Toes

I've lived in this house for thirty years, so I can feel my way around it in the dark, knowing exactly where I am. I've had to do so when sneaking in after a late night, leaving very early in the morning before dawn for work or (more likely) getting up for a pee. Or rather, I used to be able to find my way around in the dark. Over the last three months I've had at least four painful mis-steps when walking around with my eyes closed. Twice I've miscounted the number of stairs so that I've stumbled down the last one, crashing & crushing onto my feet. Twice I've stubbed my toe on the bedfoot, and two nights ago I kicked a chair very hard. It hurt.

As a result, my toenails are a complete mess, variously chipped, bruised and broken. One big-toe nail is so split that I've had to use varnish on it. At least that disguises the purple-black bloody stains underneath. I don't really care about their appearance, as they still work. Moonface doesn't like the way they look, but then she's always thought that I've got ugly feet.

On the plus side, this morning as I was filing the nail-splinters down to stop my socks from ripping, I managed to touch my left toes to my forehead. I haven't tried that for years!

:o)

Counting the days

Since I started taking Lisinopril for my high blood pressure, over a year ago, I have become very aware of how the days are measured out by the calendar packs of pills by my bedside. From the fresh packet every fortnight the ritual of taking one every morning is reflected in the growing number of empty bubbles as the days go by.

Somehow this has given me a real sensation of time going by, much more immediate than is felt in the daily newspaper or change of location on a calendar. In itself this is ironic, because I hope that by taking these pharmaceutical reminders of time and mortality I am in fact improving my chances of reaching a very ripe old age. That's ripe as in mature, not ripe as is pungent.

;o)

Microwaves

Our microwave died yesterday evening.
No more hot muesli this morning, and my coffee has to be heated over the gas stove.

We've had it since 1983, so it was nearly 28 years old. We could tell by the publication date of the cookery book which accompanied it and by the tasteful beige and brown colours it sported. Thank you, Toshiba, I'll be surprised if the next one lasts as long.

So this morning Moonface and i trotted down to Nailsea Electrical to buy another, hummed and hawed a few minutes, dithered a little, then bought a replacement. I borrowed a sack-truck to carry it home, then over the next hour or so I pulled out the old Tosh from the cupboard it has been sitting in for 25 years and replaced it with the new shiny new powerful microwave oven.

Hooray!
Hot muesli in the morning!

:o)

The Way Through the Woods

Thinking about the renascence of nature exemplified by the way our garden path had become overgrown by weeds and accretions of rich black soil, I was reminded of this poem. Of course, this is set in springtime, but there is also that sense of combined hope and melancholy within it.

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods….
But there is no road through the woods.

Rudyard Kipling, 1906.

:o)

Clearing up

I don't do gardening.
I may mow the lawn or pick up odd lumps of cement that surface in the flower-beds from building works gone by, but generally I don't garden.

But today I cleared up the dead growth from the path leading to our front door, the dead flowers that were killed in the recent frosts and which have been lying there, blackening and giving silent reproach every time I walk by. Moonface, chief gardener, has been resistant to me clearing the path because she thinks it looks pretty when overgrown; so I waited until she's returned the right tool from the allotment, and had gone out for a while. Oh, it was satisfying to get rid of all that messy dead stuff and start to make it look somewhat tidier.

Sometime, I'll get around to hacking out some of the Lady's Mantle that is slowly forcing apart the flagstones in our back garden. That's a strange plant. I remember that when I was a child of five or so, my mother was quite excited by finding small growths of the stuff on the railway embankment near home as it was so rare. Perhaps that's because we were in the North, and winters were colder then. In our garden, it's a definite unruly weed.

Clearing the dead foliage from the front path gave me a curious sense of optimism in this cold grey time of year. Hacking the fronds away, I exposed astounding deposits of rich black soil which have magically accumulated over the last coupe of years and which would have acted as seed-beds for yet more plants if I hadn't cleared it away. I could see that in spite of man's imposition of brick and concrete, Gaia is slowly yet continually fighting back and how if left unattended, our cities would revert sooner rather than later. Like the Roman cities buried under English fields, our modern world would soon be covered and reborn as something different.

We are getting closer to the Solstice again.

:o)

Bench

Sorry about that, Lucy.




we were dancing, the room was hot and so were we, so someone had opened the window to let some air in. Once we had cooled down, it had to be shut again. The sash window wouldn't slide shut from the inside, so someone had to go outside to push it up. That was me. Mission accomplished, I turned to jump off the bench and promptly fell through the slats. Umm. As I was so relaxed by a tiny glass of red wine I didn't feel any pain from the scrape on my elbow, but I think that Matt may have some bench-mending to do. I think it was rotten anyway.

Sorry again, Lucy. And it was a great party.

:o/

:o)

Long

Last night marked the end of summer.

Moonface and I went for a light meal with Neil, then on to a musical evening / Dave's 4oth birthday party at the Folkhouse. I wore jeans for the first time since the end of May, when the weather warmed up. Since then I haven't worn long trousers except when I've been in a suit or away on business. I've no idea why I prefer shorts or cut-offs: they just seem more practical and more comfortable to me. It must by my hardy upbringing, since my parents have film of me as a boy wearing regulation school shorts in the snow.

It were grim up North.

The evening bash itself was fun but rather restrained. Although Ro & Cedar played bouncing music that I'd have liked to dance to, the arrangement of chairs and tables meant that the atmosphere just wasn't right. It seemed more like a polite concert rather than a gig so Moonface & I walked home before the last band played. The birthday cakes were excellent, though. Thank you, Sophie's mum.

:o)

Arithmetic on the Frontier

Rudyard Kipling, 1886.

Not one of his better poems by any means, but it's apposite this week.

RIP Andrew.

A great and glorious thing it is

To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe--
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villainous saltpetre!"
And after--ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station--
A canter down some dark defile--
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail--
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares--shoot straight who can--
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.

The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap--alas! as we are dear.

:-(

Rips

While dressing this morning I found a tear in the seat of my favourite shorts. That's two pairs I've worn out this summer so I guess I'll have to buy some more.

It's good to actually wear clothes until they start falling apart rather than just becoming bored by them, but it does mean that there is effort involved in the forced replacement. And I hate clothes shopping.

:o(

Fluoride

I've just returned from the dentist where I had a root canal cleaned & filled, so I'm unable to speak properly and cannot make the work calls I should be doing.

With my mouth full of anaesthetic, one of the things which I bitterly regret about being born when I was, is the poor state of my teeth. Brought up in the 1950's in a soft-water area, it was before the days of water fluoridation and fluoride toothpaste so as a child I suffered lots of fillings and a few lost teeth. The poor post-war diet didn't help, either. My children seem to have fared much better, with very few fillings at all inspite of Tom's disregard for dental hygiene.

It's expensive, too, is having bad teeth. Each major treatment seems to be hundreds of pounds, and the NHS doesn't seem interested in this aspect of health, as there are few dentists who take NHS patients. At least the fillings are white, my dentist seems pretty good, and I'm in a much better state than many of my contempories.

:o(

Googled

I idly Googled someone's name today, the friend of a friend. I was thoroughly told off for doing so, as it was none of my business, I didn't personally know the person whose name I searched upon, and I foolishly let my own chum know that I done so. It was amazingly easy to find some basic information in a minute or so, however. Sorry, D, but he had admitted lying.

Chastened, I Googled myself for the first time in a year of so, and was quite shocked. I'm there on the internet, with a hundred or so real results and half my professional life visible. I seem to have written a fair number of comments to (mainly technical) blogs and a few letters to newspapers; this all on top of my holding website, my current employer and the presentation I made in France last year. There are no videos, however, which is just as well.

So much for anonymity.
Still, with any luck it may help me find a new job more easily. (If in fact one is needed)

:o/

Ooh - a New Computer!

Since Moonface's laptop was stolen from her luggage on her trip overseas, we needed to replace it. She reckons that if she can get the receipt for a new one in with her expenses,it might be the easiest way of ensuring that the College (which insisted that she take one) would pay for the replacement.

So, on Saturday, we dashed out in the morning to that vile hive of consumer worship, the Mall, and bought the little netbook upon which I am typing this. It's the first proper typing I've done with the new machine, and it seems fine, possibly better to type upon than my large Dell.

So, what have we bought? It's small, it's a Samsung NC10, it seems to do everything that we will want include connecting to the web - so it looks good so far. And it fits into Moonface's handbag so she can take it to work for use when she's hiding outside her office to ensure that she can get some work done without interruption. And it was not too expensive, either, so that if the expenses claim is rejected, we won't be faced with a horrendous bill.


:o)

Autumn

I find that there's something reassuringly primeval about this time of year with the dead leaves having completely fallen from the trees, and lying piles into brown decaying heaps in the gutters before the street-sweepers come to remove them. Somehow, it feels as if nature is proving that she could take over again if man were to disappear and that our concrete and asphalt could be covered completely in a matter of years.

It's a mournful time of year. This year, there isn't even a good summer to reminisce about, yet the days are cold and the evenings long. And while reflecting upon mankind's place in the world, autumn is the time to realise that we're only a blip on the screen, here only for a brief moment and then gone the way of all the other species - I seem to remember that most species only have a life of a million or so years, so we are a good way into our communal oblivion even if we don't continue to hasten our doom by causing global warming, atmospheric poisoning or some such catastrophe.
Somehow, I don't mind. Gaia will manage without us.


:0/

Maisy

Is posting these pictures morbid or a lapse of taste?

Maisy the cat died yesterday.

As I wrote in this blog a month or so ago, she had been getting steadily - or unsteadily, rather - weaker as the weeks passed. She eats well, but has become thinner and thinner, with hardly any flesh covering her bones. In spite of her coat of fine fur, when we stroked her her bones were individually identifiable by our fingers, and she wobbled upon her hind legs.

I had had my first dental appointment for three years in the early afternoon. Upon my return I started to make myself some tea, then at Maisy's persistent whining, I fed her with half a tin of catfood, placing it in a bowl outside in the shade. A few minutes later, back at my desk, I felt suddenly faint and woozy for a couple of seconds (I have no idea why; perhaps I should go the doctors') so I walked over to the window to clear my head. Looking down into the garden, Maisy was lying on her side on the grass, half-way between her bowl and her daytime retreat on the patio. She didn't move, so I went down into the garden to look at her. Her eyes were open, her body warm but stiffening. Poor thing.



After Moonface & Tommo returned from work, we buried her behind a bush.
We had told Porks to expect the bad news, so she wasn't too upset.
Today, I cancelled the vet's appointment I had made a few hours before Maisy's death, to see how she was.


:o(

Towards the End

One of our cats look as if she is slowly dying, as she is hardly eating, is wasting away and spends time on a seat in the garden, doing nothing, not moving to protect herself from the drizzle, not watching the pigeons when they land upon the lawn in front of her. She is skinny and scabby, and looks twice her age.



Kate Clanchy (in her Slattern volume) says it best:

Towards the End.

A wrecked street-cat got up
and shadowed us, came home
and sat an hour on your lap
in the laundry cupboard.

You counted the lice
that massed on her shoulders,
dispassionate, calm
as a man from the census.

We made her live for a while,
had her sprayed and injected,
swaddled her stiff in a towel
as a mummy;

forced milky drugs
through her shut wax mouth.
You stroked her vellum throat
with one finger, put her shaking

and small in my arms as a bird.
She pushed out a paw
as if promising something.
We smiled when she purred.

And woke in the night
to modest hoarse snorings,
fine scratchings in corners,
her peppery smell; to an itch

on our hands that matched,
palm to palm, that reddened
and spread, opened, bled.
Ringworm, they said. Then worse,

quickly worse; a shriek like brakes
skidding, wet sick on the carpet,
queer lucid red, one bony worm
that uncoiled to a comma.

You shrugged when I screamed,
cleared it bent-shouldered,
laid her flat on the floor
as a joke-cat, steam-rollered,

but her breath kept coming,
kept lifting her skin worn loose
as a dust-rag. She was light,
she was just greasy bones in a bag.

I called to her, called baby, love,
reached for your hand. She made
a rusty choking sound, squeezed out
a last tiny shit like a stone, then

you turned away I think,
I know I cried.
There was not enough between us
to keep a cat alive.

And, prompted by an unpleasant email exchange with Kaa last week, this also reminds me of my visit to Nancy a a year ago, of some kittens which she insisted upon rescuing from a canal bank where they had been dumped to fend for themselves. Her goodness and emotion contrasted with my older, more cynical attitude of wanting to leave them. Who was right? I don't know what happened in the end, but two of the three were quickly farmed out to friends, and the other shat in the living room. My disapproval, no doubt, contributed to our subsequent spat and split.



Coincidentally, the kittens were all black, triple bad luck, and found close to a hamlet called Les Moses.

:-]

Farewell to the Rainbow Pig

A couple of weekends ago I went for a ride in the Cotswolds with an assorted group of internet-abusing cycling nerds. Surprisingly, I wasn't always left behind in spite of their impressive physiques and new shiny bikes. Instead of the semi-defunct singlespeed, I took my ancient(ish) orange 1997 Norco Bomber.

But on one bouncy, twisty, rooty downhill section, I felt a spray of liquid on my calf. Looking down, I saw that they shock-absorber from my bike was spraying fluid from a leak, and I felt that the bike lost its rear suspension. The bike's eleven years old now; I bought the frame second-hand while on holiday in Whistler in 1998. In spite of emailing the manufacturers of the shock absorber and their agents in the UK, it seems like it's irreparable, so that's the end for the bike. It has a serious design fault, anyway, which splits the cup in which the blank end of the shock absorber fits. I've bodged it together with a Jubilee clip, but it's not ideal. Norco recognised that fault, and in 2003 they sent me a replacement free of charge, but I never got around to fitting it as I thought that the same would only happen again.

And why did I name it the Rainbow Pig?

It's because I fitted parts from my spares bin to the frame to get it up and running quickly, and I didn't worry about its appearance. Although it's not immediately apparent in this photo, at one time it had the orange frame, yellow forks, green mudguard, blue bottle, a red saddle and purple bars. The closest I could get to indigo was the peacock of the saddle-bag. Pretty, it wasn't, but it did the job. And now the bike's defunct. It's a shame, as it was a fun bicycle: probably the only one of its kind in the UK.


:o(

Clover

I've written before that I'm not superstitious, but as man the pattern-matching animal I notice coincidences; the rational part of me ascribes them to just that, but the irrational part of my mind wonders if there could be something more even while knowing that just thinking so is stupid.

I've found a few four-leaf clovers in my life, most of which I have picked and lost. Why did I pick them? It's the irrational part coming out to take temporary control. A few years ago I brought a leaf carefully home, dried it and placed it between two sheets of glass in a small picture frame then lost that somewhere in the boxes and books of my office shelving.

Several days ago, while sifting through some old documents I found the clover-leaf in its frame, and put it out on display. Did it bring luck? I don't know, but since then a couple of good things have happened. Straight away, the French Wench wrote in her blog that she couldn't stand me, and asked for a complete cessation of amities. It was hurtful, but better than the sulks, and after an unpleasant couple of emails and a weekend, we have stopped communicating. Now I know where we stand. God, that's a relief. I guess it's a relief for Moonface, too.

Then, yesterday, we sold the Saab. I felt rather sorry for it recently, if one can feel sorry for an inanimate object. Well, I felt sorry precisely because it was inanimate rather than animate, in that we just weren't using the car at all. I'm not driving long distances much these days, and we have the van for going away. As a two-person family since the kids have left home, there's no justification for keeping three vehicles. So we sold the Saab, and I'm sure that it will be better for the regular use. And as we have to keep the cars on the street, it was just more congestion for the neighbours. We were pleased to get rid of it before it needed too much in the way of repairs to maintain it, and we knew that there was a good bit of spending which should have been done.

Life moves on.

:-)

Gone

I don't think that I lose friends easily. I hope that overall I'm well-liked enough and sensitive enough to avoid offence, with personal skills that keep me supplied with company when I want it.

Yes, sometimes I piss people off. I can be indiscreet and blunt. But it's rare that people I know make a point of cutting me off completely. I can think of a trio of examples, no more; one based upon a misunderstanding that I could see happening but was in no position to correct. Usually, friends fade away through a divergence, a mutual lack of interests in common as we grow older and in different directions. That I can cope with.

But in the last few months I have been dumped as a friend by someone whom I cared for, whom I liked greatly. It hurts. I don't know quite how or why it happened, but it now seems irrideemable and I know that it'll take a while for me to recover completely. I tried to keep in touch, but I guess I screwed up. Damn.

:(

More goodbyes

Just after our daughter left home for university, our son found work away from home, so he moved to Wells last weekend. It's a lovely small city (the smallest city in England) which is only 25 miles from Bristol, but that's just too far to commute daily on the slow traffic-filled routes between there and here. Saying goodbye was a strain, as he had to find digs quickly in order to start work as soon as possible, so he is lodging with an oldish single man. It's not what we wanted, but Wells is a small town, and needs must. It's not a long term decision, as we hope he finds somewhere more convivial soon. But until then, at least he has a decent room and access to an acceptable kitchen and living rooms.

Moonface and I have had a short break in the North, but next week we will be a couple, living by ourselves for the first time in more than twenty-five years. It's quite a frightening prospect: there will be just two of us rattling around in this huge house. The dynamics of living here will be changed, and I foresee that we will change the way we live to match the way we did so before children. I can't imagine that we will take lodgers again, although it worked fine when we were in our twenties.

Acquiring lodgers was accidental, and easy. When we moved house from Ash Road to here, one of our next-door-neighbour's friends asked if she could stay a while, as she had just been thrown out of home by her father. So, one day after we moved, she did. Then her boyfriend more-or-less moved in, too. She later told us that she was pregnant, which was why her Catholic father played the Victorian paterfamilias so sternly. And since we had one person living with us [or one, one half, and a foetus] and three more rooms to spare, we advertised for and found two more. With changes of people and circumstances, living with lodgers lasted for five full years, until just before Moonface gave birth to Tom.

Now, living here with just the two of us is going to feel strange. It's hard enough when I am working in my garret with the others scattered throughout the house, but their psychic presence helps. On our own, it will be harder.


:-/

Nanny, again.

Moonface's mother died late last night.

She'd been hospitalized for over two months, since she broke her hip; but had cancer spreading throughout her body as well, weakening her badly. It wasn't a good death, but we suppose that she had a decent life, with the opportunity to enjoy the world. Life on a west country farm wasn't the most cosmopolitan location, but it was pretty good for her.

I have three overriding memories of Midge.

Most recently, last weekend, was of her lying inert in her nursing home bed, hardly aware of the world. She was emaciated, yellowed, weak, saddened. Her arthritic hands were bent so that she had difficulty holding the beakers containing her drinks. These, almost identical to toddlers' mugs, had plastic spouts to help guide the semi-competent users to their own mouths. Poor Midge could hardly lift the beaker to her mouth; I had to help her drink, and in her semi-conscious state, she mistook the beaker spout for an errant spoon and complained about it. Poor woman.

Six years ago, after Moonface's father's funeral, we scattered his ashes under and around a sapling freshly planted at the farm. Midge was alert, cheerful, and scampered around more than I had seen her for years - perhaps freed of the responsibilities of looking after her man. There was a strong breeze that day, so as we poured Frank's ashes into the holes prepared for the young trees, the wind caught his remains and blew them into our faces and irritated our eyes. Midge laughed as she rubbed her face and turned away from the dusty powder.

And longer ago, more than thirty years, I remember her reaction when we told her that Moonface and I wanted to marry. She looked shocked, stood straight up, uttered a single sound "Oh!" , and sat down, poker-backed, in silence.

****************

I feel guilty about not being with Moonface. She's gone to the farm, to help sort things out.
It's difficult, as I want to be with her, but I think (and hope) she'll bear up better without me. And, she's got her brother with her. If I went to the farm as well, we'd have left Tom on his own which I think would leave him vulnerable and potentially miserable, too. This is a big house to be lonely in.


:-(