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.