Thin lines

The other day, someone accused me of vanity. I was astounded. Old ladies who have long worked with and struggled to establish reality, whatever that is, are hardly likely to be vain. One might be 'D'-shaped, where one had had a good figure, straggly, where one had had nice hair and stiff where one had tripped the light fantastic. These things, amongst others too raw to mention, go a long way to preclude vanity in a realist - or anyone, come to that. It got me reviewing the basis for this comment. It arose when I insisted on a last minute change of clothes having noticed a disagreeable stain on the jumper I was wearing. This threatened to delay the departure and therefore the arrival at a concert: time sensitive, you might say. Intense reflection, during which I did see that there could be a modicum of vanity in an otherwise totally realistic approach to life, brought me to a revelation. This was not a question of vanity. It was a question of confidence. In order to go out in to a harsh and challenging world, a girl disguised as an old lady, will need her confidence. I was not prepared to face the outside universe with a dirty jumper, not even covered, as it would have been, by a clean cardie. I would have known. My companion of the delayed set-off would have known, and I bet the Wizard of Cyberspace would have known. Now, he is the last person in the world I would allow in to my habitual thin-skinned habitat, so you can see how seriously I am taking the accusation and the rebuttal thereof. I am, therefore, desperate to point out the thin line between vanity and lack of confidence. Now, there's a thing. A young man of my acquaintance who doesn't live in London is obliged, on occasion, to accept hospitality from me. I put it like that because he and I are inclined to prowl round one another somewhat warily. We have rather different ways of being in the world and I think that makes each nervous of the other. An instance: when asked to switch off the hall lights, he has been known to press a panic button near the front door. The bad news is that, before you can say "that's not a light switch" the alarm is ringing to wake the dead, the house is surrounded by police, the neighbours are banging on windows and the alarm company is ringing incessantly on the phone. The good news is that, before you can say "that's not a light switch", the alarm is ringing, the house is surrounded by police etcetera, etcetera. The system works. Anyway, this young man takes one hour and seventeen minutes in the bathroom. Uncharitably, I have been guilty of putting this down to vanity. Now I understand that he needs every hair in place - I assume that's what he is doing - in order to face a complex and barely fathomable world. This confidence building method works and, as a result, he is able to achieve wonderfully well out in a world he must see as designed for everyone but him. (As it happens, he does try to change it - the world, that is.)
Having got myself thinking, (Oh dear, a voice from seven decades ago: "Get is not a true verb. Don't use it") I was faced with another example; acceptance and conciliation. When I feel I have been treated badly I have options. I can accept the situation with grace and understanding or I can just appear to do so in a way which is, frankly, conciliatory, simply to avoid hassle and/or putting myself in a less than appealing picture frame. An example: I had expected to be invited to the wedding of a friend's daughter. I was not. I was full of empathy, the numbers, the distance the 'you know what the young are like' and so on, and so on. This was, as it happens, uber-conciliatory. I hope it sounded like acceptance. It wasn't, but it does underline the damn thin line between the two.

It reminds me of a story I may well have told you before. Forgive me if I have. I don't suppose you are inclined to re-read all the below, either. It is attributed to Nathan Milstein. " You think I am a great violinist", he is alleged to have said. "I'm not. I just sound like one." Me, you think I'm a confident woman. I'm not. But I behave like one". Prynhawn da

Loss

Now, Liz's duty is to amuse. However, life with three score and more than ten years on the clock will be bound to have dents and bumps and a few scratches on the bodywork and, more important, -no: important is correct. I refuse to adverbise it - on the inner workings. Yesterday, Sunday, a dear friend, whom I have known for fifty one years, slipped quietly away from this life. We had a conversation last Wednesday which I ended by telling her I was sending her some love. Thus, the last thing she ever said to me was "Oh! Then it will cross with mine on the way". She lived some distance from me and, at her daughter's suggestion, I went to see her on Saturday afternoon. It's unlikely she was aware of this, but I was grateful for the chance to say Goodbye and spoke to her as if in no doubt she could hear and understand. It brought to mind a story, told by another dear friend, of her husband's last days. His oldest friend was sitting at the end of his bed chuntering on about nothing much, simply keeping him company. He was trying to remember the name of a lady golfer who had them in stitches with her far from appropriate apparel and behaviour at a time when such things mattered and were noted."Was it Molly, Millie; what was it?" "Maudie" came a voice from the prone figure on the bed that had been silent for three days. So, we can't be sure of the degree of consciousness of those preparing for a journey we are obliged to let them take without us. What we can be sure of is the sense of loss, of the piece that is missing from the jigsaw of our own lives. In this case, the image is of a child's jigsaw with ginormous pieces. One would certainly be missed, may even spoil the sense of the picture. In a grown-up jigsaw, it could even be possible to be less aware there was a piece missing. No, that's rubbish. One would have a feeling of dis-ease, at least, and be conscious of something less complete than it should be and was. What a number of incomplete jigsaws there must be in the life-cupboard of the elderly.
Lose, loss, love: powerful words to be linked by a letter. The significance of History may be
underlined by these words. To lose someone one has known for more than half a century means one has also lost the common history. The slice, wedge, of life shared with her is unique and irreplaceable. When the Father of my children and I, who had met at University, became friends some time after our separation, I had a physical sense of recovery. A part of me, a far from obvious part of me, had been taken away and was, without even having been consciously acknowledged as missing, restored. He who had known my parents, my homeland, my growth, my babies had taken the incontestable element of memory of those things with him. Without his affirmation, I could no longer be sure of them. I had rendered them contestable. Crazy isn't it? I wonder if this has a truth for you, too, out there at the other end of the computer. A few posts ago, I said that change was the second cousin once removed of loss. I think they must be closer relatives than that. All change involves letting go what was. That's also loss. And all loss involves change. I have been used to ringing my friend just about daily. That has changed. She is no longer there to answer. I am coming round to seeing loss and change not as twins, but certainly siblings, even if not very close in age.
There is, however, music. On Sunday I went to hear the farewell recital of a singer I have enjoyed for many decades. I was not sure how good an idea it was in the circumstances. It was a very good idea. The programme notes assured us she was not giving up singing, simply stopping the exposure of solo recitals. A sense of relief rather too great for the situation came over me. Some things were not going to end, then; changed but not lost. Great and sensible Irish lady: she finished her otherwise serious and very moving recital with three encores from the Emerald Isle. The last was "Phil the Fluter's Ball" which had us all in hoots, singing along and letting her go with laughter and shared joy. Nos da.

Green Ink

Since the last posting I have been laid low with an infection that required treatment by antibiotics. I then went through the phase where the infection is less of a nuisance to put up with than the effect of the antibiotics. I do hope this is not in the category of more than you need to know. I offer it by way of explanantion as to why I have not had enough 'bother' to sit at the computer for a bit too long. From yesterday evening I've begun, anew, to feel I can be bothered, so here I am.

Mind you, it wasn't all antibiotic lassitude. I lay in bed watching "Roman Holiday" for the - I'm ashamed of how manyth - time. I desperately wanted to be the Princess who steals out of her palace, gets her magnificent, long hair cut off and has a day as a 'normal' young lady out and about in Rome. Since this includes falling in love with Gregory Peck, the fantasy could not have been bettered. Naturally, in that epoch of one foot, only, off the ground, their affair did not end, nor even middle, the way it would to-day. Duty and committment prevailed and each returned, intact, to his/her allotted life-slot. My enjoyment and identification with the film and the fact of television, prompted me to see the green ink effect in the last blogpost immediately below. For your elucidation, the green ink effect, or even the Green Ink effect is a term applied by someone close to me for what people of my generation called "Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells". Simply, someone who was always writing letters to the papers complaining about matters as serious as the continuing propensity of the 1127 train from Waterloo to arrive at TW one minute and thirty two seconds late. Something should be done about it. Anyway, below was a bit complainy and I feel obliged humbly to redress the balance, starting with television in bed when you are poorly.

When I was little, bed-rest entertainment consisted of someone reading to one, if they had time. You had time. You had twenty four interminable hours in which to be read to. What were they doing Down There? Had they forgotten you were all alone in an antibiotic- free Up Here unable to do anything for yourself? Enough, or we'll be back to Green Ink.
Take mobile phones. At a time when they were no more than a twinkle in some geek's ear, One New Year's Eve I was called upon to rescue someone else close to me from a situation she felt she couldn't handle. Over the telephone - landline, you'll bear in mind - and sotto voce so her host would not hear, she gave me the address. What neither of us realised was that the address belonged to a small row of houses on an unbroken street with a different name. Not clear? Well, let's say she told me she was at number 3 Elm Terrace. Elm Terrace then turns out to be part, without demarcation, of Southlands Road. (Some names and places have been changed to preserve anonimity.) Now, you can see where this is going. There was I, driving round and round more and more desperately and there was she getting more and more in need of saving. A mobile phone would have dealt with all that in a nano second. Washing machines: forty nine years ago I had to threaten my poor Mother that I could not darken her door again until she installed a washing machine. (Because we lived 200 miles apart, since you ask). The thought of the smell of a boiler full of soiled towelling nappies was enough to have produced an even more Draconian threat, if I could have thought of one. (As we speak, the Guru in his bachelor pad is living with a broken one. So what is happening about his washing you ask? Don't ask. You know). Of course the list of things to be glad about must be at least three bags full. More than even Pollyanna could have counted. I suppose, if I, grudgingly, allow myself a smidgen of honesty, we have to see antibiotics as counter-green-ink. Good Heavens, lying there waiting for the fever to break with no telly and no microwave to warm up a bowl of sick-room soup leaving no saucepan to wash up, this old lady is very glad, indeed, for the good things of the twenty first century. Prynhawn da

Disharmony

With the most exquisite music in the background, I can't think why 'disharmony' came to mind Well, perhaps I can. It would be the contrast, wouldn't it? Further, I can see that what I have in mind is also an extension of 'change', ( about which see below). Anyway, I have been noticing how irritated I let myself become when things are different just for the sake of innovation, or, worse, to indulge some directorial whim or an ego that rides rough-shod over the integrity of the original, music, theatre, whatever. Take food. The other day I ordered a dish in what seemed like a perfectly conventional, unpretentious restaurant. The dish's Cv described it as chicken with saffron mash and mixed vegetables. It came in a pile: spinach at the bottom, carrots next, mash on top of the carrots and chicken balanced on top of the mash. Now you tell me, what is the advantage of this as against laying them side by side on a plate as my Mother, and, indeed, I, would have done - and still do, of course - in the days when Art was for the walls and not the table. I dismantled this layer cake and placed the items alongside one another before partaking. I felt some embarrassment to find my companions all watching me, but, you tell me, how is one supposed to eat such a pyramid? Another speck in my eye is 'pan-fried'. I suspect I have gone on about this before. Bear with me. The very nature of irritants is that they go on irritating. But you show me an item which has been cooked first on its bottom then on its top that didnt undergo this proceedure in anything other than a pan. I suppose some venues may use a dustbin lid. Personally, I would find that grossly un-hygienic. The Guru, who, although no longer sharing a roof, still has plenty to contribute to saving my sanity, explained that things were either pan-fried or deep-fried. Deep fried in a dustbin lid, then? A plea: can we go back to grilled, roasted, poached, boiled or fried, (with a modicum or with lots of fat) and take the d....d containers for granted? Speaking of cooking on bottoms and tops, I have a confession. Well, it's a confession which hides some pride. In honour of guests whom I had the wish to honour this week-end, I decided to make Welsh cakes. For those of you deprived of the experience, I should explain that these delicacies are flat cakes cooked on top of the cooker on a flat bakestone, not, in other words, in the oven. The mixture is of flour, sugar, eggs, sultanas and a secret. I have lost my bakestone and usually make them on a frying pan; pan-fried: yes. However, this takes forever because it is too small for efficiency. Dear Reader, I bought what I thought was a modern replacement for my bakestone and proceeded. Total failure ensued. The mixture collapsed, it hated the ridges to which it was not accustomed and fell out of its rounds in to a middle puddle. With the speed of light, I greased a mince-pie tin and pushed the half-cooked mixture in to the several indentations of which it consists. (With me still? I have a nephew who says he doesn't read blogs because he is not interested that Whomever went to make a cup of tea. Do read on, Dear. I'm nearly there.) I did end up with little cakes. They didnt taste like Welsh cakes and they didnt taste like rock cakes. They were a long way from fairy cakes, having the consistency of paving stones but they were eaten with stoicism and politeness by people who appreciate that adaptation and a new approach can apply to Welsh cakes as well as to pans and pyramids.

Having got that off my plate, I'll go on to something else which disturbs my sense of cohesion: television. I watch too much. I usually enjoy what I watch and always want to know who has given me the pleasure. Eagerly, particularly when it is a film of a certain age, I wait to see who the players were. Sometimes, I even need verification of the name of a remembered face. In a flash, the readable cast of characters diminshes to the size of a parking fine's small print and a trail of another programme with an accompanying jolly voice-over pre-empts nine tenths, no, nineteen twentieths, of the screen leaving a passing ant to read the credits of the programme I have just been absorbed in. My sense of helplessness in the face of militant forces not only outside my control but also ignorant of the scope of their powers to destroy a moment is overwhelming. I lose contact with the next programme while I lie there thinking about ways in which I can overthrow the dictatorship of the Telly-rulers and emerge the heroine of the next daring-do science fiction/thriller, to rule the world of bin-lid cooking and lost captions all by myself with the odd - very odd, you may say - trusted one to enforce my bidding. Prynhawn da.

Changes

There's a catch-all title for you. After all, life is change. What's more, change is a second cousin once removed to loss. As I write, change in this house means that the Guru has moved out to his own nest. This takes a bit of getting used to. I have to remember to buy a small container of milk and not a tall one. (That's change in itself. I nearly wrote '"bottle of milk "but we don't do bottles of milk any longer, just cartons. Goodness knows what the cows make of it). A neighbour who saw us piling the car with Guru's belongings asked me who would do my D.I.Y from now on. (Do-It-Yourself, as in mending, making, repairing, painting, if you are from a planet other than the UK and are not used to the initials or perhaps the concept). My response was that that scarcely presented any angst: I was far more concerned with who would sort my I.T. You will have great difficulty in believing this, but the very day after the Guru's removal, the Wizard of Cyberspace turned up and switched me off. He did it very subtly by creating a catastrophic fault at Headquarters. He couldn't fool me, though. It was clearly designed to show who was ultimately boss and to underline that I was now without the meanest protection from him. To his credit, Guru, although domiciled elsewhere and, further, trying to be a working person , kept checking in - no, I didn't ask where, how and to whom - and reporting that things would be fixed by whatever time came and went without things being fixed. Anyway, as you see, I am up and running, again, and you can understand why this post is at least a week later than it should have been. I think you should know, too, there was a rather unseemly relish from Guru at the thought of this old lady going in to what he called "melt down" at the loss of her Internet facility.

It is quite sad to go into his room, though, and find it so empty. Mind you, more of his stuff has been left behind than he took with him. It is stashed under this and behind that where it will have to remain until he gets a bigger place than this first 'own home'. For me, it is back to the Council Tax reduction for single occupancy and the freedom not to watch "Glee" and "Desperate Housewives" if I would really rather not. I can keep the radio on all the time and eat from the tin of baked beans if I so desire and never cook again, for that matter. It is discovering that IKEA is quite user friendly if someone else does the carrying. But, as the song goes, I've grown accustomed to his face. In more than three score years and ten I have lived with any number of people and, I must say, Guru is among the few that made it a pleasure. Thinking back, I was never brilliant at change and advancing years have heightened that sensitivity. Is it that any change may be seen as a herald of the greatest change of all: between life and death? Change has its lighter side, though. If you have been keeping up - and thank you if you have - you may remember that I had some difficulty getting out of the bath. A moving chair lift has been installed. One raises it, sits on it, swings one's legs over it and then lowers oneself on it, in to the water; piece of cake, or so I have been told. It has been here several weeks now and I have not yet found the gumption to use it. Bravely, I did so when the nice man from the Council came to check on it, and me, but he was present and I was fully clothed and, thus, less vulnerable. ( For those whose imagination is boggling, I am able to use the shower for which a grab rail has been installed). As someone who has spent an aggregate of decades lying almost flat in lovely warm water this situation is change in spades. The forty-year old watches ruefully, and regretfully and, sometimes, risibly. She longs for those muscle mending bath routines of even the recent past, but she is capable of being patient and compassionate and right behind - inside? - me. Indeed, if it were not for her encouragement and determination I would still be in the stuck-in-the-bath position I was in when it became clear something in the world of ablutions was going to have to change. Prynhawn da.

Mishaps

There was some inner world discussion about the title of this piece. Should it be 'Accidents' or 'Mishaps'. As you see, Mishaps won. The inspiration came from a potentially unpleasant happening. Actually, now I come to think of it, it was unpleasant, at the time. It morphed in to funny when it was successfully over. By now, you may well be asking what is 'it'. 'It' is me stuck in the bath. Several times before it has been a d..n close run thing but residual strength and a modicum of fear have ultimately levered me out; two parts residual strength and one part fear, I'd say. Anyway, came the occasion when the residue was minimal and the fear an impediment. Stupidly, I was alone in the house. Sensibly, I had vowed never to have a bath if I were alone in the house, (Heaven forfend that it be the Guru who was in. I'm not convinced , generous and kind though he be, I would want to put him through hoiking an elderly, unclothed lady out of her bath. On the other hand, I could always have sacrificed a towel to the waves in the interests of decorum. But the Gods be thanked, we were not put to that test.) How sense had become idiocy I havent yet had the heart to analyse , but alone I was. I tried as many times as I have digits on which to count, but my arms and shoulders were no match for those slippery slopes. After much too long, I sat back, took breath and stock and remembered the telephone I had brought in to the bathroom with me.( Not all stupidity, then) But whom to ring? I knew the Guru was inaccessible and I was not yet sufficiently frightened to call in the nearest neighbour who would be young and strong enough to hoik, on the unbelievably self-centred grounds that, a famous novelist, she would put me, identifiable, in her next book. Dear Reader, the combination of fear, shame and freezation eventually gave me the impetus to do my own hoiking. And, as you will have gathered, the thing speaking for itself, I emerged, intact, to write the tale. Further, as I write, a nice man, sent by the Council, has just installed a seat-lift in the bath. Another nice man will come, when summoned, to give me what he called 'a dry run' in its use. Nothing has more incontravertably alerted the 40 year old to the naked, stark reality of this truth: I am more than three score and ten, in constant danger of being wet, cold and stranded. The Gods forfend that I should ever suffer a humourectomy or an overgrown sense of shame because I suspect this may just be the first of many such age-related mishaps. Keep Calm and Carry on: yes, indeed.

On the same lines, the Guru, whom I had not seen for a while, came in one evening while I was still awake. I was really pleased I could see him but I was not suitable for viewing and leapt - yes, leapt - off the bed to fetch my dressing gown. I fell. First, I stumbled, then I fell, off the end of the bed where I had taken refuge after the stumble. At this point, Himself reached my door. He did try hoiking, he really did, but he was alarmed and I was laughing and neither condition helped much. Then, the instructions of a great sports masseuse came to my remembering ear. I rolled on to my knees and thrust myself up with my hands, supported by the very bed that had been my downfall. Poor Guru was treated to a sight of black underweared behind and rather too much flesh but he seems to have survived and, other than a multiplicity of bruises, so have I. (It was the underwear that was black. There were no bruises at that point.) A dear friend, of similar years, found herself in the bath situation in a far country. She, too, employed the knee manouevre, handicapped by the fact that one is damaged and more in the way than co-operative. However, she, too survived though now sworn off bathing for the rest of her days. Be warned: be very warned. It's upper arm and wrist strength you need to cultivate when you are fortyish. You will need that very much more than you will need a six pack or waistline three decades from now. And beware a man bearing a chair-lift for the bath. He has "you are a very old lady" written all over him. To cleanliness which may be instead of Godliness......

Committment

In a way, this post is a follow-on from 'Loyalty' - see below. Committment is a huge subject in itself and I may well indulge in a more focussed observation later - that would be 'see above', I suppose. For now, I will stay with the superficial resemblance between the two. Having said that, my irremediable inner voice has offered a dilemma. Posting a letter: once I have put the letter in the Post Box, I am committed. If I put it in the one box I use habitually and in no other, is that loyalty? Perhaps the thesis should be resemblance/difference. Since I was very small, I have been struck by the finality of posting a letter. It is an act from which there is no return. One may hang around and wait for the postman and beg him/her to let one retrieve it. No doubt this would be an illegal act on his/her part. One could fix a hook on to a fishing rod and attempt to angle it out. One could blow the box up and then have to answer to the consequences. Or one could be resigned to inevitability. With hindsight, this seems to me to have been a seriously sound early lesson in taking responsibility for one's actions. Likewise, washing one's hair. Once one's head is drenched preparatory to applying shampoo, there is nowhere to go but on. A letter cannot be un-posted and hair cannot be un-washed. So there you have it: loyalty to the brand of shampoo married to you- can't- get- out- of -it equals : what? Committment, I suppose. Thus, I have talked myself in to the position where loyalty must be an essential component of committment.

I am having trouble with my car. The good news is that it is not the water pump which is going but the compressor of the air-conditioning. Good news because the car is driveable. Bad news because I do badly in the heat and don't relish driving about in a little blue oven the moment the sun shines. The nice man in the garage to which I am loyally attached suggests that it is not economic to throw more money at a nine-year old car which has required expensive attention already this year. He offered many alternative solutions such as downgrading to a smaller model, new, or a similar one a year old...and so on and so forth. I listened and reasoned as a reasoning and reasonable adult, but my inner voice was screaming "no" as I threw my arms protectively - and metaphorically, I hasten to add - around my beloved car. As a good Libran, I compromised. I bought time to seek the advice of the Father of my children who knows about these things, both motoring and economic. My instinct is to throw money at the air-conditioning and postpone any more radical decision in the hope that the Gods will throw me a solution: eg Lottery win or a bucket of common sense.
As I write, it comes to me that the most momentous experience I have had of a can't-get'out-of-this event is childbirth. I can see myself climbing up the stairs of the Maternity home where my first child was born thinking: Liz, you have managed to organise your life up to now to accommodate can and can't, will and won't almost one hundred per cent to suit yourself . This time, you are committed in a way over which you have no influence whatsoever. This one you can neither get out of nor dictate to. Put yourself in the hands of the staff and your baby. Work together with them all. (It was a long staircase). This I was able to achieve and on the day when someone first walked in space my firstborn arrived with a minimum of fuss. It was also the day in which loyalty and committment were both born in a way that had previously been just a poor semblance of the reality. Prynhwn da.