Monthly Archives: May 2024

The Knell of Parting Day

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A knell is the sound of a bell rung solemnly. I checked it up before using it. What I don’t know is how you toll a bell solemnly. You just pull a rope don’t you. The solemnity is in the timing of the successive rings, I would have thought, not in the quality of a single ring. Anyway, that’s my thought on it.

Whilst looking at Gray’s Elegy and picking it over for a quote, I noticed that he composed it by reusing some lines for another poem he had tried to write. I’m glad to find it’s not just me that treats old and unsuccessful poems as raw material for new ones.

Where does all the time go? Twilight has arrived, the sky is holding just a hint of colour behind a veil of grey cloud and it is time to eat and change pace.

That’s probably what I miss most about Julia not being here, Well that and there seems to be more washing up to do. And no tea appears magically by my elbow as I write. However, without her there is definitely no change of pace. I get up. I do what I like. I watch what I like on TV. Nobody wakes me up to tell me to stop snoring. And then it’s time for bed.

She, meanwhile, has been to a baseball game and is currently at a Mother’s Day BBQ celebration hosted by the family of Number One Son’s partner.  They are spit roasting a whole pig. Canadian BBQs are very different to the ones we have in Nottingham.

I’m back from eating now. Quiche and salad, in case you were wondering. The same quiche and almost the same salad as I had yesterday. No, I haven’t developed a sudden love of salad, but we had it in the fridge and I hate wasting food. I am also pretty sure I would hate dying, so it’s probably time to start eating a healthier diet.

Tomorrow I will, I think, start with cereal and fruit. Lunch? It’s definitely time to get round to that mushroom soup. Evening meal is fish finger sandwiches. They are the ones that are marketed as containing Omega 3 and being good for you. This time next year it will be something else that is good for me, so I will just have to read the internet and try to keep up. I’m eating more sandwiches and fewer vegetables now that Julia isn’t here.

Plans and Reflections

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Dead tree in the lake

It was much the same today as it was yesterday. Temperatures were up a bit, and by the time I went out the streets were already emptying out. Not that it was too hot to be out, just that it was warm and not particularly attractive for outdoor activity. I was in the shop for about an hour and a half (it’s hard to break old habits) and nobody else came in. They had bought in a rare token this morning, an early 19th Century silver shilling designed by an entrepreneur to be taken into use by pubs.

At that time we had a shortage of small silver coins and private enterprise stepped in to fill the gap. However, with only one more example to be found on the internet (sold in auction 12 years ago) it’s clear that the idea did not take off. And that – 2 examples to be found in 12 years – is the definition of a “rare coin”.

I was going through junk boxes looking for things suitable for being the basis of a new group of articles, but they have been gone through so well that there was little of merit to pick out.

Tree cutting on the island.

The groceries just arrived and to be fair to TESCO I got everything I ordered this week. They were also on time. When it works, it’s a brilliant system, but it does show just how fragile our food supply can be, even in what we think of as a prosperous and well-organised country.

I once spent three days in Tanzania. We had butter rationing at breakfast, the electricity used to go off in the afternoon and the hotel doorman/security guard was armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. The roads were amazing. In just one journey we had the front passenger door of the car flt open as we went round a bend and had to avoid a lorry that was coming backwards downhill, having insufficient power to get up the hill and not enough brakes to hold it when it stopped. We managed to avoid further trouble by travelling with the manager in charge of the office – part of his contract specified he got a new car every three years. After three years the lack of proper spares and care meant it needed replacing.

It was an interesting insight into the daily struggles people had, and the hierarchy of struggle (even an unreliable car was beyond the dreams of most people).

I had some photos with reflections, so I thought I’d use them.

Reflected sunrise, Nottingham

Poetry, Proverbs and Poppies

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I’m feeling a bit like the proverbial full bookshelf. It’s the one where you force another book into it and something falls off the end . . .

I’ve been writing more about coins and medals recently – the three short articles for the Numismatic Society’s Facebook page are the thin end of the wedge, I’m preparing others too – and I seem to have stopped writing poetry, as if it just fell off the end of the shelf. One minute it was there, now it’s gone. I have three unopened poetry magazines and nothing in the pipeline.

 

This has coincided with doing more reading again (which is a bit like recharging my batteries after so much poetry writing), more research and more retirement planning.

Little Gidding

I’ve just had three poems published, while I’m on the subject. Not sure if I’ve posted the link before (my memory is getting worse). The magazine is Contemporary Haibun Online, which is always worth a read and I am here, here and here. Sorry, I suppose I could be more subtle or inventive with the links, but I’m not.

 

In themselves, they are a great indicator of time passing. Poetic time is very distorted. One poem actually started five or six years ago. It has changed substantially since I started it, and been rejected four times. Two others were written last autumn after I went to a couple of family funerals. One harks back to a time when I was 16. That is now 50 years ago. That thought is hard to grasp. I have let 50 years slip by and would be hard pressed to tell you anything I have done in that time.

Maybe that’s the theme for my next poem.

It’s poppy time again

Shopping Problems

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I really should have planned better, but I just kept ordering as usual until Julia went to Canada. I currently have an unexpected loaf of bread (though this is partly due to not needing sandwiches too), a mushroom surplus and an oversupply of avocadoes. I also have a surfeit of sausages,  a pile of carrots and more salad type things than I can contemplate without feeling queasy.

My soup plans have been shelved as I need to eat at least one avocado tonight to keep things in order, and I also have sausages to eat. Mushrooms can wait. They are holding up well and the worst thing a mushroom can do is deteriorate quietly and make you feel guilty.  A sausage, left to its own devices, can be fatal, and I don’t like the  idea of botulism roulette.

Today, the first proper day of my retirement, has been marked, as I feared it might be, by doing very little. It is gathering momentum but the problem is that I tend to get active as the light declines, work in darkness and then sleep during the day. It worked during lockdown, but that was an extended holiday. As a strategy for the rest of my life, it has certain problems. It’s fine for cats, but, let’s face it, they have humans to do their shopping for them and they don’t have doctors suggesting seeing them at 8.30am.

Today I have eaten, watched TV, read, charged my electrical equipment, realised I have lost my Kindle again, washed up and texted and emailed Julia. She is enjoying herself, she has seen black squirrels and the weather is being kind. She has not yet seen a blue jay or eaten poutine. I am clearly going to have to text and tell her to get on with it.

 

Hake and Chips in Cromer. Compared to poutine this is health food.

The Shapeless Day

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Tea and Eccles Cake

Went to the hospital, as you know, returned and blogged, as you also know, made lunch and started to watch TV. Fell asleep. Woke. Collected post of a neighbour who is away for the week. Wrote. Stared into nothingness . . .

Normally Julia comes home about 4am. She is either here when I return, or arrives soon after. Either way, the day seems brighter and we have tea and a snack and watch TV and she tells me I need to exercise, stop snoring or declutter. Feel free to add to the list as you recall other things I have been told to do over the years. It’s not living life in the fast lane, but it suits me and gives the day some shape.

Fortunately, though food seems less important now I only have myself to cook for, and TV has less charm when sitting on my own, I can still write.

I recently started on September’s Numismatic Society talk, and I have a couple of other projects (including the articles for the Numismatic Society Facebook page) so I am being kept busy. Of course, I am always busy when I need to avoid doing something, and there is always a question when I’m writing. Am I writing because I like writing, or am I using it as a displacement activity to avoid something else?

Botham’s Whitby

One day I will examine that question in greater detail, but until I get round to writing my masterpiece on procrastination, this is as far as it goes. Now it’s time to eat. I ordered for two last week when I shopped and there is only one of me. The soup plan is now mushroom and thyme, because I have too many mushrooms. However, tonight it is going to be avocado, because I have also got too many avocadoes. We didn’t have them on Monday as planned, and I also ordered another two. Yes, that’s four avocadoes and as I’m not confident about turning them into soup it looks like I’ll be eating healthily for the next few days.

Photographs will be something selected at random.

Coffee and cake

 

Another Hospital Post

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Wooden Dragon at Carsington

I went to the Hospital today. I took the car because it had cost me £12 in taxi fares last time. It cost me £5.50 to park (more of which later). It would cost me £4 to use the bus, though this is because of the Government £2 scheme. To buy a Nottingham City Transport return would cost me £5.30. Taxis take me to the door. My own car left me 400 yards from the door, which is a bit of a struggle for me (though less of a struggle, I am pleased to report, than it used to be). The bus – well it is a bit of a walk to the stop and I don’t know where they drop off for the Hospital, so it’s a non-starter really. All this is for a journey that I could have walked at one time – I can see the buildings as I sit here and type. Julia does sometimes still walk it when she has to go.

The system was generally good and the staff were excellent. Things seem cleaner and generally more efficient than they used to be and the staff are all pleasanter.

Wooden Wizard at Carsington

So, as I delight in moaning about the NHS, why am I writing this? I know that’s what you are all thinking.

Well, for one thing, they have TV on in the waiting areas. Dreadful, mind-numbing daytime “news” and discussion programmes full of idiots and misinformation. It’s like we are all being dumbed down by a central edict from Big Brother (or, in Rishi Sunak’s place Little Brother). Feed us enough daytime pap and we will soon become politically inactive, unable to spot sleaze and too stupid to think for ourselves.

Mute Swan Carsington Water

Then, despite them having an anaesthetist in the room, they are unable to see me while I’m there. I am having to go back next week. Another car parking fee, another tortured 400 yard walk. And if I’m lucky it will, like this week, be spiced up by a parking fee machine that doesn’t work properly and an idiot who parked so close to me (despite me taking special care with my parking) that it was hard to get into my car when I left.

The nurse told me I was lucky as I was local, and that some people had to drive 40 miles to their appointments. She hasn’t grasped the fact that it’s the final 400 yards that are the problem.

Then we have the people, dressed like NHS Staff, who insist on looking at their mobiles as they walk down the corridors, several times almost colliding with me. It’s tempting to let them do it. I may be old and decrepit, but I’m pretty sure most of them would come off worse if we collided. There aren’t many advantages to weight, but inertia is one of them.

Carving at Sheepwash Car Park – Carsington

I searched for pictures of cars, but most of them were of Carsington.

Lapwing at Carsington Water

 

 

The First Day of Retirement

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Vegetable Soup of Indeterminate Ingredients

For the last six years I have had Wednesdays off work, because, with us working weekends, Wednesday was the only day we could have off together. Gradually we have done less, and the NHS has demanded more of my time, so it was often a day for medical stuff.

Today, though the first official day of my retirement, featured no work, a blood test and a trip to the jewellers to drink tea and get a watch battery and a new strap. Thus, it was impossible to tell the difference between work and retirement. Tomorrow, I will be in hospital for 8.30 to have a pre-operative assessment. I got quite excited when I got the booking but it seems that they now last six months (they used to do them the week before the operation at one time).

Mushroom Soup with healthy pumpkins seed garnish

That means that I will have to wait until Friday to notice the difference between working and being retired. Even then, as Fridays had been reduced to half a day, it won’t make much difference. It will be Saturday before I really notice and, to be honest, as Julia will be in Toronto, I’m not really going to have much of a day.

I thought that the hardest part of being retired would be striking a balance between the workload (I know a number of people who work harder in retirement than they did when they were at work)  and the inclination to stay in bed all day. In fact, the hardest part so far has been noticing that I’m actually retired. If Julia were here she would doubtless make some barbed comment about me being semi-retired since the 1990s.

She’s only been gone a day and I’m already missing her.

Carrot & Ginger Soup

Carrot & Ginger Soup

Today’s illustrations are soup. After two days of cake and Chinese takeaway my digestion is pleading for plain food and my brain is telling me to eat more vegetables. Tomorrow, I think, will be a soup making day. I’m thinking mushroom and sweetcorn. It’s a strange combination but I have surplus mushrooms and half a can of sweetcorn in the fridge. Though I also have tinned tomatoes and a bag of lentils, so that’s a possibility too.

 

 

This will be the last time . . .

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Retirement Cake

I have a song going round in my head. It has been there since I drove back from work for the final time tonight. It’s not quite the right words, but it’s close enough.

Today I did many things for the last time. However, tomorrow I will start doing many things for the first time, so it all balances out.

And, of course, with the main event of tomorrow being a blood test, I will be doing many things that I’ve done dozens of times before. In fact, it is probably not going to make a lot of difference at all. Blood test tomorrow followed by having the rest of the day to myself is a standard Wednesday anyway.

Thursday is a hospital appointment followed by an empty day. Then Friday is free, but under our new hours I only worked half a day anyway. As I say, not a lot of difference.

I’m sure I can cope with retirement. However, first I have to get through two weeks without Julia, as she is currently in London and tomorrow will be flying to Canada for two weeks. We started our married life with me going to a conference a couple of days after the wedding, and both of us have spent various nights away at events or in hospital, so it’s not that we cannot exist separately, it’s just that it feels a bit odd.

Meanwhile, to remind myself of the benefits of retirement, I will spend a few moments of the phone calls we received today – about half were useful – people making appointments, ordering stuff or asking prices. The rest were rare coins. This included a man who told me he was ringing from the toilet and having a break from work. There’s a first. And, with it being my last day at work, it’s also, I hope, a last.

A Short Snatch of Autobiography

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I’ve just searched “Victorian Insect Jewellery” on eBay. I don’t know whether it’s the people who put the stuff on, or the eBay search engine (I suspect probably both), but I was amazed by the number of identical Peter Rabbit brooches that cropped up.

There are three points here. Large numbers of identical Victorian items generally suggests that what you are seeing is modern reproduction. I didn’t bother looking further because I wasn’t that interested. The second point is that a rabbit isn’t an insect. Having said that, neither are chickens, turtles, birds or fish, but they all crop up multiple times in the search.

The third point, which I admit is small (though important) compared to the two others, is that Queen Victoria died in 1901 and Peter Rabbit didn’t appear in print until 1902, so he isn’t actually Victorian. I actually thought he was a bit later – 1904 – but when I checked up found I was wrong.  In 1903 he became the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy according to Wikipedia. Peter Rabbit merchandise was even sold by Harrods.

Preston Guild Memorabilia

It’s amazing what you learn when you are trying to avoid working at your computer.

It was eBay that finally put me out of business as an antiques dealer. I was always a bit borderline, because I’m not very businesslike, but when eBay and the internet came along I finally failed. eBay allowed people to become dealers without any knowledge whatsoever, and the internet started giving people knowledge which had taken me years to build up. Suddenly everyone was an expert, and they started competing with me. So, the antiques trade lost a dealer and the world of gardening opened up to me. I could have done both, but the kids started playing rugby and I was needed as a taxi driver at weekends.

With hindsight I regret not doing more to use eBay to my advantage, but it seemed a good decision at the time and it didn’t work out too badly, even if I did add “Antique Dealer” to my list of failures.

Pictures are, as you can see, antiques of the sort that interest me.

All that is left to remember . . .

Customers

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Bear in the Garden

We had a customer last week who ordered some silver coins from us. The total came to about £250 and the postage and packing by a secure postal service was £12. He received them within 24 hours, and immediately contacted eBay to return them, writing later to say that he had ordered the coins by mistake, thinking that they weighed twice as much as they actually did. In other words, he thought we’d made a mistake and priced them at less than the price of silver. We hadn’t, but what we had done was write accurate details in the listing. If he’d read the details instead of becoming blinded by greed, he would have realised this.

Under eBay regulations, we have no defence. The customer mkay send them back, though eBay did make him pay for the return postage. We are currently refusing to refund his original postage as we don’t see why we should pay £12 for sending out exactly what was ordered. As it is, we will be out of pocket to the value of the time spent packing the original parcel and the time spent tracing the parcel at this end, as it originally went astray. eBay were telling us to refund him as the parcel had been delivered and we were telling them that it hadn’t. It was all the fault of the Post Office system, which is an excuse you may have heard before.

Some customers are lovely, some are efficient and many are a pleasure to deal with. This chap is none of the above. He, to borrow the style of P. G. Wodehouse is a veritable boil on the bottom of humanity.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Meanwhile, we have the “album man”. He ordered a stamp album off us and we sent it out. When it arrived, we have  a torrent of complaints. The postage was too much. The packaging wasn’t good enough. He nearly hadn’t ordered because the postage was too high. The parcel had been water damaged (though the album wasn’t affected) and the parcel was torn, though the album wasn’t damaged. He would like our comments, he said, before he gave us a score of zero for postage costs.

Now I don’t know about you, but if the cost of postage is too high, I simply don’t order the item. It’s the easiest way. I wouldn’t threaten someone with a zero score. It’s bad manners for one thing, and it is also what eBay calls Feedback Extortion, threatening poor feedback to get a refund. They frown on that. So do I.

Everybody thinks postage is too high. Everybody apart from the Post Office, who keeps putting it up. They have put it up so much recently that it’s becoming very hard for us to stay in business. On the other hand they are also finding things difficult.

And finally, the tearing and the water were beyond our control, but as we had packed the parcel properly (despite his comments) the album wasn’t damaged so there was really no problem.

Straw Bale Bowie Bear

I suggested a reply (customer service has ceased to mean so much now I am retiring) but was over-ruled. However, I feel that even Wodehouse himself, would have considered the man a blister of the first water and a pimple on the buttocks of the highest order.

These are just two of a dozen recent cases, though I admit that most of the others fall into the “I have a rare coin.” category. No you don’t.

The best ones, and I have had quite a few of them this week, have been conversations on the lines of –

“Er . . . (pause) . . . I was wondering if you could give me some advice.”

As they invariably ring when i am about to bite into a sandwich, write an address or put tape on a parcel, I just want them to get to the point . . .

Bear with pansies

“Yes.” I say.

“I have a rare coin. Do you value them.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Er . . . I don’t know . . .”

At this point it’s always so tempting to say “If you don’t know what it is, how do you know it’s rare?”

Then, after an average of 3 – 8 minutes, depending on their eyesight and whether they actually have the coin to hand, we establish it’s a very ordinary coin.  The 1970s is not, as many people think, “the olden days”, eBay is not a reliable source of numismatic information and even Victorian coins are not rare – we were still using them when we went decimal and people bring them into the shop every week.

I don’t actually mind the enquiries, if you don’t know something it’s good to ask, but I do mind the total lack of preparation. At least find out what it is, or have it with you when you ring.

I’m now going to add some pictures of teddy bears. They are an antidote to the ills of modern life, and, unlike many of our customers, never ring up to stop me working with enquiries about “rare coins”.

Paddington Bear at St Paul’s