Tag Archives: family

Black Tie Number Two Please

Today has been a day of varying fortune. I trimmed my beard on Tuesday night and shaved my head last night. I should really have done it sooner but I hate doing it. There are always a lot of little wisps to tidy up. However, it does look neat and, as haircuts go, it lasts a long time. I will probably touch it up with a razor for the next funeral but after that I could easily leave it a year without needing to do anything to it. This morning I smoothed the beard off and was, in terms of personal grooming, good to go.

Jacket, tie, new white shirt, bag of poetry mags and a notebook and some oranges  and I was ready. After dropping Julia off at work I turned for Newark and the North. At that point I noted that my new route, avoiding the morning rush in Nottingham, was going to be a little longer than I had planned for and half an hour was sliced from my time calculation. There were roadworks on the way, I got stuck behind a wide load and I needed to stop at Wetherby services (not my favourite) as the length of the journey had outlasted my bladder capacity. That all left my planned 1½ hour cushion looking rather depleted, as it had gradually shrunk to 20 minutes.

At that pint the sat nav sent me the wrong way in Knaresborough and by the time i had corrected that mistake I managed to park and beat the coffin to the church by about thirty seconds, putting my tie on as I reached the pew.

It was quite an uplifting service and a crowded church, which is always good. I met a number of cousins I hadn’t seen for years. One of them now lives in Northampton, which will be quite close once I move to Peterborough. I don’t know if you remember the picture of the three little girls with parents in 1915, I did use it in a previous post, well we are the children and grandchildren of the three little girls.

My great grandfather and mother and grandmother and two great aunts.

The children of the great aunts (I met three today) are my first cousins once removed, and their children (I met two today) are my second cousins. I never really knew, just referred to them as cousins, but I thought I should look it up for blogging purposes. I’ve been very fortunate with my family as I’ve never met one I didn’t like, even after gaps of decades.

Another snippet about the day -I got stuck in roadworks on the way back, then behind a wide load again. And, struck by inspiration, I found another black tie when I sat in the car this morning. A little voice said “look in the glove compartment” so I did, and I found my other funeral tie.

 

 

 

 

Day 184

Well, I spent last night planning what I was going to do today. It was quite a list. Today was slightly different in tone and I did very little apart from avoid doing anything on the list. That is, I suppose, an achievement in itself, but not quite the outcome I was hoping for.

Breakfast, which hadn’t been on the list, was quite pleasant, as was lunch. We had bacon sandwiches for breakfast, with mushrooms, fried tomatoes and black pudding. Nutritionally I could have finished after tomatoes. I was tempted to leave the black pudding out of the list and appear more virtuous and sensible, but I am fairly truthful in the blog, and the black pudding presents a more rounded picture of both my character and my figure.

Lunch was fancy cheese on toast. I chucked some eggs and finely chopped spring onions in the grated cheese before toasting. We have been using thick-sliced malty wholemeal, which has been good.

We had vegetable curry for tea. Tomorrow we will be having vegetable curry for tea. Julia hasn’t quite mastered the art of portion control since the kids left home. It’s something I have struggled with over the years. I can still picture myself in the late 1970s with a pressure cooker full of vegetables – enough to feed  a family of four, to be precise.

At that point I realised that I had left home, but was still using the portion size I was used to seeing. Four days later, finally free of vegetables, I started to cut back on portion size. I should really have cut back a lot more, but that is a different story.

I have just been reading about a diet that could help me lose a lot of weight. Breakfast is a banana, lunch is chicken, rice and broccoli and tea is a protein shake. It’s a diet developed by someone who has more self-control than I do.

On the one hand I’m looking at a short, increasingly unhealthy life. On the other I’m looking at chicken, rice and broccoli. It’s a tough choice. Well, actually it isn’t. Chicken, rice and broccoli is not a winning combination.

Meanwhile, in a different part of the family (and one where I suspect that chicken, rice and broccoli is a winning combination) Number One Son just did his first Ultra-marathon.  Eighty miles in 24 hours. No, I don’t know why either, but I am glad he’s found a sport he enjoys.

 

Boxing Day

Christmas day passed quickly. It’s now the early hours of Boxing Day. Several meals, presents, chocolates, Bailey’s, Strictly, Love Actually and several naps filled the day in a most satisfactory manner. We also had phone calls from the kids and I spoke to my sister so all the family stuff is done too. I am, as I have said before, a man of simple needs and it doesn’t take much to make me happy.

The Ancient Santa card is on the left, the other is only about 25 years old.

On the writing front, I allowed another deadline to slip by without submitting anything and reminded myself that there are two more to look at before the end of the month, which isn’t far away. I’ll get round to doing something in the next few days I suppose, but if I decide to sit with Julia and watch TV instead, it won’t be  a tragedy. I quite like sitting and watching TV  with Julia.

Boxing Day sees my favourite meal of the holidays – turkey sandwiches with cranberry jelly and stuffing. I usually add mayonnaise to, but I’m planning on heating  some part-baked baguettes for tomorrow and I’m not convinced that hot bread and mayonnaise will go together that well. The day after Boxing Day usually features turkey sandwiches too, but they aren’t such a novelty by then.

Santa and Snowman figures

The pictures show our Christmas decorations by candle light. The Santa card is 33 years old. Julia always brings him out for Christmas and I have gradually phased out buying other cards, so it proved a wise investment. The Santa and Snowman figures are part of Christmas tradition too. I tried several different settings to allow for the colour temperature and managed to produce a number of odd effects. None of them quite captured the magic of candle light.

That’s about it. Another ordinary day in a dull life.

 

Communion Tokens and Family History

The top picture is of a Communion Token issued by the Relief Church in Annan.

There are about 6,000 types of Scottish Communion Tokens known. Their history stretches back to the early days of Protestantism, when many churches held closed communions and  only admitted those they felt were worthy of the sacrament. They are generally simple, with a basic design, cast from lead.

The Relief Church was not, as I assumed, a Church to accommodate people who couldn’t get into a crowded main church, it was a Church formed by people looking for relief from the patronage that was common in the Church of Scotland at the time. I assume that they equated patronage with corruption.

Communion Token – Annan

The second one is another from Annan. It’s very worn but you can just make out the name.

The tokens are mostly from the early 19th century and it is possible that my great-great-grandfather, or possibly another relative may have handled it. I know they were churchgoers because my great-great Grandfather supposedly left Scotland after a falling out with the church. However, having just checked Ancestry, I see that at least one great-great-great- grandfather and two great-great-great- grandmothers all died in Blackburn, so they may all have left together. Family stories are like that.

Why, I hear some of you wonder, leave the beauty of Scotland for the dark satanic mills of Lancashire? Well, I’ve only visited Annan twice and didn’t stop either time. It appears to be very grey,uninviting and drizzly, though that might not be a fair test of its charms. Blackburn, on the other hand, though it is undoubtedly a blot on the landscape, was a boom town at the time, and offered the promise of jobs, even if they did involve unsafe working practices, child labour and lung disease.

Newington Communion Token –  in better condition than the other two

This is the other side of the Annan token

I just realised the tokens have no size reference – they arn’t as big as they look on the screen – about an inch to an inch and a half long.

 

A Simple Day for a Simple Man

I’ve just spent a happy morning in front of the fire chatting, eating chocolate and watching compilations of Christmas songs on TV. I am a simple man and this is all I need. This expanded to a happy afternoon doing the same.

I just spent five minutes trying to delete a surplus full stop from that sentence. One of my resolutions for next year is to keep my computer screen cleaner, as it turned out to be a small mark on the screen that lined up perfectly. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, but it always fools me.

As I said, I am a simple man.

I have my wife by my side, my firstborn nearby and the spare child checked in by some mysterious process which allowed his face to appear on a computer screen and tell me I was looking older. He is looking uglier and tubbier than last time I saw him. It is good to have all this modern technology to hurl abuse at family members who are thousands of miles away, though I’m not sure that when I first came across a “video phone” in a science fiction story that I would ever use one for this purpose.

After that I rang my sister using 19th century technology and delayed her until she had to go, because her oven was emitting smoke. Her cooker has either elected a new pope or burned her Christmas dinner. I fear it is the latter.

I’m now going to stalk a few of my regular blogging companions and see how their day is going. After that it is turkey and more TV. I also intend drinking some of the tea I have been sent as presents and rounding the day off with biscuits.

1995 Robin stamp

 

Sisters Don’t Chase Sticks

This post started life as an attempt at a longer haibun. If you read modern haibun they are very often just a few lines of prose followed by a haiku. It’s not how they used to be, when they were often used for travelogues. Indeed, only about fifteen years ago, haibun, as a form, was originally explained to me as an essay with two or three haiku.

I wrote one. Fourteen years later I wrote another one. It doesn’t do to rush these things.

Recently I felt like having a go at something a bit longer, and thought I might try an autobiography. It earned two rejections, one in its original form and one in a cut down version. To be honest I wasn’t keen on cutting it down, but if an editor suggests trimming the prose I’m going to trim.

The altered version didn’t meet with approval, so I added “loss of integrity” to the sting of double rejection.

I decided that I would use it as a blog post. I have removed the haiku as I can use them later if they are unpublished (and because I struggle to write acceptable haiku). Apart from that, I have just about left it alone – I say “just about” because who can resist the temptation to tinker?

When I posted it, I added the news about my father, which was new since I “finished” the original. Later, I realised I had put in nothing about my mother, so I’m back again (on 6th July) to add more. A poem is never actually finished, you just get to a point where you give up and let it go. I don’t often go back to them, but this one, being an autobiography, just keeps on going. I’m hoping there will be a lot more to add before I consider it finished.

Sisters Don’t Chase Sticks

I am sitting in the garden with a cup of tea, contemplating the neglected door of our coal shed, which now serves as a utility room. A thought enters my freewheeling mind. Could I write my autobiography in haibun form?

Year One – I remember nothing.

Year Two – same again.

This is not, I feel, a promising start.

Year Three – I acquire a dog and a baby sister. I prefer the dog as it is better at fetching sticks. In this golden age there are butterflies the size of my hand and only two sorts of weather – sunshine or snowball  time. It is only with hindsight that I recognise it as a golden age.

Year Four – we move into town, the dog is hit by a car and my parents tell me they have arranged for him to live somewhere safe in the country. I start school – they teach me to read and insist I have a nap every afternoon.

Show me the boy, as they say, and I will show you the man – the reading habit is still with me and I still like a nap in the afternoon, despite complaints from my employer.

Year Five – I go fishing for sticklebacks in the canal. Nobody would let a five-year-old fish in a canal on his own these days. We have destroyed childhood as it used to be. It is, however, possible that we have prevented a few drownings and relieved the pressure on the stickleback population.

Some dogs, according to Disney, make their way back home from hundreds of miles away. Mine doesn’t. In fact, when we visit my uncle, where the dog is now living, he pretends not to know me. I like to think this was because of the head injury, but it might just be that he doesn’t like me.

Eventually I give up trying to teach my sister to fetch sticks and lose my interest in sticklebacks.

At the age of 11 I hit my academic peak, coming top of the class, and am given a book as a prize. I opt for a book on birds, an interest which is still with me.

The dog successfully avoids cars for another eighteen years and dies of old age.

Nothing much of note happens for the rest of my life. I find that sisters do have some redeeming features and are, in the end, better than dogs. I accumulate a wife, a family, and arthritis, which I have inherited from my mother. From my father I have inherited a tendency to offer unwanted advice to other road users.

My parents, after sixty years of marriage, get a telegram from the Queen and we have a party. Gradually, my mother fades away.

And so, fifty years after hitting my academic peak I am sitting in the garden thinking of writing an autobiography in haibun form.

I leave this haibun to mature. Six months later the world changes and I spend a my life in lockdown.

My father dies, and we are not allowed to sing at his funeral.

An Excellent Evening

I wrote this post last night after returning from Julia’s birthday meal  At 11.30 I thought I posted it with time to spare but as I sat down to write now, just over 12 hours later, it seems I merely saved it as a draft. I was tired. All the conviviality was too much for me. I’m getting old. Apply whichever excuse seems most likely.

Whatever the reason, I failed to post it. This means that “today” means “yesterday”.

We had a busy day in the shop today, as if to compensate for a serious lack of customers during the week. This was helped by a cessation of rain. It has been a cold, wet week.

Several customers who have been absent for a week or two put in an appearance, and another one returned after an absence of two years.

At the end of the day, as we turned the final key in the lock, I realised I’d left the camera in the back room again. As I had to cut my hair, trim my beard, wash, change and pick Number One Son up and get to the restaurant for 7.00 I decided just to go home. I have other cameras for the weekend and the photos on the card will have to wait.

We had a good meal, caught up with family gossip and launched Julia into her sixty first year in grand style. Judging from the presents her family think she’s an alcoholic with dry skin and a lack of shopping bags.

I think this may be what happens as women reach a certain age. Maybe a lady reader could enlighten me on the etiquette of buying skin care products for the more mature woman.

If I bought Julia body lotion would I be seen as thoughtful, or would it look like I was hinting she had the skin of a wrinkly lizard?

We are home now and I’m writing this sitting in front of the fire. We have just eaten a couple of chocolates and all is well, though when we turn 70 we will have to tone things down. A week of celebrations is a bit much for us now.

The picture is a phoenix rising from the flames, though you may remember it from this post.

Still flagging…

Sorry, I started the day on Wednesday with a McDonald’s breakfast, had a pub lunch and ended up with a steak in the evening. In the gaps we collected two different prescriptions from two pharmacies, visited the jeweller, saw family, shopped, went home to change and saw family again in the world’s least efficient restaurant.

By the time we got home at eleven I was stuffed full and ready for bed, so sorry there was no post.

It’s very difficult to view Wednesday as a day off when you have this sort of social life to cram in.

It’s always nice seeing family though, and it was good to see the great nephew has a mini rugby ball. He’s not showing much talent for the game, but he’s only 18 months old so there’s time yet. I’ve reached 61 without showing much talent for the game. Or for any game.

I really need to get some work done but when I’m not out gallivanting I’m sleeping fitfully, which makes me slow-witted and grumpy.

The end picture is a rather nice enamelled double florin coin brooch. It’s a very interesting coin. I particularly like the bit about it still being legal tender because they forgot to demonetise it when we went decimal. You can, theoretically, spend it as a 20p coin, though the silver value is more like £4.

!887 Victorian double florin

!887 Victorian double florin

 

Next day I wrote this post, fell asleep at the keyboard and forgot to publish.These summer nights are playing havoc with my sleep.

Yesterday was reasonably busy, but today really took off. The owner was away this morning and in three hours we packed the parcels, served six customers and bought two lots of coins in. Both of them contained lots of low value coins, though one also contained an 18th century Norwich token and the other had a respectable looking George III sixpence and a Victorian half farthing in it.

I’ve been writing up an interesting piece for eBay. It’s something and nothing but it’s also personally associated with a 20th Century icon.

All will be revealed tomorrow…

Wilting…

I have a report to write on yesterday’s Afternoon Tea and a brief biography of Private Dunkerley, the man commemorated on the memorial plaque I pictured yesterday.

Both things will take some concentration to do properly and, to be honest, after a day of high temperature and poor ventilation I’m not feeling up to the job. Tomorrow will be soon enough.

Meanwhile, here is Julia at the specially painted post box in the Market Square. It celebrates England winning the Cricket World Cup.

IMG-20190827-WA0000.JPG

I’m guessing they won’t win it again in my lifetime.

She was in cheerful mood after eating an Afternoon Tea in the company of her brother and sister-in-law.

Tomorrow we are lunching with both brother and sisters-in-law, plus niece and great-nephew. It’s an important time in the child’s development as his father is a great football fan and we are just waiting for the right time for granddad and the wicked uncles to nip that nonsense in the bud and get him playing with a rugby ball.

I’m going to have to keep an eye on Julia as seeing so much family at one time could lead to all sorts of jovial consequences. I have to be constantly on my guard against outbreaks of cheerfulness, as you never know what it can lead to.

 

 

Scone Chronicles XIX

Sorry, I decided it didn’t matter if I missed a day posting and, six days later I’m only just getting back to blogging.

I have plenty of things to write about, but no enthusiasm for the work.

However, I will give it a go, as scones have recently reappeared in my life. On that subject, I may dispense with Roman numbering after the next one. That’s what they did with Spitfires in WW2. They got to Mk XIX and the next one was the Mk 20.

I suppose it’s all part of the dumbing down of the world. First we stop using Latin numerals, then, under pressure from Microsoft, we adopt American spelling.

We’re on the verge of electing a buffoon, and have a fine choice, with both Johnson and Farage, so we’re following America in so many ways.

I’m going to fail to post before midnight, but I’m not rushing. It’s a bit late to worry about my posting record.

On Wednesday we went to meet Julia’s brother and sister-in-law who were visiting family in Radcliffe-on-Trent, a large village just outside Nottingham (which I thought was a town, until I checked when adding the link). The Atrium is a converted bank, and is very pleasant, though the name had led me into expecting more glass and plants.

The staff were efficient, cheerful, and very patient, which was good as they had a lot of kids running about. One of the kids was my great nephew, who is just over a year old now. He’s not quite walking but he’s on the verge, and manages to get about well enough.

The scones were large, and light in texture, though a bit sweet and slightly deficient in fruit. It doesn’t make them bad scones, but it does stop me talking of them in glowing terms. I’d happily go back for scones if I was in Radcliffe-on-Trent again, but I wouldn’t necessarily drive all the way from Nottingham for them. Julia had Bakewell Tart. It was a bit lurid compared to last week’s Bakewell Pudding.

Still having difficulty posting using the ancient netbook, so I’ll call a halt there. It’s amazing really, a few years ago I thought this machine was brilliant, but after using a laptop for the last three years it’s like torture.