Deja Vu

 Last night the Guru's Swing Band had a mammoth gig which I went to with some trepidation. Why? Well, apart from me, the oldest person there must have been all of thirty. I went on the 'bus which meant that I approached the door from the end opposite to a snaking queue the end of which was not visible to the be-spectacled eye. Taking my courage in both legs I advanced straight up the couple of steps to the Doorman in control of things. Not unreasonably, he pointed me to the far west where there was evidently an end to this queue. Firmly, waving my stick at him, I said that old ladies with incapacities were not about to line up in the wind and the cold. He must be fond of his Grandmother because he let me in and this post testifies to the fact that I was not riven by those still waiting in the queue. I knew that the band's first set was not until 9pm but there was a great deal going on before that. It turned out that the main opening event was lessons in jitterbugging and related dances from circa the Forties and Fifties. Imagine my excitement: I must have been the only person there who danced those dances the first time around. The girls were mostly wearing the waisted, full-skirted dresses of the time, with trainers, but even a pedant like me was able to accept the practicality of that. My poor feet were itching to get in there and threatened rebellion as I sat, decorously, on a chair provided by another young man who must have loved his Grandma. I honestly think - is there another way to think - that, had I seen a place to pose my stick, I would actually have joined in.

I remember an attempt at a parental embargo because of the risk of underwear-showing as one twirled and pirouetted without caution. The solution was to sew weights in to the hem to hold the skirt down. That didn't work, of course, largely because I took them out away from parental observation. My seamed stockings and ladylike knickers, colour co-ordinated, were, therefore able to enjoy and be enjoyed by the lovely freedom of the boogie. When I told the Guru of my retrospective identification, he nearly fell over. He looked at me as if I had dropped from Venus. Clearly, there was no way to associate the ancient with the modern, in the past and on the present dance floor. ( I have some reservations about the personification of various non-person references above. Please forgive me. I am really carried away by last night's events. But I agree: I don't like 'arch', either.) Memories I didn't realise I had stored swam about in my current consciousness; people, too. I have been here before, I knew, different county, different companions, replicated experience. With my inner eye I could see, clearly, the young me swung around a boy's back, thrown about at the end of his arms and coming to rest in an elegant curtsey at the end. There were no mobile phones - Good Heavens, what else was there none of - so I had to keep looking at the time to be sure to be ready for the parental pick-up. 'Nice' girls did not go home with anyone else, especially not A BOY. Oh Dear, where are the snows of yesteryear? Melted by the hot Chinese herbal pain patch I have to wear to sooth the chronic pain in my back. Prynhawn da

Communication

In the newspapers recently, I have seen comments about the importance of talking to babies and little children so as to encourage their loquacity and hone their vocabularies. Goodness knows why it has taken so long for 'official' comment to draw our attention to the obvious. It won't surprise you that I am fascinated by the attempts of the young to make themselves understood. I have a little heart-sink when I hear that babies have been 'good' because quiet and 'naughty' because of crying. For \Heavens sake, how do we expect them to draw our attention when they are pre-verbal. (Rhetorical). Someone I had a great deal to do with growing up was being fed when it was clear that she was storing up the food in her hamster cheeks. As the surplus spilled out the feeder kept shaving it up and trying to put it back in to the child's mouth. After a while of this in- out exchange, the little one suddenly said "Hello". "Hello, has nothing to do with it" the feeder responded. Thinking about it, it came to me that this little thing had spent a good long moment reviewing her miniscule vocabulary and had decided that the nearest she could get to "Let's call it a day with this food business, if you would be so kind" was 'Hello', regarded as a friendly and connecting word in most people's world. I have a friend across the Channel whose neighbour came to her one day and asked whether her visiting Mother were alright. When asked, the reason for the query was that she had been observed actually to be talking to the baby she was pushing in  the pram.

Irony is a tough one. We Brits seem to go in for it extensively. I overheard a conversation where someone was describing a less than happy restaurant experience. The light was poor, the food appalling, the service indifferent and the toilet facilities a disgrace. "You would'nt recommend it, then" said the addressee. A non-Brit, on the fringe, spoke, with some irritation, "Haven't you listened to a word he said?" A perfect communication between those used to irony: a lapse of manners to the rest. When I was rather ill a while ago, talking was too great an effort. I was aware that loved ones were keeping vigil but had no words to let them know I was grateful and comforted. My inner voice, never at a loss for words, even in those circumstances, kept worrying at the problem. Eventually it came up with a solution. Give them a smile. Communication was thus restored, to everyone's relief.  I was still in there somewhere. It made me realise, again, the essential nature of communication. Perhaps it is right up there with the previous post: .Love and Communication equal life's blood. Why not?  Bore da

Love

Of course, you are right. That's an extremely presumptuos title. But I shall presume only to cover a smidgen of the subject and that, I trust, with humility. It started after I had written a guest blog for Gransnet. Under 'comment' I found one from the features department of a National Newspaper asking if I were prepared to do a piece for them. Actually, yes, I could find the energy to do that. A day or so went by until we finally spoke when, Dear Reader, with rue and irony, I realised there had been a break in frequency and our wavelengths differed. The young - sounding - lady at the other end had read the guest blog and my thoughts on love being easier at the three score and more than ten than at the forty end of my experience. She had pictured a stream of enlightened romances. I was talking about 'caritas'; the kind of love which sits in the solar plexus and usually doesn't relate to the physical side of things although it is not a written rule that it should'nt. I meant compassion, and warmth and an encompassing alrightness. I find it very freeing and enabling. In the every day sense, it often means that the slings and arrows of this and that slide off me, leaving me positive and whole. For Heaven's sake, I can just be nicer than I was. Stupidly, I told the lady this  - not the' nicer' bit - when a cannier old lady may have said "That's fine. I'll send you a piece about my latest four romances." and had a lovely time making them up. Now I have scuppered my chance to be known in the world and even invited on to 'Woman's Hour'. (This is a daily  UK radio magazine programme if you happen to be in Mountview, California).

The working reality of the question of love was brought home to me in spades yesterday evening when I was speaking on the telephone to someone I have loved dearly for fifty five years. He is widowed, now, after a remarkable marriage of many, many decades. An amazing man, brilliant, experienced, fluent in many languages, well versed in politics and sport but not particularly emotionally intelligent. At least, that's what I had the temerity to assume over all those years. Last evening he suddenly said " You know: love is the most important thing. Nothing else matters where there is love." He misses the touches, the tiny kisses, the walking passed and giving a little stroke. He is seriously old but totally himself in what he gives out and how he sounds. I suppose that sort of love nicely covers all eventualities; the imaginings of the Features editor and  the 'truth' of caritas. Personally, I thought a piece based on the crossed wires of that lady and me would have been a delicious riot of misunderstandings with the polarisation of our different ages. Bora da

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.