Wedding news

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

Story - what I did at the weekend

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

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

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

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

Gone to roost

And a vine lot of trouble

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

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

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

 "You need tolerance, perseverance and wisdom"

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

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

Countries reunited

Over a hundred years ago, an English ship's engineer knocked on the door of a Glasgow house, where its owner, a Miss Maggie Bowman took paying guests, and for the last ten years had provided a home for her cousin's granddaughter.  That wee Scottish lass married that young English engineer, becoming my grandparents.  If we'd not been united countries, would they ever have met?   Would I be? 

I'm so glad we're staying united because we've done so much together, economically, in sport, in academia, and socially.   Why oh why have our English politicians been acting like this was an abusive relationship promising to stop beating up the minor partner and to behave better? This was an opportunity to renew the courtship.

Here's the Donald tartan tam o'shanter my lovely Scottish born neighbour gave me years ago.

23 rd August

I remember

Youth hostelling again

Youth hostelling provides such social fun: the grand children, the other guests, the people running the youth hostel, and the kitten that the people running the youth hostel have.  This year, we went to Cornwall, to Boswinger, hiring a family room as usual, but for a day longer than usual because it takes so long to get there.
Getting there, we went via Devon, and popped in to eat our picnic lunch at my MiL's, where the children enjoyed playing her square piano, the one that used to be in the Green Room at the Old Vic, and sounds great when you play Bach on it.
Then we had three days to explore:

• the Lost Gardens of Heligan
• the beach at Porthcurnick, where the grandchildren built such a splendid sandcastle that the tide took six minutes to wreck it.
• a day at the Eden Project

Hatching hens

Ever seen a cat and a hen together?  Do they get on?  We're kitten sitting, minding son and fiancée's (yes, they're engaged  and marrying in October) two cats, one of whom, Diana, has had a litter of four only a couple of weeks ago and we're minding them for the bank holiday weekend.

I've been brooding on the idea of having hens for some time.  I first had the thought put into my head years ago, when daughter's nursery school teacher commented that since we'd extended the garden, we now had enough room to have a few hens.  More recently I've been working with a colleague who keeps hens, http://connectedpeasant.blogspot.co.uk/ and recommends them.  

After watching this video, I realised I had never held a hen, so I went on a chicken keeping course (a hen party) where I got to see all sorts of breeds of hens, lots of hutches, learned what to feed them, and held hens.
Then, I had to get something for them to live in.  That took a lot of thought, with people advising me to go for a cheap but less easy to clean option - the wooden hutch. Such people don't realise that we don't have running water and a hose pipe in our garden.  We do have a well but it's not usable because the pump handle's broken, and we make do with the modern fad for water barrels, some of which collect old ivy leaves or breed mosquito larva.

I wanted an Omlet Eglu but someone advised us to get a hutch that we didn't have to bend down for.  Then Omlet brought out this high rise one.  So that's what we got.  Here is how you might put it together:

Then we went to a local breeder and selected some chickens. So now we have three young hens, red, white and blue.  We'll wait for them to settle and we're told they'll start to lay eggs in a few weeks.

The adventures start.  Yesterday evening, I wanted to put them away, and they haven't yet learnt to go up their ladder into their hutch so I have to put them in.  I caught the blue and put her in round the back, then the red, and put her in, but before I got the back door shut the blue was out!  More adventurous than I'd realised, she was off!  I grabbed the white, put her away and closed all doors before I went in chase of Belle the blue.  First she went off down the bottom of the garden, which could have been a disaster for catching her, but I managed to head her off again towards the house and the top pond, where I realised was fenced (to stop grandchildren falling in).  With husband's help, we chased her into a corner, pulling the fencing round behind her, until she was stuck between a water barrel and a window.  On the other side of the window, Diana, the cat was watching.   Diana was up on the glass, hen and cat were scared and intrigued by each other.  I grabbed the hen. "Squarhelp!" What a squawk!

I guess hens and cats have a mutual agreement - they watch each other, but keep away - that way, they'll get on.

Daughter's commencement

We went to Dublin to see daughter at her Commencement - that's what they call it when you begin or commence into academic status as a Master.  She's commenced her mastery of linguistics.  Now she's going to combine her maths and linguistics in researching and analysing computationally.  Well done her.  She's going to be a useful woman.

It's interesting that she's in Dublin, the place where her great grandfather came from. Like daughter, he was interested in languages, apparently winning a medal for Gaelic as a child, being the first in Ireland.  I wonder how his mother would react, watching her descendant, sewing like she did, but in this university, the one that the arch bishop told them not to go to!

IN the evening, daughter had arranged for us to attend the common supper at the university as a celebration.  We were puzzled when we arrived to find only two tables listed for the guests who had been at the Commencement, but when we entered the hall we found it full.  At most benches, sat a hundred or more undergraduates and graduates (scholars), at the top table sat begowned fellows, and we guests sat at these two tables that white table cloths, wine glasses, and red material covered (hard) chairs.  Prompt at six, one of the servants strode from the top table to the huge entrance door and slammed it shut, whereupon all the scholars and fellows rose to their feet with a shout.  Then someone at the top table said grace in Latin.  It was a rather longer grace than I heard at Oxford and not in words that I recognised. When grace was over, we all sat and supped.  After the main course was over, a similar routine took place in that something banged, everyone stood, grace was said, the door opened and scholars and fellows trooped out leaving us guests to have sweet course and a coffee.  Very nice.

A word on the scholars at Trinity.  It seems that in their second year, some undergraduates are invited to sit the scholarship exam.  Achieving it, gives the student status as a scholar, which comes with free fees, free accommodation and a free meal once a day for the rest of their time studying there, including not only their undergraduate studies but subsequent masters and PhD work too!  Doesn't that encourage the best to stay on to research!

Wisteria

This year our wisteria has bloomed more than it ever has before, more than several years together, and it smells gorgeous too.  It's not good blooming in comparison to most wisteria plants but it's good this year.  It's not a happy plant in that conservatory; it would be better exposed to the elements again, and goodness knows how it get enough water because though it leaks in there, it's not like there's ever a deluge of rain water.  However, since we have a well in the garden and a well in the house, I wouldn't be surprised if there's an underground stream from which this wisteria can feed.
Apparently, Victorians used to plant a wisteria next to a new house - I wonder why. I suppose this wisteria was planted circa 1902 when the sitting room was added to the older part of the house.

Black belt achieved

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

Black belt & dobok, with training book

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

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

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

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

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

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

Birthday frog!

Dear Step Daughters - two of them left me presents for my birthday last week, then #3 turned up with a slightly bigger parcel, requiring that I opened it there and then.  Look at this cross-stitch!

It's so fine; she must have worked for hours.  And she chose the frog because she knows I like frogs.

Today I'm in Luxembourg presenting our company's   (Catcher Media)  work package as part of the EU JuxtaLearn project. so she brought it round at the weekend.

Dublin visit

We visited daughter in Dublin, youngest of our combined children, and took the eldest of the grandchildren.

Daughter did us proud in hosting us, escorting us, showing us interesting places:

• Kilmainham gaol, 
• Dublin castle, 
• museum - there was ever so much gold jewellery in Ireland thousands of years ago
• Trinity College Library where we saw the book of Kells
• Guinness Storehouse mmm - I don't normally drink Guinness, but there it tastes different, creamy and less bitter
• St Stephen's Green - a relaxing park of beauty

and eateries: Queen of Tarts, Joy of Chai.

We met up with an old friend, saw the marathon, and went to the theatre (Brecht's 'The Threepenny Opera'). All in three days.

Of great interest to daughter and me was the house in Grafton Street where my grandfather and his six siblings grew up.  It's a shop, as it was in 1900 and something, but no one lives above it any more

Scent from Rhodes

Pine, bay, sage and thyme... The air is full of herbal scents. Sun,sea and sand, architecture and archaeology we're rambling through Rhodes sampling them all.

Aylesbury mosque

"Oh Prophet, truly we have sent thee as a witness, a bearer of glad tidings, and a warner."

Thus read one of the admonitions (or is it a prayer?) on a wall at our local mosque, the Aylesbury Ghausia Mosque.
This view of the lovely carpet (a good reason for removing your shoes) is from one side of the room and that was the side where the women sat, slightly behind a rather wobbly screen.
The president of the masjid ('mosque') welcomed us, and a school student recited some of the Qur'an in that odd singing tonal chant you hear from minarets.  Perhaps that's just the way that Arabic sounds.  The boy stood at the centre of the room so both men and women could hear and see.   I guess they were pleased with and proud of the young man, but the Arabic language passed most of us by, even though someone then translated it.
An imam gave a key note speech about peace, which was short and to the point, then there was a lo-oong speech about the relationship between Islam and Christianity and the law.  I should like the speaker to join our local Toastmasters, come along one Monday evening to the meetings at Stoke Mandeville Stadium.  Finally our local MP gave a short message.
Then we were free to tour the majid, examine the exhibition, watch a hajj film and take refreshments, but we had stayed too long and had to forgo the food.   I'd like my own church to be as inviting (though it probably doesn't have the curiosity value).  Thank you to those who invited us, showed us what is important to them and how we share important values.

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