This is the end

So sang Adele at the beginning of Skyfall, the theme to the Bond movie of the same name. But I’m going to up the culture stakes, leave Scotland and hop over to Paris with:

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done”.

I’m aware that it isn’t proportionate to compare my current predicament with that of Sydney Carton in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. For one thing,  Carton's cities are London and Paris. Mine are Littlecote and Weare. Nevertheless, I’m running with Dickens alongside Adele, for no other reason than, as I’ve said before, it’s my blo-og and I’ll write what I want to.

Not for much longer.

The wind beneath my wings

Funny old blog this one. I had the urge to write and started several anecdotes to see which one appealed enough for me to elaborate further. I couldn’t choose between them so you’ve got the lot. Sorry.

The Living Years
I’m still sorting through Mum and Dad’s belongings, trying to decide what to keep, what to chuck and what to give to the hospice charity shop. Today I was tackling the last of their scrapbooks and photo albums. Most stuff I’m happy not to keep; a few items I’ve placed on the to-be-decided pile. I know I won’t look at most of it again, but I can’t yet bring myself to part with everything. One such item is a letter I wrote to Dad when I was five and he was away from home. Where he was isn’t important, neither was what I wrote (although the spelling, grammar and punctuation are impressive for such a wee bairn). It was the fact that he’d kept it, in his ‘special’ scrapbook. I never knew that. He died 14th March 2015, as undemonstrative as ever, apart from when he squeezed my arm on the 13th.

Arson and Ashes

The business is finished. The deed is done. The curtain has closed. 

Almost.

Mum is back home with Dad and her parents, not without a couple of rants from me of which they would have approved.

Yet another funeral

No. Not THAT one. I’m talking about the funeral yesterday of my uncle-in-law, Hubby’s dad’s brother, who was also his Godfather. 

We were at the wake after the service when a friend texted me to say that doctors were concerned for Lilibet’s health. I thought my sister might have more information for various reasons, so I texted her, to which she responded: “She’s at the departure gate waiting for the final call.” Gee thanks, Sis, for the aviation analogy!

My family and other dissolute, idle bear-baiters

Some years ago, Dad’s sister showed me how far she’d got with our family tree. She’d done brilliantly as it was all pre-Ancesty.com. She’d delved into church records, archived newspapers, and local record offices until she was permanently covered in dust. She got one branch back to 1745, when John Brooks (my maiden name is Brooks) married in a tiny village on the Somerset-Dorset border. I later found a local ‘census’ that revealed he was born in about 1715. 

Other than ‘John Brooks’, all names have been changed to respect the extended family’s privacy.

I took over the research and was having fun doing all the detective work and patting myself on the back because of the progress I was making, until a friend of mine said she was also doing her family tree and had found a possible connection to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s private physician, and another to one of the key figures in the Salem witch trials. 

The incredible lightness of being

The title of the 1984 novel by Milan Kundera was actually The unbearable lightness of being, but I prefer my version, which I hope will be self-explanatory later. I’ve wanted to use such a title for one of my blogs for ages, and I’ve just found the excuse or hook, even if it’s a little contrived.

The story centres on two women, two men and a dog in the late 1960s and early 1970s, incorporating the1968 'Prague Spring' when Czechoslovakia was invaded by Russia … These guys just can’t break the habit! The central character is Tomáš, a womanizer who “considers sex and love to be distinct entities: he has sex with many women but loves only his wife, Tereza. He sees no contradiction between these two positions”, (per Wiki).

Planes, Horses and Automobiles

Our Icelandic holiday has had some transportation issues.

The first mode to rear its ugly head – and they don’t come much uglier – was flying. Yes, we flew to Iceland and, surprise, surprise, we flew back, much to the consternation of my email inbox, which must now contain every possible perm and com of: You didn’t fly did you; I trust you didn’t fly; Please tell me you didn’t fly; and You did what?

My conscience however is clear. This is the first time I’ve flown since January 2020 (thank you, Covid) and I won’t be flying again until at least 2024. The only reason I do fly is because Hubby wants to, and as he does loads-a stuff he doesn’t want to that I want to, we give and take and compromise, a concept that is alien to the wokerati, Remainers and the aviation industry.

Nine lives later

When one goes on holiday at my time of life (think hot flushes and temper tantrums), one looks to relax in beautiful, fascinating and safe environments. One does not expect to spend an entire day in a state of stomach-churning anxiety, wishing one had packed Diazepam as well as Stugeron.

I think I'm in love

So many to choose from, but only one made the grade.

Firstly, it wasn’t the Icelandic tour guide with the biggest put-you-off-your-puffin builder’s bum I’ve seen in a long while. He needs to forgo carbs in a hurry if he wants to keep his job plodding up black (can I say that?) sandy cliffs with even more overweight tourists in his wake (not me and Hubby, I hasten to add).

And what about those puffins, eh? As if they couldn’t get any cuter, I learned (from the builder’s bum) that they don’t sit on their eggs; they tuck them under their wing to keep them warm. So much more heart-string-plucking than a Mills & Boon nausea-fest. But I’m not in love with puffins.

An embarrassing puffin-watch

Iceland’s a funny place. Parts of it remind me of the Lake District, others the Somerset Levels and the Mendips. Then there are landscapes that wouldn’t look out of place in a Mad Max movie or even Pirates of the Caribbean. (Johnny Depp won! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

But the movie that comes to mind the most is Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds: oyster catchers, snipes, red shanks, kittiwakes, arctic terns, golden plovers, fulmers, whimbrels, knots. We saw them all. But we didn’t see any boobies.

Golliwoggs, and all that jazz

You might think it a tad premature – I haven’t even applied for probate yet – but we (me, Sis and Bro) have decided to put Mum and Dad’s bungalow on the market. Yes, Dear Reader, at the age of somewhere between 49 and 79, I am an orphan.

If Carlsberg did funerals …

… it would probably have been the best funeral in the world. I would have opened with, “This was not just a funeral, it was an M&S funeral,” but M&S are in my bad books – more later.

I wasn’t going to blog about this – Mum’s funeral – bit personal, bit raw, but honestly, everyone told me it was a stonking occasion so I just had to share. OK maybe no one used the word ‘stonking’ but they would have agreed with me if I’d said it.

First of all, the weather co-operated. Secondly, half the family recovered from Covid just in time. The readings were from the Authorised Version of the Bible and the C of E Traditional Psalter. Pure poetry. More family made long journeys than I had anticipated. Family members presided, read, eulogised, pallbeared, processed and took honorary bows. I over-catered at the pre-funeral lunch and then again at the wake, which is fine; my worst nightmare is running out of food. The flowers were glorious. The open bar at the wake went down well – surprise, surprise. And I got my hair looking nice.

Monty Python strikes again

I’ve just read about the scandal at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, where over 200 babies and nine mothers died and others were left with appalling injuries and mental trauma. These statistics undoubtedly understate the true picture nationwide.

I’m not the first person to comment that these mummies, bairns and their families were victims of a Modern Midwifery Mantra that ‘natural childbirth is best’ i.e. you go against Mother Nature at your peril. However, it’s more than a mantra; it’s an obsession – an obsession with an unproven theory, a fad. Worse. It’s a moral crusade to teach the world that health professionals and their cronies know best, and the rest of us are ignorant if not morally bereft. They unquestionably believe that experiencing natural childbirth in all its glories (and goriness?) is best for bonding. Mums and dads don’t know that because they haven’t been on the courses, read the books, aren’t immersed in ‘the culture’ so they won’t understand. Never fear. Midwives are here to rescue the uninitiated. Show them the light. Hand them the Holy Grail.

Silver Linings

I could have entitled this blog “God moves in mysterious ways” but I thought the “G” word might offend some people. So I’ll stick with “Ag”, i.e. silver, a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin argentum), a soft, white, lustrous transition metal exhibiting the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. Now you know. (Thanks, Wiki.)

You might recall that last August I had my shoulder bionic-ed (a.k.a. torn rotator cuff sorted), which necessitated slings, opiates (yum yum) and not driving for eight weeks (not so yum yum). All in all, it was a procedure full of pain, angst, inconvenience and constipation, the downside (or cloud) of the opiates, but one upshot (or silver lining) was that Hubby learned how to make flapjacks, although he never got the hang of the difference between whisking and folding for a sponge cake.

It's Valentine's Day, but ...

Despite being sandwiched between National Tortellini Day (Celiacs look away now) on February 13th and, ironically, Singles Awareness Day on February 15th, Valentine’s Day has a much higher profile. I’m not making this stuff up – see What day is it?

The identity of the Saint who inspired this most hallowed occasion in our annual calendar is uncertain. One theory is that he died in Rome in the 3rd century (AD) and is the patron saint of lovers, epileptics, and beekeepers. Honest! Another claim to the fame is a Roman priest and physician who was martyred during the persecution of Christians by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus in about 270 AD. According to legend, St. Valentine signed a letter “from your Valentine” to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended and healed from blindness. Another says Valentine defied the emperor’s orders and secretly married couples to spare the husbands from war. 

Update on the baby-vomit

Yesterday I blogged about the yukky smell in my kitchen that I eventually worked out wasn’t rancid baby-vomit but a pint of double cream that had spilled into the reservoir behind and under the integrated fridge, inaccessible by definition.

The idea of a fridge reservoir is to catch the condensation that forms at the back of the fridge, which is then evaporated by a heating element so there is never any need to empty or clean it. And the idea of one whole pint of double cream heading into the reservoir, along with God-knows-how-much condensation, was quite a queasy thought.

Today's highlight was a funeral

Today didn’t start at all well. 

Coming down the stairs, I could smell what I can only describe as three-day-old baby vomit, bucketfuls of it. Bins need emptying, thought I. No they didn’t. Dishes need washing then. There were indeed a few in the sink, but only vegetably stuff from the previous evening. Something off in the fridge? Getting close. 

Welcome Back and Merry Xmas to my mojo

Some aspects of the festive season have turned me off for the longest time:

• The pressure to buy imaginative gifts when all I can think of are socks and scarves;
• The struggle to suggest to rellies what I’d like for Xmas and who are never satisfied when I say, Oh just a bottle of gin will be fine. (Although, one can never have too many earrings.)
• Mistletoe that has to be replaced every few days … hmmm, is that a metaphor?
• Glitter and pine needles everywhere that even my ridiculously expensive Dyson can’t keep on top of. (Ugh – preposition at the end, sorry);
• Xmas cards that are bad for the planet. All hail, JacquieLawson.com!
• Squeezing into too-tight sparkly clothes that I wear just once a year. Thank goodness for Bridget Jones’ knickers.

Sex and the City

This post is my raunchiest yet (for me, that’s not difficult) and written for the Girlies. So, Gents, if talk of fashion, make-up, bitching and sex is a real turn-off for you, look away now.

When SATC first hit our screens, I sniffily avoided it. I’d read the hype and decided it was nothing but cheap porn. What persuaded me to get off my prudish high horse and give it a try was the realisation that one of its pivotal characters was Carrie Bradshaw’s love-interest (one of her many, that is) Big, played by Chris Noth.

Be still my beating heart.

Little things mean a lot

There’s something relaxing, bordering on the therapeutic, watching a soufflé rise: whether it’s smug satisfaction at having made it; anticipation as to how scrummy it’ll taste; maybe respect for the science behind the phenomenon; or just childish wonderment at the tantalising transformation from slop huddled in a dish to the master of all that it surveys.