, who is living these days in a condition of constant bewilderment and is also very deaf, so that she can no longer in any real way understand what I’m bellowing in her ear. And there’s my mother, who is in a much better state but is apt these days to insist that she is right and I am wrong about a variety of things.

Such as today. For the first time for ages, she was upstairs in our house and looked into our upstairs bathroom.

She: You told me that there was only a shower in here, not a bath, and look – there is a bath.

Me: I wouldn’t have said that. I know there’s a bath. We had it put in.

She: You told me off for saying there was a bath. I distinctly remember it. I can’t remember why we were discussing it but I said there was a bath and you said there wasn’t and you told me off for it.

Me: [grinds teeth].

And that sort of thing.

It doesn't really matter, I know. But. Gah. Grump. Whinge. Moan.

Tell me about something cheerful in your life. Please.

Pleasure under difficulties

It's our two-day mid-term holiday and I've been gardening, though this is not a picture of me. For one thing, I'm rather plumper than this, though happily my head isn't quite as large. For another, I don't have a faithful dog keeping me company. My faithless cats are slumbering in the warm living room. Very wise. It's FREEZING out there - literally. I've just emptied the bird bath because it contained a mixture of dead leaves and ice. Nor is the garden as green as in the picture - well, the grass is, but not much else. And I'm wearing a red down jacket and thick trousers rather than the pinafore dress and bare legs. There is no need for a sun hat.

"Gardening" is a bit of a euphemism. I've been raking up large quantities of soggy brown leaves. This is not my favourite occupation but it's a very necessary one, since they're everywhere (where do they come from? - well, yes, trees, but we have far more leaves than could be accounted for by our two trees and anyway I raked them all up in October). Under the leaves are bulbs, snowdrops and crocuses and chionodoxa and scillas, all trying to get through to the light and give us a little touch of spring, so it's a worthwhile task to rake up the leaves and allow the flowers to shine through. But it's backbreaking for a person with a bad back, not wonderful for a person with a lately-broken ankle and I've had to come in to thaw out my frozen hands and feet.

Ah well, we're not here to enjoy ourselves / the labourer is worthy of her hire / it'll be worth it when I've finished and suchlike remarks. Meanwhile (oh ye of little faith!) Tony the Painter arrived exactly when he said he would on Monday (well, or Tuesday; but it was Monday) and has been working away non-stop ever since, listening to intellectual programmes on the radio. So that's good.

Feet and hands now able to sit up and take a little nourishment. Maybe I'll give them a cup of tea before venturing outside again. Say it firmly: I enjoy gardening. (Convinced?)

Essays on my desk

We have a range of students at our college. For example, I asked two classes to write essays about topical issues of their choice.

Here are the first sentences of two essays:



First student: “Anthropocentrism is an interesting concept.”


Second student: “Yessss it’s the weekend, time to get steaming.”


("Steaming", by the way, means "extremely drunk".)


As I said, a range of students.

Guessing game

The phone rang at 8 o'clock this morning. I answered it.

"Wellllllll now," said a voice. "It's myself."




(Can you guess who it was?)

Me and famous footballers

When the young doctor suggested I have a moon boot for my broken ankle, he added, "You know, like the footballers get." At the time, I didn't know, but look - here's a picture of a footballer that even I've heard of (I won't name him in case people Google him and are disappointed to get this) who was recently kitted out with one. It's nice to be at the cutting edge of fashion.

We visited the Burrell Collection in Glasgow today with friends. Glasgow people tend to be (shameless generalisation follows) friendly - more inclined to chat to strangers than Edinburgh people are. It's true that if you stand at a Glasgow bus stop, you're rather likelier to get people's life stories than you are while waiting for an Edinburgh bus. Anyway, as I was clumping down the steps in my trusty moon boot on the way to the café, a cheerful-looking lady stood at the bottom watching my progress, presumably wanting to keep well clear of a woman with a tendency to fall over. As I got to her level, she smiled, looked at my boot and said to me, "Could you not afford a matching pair?"

Tony the Painter

Hurray! The Virgin chap came at 8 this evening and we're back on line after 10 days. I've missed you all! And I have LOTS of emails to answer.

We got a phone call this morning from Tony the Painter, who's coming to paint our son's bedroom.

Tony has a wonderful Irish accent, instantly recognisable.

Him: Hello-o-o-o, Mrs MacDonald. [This is not my name, by the way, but it doesn't seem worth correcting him.]

Me: Hello.

Him: Wellllllll now, it's Tony the Painter.

Me: Yes, hello.

Him: Welllllll now, I was wondering about coming to paint your bedroom.

Me [encouragingly]: Yes.

Him: I was wondering about Monday.

Me: Yes, Monday would be great.

[Some chat then ensues about the finer details of this arrangement.]

Him: That's fine now. I'll see you Monday. [Pause.] Or maybe Tuesday.

Mmph hmph.

Last Wednesday there was a thunderstorm and since then, we've had no internet at home.

I feel very bereft!

I can't blog.

Sob.

Naughty Virgin (there's an oxymoron for you) aren't fixing it. Well, they claim they will. But they haven't done so.

Sob.

Ah well. I'm still reading a few blogs at lunchtimes at work but am gagged. Mmph. Hmph.

Writing this at work now. Got to go.

Waving at you...

Hard stares

How am I supposed to type with Sirius pestering me? Not only is he squeaking piteously like a cat who hasn't seen a morsel of food for... oh... half an hour; not only is he insisting that I use my right hand to stroke him over and over and over and over again from head to tip of tail; but if ever I desist for ten seconds, he starts sharpening his claws on my cane computer chair.

And now I can feel his eyes boring into the back of my head. I can't possibly find my way from the study to the kitchen, he complains. It's a distance of at least twenty steps.

I'm somewhat devoid of inspiration, anyway. Exhaustion has set in after a full day including an evening class followed by lots of marking.

All right, Sirius. I'm coming.

Little dears

Daughter 2 phoned me for a chat yesterday lunchtime as she was having a walk near her office in (very smart) Chelsea. She met a nice cat and was giving it a pat; I could hear the cat miaouing to her.

Then things became noisier, with lots of voices. "It's the local primary school - they've been let out," she said.

"Is it a posh school?" I asked.

Pause. "Well, the uniform is burnt-umber corduroy plus-fours* with yellow long socks and a bright green jumper [ie sweater]."

That would be a yes, then.

* plus-fours are knickerbockers, by the way. But four inches longer, evidently. (Thanks, Mr Google.) You also get plus-twos, sixes and eights. Didn't know that. I imagine the children were actually wearing knickerbockers.

Hoppity hop

Now, I've worked with young people all my life and I'd like to make it clear that on the whole I like them. I liked them when I was one of them and now that I am a Fairly Old Person I feel privileged to be among them: their glowing skin and their glossy hair and their laughter and good humour. So I'm not really going to turn into a Grumpy Old Woman quite yet.

Today I got a bus home. I had decided this week that I could do without my crutches but when I got on the bus, I immediately regretted that I no longer carried these badges of disability because it was crowded and I had to stand - at the door end of the bus, facing the seated multitude - balancing on my good leg with my moon booted limb at an awkward angle out in front of me. Now, I know that most people don't sit on buses examining the legs of ladies of a certain age, but I can't help feeling that the odd young person, sitting comfortably on his or her seat, might have noticed my appliance. But apparently not.

Then this old chap suddenly leapt up - well, heaved himself up - and, saying in ringing tones, "My goodness, I've just noticed that you've got a bad foot," offered me his seat. I hesitated (he was clearly a lot older than I) and he said, again loudly, "I'm nearly 90 but I can still stand." So I sat down, thanking him profusely, beside the young man in the other half of the seat, who took out his mobile and began texting. After a while, the old chap bent down and proclaimed, "I'm so sorry it took me such a while to cotton on." Young man gazed firmly out of the window.

Eventually the lad got off and the old chap sat down again, gazing after him. He shook his head. "The mores of the young," he sighed.

"You don't look 90," I said. (Actually he did look quite old but hey, he gave me his seat.) We had a nice little chat. He showed me his shopping bags.

"I've been taking advantage of the sales," he said, "to buy some advance birthday presents for some of my 11 grandchildren."

I like that: think ahead even when you're 90. Assume you'll be still be around for the birthdays.

"I still play golf," he said. I murmured admiringly. "I'm not very good, of course," he added, and then after a pause said, "but then, I never was."

Two discouraging thoughts, then: 1) I look more in need of a seat than a 90-year-old; and 2) I may never get any better at (for example) tennis than I am at this age. And that's pretty rubbish, let me tell you.

Just cats and things

We've started the biscuits. Very nice, though it feels a tiny bit wrong to eat a koala.

Some self-indulgent pictures of cats. This is Cassie, reading the Sunday papers via her bottom. She's an intellectual.

Cassie to the left, Sirius to the right. He's sitting in the Australian box, specifically on the packets of biscuits, warming them up nicely with his bottom. They survived intact.

Here's Daughter 1, the one who's going to make us grandparents in July (if all goes well), tickling Sirius under the chin. She has long hair, hasn't she? And won't the baby enjoy pulling it? Sirius is snoozing on my mother's coat. Comfy.

And this is Cassie cuddling into Mr Life. If you actually asked her to lie with her head considerably lower than her feet, she would protest in no uncertain terms. But since it was her choice, she seemed to be enjoying it. As was Mr Life.

Extract from an essay today:

I would like to be a radio presenter but in reality I would like to be a basketball player or an actor or an internet sensation on YouTube.

What would you like to be? Or? Or? Or?

Tea and sympathy

A few posts ago I was bewailing (as is my wont - sorry) Daughter 2's departure to London. Whereupon HerHimnBryn of Accept All Offerings - http://acceptallofferings.blogspot.com/
(keep forgetting how to do the linky thing - must learn it) and Secret Hill Mosaics - left a comment saying that she wanted to send me some tea and sympathy from Australia.

Just the offer, never mind the actual tea, was so heartwarming. But then a parcel arrived. (The black cat is just incidental, covering the address so you don't all think I'm canvassing for free gifts...)


I was so touched that someone who only knows me through my maunderings about cats and flowers and students and departed children should sympathise and bother to do anything about it.

Look! Beautifully wrapped little thingies and biscuits and tea - the biscuits are Tim Tams and koala shapes!

Not just tea and biscuits but a wee plate too, with Australian flowers!

So pretty.

And thoughts.

And a hand-made card. HerHimnBryn makes beautiful mosaics - do go and look at them at http://secrethillmosaics.blogspot.com/

I'd never heard of a Bronze Wing Pigeon.

Thank you so much, HHnB.

PS ankle coming on well, thank you. Now hobbling considerably faster.

Logic

Extract from a boy's essay in defence of video games:

One good point about video games for today’s generation, who spend more time inside than their parents did when they were young, is that when they do get out, their senses are more refined than other people’s, which could be an advantage.

Ye-e-e-s.

I've just been out with some friends. One was commiserating with me about the ankle. "I had a festive injury too," she said.

She'd been out at a work Christmas event and had become slightly merry. She'd also won a prize: a HUGE bar of Toblerone. She really likes Toblerone so this made her even merrier.

"You know how it is when you've had some wine," she went on. "You can only think about one thing at a time. So when I got a taxi home, I kept thinking, Don't leave the chocolate in the taxi. You can have some when you get home and it'll counteract the wine."

So she clutched it to her bosom all the way home in the taxi, got to her front door safely, opened it and was met by her enthusiastic dog. "I was pleased to see him too," she said, "so I rushed to give him a hug and dropped the enormous bar on my foot. I couldn't walk for days and it's still bruised."

"So you threw the Toblerone away in disgust?" I asked.

"I was so angry with it," she said, "that I ate it."

Thoughts from my moonboot

It’s really quite salutary to be mildly disabled on a temporary basis. It’s changed my behaviour. For example, I find myself planning my movements. Instead of strolling from the kitchen to the living room with a watering can, dealing with the plants and then wandering back for a cloth to wipe up the spills, I set out armed with the cloth in case I might need it. I think before I open the fridge and then I take out all I might need to cook the dinner, instead of dotting back and forth as things occur to me. When you hobble, crossing the kitchen is an expedition.

At work, people vary in their behaviour to me. On my first day back, several of my workmates offered to make me a cup of tea from the kettle in our office. No, alas, this didn’t last... (It was nice while it did, though.) They do open the (heavy) workroom door for me if they’re in the vicinity and I’m carrying stuff and at least one crutch.

I have two crutches but I can’t carry anything if I’m using them both, so I tend just to use one if I’m plodding to a distant classroom with books and papers. There are various heavy fire doors on the way. Remarkable numbers of students just let these swing in my face – not out of malice but just because they don’t notice me tapping my way along behind them. But an equal number are very helpful and hold them open.

In the street, people are solicitous to those on crutches. They let me go first through narrow gaps, smiling sympathetically. But I went to the ballet on Thursday with my mother and decided that the crutches would be a nuisance, so I took a stick instead. Immediately the sympathy evaporated. This could have been because about fifty percent of the audience were old ladies with sticks, so I just became one of the masses and had to take my chance.

The foot is a lot less swollen now and the bruising is fading, but it’s still quite achey. I’m quite fond of my moonboot (“You should have got a pink one” said a particularly girly student). It’s lovely to take it off last thing at night but on the other hand it gives me a certain security to put in on again in the morning – it definitely supports the ankle. Thank you to whoever invented them – so much better than a plaster that's with you all the time.

I haven’t been for a walk for sixteen days now and am feeling horribly unfit. Can’t drive, can’t walk more than a few hundred yards, take a long time to go up and down stairs. How pleased I shall be when it heals completely. I won’t be taking two working legs for granted, certainly for a while.

Presentation skills

It's not a humorous topic, I know, but a student was giving a very solemn presentation yesterday about AIDS, and he kept on saying that one of the symptoms of HIV is "ammonia". I assume that he meant anaemia.

I didn't argue. It cheered up the talk. He's not planning on a career in medicine. Fortunately.

At the fracture clinic, a nice young doctor (who looked about 20 – the world is run by peachy-faced people nowadays, but I suppose this is good because I certainly don’t want to run much of it) offered me the choice between having a plaster on my leg (a stookie, as we call it in Scotland) or “a moonboot, like the footballers wear”. I’d never studied footballers’ legs, injured or otherwise, but when he said that I could take it off to have a bath – what an easy decision! So I’m now moonbooted up and while I couldn’t claim that it’s hugely comfortable, it’s tolerable.

He also said that I could put weight on the foot to a limited extent, which was very cheering, because let me tell you, swinging around on crutches while keeping one foot off the ground is not as easy as it looks. Easy for a slender young man with good upper body strength, possibly. I am not that slender young man. Apart from anything else, it’s impossible to carry anything, which rather restricts one’s usefulness about the place.

“I can go back to work now,” I said.

“What do you do?”

“I’m an English teacher.”

“My mum’s an English teacher.”

“My son’s a doctor.”

A nice parallelism.

So that was all good. Now I have to see if I can hobble round the corner tomorrow morning to the house of a kind colleague who’s agreed to give me a lift to work; and then shuffle round the college all day from room to room with the necessary stuff.

The great thing about teaching is that it takes one’s mind off one’s pain and sadness. At least while it lasts. But I do miss our distant offspring.

Events!

You may remember that we climbed Blackford Hill on New Year's Day and I slipped and fell on the way down. It was memorably sore but I thought I'd just sprained it and spent the week hobbling about. However, it remains very swollen and bruised, so today I saw sense and went to the hospital and they x-rayed it and it's broken.

I've now got crutches and am not to put any weight on it. I have to sit with it higher than my heart all weekend. This is very boring. I've got an appointment at the fracture clinic on Monday morning, where doctor Son says that they may give me a weight-bearing plaster, which would make walking easier. And by the way, he's got engaged to his young lady.

So far this year:

I've broken my ankle
I'm going to be a granny!
Daughter 1 and SIL plan to move house (before the baby arrives in July)
Daughter 2 has moved to London
Daughter 2's getting married
Son's engaged
My mother's going to move in with us, selling her flat and somehow getting rid of her extremely numerous possessions.

It's all a bit exhausting for a person who likes a quiet life.

Fortunately, Cassie and Sirius Cat are taking it all calmly. And Mr Life is nobly rallying round.