A stonking day promises

 Looking at today's weather at La Motte du Caire, a stonking day promises.

The light is right, and the pilots know it because they've already rigged so many gliders and are milling for the briefing.

Would that I were there

Am I a difficult woman?

Am I a difficult woman? Helen Lewis has recently published a book, "Difficult women" that explores the history of women labelled difficult. Difficult  doesn't mean being horrid, just complicated, and possibly not nice. Lewis writes about a host of complicated women, not all of whom are feminists, just awkward women, as Helen Lewis herself can be!
Recently to be a plethora of books about "Difficult Women", "Invisible Women" (Caroline Criado Perez), Bloody Brilliant Women"(Cathy Newman) have been published. And there's Yvette Cooper's "She speaks", Karen Brady's "Strong Woman" and Deborah Frances-White's "The Guilty Feminist". They cover the usual themes of power, getting to the top, trail blazing, being recognised despite being the second sex, the aberrant body of a male. These are good writers, expressing well ideas that many woman have but don't have the skill or the power to express.
Usually I don't identify myself with the women being written about, like I'm not at the top of my tree, or any tree! I don't trail blaze, am recognised for nothing. But, Lewis has picked on one thing I've done and when I did it, it raised a few eyebrows, caused a few comments. Lewis refers to Anna Coote and Tess Gill, and they influenced me. In the seventies, they wrote a small book that argued why women needn't change their name when they married. In the seventies, eighties, even the nineties women changed their surname. HR departments sometimes did it without permission - it was just assumed.
But when I married, I didn't change my name, but kept my father's. Yes, it's still the name of a male, but it was part of the identity I'd grown up with. When my mother and then my cousin asked if I was changing my name, I realised that some people important to me thought it was no longer absolutely essential to take your husband's. My less advanced-thinking to-be-MiL wailed, "But there'll be no second Mrs C!" "What nonsense!" I thought, and politely pointed out that her other son had already married, so she did have a second Mrs C. When I walked into the unemployment benefit office to tell them I was getting married (I thought they'd change or stop my benefit), they said they only needed my married name. Well why would they need that information?! I stated, "I'm not changing it!" and walked out - they hadn't been kind or helpful in there. I was happy to be awkward (difficult?) for that UBO. I guess it was trail blazing because no one else was keeping their maiden name in those days. So yes, sometimes I can be a difficult woman.

The Messiah

"Oh we, like sheep" The Messiah is a Handel's choral work that my dead husband used to play of an evening. We'd stop work, studying OU courses or stop marking, fixing the house, paying bills, whatever, and at nine thirty sit down together for a while in our sitting room on a comfy sofa. It was a time to chat, chat about nothing in particular, just whatever came up. Just time together. And he'd put on a record or a CD. Mostly he put on Bach, but The Messiah was definitely one of his favourites. Being more comfortable with modern pop, I was a bit fazed initially by some of his choices. "Oh we like sheep...." really threw me as I couldn't hear the next bit several bars later "have turned". So I'd sing in the gap, "And I like lamb". I was mocking it, and DH would smile. After he died, I played his music to keep me company. I had a few dates, and the best one was to a performance of Handel's Messiah. I married that date.
In January this year, a neighbour told me that the local choral society was learning to sing The Messiah. I've never sung it, heard it lots but never thought of singing it. No - when I joined the Next Stage Choir, a partnering choir suggested we sing The Hallelujah Chorus, so I'd learned that, or tried to learn to sing it and assessed myself as pants, but still enjoyed it.
I joined the local choral society intending to learn, not perform on March 25th. The choir master is great at teaching us to sing emotion. For example, singing "Unto us a child is born" he told each part to think of themselves as parents or grandparents. This child is born - the mother and father are the sopranos and tenors, the grandparents are the altos and basses. And of course I could think of my newly born grandson.
In the event, the concert was cancelled because of lock down, and I still couldn't sing most of it very well. I was getting better at the Hallelujah chorus. However, a self isolation choir sprang up: The Self Isolation Choir. Thousands of us  from all over the word, England, Scotland, Wales, Canada, US, log into a YouTube live recording several days a week for the director, Ben England to teach us to sing and we're singing The Messiah. We had pdf copies of the music and access to Choraline. We had to video ourselves singing in time to a click track, then upload each piece. So we've had to learn some new technical skills too. It's come together into a decent performance, so good that it got publicity on BBC radio and TV yesterday. Our live performance will be on https://www.theselfisolationchoir.com/ this Sunday evening. I shall stop marking at 7.30 and sit down in our sitting room on a comfy sofa for the evening to listen, watch and join The Messiah. This time I'll sing more than "We like sheep"

Tae kwon do under lock down

Are you keeping fit during lock down? Or too miserable to be bothered?
 "CV won’t worry you - axe kick it! "said my tkd friend
Bytomic tae kwon do has kept me and other students fit by presenting classes despite the lock down on Facebook Live, but has done even better now by offering us feedback via Zoom classes. Last weekend, I took part in an interim grading for black belt practising in our dining room. Hurrah!
This is so much better than this time last year. You're supposed to do an interim grading at least once a year once you get to black belt, but last year I couldn't cos my retinas fell off and the medics told me not to do any jumping (probably would have been better telling me to sort my infected tooth). So it was extra special that I had the chance to do the interim this way. It's not that I did well or badly; it's that I could do it, last the hour of high intensity exercise and sequences of movements at a high standard.
After an operation, you're vulnerable to infections because the anesthetic reduces your immune response. If we hadn't had lock down, after my op I would have followed medical advice and not gone to tae kwon do classes for two months. The lock down however gave me opportunities to watch on line, and realised that I can still do squats, and lunges and kicks and punch and block with my left arm, so I could keep doing a lot.
Our neighbours shop for us, and I have some online shopping. One neighbour saw on FB my need for tonic to go with my gin and passed a bottle over the wall. Otherwise things are as normal because my work, at a distance for 30 years, carries on as normal.
Enjoying the solitude like Georges Moustaki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9-OzSzCDWo 

Ten days ago

It's been a difficult six or seven weeks. Ten days ago I was just out of hospital after an operation for cancer. I had to have a mastectomy after I was diagnosed with recurrence of breast cancer, in February. The hospital was a bit quiet, almost empty. I got in under the wire, before all other operations were stopped. The surgeon rang the week before to prevent me having to go in for a F2F and she offered me a choice:

• Increase my risk of catching the virus by coming in for the op.
• Wait  six months.

She said that she was delaying all the BCs she'd diagnosed in March, but she was prepared to go ahead with mine. But I had to understand the risks. Then she repeated the discussion at my bedside on the day of the operation to ensure I was fully aware of the risks. One woman decided to not have her op and left. Thank you to those 11-12 medics that treated me on Wednesday: physiotherapist, radiologist, anesthetist, surgeon, unaesthetic nurse, trainee nurse, nurse practitioner, staff nurse and other nurses.
I had to make difficult choices that week.
Now it's ten days ago. I don't yet have symptoms of CV19. I hope those medics also are still healthy.
“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” (Julian of Norwich)

Updated FB profile picture

In December last year 2019 Bytomic tae kwon do awarded me

Spirit of Tony Lobato

 the "Spirit of Tony Lobato" 2019 award.

Now I really am going to need that spirit again and that the Bytomic club awarded me this means that I shall live up to it. I have to, don't I?

Making God laugh

"If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans"
said my Serbian landlady last week when I was staying at the Two Roses B&B in St George, Ontario in February I was visiting my daughter, enjoying the biting cold weather, the flurries of snow and a full day's skiing out at Mount St Louis and Moonstone. We also did karate, shooting, and visited a sauna/spa.
I had some plans for March:

• lots of tae kwon do to make up for what I missed last year when my retina fell off and I wasn't allowed to jump for months. 
• speech making at Toastmasters to finish the Bronze award that got stuck years ago when I was on aromatase inhibitors
• SiL's OU graduation ceremony
• sGrandchild #3's drama performance
• trip to Liverpool with the choir
• a dental appointment

Then I got told my BC is back and although on the whole (some tests yet to come back) it's not an advanced cancer, treatment is messing up my plans. After an op, I'll not be doing so much at the end of the month, less tkd, no trip to Liverpool, and I'm already back on the aroma-nasty-ase inhibitors!
Lesson: Do not tell God your plans.

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