An Unhappy Blogger and a Happy Gardener

 Oh botheration! Now what's wrong? I am fast losing interest in blogging. First, Google takes over and messes up the system, removes followers and makes commenting into a problem. Not to mention adding photographs. What used to be so easy always takes many attempts now.

And then it starts removing my posts. Apparently some of my posts are offensive and must be taken down. Eh? One of them is a poem, fully in the public domain and not in the least offensive. There are two others which are purely history and deal with people surviving killing cold in post war Germany. Where on earth is the offence? These posts are 10 years old and more!

And when I opened my blog today I find that I have 45, yes 45, items of spam. Naturally, I checked and found that 43 of them were bona fide comments, going back to 2013! The remaining 2 were simply from people who wanted some attention.

Who is it who is messing with my blog?  And why? Does anyone else suffer this fate? I see a sad little old person hunched over a screen and painstakingly going through years and years of blogs, trying to find something to wet themselves over. Somebody with the mindset of the parents who consider the greatest sculpture ever, Michelangelo's David, a biblical figure, to be pornography? Or could it be somebody who has a grudge against me personally?

I expect not, I expect it's simply an algorithm which homes in on certain words. 

So let's go out into the garden for now.

My helpful son took me to several nurseries, patiently following me around and pushing trolleys without complaint. I bought a lovely lot of goodies, most of which have been planted but here's a picture of some remaining.

This is only a very narrow strip of raised bed, it's amazing what you can cram into it if you take care of it, feeding and watering when necessary.

Here's my "ballerina tree", the leaves out now, even if they are still small. The strangest thing, I had never before noticed that there is blossom too, but of course there must be, it's real name is 'weeping pear' and pear trees, ornamental or purely decorative, have flowers. The white flowers peering through near the ground are more of my dreaded daffodils. I must have got rid of thousands and still they come. The blossom on the cherry tree to the left are almost finished and the new rusty red leaves dominate that end of the garden now.

 

And some tulips, just for fun.  I like tulips but, like daffodils, they die horribly, messing up their beds in a very rotten (literally) way. Proper gardeners will dig them up and store them until autumn, when they replant the bulbs, but I can't be bothered. I am already storing enough plants over winter in the conservatory and I simply don't have enough space for more. I am a bit old to install a greenhouse now.

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If you cannot automatically comment please leave me your name or, even better, your blog name; it is nigh on impossible to visit your blog if I don't know who you are. Even a name alone, like Mary say, isn't much good if I don't know which Mary has commented.

Appreciating blogging.

 How sweet you are, how darling. Thank you for kind words; it is true, much of the pleasure of blogging comes from the feeling of community. 

When a blogging friend of mine, urspo at sporeflections, recently said that he had been blogging for 15 years, I decided to check on my own length of service. Last November I had done12 years. Heavens, you get less for murder, as my dil is wont to say. Mind you, she applies it to marriage rather than blogging.

When I started I was green and young at heart; if I was not, after all, going to become one of the great writers of the age I might as well try the very lowest form of writing, a positive waste of time, as my then writing teacher said. Much better to slog at something serious, she suggested. But she did agree that I had found ‘my voice’, loud and clear. Only much later did I learn what that means.

In spite of feeling shy and very tentative I soon enough mastered the blog format, true,  not gathering any followers, but discovering that writing down my thoughts, however hesitantly, brought a kind of pride. So I carried on, ever more relaxed and confident. I also discovered the joy of photography.

I’ve always had a horror of being deemed mediocre, something to do with kindnesses my parents felt obliged to send my way. “Is there nothing you can do properly?” was one of their favourite expressions. Heigh Ho, it’s a long time ago, yet it still rankles.

Inspiration came easily, Beloved and I had decades of bouncing ideas off each other, stimulation came in the form of plays, concerts, meetings with friends and the heated debates we shared, gardening, walks in the Shropshire countryside, giving a home to dogs. I also delved into my past, my life in a newly liberated Germany, history, bits of geography. Then there were the memes, the communal writing to a subject, often funny. By now I had amassed a respectable number of followers, sadly, Google took several dozen away from me because the bloggers didn’t have a Google account. However, I persevered.

Then Beloved died. It was hard to carry on, nothing made sense, much was pointless. For the last three years there have been huge gaps, my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. Covid made it worse, suddenly there was nothing to say, unless I went back to the writing I had done during the early to middle years, i.e., leave the daily boring grind behind. Skim the surface of life at present and find what gets caught in the sieve. I want to concentrate on being truthful rather than bang on about facts. After all, both in my country of residence and, say, the US, we have recently learnt that facts are easily bent out of shape, invented, and twisted to make ‘alternative facts’, which are fervently believed by millions of people. So, let it be truth, maybe a personal truth rather than a universal one.

I really hope my blog will change a little, set off in a different direction, maybe use some poetry again.

I blame reading poetry in bed for the very late hour, it is now 5.16 in the morning, time to go to bed.

Love, Affection, Feeling Fond

Here’s a question: Do we only truly love those by whom we feel loved or can we love without expecting a return? (Forget about unrequited young love from afar, I don’t believe there’s much substance to that, but you may, of course, think differently, particularly if you follow some of the greatest poets both in antiquity such as Ovid and Dante and more recently, Goethe, not to mention modern popular music.

I was thinking of love because of Millie, of all things. Remembering Beloved, with whom I was both in love as well as loving him deeply, unquestioningly I thought at the time of our lives together,  I now think that the fact that he loved me as deeply did no harm to our close and harmonious relationship. Many of you use blogposts to describe how warmly you are enmeshed with your families, children and grandchildren. Long may it continue and may you never be disappointed. That kind of relationship needs work, tolerance and understanding each other’s needs and preferences. My own family is not as successful at this as yours.

But back to Millie, she had a serious stroke the other evening. She has recovered now, at the time I thought the end had come. While I sat comforting and nursing her for the many hours it took for her to return to a more stable condition I realised, by and by, that with her death the last common link with Beloved would disappear too and that there would be nobody left by whom I would be loved unconditionally. I am not comparing the love of an animal to the love of a human being but, in my opinion, it comes at least halfway up the scale. I have more affection for animals than some humans.

Quite definitely we feel affection for good friends. But here too the fondness must be returned. For how long can you be friends with someone who ignores you, behaves in an off-hand manner or treats you badly when it suits them. Some people are natural door mats but I’d hope you are not among their number. If your friend refuses to accept your friendship in the spirit in which it is offered, change your friend.

We can, of course, grow fond of those whom we employ. Old gardener has worked for me for many years, we toiled together, sat and chatted (me listening to him more than the other way round since he became deaf), we got tired together, drank tea, admired the results of our labours, gossiped, sniped at others; in other words, we were on very friendly terms and I was very fond of him. And now my dear Austin, Old Gardener, will  garden no more. He is very ill, his strength gone, his good humour vanished. He is in the clutches of a pair of nasty cancers,  neither treatable; I shall miss him and his penchant for indiscreet gossip as well as his pleasure in telling long stories about life in the bad old rural days. I am not sure that Austin was as fond of me as I was of him but that doesn’t seem to matter in this case. It matters very much more in the case of Paul, whom I have also mentioned here several times in the past. Paul is back with me for the time being. I doubt that Paul is fond of anyone, maybe his mother, but no one else. He is a serious depressive and that depression allows him no room for anyone else but himself. I am sorry for Paul but I am not fond of him. I need a return which he is at the moment unable to give.

😭 Serious Apologies for Comment Mishandling 😭

For more than two years commenters have complained that their comments disappeared and several of you have asked me if I’ve barred you. In fact, some people seemed quite hurt. I have been as mystified as you, as far as I knew I had never knowingly barred anyone. I put it down to the switch-over from Blogger to Google and blamed Google’s high-handedness.

Not so, I was wrong.

I have now found out that years ago I installed comment moderation after 4 days, which I then promptly forgot about. 4 days does seem rather mean, people don’t always visit a blog the moment a new post is written and the trolls, whom I wanted to discourage by the installation of moderation, usually wait a bit longer.

Because the instruction to moderate came from me Apple didn’t overrule me and the Comments Sections “Awaiting Moderation” and “Spam” filled up to overflowing with hundreds (literally) of unread comments to my blogposts. I have now retrieved many of them and hope they have settled into their allotted slots under the relevant posts. There are still several hundred to go which I will deal with as soon as I can.

Some of the commenters aren’t regulars, no wonder you only wrote in once or twice. I am very sorry for not having acknowledged your comments. Quite a few of the then regulars have also disappeared, I don’t blame you at all.

Sincere apologies all round, I will certainly do better in future.

A Canadian Visitor

There are some bloggers whose blogs you like so much that you think you'd love to meet them in real life. If you’re lucky they like yours too and soon you find yourselves looking for any new posting, commenting, emailing and sharing snippets that have no place in a blogpost, stuff you don’t want to tell the whole world about, but you trust this blog friend enough to open up, in the comfortable knowledge that you won’t ever meet them, so intimate information isn’t going to come and bite you on the bum. Even skyping is safe. You have enough good sense, you hope, not to lay yourself open to ridicule, you only choose to respond to the kind of close questioning you can live with; - actually, somebody who asks too many close questions isn’t going to remain my friend for long.

It’s all lovely, there are oceans between you and your friendship is never going to be tested in the cold light of day.

So you think.

And then you find you’re wrong. Canadians and Americans think nothing of emailing: I’m going to be in your neighbourhood next week/month, can we meet?” It’s happened three times in the past and last month it happened again.  Three times in the past I agreed to meet individual bloggers, Pondside from Canada and City Views Country Dreams and Prufrock’s Dilemma from the US. All three ladies were delightful, as delightful as their blogs and very quickly initial slight wariness became genuine warmth.

Last month it was the turn of onegoodsentence, another Canadian who spends half the year in Canada and the other half in the South of France. It’s a tough life for some. Hiding behind onegoodsentence, a blog which has seen no input for exactly a year, is Deborah, an excellent writer who doesn’t write but has promised to apply herself again when the muse moves her.

Emails went to and fro. "Pierre and I are going to a pickleball tournament in Stratford in October. It doesn’t look all that far from Ludlow on the map, so let’s meet, shall we?" There was a time when we emailed and skyped regularly, but lately our contact had come to an end. I was a little surprised.

Questions:
                  Why had we stopped our conversation?
                  How much had I told her about myself?
                  Did I want to start all over again?
                  What on earth is pickleball?

Answers:   Don’t know.
                  Can’t remember.
                  Hm, not sure.
                  No idea.

There is such a thing as over-thinking. After a few false starts regarding meeting-places we decided upon a restaurant close to Deborah and Pierre’s hotel and not too far from Valley’s End, The Clive, named after Clive of India, and part of the Earl of Plymouth’s estate.


Deborah and Pierre were seriously impressed with several items on the menu, which had been sourced from the Earl of Plymouth’s piggery and Lady Windsor’s garden. Deborah took menus home with her, with permission, naturally.

So there. Deal with it, Colonials. No aristos for you. Serve you right for breaking the sacred bond with the Mother Country. Mind you, you probably wouldn’t want to put up with very friendly, but also very slow service. We were there for hours, which suited us.

But, to start at the beginning:

We drove up on a rather chilly, slightly misty October evening. While shutting the car doors I looked over towards the hotel entrance and saw another couple just stepping towards it. Have you ever felt this bolt of instant recognition? It was dark enough not to be able to distinguish much but I knew that the tall woman about to enter the hotel was Deborah. She must have felt exactly as I did, because she stopped dead, peered at us in the gloom, marched over and said my name, adding a question mark to it. Feeling a little insecure I made a joke and asked: “Do I know you?” We grinned at each other and Deborah instantly folded me into a bear hug, real Canadian stuff, strong enough to crack my ribs.
I knew then that everything would be all right.

We were shown to our table and from the moment we sat down to the moment we got back into our cars four and a half hours later we never stopped talking. We ate and talked, ate and talked, doing full justice to the menu and each other. None of this: "Well, if it doesn’t work, if we don’t like each other or our husbands, we can always cut the evening short and make our excuses". I believe we were the first people to arrive and the last to leave the restaurant, asking the sweet young waiter to take our photos. Deborah, tall, slim, elegant Deborah was a wonderful dinner companion, as was her husband Pierre, Deb’s FB in blog parlance, her favourite Belgian. I hope and trust that the two of them liked us too, surely they would otherwise have said: “early start tomorrow, sorry, must be off.” We found that we had so much in common that we could have spent another four hours talking, except eventually, from sheer excitement and the rush to get everything in, fatigue sets in and you have to give up and hope that you will have the great good fortune to meet again.

Deborah and Pierre were off on a whistle-stop tour of several other touristy areas in England in the morning, I would have loved to enjoy their company in Valley's End the following day, seeing that we were both now certain that it was safe and there was absolutely no need to find excuses for a quick getaway.

I also found out what pickleball is: an indoor racquet sport, a thing between table tennis, tennis and badminton. I think.

Instead of an Excuse

So many posts unposted, so many blogs unread, so many comments ignored or not left, so many emails not replied to, so much writing left unwritten.

I don’t really know what happened, why I have barely glanced at my computer for the past two plus weeks (really? yes,  I just counted 17 days). I have been feeling rather tired, am I simply under the weather? A bit depressed?

There have been days full of sunshine,

gloomy, foggy days,

working days,

snapping sparrows bathing in the dog bowl

during idly looking out of the window days,

and days full of magnificent autumn colour.

In other words, nothing out of the ordinary. Now that it’s November, most of the leaves have gone and the nights have turned mildly frosty. There’s a bitter North-Easterly blowing and Millie’s walks are ever shrinking in length. She’s not too unhappy about it, she has started to limp after strenuous exercise; I am not going to ask more of her than she can do.

The sad thing is, I miss writing, blogging and visiting blog friends. I feel guilty for not replying to emails, which is a bit silly. I throw half an eye at the blank, dark computer screen, sigh, then sit down with a trashy thriller for an hour.

My attention to detail appears to have gone into hiding too. I ordered a new printer+ on the internet and when the thing turned up it was massive, far bigger than the space allocated for it. It was an office printer, wide format, with  facility for legal papers, large and small sizes, envelopes etc., as well as a fax machine. I have no fax number and no need of a fax. When ordering I forgot to look at the specifications and, most importantly, the size of the gadget. Printers have gone down in price since I bought the previous one and as I couldn’t be bothered to pack the thing up again and return it, it now sits in a different room, staring at me, balefully, every time I pass it, accusing me of sloppiness.

Sleep is hit and miss too. No wonder I am often tired. I love to go to bed late, get a book ready, wriggle into a cosy position, and feel grateful for having a warm, peaceful and comfortable space to put my head at the end of the day. Sometimes, just when I am at my most snuggled in, my mind suddenly insists that sleep is a waste of time, and how I could much better spend my time thinking, dreaming, reading, going over the past day and organising the next one. Fatal! I might have allocated anything from five minutes to an hour for this state of being between waking and sleeping but, once I am embarked on this route, sleep flees. Two, three, four times I rise again, for a drink of water, a visit to the loo, a sleeping pill, another sleeping pill. I do eventually fall asleep to wake to another complicated day and, given half a chance, I grab a nap after lunch. But then again, I could be reading instead of napping?

The Selfish Gene

This may not be exactly what Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene is all about but there’s certainly a connection between ‘Doing Good Makes One Feel Good’ and the survival instinct of genes, that is the survival of the most selfish and therefore fittest genes.

I’ve been in one of these spells of ‘why blog - who could possibly be interested in my throw-away drivel’,  followed, a bit later, by ‘if it gives me pleasure to blog, who cares if anyone else wants to read said drivel’.

That’s me being pensive - via a selfie. (selfish selfie?)

Anyway, to repeat, why blog. Do you blog because it gives you pleasure, whatever it is you write about, even it it’s purely self-centred? Can the general kind of blogging, the kind I indulge in and most of you, whose blogs I read, be anything else but self-centred?

Is there a kind of blogging which benefits others?
Perhaps blogging is a pure form of selfish altruism, after all, it benefits ourselves most of all.

Very well then, I’ll do some ‘blowing my own trumpet’ blogging,  having decided once again to take up recording my drivel.

I have been kind on several occasions recently. Only once entirely without an ulterior motive. I had no choice, really. Unlinking a shopping trolley at Aldi’s I noticed a woman rushing past me. She’d obviously just returned her own trolley and was on the way back to her car. I noticed her for two reasons, one she was wearing a bright orangey skirt and two, she was swinging her hips rhythmically at speed, clearly in a great hurry. Having stared at her for a moment I turned my attention back to the row of trolleys; on one of them sat a tan leather handbag (purse to you over the pond), well scuffed and filled to bursting. I grabbed the bag and asked various ladies occupied with their own trolleys if they were the owner of the bag. All of them shook their heads. I kept hold of the bag, I wasn’t going to make the same mistake I had made several years ago in the London Underground, when I found a well-stuffed wallet on the floor, asked the young man in the seat opposite if he had lost it, was told ‘no’ but instantly informed that he was getting off at the next stop and would hand the wallet in for me. Like a fool I handed it over. As he ran out I realised that  no way would he hand in that wallet to Lost Property or a station guard. I just hope he stole no more than the cash and returned the rest. Probably not.

No, I wasn’t going to make that mistake again, I would hand in the purse myself, to a supervisor in the store. I went up the aisle and saw the woman in the orangey skirt harangue a uniformed member of Aldi’s staff. As I came nearer I heard “but it must have been found in the shop, I haven’t been anywhere else. Are you sure it wasn’t handed in?”
Orangey skirt lady had a high, angry, scared colour. She saw me loitering, and glared at me, ready to accuse me and anyone else within reach of theft. The member of staff was upset too. “No, I’m afraid no bag has been handed in; I can make enquiries, of course. Have the shop searched.”

Aha, orangey skirt lady was bag lady!

I went closer and brought forth the bag with a dramatic flourish from behind my back. No fanfare, just an accusatory “there’s my bag, where did you find it?” Member of staff joined  in the chorus. “Yes, where did you find that?” And, turning to bag lady in orangey skirt “Do you want to check it?”

What? I am handing in a lost bag and my credentials need checking?

Both of them saw my thunderous look and both withdrew. Orangey skirt bag lady finally calmed herself, hands still shaking, and after giving further action due consideration - you could see her weighing up the pros and cons of checking me out v. thanking me, she decided to trust me and fell upon my neck in a short but powerful hug. Finally, I got my “Thank You”.

Isn’t it strange that the two women's first reaction was to suspect me of evil-doing?


This post is now long enough, recording the next act of kindness will have to be postponed. Until next time.

Google rules ok!

Losing followers?

I finally saw the Google announcement which states that they are no longer allowing followers who are not in possession (?) of a Google account. So that’s why I have been shedding followers since early in December.

Any of you who are not informed of new posts on my or any other blogger’s blog are not being blocked by the blogger but Google itself, that giant, all-consuming steamroller flattening and levelling all who come into its clutches.

This is what Google said:

In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.

 As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

 We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

Posted by Michael Goddard, Software Engineer


I am not asking any of you to take on a Google account if you don’t wish to. Instead, I might simply delete the Followers’ gadget eventually.

Resourcefulness, Frogs and Rumour Mills

Guiseppe Arcimboldo  -  Autumn  -  1573

Post Autumn Equinox, and the nights are drawing in. Beloved and I have had no enjoyment of summer at all; a whole barrowload of problems has seen to that. And when his problems lessened came the tailend: first I fell over, then I came down with a sudden cough and bronchitis which are lingering. Cough medicine on an empty stomach made me feel nauseous. Resourceful as I am, I thought to make myself sick with a finger down my throat. The resultant dry heaving was not only extremely painful, it also set off a bout of AFib. Once again, resourcefulness was called upon: I took a double dose of my beta blockers, paracetamol and a tranquilliser (Oxford spelling - I just looked it up!) right away, and the ordinary dose at the regular time. Whenever I tell a doctor they present a short intake of breath, and mumble: “some cocktail”. Anyway, it worked.

I have written about nothing but doctors and ailments and our general physical decrepitude for weeks. And even that only very intermittently. No wonder followers are leaving in droves. (I can’t be bothered to find out who you are - so no repercussions.) Thank you to all who have stayed with me, sent good wishes and wrote lovely comments. It feels good to know that one is not alone when the going gets tough and that others too have experience of sad times.

I am trying to make gardening easier. Removing clumps of herbaceous perennials I often come across co-residents, as this frog. He hopped away from me when my fork came a bit too close for his liking but he jumped no more than a couple of feet, there staying stock-still and posing for my camera. I encourage these fellows, in their capacity of slug police they cannot be faulted.

For several months a rumour has haunted Valley’s End that our favourite doctor, the one who saved our lives during the recent calamity, is about to retire. One chap had him taking up a job delivering BMWs, somebody else said there was general short-livedness in the doctors’ family and he was going to retire to enjoy whatever time he had left; yet another person had it for definite that the doctor’s wife had killed herself and he just couldn’t get over it. And more, each reason more outlandish and far fetched.

I can’t be doing with rumours, I need facts. At the end of the last consultation with him, we had the following conversation:

Me : “What on earth are we going to do without you?
Doc., laughing: “Nobody is indispensable”.

Me: “O yes, you are. You are too valuable for us to lose you. You are the only one who takes the time to explain things. Besides, you aren’t old enough to leave.”

Doc., laughing again : “well, I will be 60 at my next birthday. But leave? Not as far as I know. Who says?”

Me :”There’s a strong rumour doing the rounds that you are about to leave, even worse, that you are leaving before the end of the year.”

Doc. “Leave? I’ve already booked a holiday for the rest of this year and put in a holiday request for next year. So it might seem that I’m keen on holidays but I’m not retiring just yet.”

Beloved, heaving a great sigh of relief,: “Right, so I can be sick for a bit longer.”

Laughter all round.

Who comes up with such drivel? How does the rumour mill function? Who sets it off? Many patients have been going from person to person, doing the ‘between you, me and the bedpost’ dance, upsetting many others. As soon as I am told anything ‘in the strictest confidence’ I know I am being but a cog in the rumour machine, expected to spread the word.

Well, no. Find another muggins.

Now What ?

Now that I’m beginning to find my way around iMac Yosemite I’d like to restart blogging more or less regularly. But what is there to say? A subject would be helpful.

The weather has been very pleasant, there’ve been no great upheavals, my bruises are fading, Millie and I have had some gentle walks, the birds are singing and the garden is taking on colour and life again.

naturalised campanulas on the edge of the football field

Paul is coming most Tuesdays and although he’s had a bit of a row with a neighbour about stuffing OUR cattle grid with OUR prunings, gardening has been a joy. The neighbour rents a garage at the road end of our drive and saw Paul unloading a barrow’s worth of twigs into the grid cavity. There’s a field between neighbour and us and we have a fairly good relationship. Neighbour was worked up because he’d been lumbered with a small grandson who obviously had ideas of his own how to pass a  jolly hour or two; I heard grandad hissing “sit down, sit, sit down”. 

I am glad Paul, who gives the impression of being a very gentle man, didn’t let neighbour bully him. Neighbour is the kind of man whose mouth is permanently turned down at the corners and who seems to have an equally permanent bad smell under his nose. Still, he usually admires me because he thinks of me as one of those highly organised and efficient Germans. “I don’t work for you,” Paul told him, “Go and take it up with 'She Who Must Be Obeyed’ instead". Sensible man. Neighbour hasn’t uttered a word.

dandelions, celandines and violets on a bank above the river

There’s been a touch of the melodramas, the dreaded Afib came for a visit. Because I dose myself up the minute I notice the rhythm changing I usually manage to sleep through several hours of an attack; for the remaining hours (ten in total this time) I manage to stay calm and wait for either a return to normal or, after twelve hours, a call for help. I’d been a bit tense for a few days, then a very dear friend of ours fell ill suddenly; there was a debate about cancelling/not cancelling a theatre trip, risking or not risking a journey which could easily end in disaster. As I have the unfortunate habit of feeling obliged to take on the woes of creation, whether creation wants me to or not, the adrenaline levels rose and my heart played ‘silly-buggers’.

Well, I ask you. If you can’t even rely on a ten-years-younger friend, fit and strong and willing and able, to stay upright, whom can you trust? Friend is home again and in good spirits, I am extremely glad to say. He now understands why I hate going into hospital and drag out calling the ambulance service for as long as I can.

daisies

Son and daughter-in-law and stepdaughter came for a short visit over Easter. We see little of family, there are many months between visits, although son and I are on reasonably good terms. But I think I must appeal to son’s kind heart and get him to drive over more often: there are a surprising number of jobs too small for a paid handyman and too difficult for us; in other words, just right for the d-i-y skills of an intelligent chap who can reach those hard-to-get-to spots without climbing on a precariously balanced ladder or breaking his back to crawl into tiny spaces.

In case you think me totally selfish: I quite like to see him anyway.

So there we are. I’ve read a few books, cooked a few meals, saw a few friends, went to the pub, had a drink or two, wrestled with a couple of computers, cuddled the dog, saw a play, read some poetry, argued with Beloved, and got used to not having easy and unlimited internet access. Apparently, there is great danger of becoming dependant on social media and the net. Can’t say I’ve noticed. For a few days it felt strange not to be blogging and reading blogs but the feeling caused me no great anxiety. Still, all of you who have remained faithful to my inconsequential burblings rest assured, I shall gradually get round to visiting and paying my dues.

Just thought I’d tell you

that I’m definitely still alive and keen to get back to the blogging universe.

Funnily enough, I’m getting stiffer and more sore from the fall as the days go by; my knees still smart, and hips and shoulders complain when I make any sudden moves.

But Millie has long been forgiven.

I am using my brand new iMac, the latest version, which takes a bit of getting used to. I am nearly through setting her up. Like all new acquaintances she takes careful handling. I am also rather cross with Apple for doing away with Microsoft Office and MacWord. It’s a complicated process to reinstall the data contained in the files because Yosemite refuses to ‘read’ them. Luckily there’s Time Machine keeping them safe until I find a way to rescue them.

Back at long last

but by no means sorted.

Everything was gone and I still haven't recovered much.
The Macdoctor wiped the hard drive and re-installed the ancient Snow Leopard which means that many apps can't 'read' contents added in more recent versions. I am working my way through apps but there's little hope that I can repair much. It'll have to be a new computer but I haven't decided yet whether it's to be a macbook or another iMac. The price of the things!

Apart from that, and on a lighter note, I am lucky to be alive. Millie did her best to kill me. Nearing the road home on a walk she suddenly saw one of her best friends, Kevin, who was out with Sam, his collie; the two of them were crossing the narrow entrance that closes off the dirt track into the main road.  There are thick metal bars across this gap, with a staggered opening, to stop kids running into the road.

Millie saw Kevin and rushed towards him. Millie loves men. The way she throws herself at her favourites is almost indecent. Terrified that she would run into the road I screamed at her. NO! She crouched on her belly, but only for a second. NO! More crouching. Believe me, when I bellow NO! the whole street hears me. Everybody around stops dead instantly. Not Millie. She slowed just enough for me to catch her by the collar but then she gave one almighty final tug to reach Kevin. As I was leaning over her I was off-balance already, so I went forward in an arc, my head hitting the metal bars, scraping knees and arms in the process. Kevin grabbed my arm, hard, which didn't help, Ralph from across the road came rushing over and a lady arrived from her garden gate. I was winded and hurt all over, so I simply sat there trying to catch my breath and whimpering a bit. That made Sam come and give me a slobbery kiss, while Millie, firmly held by Ralph, looked a picture of innocence; a little pained at having been deprived of greeting two of her favourite men in the manner to which she feels entitled but otherwise calmly wondering what all the fuss was about.

Eventually I allowed myself to be dragged upright by my kind rescuers and Ralph, still firmly holding Millie's lead, took me to the gate into our field. When I said "hold her close, don't let her get run over", Ralph said "why not, she deserves it." He was joking. He's another one Millie loves to distraction. Little tart.

I am still feeling very sore today, but upright and breathing.

Still struggling

I was going to brag and ask for a round of applause because
I cracked Yosemite and was successfully updating app after app.
Then suddenly up pops a window shouting "bug alert' and the screen froze.

I tried all the Mac Helpline advice on de-frosting to no avail and finally gave
in and took the iMac to the Macdoctor. It may be a week before I get
her back.

Hold the applause for now.

I am  typing this on my iPad, which is a right royal pain.

See you anon.

The woman just won't learn

Can't ever leave well alone.

The Mac was working beautifully, a bit creaky and aged, maybe a bit slow; but it worked, and it and I had come to a satisfactory coexistence.

No , mess it all up, why don't you, cause a rift by installing the new OS, namely Yosemite. And thus causing the poor old Mac to throw up it's keys and not only go on a go-slow but refuse to entertain usage of my dearest and most used apps.it's all over between us, divorce lawyers have been notified and if mediation doesn't work, a new partner has to be found.

Oh dear me, I never thought that's how it would end with us. An honourable retirement of a much loved friend would have been much more the thing. But this?

Will you ever forgive me, old friend?

Meditations On A Rainy Day III

The difference between these two pictures is 20 hours

and an awful lot of rain.

It’s the same stretch of river and the same willow tree.

For tonight the forecast says dry and very cold.

2014 has been good to me, or perhaps I have been good to myself? They say “Jeder ist seines Glückes Schmied”, or ‘Life is what you make it’. Even the ancient Romans knew that. Appius Claudius Caecus told us that  ‘Every Man is the Architect of his Own Fortune’. I expect everybody has their favourite proverb but do we all follow the sentiment?

Well, I think I’ve cracked it. For the whole of the year I was determined that apart from the odd stumble here and there my path would be smooth, that I would not let indifference, unkindness or bare-faced lying on the part of others, no matter how close the connection, push me into unhappiness or illness. And I’ve done it. Two separate relationships have made me very unhappy in previous years; one is severed completely and the other is cooling. So, that’s that. I am amazed at how easy it was in the end. I feel regret, but accept what is and cannot be changed. Both situations have been fraught with unease and pain in the past, in both cases a catalyst caused me to stop and examine my motives for continuing with them, when there was no profit and all loss. It feels good.

Half the young ladies in London spend their evenings 
making their fathers take them to plays that are not 
fit for elderly people to see.               G.B.Shaw

All the pleasures and happinesses of 2014 have been modest, play-going chief amongst them. Thanks to a good friend we have had many trips to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford; many more are planned for 2015. That wonderful new institution, Live Streaming from the foremost theatres in London, as well as the Royal Opera House, have meant that we hardly had to miss anything we crave. As well as going to poetry meetings in Knighton, over the border in Wales, we have resurrected poetry readings at our house once a month; wine and poetry in a circle of like-minded friends make for wonderful evenings which require little effort but give an inordinate amount of pleasure.

A Book Is Like A Garden Carried In The Pocket.

Chinese Proverb

Aren’t I lucky. I have both. An endless supply of gardens on my shelves and an outdoor garden for work and play. The balance has been shifting, I’ve allowed myself far more reading than gardening time during the year, partly due to the ease with which I can, thanks to a Kindle app, read for hours without stopping. Gardening has been important too but I’ve relaxed my harsh policy of eradicating every weed that dared show its face; or if a plant wants to lean over, muscling in on its neighbours' space, so be it. I will not chastise and imprison it in a rigid corset of stakes. Besides, I’ve dug up and given away many clumps of herbaceous plants this year to replace them with easily cultivated shrubs. But best of all is to be out in the garden in summer, drag a chair into the shade of a tree, fetch a drink and open a new book. Bliss. 

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

Pat Conroy: My Reading Life

To my great surprise, I’ve continued with blogging throughout the year. Had you asked me five years ago I would have said that this is an activity destined to last but a short time. I am posting less, reading fewer blogs, leaving comments only once or twice a week. I have made absolutely no effort to gain new followers and have cut down on the numbers of those I follow. But I am still blogging. It’s my only other addiction apart from a craving for chocolate. Will I give up either next year?

I often think that the night is more alive 

and more richly coloured than the day.

Vincent van Gogh

Leaning out of my window last night, breathing deeply to get rid of stale central heating air in my lungs before bed I looked up into a clear, cold, starry night. The swollen river hummed monotonously, deeply soothing to the spirit. The night was calm and so was I. Counting my blessings is not for me, but appreciating the joys of the simple life is. 

Whatever happens in the new year, I will be kind to myself. 

Contrary

While my mac was away from home for a bit of R&R I felt utterly bereft. Every time I passed the empty desk there was a tiny jolt. Fine, I said to myself, so you can’t go online to blog but you could prepare a blog post or catch up on emails. For a moment I was quite serious about that, eagerly making for the computer corner, until I realised that, no, I can’t do that either. I use the mac for writing, researching and blogging, ipads have small keyboards, they’re of no use to me for ‘proper’ writing.

There was definitely something missing to which I have become seriously addicted. How do people who say they have no need of a computer manage to live with themselves?

After an absence of a day and a half mac’s R&R was over and I could fetch him (him?) home. Mike the macman explained that all was well again and that he’d added an extra 2Gb of RAM to the measly 1Gb available on such old (old? OLD?) desktop computers and that that would speed it up a bit and that he’d sorted out a lot of inconsistency on the hard disk. I felt exactly as I do at the Vet’s when I pick up Millie after a minor op. I embraced my mac as I embrace Millie and put him on the back seat. Millie only gets to ride in the boot (of the hatchback - last time I mentioned that Millie rides in the boot somebody threw up their (blogging)-hands in horror at the very idea of such cruel incarceration).

But here comes the contrary bit: once I’d carried the mac upstairs to my study and set him up on his desk, I reconnected everything, checked that all was in working order and promptly ignored him for the rest of the day.

A bit like a man; it’s nice to know they’re around to use anytime you need them.

Who Cares

except me,

that the grass in the lower field, where Millie and I walk daily, is finally being cut and I can actually see her again  rather than just follow a movement in the grass,

and that a nice farmer is turning the rows to dry them prior to baling the hay, all out of the kindness of his heart - I really can’t see the Duke of Norfolk, who owns the land, paying to have it cut - and for the sake of the village carnival at the beginning of August,

and that the garden is a perfect wilderness and my despair, but that Paul is back and is hard at work cutting hedges and trimming shrubs and that he and I are planning to dig up lots of herbaceous plants this autumn and replace them with shrubs to lighten the load for future years,

and that after a very hot period today was actually made quite pleasant by the addition of a few clouds but that a heatwave (i.e. nasty and sticky weather with thunderstorms) is forecast for the weekend, and that that means that I will once again have to disappear from view and hide behind a book and a tall, cool drink,

and that I’ve been to a vernissage and bought a couple of water colours for which I have yet to find the most suitable space in the house,

and that WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS,

Image Source: Sticky Wallpapers

although, come to think of it, there may well be a few million other people who do care about the latter. I sat up half the night watching the celebrations on German TV, wishing myself to be part of it. And I’m not even a football fan. (I lost a follower the night of Germany v. Brazil;  if you are a Brazilian, I am sorry; 7-1, what on Earth happened?)

It’s been too hot to blog, there’s been Wimbledon, the Football (soccer for you in the US) World Cup, some theatre, an informal party or three, a bit of gardening in early morning and late evening and not a lot else.  Nothing to blog about. I wouldn’t want to admit to reading rubbishy thrillers and very light-weight novels for hours on end, so I won’t mention doing that. Absolutely nothing to blog about.

After all, who cares about other people's boring recital of the banal doings of their daily grind. Just pretend you hadn’t read any of this. Sorry to have been wasting your time.

Heads Rolling, Then And Now.

"Any ideas for a blog post? I need something light and easy, nothing that will require research, nothing too serious, nothing too personal.”

Having just finished reading ‘Stoner’ by John Williams, the must-read novel of 2013 according to the literary establishment in the UK, I was still deep within the pages of this bleakly depressing and utterly gripping book; nothing suitable sprang to mind.

“Have you mentioned 'Bring Up The Bodies’ yet?” Beloved answered, metaphorically scratching his head. We went to see the second of the Mantel adaptations at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon last Saturday.

“I want something light and entertaining. Besides,  the people who read my blog are not culture vultures. A review of a serious play would interest few of them.”

“Yes, I see that; of course, you want to write for your readers. Mind you, the Tudors are absolutely at the top of the tree of current interest. You can’t get away from them on TV.”

Beloved had a point. There’s one more or less populist programme after the other about them; learned researchers and historians strutting their stuff in front of the cameras, not to mention fictionalisations with added cleavage, smouldering, meaningful looks and gruesome executions galore.

Henry VIII went in for gruesome executions on a grand scale. Depending on which source you follow, during his reign between 1509 and 1547, a­n estimated 57,000  to 7­2,000 English subjects lost their heads, and not in a nice, flirtatious way. As soon as he ascended the throne he chopped off the heads of his father’s most influential advisers; he was probably just following the old adage  'start as you mean to go on’.  New brooms and all that. By comparison, his daughter , who succeeded him on the throne,  killed fewer than 300 people during her six years as queen. But she came to be called ‘Bloody Mary’. Talk about double standards. Feminism still has a job to do on this one, even in these enlightened times.

“No, writing about Tudor politics doesn’t strike me as an apt subject for a lightweight blogpost.” I needed to turn the conversation back to the matter in hand.

“Put like that, I agree.”

“Just think though, nowadays, if governments want to do away with politicians who have served their purpose, or others, who have become a thorn in the flesh of whoever happens to be paying the piper, they get the media to do it for them. No blood visible. Public opinion will do the rest. Blood and circuses for the 21st century. In Tudor times, the populace gathered around the scaffold or the executioner’s block, today, we read the Daily Muckraker.

“At least we no longer kill them dead.”

“No such luck, instead they get to ‘spend more time with their families’ “.

“This is all very well, and I’m sure we could go on, but it still leaves me short of an idea for a blogpost. Something light and funny, maybe?”






PS: For US readers: 
“Spending time with one’s family is a metaphor for being sent into the desert politically.

Brain Compost

You know those ideas and thoughts you have which disappear into the great void of forgetfulness?

Not the ones which happen to get lost on the way up the stairs or from one room into another;  the ones when you meant to fetch something, do something, and by the time you got wherever it is you wanted to fetch it from or do it, the whole thing has vanished, and you have to start all over again.

Nor the names of books, films and plays you are just about to throw nonchalantly into the conversation when you find your mind a sudden blank and your face red with embarrassment.

Nor the appointments you miss because you forgot to transfer dates from one diary into another.

Nor when you find you have forgotten the name of the person coming towards you with outstretched hands, beaming with pleasure and loudly greeting you by name.

Nor when you forget the names of people in your own family and you recite them all, male and female interchangeable, all the way through, until the final name you utter is the one of the child/aunt/uncle/other grinning delightedly at your discomfort. My dad was particularly good at that; we used to let him work through the list and congratulate him when he finally matched name to person.

No, none of the above.

I am talking about the really good ideas, the clever ones, the insightful, creative ones. Like when you have a brilliant idea for a blog post. Or, if you are of a slightly higher order on the literary scale, an idea for a short story, say. Or at work, a problem which has irritated or confused you for many months, and suddenly, you have that light bulb moment, and there’s the solution, as plain as the nose on your face.  Or maybe you have a really insightful thought, one of those that should be anthologised, an aphorism destined to be forever repeated by bloggers given to filling their posts with quotations.

I am sure you know the sort of thing I mean.

If you do, and are the person who experiences a flash of brilliance, I advise you to write it down there and then. Somebody, something will interrupt your train of thought and the solution to all the evils of the world will have disappeared for ever. Einstein/Shakespeare/Beethoven never allowed a mere mortal  to disturb the creative muse, that’s for sure.

But now I finally come to the point of this post (the idea for which I’ve nicked from PerlNumquist at his blog Mental Floss) : what happens to that collection of bright thoughts which appear like shooting stars across the night sky, only to disappear as quickly? Where do they go?

Everything on our planet is recycled.

Is there a bottomless pit in the brain where they collect, become a kind of primordial compost heap of thoughts which rots down over the years, only to be recycled as manure for new growth?

Is it possible that ‘wisdom comes with age’ is nothing more than absent-mindedness during middle age?

Life getting in the Way of Blogging . . . . .

. . . .  whatever next!

What a strange thing it is when a blogger feels guilty for not updating their blog at regular intervals with a new edition of personal trivia. As if it would make the tiniest bit of difference if one disappeared! There are millions of us competing for attention, after all.

However, life has indeed been getting in the way of blogging recently,  rather pleasantly, actually.

Here’s a little something instructive to be getting on with for those of you who need telling; I found it pinned to the wall above a broken wash basin in the ladies’ of a very shabby shop.

Gallivanting is coming to an end and normal service will be resumed forthwith.