Gliding weekends (sunny Sunday with friends)

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

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

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

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

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

Friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Icy spawn

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

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

Judo champ trains tae kwon do shorties

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

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

And she's nice too.

Tattooist's parlour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Furtling about with vehicles in San Francisco

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

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

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

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

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

Trains at the Grand Canyon

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

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

Poolside

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

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

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

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

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

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

Olympic atmosphere

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

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

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

See highlights here.

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

Note daughter's patriotic head gear.

Late love

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

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

Oncologist out

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

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

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

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

I'm cured.

Graduated daughter

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

Electronic memories

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

The Open University - Social Sciences

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

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

A frog's arrival

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

Stories of middle-aged women

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

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

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

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

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

Local jubilee

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

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

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Half my myopia sorted: June 2012

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

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

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

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

Mothering Sunday titles

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

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

Hyaluronic Acid

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

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

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

Crumbs and buns

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

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

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