Thoughts of Christmas

I have not blogged recently. I have done a few extra shifts in the charity shop. Fortunately Mondays have been shared with the person I like working with; Ethel, who has become a friend. We laugh together at some of the things that customers say and at the behaviour of some of our fellow volunteers. We have named one person Brown Nose and another Herr Flick. The shop  manager is in a difficult situation at present. Her husband has been diagnosed with cancer. The tumour is pressing against a lung and originated in the bones. He is going to take what she calls the shrinkage drug. 

Last Wednesday I did not work  because my old friends came up from the Isle of Wight. Owing to various operations (theirs and mine) and family issues, this is the first time we have seen them this year. They are the first people to be entertained in our dining room.Dan outdid himself with the meal and I opened a bottle of my birthday champagne for Anne and me to share. I seldom drink so much; we followed the champagne with a bottle of Prosecco. She brought me a belated birthday present; a beautiful lead crystal jug. Dan received a jug too, but his is silver. I was able to give her some toys for her grandchildren and a Portmeirion quiche dish for her kitchen. Like me, she likes Portmeirion goods.  

We have decided to spend Christmas in our flat in Vence again. Flights are booked already. The old-established airline Monarch went out of business a few weeks ago and we wanted to be sure of getting a choice of flights. I am looking forward to it and hope that we are as lucky with the weather as we were last year.  It will give us a chance to enjoy our new kitchen. We have to get a door and a plinth from Ixina in Vallauris to complete the job. 

Last Thursday we went to the Yvonne Arnaud theatre in Guildford. We took friends with us to see The Wipers Times. It was excellent. We don't go to the theatre at Christmas now. We always took Katy on Boxing Day or soon after Christmas because she loved live performances.  Dan used to get cheap tickets for Monday evenings at the Kings Theatre in Southsea; we took both children to see Bonnie Langford as Peter Pan. I remember Katy leaning forward as the curtain went up, eager not to miss any of the play. I miss her. I always shall. 

Dan has been too busy to go on the Alice Holt Forest walk. Today he was at the Citizens' Advice Bureau in Petersfield, helping to manage the project of moving the bureau to the library. Next Tuesday it is the Probus lunch and the talk is about the Severn Railway Bridge disaster of 1960. One more monthly lunch and then it will be the Christmas dinner. 

Today I was on the Southampton Heritage Photos page on Facebook. I saw a comment from someone whose maiden name I recognised. We were at junior school together. I hope to chat with her on the Internet. She was not a particular friend but I remember her as a pleasant person. I wonder if she has kept in touch with anyone from that school.  I have not; I moved away from the Southampton area in 1975 and shall never go back. I am too happy here in Petersfield. I think it's the best place I have ever lived and I never want to move. Dan feels the same. I feel pleased that he has such a good social life now. Learning to play bridge and joining the walking group were my ideas but they have worked out well for him. He shoots clay pigeons, plays petanque and is president of his bridge club. I think he will be chairman of the Probus club next year. 

I shall blog again soon. I am still taking painkillers. I found that Boots no longer sell the caplets I prefer but Tesco pharmacy does and I got some from an online pharmacy. They help me sleep. I use heat patches for my arthritic neck and bought another woollen shawl last week. I am growing old, as we all are. 

A Precious Picture Rediscovered

When our beloved daughter died it was comforting to have pictures of her on display.  The saddest thing was that I could not find her baby book, with her new-born picture in. I asked my husband's sisters to search the house where their father lived but nothing could be found. Today my husband was sorting out some old pictures that were in a box that used to be under a chair in our bedroom. Some of these came from my late aunt's house (the wife of the man for whom I took responsibility). She had kept the copy I sent her when our baby was born. It has been scanned and is now on the little marble table with the other pictures. 

It is some time since I have updated this blog. We have been to France, where we had our kitchen renovated, returned from there and taken up our usual life. Dan has been playing petanque and bridge and I have been doing extra hours at the charity shop. Last Thursday we celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary. We decided to go out for lunch rather than dinner as Dan had the AGM of the bridge club in the evening. We lunched at the Turkish restaurant in Bakery Lane. We enjoyed our meal; the food and service were excellent. We forgot that we had theatre tickets for the week before last and have decided to put all our appointments in our Outlook calendars. 

I enjoyed the last Probus meeting. The speaker was our chair person's boss at one time. He is a very important government archivist and he was very interesting. At the end we were each given a handout, photocopies of prints of Domesday book pages and a few other things, including the table of heights and weights to calculate the drop for judicial hanging. The next meeting is not until the very end of the month. One more meeting and then it will be the Christmas lunch. 

We have visited the old man twice since our return from Vence. The first time he managed a little chocolate. On Saturday he did not seem to be responding at all. Yet still he lives on. I wonder how many people will come to his funeral when he finally dies. I have planned the funeral, although I do not think that his family will like what I have planned. I think that his niece wants hymns and prayers. There is no point in doing this; he had no religious faith when he was cogent. I want my aunt to be remembered as her funeral was such a depressing affair. My youngest brother's wife has been very ill with kidney problems, supposedly caused by medical negligence in diagnosing a skin rash. I doubt that he will attend. Perhaps my niece will come, as she was not able to get to her great-aunt's funeral because of the weather.

We walked on both Fridays and are glad to be back in the routine. We are considering joining a Tuesday morning walk at the Alice Holt Forest. Dan will still be able to play petanque in the afternoon and I shall be able to visit the nursing home. 

I shall write about our kitchen renovation in my next post. 

Tired nerves and minor injuries.

I am feeling very happy about my home now. The dining room is charming and the little table from the Vence kitchen has been restored and is in place. The two chairs, bought not long before we put our Clanfield house up for sale, are at the top end of the living room with the two little tables we bought in the Barnardo's shop in Waterlooville. They look so good since their restoration. It is so pleasant to have breakfast in the dining room.  The window is a corner one and we look out on the junction of High Street, College Street and Dragon Street.  I am looking forward to when our friends come from the Isle of Wight and we shall have lunch there.  That will probably not happen until after we come home from Vence. 

I did attempt the walk on Sunday. I knew before we had walked a mile that it was a mistake. It was planned that there would be a meeting at some friends' house and the walk would be discussed.  Dan went to this meeting and the other couple had been and gone. Had they discussed it together, I would have  known not to go on the walk.  Dan said that I was not to worry; the walk would be a "gentle" one. From the time we met up, one woman was in a foul mood and walked on ahead of us. I regret not turning back and going home. I coped reasonably well at first, but at Ramsdean I slipped on a stile and fell. There was barbed wire on the stile and my left hand and arm were cut and scratched. I sustained a bruise on the left forearm and one on the left leg. When we stopped on Winchester Hill for light refreshments, Dan remarked that we were all being left behind. The upshot was that the wife of one of the walkers came and collected three of us at Exton and we all returned to Petersfield. I had a hot bath and changed my clothes. We collected the other couple and went to the Wykeham Arms in Winchester in the early evening. 

The other couple completed their walk. They arrived when the four of us were sitting in the bar having a drink. The female half of the other couple asked that we sit outside so that she could smoke. Our table was booked for a 7.30 dinner but ultimately we did not sit down until ten past eight. It was more important that the one smoker among us sat down again after she and her husband had showered and changed and smoked another cigarette. As soon as I decently could I left them all and went to bed. 

I know that there are business problems for that couple but she is an inconsiderate person. In the past she has complained to Dan about what she sees as my rudeness and he has accepted her criticisms and passed them on to me. When the four of us are together the other three tend to talk about their business and I am not included. I can bear this; I have nothing to contribute and am happy to listen to my iPod.  This is my rudeness, it seems. I have to accept that, despite the fact that I wrote copy for their entry for an award, I was not worth a three pound bouquet of flowers from the Lidl supermarket on my birthday. They tolerate me because of their friendship with Dan.  I have decided to distance myself from it all. I shall give the person who gave me the second-hand artwork for my birthday last year a present on her birthday in November and then my involvement ends. 

On Tuesday I went to the minor injuries unit at the Petersfield Hospital and had a tetanus inoculation. This now includes diphtheria and polio. A nice young male nurse administered the injection.  He talked about childhood immunisations; I explained that I am a year older than the National Health Service and such vaccination was not routine when I was a young child. I had a polio shot when I was twelve years old, because there was an epidemic of that horrible disease. I remember that we could not do physical education at school. There were no Christmas parties; all this was delayed until the summer. 

We had an invitation to a party for the fiftieth birthday of a friend of the inconsiderate friend. I put it on the bulletin board and fully intended to accept and go to the party. Dan had a letter about a hospital appointment and pinned it over the top. I emailed the party giver and we shall send a card and flowers. I am going to ask Dan not to blame me about it. 

Coping and continuing to function

I am home for a few hours as I have agreed to work the afternoon in the charity shop. I went in as usual, taking the box of biscuits that I bought in Leclerc. I stayed for an hour or so and then came home via the health stores where I buy most of my breakfast cereals. I also visited some of the other charity shops in the town.

Yesterday Dan went to Alresford to play petanque as usual. I did not visit my aged uncle as my left eye is still sore. Around 5.30 Dan's cousin and his wife arrived. We had a very pleasant meal together at the local ASK Italian restaurant. Philip is a very eminent professor of astronomy. We have visited him in La Palma, off the coast of Tenerife and Cape Town, where he was leading important projects. He and Anne have twin sons. It was good to see them and catch up on their travels and activities.  Anne is a scientific programmer and they met when Philip went to NASA. She is an American from Dublin, Pennsylvania. We have an invitation to visit them in Oxford.

I had my second vitrectomy on Monday afternoon. It went well. I was not so heavily anaesthetised this time and conversed a little with the surgeon. During cataract surgery one is conscious all the time and can make conversation with the surgeon's team. I am now washing my hands more times than Lady Macbeth in order to carry out the regime of eye drops. I have antibiotics four times a day for a week and anti-inflammatory drops four times a day for four weeks. When I go out I wear dark glasses. The pupil of the left eye is still a little dilated, making the vision fuzzy.

I have some emails to which I must reply. One is from my cousin in Melbourne, one from an old school friend and the other from my friend Adele. She and I met in Kingston, NY in 1974. Our respective husbands were both assigned to the IBM plant in that little town in the foothills of the Catskill mountains. We would have got on well together however we had met and have been firm friends ever since. Adele separated from her husband in 1976 and has not  married again. She has come close to it twice but remains single. At my daughter's funeral my three oldest friends were present; one from schooldays, one from civil service days, one from IBM assignment days. I value them all.

The weather is getting warmer. It has been very cold during our absence in France. I left the warm quilt on our bed and am glad that I did. I think that I shall change it next week. Tomorrow is chores day; ironing and polishing the silver. My dining room is going to be complete sometime in the summer. I am looking for a little table for the living room and for lamps for the dining room. There remains one room, the smallest (or smaller) bedroom, that needs a new oak floor. Dan uses it as a study/ office. It still has the rather horrid carpet that was there when we bought the flat. This, too, will come to pass. Patience.

Just another Tuesday

There was sun today, although the wind has a bitter edge to it. I went to the nursing home and the old man was pleased to see me. He ate a whole custard tart and a lot of small pieces of chocolate. He managed to upset his tea and it went into his bed. A repair I requested has been done but it seems that the door catch will be replaced with something else. A young carer, one of the Eastern European men, is annoyed because he feels that he and his colleagues are being blamed for the damage. I reassured him and told him that my engineer husband thinks that it was not installed properly when the new wing was built. I have complained many times about the handyman.

Dan played petanque at Alresford as he usually does on Tuesday afternoon. It is a pleasant little town and the players are an agreeable lot. I am not interested in sport although I enjoy walking. After the nursing home I walked home again, visiting various shops on the way. I am always looking for bargains for my two Christmas shoeboxes. In recent years I have become disillusioned with some charities; I do not see why salaries have to be so large. Watching the Camila Batmanghelidjh's "torrent of verbal ectoplasm" when she and Yentob appeared before the Commons public administration committee further increased my cynicism.

I do help out in a charity shop as I like to feel useful. I have been criticised for giving to the shoebox appeal but I shall continue to do it. I shall never have any grandchildren so I might as well give two stranger children a little happiness at Christmas. It is not a time of year that I like.

A friend called in with worktop samples. Our gas hob has a fault now and my husband, who is the cook, is thinking of replacing it with an induction hob. This will mean a new worktop. We may also have dining room at last.  We have used that room as a second bedroom ever since we bought this flat. We moved from a large house and left three rooms of furniture behind but brought a lot with us. Dan's father and his good, kind, truly Christian second wife used to stay at Christmas along with our daughter. Those were happy times because Katy adored her step-grandma and her affection was returned. Darling Elizabeth died in September 2014 and now Katy is gone too. Father-in-law is ninety-six and increasingly frail, although fairly compos mentis.  

I have to work in the charity shop tomorrow. I suppose that I do not have to do it; I am a volunteer. It is the second charity shop that I have volunteered at. This one belongs to a big charity and the other one supports the local hospice. I enjoy the work on the whole and like most of the customers. The one thing that can spoil the day and make me reluctant to continue is the problem of getting on with some of the other volunteers. I try to get on with everyone and think it reasonable that, as we are all working to the same end, that people will try to get on with me. Not always the case.  There are the workplace bullies, the ultracrepidarian bletherskites and the just plain miserable. The manager, too, can be very difficult.

So why do I do it? As I said, I want to do something useful. I also enjoy seeing people get bargains. When an old lady finds a good-quality cardigan, new with its tags, on the £2 rail, I am as pleased as she is. When a mother comes in to find clothes for her son for cub camp I enjoy helping her search the rails for waterproofs and T-shirts. When a commuter walking up to the statin early in the morning sees an interesting item in the window and telephones to ask us to put the item by until Saturday, I hasten to do so. I am happy to bring things to the window and hold them up for customers who cannot get into the shop because of limited mobility. I sympathise when a customer tries something on and finds that it is not quite right.  When our daughter died we gave most of her things to the shop and they raised a great deal of money. When the shop was broken into two weeks ago it was heart-warming to see how people dug into their pockets and purses to fill up the collection box again. It is worthwhile, if only one can put up with other people's idiosyncrasies. I shall continue to work there for as long as my eyes can manage the till.

Then what?