Things yet to do - experiences yet to try

Opportunities are when preparation meets luck says Professor Lucy Rogers, https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=nv9R9SnlUbw 

SD#3 gave me a book on "The Luck Factor" by Richard Wiseman and the first principle is about making your own luck, partly by finding new experiences, things you've never done before.  So I asked Facebook friends, to write me a list of up to six events / experiences to help me choose things I've not yet done. Here's what they suggested:

• Find your local hobby shop and join a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Or similar. Playing an in-person pen and paper Role Playing game is a great way to meet new people and discover things about yourself through playing a fantasy character.
• Go on a silent retreat at St Beunos - it’s wonderful !!
• Ride a camel (have you done that?). Ideally galloping across a desert somewhere, belting out the Indiana Jones theme tune at the top of your voice.
•  Learn to play a musical instrument.
• Teach yourself a non-latin script (Thai, Hindi, Chinese)
• 👏If you have to ask us, Liz that means you have probably already done most things you want to experience... New.... 😎 However, have you... 1-walked naked through a cornfield at dawn... 2-Scaled the outside of the Eifel Tower 🗼 dressed as wonder woman... 3-Run into the underwear department of M&S and shouted "knickers"... 4-(you might enjoy this one) Sat in a bath of baked beans for charity... 5-Given a Ted talk on religious metaphors in CBBC programmes...6-Given a man the benefit of the doubt...
• Cross a mountain col in a blizzard; get caught out on a mountain ridge in a sudden electrical storm. Neither to be recommended, but worth the experience. Assuming you survive.
• Learn to knit socks (if you can’t already). Learn swing dancing. I can help with both these options.
• Had an affair?
• Taken class A drugs?
• Fiddled your tax return?
• See the Northern Lights
• Get a puppy

Knowing about the people who posted these, I realise that of course they recommend things that they've done and really enjoyed and would want others to enjoy the experience too. That's friendship. Isn't it nice that one offered to help me learn. There's a lot of learning: new scripts, knitting, a language, dancing.

1. Take the first experience, playing Dungeon and Dragons. That suggestion has already led to a new opportunity because I told sgs#1 of the suggestion and how I knew a local shop where I could join in and he suggested that instead I should go round their house for a game and gave me reasons why it would be nicer. I wouldn't be meeting new people but his reasons were good.
2. A silent retreat: not done a retreat since I was a teenager and I must look up St Beunos. I wouldn't get to meet people to talk to them, would I?
3. Ride a camel: yes - I'd forgotten I did that with late husband when we visited Morocco. Didn't gallop. But the suggestion reminded me of a teenage wish to gallop across the plains of Mongolia on a horse. I am advised to read Christina Dodwell’s books because she did that. I looked for the books but they're out of print so I'll have to search.
4. Play a musical instrument: I'm not motivated any more. I played the piano, the guitar, the mandolin once. Piano and guitar I still play occasionally. Now I like singing in a choir and meet more people. That way I make more opportunities. Opportunities have already occurred cos I joined the choir, like going to a recording studio and making an album, or the wedding party earlier this month. 
5. Non-Latin script: interesting suggestion and I've looked at Korean because of tae kwon do coming from Korea. It wouldn't get me meeting people.
6. Knitting seems solitary too
7. Swing dancing: yes - I'll find out about that
8. Northern lights; yes - I've wanted to for years. Husband's not interested. I want to go this January weekend to Toronto, but again he's not interested because it's cold. I want to go even if it is cold. I want to see my DD
9. Puppy: thought about that. My teenage DS wanted a puppy, and if I still had a teenage son at home, I'd be tempted. 

I wonder why some of the illegal or ridiculous suggestions came from men, men I know who often say things with a wink and their tongue in their cheek. Would I admit to fiddling my tax return? No more than I'd admit to anyone if I kept (I don't) a baseball bat next to my chicken run. I can't see that those experiences would lead to good luck. Ah! I didn't say I wanted good luck. But I do. So far this year, luck hasn't been very kind to me, so I have to improve it. That means I'll take up some of these suggestions. Thank you friends.

Your first drink

A radio programme this week asked its participants what their first drink was. Most of them had illicit drinks with friends in the evening, but my first drink was given to me by my auntie. Aunty Grace was having a party and I was there along with my mother and other family and though I can't remember the reason for the party perhaps it was my cousin's 21st. I would have been about 12. There were these sweet yellow creamy drinks. I had two or them and was on my third, asking Aunty Grace what they were and if I could have another please.
"What are you drinking?"
"Snowballs".
Auntie yelped in horror. It turned out I was drinking a cocktail of lemonade and advocaat.
"Don't tell your mother!" Aunty worried.
I never told, but now years later, I wonder if I could have shared that story with her when I was grown up and Aunty G would no longer have been in trouble, but they could have laughed about it together.

Christmas babe

Though they say Christ was born at night, Christmas midnight mass has few children, so yesterday's six thirty service with carols was for our parish children. Another child was born about a week earlier, one that I'll care about, my first grandchild. Welcome, little boy. Welcome to your first Christmas, may you and your parents make a new happy family.

Singing it's a wonderful Christmas

Nearly a hundred years ago, my grandparents met when singing in their church choir. I never heard my grandmother, Mary (said Marie) singing because she died before I was born. But her sister. Bess, taught her daughter, my aunt, to sing Irish folk songs, remembering all the verses. Her brother, Charles, was once approached to train as a tenor in the States because his voice was so good. My parents enjoyed music, my father in an amateur operatic society, and at home my mother playing the piano and the family singing, but I didn't know this history of singing in the family, until decades later. Like my grandparents I joined a chapel choir accompanying on guitar. I discovered how much fun singing is, and sang for my own pleasure throughout my twenties and thirties. Sadness and pain in my mid-forties stopped me singing.

Next Stage Choir: It's a wonderful Christmas

Some years ago, on a short acting school week (blogged at Itch scratched)  I rediscovered the joy of singing, and singing with others. I looked for singing lessons locally and tried a couple of choirs, but nothing worked until in February 2018 a new local community choir, Next Stage Choir started in our town. And loved its ambiance.
I love singing. I like the enthusiastic people I sing with. I enjoy the female friendship (not so many women in my work or tae kwon do), and the projects we have done and lined up to do. Our latest project has been to produce an album of Christmas songs. Here's a photo of the CD when it was released at midnight at the start of December.
We sound good. You'll enjoy listening and perhaps sing along when you download it (Amazon, Spotify, iTunes). If you want a CD, let me know and I'll get you one.
I wish I could share this news with my family - my mother who played the piano, my aunt who sang Irish tunes, and those grandparents who passed me the passion for singing when they married nearly a hundred years ago.

Faster walkers: healthier minds

Years ago, striding up our street with my long-legged teenage son in tow, he complained that I walked quickly and wanted me to slow down. I think I've walked like that since I used to walk with his shorter but fast-legged father in my twenties, thirties and forties. I walk particularly fast in the late morning after I've had a cup of coffee. Don't dawdle in front of me when I'm shopping down the high street - I've even heard someone say as I passed, "What's the rush?"
This article "Slow walkers have slower minds" appeared in the newspapers in October, though a more positive headline is: "Faster walkers have healthier minds in the long run" (I note the editorial pun). It pleases me to read the article since it encourages me to think I have a healthy mind, whatever that means.
I have to use my mind because I'm still learning and am chuffed this year to have passed a couple of exams when I said ten years ago I wasn't taking any more. I don't need to take any more, but one theory paper was for my second Dan tae kwon do and I did well in that despite it being only and all memorisation, and the other paper was the Cisco CCNA1 where you have to understand as well as remember. Remembering quickly is so hard.
So if I walk quickly, will I remember better? Does remembering better mean you have a healthier mind. I think I need to go to the source research to find out what a healthier mind means.
The source doesn't define a healthier mind but associates speed of gait with cognitive development and aging, Slow gait in middle age went with poor physical function, which probably means you aren't very agile or fit. Also slow gait went with getting older faster, so if you don't want to age, perhaps the advice is to speed up your walking. Thirdly, it reports that slow gait went with "poorer neurocognitive functioning across multiple cognitive domains". Does that mean you don't think very well or you think more slowly? So which comes first, thinking not very well or walking slowly. Whichever! I now feel vindicated about my fast walking, hope my son's walking has sped up and remember that his late fast-legged father was a fast and highly intelligent thinker.

Never forgetting

It was Friday 23 August 1996. Il y en avait trois hommes

from the club

Never forgetting the views and the camaraderie.

from the hangar

Photos taken from web cams at La Motte du Caire http://www.cvvmc.com/index.php/fr/

Yummy food

The first pantomime I ever saw was at St Bede's secondary school in Crosby when I was perhaps seven years old.  Someone, probably the Widow Twanky, being as it was Aladdin, sang 

 "Yum, yum, yum, I love my tum, 

Yum, yum, yum, I do.

Yum, yum,yum, I love my tum

And my tum-tum loves me too!"

Or would be a plump Buttons sang it?
It's odd that I remember those words, but they must have amused me because they mean you love your food and your body loves you. Enjoyable food is good for your body. Your body enjoys it.
Recently, husband and I have decided to have lunch once a week at a local wine bar. The menu includes:

• Smoked salmon and lemon risotto
• Grilled asparagus, poached egg and pesto
• Lamb kofta, tzatziki, warmed pita bread
• House salad, (honey, fig & goats’ cheese)
• BLT

These are all menus that I'd happily make at home. They avoid beef, or cow protein, milk and sugar, though figs can be sweet. Fresh figs are yummy and they'll be in season soon, so I'm encouraging husband to look out for them when he goes shopping.
The other places I get ideas for yummy recipes are the organic vegetable delivery services I use. They not only send you veg and fruit, but also recipe boxes, boxes that hold all the ingredients you need to prepare a meal. For example, last week we did haddock with oregano and olives. Now I know how to do it, I'll repeat it using our own oregano from the garden. More adventurous recipes for us include,

• summer miso and tofu broth (not sure I like tofu)
• lamb madras with homemade flatbreads(I'm not making those again!)
• Persian stuffed Portobellos (a waste of life)
• Thai chicken rice bowl
• Thai green chicken curry (Yummy and coconut is nice. Not sure how I'd make a the Tai green curry paste again though)
• Indian broccoli rice (like Goldilock's porridge, just right)
• broccoli and jasmine fried rice
• butternut squash and chickpea curry
• roast aloo gobi and chickpea salad
• Spanish chickpea stew (needs a spice pot with something unknown)
• aubergine & chickpeas (plenty of tins of chickpeas in the pantry)
• spiced cauliflower and lentils (news is that our hot summer killed off the caulis this year)
• courgette, halloumi and red wine lentils
• Lentils & tomatoes with kale and egg (will do again with our hens' eggs)
• curried broccoli quinoa (again served with eggs)
• asparagus, goat's cheese and lemon risotto 

It is amazing how yummy soft goat's cheese is. Last weekend the newspaper had a salad recipe to use a glut of tomatoes with soft goat's cheese and melons. Yummy, yummy, yummy. I love my tummy.

Father's day and a father's day

The Sunday in June that is Father's day is also near to dead husband's birthday.
Here's a photo I took of him very soon after we met. It's on the cliffs near Hastings somewhere. One weekend he would come visit me and another weekend I'd go up to his, and we'd go gliding, usually staying in a tent somewhere, even in November. When he came to Hastings we would go out walking, meet my work colleagues, and even get to the occasional party, though parties were more frequent once we lived in Hampshire.

The photo is a bit of a mess because we had it so long and without a frame for it, and our cats, Hobbledy and Pixie, had a chew and a scratch at it.
Years later, his brother returned me a copy I'd given him in the late 1970s, a pristine clean copy, but I never made a scan of that because this is the one I had on the family web site for years, since the earlier 2000s. I published it with a link under it to a private wiki I had created of his life, school, university, hobbies. but I never developed that wiki much and the family web site has gone now so here he is again. If you want to know about him, then google for Oxford University quadraphonics.

In 2014, my father was still around for Father's Day despite his recent heart attack. D.G. I still had one of my favourite men.

Warm spring, not

As we walked out of the car park yesterday evening to rehearsal, fellow choir member commented on the cold when it had been so warm over Easter. Easter was lovely. We had four days of deliciously warm weather: a day with a barbecue, a day sitting outside Rumsey's drinking coffee and tasting chocolates in the sun, a walk over the hills. 

Our Canadian guests tasted the warmth of an early English summer. Now they've returned to the icy blasts of Ontario, still with a sliver of snow. But here too is now chilly again. Hence my fellow choir member's comment as she wrapped her cardie round her neck. Silly old weather.

Spring smells

Don't you like spring? The clematis armandii at dusk, as the blackbirds sing and my hens settle for sleep, scents the air as strong as honeysuckle.
Spring beckons. Tadpoles have grown from the spawn. All is well.
Even our kitchen looks spring like as it emerges in cream and green from the dust of the last few weeks.

House upheaval

Nearly degutted kitchen

Last week was traumatic. Not only did I have operations on both eyes because of retinal tears, but the builders arrived to gut our kitchen in preparation for our new one.
This meant moving contents of kitchen cupboards into... somewhere else. So now we ask, "where did we put them?" "I was looking for a bit of mustard..." "Do you know where I can find a tea towel?" "Where are the sprinkly things?" (aka spices).
Poor husband was traumatised by this chaos. He'd planned to bake a cake on the Friday before his train Risex exhibition, but with two builders, two plumbers and an electrician wandering about the kitchen, noise from drills or saws, old plaster and paint falling off the ceiling, no cupboards, water or electricity sometimes going off, dust sheets or dust over everything, and where are the scales? Er? no! No cake this year.
I hope the Risex visitors aren't traumatised by lack of cake.

Some contents of some cupboards

Choir recording project

Angel studios welcomes NSC

Our choir made a recording at Angel Studios, London. Most of us had never been in a recording studio before, never recorded before, and indeed, our local choir didn't exist a year ago.
The building looks old from the outside, but inside you have no natural light, no idea what’s happening outside and most of the inside is sound proofed, padded and stripped of its originality. You can still see character in the stair banisters, and the old gas fire at the end of the ladies’ loo. We were about 80 people to fit in our studio, of which there are at least three.

We recorded only six songs, about 20 minutes worth, but those took all day, doing takes and retakes, as well as the director reminding us of parts or to be quiet, and freeze at the end of a take, not claim, cough or shuffle. We finished with a minute to spare at one minute to six, time enough to take some more photos of the choir to go with the CD.

A few of us stayed after recording to watch the mixing. I walked into the mixing lab as they were playing one of our songs and was stunned to hear what we sound like. You usually hear only your own part, concentrate on that and can't hear the blend. We're good!
The technology was fascinatingly powerful; look at this speaker on the wall. It's as big as quadraphonic speakers, so you can imagine the quality of sound that it produces..

Speaker

Mixer board with two choir acolytes 

Look out for the Next Stage Choirs Christmas recording in the autumn. This is going to be amazing.

Prickly new car

Why do Citroen call their car a Cactus?
It should fit better in my garage than my old car: http://ejh2.blogspot.com/2009/12/tight-squeeze.html
Got a new car. It's all right. It's bigger than I need now I have neither children nor octogenarians to transport.; I'm not the hugged (aka squeezed) generation any more

Christmases past

Xmas 2018, we went to SD#1 for lunch.
Aunty Eileen and Aunty Pat had died in 2018.
Xmas 2017, DH I went up to stay in Richmond and took Eileen to mass on Xmas day (and I went to the Saturday vigil mass too), and for a meal in the hotel on Xmas day - not wheel chair accessible. Daughter had gone to live in Canada.

Mum had died.

Xmas 2016, Daughter's Canadian friend came. We all three, CF, DD & I went to midnight  mass at St Joe's. We visited Mum at her cafe home.
MumC had died.

Xmas 2015
Dad had died.

Xmas 2014, just three of us. DD, DH and I went out for lunch.  I had to rush up to Yorkshire to see Mum and Dad before Christmas. Was that the year we invited DH's brother & wife for lunch later that week? They came the year before DH got cancer, now fixed. We'll meet them for lunch next week.

Xmas 2013, 5 years ago, one of the nicest with the most and best promises for 2014. SD #2 came over at coffee time with her son & daughter but had to leave before DS and girlfriend got here so girlfriend never met her and they never met her new son. DS & girlfriend told that they had got engaged, & SD#3 rang to say the same with her partner,

Xmas 2012 6 years ago, SD #2 came with her new son. Photo on FB

Xmas 2010, we went to do Xmas for my parents. DD flew home from Bordeaux (She had an EU Erasmus scholarship) for Xmas. I gave my supervisors the first full draft of my thesis.

Xmas 2009 was nice - the last time my elders came.

Many deaths leave me now without the older generation before me, unless you count my father's cousins. They're only a tad older than my DH.

Memories of music: Until it's time for you to go

"Until it's time for you to go" was a song I learned and sang in summer 1975, after my first serious love affair had ended. I learned it from DW's records. He too had just had a serious love affair end, engaged to an Irish girl at the same college as me. But he was a Northern Irish Protestant. Why did he have to meet another Catholic girl? Me. But we spent that summer as friends, travelling together platonically (we experimented with that word,"platonic") round French camp sites, hitching down to Bordeaux, and walking up the highest (and hottest) sand dunes of Europe in the middle of the day. We laughed, argued and sang together that August.
Back in his room at Brunel University he had this Buffy St Marie record and I taught myself to play the tune on  my guitar, and I learned its words. They seemed so apt to us, in a relationship we could not sustain:
"Don't ask why"...
"and here you'll stay until it's time for you to go".
"Yes, we're different. Worlds apart. We're not the same..."
but we were the same, and only a sea apart, a slightly different faith apart.

---

Having written that, now I remember more about that holiday:

• visiting P & M, old family friends that I'd spent a previous summer with and who were holidaying in the Bordeaux region, knocking on the door and hearing an invitation, we stepped in to the family's surprised faces. P had said, not "Entrez" but "Qui est là? It must have been shock to have us visit in late evening and dark. Their son, F, quizzed me on our sleeping arrangements in our tent - cheeky nearly teenage boy!
• the torrential typical Mediterranean downpour, so DW had to wake me because i was sleeping in a newly created stream! We spent the rest of that night in the men's showers, and packed and left in the morning. But the sun came out and by midday, all our clothes were dry, including our sleeping bags sitting on the top of our ruck sacks, as we hitched in the heat. one night our hitch dropped us int middle of who-knows-where, but not near a campsite, so we pitched our tent surreptitiously and hopefully in a small wood by the side of the road, slept and got up early to be off before someone came saw us and complained we were trespassing.
• one lift took hours to get and DW was getting grumpier and grumpier, so I was attempting to balance him with cheerfulness. he complimented me after, but I felt I was forcing it, yet he never knew and my cheer took us through to the next lift.

After that summer, we started our first jobs, in London, hardly a city apart, only a few suburbs between East London and the west. We kept in touch for a few months, then, since our paths didn't cross again, we lost touch. It was time to go.

Truth and arguing

Do you know what is true? Do you know how to argue? To structure an argument? To make a good argument? Husband and I have been discussing Evan Davis's approach to recent "Post Truth" life. I have to tutor argumentation techniques and Davis's introduction to his paperback edition provides me with an example structure:

1. disreputable politicians tell lies
2. the naïve public swallow the lies
3. accordingly, the naïve public vote the wrong way

Such a structure provides a claim, a supporting claim and conclusion, but it doesn't make it a good argument because we can pick holes in for example, the public being 'naïve'. Is the public naïve? Evan Davis argues that the public can choose without having to believe literally everything. The ten commandments of the Christian bible do not include "Thou shalt not lie" but “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.” So then, husband and I discussed what a lie might be, and the motivation of someone apparently lying; is it for a greater good, or for self-benefit. Arthur Miller's play, "The Crucible" turned on this distinction.

Years ago, when I kept a tank full of goldfish and had two small children, one day, when small son was out, I discovered his favourite fish floating dead at the top of the water. I rushed out and replaced the fish with one as much the same as I could, so that sensitive son wouldn't be upset. But in his teenage years, son told me that he'd once taken the fish "for a walk". "How did that go?" I enquired? "Not very well," he admitted! He'd replaced the moribund fish in the tank where I had subsequently found it. Between the two of us, we both lied, but for different reasons.

Husband suggests that truth is what you make it. Isn't that a Buddhist concept? Tae kwon do practitioners tell a story of a Korean philosopher, Yul Gok, who wanted to study Buddhism at a time when it was not much practised in Korea. He started a pilgrimage to China to find enlightenment. On the way, tired, he laid down in a cave at night to sleep, but woke thirsty in the dark. Reaching out for something to drink, his fingers touched what felt like a gourd, which he lifted to his lips, found water and drank. Delicious! In the morning, he saw, that the gourd of delicious water was not a gourd but a skull, a skull full of putrid water and maggots. Disgusting! So was it disgusting or delicious? Delicious or disgusting? Truth is  not what you see, or what you feel, or what you taste. You make truth in your own mind.
Just to prove it, watch the 1944 short video of shapes and lines at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTNmLt7QX8E. Isn't it your mind that tells a story from what you watch? 

Unbeknown to us both, husband must have Buddhist tendencies. No wonder he is so tolerant and my attempts at Western style argument with him don't work!

How to make friends: unusual ways

Here's a short timed and rapid tour of England, not Britain, just England: https://expatexplore.com/tours/taste-of-england/
and it's an American who's told me of it because she and her husband are about to do it. They arrived in London last week, and husband and I went to meet them. We had never met them before but got on well, chatting from our meeting point outside Buckingham Palace, then as we walked to Brown's and while we had lunch.
This is my new random friend (RF). RF emailed me some years ago, "Dear B..." which isn't quite my name. First I thought it was spam mail, then I realised as she sent me more emails that she had the wrong address. I ignored them. Partly I ignored them because she was emailing me at an email box that I rarely used, so I didn't notice them for months. Over time I got to know something of her life as she told it to her friend, B, Then one month I looked at the email and saw that she was telling B about some issues, issues that touch your heart. At this point, I had to tell her that she was emailing the wrong person, but that since she'd told me so much about herself for the last two years, here was some information about me. She thanked me. The next New Year we exchanged emails just to say hello.
A month ago I realised that RF was due a big birthday this year so emailed to ask her about it, and she emailed back to say that they were coming to England this month, to visit on a whirl wind tour, including a couple of days getting over jet lag in London, and then this expat tour. It was too goo an opportunity to miss, so I suggested we met. We didn't even know what we each looked like and she sent me a photo of her at that big birthday.
I can't tell you here how much we've got in common with this lovely couple from Detroit., but we are both glad she made that serendipitous typo in that email to Betsy and we'll be keeping in touch on purpose in future.
Telling this story to a tae kwon do friend today she replied telling me of a occasion to do with random theft, when she made a new friend, one that she's kept for twenty years. We meet nice people when we respond well to random opportunity

Memories of music: While the music plays on

"They say my voice is so appealing,

that no one sings the blues the way I do."

I'd like to sing more blues; I'd like to sing more; I'd like to sing like I used to do. But age and hormone drugs....

"little do they know..."

'While the music plays on' tells of a memory of a lover, while the singer sings "each night in some café" where she's on display. She sings about her "lover dancing by in someone else's arms". (Doris Day sang it or listen to Tony Bennett who sings it with slow feeling.

Can't you feel the choke in the voice as she sings, "... in someone else's arms"?

Were you dear reader ever in such a situation? Knowing someone you had cared about no longer cared about you? And when you see them in the same space, a shared room, they ignore you? Are you bitter, or, like this singer, are you blue?

"...no one sings the blues they way I do

but little do they know, 

their praise just goes to show

Every word I sing rings true."

La Motte

http://www.jm-foto.com/2007/La-Motte/index.htm

I found this wonderful series of photos about gliding at La Motte, taken by one of the German visitors to the gliding club. I remember the excitement of the trip after coming off the motor way, reaching the Col, driving round the craggy castle of Sisteron, and back north to La Motte, breathless at the awesome splendour of the mountain tops. And that's before we start gliding. Look at these photos.

and these http://www.cvvmc.com/index.php/en/webcams

Guided tour to theorem country

What's a theorem? An assertion you can prove is true, at least that's what I'm asserting following yesterday's seminar at an Oxford University Continuing Education (OUCE) day.

If you've seen the Theorem of the Day web site you'll get a flavour of what the discussion was about. The presenter was the author of that site. Now that site is not easy, not the best way to get to learn about theorems, if you know nothing to start with. Theorems are challenging. But if you like thinking, then you'd have enjoyed the day. And it did help to have some maths.

The participants included relative amateurs like myself, retired maths teachers, chemists, physicists, an eminent professor of biology, a couple of sixth former, a member of the Institute of Mathematics and her husband who'd done a PhD in maths - but not this field she hastened to assure me.

Planning a birthday party

• invite people: write cards, send emails
• book the venue
• get husband to bake cake, and tell him how to ice it
• check children & brother's family are coming
• get decorations
• plan brunch
• arrange people into teams of 3 and then of two to play against each other - or let them choose their opposition
• think if I want to say anything
• plot 60 good things about life.

Memories of music: the Hallelujah chorus

The Hallelujah chorus comes from Handel's Messiah. My dead husband introduced me to this music when he used to sit of an evening on our brown sofa, his one long leg resting on the other, his arms conducting enthusiastically, and me playing ignorant pleb. When they sang, "Oh! We like sheep..." one day I responded, "and I like lamb!" causing husband to choke a chortle at the impiety. With practice, I grew to like that magnificent music.
Years later, would-become-new husband took me on our first real date to hear The Messiah. He was, unbeknownst to him, onto a winner that brought me happy memories.
This year The Next Stage Choir performs the Hallelujah chorus. I sing with the sopranos. The high notes challenge me and the long holding of breath challenges even more but the choir master and fellow sopranos say it will come with practice, so I'll practice. With practice, I'll get to sing it.

Lying or writing clearly

Do you want to write clearly? Adding adjectives to your writing blurs its message, mendacious writing. I suspect though that often my students write like that, not because they're lying but because they don't really know what they're talking about but if they write enough words, perhaps they'll say the right one that persuades me to give them the mark!

Watch Pamela Meyer's TED talk on 'How to spot a liar' at http://www.ted.com/talks/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_liar,which is intriguing and informative. I love where she shows small babies, toddlers and five-year olds and even a chimpanzee lying - it shows a level of intelligence that gets you out of trouble or gets what you want. It shows an understanding of other people.

Not that I'm recommending lying - I would lie to avoid hurting someone, and I think Meyer suggests that when she uses examples of lovers and spouses. Watch it.

Another father's day

 Another year, another father's day, another birthday

Gliding field at La Motte du Caire, end of the day

Not
http://www.cvvmc.com/index.php/en/webcams

Lectionary 10

"Lectionary 10" is what it reads on the front of the weekly leaflet of the Faith Lutheran Church last Sunday when I visited with daughter and daughter's partner (dP). You can find its web site at www.faithlutheranbrantford.com
The services are not unlike those I've attended elsewhere for years: start, say hello bit perhaps, sing, pray, sermonise, pray, pay, pray, eat & drink, pray, it's ended (deo gratis). I like the way the FLC write it up as: gathering, word, meal, sending.
Yesterday's sermon, perhaps a tad long, revealed a depth of tolerance for difference, in recounting a similar Lutheran church near San Francisco where in the eighties a number of male members kept dying off, before they realised they had AIDs and were gay, which is something not tolerated by some. The congregation still accepted them despite protesters standing outside the church with placards saying it was a sin. When the pastor revealed he too was gay, the congregation said, "yes, we know. You're still our pastor" and when the bishop tutted, the congregation said, "yes, we know. He's still our pastor", and he stayed their pastor.
That's Christian tolerance.

Busy, busy first day when we visited Niagara
and then drove in this newly hired car to Waterford to see Glen's karate class. We didn't get back to our B&B in St George till well after ten o'clock, so I got to drive in Canada in the dark.
We got to eat poutine.

Canada

We've flown over to Canada to visit daughter, G, who now lives in Ontario with her partner, G.  We plan a lot of activities: visiting Niagara, touring Toronto, canoeing down the Grand, playing karate at her partner's club, eating poutine, meeting her partner's mother who's flying over from the west coast.
Husband has twitched his back and is a bit uncomfortable if he sits for a long time, so we have to adapt what we do. At this very moment, he's reading his newly acquired (my old) iPad with the newspaper on it, his crossword, access to the cricket scores. He appears to be happy.

If I could use a time machine

If I could use a time machine, I'd go twenty years ahead of now and avoid the boredom of lonely retirement and being socially useless. I'd jump straight to aged decrepitude and senility in the hopes of oblivion. Then the rest of society couldn't accuse me of being a drain on the younger generation that can't afford degrees or mortgages, and there's not enough of them to support baby boomers in retirement. In the eighties, baby boomers could get mortgages and pay the 16% interest, and Thatcher hadn't yet sold off all the council houses so that was an option too.  Baby boomers' parents could retire early cos there were so many younger people working who could therefore pay for their retirement pensions.
And if I wind my time machine forward, I could skip being taxed on the Open University degree I got part time without a government grant or support while I was paying that 16% on our mortgage.

Aged auntie died

You know how they talk about the squeezed generation - those people who have aged  relatives getting doddery and still have children to bring up. Well they ought to call it the hugged generation because your children hug you and your aged relatives need you. But I'm no longer the hugged generation because my children are quite grown up and the last of my older relatives has gone. Aunty Eileen died in the middle of this month of March after too many bugs in her increasingly frail body.
Here are some links to when I blogged about her:

• Setting up my power of attorney for her: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/legalities-and-paperwork.html
• Dealing with council officials: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/sheltered-housing-and-councils.html
• Bringing her and my parents to our house for Xmas: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/driving-ocotgenarians.html
• Bureaucratic banks: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/boo-to-bureaucratic-banks.html
• Confusing conspirations: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/conspirations-to-confuse.html
• Visiting for Xmas: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/travelling.html
• Support plans: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/crumbs-and-buns.html
• Caring people: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/ageing-aunty.html
• Things and stuff: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/memories-are-made-of-stuff.html
• Stoic: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/lifes-not-good.html
• Pets, or not: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/aged-auntys-cat.html

Now I'm drafting an eulogy for her funeral next weekend. What should I write?

Eileen and her big brother, Joe

Visiting Ireland with her parents, 1947

She had a wicked sense of humour

Bridesmaid at Joe & Jean's wedding, 1950

Frustrating week - snow stopped all:

Frustrating week - snow stopped all:

• choir
• tae kwon do
• face-to-face tutorial
• getting back from North Yorkshire where ancient auntie moved from hospital to care home for respite. At least auntie can now see out of a window and watch the snow.

On top of that, the university union, UCU, called strike action, which meant I couldn't do an on-line tutorial.

Votes for women

A hundred years ago this week, one of my grandmothers got the right to vote. She was old enough because she'd been born in 1888, but the other grandmother was only 18. She had to wait another ten years till she had the right to vote.

Working then and now

Have you written your CV? Do you have a job? What is a job? If it's some action that you get paid for, then you probably count it as a job, rather than a chore.

I've worked since I was 16. As soon as I finished taking my GCE exams, I walked down Chorlton high street going in every garage, hairdresser and shop asking for a job until I got one in the local supermarket. The supermarket manager must have asked me about my background because someone got excited about me having taken (I hadn't yet got the results) maths 'O' level. Consequently, they put me on green groceries. This required weighing produce and then doing complicated arithmetical calculations in your head, like if apples are one and seven pence ha'penny a pound, and this customer wants six ounces of apples, then how much must you write on the brown paper bag?*
Maths is not arithmetic; maths is patterns and logic. I can do patterns and logic (though I didn't know it at sixteen). I cannot do mental arithmetic, and I particularly cannot do mental arithmetic when under stress. Can you?

I was rapidly taken off the green grocery counter and put on the tills instead. The tills were fairly amusing because you met lots of customers, usually women and you had a machine to add up all the purchases, even the extra carrier bag that they asked for after you'd totalled. The first day, I used to put the total back in the till again and then add the few pennies for the bag so I could be sure the sum was correctly calculated. Unfortunately, this meant that at the end of the day, the till was short of the money for all the extra times I'd used it as a calculating machine.

Despite these disasters, the manager kept me on for the next five weeks of the summer holiday, paying me five pounds a week; and he took me back for the next two years of sixth form employing me on Saturdays and school holidays. Thus, I earned my tiny fortune that I spent on my two guinea pigs, one rabbit and twenty pet mice, or on Sunday train fares to the peak district, to trek for my Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme efforts. My brother got jobs in university vacations when he worked on roads along with Irish navvies. He earned a fortune compared to me, but that always was the differential between male and female wages.

What 16 year old now can get a summer job so easily? Over ten years ago, I encouraged my teenagers to look for something, but they came home explaining that everywhere they went, they were told, "Come back with your CV". They didn't get paid work till they went to uni where they got part-time jobs as librarians, tutors or lab assistants. One of our kids spent a year between uni and her first professional job working in B&Q, coming home grubby and proud that she'd earned.
My grandmother started working in a china shop at 14, my mother started teaching in an inner city school at 19, and I was 21 when I started teaching. Yet none of our children started working until at least 22. Several took gap years. One did a foundation year before uni. All of them have done masters degrees. So they're all highly educated, and took years about it.

But it seems hard for them to find and keep jobs.  I suspect my fourteen year old grandmother needed some way of earning her keep, some job that would pay her for her efforts so her auntie didn't have to keep her (her father having died and her mother emigrated). My mother wanted a qualification so she could support herself whether or not she found a husband who could keep her. Similarly, girls of my generation were encouraged to work before marriage, expecting to do hairdressing, secretarial or clerical work, and if they were a bit brighter they could be nurses or teachers. Most of them were not expected to go to university and some were actively discouraged. I started by East End primary kids with the enthusiasm of a twenty year old that thought she was doing good. Then I found teaching English as a Foreign Language was fun because of the intellectual challenge of explaining my own language. (You tend to take it for granted, automatically knowing things like the difference between "I do" and "I'm doing" or "you must" and "you don't have to" or "I could have done" and "I was able to do). A a job was a means of earning a living, of paying the rent, eventually a mortgage and contributing to society.
You used to aim to find a job. And you didn't always have to submit a CV.

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*BTW, one shilling and seven pence ha'penny for a pound (twelve pence in a shilling and sixteen ounces in a pound) means that I probably should have written 7d on that paper bag. It'd be an easier sum at 1/4 (one and four) a pound because that would be 16d a pound or a penny an ounce.

The holiday I'd like

Isn't this the time of year to go and see the Northern Lights? Wouldn't it be wonderful to take a cruise up the Norwegian coast, stopping at the various towns on the way, and go right into the arctic circle to see the lights?
But suppose it was too cloudy the night we were there. As husband points out, how could we be sure of seeing the lights?

A view from the pew

Singing makes you happy. Singing brings joy to the heart. Singing heartily is like a work out and warms you up. So when my daughter inveigled me into joining our church choir, I agreed. Do you sing?
 Ours is a small choir, usually only three or four of us plus the organist. Our organist organises us, suggests pieces, and she gets us to rehearse. We learn to sing in parts: bass, alto, soprano. Our organist has a lovely clear alto voice that you can hear every week at the Saturday evening mass. We also sing at special masses.
We've sung some special masses in the last year, such as our parish priest's anniversary of his ordination. For these special masses, we've practised what seem to me quite difficult pieces, like Bruckner's Locus Iste, The Deer's Cry and Mozart's Ave Maria. This week we sang at the November mass for the dead. After the communion, the choir sang two pieces: The Deer's Cry and Jesu, lover of my soul. They sounded beautiful. The Jesu has four verses, which we harmonised.  The Deer's Cry  requires a solo voice with a choir later in the piece.  Listen to Rita Connolly sing it, or come to our church and hear our organist sing it.
If you came to that mass for the dead you heard and saw us light candles for and read the names of those dead of the parish. You heard and saw our parish priest's blessings over us at the end of mass, and you heard some of the loveliest singing. You'd have felt at peace, blessed and happy.

Influence of BBC micro today

Why has my daughter now moved to another continent? After recently attending a seminar on the history of educational technology, I now blame this event on the BBC.

1. the BBC micro came out circa 1980, 
2. inspiring the start of the games industry in the UK by the 2000s, which is how 
3. my daughter met people through on-line games in the 201xs.
4. then she played gamers from other countries, even continents
5. then she met one special gamer
6. and emigrated...

all because of educational technology
I recommend Mike Sharples slideshow at https://www.slideshare.net/sharplem/introduction-to-educational-technology-55332225

Gunpowder

Did you watch BBC 1's "Gunpowder"? Critics have welcomed it, wondering why the gunpowder plot of 1605 had not been televised earlier. But watching it, its gory and brutal scenes of pressing to death of someone who wouldn't plead guilty or not guilty, or of hanging, drawing and quartering, you remember why you wouldn't want to remind people of the background, the context at the time, the persecution and killing of English Roman Catholics, their exclusion from Parliament and from the professions for centuries afterwards, despite their professed loyalty to king and country. It was dangerous to tell people you were a Catholic. Indeed, even in the twentieth century, I rarely told people I'd been brought up Catholic.
Once, on an airfield, somehow I mentioned my faith. My fellow glider pilot, a young Scottish woman, was astonished, "I've never met a Catholic", she declared. You'd have thought I had horns growing from my head. Unlike Muslims or Sikhs, Catholics are not visible. They don't wear distinguishing garments, and the most you might see if you're observant is a small cross or crucifix on a lapel.
As I was growing up, in one of the most Catholic parts of England, I learned that I was English, that we were loyal to our royal family, so loyal that I childishly announced after reading another fairy tale, that I was going to marry the prince of England. My mother informed me that I couldn't because I was a Catholic and English princes couldn't be heirs to the throne if they married a Catholic. Nothing daunted, I accepted that law and I loyally carried on being English and Catholic.
You might wonder why I didn't seek a foreign prince, like my daughter's found (he's her prince - not a royal prince) but after a stint working abroad, I decided I liked English men anyhow and came home where I soon met her father. And we lived happily for a couple of decades after.
There are two more episodes to "Gunpowder". It won't end happily ever after.

Ship's cabins

Cruise cabin

Our cruise bedroom, nay, cabin, was adequate with around 160 square feet, twin beds, a space between the beds for husband to stand with his arms on hips and his elbows at my eye height. It was an 'exterior' cabin, meaning it had a window or a porthole. It also had a bathroom, an easy chair, a small round glass-topped table, space for our empty suitcases, more space to store things under the beds, a desk with a screen on it to watch the ship's news and a tray for the kettle and tea mugs.  And there were four mirrored wardrobes with a dozen drawers.
I remember the cabins on the SS St Britain at Bristol, about half the length of this cabin, and not as wide. Each side held three bunk beds, where you berthed perhaps with five strangers.
I wonder how they  managed noro-virus on such ships in the mid 19th century. Here, on the Balmoral, at every entrance to cafe or restaurant or bar or lounge we are exhorted to use the sanitizer on our hands.  "wash, wash, wash" the captain tells us every midday.

Cruising the Baltic

Welcome Aboard The Aylesbury to Marylebone  to Waterloo then Southampton main station

We went by train and taxi to our ship, the Balmoral. This took us 2,444 nautical miles from Southampton and back via the Kiel canal, Copenhagen, Tallinn, St Petersbury, Riga and Warnemunde.

Our ship

The Balmoral has ten decks, 710 cabins, five dining rooms. Our cabin is deck 5. It can carry 1350 guests and 510 crew. Its maximum speed is 18.5 knots. Funny how I got used to hearing that engine speed lulling me to sleep each night. Eventually I woke to it realising that I missed the birds at dawn.

Vocabulary

I referred to our window in our room and got reminded that on a ship it's a porthole and we have a cabin with berths.

Ramblers

We're with the Ramblers group, about 21 people and a leader. We're all in the 'older' age range, old enough to have saved enough to afford this, and to have enough leave to go away for two weeks. Most members of the group have retired or gone part time. Three or four of the men have good heads of hair. Most people wear glasses. We have four single / widowed women, one of whom has Australian permanent residency. I don't learn names because I miss the first few minutes of the first meeting and they're never repeated. I pick most names up during the fortnight, one by one when we sit at the same tables for meals, which we do every night.
One of the innovations that Ian, the leader, suggested, was the use of buddies. When we go on tours, walks and trips, he can't always see us all to count us in and out. A partner might help, though not all of us have partners. So Ian's idea of a buddy is someone who isn't your partner you buddy up with and they check you're present and warns if their buddy is  missing. It works. My buddy turns out to have been an OU tutor like me, and like me, had done her degree and doctorate later in life. In fact, several of the Rambler women did their degree and professional training later in life, having been brought up for the teacher/nurse/typist until-you're-a-wifeAndMother life.
Ramblers briefings are usually every day at the same time in the same place but not for this trip because we only get briefed for shore visits so we sometimes forget and miss a briefing. Fortunately we make most of them. For shore visits we're advised to take insurance proof, debit card, passport, EHIC (for the EU countries Germany, Estonia and Latvia), phone with the number of the local agent. 

Meals

Food on board was good quality, varied and plentiful with starters, soups, salads & main courses followed by desert and coffee.

A lunch menu

 One dinner menu for example:

Starters

citrus cocktail chilled orange and grapefruit segments, dressed with grenadine
roast beef rolls with asparagus
roasted strip loin, filled with grilled green asparagus and served on lettuce with sour cream and chive dressing. 

Soups

fisherman's broth : fish broth with carrots, fennel julienne and salmon quenelles
cream of lamb with root vegetables
mango gazpacho: cold mango soup garnished with red onions, cucumber, coriander & drizzled [sic] with extra virgin olive oil
I've cut out some of the creative descriptions

Salads

house salad with a  choice of dressing
a selection of market fresh seasonal ingredients with a choice of honey mustard, balsamic, Caesar, thousand island or creamy garlic and herb dressing 
Avocado salad with pineapple
a medley of diced avocado and pineapple tossed in an orange vinaigrette, served ... with lettuce

Main courses

pan fried lemon sole with butter sauce
grilled corn fed chicken breast
roast veal leg
lasagna al forno
salmon trio
and there was a vegetarian dish each day and a British dish of the day such as Suffolk stew. on top of that, grilled fish, pasta, omelettes were always available if nothing else met your fancy. Finally deserts were served.

Lunch in the Spey restaurant

If you had dietary requirements, your waiter gave you the dinner menu the night before to choose from and sorted it with the chef before you arrived. so for example if  you fancy the tagliatelle "perugia", but avoid gluten, then the chef would prepare it with gluten-free tagliatelle . 

On the last weekend, they arranged a Neptune menu - loads of seafood.

Fish picture - lettuce represents the seaweed

Seafood Neptune lunch

Unfortunately, it was the same day that Ramblers had our afternoon English tea. Having eaten so much seafood we had hardly any room for the dainty and delicious sandwiches and cakes with proper leaf tea in the Observatory lounge.

English high tea

Crew

The captain, Lars Juel Kjeldsen, a Dane who'd lived in Sweden, welcomed us to the ship and gave us midday updates on progress on sea days. He had a tag phrase, "it is what it is" about the weather or life.
On the last night, he gave awards to nominated members of staff for their particularly good service. I daresay they deserved it; i cannot think of time or place where all the staff seemed so happy to see you and serve you and talk with you and remember you. We had our stewardess, Joecyn and Billy our waiter. Both were from the Philippines. Perhaps that's why there were Tagalog classes during the voyage. I learned to say good evening to them: "Magandang gabi". I also met crew from Bali, India and Thailand.

Activities at sea 

Each day, whether or not a shore day, offered activities, announced in the ship's "Daily Times" a short newsletter that arrived in your cabin in the early evening. Activities included: yoga, Pilates, line dancing, ball room dancing, fitness classes,use of the gym,  Bridge, chess, craft, knitting. Classes were offered on Haiku, cooking Thai massage, iNdiean head massage. There were talks on Faberge & the treasure of the Tsars, on genealogy, Port talks e.g. on Copenhagen or the Hanseatic nations. Some went to bingo or quizzes, or gambling. There were shows every evening - one evening specialized on Great Britain and everyone sang English, Irish, Welsh or Scottish songs, wore red, white and blue, and waved Union Jacks.

Russian Capella singers

St Petersburg opera singer

In St Petersburg, we visited the cathedral in St Peter and Paul's Fortress where we heard these professional opera singers. The first minute is the heavily Russian accented introduction. Listen for the deep baritones in the last half minute. It's amazing. 

More cities to describe but others have described them before me.