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. 

Family influence

Today is my son's birthday. He influenced his family, and one really good influence happened on a car journey. Son sat next to me as I worried about my doctoral viva, and he told me about Toastmasters, the club where you practise speaking in front of people. He asked me to speak for two minutes about my doctoral topic, and I did!  Shortly afterwards, I found our local Toastmasters club and joined. It was such a useful experience that I told his sister, and she joined. Then a year or two later, when his step-sister had to make a speech at a wedding, she joined, and she got her partner to join too. The two of them got so involved that they were on the local committee helping out a lot.
All through the influence of one member of the family.

Exam results

The A level results have come out. I'm delighted for my nephew who has earned the place he wanted at the university he wanted. His mother is justifiably proud.
Ten years ago, I was in the same position, and my son won the place he wanted. He went on to the right university for him, coming out with a good degree, and then went on to get a Masters as well. A week later, on a French airfield, my daughter rang her school from the public pay phone to get her GCSE results. With no speaker phone, she repeated out loud what they told her for her nervous mother standing next to her.  She did herself and her school proud.
Like ten years ago, I've been planning to go to France, but things conspire. Elderly aunt might need some support this week; planes no longer fly to Grenoble; trains take seven hours, and no way am I driving 500 miles.  How did I do it in 1997 with two small children in the car? Even taking several days with a stop in Paris at friends and at a campsite on the way down, on my own, a single parent, - how did I do it? But I would now like to go away for a holiday in the sun.
At tae kwon do, I (discretely) asked a mother what her son's results were. His mother looked grumpy, muttered quietly what his results were but pointed out that anyhow he didn't need them to get where he wanted to go. Neither did I when I did my A-levels - I already had my place at training college so I had no motivation to do really well at my A-levels so I think he's done fine. I was on the point of telling his mother this and congratulating her to have got him through his first 18 years and he could start his adult life, when she grumbled about all these people on Facebook announcing their offspring's wonderful results.  It's funny because she's being putting on Facebook what a wonderful holiday her family was having in several different countries - it sounds wonderful and I'd love to do that too.  Was she boasting about her holiday, but grumbling when others boast about their children's successes?  No.  She was just sharing her pleasure.

Life's not good

Life isn't too promising at the moment.
So sad and upset.
Saw parents and aunty just before Christmas, though I had been thinking of going up perhaps with husband this weekend, but son said he was going, and then my sister.  Trouble is now my sister can't go because her car wheels got broke in a ditch.
Mum, who used to read this blog, now can't see and not being able to see can't remember what she can't see, like the cup of coffee we've just put in front of her, and told her it's there.  But she has to see to know it, so she forgets we told her it is there.  To add to her misery, she's losing her hearing, so mis-hears and then can't make sense of what she thinks she heard, like "I've got a table in this document", she misheard as "I've got a cable in this document".
Aged Auntie has a different form of forgetfulness, and a stoic attitude that her local priest described as "Here day, go day, soon come Sunday" attitude  her.  Not only is she cheerful and accepting of life's restrictions, though she would like to stop falling, forgetting where she is and go out without having to have company to stop her falling and getting lost, but she is eating well, smiling, remembering better than she was and is philosophically accepting of life's trials.  She's our father's sister, and I can see the stoicism in them both, the stoicism that he is drawing on in his need to support our ailing mother.

At least son and new wife will be going for a few hours.  Mum doesn't welcome people for too long because she can't play the host any more, see the food in the freezer or what the dial on the microwave says.  She can't see other peoples' problems, like catching wheelchair wheels in a grubby rug, or an iron that is too clogged to steam any more. And she can't see what work her cleaner of 17 years does, an enthusiastic, honest and loyal worker.  Listen to her saying happy Christmas: https://audioboom.com/boos/2754739-carol

She's the salt of the earth, and like salt, a little cheer goes a long way.

Wedding news

The hotel fire alarm went off at half past midnight on Sunday morning, just after most people had left the wedding party and gone to bed.  Left standing were the bride and groom, the bride's family, and many of the younger groovier lot, who I'd left jiving on the dance floor, taking selfies and drinking the remains of the champagne (cava) from the magnum bottles. So who would you expect to have let the fire alarm off?
The wedding took place in lovely surrounds in the Gilstrap Registration Office at Lincoln, next to the ruins of the castle. The groom was white with nerves before the ceremony, but you can see from this photo that now the vows have been made, the registrar's mispronunciation of his surname corrected, and the deed done, he's smiling proudly. His bride, who avows she does not want to be the centre of attention, quietly took the visual attention for the day, looking beautiful, - see her happy smile - but saying little.
The best man did my son proud, racing round the country to fetch the last-minute arrived bridesmaids' dresses, which all fitted each bridesmaid perfectly.  The best man also ran around getting people to sign a memory book against the polaroid pictures that a pair of friends had been taking of everyone.  And he made a great speech starting from how he first noticed my son at school in maths class, when one poked the other.  He described how he'd introduced the couple, and in explaining the couple's gradual revelation to their friends of their relationship, apologised to me that I was the last to know, for which he proposed a toast to me!  Well that's a first - a somewhat untraditional toast, but this best man has endeared himself to me for some time. He was the one a few years ago who helped my son to buy a new car.
At the reception, I met the bride's family at last.  I'd met her maternal grandparents, and her little brother, but now I had the pleasure of meeting her other, rather older grandparents, and her lively younger sisters. Her grandparents had stalwartly remained in the dancing room despite the deafening music, whilst my siblings and I had removed ourselves to a place where we could talk and tease each other.  Every now and again, I'd go back in for a dance. At midnight, most of us retired, including the bride's grandfather and grandmother.  They decided to have a shower before bed, but the shower would not turn off.  They had to call the hotel staff, who also could not turn it off. The water got hotter and hotter, until eventually the steam set the fire alarm off and woke most of those who had just gone to bed (not my sleepy husband who admitted that he'd only thought he'd heard it).  Fortunately, it went off again almost immediately and we did not have to leave our rooms, except the bride's grandparents. They had to change bedrooms because the hotel staff could not sort it out.  It was not the bride or the groom or the best man who set the fire alarm off. Nor her lively sisters.  It was the oldest guest - her grandfather!

Story - what I did at the weekend

Once upon a time, two or three decades ago, a poorly fertile woman, after ten years of marriage, in her mid thirties at last became an elderly mother.  She and her husband were overjoyed at the arrival of their healthy, blue eyed blond baby boy who immediately opened his eyes and gazed intelligently at his delighted Daddy.

His father and I, for I was that mother, gave him a loving home, nurtured and nourished him, planned his education, and our son went to a good school, then a good university, and found himself a good job.  What does a young man do then?

He found himself a good girlfriend, a gorgeous girl, a princess to dream of, someone who thinks my son is one of the best guys in the world.

So what was I doing last weekend?  I was welcoming his girlfriend to our house for the last weekend as his fiancée because next weekend he marries her.  Last weekend, she and I went to the dressmakers to alter the wedding dress, to make it fit perfectly for the wedding.
And as all good stories go,....
May they live happily ever after.

Gone to roost

And a vine lot of trouble

It's interesting how many poultry derived idioms we have in the language, isn't it?  And now so few of us have hens, we've forgotten or don't realise where they came from:

• gone to roost,
• pecking order
• flown the coop
• hens' teeth (they don't have any)

We went out yesterday to old gliding and Oxford friends' 40th wedding anniversary.

 "You need tolerance, perseverance and wisdom"

 to keep a marriage that long said a friend who raised a toast. May my son and his fiancée, marrying on Oct 25th at Newark, have those gifts too.

When we came home, it was past dusk and the hens had flown the coop and gone to roost. I had had to hunt the garden in the dark, till I found two of the three in the vine. "Vine lot of trouble" remarked my husband! The third hen, Lady Grey, didn't turn up till this morning, and now all three are happily eating left over rice curry from a few days ago. Cluck, cluck, clllcckk! Happy hens.

Black belt achieved

Here's what my son gave me for my birthday - a black training dobok, because I'd got through my tae kwon do black belt grading the week before, after nine years.

Black belt & dobok, with training book

I might have done it sooner if I hadn't devoted so much time to my doctorate, and then had the breast cancer. But, I never planned to get a black belt in anything.  I just took my daughter along and found I could train with her.  Most times when a parent takes a child out - to ballet, karate, swimming or piano lessons, - they have to sit there and wait patiently.  I'm not so patient.  Sooner or later my child was going to have to get herself there, or not go.  But once I realised I could join in, I also found that playing tag for the first time in decades made me laugh - another first in a while when you're a woman in your early fifties.  Then I tried to catch up with my rapidly improving daughter, so I went to more classes, got to an intermediate grade and got fitter.

One tag at a time, one new colour at a time, I went up.

As I got higher, I realised more and more people were helping me, not only the subum (teacher) but also lots of black belts, particularly the junior black belts, who courteously showed me how to do something better, and despite my poor and slow technique were willing to partner with me, thus demonstrating that getting to black belt isn't a solo achievement.  Then I realised that middle-aged, middle-grade women were seeing me a a role model, and that spurred me on too. And Christie Bytom was there in the background cheering for me.

The BBC Radio 4 programme iPM: Share What You Know asks for one sentence items of listeners' news, which they then select and read out over the air. I wrote:

"After nine years of training, including a year when I had breast cancer, I've been awarded my tae kwon do black belt" 

On 16 November, they got Dame Jenni Murray to read them and she read my sentence too - she who herself had breast cancer. The podcasts are at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ipm and the listeners' news is towards the last couple of minutes of the programme.

Two men and a car

Yesterday was an interesting day, not only because I spent most of it with two rather nice young men. What is a middle aged woman doing hanging out with two men in their twenties?

My son was searching for his first car and I was taken along as support and potential adviser - he flatters me because I've only once bought a car. Son's friend thought he knew something about cars, and indeed I was impressed that he turned up equipped for the adventure. His kit included:

• magna light
• plastic gloves
• i-phone

He used the light to peer at the car's dark places, under the bonnet, behind the boot, beneath the wheels. And his gloves kept his hands clean when he poked the wheels to find the brakes. This poking the brakes was helpful on the first car we looked at, a Ford Focus in Milton Keynes because he found a lip and suggested that the brakes might soon need to be replaced, and that comment initiated a conversation with the salesman who assured us that the cars his organisation sold did MOTs before they put them up for sale, so the brakes should be safe enough to pass the MOT - you assume. But the Ford Focus was a tad expensive, so we drove home to have some lunch and further perusal of car selling web sites before venturing out again to Luton, via Dunstable.

The Dunstable car site looked a bit dicey being a temporary office on an unmade up lot and the end of a very quiet road on a quiet industrial estate - we only found it because of the hand painted words on the gate-post "Car sales". We turned round and headed off for Luton.

Son's friend now used his smart phone to access Google map to get us to the Luton. Unfortunately, it wasn't a GPS that might have told us about the closed road and the detour and the detour took us down and up a local road with yellow lines each side and cars parked each side and on coming buses so driving life became a bit fraught. My car is on the small side, and if I see a space to pull in, I'll fit, but if on-coming bus decides to carry on on-coming then my car can't reach the space to pull in. I had to reverse down the main road until I reached a junction full of traffic and still no room for on-coming bully-bus. At this point, another driver suggested I reversed into a side-road on the right, which would have meant only two other cars would have to reverse. Fortunately, I realised that if I pulled onto the kerb on the right, then bus could squeeze between me and other parked cars - not sure why bus couldn't pull over more. Doing this meant that I couldn't get back out into the traffic stream until son's friend turned up sterling. He jumped out of the car, stopped the traffic to let me back into the flow and jumped back in. We decided that we weren't going to come home that route.

The delay meant it was nearly dusk by the time we arrived at the next car sales, a muddy lot tended by a bearded Muslim, with some others collecting and tipping barrels of sand into the muddy ruts. The car was a Nissan Almera and S'sF immediately noticed some damage to the rear bumper and a check revealed the car had been rear shunted. He peered at its engine - his torch now being essential as the light went, but every thing else seemed acceptable. Son, S'sF and Muslim salesman started negotiations over MOT, documents, price, means of payment, when to pay.

Suffice it to say, son has bought his first car and I expect to see more of him now he can drive over here without the hassle of a long slow bus journey at inconvenient hours. So maybe I won't have to drive him places again, but neither will I get the chance to drive his friends around too. End of another era, start of a new.

Young nuns

The BBC recently had a production on young women contemplating becoming nuns. I knew it was on having seen a review of it in The Tablet, but I hadn't realised until son pointed it out that one of the young women was someone I have known. Though I haven't seen her for more than ten years, I've talked on the phone with her mother nownthen, and son has been in touch with her more recently and has time and respect for her.

It's good to know how the youngsters have grown up.

Growing up

Both my children recently contacted me, asking me about computing problems. How nice! At last they can talk about technical subjects I understand.

I was at teacher training college in the seventies, and one Sunday lunch at home my mother, also a teacher, and I were discussing how children learn. She exclaimed

"At last! Someone I can talk with about Piaget."

How nice to have adult children.

Son settled

Son has found a flatmate for the year of his MSc (in electronic engineering here)

Sunday, spent several hours in son's flat waiting to meet potential flatmates and feeling 'de trop', that his mother should not be there now he's an adult, but he had asked me, and the landlord is a family friend. So the three of us sat and waited.

Many students come to the UK to study at masters level - I think there are more foreigners than English students and son had been emailing several people from various parts of the world - Ireland, India, Switzerland, and we'd had discussions about names, where they might come from and what sex a name might be. So it would be an interesting afternoon meeting these strangers, and it was interesting.

One student walked in with her father, and immediately I felt I had a part to play - I was no longer 'de trop' because I represented son's background and family. Student With Father had lots of pertinent and sensible questions to ask, texted a few hours later to express interest in flat, and asked to meet again, which they did. Father and I discussed our families, our jobs, our religions - they are Jains from India - whilst SWF and son agreed bills, whether they'd keep the television, when they'd move in and how to draw up a contract.

Son sorted and settled. And daughter too - see her new blog here. Happy mother.

Guitar hero mum

Here's a first for me. I've at last played my first PS2 game even though it was around 1998 that son first bought a second hand play station. He had to plug it in himself to the video and TV system and I've not had control of its programming ever since.

Recently he got a game called Guitar Hero, and daughter, back from uni, has been playing it. She decided to get a second controller and persuaded me to leave my sewing to join in. I've been playing something of Blur's and Coldplay. It's fun, heaps easier than real guitar and a new way of listening to the music because you can move with it, which I like.

Wow! Go me!

a Good Day

June 17th
Both my children today are having good days. Although neither has spoken to me, I've heard from them electronically. One texted that she's:

"Off to Bordeaux! :))"

which means she's got good end of second year university exam results. The other has Facebooked:

"Done"

which means he has taken his last university exam this morning and is relieved.

It's beautiful weather.

And a Good Day.

Tight squeeze

My new car is a tighter squeeze into my garage than my old Volvo estate. The door handles and the wing mirrors have a tendency to scrape along the breeze block.

When son visits for a weekend during term time, he borrows a self service pay-as-you-go Golf from Streetcar, and he reverses it into my garage. Goodness knows how he does that. I'm amazed and admire his skill.

Husband on cold glass roof

Knock, knock, knockty, knock. Knock, knock, knock.

I could hear this noise, and vaguely wondered what husband was doing but he's such an active man, that I just thought he'd found something else to fix, mend, or bash. I blithely carried on marking assignments. Son came in.

"What's that knocking noise?"

I gave him my opinion and we started to chat about other things.

Twenty minutes later the door bell rings. Son goes to answer it and comes back creased up laughing.

Husband had exited the house via a bedroom window, but he hadn't told either of us of this intention. He'd closed the window behind him so he could paint behind it, but then he couldn't get it open again, and was stuck on the conservatory roof! He'd tried knocking to get our attention, but we ignored the poor man. So he'd had to semaphore down the hill to a neighbour in her yard to get her to come round, tell us the problem so we could open the window to let him back into the house.

Good communication we've got round here.

Oxford Gliding Club barbecue evening

We went to the Oxford Gliding Club barbecue evening yesterday - all of us, husband, son, daughter and our two Austrian visitors.

My first barbecue there was August, 1976. They really are a friendly club, welcoming us, though I haven't visited for some years. Several people came and chatted, some remembering me and some even recognising son & daughter as their father's children. They told son and daughter tales of their father, about the decca navigation system he made, and a speed gun avoidance device that confused the doppler effect of the police radar gun. It read 140mph when he was doing 40.

The food was delicious and heaps of it for mere pounds: salmon, pork crackling, salads galore followed by three varieties of pudding. I thought the Austrian girls were falling asleep, but they woke up enough to charge their way through the crowds for at least three helpings of strawberries, then went back to play on the swings.

There were bottles of bubbles on the tables for us to play with.

One of the pilots was a flame juggler - if I'd known there'd be such entertainment I'd have taken my Flip video. Then someone produced those noisy twirly balloons that fly into the sky and around with a screech, like they are live animals. We had fun with those.

I was having such a good time that my children had to drag me away so that they could get to bed.

Long holiday

Son's gone to the USA for five weeks, with friends, to visit California, and Las Vegas and Yosemite amongst others. He should have a memorable time.

Home again

Son's back from uni for summer, or for some of it as he has plans to travel. Daughter's staying away in her new flat. Other daughter (step-daughter #3) is well ensconced in her university town. So it'll be a quiet summer. Perhaps I'll do my research work at home.

OU's 40th birthday

The OU celebrates its fortieth birthday this year. There's to be an open day on campus this Saturday. See http://www.open.ac.uk/platform/campus/events/open-unlimited-anniversary-open-day. And here.

Last time I came to an open day here was 15 years ago with my two small children and husband in tow, my first visit to my university although I'd finished my degree by then and started tutoring. Daughter got photographed in an OU magazine, playing maths with the maths clown. This time it looks full of interesting activities again, and what's unusual is that some of them seemed aimed at teenagers rather than small children. I'll be there. I might have husband with me, but I don't know about large son. Pity daughter won't be around.