Monthly Archives: June 2020

Random Thoughts II

After studying a number of articles on writing I decided to take some of the advice on board and write every day. I’ve previously tried setting myself targets, and have sometimes managed to hit them. Unfortunately this occasionally presents problems when I run out of inspiration. As you can see from yesterday’s post there are days when even the use of a random subject generator doesn’t help. It did, however, help provide inspiration for today’s title.

I turned it on again today and turned up: “Write about moving home.”

Coincidentally, that is precisely what we are thinking of doing. It’s time we looked at bungalows and, based on the experience of my parents, it’s better to start thinking about it now rather than delay. They were about eighty when they moved last, and even though they didn’t move far it was obviously quite hard for them.

I’m actually quite worried that the random subject generator is predicting my thoughts so accurately.

We’re having to make some big decisions about where we want to live. I’d actually be happy living in a tent. The maintenance required would be minimal – just some canvas and a needle and thread. It would be lovely in summer, just roll the side up and have one massive garden room. The other 362 days of the year would be more of a problem and winter wouldn’t be much fun, but these days winter isn’t much fun anyway.

Blue Iris

Iris at Mencap Gardens

Yellow Flag

Julia is insisting on somewhere with walls and a roof. She’s probably right. She’s also stipulated that it needs to be near a hospital because I spend so much time there these days. She’s very practical. I was thinking of living near the coast and learning about sea fishing – she’s thinking of medical care. My worry about the coast was centred on global warming rather than blood tests. As sea levels rise East Anglia is likely to return to the sea and even if you could get enough sandbags shopping in a rowing boat isn’t going to be much fun.

She’s also insisting that we give the kids the address of the new house. This is a bit of a blow as we will have to let them visit. In that case we will have to have a bigger kitchen to house the larger fridge this will involve.

Actually, she’s probably right about not moving to the coast – that would just be asking for people to come and visit.

Garden Flowers

We have a few years to decide, so there’s no need to rush. One thing we do want is a manageable garden as, inspired by other blogs, I want Julia to have plenty to do in retirement. I’d feel guilty if she hadn’t enough to do. The other thing is that I’d like to be detached. After thirty years living joined to a man with a drill and a passion for DIY (which he indulged for three hours this morning) I don’t want to share a wall again.

So, here’s a question. If you were moving again what would be important to you? A bit like Desert Island Discs, you can take your current spouse and let the children have your forwarding address…

Random Thoughts

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I pressed the button on the random subject generator and this was what came up – “What does getting old mean to you?”

It wasn’t what I was hoping for. I could have come up with that on my own. I had honestly meant to write on any subject that came up, but as many of my posts are already on that subject I thought I’d try again.

So I tried again.

“Write about your feet.”

I am very tempted, but it would include thoughts about arthritis and about getting old so, again, it’s nothing new.

One last try.

“Write your obituary.”

You know, I sometimes wonder if the world really does hate me. I have recently had to help with my father’s obituary and I could have done without a reminder. It was bad enough this morning when someone came into the shop to buy a Father’s Day present. I’ll be cheerful again tomorrow, but for tonight I’ll pass.

So, one last try.

“What has made you angry recently?”

That’s easy, the random subject generator has been winding me up for the last half hour. I could, given another hair’s breadth of provocation, really let rip on the subject of random subject generators. It’s not much of a thing to get worked up about but it will do for the moment.

There other things to get worked up about but I’ll leave you with a quote.

“Mashonaland is ours, we conquered it, and have every right to be here…”

This could so easily be a quote from Cecil Rhodes, but it’s actually a quote from Umgandan, a Matabele induna.

Whatever today’s revisionists may think, not all the invaders in Africa were white.

Julia has worms!

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It’s 30 minutes to midnight and Julia has worms. That, I think, is enough to provide me with my required 250 words.

I would have more time but by the time I’d read a few comments and checked in on a few blogs I realised I had 32 minutes to post. The missing two minutes were spent explaining to Julia that the title was going to bring her loyal fans flocking to the post. I have no illusions. After thirty years of marriage I realise that the majority of people who speak to me, or read the blog, are more interested in her than they are in me. It’s probably because she likes people, speaks to them and positively encourages them to talk about themselves. I don’t. lockdown for me has been one of the best times of my life – I’ve been paid to stay at home and eat bacon sandwiches and I haven’t had to be nice to anyone. The only way I’m ever going to become a “people person” is if cannibalism becomes socially acceptable.

Wormery in a wheelie bin

The worms in question are all safely contained in a wormery made from a wheelie bin and donated to her by a local group who make wormeries to give away. I’m not sure why, but it’s a useful thing to have, both for gardening and for teaching about ecology. The woman who delivered them has some experience of the farm where we used to run our group, and the two of them spent a happy half hour comparing views.

She also told Julia that the worms like avocado skins as they curl up inside them. The mind of a worm is a mystery to me.

That’s 280 words. I have hit target and will now add a link, and post. The photos will be loaded later. I may get them on before midnight but I have to download them from email, which can take time when an idiot is doing the downloading.

Worms at Mencap Garden, Wilford, Nottingham

The Scent of Roasting Vegetables

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As I sit and type, I can smell roasting vegetables. From the window by the computer night is coming. The cloud formations are becoming more dramatic (dark centres and glowing edges picked out by the sun) and the sky is turning a delicate pink.

There is a fresh feeling to the air, which is a pleasant relief after 24 hours of rain and flash floods. At this time last night it was almost dark as the rain clouds piled up and squeezed the daylight out.

If I ever win the lottery and am in the position to design my own house, I will build myself an office next to the kitchen. It seems to be the perfect place. This would be improved only if I could build the kitchen somewhere warm. England is a wonderful place, but it’s not the best climate for my aching bones.

I’ve just given the vegetables 15 minutes and have now put the pies in. This gives me another 20 minutes to write. I’m afraid culinary standards have fallen a bit over the last week or two. We ran out of bread this week, because we have had eight days since the last delivery, and because I am making more sandwiches now that I am back at work. Julia will be in the gardens tomorrow so she will need sandwiches too.

On the way back from work I popped into Aldi. There was no queue, though people, as usual, were not shopping well. Too many people taking too long to decide, and shopping in an unstructured way. This isn’t shopping at an exotic tourist market, this is shopping in a budget supermarket. We aren’t spending a leisurely afternoon watching artisans at work – this is industrial style shopping. Or, to speak plainly, get in, follow the flow, fill your trolley and get out. And in particular – don’t spend ten minutes selecting a loaf of bread whilst stopping me getting to it. Buy your bread and get out of my way – I have better things to do than standing patiently and breathing your germs.

Over the last few months shopping has become, in my mind, a dangerous sport on a level with skydiving and mountaineering. Like those two activities, it is made more dangerous by stupid people. Two stick in my mind. They were talking in a gangway and making it awkward for everyone else to get round. One had a trolley crammed with things that should have had a sign that said “Welcome to Diabetes” and the other was saying “Are we allowed to bring people shopping with us now?”

I presume that was relating to the relaxation of restrictions and the formation of a “social bubble”. You can probably gauge her level of intelligence from the fact that she felt in need of assistance to take things off a shelf and put them in a trolley.

The timer has just gone. I will add broccoli now, make gravy and stun my wife with yet another example of how to cook with minimal effort.

The picture is very much like every other picture of pie, roast veg and gravy I’ve published before. Sorry I’m not more interesting.

Food notes – yes the broccoli was a bit past its best, and don’t buy the ALDI Chicken and Ham Hock pie unless you like looking for three bits of meat in a mass of gravy. They charge a price in the upper range for a pie, but they don’t deliver. The crust is the most impressive part of it,or possibly the packaging. Definitely not the filling. This, to me, is the wrong way round.

Sunset over Sherwood

Pie, gravy and roasted veg

Sunset over Sherwood

Poppies, Planning and Pottering

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Yesterday it was coins, today it’s poppies. My life is varied if nothing else.

I spotted these bees in the poppies as I walked to the car yesterday. I did not have a lot of time to spare, and didn’t want the neighbours to think I was mad, so I just took a few shots as the poppies blew in the wind as I passed by on my way to work. As a result, the shots aren’t great, or varied.

Orange Poppies

That’s the story of my life. Rush, rush, rush and never time to stop and get a grip. After a three month holiday I really should be more organised. In fact I should be so organised that everything is perfect. It isn’t, and I will probably look back on this time with deep regret. Not that such thoughts are unusual, as I find I have them more and more. I thought you were supposed to be at your most depressed in your 40s, and that you became more cheerful as you age. It hasn’t worked out like that.

I suspect that like “Life begins at 40” and “60 is the new 40” this is aimed at making old people feel better about themselves. In fact one of the links I followed, whilst saying positive things about old age, also mentioned that hearing loss could be a burden in old age. It mentioned this several times and I wasn’t surprised to find a big button at the end of the article linking it to a site to sell hearing aids. I may be old, and slightly deaf, but I can still spot when someone is blowing smoke.

Last night I started planning for my retirement. It’s less than five years before I can draw my pension and I’m looking at all my options.

A time machine would be good, as I could go back, correct my worst decisions, save more money and look forward to a comfortable retirement, Ditto for winning the lottery. Logic says that I probably have more chance of inventing a time machine than I have of winning the lottery. I have made some plans for that. My theory is that if you buy enough longcase clocks and set them all running at the same time they will, because they are old and unreliable, all start to show marginally different times. When 12 o’clock comes round a few days later the cacophony of clocks striking at slightly different times will set up a temporal vortex and I will step through it. Now I come to think of it, I might have got that from an episode of Doctor Who…

I’ve just been looking at the WEA website (Worker’s Educational Association) looking for things to do in retirement. I hadn’t thought of them for years and now realise that some of their courses might have been useful during lockdown. Unfortunately the ones I want all have waiting lists. I’m sure I will manage to do something along those lines in the next few years.

Bee in Poppy

I had always imagined that retirement would be spent pottering around, but I’m already pottering, so I need another ambition. As I’m already becoming noticeably more curmudgeonly as time goes on I can’t save that for retirement either. It really does seem like I’m becoming old before my time. I should, according to the internet, be out learning how to skateboard, not sitting at home moaning. As I can’t even balance well enough to put my trousers on without introducing a frisson of jeopardy into the proceedings, so I’m certainly not risking a skateboard.

As a retirement project I may write a book about getting old. With any luck I may manage to sell it as a a TV script, so I will ensure that bathing in asses milk, driving sports cars and drinking red wine are prominent in the book so I can travel the world enjoying myself. According to this article I will need to drink 180 bottles of wine a day to get the full benefit. If I ever work out how to function without a liver I may give it a go.

Sing a Song of Sixpence

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1787 Sixpence Size Comparison

This sixpence is one of my favourite coins, and is pictured above with a current penny coin and a US cent for size comparison.

The sixpence was first issued in 1551 – the reign of Edward VI. He was the sickly son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, the King’s third wife. It continued in production in subsequent reigns, though it was not produced every year. One of the issues of George II was designed by John Sigismund Tanner, which is why those of you old enough to remember the 6d coin are all saying “Ah!” at the moment. Yes, that’s why it was known as a “tanner”.

Unfortunately, the Royal Mint website says that the name probably dates from the early 1800s and comes from the Romany “tawno”, meaning “small one”, which confuses things. Why the sixpence should be the small one when we had silver 4d and 3d coins at that time, is not explained, but let’s just say that I don’t consider the Royal Mint website to be 100% correct in all things.

There was a break in sixpence production between 1758 and 1787. This was partly due to a world shortage of silver, and partly due to the madness of King George, who was unable to authorise new issues. This led to the issue of unofficial token coins by local tradesmen, and the use of foreign silver coins as substitutes for the crown (five shillings) and half crown. The Bank of England also issued coins of 3 shillings and 1/6d, selecting these denominations to avoid conflict with the King’s coinage.

The design features a bust of the King wearing Roman-style armour and a wreath of laurels. He was not, as you can see, a handsome man. Looking at him brings stories of Princesses kissing frogs. The reverse has four shields representing the King’s claims to England/Scotland on one, and France, Hanover and Ireland on the others. He’d have been better off forgetting France and hanging on to America.

Sixpence George III

1787 Sixpence

In 1787 the average working wage was £15 – £20 a year – or around a shilling a day (working a six day week). A low level domestic servant could be on as little as £3 a year and a footman could earn £8 (about 6d a day) Servants were also given food, lodgings and clothing. It’s never easy comparing the cost of living, but this article is quite interesting.

So, what was happening in 1787?

February – in the newly independent America – Shay’s Rebellion fails. This was a rebellion by Massachusetts residents against government taxation policies. This seems familiar…

There would be two more rebellions a few years later – the Whiskey Rebellion and Fries’s Rebellion. Until I started writing about 1787 I had no idea American history could be so interesting.

On May 13 the Ships of the First Fleet left Portsmouth for Australia with around 700 convicts and 300 crew and guards. Or up to 1,500 people according to other accounts. It took them between 250 and 252 days to reach Botany Bay as they became a little strung out on the journey, though two days after 250 days at sea is still quite impressive.

The First Fleet is commemorated with a memorial, including a garden area with a barbecue. Because I’m trying to be a nice person, rather than a crabby old xenophobe, I will refrain from mentioning how it is typical of Australians to have a barbecue. It is not only their national symbol, alongside the kangaroo and the boomerang, but it is their way of rubbing it in that our weather is not as good as theirs.

Why Australia? Because the newly independent American colonies refused to accept our convicts. If we’d sent them to Canada, which would have been cheaper and less sunny, I wonder if the Canadians would then have developed a love of cricket.

This mention of cricket is fortuitous as the first cricket game was played at Lord’s in this year and the MCC was founded. It was possibly cricket which killed Prince Frederick, eldest sone of George II and father of George III. He was a great patron of the game and died of an infection of the lung. In one version of the story this was caused when he was struck in the chest by a cricket ball, though others say a real tennis ball, and the dullest version of the story says it was pleurisy.

Also on a topic which has recently become topical, was the founding of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The movement for the abolition of slavery had been inspired by Pennsylvania Quakers and had spread to Quakers in the UK. The society was founded in 1787 because Quakers were prohibited from holding many civil offices and they sought to include Anglicans, who were not disadvantaged by religion, to increase the political reach of the society. (The Test Acts would be repealed in 1828, shortly before the abolition of slavery in British territory).

In 1787 freed slave Ottobah Cugoano published Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species.

Design by Wedgwood for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade – it was on the seal of the society and appears on a number of other titems

Six men were killed in 1787 when troops opened fire on striking weavers in Calton, just outside Glasgow. The weavers had become accustomed to wages of up to £100 a year (see the link about wages – £100 enabled one of the ‘middling sort’ to live comfortably), due to their skill and demand for their product but mechanisation was making things cheaper, and prices were falling. After a 25% wages cut they went on strike and six were killed when the troops opened fire.

It’s a story with many echoes through history, including the Luddites, the Peterloo Massacre, and the Scottish Insurrection.

That is probably enough for now. It has now run to over 1,000 words, and I have only kept it so short by cutting several hundred words. The trouble with the internet is that it makes it so easy to keep finding more and more information.

Wedgwood jasperware plaque, also made as a pendant and a brooch.

The End of the Beginning…

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I was encouraging my dining room computer to greater efforts last night, because I felt it was deliberately slowing down and refusing to obey commands just to wind me up. Shouting isn’t a long term answer, we really need a new computer, but it provides some short-term relief. In this, a computer resembles a teenager, though teenagers do eventually improve. On the other hand, you can switch a computer off and it never empties your fridge.

As I paused for breath I heard Julia say: “Simon, can you stop swearing please?”

This led to our usual discussion about me and my right to freedom of speech and how it was hardly even swearing compared to some of the things I could have said and how…

“Will you **** shut up, you foul-mouthed ****!”

I’ll leave you fill in the gaps. Unlike the tabloid press I have deliberately left the words unidentifiable. If you are going to blank out the bad language I’ve never seen the point of adding the initial letter and the exact number of asterisks. You may as well just print the word. As I know my readership contains churchgoers and grandmothers I tend to be honest in admitting that my language is not good, but refrain from exposing the true depravity of my language. Too many years spent working in the company of rough men. I really should stop it, but like vegetarianism and exercise, I seldom persist in my improvements for long. Te only two things I have really ever given up have been smoking and hard work. I have not done either for over 20 years.

It seems that Julia had just been adding sound to a video she had done for work and my advice to the computer meant she was going to have to do it all again. There really are times when I realise I’ve been a bad influence on her.

Chastened, I carried on typing, but when the computer seized up again I made my displeasure obvious with the use of hand signals.

It’s a good thing that we are doing more days at work in the coming week, as lockdown is beginning to change me. First I started eating too many biscuits, then I pretended to be a bear and now I’m making offensive hand gestures at a computer.

Salon closed

We’ve each been in twice a week for the last two weeks to do the eBay work and answer the phone. From this week we are going in four days a week and there will be two of us in the shop each day. I will be at work tomorrow, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

In two weeks time we will start letting customers in by appointment. I spoke to someone by telephone today – he has had a queue outside all day wanting new watch batteries. A lot of watches ran out of power over the last few months.

It’s going to be a long slow recovery from lockdown.

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Winston Churchill

Picture of Desertion and Dejection

Oh dear…

22.07 and not a thought in my head

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I’ve let the day run through my fingers again. It is now one hour and fifty three minutes to midnight and I don’t even know what I’m going to write about. There isn’t even anything I can use in my drafts folder.

I note from checking the internet that Black Lives Matter called off their demonstration in London today rather than contribute to the problem. That, I feel, was the right decision and has put them right back on the moral high ground. Really, being anti-racist is to always have the moral high ground, but you know what I mean. Vandalism never looks good. An organisation that will give up its right to make a peaceful protest is clearly one that will, eventually, prevail.

The trouble with modern life is that we have so many people who know “their rights” and not enough who are prepared to think things through. Just because you have a right doesn’t mean you should exercise it. If I were ever to go on Room 101, “people who know their rights” would be top of my list.

Talking of this, we had a right to protest about Tibet when the Chinese President visited during the early years of Tony Blair’s premiership, but we weren’t allowed to exercise this right because Tony Blair was concentrating on trade. Tony Blair went on to even greater hypocrisy, we allowed various other shady dealings and I got older. With age comes the realisation that you can’t do anything about it, which is why I confine myself to shouting at the TV and asking young people to stop mumbling.

In the meantime I’ve been thinking about statues.

I haven’t come to any conclusions, I just thought I’d tell you I’d been thinking of them.

I quite like civic sculpture (or public realm enhancements to use the jargon term) and think we should have more of it. We have some round Nottingham on roundabouts, such as a depiction of the Flying Bedstead, racehorses outside the race course and various robins and wickerwork. I’ve often thought they would make a good subject for a series of posts but it’s tricky parking and taking a photo when they are on a busy road.

The timings contained in this post may be nonsensical as I note my watch and computer clocks differ by over an hour. I’ve been using the computer as the more reliable one but just did a time check and my computer clock seem to be 77 minutes slow. Technology! Pah!

Photos are selected from the free Media Library as I can’t find any of mine and didn’t want to steal photos from the local paper.

Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

Irony

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Places of worship in England will be able to open from Saturday 13th June for acts of private prayer. People can pray in household groups as long as they distance themselves from other praying groups. However, acts of organised worship are still not allowed. I am, I admit, mystified by the difference between a room of socially-distanced people engaged in individual prayer and the same people, in the same room, at the same distance, engaging in an act of worship. Apart from a priest and a little more exhalation I don’t see any difference.

My Dad’s funeral took place on the 12th June. He had worshipped on and off for 50 years in the village church (admittedly more off than on – like Churchill he was more a flying buttress than a pillar of the church, supporting it from the outside), but he could not have his funeral service in the church. If he’d died a few weeks later this would have been OK. That’s irksome, but not ironic. The irony is that they announced the reopening on the day of his funeral.

Stained Glass – Ely

A Funeral in the Time of Lockdown

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“The best portion of a good man’s life is his little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”

Wordsworth

It was my father’s funeral today. I haven’t mentioned it before because everyone has their own challenges at the moment and many of you have your own parents to worry about.

However, it’s a significant day in my life, and part of my record of lockdown.

He died after a short illness, having tested positive for Covid 19 several weeks ago. He was moved from the care home to the hospital as he became weaker and, after a brief rally, died peacefully, without experiencing any of the breathing difficulties reported in the press.

Last time we visited he beat us all at dominoes. He may have lost his ability to remember people, but he still retained his facility with numbers. He was still competitive, too, and retained the will to win that had led my mother to hide the Monopoly board each Christmas was still there.

I will remember that visit, with the sound of a distant TV and the click of dominoes, and my sister telling me it was only a game.

It is a matter of great sadness, but he was ninety one and you cannot complain at that.

The funeral was a strange affair. We could not use the village church because it is closed during lockdown, and simply met at the crematorium for a short service. Numbers were limited to ten, and we had to tell many friends and family members they must not travel, as we want them all to stay safe. There was, of course, no gathering afterwards, which made the whole thing seem incomplete.

There was a list of people who were allowed to attend posted near the entrance. This includes partners, children and grandchildren but excludes friends. If you aren’t on the list, you aren’t even allowed in the grounds.

Our group included three family members and five friends.

In doing this we weren’t actually breaking government guidelines, as close friends are allowed if family members do not attend. Most of the friends attending had known him for between twenty and fifty years and seen him more often than most family members.

It seems that the crematorium is making up rules to suit itself.

Having checked the regulations to ensure I am accurate in reporting, I can also add that the figure of ten people seems to be an arbitrary figure decided by the crematorium, rather than a government figure.

My father loved singing and, in his youth, he had been asked to join a professional singing group but my grandmother had been unwilling to let him go. Sadly, we are not allowed to sing tomorrow as excessive exhalation is considered a health hazard.

The service was available on webcast and a number of people have already been in contact to thank my sister for her efforts in organising a meaningful and dignified service in the face of several difficulties.

It was an uplifting service, celebrating a life, without being boastful. This summed my father up. He achieved many things in life. Starting from a position of disadvantage, he educated himself in the Royal Navy, worked hard, and won several prestigious awards. He also found time to work for charity, serve in a soup kitchen for the homeless, and stay married for 60 years. My mother, it has to be said, played a large part in his success.

He was known for being blunt, being good company and working hard. Mainly, it has to be said, for being blunt.

As we left the crematorium a large group of socially distancing mourners we lined up outside the gateway to pay respect to another funeral. This is how we mourn in times of lockdown.

Flowers

quercuscommunity

Life after the Care Farm

Monthly Archives: June 2020

Random Thoughts II

Random Thoughts

Julia has worms!

The Scent of Roasting Vegetables

Poppies, Planning and Pottering

Sing a Song of Sixpence

The End of the Beginning…

22.07 and not a thought in my head

Irony

A Funeral in the Time of Lockdown