As I was saying...

The post I had in mind as a Part 2 to my favourite things and vice versa, was postponed while I lived the guest blog adventure. Now seems as good a time as any to ramble on with it. First, I should say that, influenced by the negative responses to it - the guest blog, of course - I started trying to avoid the complaining, mannerisms, style and so on which had been criticised. Not a good idea. Of my time on earth quite a lot of it has been spent working out what pleases the other. In my life away from blogging I think I have managed to cultivate a bit more of a 'dammit' attitude to the 'right' thing and the 'wrong' thing so I shall transfer the benefit and be as predictable, toshy and unclear as turns up spontaneously in my stream of consciousness. Bryn Terfel singing Welsh songs: that's not a bad start.  A deep voice from the land of my father's (apostrophe?). That's enough to burn my toast... while I stop and listen, of course. Though nostalgia is a double-edged whatsit. Given enough of it, it becomes homesickness which, as a war time six year old sent to boarding school, I know a bit about. Indeed, it may well be my prime 'dislight' now I see it in black and white.  Echoes of it creep in  even to the here and now of life. For instance, if ever I am separated from someone I am close to on an outing, I am plunged back in to the despair of The Abandoned which I experienced when kind parents, seeking to protect me from the pain of separation, simply left me at the school without saying "Goodbye". I recounted this to the father of my children when he disappeared at an Airport recently while we waited for our flight. In sixty years I had never confessed before. "Very well", quoth he, "next time I'll say 'I'm just going for a newspaper. I may be gone some time'". And that's another of my distinct delights: the awareness of a shared allusion. It feels like one of the most profound of  jokes (You do get the allusion. Think 'ice'.)


Communicating with the wordless is another great delight. Working to understand my cat pleases me. I ask her what kind of miaow if it is not instantly apparent. Patiently she miaows again evidently hoping to find me less stupid with repetition. Currently, there is a television advertisement for spectacles. A vet is feeling in a pile of fur for a pulse. Failing, he tries his stethescope on himself then on another part of the fur. Urgently, he calls for his assistant to come " as quick as you can.... a cat with no pulse." The assistant picks up the fur and places it on her head. He has mistaken her hat for a cat. The advertisement then shows the cat making one of those non-miaows which are a sort of 'humph', as if - "over here,stupid" The advertisement is for a firm that makes eye-glasses, for the benefit of those of you in Mountain View, California. Pre-speakers make rather more rewarding reading. This can be done via decibels, hand gestures and puce faces, also by chuckles and smiles,  grunts and variable tones. It's possible that love for the little ones brings the nicest delight of all. I am still delighted by my eldest's first responsive communication: "in the barfoom" he replied when his Father enquired, as one does of a baby, expecting no reply, "Where are your shoes?". His father came running through the house shouting "He spoke. He spoke.". Alright: the secret's out. Communication is the delight, the favourite thing. Bore da

Guest Blogging

Well, that was exciting: Gransnet kindly asked me to write a guest blog for them and I trepidasiously accepted. It appeared last Thursday, which would have been January 8th but I havent the faintest idea how you access it. I was sent an email with a lot of blue letters which, I am reliably told, were a link. I pressed on that and 'Eureka', there it was.  It seems that a number of you has come on it because there were quite a few 'thread' comments. Most were warm, friendly and pleased to meet me, so to speak, but there was the odd contra -indication. It was amusing to read a little discussion about which end of the age range, 75 or 40, I actually was. I had a bit of a read randomly, myself, and it seemed clear enough to me. More than often I refer to the three score and more than ten years I am carrying thus far even if the whole point of the enterprise were not to draw out the ironies, disasters and fun of being 40 on the inside but 75 plus in actual years. I do apologise, however, if I have set up a muddle and will try to do better hereafter. There were several comments disagreeing with what I had said.. I see this as an interesting manifestation because it never occured to me that feelings and experiences could be "wrong".  Someone wrote that the blogposts were "tosh", a word I havent heard since playground days.  Several wrote how much they enjoyed being old in a "so there" kind of tone. There I really am deeply sorry for a mislead. I do enjoy my chronological age. That has nothing to do with the fact that it gives rise to very real predicaments that have to be managed, sorted  and, hopefully, laughed about. Thank you Gransnet for the opportunity and I will read all the threads again if the Wizard of Cyberspace has left the door to them open. I would suspect he has; for encouragement read chastisement, for skill read stupid and for a job well done read banishment. If he had his wicked way there would always be an IT disaster for him to mock me with. The door will be open simply because of the presence of the 'toshers' amongst us.

I had intended a part 2 to the previous Delights and Dislights post because, having written one, I found I was overwhelmed with more. The guest blog has provided both: delight in those I have pleased and dislight where I have erred. (I am aware of the liberty I have taken with the negative, but if one can't invent a word at my age when can one?) But there really is a special delight in reaching more readers whom, I hope, will identify with the unexpected and unrehearsed aspects of feeling just the same on the inside while a lot more than thirty years have gone by on the Passport. I see that I made an assumption. I assumed we were all in agreement that a certain purity of developement in terms of who one was going to be had been reached by forty.The concerto has its form. There are just the decorations to add. In fact, there is the basic me which is more or less constant. Opportunities to modify, moderate and expand do offer themselves and I hope I take them: that is: take in a new source of love, throw out an old source of irritation for instance. Someone I know well won't allow anything new in to her house unless she throws something old away. That sort of courage I lack but I muddle through actually and figuratively. Here's to blogging and even threading. Prynhawn da.

Delights and Dislights

For someone who thrives on routine and ritual, the current ten Sundays in a row - from Christmas Eve to the second of January of course - are  trying, to say the least. I am ready for a sabbatical from Sabaths, particularly since, at my age, the last lot feel like only a month or so ago. I think I must never have lost that baby thing when you begin to realise that the a) of hunger will be met by the b) of lunch in what one would see as the inevitable if one were old and sophisticated enough to know the concept and, thus, the word for it. Anyway, on my eve of New Year's list of cons and pros, ten days of Sundays are conissimo. During the enforced idleness I have been reviewing the pleasures and displeasures from the vantage point of three score and many more then ten to see how they differ from those of two score. I start with the toughest of them all: the Wizard of Cyberspace. I hardly dare to put his name to paper so superstitious of his power am I, but I feel it's only fair to tell you that this very enterprise has already come a cropper once. Just as I was luxuriating in a reliving of my first delight, with two fell swoops all was eradicated. Somehow, somewhere  I seem to bring my wrist down on the bottom of the keyboard and the screen of prose flows straight out in to the ether. I may have pressed a neurotic fifty times on 'save': saved it has not. The Guru says I must have done something. I know not what. I wish I did. Anyway, I had been telling you of the great pleasure of getting up in the middle of the night to find it is 4.10 am and I can crawl back in to the lovely warm nest for lots more night. When I was forty, I would rail against the middle of the night wake up call, now I actively will myself to do so simply for that delicious gift of more bedtime. Elderflower cordial when I am thirsty comes close to re-bedding. Milk choclate with nuts will do it for me, too, although, truth be told, that delight comes with a contra-indication because I am left feeling slightly nauseous. There is delight in watching my cat watch me prepare for bed and as soon as I am in and stationary leaping on top of me to settle for the night. She is the beater when it comes to routine and ritual; from under the bedside lamp,she picks her way through and around the impedimenta on the bedside table and lands on top of me, always with her back to me although she is always front ways up during the day. People who are close to me hesitate to have work done in their house which  would necessitate moving out for a time because their seriously ancient cat's life is so ruled by ritual that there is only one side of the staircase she will walk down and relocating is, therefore, out of the question.

Of dontlights there are so many I don't know where to start. If I weren't too afraid of his power to name him, You Know Who would be high on the list.  I dislike being called 'Liz' or even 'Elizabeth' by the young lady on the Gas Board switchboard. However, I lack the courage to say, "I prefer,' Mrs. Mountford' if you please".I don't like stepping out of a warm shower in to a cool rest of bathroom. I don't like brown envelopes and I like even less postmen who leave a card saying they have taken my parcel away because I wasn't in to receive it. Yes I was and, no, he didnt ring the bell. I don't like sprouts and at my age I don't have to eat them. I hate narrow, steep stairs and have to choose restaurants by the location of their facilities. 

These are a few of my favourite things and rather fewer of my unfavourites. More to follow one of these days. Prynhawn da. PS I do like blogging.

Hearing

Alright: on the bullet I have bitten. (No preposition at the end, you will note.) The particular bullet on which I have bitten is, in truth, about the real size and shape of a bullet but soft and malleable. I have , at last, put the hearing aids the NHS so generously gave me to their proper use, that is, in my ears. You have no idea what a noisy world we live in. On my return from the audiology department at my local hospital I was in the bathroom when I heard the loudest most racous meow I had ever experienced. I tore back down the stairs - well, lumbered actually - to see what harm had befallen my beloved cat to find her standing there, merely trying to establish where she could find me. The bedside clock has been banished  to a distant drawer and the radio reduced to about 50 whatevers of volume: (around 72, since you ask.) Turning the pages of the newspaper makes a  sound like a ship's cable being pulled through the door which houses the anchor. I am more than somewhat disillusioned. I thought of cat-faced-darling as having a very ladylike turn of speech. In fact, she sounds like an inebriated young supporter of a losing football side. Don't get me wrong. I still adore her. I just wish she would talk a bit less - and quietly. I have yet to put this development to the Hospital Enquiry Desk test. I am hopeful that I shall hear my enquirers the first time they ask me something  Up until now, I have been relying on guesswork and hope.

Life management has had to change. Get up at least ten  minutes earlier than erstwhile to allow insertion time. Hair spray before they go in and wait until it dries,  so as not to contaminate the little dears, of course. No adjustment to styling once equipped otherwise I might catch the relevant bit in the brush and have it speared on a bristle. My aids appear to have no controls other than in or out, loud or louder.  My colleague at the Enquiry Desk has three adjustments, one of which cuts out extraneous background noise. She acquired her aids from the same source so I shall have to look in to my seeming deprivation. Talk about " you gave her a bigger slice of cake than you gave me". Along with "you said" that must be the most frequent of childhood complaints. Another extraordinary happenning: having experienced the greater clarity and underlying scratch of everyday life, I somehow expected to be seeing better, too. This was absolute nonsense, of course, but I keep telling you directly or by implication how both complex and straightforward is the inner world and here is yet another example. All this started only five days ago and I am rather proud of how I have adapted. The instruction book tells me to try an hour or so at a time, inside and out, but I have had them in all day every day since the beginning. Oh dear: I was tempted to say 'ab inititio', a phrase I havent thought of since I left University. Perhaps my sight is unaffected but my superiority complex is not.  Sseriously, though, without having, anyway consciously, noticed a dampening effect on my confidence of the nodding and smiling response which goes with a degree of deafness, I do seem to have grown cheekier in the last five days. "There's nowt so queer as folk" as they say up North...".nothing so odd as people", for those of you in Mountview California. Bore da

Blessings

Earlier in the week, those of you with the necessary skills will have noticed an alert, other than my own, to a new blog post. I had come within a whisker of finishing it when the Wizard of Cyberspace waved a wand and the whole thing vanished. Disgruntlement has delayed my making good the loss but I feel strong enough this morning to have another go. I have it from a very reliable source that I must have touched the space bar. Well, of course I touched the space bar otherwiseeverythingwould have runintoitself. Anyway, please be good enough to keep your fingers crossed or light a candle to the Wizard or whatever voodoo best fits your hope application that he will allow me to finish this time. One more thought: where the D...l is the stuff 'saved' if it goes in to cyberspace at one fleeting touch?

I had written about blessings. It seemed a good idea because I have spent an inordinate amount of time looking at the diasadvantages of living in a body that is three score and many. It was/is about time I looked at the advantages.  Milk is homogenised. I no longer have to scrape a disgusting skin off my hot choclate. I don't have to eat my greens. What possible good can greens do for me at this stage? (Rhetorical: please don't send volumes of green-eating pluses though comments on anything else seriously welcomed.) I am more comfortable in my skin. I rarely feel slighted.. When I first started work at the local hospital, I was under a mentor who had a particular characteristic. Of ten proceedures I would get nine right and she would comment on the tenth. My bristles remembered how they used to feel but remained dormant. Presently, she stopped. Either I was doing well enough or she was bored with teaching me.. According to maternal advice one shouldn't wash one's hair on certain days of the month. I can wash my hair when I like. Come to that, there are no certain days of the month. There are no more aunts to write to to keep in touch or thank for presents; what my young used to call "Grandma letters". When I do write 'thank you' letters it is out of joy not duty. I can dye my eyelashes. This started when I used to have swimming-type summer holidays  and wished to have some definition of my eyes in this raw, wet state. People started telling me how well I looked so I have kept it up. Being vain at my age is very different from being vain at forty. I give the impression that I know a lot. I don't. My memory is very full of all sorts of information.When the old man in the archive can access it it does seem like erudition not just memory. I am braver. I can give my symptoms to a male receptionist in the Gynaegology Department  of the hospital without flinching, though I have to say, it is taking equal rights a bit far to instal a male in that situation. There you have it: equal rights.  Women knew their place until a certain number of years ago (.Mind you, an ardent feminist of my acquaintance at that period called her brother to remove the offering of a mouse the cat had brought her).  I was seen as a rebellious nuisance back then. Now I am just a liberated woman. Bora da
ps Made it. Publish quickly before You Know Who notices



 

Blogfest

  Yesterday was 'B', or Big Day, in the Bloggers' world. We came from near and far and even further to attend a Blogfest, meet our peers and increase our education, thereby, increasing our fulfillment in and our capcity to communicate through our blogs. For the most part we were  women. That is, each woman was entirely a woman, so far as I could tell.  What I meant was,the constituency was made up mainly of women. I make this pedantic point because, for me, one of the sessions that had the most impact dealt with the unmitigated glory of technology, that is, the internet, in the education of the young. Does the computer go on about the order of words in a sentence and the way meaning is conveyed? Of course it does if you ask it to. What it doesn't do is lighten your day with the sight of the teacher whose skirt is tucked in to her knickers at the back where you can see it as she stands at the blackboard but, clearly, she can't. Nor can you bring it an apple or flowers at the end of term.  We were offered impressive examples of how the world was opened to pupils who, otherwise, were missing the lifeblood of education. My growing and physical discomfort culminated in a question which I wrote down in order to be secure in asking it, in spite of a serious attack of performance anxiety. (Those of you loyal and tender readers, may remember, part of my professional life was treating performing musicians for just that complaint, which the older among you may well call 'stagefright.' Odd what a refining up will do to the name of a condition; as in 'laryngitis' versus 'sore throat.'). The question was:  how did the Speaker and the Panel see the contribution of human relations in the Cyberworld? Where was the place for them and, indeed, the time? Dear Reader, there was no Q and A slot. I would have asked it in a genuine 'want-to-know way'. I felt alarmed and saddened and intensely concerned. Of course, no-one seriously expects Cyberspace to obliterate human relations. But hang on a minute isn't that more or less implicit in what the eminent professor has just said; in a confined arena, education, it's true, and formal education at that?. But education makes an impact and here you have a very worried old lady. Will there be generations who communicate only via keyboards and Smart  whatevers? Oh Dear, I am in danger of ruining  Sunday. Happily, that was the most challenging event in an otherwise brilliant and superbly well organised day. I can't wait until next year....if I'm spared, that is. Can't maake too many plans at my great age.

To change the lilt, I shall report on a lighter note. I have cards with all my details and contacts on them.: pure Downton Abbey. Some also have the link to 75 going on 40. In the early morning rush, I couldn't find those so, in the Minicab taking me to the venue, I wrote the link in ink. Arthritic hands, jerky drive, you get the picture. When I arrived I was presented with a gadget with my name and the name of my blog on it, about the size of a large credit card, on a lanyard to put around one's neck. This gadget, when tapped by another's, would recall all the protaganists details, down, I believe, to the name of the store from which one bought one's underwear.( "Don't we all" as Lady Thatcher once said.)  So much for giddy-making illegibility and old-fashioned old lady communication. Bore da.