Garden room

Isn't this room gorgeous?  Look at the door that allows you out onto the patio, the light reflecting off the tiled floor, the hops shading the room.  We've just had the decorators in, taken out the green fitted carpet and one of the nine huge windows.  We've turned that window into doors, and replaced the carpet with these parquet tiles under which there's wired heating, so the room is now warmer in winter, but cooler in summer.  I use it as a study - you can see my desks - but it now feels like a garden room - a transition between house and garden.  It's lovely.

Sedentary sixties

This photo shows I've stepped over 11,000 steps today, the first time I've managed that many this week.  But then, today, we rehearsed and performed the Red Kite women's dance in the Vale Park, and then I did tae kwon do too.

I got the counting device a week ago after watching the BBC Horizon programme, Monitor Me.  Apparently you should aim at 10,000 steps a day, but in my sedentary work I'm lucky if I do 3000 and on one day this week did only 2000 because I was writing, at home, and didn't go out even for a stroll.

I made up for a lot of steps today.

Bureaucracy Tuesday

Not a punday Monday, but bureaucratic Tuesday!

I did a little work today between 7.30 and 10 o'clock, before the bureaucrats reared their ugly 9-5 heads.

1. Then my boss rang.  He's okay this boss - get that clear - but he has to explain to the EU bureaucrats what hours we've been doing in order to get the EU bureaucrats to pay the company.  The discussion on the implications and ramifications of the forms he needs to fill with what hours and what information on who, how long, for how much, took about an hour.  It's not democracy to have so much bureaucracy that the work doesn't get done.
2. Then I had to ring the company that delivers ready made meals to aged aunty because her bit of plastic won't go through.  I agreed to send them a cheque then rang the bank.  Turns out that EU regulations say the bank can't stay like it is but must split into two banks and that means they have to issue a new card, which they've sent out and they've stopped the old one.  Those phone calls took an hour.  I don't feel in charge; they changed the bank without me asking; it's bureaucracy not democracy
3. Then I trotted down to the charity shop to deliver some specialist books for recycling.  "Thank you.  Are you a tax-payer?"   Oh, no!  I'm not filling out one of their forms today, and I've probably filled it out before, so now I feel guilty for not helping them get their extra tax free amount.  But it's more form filling and bureaucracy. Charity depends on bureaucracy now.

Gus O'Donnell argued on Radio 4 that "an efficient bureaucracy isn't only a symptom of a mature democracy - it's a fundamental prerequisite."  Can we note the word 'efficient' please, and let me get back to doing productive work?

Never ever give up

Remember.

The end of another gliding day.

Caring for ageing aunty

Dear aged Aunty even forgets to eat.  She sits and stares out of the window at the windows and walls of rooms of other sheltered residents.  Even when food is next to her, she doesn't eat it unless reminded.
A month ago she fell, breaking her hip.  Or maybe she fell because her hip spontaneously broke. Whatever.  She stayed in hospital a remarkably short time and last week came home - minus her zimmer frame because the hospital forgot, or may she left it in the ambulance ... whatever.  She can't walk without it - what care is that?

So the really caring people, the volunteers from the local St Vincent de Paul Society ran around, one getting her a zimmer frame in the next few hours, which meant that volunteer didn't get to eat supper with her husband.  That's wrong.  You have to get your priorities sorted and that means voluntary work comes after family, but that caring volunteer said quite reasonably that you couldn't leave an old lady alone with no means of moving.  When she came back with the frame, Aunty was in bed, with the door unlocked. We have to get a key safe, so that we can lock the door safely, yet get in to help her.

Then, on Monday, the new carers who deliver food, forgot lunch, and Aunty sat there staring out of the window at the walls and windows with no food until, again, the same SVdP caring person arrived and realised what had happened and whipped her up an omelette in the microwave.

Aunty can't do the shopping herself, or ring the news agent to deliver her papers, or organise the delivery of the drugs she must take every day, or feed herself, let alone cook.  She hasn't unpacked her boxes from when she moved in there in 2009, and doesn't know where her clothes are.  She doesn't do her own laundry but someone else must come and fetch it and take it away and do it for her, and then put it back in her drawers.

Her drawers are mixed and muddled.  When she went into hospital, one of the SVdP people couldn't find her nighties.  I found them when I visited last weekend; they were in the wardrobe under her outdoor hats and gloves, with some cassette tapes.  I've put them in the drawers next to her bed.

If you have a child, a toddler, you know you have to mind them.  You give them food, wash their clothes, wash them, and put them to bed.  Aunty now needs minding like that.  She even asked me to cut her nails.  And volunteers can't be doing all that for a non-family member.  Soon Aunty will have to move from her sheltered flat to a room in a care home.

Visual memories

We spent a few days last week with three grandchildren at the Cheddar Youth Hostel here.   Previous years we've stayed at Totland Bay on the Isle of Wight, Wilderthorpe Manor and Pembrokeshire, Wales.

I checked back in this blog to find at the Isle of Wight http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/isle-of-wight-youth-hostel.html youth hostel grand daughter #1 lost her tooth and we needed to call the tooth fairy.  This time her little sister, only five, had a wobbly tooth, but nothing was lost.

The blog reminds that husband had planned the trip telling me we were going but omitting to mention that we were staying in a youth hostel with grandchildren.  Now I might know better and be less surprised.

In August 2009 we went to Shropshire here and I took photos, photos of the birds nesting in the youth hostel, and photos of the gliding site we visited.  Last year at Pembrokeshire, when I had a great time surfing I didn't blog, and husband didn't get much in the way of photos of the surfing.  I had an unforgettable time surfing, yet I remember little of the hostel.  I remember going round a castle and someone falling and not being able to get down a narrow staircase so a helicopter came to rescue her.  I took photos but didn't blog the holiday.  A blog helps me retrieve these memories.  This trip I would have taken my camera but it is being mended.  The visual memories are

• walking over the hill top the first morning, and sheltering under trees with another family under the next trees waiting for the rain to stop;
• watching rain coming in over Cheddar reservoir and we are already pretty wet, and hoping the others will hurry up but we're about to become thoroughly drenched. 
• the high roof of the Cheddar cave
• the huge cliffs of the gorge
• the soft sleeping face of granddaughter #4 on her bunk in the morning

Gliding weekends (sunny Sunday with friends)

Gliding incidents used to be the staple of my social conversation.  Sunday evenings would be spent in the pub reviewing the weekend's gliding activities: who'd gone solo, who'd earned a medal, who'd landed out.

My gliding club friend, having finished her Open University studies, is returning to normal sociability.  She invited husband and me, along with several others from gliding days for lunch on what must have been the first warm Sunday of the year.

Her dog, Hendrix, hid in the shade beneath our table, while we compared notes on our now grown children, our waning careers, and pension prospects. the mortgages we've paid off, and the 16% interest rates we started with.  Gliding we hardly mentioned, apart from remembering the scandal when an early solo pilot misjudged his height so badly that he failed to return to the air-field, attempted to land on a local parade ground, yet was so low he missed that too, and as he glided into a street, wrapped the K7 glider round a lamp post so that his cockpit nose ended up in the first floor  bathroom of a local house, whence the owner dragged him to safety.

It was a memorably embarrassing incident at a politically difficult time because the MOD was trying to sell the airfield, and despite a question about our airfield's safety consequently being asked in Parliament, the incident was effectively hushed up, forgotten and the airfield sold.  But, though we didn't know the culprit, we were all ab-initios or early solo pilots too at the time, and we remember it.  I expect culprit and house-owner remember it too - a talking point for their Sunday reminiscences.

Photo (by Terry Morgan) from the local paper 1982.

Friends

My son asked if I had any friends because he didn't know them.  Children don't always know their parents' friends, and I have sometimes wondered who were my grandparents' friends.  But children don't  know them, not only because they are absorbed in their own lives but also because they are physically in different places.  My friends were in the places where I grew up, where I went to school, college and worked, and I'm not in those places any more, and neither are they.  You lose touch.

Best friends, 1966 including Sheila, her sister, Cathy, and Anne.

Thank goodness for FriendsReunited some years ago.  Through that I found one of my very earliest friends (VEF), someone I knew when I was nine, and she now lives not far from me, a lovely intelligent woman, shy - the nuns battered any confidence out of her.  I made some good friends at that school, but not at my second secondary school because our family moved when I was around 14 and all the girls in the new school seemed to have paired up into best-friend relationships and there was nothing spare for me.

My best friend from my first secondary school came to live not far from me when our children were born.  We've kept in touch, but our sons don't remember playing together.  It didn't help that when I remarried I moved away so it was more difficult to keep in touch.  I made friends with other women through our children, playgroup and nursery school more than through primary school, and I missed them when I left.  When we meet, I know why they're friends because we talk for ages about things that are important to us.

Third year, 1966, including Madeleine, two Annes, Penny C and me.

A few weeks ago, a gliding-club friend contacted me to say that she'd finished her Open University degree and at last had time to spare, so we spent a day together catching up, comparing notes on work and life.  Her son went to the same university as my son, but they don't remembering playing together when they were little, and never had cause to meet again at uni.

Then there are the girl friends or play or have played tae kwon do.  I meet one who doesn't play any more for coffee occasionally.  Our latest point for comparison has been cancer treatment because she had breast cancer diagnosed a year after I did.  Another tae kwon do friend, who invited husband and I to her fiftieth birthday party, is a garden designer, and at the moment I have 40 of her plants nestling warmly in my greenhouse, ready to bloom we hope in time for her design display at Chelsea.

Recently, researching away from home for a couple of days, I stayed with an old college friend who lives in Worcestershire.  We had a wonderful time talking about, for example, books we've both read - Dervla Murphy's "To India on a Bicycle".   We don't see each other for decades and then meet twice in a year  - we met in summer last year for a mutual friend's sixtieth, when we sang and laughed as if we were still in college.

For my sixtieth birthday, I wanted to invite sixty girl friends but I ended up inviting men too.  I have a few men friends, not just husbands of girlfriends.  I have an old work friend who lives in America.  We'd lost touch but he's got such an unusual name that when I googled him (and his wife who has a different name) it was possible to get back in touch.  And he came and stayed with us for a night last year.  Many of the friends I've made in the last few years through my PhD are men, and several are from other countries: Canada, Ireland, Germany, China, India.  One PhD colleague who comes from Syria was very supportive and caring when I was diagnosed with cancer - his father had recently died of cancer.

And my best friend?  I asked my mother when I was around 14, so sad that I couldn't make friends in my new school, "Who's your best friend, Mum?"  She looked surprised that I didn't know.  "Why, your father of course!"  There you are - your best friend must be your spouse.

Icy spawn

So cold, went in garden, saw ice in pond, thought to photo it to compare with previous years, years when I could find frog spawn in ponds, would collect it and hope I'd get tadpoles.   Not this year.  Too cold to spawn.  I thought.

But my tadpoles last year must have grown into frogs when I wasn't looking, because amongst the ice I saw spawn in the pond, my pond!  Hope springs.

Judo champ trains tae kwon do shorties

Do I look short?  Have I shrunk?  No - I have osteoporosis thanks to the aromatase inhibitor drugs I'm on, but I'm not shrinking yet. I'm standing between a couple of judo champions: Karina Bryant, whose Olympic bronze medal I'm holding, and a potential Olympic champion whom she's training up, Frazer Chamberlain.  Our tae kwon do instructors arranged a two-hour session with her in which we practised rolls, side falls, back falls, forward falls, throws and chokes,  all practice that I need so that if I do fall, I don't break anything.

 I hoped Karina would try tae kwon do too. She knows Sarah Stevenson, the tae kwon do champion. Imagine Karina against Sarah.  Who'd win? Karina says that she would win, if she could get close enough to Sarah to throw her, but Sarah would kick her first!  Yes - that's what I'd do against someone as big and as skilled as Karina - keep her away from me.

And she's nice too.

Tattooist's parlour

In the tattooist's parlour, the piercer thought he recognised me.

Now, I'm a middle-class, middle-aged (more or less - well okay, rather more than less), white, educated woman that doesn't usually frequent tattooing parlours, let alone get recognised in them.  In fact, this was, I must admit, my first visit to a tattooing parlour. So if you look at me, would you think that a tattooist would recognise me, like do I hang out with tattooists  or with people that are covered with tattoos, or with people who have just a few tattoos?  Well, yes to that one because I've got a tattooed step-daughter and a tattooed PhD colleague.  But to look at me with my white hair, my middle-of-the-road if not somewhat conventional clothes, you wouldn't assume I have much acquaintance with tattoos.  Yes okay okay, so I've got three tattoos, but they're my radiotherapy tattoos and don't count.

What am I doing in a tattooist's parlour?  I'm escorting, chaperoning, encouraging - well she asked me to come - some female who is about to get her ears pierced.  Nowadays, you don't get your ears pierced like I got mine done at 22, in a back room sitting on a chair at a jeweller's shop.  You can get them done in bling shops like Accessorize, by some shop assistant while you sit in the window being watched by the world.  When I asked at the jeweller's about getting ears pierced, they said they don't do that any more but they advised me that a tattooist would be much more reliable and sensible about piercing ears than a shop assistant.   And indeed, I'm well impressed.

We walk in to a small dark, very full and very busy shop in the Aylesbury gyratory - that means it doesn't have exorbitant rents like the shopping malls demand, but from the outside it seems a bit seedy.  Inside the walls are covered with beautiful drawings of flowers, and fancy letters and flowing drapes on feminine forms.  The piercer, a strong beefy man in his thirties, tattoos peeping out at the end of his shirt sleeves, asks me if I'm worried about female friend and I assure him I'm not, that I had my ears done at the same age, and she's old enough to make up her own mind.  As female friend fills a form about her health and name and what she's having done, I chat with an assistant.  He tells me that he's only been there for six weeks, but that he's learned more about drawing in six weeks here than he had in four years in school - he has an A-level in art.  I'm impressed.

The piercer calls me into a back room to check that the marks he's put on female friend's ears are acceptably even. They look okay to me.  He tells her what he's going to do and how.  That's when he comments that he's recognised me.  Female friend lies down on the couch - I notice cleaning equipment round the room - this is a hygienic procedure. He tells her how to breathe, leans over, and that's one ear pierced.  She has to turn over, move to the other end of the couch so he can reach her.  I see some interesting models of body parts with various piercings.  The other ear is already pierced and it's bleeding a bit.  The piercer inquires if she drank any alcohol the previous evening because alcohol can cause the blood to flow a bit more but she hasn't drunk - it's just her.

It's all done; she can pay and leave.  I'm further impressed as a gaggle of giggling girls pile in and the piercer tells them that they are not all coming in his clinic at the back because he doesn't want any peer pressure on the youngster that says she wants her tongue pierced.  This man does a psychological assessment on his customers before he provides the service.

And yes, he and I do have something in common.  We both play tae kwon do and he's seen me at the black belt training sessions.

Furtling about with vehicles in San Francisco

Here's husband ineffectually fiddling around with his hand-me down camera in China Town, San Francisco, photographing an exciting trolley bus - interesting NOT.

We spent four nights here, a lovely city for its steeply angled streets, its characterful transport and its shops (I'd love to come here with a daughter), and stayed in this wonderful bed and breakfast, at the Golden Gate Hotel.  I loved the way their cat sat on the desk by the front door to welcome us.  Their dining room is tiny; although they must have around seven rooms on each of three floors, there are only two large round tables and one small one in the breakfast area, so you have to talk to other guests, which is lovely.  We met people who were also on holiday, from all over the States, or from Holland, or from Australia, and people who were here for conferences, or with a spouse at a conference.  In the afternoon, the hotel proprietors provide tea in this same area, and whilst not as busy as at breakfast time that gives you a break, a light fruity tea, and the most delicious cookies, something like my mother-in-law used to make.  Yummy.

And did I mention San Francisco's vehicles?  It has trolley buses, buses, tram cars and cable cars, not to mention the BART - Bay Area Rapid Transport.  We bought a 3-day ticket and travelled on most of the vehicles.  People talked to each other on these vehicles and we saw a variety of  San Franciscan life.  On one trolley bus, there were forty small boys, a class of eight-year-olds all very smartly dressed in school uniform with blazer and pressed trousers, and white shirts and ties - obviously a private school (Sacred Heart).  On  another trolley bus, wheelchairs were easily and readily accepted and stowed, in a way that I've never seen in the UK.

 I even made a sound recording of the cable car bells to share with my mother when I get back.  You can see one coming up the hill here.  I didn't fancy hanging on a pole on the outside, but even getting on and off can be a bit scary as they stop, on the tracks, right in the middle of a junction, and you have to check what traffic is around you, and that it has stopped like it's meant to!

Husband is less stressed since he bought a new camera.  Now he can effectively shoot a series of photos of the trolley buses and might use them to illustrate a piece for his model railway club magazine.  

Trains at the Grand Canyon

Last weekend we visited the Grand Canyon. Here's husband ineffectually faffing about with his camera, taking photos of a train, for goodness sake. We had half a day in that Grand Canyon park, and we spent a hour of it walking to this station, waiting to see and photo the blooming train. Was I grumpy!

We got back up to the rim (south) to glimpse the view, though husband stressed about other tourists who were off the track, near the cliff.

Poolside

Why leave home?  If you had a home like this, you'd stay.  This is my brother's back yard, with wisteria shading the veranda by the pool, and a couple of affectionate, animated shaggy hearthrugs, Wheatens, to bark at intruding birds.

Jet lagged for the first few days, we unwound here in the mornings, in the afternoon hiking in nearby mountains.  Here we've reached the top of Fletcher Canyon, a gain of height from around 6600 feet to 7700 I think.  We need to be fit.

Then we went to Yosemite with brother and sister-in-law, staying in a huge cabin - bigger than the first house I had.  Each of the four days, we went on a hike round somewhere, Nevada Falls, Glacier point, Panorama view, Vernal falls, Yosemite falls, seeing lakes, meadows and the Mist Trail.  At least the mist wasn't there that day, dampening the steps.

Rocks, like El Capitan,are enormous and even using binoculars the climbers were still tiny pinpricks.   One evening we watched the sun set over another famous rock,  Half Dome.  Another evening we came past El Capitan in the dark and could see the flashlights where the climbers were stopping for the night - it takes days to climb these rocks.  For a light hike, we thought we'd visit the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias, but it turned out to be another four mile trek up hill, as usual and we got back to the cabin hungry for our lunch and a siesta. 

On the final evening, we had a talk from the Search and Rescue Team http://www.friendsofyosar.org/.  This speaker told wonderful tales of the perils in the park, and afterwards we realised that the scary steps down by the Mist Trail were just as dangerous as we'd felt when we were negotiating them. 

Now we're home again, resting, catching up with news, blogs, photos, and audio diary, just relaxing by the pool again.

Olympic atmosphere

Daughter and I had tickets for the tae kwon do Olympics this week.  Neither of us has ever attended an official sports event like this, not rugby, not cricket, not football, so this was excitingly different for us, let alone that it is our favourite sport to practise.

Don't go up there thirsty though.  They'll sell you something to drink, but they don't make it easy to get something without sugar or alcohol - ordinary water.  The queue for the drinking fountains and to fill your water bottle was longer than any queue for food.

The atmosphere was great.  We cheered and stamped and shouted and waved flags, especially when Jade Jones, the GB tae kwon do under 57kg came on. We saw her get through to the silver round, and when we got home, on the telly we watched her win gold.  We also watched Martin Stamper, who was up against a really good Afghan and didn't win, but was good enough later to earn a bronze.
Another that won the crowd's sympathy and support, despite losing, was Diogo Silva from Brazil, who had a gammy foot, and the doctor was called a couple of times, yet he kept getting up and fighting again.

See highlights here.

We took the opportunity to try out the London cable car, and on the way there instead of going on the DLR, got off the underground at Greenwich so got these wonderful views of east London.

Note daughter's patriotic head gear.

Late love

She blushed.  The red flushed from her checks, down her neck and up to her forehead.  You could see tears filling her eyes.   My colleague and I had just followed up on what this intelligent, beautiful woman had earlier told us, that a relationship, which eleven years ago had spluttered to a halt, less than a month ago sparked again - and the pair  instead of wasting more years had let that electricity flow.  She's in love, she's smiling like a girl, blushing like a teenager, talking about life-changing events, and she's sixty.

A few weeks ago, I blogged that middle-aged women had stories to tell, to tell of their loved but aging relatives, their young relatives who've left home, of grandmother duty, of how they balance home and work, if they're still allowed paid work.   What you rarely hear of is this late chance for love. We're privileged to be allowed to share her joy.

Oncologist out

Imagine feeling cared for, nursed, being someone special.  When you're waiting in a busy waiting room, in the oncology department of a big hospital, with no one to talk to, a nurse comes up to you, addresses you by name (almost right) and asks very nicely if she may weigh you.  Someone's paying you attention, aren't they?  They care whether you've put on weight or lost it and the nurse will pass the information to the doctor who knows that some anti-breast cancer drugs tend to make you put on weight, and the doctor will discuss that with you. 

But no, "that's just something the nurses do", explained the oncologist (B) I saw that time, saw just the once, never again.  The next time I came to the oncology department, I courteously though somewhat nervously refused to allow the nurse to weigh me.  She told the doctor - at least now I know that they communicate - and the doctor (C) talked about placebo treatment - visiting the doctor makes people feel better.  Yes, I understand that, having once visited my doctor anticipating our second baby, but wanting a home birth - he said he couldn't treat me because he didn't do home births, and I went home rather melancholy.  Being treated makes you feel good.

Nevertheless, last week when I went to the oncologist, I allowed the nurse to weigh me.  It amused me to note her complete lack of observation as I stood on the scales fully dressed and holding  two bags, one with a purse, a digital recorder, a camera, and a paper back book inside.  Needless to say, I weighed more than before. 

However, for the first time, I saw the same oncologist again.  This man (C) copes with me citing breast cancer research on predict, vitamin D, hyaluronic acid, aromatase inhibitors and that women diagnosed when over 60, gain less benefit from these drugs.  We had a discussion on the relative statistics of taking an aromatase inhibitor versus exercise (pdf), and he tells me not to stop taking the drug but that as far as the oncologists are concerned, I'm cured.  They removed the physical lump; they radiated the area in case they dropped anything; the aromatase inhibitor will prevent anything else starting up.  Keep up the annual mammograms, keep taking the aromatase inhibitor for five years (I can have a trial month out to see if the aches go away and if they do then they'll use a different aromatase inhibitor) but otherwise go away and don't come back. 

I'm cured.

Graduated daughter

Daughter has graduated with a good honours degree in maths with study in continental Europe.  Well done, grown up daughter.

Electronic memories

I saw some old friends in Paris a couple of weeks ago and asked to see photos of their children, but being octogenarians and frail, they don't do electronic, and they have no photos.  From a shared holiday, we have photos of us and their children in the 1970s, and of their mother, and of their father in 1968.  It bothered me to lose a similar memory, and I'm glad to see that, Gillian Rose, an Open University lecturer has brought this up as a problem to consider within the social sciences.

The Open University - Social Sciences

The Open University - Social Sciences Here is the Friday Thinker: Almost everyone owns at least a few family photographs, whether pasted into albums or saved on computer hard drives. Over the past decade, more and more of our photos have become digital. But has the shift to digital images changed what we do with our family snaps and how we feel about them? Why might this matter to social scientists?

A digital divide separates my old friends from visual and tangible memories of the last ten years.

A frog's arrival

After three years trying to get my tadpoles big enough to survive, each year losing some to too much sun, or stagnant water, at last I have a frog.

Stories of middle-aged women

"As a woman of 50, I’m surrounded by my contemporaries and what women of that age go through: parental loss, cancer, dealing with Alzheimer’s, children growing up. All these issues that are here in our lives and they’re invisible."

thus spake Samantha Bond recently, here, when bemoaning the lack of stories of middle-aged women.

Such am I.  I and my peers are coping with aging relatives, taking on legal powers of attorney, mourning those we are losing alive to Alzheimer's, and vicariously taking on the troubles of our grown-up children.  Our children may be living the dreams we once had: emigrating, studying fantastic university courses.  Or they may be worrying us with troubled relationships, dangerous driving, failing exams, not working. 

Is there not drama in such lives?  Apparently not, and hence Bond's moan.  There are few theatre, film or stage productions of the lives of people like me.  Despite the bulk of theatre audiences being made up of middle-aged women, despite the novels written by and for us, there are not the productions, and hence there are not the roles for the actresses like Bond. 

Middle-aged women are like the main supporting wall of a house, central and sustaining, but hidden.

Local jubilee

It's our Queen's jubilee. The United Kingdom is going red, white and blue today, a day to be proud of being English, or Welsh, or Scottish, or a member of the Commonwealth.  The whole country is having a big party.  In Aylesbury old town, we've already had our Jubilee lunch, shared between local residents and anyone who goes to one of the town centre churches. A child was giving out little plastic Union Jacks that make flapping clacking sounds, and the band 'God save the Queen' in a modern fashion.  Then a few minutes later, a black woman and I together waved our flags and sang it again to the traditional tune.
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us
God save the Queen

Our local politician tweeted when he & @marymaryb89 judged our neighbour Margaret's "as best decorated mobility scooter at #aylesbury #StMarys jubilee party!"
The atmosphere is wonderful. Despite the damp and drizzle, we're all happy and gay and proud of being part of the UK or the Commonwealth. Our Queen has been serving us for 60 years and we're all partying in celebration. Thank you to our Queen Elizabeth.

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Half my myopia sorted: June 2012

My two eyes have very different focal lengths - is that the right term?  One is around -1/2 dioptre but the other is -4 dioptres.  This has advantages in that I can read very small print with one eye, like the ingredients on tins and the warnings on medical leaflets, and I can see well enough to drive with the other eye.  However, the disadvantages are that only one eye is working at a time, the two eyes are quite imbalanced and if I want to work on the computer and read a document at the same time (like when I'm marking OU assignments or copy-typing an historical diary) then I need to swap at least two pairs if not three pairs of glasses.  Vari-focals don't work because I have to throw my head back to see through the short sighted bit at the bottom and in the office everyone seems to fix their screens high up which makes the neck ache even more!

I had a problem that glasses didn't solve - exacerbated it even - and I was not going to go down the irreversible route of surgery.

But then I read of ortho-keratic lenses, discovered someone who could prescribe and fit them, and now have one lens that I wear every night in the very myopic eye.  It's wonderful.  In the morning, I look out of my bedroom window and can see into the distance with both eyes - I usen't to be able to do that.  When I sit at meetings, I can see the person at the end of the table and don't need to put on glasses to read the papers in front of me. It's wonderful.

But it's temporary.  If you don't like it, don't like wearing the lens at night, can't see well enough, you can go back to your body's choice of focus by simply no longer wearing the lens.  Or if you lose the b* lens, you go back.  And I dropped my lens the other night.  I heard it hit the wood of the dressing table, thought it had slipped between a piece of china and a tissue, but it simply disappeared.  I searched for 15 minutes before I was too tired and fed up to look any more and went to bed.  Husband and I searched in the morning, but it was not to be found, so I had to ring the optometrist and order a new one (£50).  In the meantime, my eye has been reverting to its normal -4 dioptres myopia and I can't see the detail of the blossom outside my bedroom window, nor the face of the person at the end of the table at yesterday's meeting.  The lens arrived today, and tomorrow I'll be able to see again as I want to.
2018: I found the missing lens! It had dropped into an open envelope propped up at the front of an open drawer of the dressing table.

Mothering Sunday titles

Step-daughter #2 earns a smile and brownie points for addressing a mother's day card to me like this. She appreciates how much work it is to stop people calling you Ms, or Mrs when your husband's surname isn't the same as the one you use and you've never told them to use Ms or Mrs so why do they think they should change your title to something they've not been told.

Maybe SD#2 'll get a doctorate too one day.

Hyaluronic Acid

Wandering round the local health food shop the assistants, whom I know because I'm often in there, asked me how I was. I had a little moan about the side effects of the aromatase inhibitor drug I have to take and then commented that my skin was also losing its elasticity, which it would do anyway at my age, but seems to have lost more quickly recently. The assistant recommended hyaluronic acid. This sounds wonderful - an anti-aging drug. But being as it's expensive, I thought I'd go and do some research on it first.

Googling just for hyaluronic acid tends to tell you about what it is, how it might work and some of its side effects but it wasn't until I searched for 'hyaluronic acid' and 'breast cancer' together that I got the scariest warning. Don't take hyaluronic acid if you have any cancer, but particularly if you have breast cancer. Hyalonic acid (HA) is recommended for creaky bones as well as for ageing skin - it seems to rejuvenate. BUT its ability to counter-act the side effects of Arimedix may be because it supports/ encourages breast cancer. There appears to be correlation between high HA and breast cancer - though cause is not yet proven. So I repeat:  

Don't take hyaluronic acid if you have any cancer, but particularly if you have breast cancer.

Crumbs and buns

Aged auntie has a support plan. Adult social care services review an old person's needs and sets up support to enable them to carry on living independently. Five years ago, I had nine octogenarian relatives but now only five of them stagger on. Those who died, died still living in their own homes, their own lives into their nineties, but aged auntie can't control her own life any more she forgets - like you all forget "what did I come in this room for?" but she forgets more and more often - like whether she's eaten today, or that she came into this room for her food, that anyone visited her this morning and even how to get home from the shops, and that is scary for her. She's not got Alzheimer's and she can still do the Telegraph cryptic cross word, so you can see how frustrating, demeaning and maddening it is for her to forget every day. If she forgets to eat, she dizzy. If she forgets her medicine, she's in trouble.

Recently, AA sat down with ASC, mental health services, two friends from the Saint Vincent de Paul Society and me and we all her eating, shopping, and other things. The SVP is an interesting organisation. Years ago, AA was an active member, visiting old people in their homes, care homes, sheltered housing or community centres, chatting with them, keeping them company, she threw them crumbs of company and solace, thus making a loved and respected member of her community.

Now her turn has come, and those who watched her as a role model, now watch for her and hence came the SVP members to her review meeting. These are people who deal practically with AA - what I can't do living 200 miles away, people who observe AA getting thinner, and when AA tells ASC that she does her own shopping, shake their heads, so ASC know the real story.
AA built up her relationship with these people years ago; now they respect and even love her. I cannot sing their praises enough. AA's breadcrumbs are floating back to her as currant buns.

Memories are made of stuff

This head scarf is the first present my father gave my mother circa 1947. Eventually she passed it to me with admonishments to look after it, that it was important.

These other photos are of stuff I found in Aged Auntie's flat.

'Stuff' sounds so deprecatory, as if of no importance. But to AA these things are what remind her. Her iron is a professional tailor's iron and extremely heavy and AA was a professional tailor. When I insisted that it had to go because having too much meant that stuff hid important things, she asked me where I'd be taking it. I ventured, 'an antique shop?' to be told that it wasn't an antique and that it was still used professionally and AA had a certain intelligent glint in her eye, so I remembered the Moroccan tailor in our town and said that I'd take it there.

Then AA looked at the old tools I'd pulled out. They were her father's tools. "Chop-chop", she remarked as she looked at his axe - another memory.

Memories are contained in stuff, stuff that brings back memories of other people, other times, lives lived and passed. Memories keep alive, and that's why you don't want to take away old people's stuff, because you take away their memories.

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.

Learning when you're 60

It's a bit disturbing to a newly turned 60 year old to read that Brain function can start declining 'as early as age 45'

My first reaction was that they would get that result if they tested only on civil servants, British civil servants - which is a bit rude of me to imagine that civil servants might start losing brain function earlier than other working people. But then seriously, when I looked at the age cohort - 45-70 over ten years - I had to wonder if perhaps these people were stuck in the same job, still employed after ten years, so had no reason to use their brains, never learned anything new. If you're 55 say, and have secure employment and a pension to retire on at sixty, then what motivation do you have to learn new skills, memorise new material, practise something new, when you can carry on doing what you've been doing for perhaps thirty years. And if you don't use it, then you lose it.

If you haven't played netball for years, then do you imagine that you can still run around like you used to? If you haven't spoken French for years, then can you remember all the vocabulary you used to have? Is it then surprising that the muscles you used to use to play games no longer work? Is it surprising that you've forgotten how to learn a language? NO!

Five years ago I struggled to learn new moves in tae kwon do. Five years ago I struggled to understand new theories and concepts in business and social science. I struggled to write academic papers, and I struggled to make new physical patterns. I still struggle. BUT, I know that I can learn them. I realised this when I started to dance and found that some of the movements I'd practised at tae kwon do were transferable to dancing. Ergo, since I've done a lot of learning in the last five years, some of the academic skills I've learned must transfer to other contexts.

I recommend life-long learning.

New years' travelling plans

You don't want to spend a fortune on air tickets to another continent and then not stay for more than a couple of weeks. I have such a dilemma in that I haven't been to see my brother in the States for 16 years. I last went to visit brother and his wife in 1996 when they paid for us to spend Christmas with them after my husband had died in August. Christmas promised to be very bleak that year, and I was devastated, deep in mourning. Since brother & wife hadn't been able to fly over for the funeral, which would have been an utter waste of money to fly so far for a couple of days for the sake of someone dead, brother paid for daughter, son and me to fly to Vegas and to stay with them for three weeks. Son had three weeks holiday from his new school, and I just took daughter off for the last week of her school term without even asking permission.

I remember those weeks well, brother's very sensitive care for all of us, sister-in-law's welcome and companionship, and they kept us busy. They took us to visit the Vegas casinos (keep within the paths because we were with children), see the white lion, and the first time I saw Cirque du Soleil. I'd never heard of it then, but it was the most amazing circus, with no words, just acrobats, and clowns. They weren't nice clowns though. SiL told us that we weren't going to have seats near the front in case the clowns picked on us. And we watched one poor man following a clown who had his tickets and was showing him to his seat, along the aisle, along a row, over the back of some seats, along another row, over the back of some seats, then the clown tore up the tickets! The poor man was stranded.

But I haven't been to see brother & SiL since. They've come here several times, and
my son has visited them twice, but I've not been there. Mainly I've been engrossed in bringing up my children, first on my own, then I remarried, and have been building relationships with my new family, and husband had paid work too and didn't retire until 2008, by which time I was well into my PhD, so couldn't travel too much - except for that trip to India for the Navjote. I could travel to academic conferences for my studies, and even got the expenses covered, so I managed to get to a very eminent conference in Canada in 2010. This year I presented at a conference slightly closer to home, in Amsterdam. Now I have no academic affiliation that will support me at conferences, so I'll probably only go to a couple in Oxford, and might even gate-crash those, depending on how much they cost.

So I want to go and see brother & SiL in 2012. I've arranged my Open University tutoring so that I am free in September for two or three weeks, and husband's agreed to it, though he hasn't yet agreed to more than two weeks and we haven't yet booked our tickets. I expect we can do more than just stay with brother & SiL like I did last time, because now we don't have lots of children to look after. In 1996, SiL had three children and I had my two. I visited them earlier in 1988 when between us we had five children under school age, and we went nowhere but the supermarket, which was my excitement of the holiday - I'd never been in an American supermarket or anywhere in America for that matter. So my previous two trips to the States haven't been very good, and I've had little to entice me back, but this time husband and I might hire a car and go some other places too, like the Grand Canyon, or Zion National Park, and if we go in September, SiL says the temperature is good and we could go alpine hiking up Mt Charleston or visit their holiday hut.

Maybe husband and I will visit India in 2013, or I wonder when I could visit with daughter. When I was in India in 2008, I watched all those young women, and I missed my 17 year old daughter, and I watched them together and thought that she would get on with them. But daughter is finishing her first degree this year and may have a job without much leave in 2013, so she won't have the time to come with me. On the other hand, she loves linguistics, and has just spent a year studying maths in French in France before returning to Bristol to finish her maths degree, and is considering taking a masters in linguistics. At the moment she's looking at studying in Dublin or Wales, and she's job hunting. I wonder if she could study languages of India or linguistics in India. Then spending money to visit India with her in 2013 wouldn't seem like a waste of a fortune.

A Navjote in New Zealand

Brilliant! a Navjote in New Zealand.

My Indian girlfriend emailed me that her grandson had had his Navjote in New Zealand where his parents live because his father couldn't get long enough time off work to travel to India. So IGF and her husband have gone to New Zealand until next July. IGF's son posted the photos of the Navjote on Facebook.

The photos I like best are where there are lots and lots of children and my IGF looks like a matriarch there, happy and proud. I looked at how she'd arranged her sari because I'd just been explaining saris at Toastmasters, so I wanted to know how she was wearing it.

Enjoy New Zealand - how nice to be able to stay for several months, and watch and be involved in her grandsons' every day life so that she gets to know them and they know her.

Wearing a sari

Last week, my always exquisitely dressed girl friend, AEDGF, said that she was going to a party, that she wanted to wear some Indian dancing clothes and produced a sari. I don't think sarees are very easy to dance in, particularly when it's a western woman dancing, and then I discovered that she didn't know how to put one on. So I showed her, and then got her to practise. It wasn't an easy sari because it was nylon and kept slipping.

In 1976 my Indian girl friend (IGF) first showed my Australia nursing girl friend and me how to pleat the folds. Most English women don't know how to do that. I have the photos of us in the saree shop surrounded by the most beautiful colours, hues, sheens. I bought two sarees, a turquoise one and a pink one with oil painted decorations, and there's a photo of me wearing the pink one.

AEDGF rang me over the weekend because we were going to meet at Toastmasters on Monday evening. Toastmasters is a speech making club, where we practise making speeches, and it is very interesting because you hear 4 or 5 short speeches, around 7 minutes, in an evening, and they could be on all sorts of different topics. Yesterday, one chap wanted to practise vocal variety, and told us a tantalising tale of Jack Landon's, then my coaching girl friend wanted to practise a presentation she was going to give to some sports coaches, and someone else spoke about her holiday in Cuba, showing us a photo of her being kissed by a dolphin.

AEDGF hasn't got a long slip to wear under her sari and wanted me to bring her one that she could borrow. And then I had the idea that I could do a demonstration speech on 'How to put on a sari'. I dressed for the part in my turquoise sari, struggling into the choli, eventually managing to breathe because it's a bit tight. I put on rather a lot of makeup, packed the pink sari, its slip and choli and went to Toastmasters. You must imagine the looks when I arrived because although it is Christmas and we'd said that we'd dress up, the 'dressing up' was a bit quiet. AEDGF had a Christmasy hat on her head, and a gold shiny polo necked jumper, and chief toastmaster had a tie with Father Christmas faces on it, but I was the most dressed. A couple of the women said I looked stunning, so that was a good start for my speech.

I started by saying 'Namaste', and what I was going to do, which slightly worried the men because they thought they were going to be subject to a bit of a strip tease, but then I pulled out the pink saree, spread it over the floor so that they could see how long it was, and while I was doing that, AEDGF was pulling the pink underskirt on over her trousers. I didn't give her the choli. Then I put the pink sari on her, made her turn round to show everyone, showed people how the pallu at the back of my sari was a different pattern and how far it hung, and that I could pull it over my shoulders or head. I put it over AEDGF's head, told everyone how a sari made you look and feel beautiful, and finished with another 'Namaste'.

I hope my IGF'd have been proud that I remembered her lessons from so long ago. I got husband to take some photos of me in the turquoise sari, and perhaps I'll put them on Facebook, or even here. I realise there are different ways of wearing a sari, and I could look some up on youtube, but I'll stick to the way IGF showed me. Thank you. It's good to have her as a friend.

Your favourite colours

Someone recently asked me what my favourite colours are. But it depends where you are and what you're doing, if you're wearing the colours, or sitting in a room of colours for example.

Wearing colours - I wear blues, all shades of blues, and other colours only if they are blue tones. I wear turquoise, navy blue, royal blue, sky blue, lilac blue, lilac and purple. But is grape a blue grape or a red grape? I'll wear reds with a touch of blue, so crimson red works but not scarlet red. Some pinks work, but not peach or apricot because they've got too much yellow in them, and I'll never, ever wear orange.

Rooms of colour - I love the colour yellow. I may not wear it but I'd decorate every room in my house in yellow because it's so cheerful and bright. When I was a little girl, I knew blue was for Mary, and brown was for Saint Joseph, or that blue was for boys and pink was for girls. But I had a yellow mug and said that I liked yellow because it was the colour of the sun.

I like deep browns, but now I understand that brown is a colour of the seventies so I'm not allowed to have it. Well, I wouldn't wear it (not to mention that one of my school uniforms was a light brown), but I could have a yellow room, with a few dark brown oak pieces of furniture, couldn't I?

What are your favourite colours, and why?

Breast cancer women 'stop drugs'

** Breast cancer women 'stop drugs' **

"About a third of breast cancer patients stop taking medication because side-effects are more severe than they expect, researchers suggest"

says the BBC here.

I'm not surprised. Last time I saw a specialist doctor, he listened only to the first side effect that I mentioned, then he launched off into a spiel about the side-effects only being in the first three months, while I went through another side effect that minute. I watched him and thought perhaps after three months you just get so used to the side effects that you think them normal. But after reading this BBC article, I realise that you just don't bother telling the doctors because they aren't going to listen anyhow. If the doctors aren't going to listen, then you have to do your own thing to deal with the side-effects, and if that means stopping taking the drugs, then so be it.

I had an interesting email from Cancer Research UK about the causes of cancer that you can control, with a wonderful graphic that I recommend downloading and printing. In breast cancer, the fifth most important cause is inactivity, not something you might have accused me of. However, since I last saw that doctor, a new side effect has attacked me - creaky achy joints. I need supple joints so I can kick at tae kwon do, so a side effect that prevents me being active in order to prevent cancer is a very unhelpful side effect, to the point of being contradictory, and therefore the cause of the side effect should be avoided. The cause is the drugs so stop taking the drugs.

I'm a jam sandwich

Step daughter #3 gave me a hug, and her partner joined in. I felt like I was the jam in the sandwich and just as sweet.

Bowling together

Bowling together [1], not alone, demonstrates friendship, networks, and links.

My girlfriends, together with their partners or child in some cases, along with some very close members of my family went ten-pin bowling for my birthday. Some friends came from very close, being neighbours, and others from miles away, people I knew when our children were small, friends from the Open University, and friends from tae kwon do.

Unfortunately friends from belly dancing and toastmasters couldn't make it or we could have had some performances and speeches.

Husband made a wonderful cake - the best tasting he's made yet, and he bakes good cakes. He iced it with numbers

00111100

People gave me wine, flowers, smellies, chocolates and books, so I'm having a week of luxuriating in the bathroom. There's sparkling Saumur left to share if you have the time to come and visit me.

I don't know who gave me a dozen pink scented roses - they're beautiful. Thank you, friend.

---

[1] Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, New York ; London.

Sixty reasons to cheer

Sixty soon and sixty friends and sixty things to do - what a long list compared to that of a six-year old - did I have a birthday party when I was six? I might have had. I know I didn't have a party when I was seven, because instead my baby brother was born, and they told us (my bigger little brother and me) in the playground at school that we had a new brother, and we went home and saw him in bed with our mother.

Following the example of a colleague who was fifty recently, here are my sixty reasons to cheer in my sixtieth birthday.

Successes!

Today has been a good day

1. Step daughter #2 had a mortgage offer
2. Son earned his Masters degree with distinction

Cancer statistics

Did I have cancer? Am I a survivor because that routine mammogram in February found the tiniest lump, diagnosed it as cancer and I had local treatment (operation & radiotherapy), followed by systemic treatment (these nasty anti-hormone tablets). I reasoned that it was such a small lump that it wouldn't have been feel-able for at least a year, and then some. So with treatment at that stage I'd certainly have lived longer than five years from last February. Now I've had the diagnosis and the treatment, of course I'm told I'm likely to survive five years and the survival statistics would look good, but I would have survived those five years anyhow!

Now there's a debate about routine mammograms resulting in over-diagnosis, consequent over-treatment and survivor stories that encourage greater take-up of mammograms. Here's the original research from America, in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Note that the authors, Welch & Frankel conclude:
"Most women with screen-detected breast cancer have not had their life saved by screening. They are instead either diagnosed early (with no effect on their mortality) or overdiagnosed."

Perhaps I don't need to keep taking these horrid tablets. I shall certainly argue this point with the oncologist at the next meeting in January. Perhaps it would be reasonable to stay on them only until the next mammogram in March shows that there are no more lumps. Last time I saw an oncologist, he said that if new lumps appear, it tends to be within the year or eighteen months after initial diagnosis. So perhaps I can come off the tablets after a clear year to eighteen months, instead of staying on them for five years.

BIG birthday

I have a big birthday coming up and I would like to celebrate it. I'd like to celebrate:

1. with sixty girlfriends,
   
2. take them to a spa for a day,
   
3. with a nice lunch and
   
4. lots of bubbly.
   

Realising that around a dozen girlfriends had commented supportively on my Facebook page when I talked about my radiotherapy, I wondered if I had sixty girlfriends, so I counted them up and reached over seventy. Seventy girlfriends collected over the years from school, college, work, hobbies, and neighbours, and my lovely female relatives.

But, first I couldn't find a suitable spa for us all, although daughter and I did go and test run a couple. ;) And secondly, some of my friends live too far away, maybe only in another county, but some live in the States, or Australia or Spain or New Zealand or somewhere in Asia.

So I'm planning a smaller get together of my local girlfriends with a few important men friends as well for luck.

I've asked Husband to bake me a big fruit cake, and last night the kitchen smelled of spices and fruit, so that's promising. I've found a venue, and started to invite a few people.

Now, I need to organise the nibbles and fizz. How shall I decorate the room? Any suggestions?

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.

Bureaucratic messes

I sent off my tax return a month ago, to town A, as tax man asked. Now, a month later, I get a letter from tax man at town B, saying he wants my return! So I've sent him a copy of the return I sent the first tax man, together with a covering letter. Friend who's an expert on tax says that all HMRC post now goes to a central system that allocates it round the country to offices that have capacity. So the fact that I sent something to town A doesn't mean it actually went there - it may well have gone to town Z! It should however have reached them and been recorded so the implication is that they have managed to lose it. Typical!

Daughter's university accommodation wants to be paid on a card, and with direct debit but the account needs two signatures so it doesn't have a card, and the accommodation organisation has mislaid or lost the direct debit we set up in April. They've agreed, reluctantly to accept a cheque. So I've written a cheque, and a covering letter.

Messes come in threes. I've managed those two but I can't manage the pension letters I get from Barclays. I can't make head nor tail of their jargon, their numbers, their variation on dates, annuities, instructions and policies. I wish I'd never bought the bloomin' policy because the effort is just not worth it.

Versailles kir

Nice trip to Versailles with nearest and dearest to finish off my PhD with a celebratory glass of kir at the Open University degree ceremony.

That's my third trip to France this year.

Herbie's blog

Husband's new grandson arrived at the end of July. He was a couple of weeks late, but making up for it with his own blog at http://herbieharford.blogspot.com/.

Hotel service

As part of the Ramblers tour, we stayed four nights at the hotel in Foix, which was in the centre of an interesting old town.

On the Tuesday, we moved to the Hotel Bristol in Carcassonne. The room was airy, with a nice view over the canal, but therefore noisy at night, or quieter but hot if you closed the windows. I needed a pillow but to my surprise the pillows in the wardrobe had no pillowcases on. I had to wait until Wednesday, when the chamber maid put a pillow case on and in the afternoon I came back to a nicely made and comfortable bed.

On Thursday, I touched up my nails with new light blue nail varnish, then dashed out leaving the nail varnish in the bathroom (I think). Yet, in the evening I could not find the varnish again. Weird. I moved the furniture around, which revealed how dusty the carpet was. I left it like that. On Friday morning, the room was thoroughly vacuumed and the dusty carpet looked really clean but I never found the nail varnish.

Tired on holiday

I thought on this, the last day, I would walk a bit, but I've woken too lethargic to be bothered to eat breakfast. Today's walk, despite starting gently, finishes with a long walk and no-get out clause.

Nevertheless, this week I've walked round Foix, and the village of Montsegur, visited Mirepoix and Carcassonne and its old city - I went up there on the navette train, and I've met some interesting people amongst the other ramblers.

I spent a happy couple of hours yesterday on the Canal du Midi, on a boat trip from Carcassone up to the lock, l'Ecluse de Ladouce. At the end of the nineteenth century, the tow paths, used by tow horses were eroding, so they planted plane trees to protect the bank because these trees have a strong root system. However, the problem now is a fungus that is attacking the trees, which may need to be replaced.