Re-inventing the wheel

Re-inventing the wheel

So. Haven’t been on here for so long…

Sometimes life gets in the way, and often I haven’t anything to say.

Spent ages trying to find a solution to keep husband warm in the car, when sitting in for his break times at work, without the engine running. Mucho research on heated gilets, seat pads, blankets with separate rechargeable battery packs. All of them had reviews that were less than great, and unfortunately we are both likely to complain, at least to each other. Neither of us are that great at going with the flow. But at this stage of our lives, unless we each have a personality transplant, that isn’t going to change, sadly.

Turns out the solution is a hot water bottle! Yes, I know! It works great, and nowt to go wrong with it, bar the obvious bursting.

And it ocurrs to me how many times I make my life more complicated, when it really doesn’t need to be. I’m a bit of a Luddite, and when I’m forced to use technology, if there is a way of bodgering it up, I probably will. So it makes sense to avoid the technology when there isn’t any need. Oh the irony of writing this on a blog! I can manage that, to be fair.

So, lesson to self. Keep it Simple Stupid! (Not my idea, but a good one).

Simple pleasures seem to be best, first coffee of the day, watching the blue tits at the feeder, seeing some squirrel action outside.

So I’m going to try not to complicate things unnecessarily. Which actually fits quite nicely into decluttering clothes etc. I’d like to get to a point where I have much less stuff. Sometimes, I don’t know what I’ve actually got, because stuff is packed away, in rather too many different sizes.

Lets see how it goes. Any thoughts?

Life after covid

Perhaps the title is optimistic. Probably it would be more accurate to say ‘life when covid is still around, but seems to be something we are more able to live with, after numerous vaccinations’.

I hadn’t appreciated how many good things are in my life, until some of them weren’t possible during lock downs.I sorely missed my daughter, teaching some distance away, who I couldn’t see, but her pupils could.

I appreciate I and my immediate family got through pretty much unscathed, and my heart goes out to people who were much more affected by it than I. Losing loved ones, being unable to visit elderly relatives in hospital, to say goodbye, all while various members of government were flouting rules set by them.

It shouldn’t have taken a global pandemic to make me more appreciative of the good stuff, but it appears it did. I’m so grateful for my friends, family, being able to meet for book group, go to hobby groups, play in my band.

I hope I remain appreciative, and I will make renewed efforts to complete a gratitude diary of three things I am grateful for every day.

Letting the good land, in challenging times

Letting the good land, is a phrase I came across recently, when using my Calm app. It’s counting your blessings by any other name really. Some people journal these things, and I admit, I do feel more positive when I do, but it’s a matter of prioritising it. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. But if I do, it becomes one of those virtuous circles, so worth doing.

I am aware, like most of us, how much my life has been limited by the pandemic. Missing my book group, the knitting group, my music band, and I never thought I would say I would miss the gym (even though that’s mostly my waistline). But humans are social beings, and even the gym involved human interaction along with physical effort.

So when I’d stopped internally whining about it, I actually had a proper think. Like most people, I thought it would be over by now. By over, I mean the main restrictions. I realise many people have lost loved ones, and got long covid, lost jobs and businesses and the effects will roll on for many years. But somewhere in my head, I thought that ‘real life’ would resume before now.

That hasn’t happened. Because I am a certain age, from a time when we didn’t do computers at school, the zoom age seems a little bit sci-fi. But hey, I’ve given it a go, and emboldened by the experience, we are now knitting on zoom, a group spread throughout the country, who got together through a charity knitting project and didn’t know each other before. I am now doing yoga via zoom, and we are book clubbing very soon!

But is it the same? I hear you ask! No, it isn’t, but it’s better than nothing, which was the alternative. When I stopped internally fighting, and metaphorically stamping my feet because I was frustrated I couldn’t DO things, these very things became possible with a bit of mental adjustment. And that reminded me of the book, the Tao of Pooh, the story of Tao principles told through Winnie the Pooh. When you stop fighting situations so hard, things become easier.

Life’s weird coincidences…

Apparently Michael McIntyre started Send to All in 2014. This involved, originally, picking on a random member of the audience, stealing their phone, and sending a weird text to everyone in it, and reading out the responses. Now, I don’t know if Michael McIntyre invented this, but I suspect and was witness to something very similar to it. Back in about 2012 a friend and I attended a comedy gig in the a local hotel The compere was Tinky Winky, but in civvies. Very funny slightly edgy comedian was on. Suddenly there was a phone ringing, off stage. But not in the audience, behind the stage, where the disco were getting ready to start when the comedy had finished. Comedian went back, got the offending phone, and rang someone at random, whilst embarrassed looking chap stood next to him. Told the woman on the other end that he had kidnapped her father, as by this time, he had established that she was his daughter. Of course, drink had been taken and we all laughed like drains. Imagine about a hundred people laughing, drunkenly. Woman on phone not phased at all. In fact said, “Oh, have you?!” sounding very unconcerned. Cue much speculation about whether it was a set up as she was so nonchalant.

So, mostly, the story would end here, and we would never know. But I DO know! Only after a few dates with my dearly beloved did I find out that he was daft-bloke-with-phone-on! And it was real! The only reason we ended up talking about it, was the Tinky Winky connection. You know when you go on dates and try to pretend your’re a nice normal human being, and you’re hiding the crazy…? (We’re married now, so no need to keep up the pretence fortunately ). We were talking about the kids watching teletubbies, and then the Tinky Winky connection was made. Otherwise it may never have come up, or taken years longer! I would probably, in some weird little corner of my brain, wondered about it, at 3am on an insomniac Wednesday morning.

And somewhere in the world, there is a talented, possibly slightly bitter comedian, who is quite reasonably, maybe, claiming that he did the more confrontational version of Send to All, before Michael did.

Things I have learned this year

So, no-one could have predicted how 2020 would turn out. Very odd, and sad, and frightening for many people. Lots of losses. Loss of life, and a diminished capacity to say goodbye, and celebrate the life of those people, and a loss of events/memories. Births, weddings, significant birthdays. The list goes on.

But hopefully, the we are at the beginning of the end, with vaccines being rolled out. Maybe some more lockdowns, but with the light at the end of the tunnel in view.

But I have learned some good things, and I don’t claim these are original things, before that appears in the comments!

The ability to go to my allotment was a lifeline, and I appreciate this comes from a position of privilege. .

My friends, always important to me, became more appreciated, and I felt that coming back to me too.

I appreciated how much I enjoyed the previously taken for granted getting a cup of coffee in town, and sitting with a book for a bit. Or a natter with a friend, with coffee, and ideally a piece of cake.

I miss playing the drum in my band, and doing gigs at wedding and old folks homes.

I miss my book group, even though we are still reading the books, it’s not the same!

Or even going to the gym, which I have always regarded as a chore, and only done because it prevents my backside becoming too big to get through the hatch to the attic.

I have had cards sent, via normal mail, and sent little presents to show I was thinking about people. All things that probably wouldn’t have happened normally.

Neighbours have looked out for one another more, making sure the shielding had what they needed, and were ok.

So, my friends, I love you all, and appreciate you more than ever. I just don’t tell you enough. I’m telling you now, and I’m sorry it’s taken such extreme circumstances to do it.

Here’s hoping for a better, and kinder 2021.

The power of thank you

The other day I received a hand-written thank you card. I had been thanked by messenger already, so I actually wasn’t expecting it, complete with the autographs of the small children concerned. It was a lovely thing, and I was really pleased by it.

Is it a sign of the times that we are surprised by this sort of thing? If someone has actually said thank you, in some form, I’m not bothered by the absence of a ‘formal’ follow up, but oftentimes neither happens. It makes me a tad vexed when I linger to hold a door open for someone, and they sail through it without comment. Indeed, I have been known to passive-agressively call ‘you’re welcome’ after them. It’s no wonder children don’t always use please and thank you when the parents don’t.

And it makes such a difference. Years ago a former head of a well-known bank was telling me of his early years brought up in a Barnardo’s home, where he very quickly learnt that being polite and not causing trouble made his life better. Honey catches more flies than vinegar. I know some lovely well mannered children who are only vaguely connected to us who end up with Christmas presents because of this.

And it’s about validation. We all want to feel appreciated, that we have made a small contribution to the world that day. It doesn’t hurt to say thank you. As I get older I try to be better at this, and thanking people for kindnesses in times past, or telling them why I appreciate them.

I’ve never had less than a positive result from it. Maybe we should all try to do it more?

Things to learn from an allotment…

Haven’t blogged in forever, and found this title, in draft form.

I love our allotment. Despite pretty much being in the middle of the city, it really doesn’t feel like that. It helps that no one has any electric. If you want to boil a kettle, you do it on a gas camping stove, or maybe your woodburner. People may have radios, but I’ve never heard one. I suspect that like me, they’ve never ended up bringing a radio from home because that would somehow miss the point. If you can’t, or don’t want to, jet off to a remote island for the peace and a different pace of life, then consider an allotment. Chances are your mobile signal will be rubbish, which stops all the facebooking. So life slows down, for a bit, and goes back to simpler times.

We inherited a couple of apple trees, raspberries and gooseberries, and rhubarb, so they come through whatever. Other vegetables are trial and error, some more successful than others, but as time goes on, we learn more, from experience, reading and that of other people. It’s very satisfying, making something from your own growing. Home grown apple crumble anyone? There’s something very grounding about working in the soil, and producing albeit a small amount of food for yourself.

When I’ve been there a couple of hours, in my scruffy gear, with no access to a mirror, or technology, I feel like I’ve had a detox from normal life. I come back feeling chilled, relaxed, ready to have another go at life. I even find myself driving away from there more slowly. I imagine people feel like that after gardening, but with an allotment you have to get to it first, and I find my mindset shifting on the way there.

So, an allotment teaches you to go back to basics. Have a simpler way of life, even for a short time. Do things more slowly. It gives you thinking time, without real life noise, both real and technological. And those have to be good things.

 

 

Everyday heroes

There are some people whose getting up every day and carrying on with a normal life fills me with absolute admiration. If you believe in the magic power of three, it was the realisation recently that I had come across, or knew , three people in this situation that inspired me to get to my keyboard. I don’t blog as often as I should, but I believe that I should only write when I have something to say (unlike in my youth). I’ll start from the last one, as this is where my lightbulb moment came in.

I recently spent a week at a Northern Caravan Park. I’m not going to name it, as frankly it doesn’t deserve the publicity. (Somewhat bitter about being told there was wi-fi, taking three teenagers on the back of this, and finding it unusable. Also, the existence of a courtesy bus, that ran so infrequently it was practically useless). And the rude staff….

On one of the nights at the club-house we had a ventriloquist. Very talented, and very funny. He had recently got into the final of one of the reality talent shows, only to fail at the last hurdle. How hard must that be, to be so near to the ‘big time’, and then having to go back to the northern caravan club circuit, but doing it with good cheer, and good grace. I really hope it works out for him, in the end, and he goes onto greater things.

The second is someone who has a business growing and delivering organic veg in the midlands.( * If anyone wants details of a veg delivery within a one hour radius of Telford, let me know, and I’ll pass on the details).  Himself and his wife started the business together a few years ago. Sadly his wife was very ill for a few years, and later died, many years before her time. The last time he delivered he said he was finding it hard, because it would have been her birthday. He carried on in very difficult circumstances, doing the work of two people at least. He said he had no choice. I believe many people would have taken to bed with a large bottle of vodka, so not doing that makes him a hero in my book. And makes my everyday moans, about teenagers, and wi-fi, and being a single parent very trivial by comparison.

The last one, or the first, is certainly not the least. A very good friend of mine has a life-story that you would believe was fantasy if you had not been there to know it was true. Unbelievable things have happened to her, and her family, and yet she carries on, cheerfully, being a fantastic mother to her kids and holding down a full time job. I am in awe of her. She knows who she is.

Makes me grateful for my family, my friends, my job and my life.

My name is Parsley, and I’m a parking meanie….

Ok. So I don’t know if this is a peculiarly British thing,  but regardless, I like it. It’s a bit about rebellion. And a bit about hating to pay to park. I don’t know why I hate to pay so much. I think it’s to do with going shopping, putting money into the economy and then being stung for parking on top. Our local parking seems to be more expensive than many other parts of the country I have visited, and is doubly annoying because we don’t live in an affluent area. But other people must feel like me, as many times when I go to the machine to get my ticket, people have stuck their unexpired tickets back on the machine for people to use. It always makes me smile, and if I have an hour left, I do the same. It will be a sad day when all machines put your car reg no, and I can’t do this any more!