November is the time to plan for December. The first half of November is boringly empty; the second is too busy with TMA marking, emailing to agree extensions, buying stamps, planning presents, attending grandchildren’s school events: concerts, fairs, nativity plays.

Why do people suddenly get sociable when I’m so busy? I went to lunch with friends twice in the last fortnight. I’ve extra choir rehearsals for Christmas performances and the BCS has an interesting Christmas lecture next week. Aylesbury speakers were short of a speech so I’ve volunteered and prepared one.
And it’s cold but I’ve got the boiler people coming in next week so can’t go to see  #1 grandson’s school play.
No wonder I end up a bit stressed with a sore throat. Hope it doesn’t make a cold. But I don’t think I’ll be fit enough to give that speech.

October for family

This October has been a month for my family because my daughter is over in the UK for a couple of weeks and we're meeting her brother a few times.We've also managed to get my brother and SiL over to chat with daughter. And she's meeting her cousin, the one who's marrying in Geneva in June.

We've had a variety of activities. For instance, the first week, we went up to London to renew daughter's passport, and took the opportunity to window shop in Liberty's. One weekend, we went to Opuz for supper because they had a guitar duo, and we went again on Sunday to share lunch with my SiL and her son, who daughter has always got on with. And son & DiL did something special in St Alban's cathedral at the middle weekend. This Wednesday, we met SD#2 and her two, to walk to Staddy's gate near Chinnor. We drove up to Lincoln to share time with them there on holiday, exploring its catheral and museum.

After doing all that, driving to St A's, and to Lincoln and back, I'm pretty tired but it's been as good as a holiday for me.

Still kicking

 Yesterday I attended one of the pre grading sessions for red and black belts and practised one, tow and three step sparring, mainly partnered with red belts. I'm now second Dan and have been for some years, but I don't demonstrate enough power to move on to third Dan. I'm chuffed I got this far anyhow. Playing takes up some of my lonely empty time, still makes me smile, and keeps me measureably fit for an old woman.

I wish there were more women in the club.

La Motte du Caire 29 years after

 

View north of the site

Map and photo taken from https://worldcam.eu/webcams/europe/france/8705-la-motte-du-caire-gliding-club 

Doing things alone and help

Some months ago the b*y fox or foxes got into the hen run. This shouldn't have happened because its door has a drop down catch that is fox proof. However, when I erected the run, five years ago, I put it directly on soil. This has led to some issues, one of which is that the uprights have sunk as the earth has risen, meaning that the door level changed slightly, which meant that the catch didn't always drop into place, and it couldn't be seen. All the fox had to do was worry at the door, lean on its top rail and it would open. 

I want to fix this. I've got one paving stone that I've used as a trial and moved it under a corner upright. I decided to get a few more pavers to put under the other uprights. I went to B&Q to get them. But I couldn't pull the flat base trolley out; someone did it for me. But then I couldn't steer it, so I walked down to the pavers to find they were a foot above my head. A notice said to ask for help, but help wasn't available and the tills were busy so I went home. Today I tried again. I didn't touch the trolleys but went straight in and asked for help, which arrived almost immediately. Ian fetched a trolley and explained that you don't push them; you pull them because the steering wheels are near the handle. He pulled it. We reached the paving stones and he loaded them onto the trolley, wheeled them to the checkout, I paid and he wheeled them to my car and loaded them. In the meantime, Graham, our builder, had whatsapp'd me about access so I warned him I'd be back any minute but stopping outside my house with these pavers. Bless him. He saw me and immediately came to help me unload them, stacking them half way down the garden near the hen run.

A job that I can't easily do on my own achieved comparatively easily with the help of those two men. 

Bird's nest

 Birds in our garden include the blackbird that sings each morning. A few weeks ago, my lodger warned me of a blackbird's nest in a bush near the patio, and to tell the gardeners not to disturb the birds. All seems well and the fledglings have flown.

Now that I can look at the empty nest, I'm both saddened and glad to see that it's lined with the soft white down from my chickens that the fox caught last month. 

“Alexa, play the radio”.

What is the first thing you say each morning? “Thank you for the tea” “Open the curtains” “No, close them! The light's too bright!”

One of my friends at TT college shared cultural interests with a male friend going together to classical concerts but she married a man from her shared geographic, cultural and ethnic background. A nice man, but without her interests and values. A couple of years later with two small children she sighed that she was often lonely but never alone. They divorced.

I’ve been married to men with values and interests similar to mine, men who paid attention to my interests and supported my ambitions. But now they’ve died.
My first words now in the morning are “Alexa, play the radio”.
Lonely and alone.

Anniversary

 

Flowers we liked. 

In early April 2022, I looked up and saw this display and thought, "Oh I'll show Adrian when he feels better." But he never felt better; he never saw them. He enjoyed the outdoors and plants and flowers and seeing this display would have made him happy. One of the last walks we did together was in the ward, because he asked to walk to somewhere where he could see outside, see the trees and we walked away from his bay, with his drip attached to see if we could see anything. But you couldn't see anything but roof tops from that ward.

Mothering Sunday

They call Mothering Sunday "Mother's day" in some places. My DD lives in Canada where it isn't a Sunday but some marketing day in May. A friend with an Irish background tells me that Catholics don't celebrrate Mother's day, but my Catholic family did. It wasn't a thing in church, not like it is in the Anglican church, but we just were extra nice to Mum that Sunday. One year I found a card for my godmother and she was really surprised and happy.

Yesterday we sang Brewer's Magnificat in D - it's wonderful. Then I went for lunch with sD#3, and then to tae kwon do. It was a day of doing my three favourite things: singing, family and exercise.

Why learn a language?

 Someone recently told me they spoke no Italian, but their son had married a woman with an Italian background and although she wasn't a practising Catholic or living in Italy, she wanted an Italian marriage. She described the hoops to go through to get an English bishop involved. Apparently, the C of E  bishop of Gibraltar is also the bishop of a lot of Europe including Italy. How weird!

DH and I learned Italian when similarly, his eldest daughter was marrying an Italian. although they married in an English register office, we still learned Italian so we could talk with his parents and sister. I thought it would be wonderful because their children would be bilingual, but sadly, 25 years later, they're not. Although their father was a house husband, he spoke to them in English, initially quite broken English because he came to England without any English and he and she spoke in French!  

When we were courting, husband and I used to meet  in a Italian evening class - local for him and I drove a long way for this! After a few years, we moved from that slightly informal conversation class, when DH enrolled us both on Italian As level. which I did not want to do. No more exams please. He worked v hard. I went and got a book of Italian songs, learned them by heart so I could speak Italian well. I did better than my quieter husband on the oral. when it came to writing exam answers, I tweaked my writing from whatever I'd learned in the songs, knowing I'd then got the right grammar, and I just needed to know the vocabulary. I got a better grade than I'd got in my A levels when I was 18.