Christmas: Father Xmas and God

 Do you teach your small children that Father Christmas is coming, and he'll bring presents for good children? 

And do you teach your children about God?

When I was six, at a Catholic school, someone in class told us that Father Christmas didn't exist, that it was your parents leaving stockings at the end of your bed. I accepted that because it made sense. But then I wondered, "if  Father Christmas isn't true, when are they going to tell me that God isn't true either?"

They never did. I observed that my family had too much invested in the idea of God for them not to believe it. Grandparents, aunts and uncles went to church on Sunday mornings, parents had photos of a church wedding. I was been trained to make my first communion, with church plans for a big event and fancy white dresses for the girls. They'd look as pretty as princesses.

Still being enamoured of fairy stories, I looked for a prince to marry, telling my mother I'd marry Prince Charles. Reality struck. "You can't, dear, because you're a Catholic, and if you marry him, he couldn't be king."

Ambition dashed at the age of six!

Happy birthday me

Having a special birthday this month, it seemed worth having a bit more of a celebration than just ignoring it. After all, who knows what state I'll be in for my next big 0 birthday?

There's a local tea shop that does yummy cakes, decent tea, and an elegant espresso, with a separate couple of rooms upstairs. I talked to its propiator, Nicki. She was happy to cater for up to 18 people up there, and would bake me chocolate gluten free birthday cake with candles. 

I invited about a score of local women friends. Not all could come; we ended up with around a dozen. But some had never met any other friends of mine before and some were going to know only each other, like the choir sops. How to get them to mingle?

Now the thing about getting older is that you've done lots of interesting things, so I got a quiz together, contacting each friend beforehand to ask for fun and interesting facts about them. Then I put the facts together as a quiz for them to ask each other and find out about each other. 

Here are some of the facts.

• Who appeared on the BBC milking a cow?
• Who fell into the sorting machine at the council rubbish tip! 
• Who has a model village with a hamster buried in a mahogany coffin under the parish church?
• Who was asked out by Vice President Johnson of the United States?
• Who fed hamburgers to lions at Tampa?
• Who went to a Buckingham Palace Garden Party in 2012?  
• Who completed a 2100m x 8 zip wire challenge in Split, Croatia!
• Who lived on a farm in Norway, also in a cabin in the woods?
• Who walked into the Louvre when it was shut because the security guard thought she was staff?
• Who trespassed in the Karnak temple in Luxor, Egypt, after closing time?
• Who is studying an OU law degree?
• Who did a masters at Oxford at 57? 
• Who got married to Davey Jones from The Monkees twice a day for two months?
• Which mad, irresponsible mum (and dad) took toddlers to an uninhabited island off the coast of Malaysia where there were no people or electricity or phones but large monitor lizards!
• Who's done at least 25 amateur musicals including playing Annie in Annie get your gun, and Roxie Hart in Chicago? 
• Whose first serious full-time job was as a milk woman and was taught by a milkman called Ernie?
• Which woman here has pulled a car?
• Who is a Morris musician and dancer?
• Who's got a 16.2hh chestnut sports horse?
• Who's been sky diving?
• Who was a games maker working at Greenwich at the equestrian event for 2012 Olympics?
• Who overcame extreme fear on canopy walkways in Malaysia, Sydney Harbour Bridge, the cathedral in Milan and Sigiriya Rock in Sri Lanka?
• Who caught a 7-foot-long sail fish?
• Who's met the Queen?
• Who collects mechanical clocks?
• Who's bathed on a beach in Goa?
• Who's flown a glider round a preplanned 100km route?
• Who's got a black belt in a martial art?

Aren't my friends interesting?! You recognise the facts about me? After about an hour and a half, we had a plenary, and matched every fact to someone in the room, which elicited more stories, like why she was on a zip wire in the first place, and what answer she gave VP Johnson. It was a fun couple of hours. Thank you my friends.

Happy birthday, Mum

My mother recorded in her family history

On the morning of October 22nd 1923, in Bootle on Merseyside, two little girls were going to school. They were cousins, eight years old and good friends. Their route to school took them down Linacre Lane, across Stanley Road, and on through side streets to St. James' Select Catholic School. It was on one of these side streets, Balfour Road, skipping and playing as they went, that one of them, named Edith, but at this stage of her life known in the family as Girlie, looked behind them and said, 'Look Gracie, isn't that your Dada?'

Grace turned round and saw her father on his bike, head down, pedalling rapidly towards them. Before he reached them however he crossed the road, parked his bicycle and hammered urgently on a house door. Grace and Edith called and waved but he neither saw nor heard them. The door opened and he vanished inside. The two little girls went on their way wondering what it was all about. Grace found out when she went home for dinner. As she went up the entry which  led to the back door of the house she passed her Aunty Sally, Edith's mother, who smiled at her and said, 'Hurry up, there's a real live doll for you at home!' In her mother's bedroom a minute baby sister lay in the cradle, and the midwife, so suddenly and urgently called for had just left. Willie, her younger brother, had been called in from play to see his baby sister but had been more interested in enquiring of Nurse Scott why his mama was in bed in the middle of the day. Five weeks early, a not really wanted fourth child, born nearly five years after the family had, hopefully, been completed, I lay in the cradle and cried lustily. The midwife,calling a few days later when my mother was downstairs again and busy in the kitchen, listened and said with satisfaction and some surprise, 'Well, that's not a premature cry!'

I was small though, and weighed only four pounds when weighed for the first time, fully clothed, at four weeks. My father held me easily in one, admittedly rather large, hand and used to tell me that my head was no bigger than an orange. "No bigger than that!" he would say, picking one out of the fruit bowl to show me. But I thrived, and was showered with love and attention by parents and siblings. My mother had born the other three closely, one after the other, during and just after the first world war. With her husband away at sea and in danger, she, alone and pregnant, must often have been too weary and too worried to enjoy her family. And our father, having missed much of his children's babyhood became a rather strict Victorian style parent on his return. For both of my parents this new 'unwanted' baby was a new shared experience.

Mum thrived indeed, living into her nineties. Happy birthday, Mum. Remembering you.

An autumn wedding

 What a week last week was, when we were in Canada! 

At Monday's thanks giving meal, half way through, daughter's partner announces that there'll be one other at the meal the follwing evening. "Who?" we enquire. "Pastor Brian" and "we're getting married tomorrow".

They gave us less than 23 hours notice! And it was a lovely ceremony with just the six of us: the couple, the pastor, his mother, my DH and me, out on their deck in the fall light. They made their vows, his mother and I signed as witnesses, then sang them "Sunrise, Sunset" from "The Fiddler on the Roof". Glen, who's grown up hearing it, refrained from joining in. They had no cake, or confetti, no speeches, and only a few photos taken. DH happened to have bought a bottle of bubbly from the local shop. The wedding meal was in a private room at a local hotel. 

Other than that excitement, we had coffee from Tim Hortons, and visited a few shops, but didn't buy flowers for the wedding because we didn't know about it. On Monday morning, his mother prepared the thanks giving meal while we drove over to Pinery Provinical Park at Lake Huron, and got bitten by a thousand sand flies. Poor daughter had a bite on her face. Fortunately, it had gone down by the time she donned her wedding dress the next day. She sewed it in six weeks, because they only planned the wedding from when my email arrived stating our dates and flights. In six weeks, they'd organised the pastor, made the dress, ordered wedding rings, and booked the hotel meal.

We arrived home last Friday morning, and jet lag like oversleeping is nearly sorted. Now to distribute some maple syrup to family and hen minder.

Meeting family again

Pleased that restrictions are lifting and we can travel. Husband and I plan to travel to Canada soon to see our youngest. Daughter is settled there with a good job, and a home. Last summer, she and her partner bought a house together and I've not yet seen it. 

But travelling can be costly and stressful enough without Covid, and this time we have to get PCR tests, costing nearly £100 each. We have to have negative PCR results before we're allowed on the plane. That means we'll need similar tests from Canada before we can fly back too. That adds nearly £400 to the cost of the trip. Bit of a pain.

But the five of us are looking forward to the visit. Husband has dug out his passport, and checked my booking for our PCR tests 72 hours or fewer before our flat. Daughter is telling me something of what they've planned, like to take something nice to wear cos we'll have a meal out one evening. The woman-who-should-be-daughter's-MiL is preparing the turkey cos it'll thanksgiving Canadian happens when we're there. That's so exciting - if you just go on holiday you don't get such experiences, only when you've got friends and family in the company. 

La Motte

Light and activities promises a stonking day at La Motte du Caire  

You can see so many people, crew and pilots preparing their gliders. 

It looks as if today's weather will be easier soaring than it was this day 25 years ago.

I read in the club's newsletter that an old friend RC had died in 2020, and I was so out of touch that I didn't know. 

A month of life, started with death, continuing with birth

We celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary this month. Both having been widowed, we have more than 50 years of wedded life between us, which is something to celebate. We cherish each other and subscribe to the "till death us do part" bit. 

Death came to his brother at the end of June, and his funeral is now, three weeks later. Funerals are family events. The first funeral I went to was my grandmother's in 1973. As her coffin was lowered into the grave, I choked. Remembering how hard I found that, when I came to another funeral in the 1980s, a lad of about 18 years old, killed in a glider collision during a competition, I stood well back from the main funeral party. I watched his family go to the grave, his parents, and his sister, the only sibling, who would never have nephews and nieces. 

I've been to other funerals since: my late husband, my cousin, parents, aunts and uncles. Today, was the funeral of someone of another of my now older generation. At the meal after, they had a photo album of his life, as a toddler with his mother, as a young man with both his parents, as a university student with his brother, his wedding day, his own little boy, now a grown man who wrote his eulogy.

Yet two days ago a child was born into our family. That day was I showed his toddler brother photos of when their father was a toddler, and his baby sister was born.  Life goes on. 

Improved singing

Our F2F choir (Next Stage Choir) that has been rehearsing in groups of no more than 30 and outdoors, met this week, indoors, all of us (about 40). But there were only four sopranos. Before lockdown, we were eight or more, but at least three have dropped out, and this week two were away. So only four nervous sops. 

We were singing Sondheim. Do you know how difficult Sondheim is? But beautiful harmonies, amazing suspensions. BTW, I didn't know about suspensions until I joined the Self Isolation Choir. I've learned a lot. Our F2F director, Russell, decided to start the rehearsal with a fast piece, "Putting it together". Sondheim is so so challenging. And the sopranos are first in that piece. 

We also rehearsed "Into the Woods". At last we could hear each other together, not on Zoom, or the poor accoustics of outside. It was fascinating to hear the minor tones of the second sopranos and altos underlying the brightness of the first sopranos. Sondheim writes dark pieces. 

Finally, we finished off with Sunday - I hadn't got my music for that but almost know it anyhow. It's a lovely piece. Russell grumbled that we should all be off book for that by now, and he wants us off book next week for "Into the woods." 

The best bit was right at the end, as we finished, one of the tenors came up to the four of us, and said, "Ladies, you were great tonight! There were only four of you sopranos and you sounded wonderful!" Wow. <blush of pleasure>.

Father's day is this weekend

 And yesterday was a father's birthday. Who remembers?

https://ejh2.blogspot.com/2018/06/another-fathers-day.html

To reconstruct or not? to be or to do?

A fellow BC sufferer/ survivor in a FB group asked if she was mad to have no reconstruction. Like me she's having/had a one side mastectomy. Like me she's opted for no recon. Like mine, her surgeon says she can change her mind later  "Did any of you do the same as me and then change your mind later?"

When I had my right mastectomy in March 2020, I reasoned it would be risky to have more surgery and it was for looks on, not for function. S. daughter #2 advised me that her daddy could manage me having only one boob!  

S. daughter #3 advised me that losing the boob meant I became an Amazonian woman (proverbially they thought they could fight better without the R one!).  

My tae kwon teacher admired my ability to get back to training within weeks. I could still kick, punch, block, squat, do sit-ups, press-ups, see, hear. Having had a boob job would mean I couldn’t do press-ups for months.

A year on, I’m ok with my looks. What I can do matters more than how I look. Looks make me feminine, but action makes me feminist.

Wall repair under lockdown

Total lockdown has been lifted in England and today we can meet in groups of six, or meet family of five plus two grandparents equals seven and in our garden today, we plan to meet family. That'll make it a busy place because we also have three builders fixing our old wall that fell down last year. 

This garden is enclosed by a wall, a hundreds year old brick wall with lime mortar, two bricks thick with capping stones - beautiful. But it is a lot of wall, and the previous owner who replaced a lot of the wall made it only one brick thick, thus halving the cost. Unfortunately, he also used cement not lime mortar to repoint some of the old bricks. That doesn't work because the cement is harder than the brick, and water has to get out through the brick thereby dissolving it. So we have patches where the brick is eroded. 

You can see the capping stones on the wonky piece of wall in this photo, and the crack where it's leaning into our garden, though there's a buttress on the other side. 

When the gardeners took the ivy off last year,  it was obviously unsafely wobbly, so we got our builder, GP, to take it down safely. Unfortunately, because the cement mortar stuck to them, the bricks were not salvageable and we're having to source old bricks to rebuild. 

This afternoon then, when our lunch time guests arrive there could be ten of us in the garden. What sociability after lockdown!