English winter

I make no attempt to disguise it: the Sage and I are no end pleased and flattered that you want to come to our party.  You are all most welcome - it's you lovely people who make it fun, we just provide the venue - and a lot of food.

Today was a bit frustrating.  I went to a lecture on Freud (the artist, not his grandad) and Hockney and then trotted along to Jarrolds to do a bit of shopping.  I wanted some new boots because my long ones' zip had broken (that is, two boots, one broken zip).  I tried on a lot and eventually bought these* (no pic posting problems on Safari, though I understand those unfortunates who still use IE have to go round the houses) though they weren't exactly what I'd been looking for, but were gratifyingly well reduced in price, fit perfectly and - well, I need new boots.

It started snowing while I was in the shop and by the time I'd finished I was only five minutes short of that hour's deadline in the car park, so I didn't buy the books I'd planned to (book token for Christmas!) and headed back.

Darlings, I soon discovered that there was a problem.  Everyone was leaving Norwich early because of the snow, and Grapes Hill was closed - it appears to have been a scheduled closer, presumably because of roadworks and no one was undaft enough to open it again.  I ended up several miles in the wrong direction on the ring road, my least favourite road in the world (and I've spent hours stuck on the M25 and various other motorways) and I finally arrived home at 6.06 pm after a journey starting at 1.25 which should have taken half an hour.

But I am a positive and uncomplaining Z on the whole, and I took time to notice how pretty the trees were

I was, of course, stationary at the time I took the photos, as I was quite a lot of the time.

I also observed, as so often before, how lovely people are.  No one lost their temper, no one hooted a horn, even when someone was blocked from going ahead by a car that had space to move a bit and leave room, people paused to let someone in front or out of a junction.  I stopped to let three young women and an older one cross the road - the ice was treacherous and the older one fell and the others hurried back to help her up and walked on arm in arm.  Lorries lost traction, but fortunately everyone took great care and I saw no accidents, which was remarkable.

Have to say, though, what a stupid situation.  I've no idea what (apart from not shutting Grapes Hill) could have been done, because sending traffic control police out would have been a danger to them.  I have no plans to go far for the next few days until the very English winter weather eases.


*Looks like fat calves and tiny feet.  Neither is true - put it down to foreshortening

It's June in January...

29th June is the day of the party, as a few people can't make the July date.  Splendid.  I'll put a header post up in due course, but plenty of time for that.  And I'm usually the one who insists on spontaneity - though booking a day with a dozen or more people is better done well in advance.  I must be getting sensible.  Oh gosh.  Pause for thought there.  Is that a sign of maturity?  I feel like a ripe Stilton.  I hope I don't smell like one ... no, no, we're getting into the realms of absurdity here.

It's only five weeks until Elle leaves us, a thought that's making me rather sad.  We will really miss her. Not that she'll be here all the time until then, but don't you think there's quite a different feel to someone being away for the day or a few weeks, from them going away for good?  Though we're sure to keep in touch, we've become such good friends.  And Berlin is one of the many places I've never visited, so when I do I will be sure to meet her and her family again.

I didn't expect to wake up to snow today, but it would be nice to do so tomorrow.  Not that hopeful, it seems to be forecast to do its usual thing of petering out by the time it reaches the easternmost fringes of East Angular.  There wasn't even enough frost to have to clear the windscreen this morning, just a few snowflakes.  Elle was slightly surprised to hear of my enthusiasm for building snowmen, but ... well, you've got to, innit?  Though it might have to be a snowgnome this time.

Z wants a dog

Taken aback as I was to be compared to Truman Capote by Rog, I've decided that he meant it in the best possible spirit, though it's still making me ponder in the dark recesses of the night.  Regarding the party, a majority seems to be edging towards 29th June, though neither date has been ruled out yet.

I should explain about my dog hints - you are acute, you lot, one brief mention in the comments ... anyway, it was that trip down south at the end of September that really did it.  I kept on meeting lovely dogs and it hit me harder every time that, two years after Tilly died, I miss my dogs desperately.  For quite some time, I missed Tilly and Chester so much that getting another felt like replacing them: ie impossible, and it wasn't a practical proposition either, for several reasons.  But now, I've got to have one.  But my terms and conditions still have to apply, so I have to exercise some judgement, not that easy for your impetuous Z.  The main points to consider are:- 1) Grandchildren.  It must be good with children.  2) Chickens.  It must not kill or even chase chickens, once I've kindly explained once and shouted once that they're out of bounds. 3) Boundaries.  It must, in time, learn not to go out on the road or across the fields, even though there are no fences.

Back in early December, I did get so far as to go to look on the vets' noticeboard and I wrote down someone's name and phone number too, but I didn't actually ring.  It's hard to explain why, but I think it was because the notice was already a week old and I thought the dogs, two 7-year-old golden retriever sisters in urgent need of rehoming, would have been snapped up.  I funked it, in short, because I was afraid of being disappointed.  I'm not good with disappointment, I never have been.  There have been times when I've preferred realistic pessimism to the risk of disappointment, but that has been during periods of entirely understandable low spirits.

Anyway, it won't be long before I have another go.  But I'm quite relaxed about it, though really rather keen.

Houzekeeping

Thank you for your enthusiastic responses.  The most likely date will be either the 29th June or 27th July, so let me know if you can't manage either of them and let's hope one day will suit everyone.  If you'd like to stay overnight, you'd be very welcome.  We have two double and a single spare room and another room where I could put a blow-up double mattress (if well inflated it's comfortable, I've slept on it many times) if Weeza can haul it out of her garage, where it's resided since she moved from London.  I can put at least two more couples in the bungalow, though I'll have to buy another bed first as there's only one in there at present.  A sofa bed could be a useful buy too - there won't be a problem about fitting people in, I'm sure.  Plenty of time to sort it all out, anyway.

I've turned off the registered user thingy for comments, because it's supposed to accept open ID and it doesn't.  It really only wants to take people who have a Google account and I don't think that's acceptable.  It's been a lovely break from spam, but that's my problem not yours.  I have comment moderation switched on for posts after two days so, even if you've subscribed to comment notification, you shouldn't get them in your emails unless they're on the most recent couple of posts. I can't guarantee that I won't turn on word verification if I'm bombarded, though, as I had been getting dozens of spam comments every day.

This morning, I met three new governors to go through the information folder - they're all very knowledgeable about school and governor matters and I came away with a list of items to do, check on or make sure they're mentioned at a future meeting.  I feel a bit overworked today as a result - so I do my blog housekeeping instead of getting on with the work.  May not be sensible, but it's human nature, surely?  So I can't help it.  Also, it's my lunch break.  Ho ho.

I haven't quite finished the Christmas Stilton yet though, so maybe I will have a sliver or two.

Z thinks about a celebration

The programme for the Aldeburgh Festival dropped through - no it didn't, we don't have a letterbox - was delivered this morning.  It's Britten's centenary this year so there are big celebrations, both there and in Lowestoft, where he was born.

I haven't said anything about the new year as yet because I've been deep in the past (where I'll return soon, I daresay).  And though I haven't made resolutions as such because they're better made when the thought occurs to you - oh, it just has! - so this must be a nearly-new year resolution - I'm going to carry on going to the cinema after Elle leaves and start going to concerts and the theatre again.  Because the Sage really doesn't enjoy any of it and, after all these years of living with me, the novelty has finally worn off and he feels able to say so.  So - and I've often done that before but lost heart for a while - I'll go alone.  One should always be self-sufficient in any case and ones own true friend.

Having said that, the first thing I did was email the family to see if they'd like to come to any, and I've takers for a couple of them already.

On 12th June, which I suppose is Benji's Happy Day, Lowestoft's fountains will be playing his music and the promenade will be decked out with banners.  Isn't that lovely?  Musical fountains, I wonder how they do that?  I've probably told you this before but can't quite be bothered to go back and check, so excuse the anecdotage, but young Ben's father was my family's dentist.  Daddy used to go for check-ups in the school holidays and always heard Ben fiddling in the room above.  It's maybe understandable that he was not one of my father's favourite composers: the association was unfortunate.

Anyway, I'm booking for anything that catches my eye and doing it soon (I'm a Friend, darlings, and have priority booking).  And it's made me think about a date for this year's blog party.  If you're up for one again this year, of course?  The weekend of the 1st June looks good.  Or any weekend in July except for the first, because our village festival is on the 6th July.  August is entirely free at present.  May and the rest of June, I'll have to firm up arrangements, as they say, at this end first.

If you've been here before you'll know about us.  If you haven't, do take this as an invitation.  Lovely people have come along, many of them twice (out of two parties, that is) and have been delightful and charming and friendly and have got on well enough to meet up since.  We've got a number of spare bedrooms and you're welcome to stay (until all bedrooms are taken) and I love feeding lots of people and take all preferences and allergies into account without any bother.  Entertainment, you have to provide, just by chatting to each other, though I daresay you might be sent into the garden to find where the bantams are laying or have to listen to "Eleven more months and ten more days" on the wind-up gramophone or even, if you're remarkably lucky, be introduced to Bobby the leopard.

Best of all, you would meet the Sage and our family.  We're looking balefully at 40 years of marriage this year and realising how old this makes us, but whatever we do on the day, you're welcome to celebrate it with us.

Tell me possible dates and we'll find one that everyone can manage.

Update - 29th June or 27th July are the best options at present.

Z hugs

I went to London yesterday to check out my flat, because my tenant has bought a house.  Yay James, and thank you for looking after the place so well.  Oven, bath and fridge completely clean, and they are the mark of thorough cleaning.  I've had to spend a full day cleaning a one bedroom flat, empty at that, in my time, so I appreciate not having had to.  Oh, and the windows were clean too.

If anyone is interested in paying me something approaching £1500 per month for a one bedroomed unfurnished flat, do get in touch.  Islington, opposite the canal, round a couple of corners from Upper Street at the Angel station end.

Ahem.  Advert over.

I can't imagine why, but I started walking from Liverpool Street and I just kept going.  As long as I kept North and followed my nose a bit, I was going to hit my destination - it's a couple of miles, I suppose.  But why I didn't just hop on a bus (205), I can't think.  And then I needed a couple of things and had to go and fetch them from the supermarket - forget your Tesco, in Islingto  Sainsbury's and Waitrose are side by side, opposite Gap one way and M&S the other.  I did go in Waitrose because I seem to be that sort of Z, but I hit Chapel Market too, because I'm that sort of Z as well.

I finished earlier than expected so took a bus back and was on the platform at 2.58.  Did I catch the 3 o'clock train?  Hell, yes.  I'm allowed to run to catch public transport, though no further because it jars my lovely three year old hip, and I made the most of it.  So I was home an hour early, which was just as well because I was surprisingly tired.

That didn't help me sleep, sadly, and nor could the Sage.  I wish it was a bit colder, I can't sleep in this mild weather with the winter duvet on.  So we had a long conversation at about 4.30 this morning about Life and all that comes of it, and I finally fell asleep around 6.  As a result, I didn't even hear the alarm and had to scurry around to be out of the house, teeth cleaned, by 9.

Later, home from the dentist (poorer but unscathed), I finished some school governor work that has been hanging over me for a couple of months.  I hasten to add - well, that's a figure of speech, actually I'm drinking coffee, eating chocolate (we were given rather a lot and someone's got to do it) and not feeling very hasty at all - that I'd done nearly all the work, it was just the review of one document and the writing of a letter, plus checking a couple of dates that were still to do.  But I've done it.  And the deadline is actually Friday morning, so I'm quite pleased with myself.

Later, the Head told me that our Finance Director and her assistant have both passed their accountancy exam, the CIPFA (I'll look up what it means in a while) which is jolly good, so I went to give them both a congratulatory hug.  Because I'm that sort of Z too.

Z plans to skip

I've whinged before about my lack of reading libido of late.  That is, I read loads, but by the time I've read papers for various meetings, newspapers, blogs and so on, I don't seem to have much concentration left for actual books.  That I've been blaming it on the average modern novel has been given credence by the fact that, over the past couple of years, many of the books I've read with enthusiasm have been classics.  I've re-read War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Vanity Fair, La Peste and L'étranger, the latter in French, except for the words I couldn't be bothered to look up, Huckleberry Finn ... oh, I can't remember, but you get the picture.  But otherwise, I read a few pages and lose interest and it takes me ages to get through a book I would previously have read in a day.

I may have discovered another reason.  I'm being too thorough.  Read this, my darlings, and then come back to me.  Because I was talking to a friend the other day who said he had never been able to enjoy anything of Tolkein's, though he'd read The Hobbit to his children (when they were, they've grown up now) and they'd loved it, he'd been bored as a stiff.  I kept quiet, I enjoyed the books too - but now I realise that I skipped through a fair lot.  When it gets onto overly descriptive bits that interfere with the plot, my eyes go 'yeah, yeah' and whizz through until something interesting happens.

When I was a child, I read very quickly.  I zipped along, getting the feel and the mood of the book, and the story itself and, if I liked it, it wouldn't be long before I read it again.  In fact, sometimes I read the last page, turned back to the first and read it again straight away, taking in anything I'd missed.  I carried on reading quickly for years, until I deliberately slowed down when, buying three or four books a week and reading them in a couple of days, I realised I'd got a habit I couldn't afford.  Yes, I could have gone to the library - actually, I did that too.  I couldn't keep up with myself.

I've come to the conclusion that it's because of all the documents I have to read thoroughly: I pay a novel too much attention and a lot of them don't merit it.  So I'm going to try speeding up again.

By the way, that article - check out pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør's comments - so that I don't have to.  I was quite unable to read them, my eyes glazed and my tongue dribbled.  This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. 

Z pulls her weight

There are railings between the churchyard and the road.  Many such wrought iron fences were taken down during the War, to be melted down for munitions (I've read that most of them weren't used for this purpose at all and it was rather a wasted effort) but cattle were regularly driven past the churchyard to graze on the fields beyond and, since there are yew trees in the churchyard, it was felt too unsafe if there was no barrier.  Just inside the railings, there's a row of lime trees.  Electricity and telephone wires are strung above the pavement too.  And it was felt that the trees should be topped, because there was a danger of one falling onto the road which would have brought down the cables to boot.

The Sage was asked for advice and he spoke to someone we know - actually, he's the chap we employed to do our drive, which is his primary business, but people are always obliging and he agreed that a couple of his men could work for the church.  One of them was our good friend (and, for all too brief a time, gardener) Jamie.

There must be a dozen trees and Jamie, Jimmy, the Sage and I worked on the job for several weeks.  Jamie was the brave man who climbed the trees and wielded the chainsaw and the rest of us hung on ropes and lowered cut sections into the right place.  it was jolly hard work and quite tricky.  Experienced and careful as Jamie was, he didn't have all the equipment a professional tree surgeon would have - this was 25 years ago, you'd not take the risk now.  I came to admire him hugely during that time because he kept joking and never gave up.  After the job was completed, he admitted that he had been pretty nervous at times and the fear was cumulative.  I'd known it, I would have felt the same.

He reminded me recently of one occasion where a large chunk of tree wanted to fall one way and we were all hauling on a rope to pull it the other.  I was at the front of the rope and the others (including Jamie, who'd got down the ladder to come and help) were lined up behind me.  Suddenly, the chunk of trunk came the way we wanted it and we all fell over, me on top.  Jamie said that my presence had been appreciated, if you see what I mean....

Another time, we could hold the tree but not pull it, it was too heavy.  Being an 8-stone weakling at the time (I pulled above my weight, I was very strong, but the least useful person there) I was sent out into the road to find someone to help.  It just so happened that the coal lorry was going past at the time.  A man who can carry hundredweights of coal on his back isn't daunted by a bit of tree and he came and saved the day.

I love mucking in and getting a tough job done and none of the men I've ever worked with has ever been in the least sexist or patronising, even though I'm a girlie, strength-wise.  I pull my weight: it's just that I'm not all that heavy.

By the way, if any of you is having trouble with spam comments, mine have dried up altogether since I turned on Open ID, and I had been receiving several dozen every day.  But if it causes you a problem in leaving a comment, do let me know.  My email is on my profile.

Z rambles, rather

Six months after we moved here, my stepfather died suddenly.  He and my mother had breakfast, he went upstairs to shave and was gone a long time so she went to check and found him.  It was only a week or so before their tenth wedding anniversary and they had been very happy together.  He was a lovely man and was thrilled with the welcome he had received into our family.  My children loved him too, so much so that my daughter gave her son his name as a middle name in loving memory of Grandad.

My mother knew he had booked at a restaurant for a special celebration, but he hadn't told her where and she wasn't able to cancel it.  This bothered her - having been a hotelier in the past, she was punctilious about consideration and politeness to those in the hospitality business.  As a result of her telling me about this, I'm the same, especially in hotels.  I always leave my room tidy, wipe round the washbasin (toothpaste splodges are horrible) and bath, leave a tip when I go.  Mind you, we had a cock-up on the supper front a few weeks ago, booked for a meal at the Yacht Club and forgot to go.  I have sent the money (which they didn't ask for) but still felt awful.  Um, I digress.

My mother was still only in her early 60s, widowed twice and planning to leave the home where she and Wilf had been so happy.  It was tough for her and she faced it bravely, but I admit that I was anxious about her coming to live here.  I'd so enjoyed settling in and getting to know people, starting again with a new identity in a sense - no baggage from where I'd grown up - and half an hour away had been a good distance from her strong personality.  We did get on well, but I'd found an independence (yes, I know I had been married over ten years but I had remained in her shadow) that I relished.

Anyway, the alterations were done to the bungalow during the spring and Roy the painter came in to do the decorating in the summer.  We had a project of our own that summer, dismantling, mending and re-erecting the summer house.  I was in charge of repainting it.  I bought a hot air gun and stripped every scrap of paint from it, inside and out.  The exterior had been painted several times, layer on layer and it took a lot of work.  Roy told me afterwards that he thought I'd give up and call him in to finish the job, but I enjoy seeing a task through.  I've repainted the summer house a few times since, but sadly it's in a bad way again now.  Moles got under the runners (it's a revolving one) and we can't open the door more than a crack and it needs dismantling again.  I don't think there's any point in re-erecting it at present and I hope we'll be able to take it down (it's all bolted together, but it's very heavy and we need help) even if the sections are just stored for a while, because it's a mess as it stands.

I've always enjoyed getting stuck in to a project.  Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know about the building of the Wall, which was done over two summers, and there have been several other tasks over the years.  One of them was topping the trees in the churchyard.  

Z hasn't done a lot

You know the radio programme 1've never seen $t@r W@rs, where people own up to several things that *everyone* has done and they haven't, and they then do it and talk about it?  Well, Macy was talking about the gym yesterday, and it occurred to me - not only have I never belonged to a gym, I've never even set foot in one.

It's a matter of good fortune, but I've never broken a bone.  That is, my right hip was sawn off three years ago, but I don't think that counts in this context.

I've never taken any illegal drugs.  Not a sniff.  Nor any legal but dodgy ones, either, nothing to change my mood in any way.  I'm clean, darlings, completely clean.  I know, child of the 60s, I should be ashamed.  But I'm a self-control freak instead.  I don't mind in the least what anyone else does, but I want to choose what I do.  I didn't smoke in my teens either (I've had the odd cigarette but never been a smoker) because of the peer group pressure.  I don't do peer group pressure and if everyone around me is doing something, that's quite enough reason for me not to.

It so happened that, the other day, Weeza mentioned that she'd never seen Titanic.  I can't say that, I'm afraid.  She said, maybe she should, but the rest of us suggested that she should take it as a matter of pride.  I'm trying to think of a film that I should have seen or that everyone else has, but I'll have to give that a bit more consideration.

I've never read a Mills and Boon novel, but on the other hand I've not read anything by George Eliot either.  I'm not sure why the latter omission, I read most classics in my teens.  Oh, I've never read anything by Salman Rushdie.  I stood next to him in the bar at the Theatre Royal in Norwich though, when Arthur Miller was doing a show - various actors were doing readings from his plays.  It was very good.

Exchanging emails with my friend Martina in Seattle the other day, it was mentioned that she's been to Pompeii.  I haven't.  If I was going to, I should have been there years ago when I'd have found it fascinating, but now I don't want to.  I've become more tender-hearted as I've grown old and the horror of it would upset me too much now.  Actually, we didn't get away much for years so the list of places I haven't been to is a very long one.

I've never owned a cat - if one can use the expression.  I've never lived with a cat.  I like cats, I don't mind the idea in the least, but I'd rather have a dog.

Anything I should have done that I might not have?  I'll answer all reasonable questions.  Or any admissions of your own?

Update - I'm prompted by Sir B into another admission.  I've never ridden on a motor bike, not even a moped or a scooter.  He suggests I might get a licence, but it seems a bit like running before you've tried standing on your feet.  Or possibly trodden on your own toes, which might be more my style.

PS - do click through to the comments which, as so often, are shaping up to be the best part of the post.

Rambling Zose

I did grow flowers to cut, but mostly I was interested in vegetables at the time, because I was greedy and because I loved sowing seeds and nurturing baby plants.  The three round beds in front of the house had some elderly rose bushes in, well past their best, so I dug them all up and moved them elsewhere, because I didn't have the heart to put them on the bonfire, and then planned what to put in their place.

I'm not sure how big the beds are and I can't be bothered to go out and measure them - say 12 feet diameter, but that's a guess.  3 of them. I've probably said that already.  There used to be an Anderson shelter there during the war where the family decamped when the air raid siren went off.  In the summer, the Sprig* slept out there in his little siren suit.  A line was attached to the front door knocker so that he could rouse his parents if he needed them.  I've no idea what it looked like or how safe it was: I'd have thought there was more protection from a bomb in the house, unless it was on fire.

Anyway, I went off to the marvellous local nursery, B100ms of Bress1ngh@m and got one of their catalogues.  I'm afraid that since the family sold it, it's become a poor shadow of its previous self.  They used to raise much of their stock and cultivate many new varieties, they had a vast range of interesting plants and a comprehensive and helpful catalogue.  Now the nursery and glasshouses are abandoned and the garden centre sells pre-packed and bought-in plants and a lot of garden-related stuff and it's a lot more expensive than it used to be.

What I wanted was a range of shrubs that wouldn't grow more than about 4 feet tall, had some variety in leaf colour and shape, that some of them would be evergreen and that they would thrive in poor, sandy soil and a sun-baked location.  I wasn't too bothered about flowers, though obviously some flowers would be an advantage.  I bought about 25 or 30 plants and spent £100 and some of them are still there.  Two of the beds are nearly all sand and stone and it's really quite difficult to get anything to thrive, but the third is almost as I planted it.  As planned, it needs little weeding and no watering after the first year or two.  I reckoned that anything that had to be cosseted was in the wrong place.  The few more unusual plants didn't survive in the long term.

In the house, we'd had a lot of work done before we moved in.  A new roof, windows, kitchen and bathroom, it was rewired and completely redecorated and we had an Aga installed.  Not all the rooms were painted before we moved and the local painter and decorator came along when he had a few free hours and did some work, usually by finishing early and coming here in the early evening.  We used to chat as he worked, if he was within talking distance, and we had a glass of wine together before he went home.  Nice man.  He retired a few years ago and he and his wife live in a village by the sea now.


*baby Sage

Happy DayZ

There's quite a lot of ground here, but you wouldn't call much of it a garden because it's so bitty.  The front garden and the small lawn are separated by the drive and another part of the drive separates the lawn from the kitchen garden.  Then there are various outbuildings, quite a lot of gravel and a fair bit of rough grass.  The Sage's parents had always had a gardener, usually someone who'd retired from full-time work and wanted to work half days.  Kenny came to work for Ma the year after Pa died, he stayed on after her death to keep an eye on the place and he carried on with us until he was well in his 80s.  But he was still in his late 60s when we moved in but very tough and he never gave up on a job.  Nor do I, so we made a good team.

We did have help to lay the paths though and to erect the greenhouses as well.  In those days it was one of the highlights of my year (I know, loves, but it was before the days of blogging) to read through seed catalogues and I spent hours comparing varieties and prices and writing out my wish list, which was hardly cut down before I carefully filled out all the forms and sent off my orders.   I started sowing seeds as early as possible in those days, and it took a lot of care to keep everything alive and growing through the winter.  Nowadays, I reckon it'll all catch up and I don't sow anything in the propagator before March.

But I'm jumping ahead of myself, because we moved in late July.  After consideration, I decided to grow vegetables as normal at my old house and leave them for our buyers.  They were appreciative: we knew them quite well and Ro was about the same age as their daughter.  Actually, she was dismayed when they moved in and she found that we'd taken his swing, which we kept in the hall and she had loved playing in.  Ro wasn't that fond of it, because he was an independent little boy and didn't like having to be lifted in and out, so we took it back for Rebecca as a moving in present.

They asked us round when they'd been there a few months and showed us the changes they'd made.  Um...sorry, we didn't like them much. A lot of rather elaborate paint effects and gilding and tiling all over the place.  Not that it didn't need updating, we'd lived there ten years and, having done a lot to start with, hadn't changed much since - but it wasn't to our taste.  Still, it was a lovely house and you couldn't take that away.

I was still very close to my mother when we moved and it did me good to be out of our previous social circle.  Still only half an hour away, we saw each other often, not least because Al was still at his prep school in Southwold and he stayed with her and her husband, my lovely stepfather, a couple of nights a week to save a lot of travelling.  But I started to grow into my own skin, I made friends - making the effort to go out and do that did not come naturally to me - and I didn't hanker after the life I'd enjoyed in Lowestoft.

Undeterred, Z returns to the drawing board

Right, so now I've proved to everyone's satisfaction that I can't draw, not even straight lines, and you've roundly teased me for it, I'll continue with my story.

We moved in the day before Ro's second birthday, and this was also the start of the school summer holidays, which gave us plenty of time to settle in and start to get to know people.  I can't remember much about what we did, specifically, but I do recall a very happy time.  As I said, I felt at home straight away, rather to my surprise, and there was plenty to do in the house and garden.

The vegetable garden was not in a convenient place at all, and an ash tree overshadowed it.  I wanted a large greenhouse - this had been a stipulation when we moved here.  I'd had two in my last garden, one was 12' long and the other 8' and I wanted nothing less.  In the end, the best value turned out to be three  greenhouses, each 10' x 8', which worked out less expensive than two 12' ones.  We erected them end to end, with closable doors in between.  We removed the turf from an area of lawn where my father-in-law used to practise golf shots and stacked it to rot down, and prepared my kitchen garden.

And a picture will paint another thousand words here, so I've picked up my pencil again, and a ruler too this time (the left line doesn't look quite straight because I had the paper on my knee to take a photo and it sagged slightly).

The shaded areas are paths and the white ones the beds.  I drew it from the side, so what looks like a Z with an arrow beneath is actually N, showing the direction of north.  *Sigh*  Yes, I know.  Just think what it's like actually being me.  It's not very clear, so I'll tell you that what I've written across the bottom of the picture is 'Greenhouses divided by sliding doors.'

Each bed was 4' by 30-something ' - I can't now remember whether the length of the beds is 38' or the beds plus the paths at each end is 38': ie, the beds are 34' long.  You can deduce that each path is 2' wide.  The paths were made of concrete and this had several benefits - the obvious ones are neatness, not digging and fertilising areas that were to be walked on and (in this dry area and with our sandy soil, quite an important consideration) not watering areas that were not growing crops - indeed, rain ran off the paths onto the beds.  I wasn't going to have to walk on the beds often, as I could reach the middle from either side, and I could put fleece, cloches or netting over the beds easily.  They were easier to maintain: even if I didn't use one of the beds for a year, the weeds would not encroach on the rest of the garden and the digging and weeding could be done in manageable sections.  There was yet another benefit that I hadn't taken into account, which was that the concrete held the warmth of the sun and helped to warm the soil.  All in all, it was one of my better ideas.

Since then, the kitchen garden has been enlarged considerably, but this was the original set-up.

Once the paths had been laid, the rotted-down turves were dug in, along with a lot of cow muck, and I was able to start growing vegetables the next spring.  I grew flowers for cutting in those days too - cornflowers, sweet peas, all sorts of things, and had flowers in every room for much of the summer.

I loved my greenhouse and it became my refuge when I needed a break from the family.  Any of them was welcome to come and join me there and help with the potting up or whatever job I was doing, but total tranquillity was a firm condition.  If any child came complaining that they'd quarrelled with a sibling, they'd be chivvied straight out again.  If they just came to cool off and become relaxed again, that was fine.

Z draws up a plan

Right, here's a rough floor plan of the bungalow.  Not at all to scale, the drawing room isn't as huge as that so the proportions are out somewhere, but it should give you an idea.  Ah, I've just noticed - the laundry room, dressing room, cloakroom, hall and drawing room outer walls should all be one line and the porch be an addition.

Originally, the sitting room was two bedrooms and the bungalow ended after that.  The cupboards plus cloakroom were where the bathroom was.  Where the bedroom, bathroom, dressing room and laundry room are now used to be my in-laws' little extension which housed Hilda's bathroom, the boiler room and the warm room which was used to dry clothes etc and had cupboards to store bedlinen and towels. The lobby is a little hallway which the other rooms lead off from.

We paid for the alterations of course, the house belongs to the Sage so we had the structural work done.  My mother spent almost as much (some £17,000) on decorations and furnishing.  It was ludicrous really, on a new house, but we went along with it.  My stepfather had died, you see, in January 1997.  She never did have the new conservatory, which should have been along the right hand, as you see it, drawing room wall, because she'd wanted it for him, but the rest was all done.  The council, having tried hard to make us restrict the size of the extension to 800 square feet (we argued it up because Ma had lived in a large house and her furniture was in proportion), passed the alterations and extension without comment.

The building of the bungalow

I have written about the time we moved here before, but I don't think I've said much about the following year or so.  Just to set the scene for those of you who don't know our background in this house, we live in the house where the Sage was born and where his parents spent nearly all their married life.  They married in 1927, bought it in 1928 - at the time, it had been divided into cottages, so they spent some months returning it to one house and making various alterations to make it more convenient for family life.

Their first babies were twin boys, but they did not survive.  What a shock and a tragedy - they didn't know that there were two babies, let alone that there was a problem.  But it meant that when their first surviving child was born, the Sage's elder brother, they had already moved in here, and their other two children were born here too.

It's not at all surprising that the Sage was thrilled when I offered to come and live here after his father's death, when his mother decided that the place was too big for her and that she would have to move out.    She looked for a house in the village but there was nothing suitable, so she asked if we minded if she built in the garden.  We had great difficulty in getting planning permission but it was eventually granted, with the conditions that the two houses must adjoin and have a connecting door, and that only members of our family could live there.

Ma moved in once the bungalow was built, but she didn't have long to live and died suddenly in October 1985.  We were having some renovations done and hadn't moved ourselves yet.  It wasn't until the next summer that we moved in.  Ro was just two then, Al was ten and Weeza was twelve.

I have written before about my determination to be outgoing and make new friends (I'd been quite the opposite before, I waited for people to come to me, being quite shy and uncertain), because the people I knew were left back in Lowestoft.  Having a toddler helped of course, because there were other young mums with babies the same age who wanted friends for themselves and their children.  In those days, it was still usual for most mums to take a few years out from paid work until their children started school.

I've also mentioned that I settled in unexpectedly quickly.  I really enjoyed living here, rather to my surprise.  I loved my old house, an Edwardian former Rectory, and it had taken me years to overcome a feeling of claustrophobia in this Tudor house with its low ceilings. Also, I'd never lived so far from the sea and I thought I'd miss it.  Maybe I would, if I hadn't liked it here so much.

My stepfather had a heart attack at the end of 1985 and his doctor recommended that he avoid stairs as much as possible and spare himself over-exertion.  And so, it was proposed that they sell their house and come to live in the bungalow.  Newly built and hardly lived it, you'd have thought it wouldn't have needed much doing to it, but actually my mother wanted everything changed.  For a start, her four-poster bed didn't fit in either of the bedrooms.  She didn't like the kitchen, the bathroom (she was right there, Ma had chosen a hideous deep pink suite in a small and darkish room), the carpets, curtains or colour scheme.  And she needed a dressing room, of course.  And a porch and conservatory.

So plans were drawn up.  Between the old house and the bungalow was a flat-roofed extension, which housed the larder, the boiler room, the airing room and Hilda's bathroom.  Hilda had come to the family as a nursemaid when the Sage (then known as Sprig) was a baby and she had never left.  It was decided that if most of it was knocked down, a new bedroom, bathroom, dressing room and laundry room could be built, leaving our larder and a lobby big enough to house our chest freezer and provide a new back door, as we'd done away with our old one when we built the room that is now my study.

I'm digressing again here.  I was going to talk about me.  Oh well, another day. 

Z gets to grips

Okay, I've made a start and turned out the laundry room and started on the lobby.  The lobby is where the freezer is going to go again, having been moved out to the porch several years ago to make room for shelving to put the things I couldn't throw away when my mother died - I told you it would become boring.  I've been throwing things away.  I don't want to talk about it.

It'll be excellent when it's done, though, and worth it.  Close the door, don't look back - I've always been good at moving on, though if ones life flashes before the eyes just before one (*one* is a wretched word when used as an impersonal whassisface, innit?) pegs out, it'll be a symphony of repressed memories.  I'm not traumatised, that would be silly.  Just that my childhood was - well, rather lovely, actually, and I don't like to let it go.

The Sage, Elle and I are all at our respective computers.  Modern living, hey.

Elle is off to London tomorrow, to see a friend who's staying in Bristol - it's a good halfway spot.  She's returning on the train that gets in at 11.10 pm, so I'll drive over to Diss to fetch her.  She acknowledged last night that she's quite nervous of the dark.  Of course, when I was growing up street lights went off at midnight but, though I lived in towns until I was over thirty, I mostly had very large gardens and I adjusted to village-in-the-country living very quickly.  It isn't for everyone though.

When we moved here, which was at the end of July, many years ago, the rain set in in September and hardly seemed to stop for the next eighteen months.  It may not have been a record-breaking year as this has been but, since I don't remember flooding in the West Country, maybe East Angular was wetter than other places for once.  Ro, who was a toddler at the time, became known in the village for being always in wellies.  However, I loved it from the start.  I've known other people who have moved here and whose first question has been "Where's Tesco?" (or Sainsbury's or Waitrose, depending on, um, personal preference).  But, not only did I love it, but I had thought it through - because that's what I do, loves, I act on instinct but there are surprisingly sound reasons when I think about it - and I didn't overdo the discomfort, whilst embracing the good parts of living here.

Ooh, as so often, I sat down not knowing what I was going to write and now I have something for tomorrow too.  Splendid.  A bit of my past that I don't think I've ever blogged about before.

Toodle-pip, dear hearts.  Until tomorrow - don't get your hopes up, mind you.  Nothing especially revealing, unless you're interested in the minutiae of Zhistory.

If Z relaxes any more, I'll slide under the table dribbling gently

Back to the cinema this evening, this time to see Life of Pi.  I enjoyed it very much and it's made me want to reread the book, which isn't always the case.  The sight of Indian food made Elle and I want to eat some, so I quickly phoned Ro to find out a nearby restaurant he could recommend, and the Sage to let him know we'd be an hour late.

The least likely film for me to watch is the one about the family caught up in the tsunami, who survived.  It's all far too fresh in the memory, even the trailer was too upsetting to watch.  Elle and I both turned away.

The week has been slipping away and I haven't started on any of the things I meant to do.  But I've been watching DVDs, reading, cooking - all very pleasant but I'd saved a few days specially.  I'm so foolish, darlings.

Anyway, the consequence is that I haven't done anything much to tell you about.  Though I wouldn't have anyway.  Turning out the larder and laundry room ...... hm, doesn't quite thrill, does it?

Still, my total inaction reminds me of a day of interviews I did last year.  It was for a temporary internal promotion at school but was likely, if successfully completed, to lead to a different permanent promotion.  The person we ended up appointing already led a major academic department.  Near the end of the interview, we asked her about her capacity for taking on extra responsibilities, quite time-consuming ones, when she was already so busy.  She looked surprised that we needed to ask.  "Well, the more there is to do, the more efficient you become, don't you?"  She was right, of course.  And so, pleasant as it is to have a break, it's a good job it's a short one.  I need deadlines and obligations or I get bored.  And a bored Z is a boring Z.  

Z lives for the present

We had to go to Lowestoft today and picked up Elle from her friend's house, where she'd spent Christmas, on the way back.  I asked about the planned party for New Year's Eve.  It was still on, but they hadn't found a venue yet.  There was one possibility, but it was quite a way for most of the guests to go.  I thought for a couple of minutes before speaking, for once (my sister calls our usual leaping-in "mouth overtaking brain"), so I can only blame myself if anything goes awry (Elle didn't ask, or even hint), and offered the use of the bungalow.

So there will be quite a number of teenagers around here on Monday night.  We'll stay out of the way unless things seem to be going awry, but I don't expect them to.  They're all a good bunch of kids and Elle has been to a couple of parties already, with no ill effects to the venue.  A number of them will sleep over, I daresay, there's one double bed that Al and Dilly left behind but otherwise they will doss down on the floor.

Elle's mum (who is French, though she lives in Germany), sent a parcel of some splendid French delicacies for Christmas for us, which is so kind.  I can't remember if I've mentioned that she, with Elle's father and brother, will be coming here for a few days in February before Elle returns home again.  This has not gone at all as planned, I thought we'd just be providing the introduction to the school and a host family would be found and we'd just meet her a couple of times, but how glad I am that this wasn't what happened.  She has been to several friends already and stayed a while with each, so she hasn't been stuck with us the whole time - and we've had time to recover from the effects of having a teenager in the house again - but while she is here, she's really part of the family.  It's a preview of having teenage grandchildren - I love them being the age they are, but I'm going to enjoy their growing up too.  I've always thought how lovely it will be, to have an open house where my grandchildren can stay, invite their friends, feel that they can relax and have a (mutual) parent/offspring break and, whether this happens or not, depending on geography, health, closeness and so on, it's a foretaste of a dream come true.  I sometimes feel that, at my age, I've not a lot to hope for (this isn't meant to sound depressed but we've had a few foretastes of old age recently) but, though I've blogged a lot about the past recently, this doesn't mean I'm going to hanker after it.  I'm going to take what now has to offer, and offer what I can as well.

Z feels fat and sleepy

We did have a good time yesterday and ate far too much.  I rarely overeat nowadays, but restraint went out of the window, largely because we were in no hurry at all to finish the meal and had long gaps between courses, so regained appetite.  Even later in the evening after Ro and Dora had gone, the Sage managed some smoked salmon and I ate Stilton.

I didn't feel over-full when I went to bed, but we were too warm.  Not realising the mildness of the night, we'd put on the electric blanket for a few minutes and we both lay there whinging gently about the heat.  The Sage went to sleep in the end but I didn't, and after a few hours I gave up, went downstairs and cleaned and tidied the kitchen.  Then I went and watched a DVD, then tidied the dining room before shambling back up to bed at nearly 6 o'clock.  I still didn't sleep for another hour though before falling into a brief doze before the radio woke me again.  And if this has been long and dull to read (I know, there's no 'if' about it) then I hope you've skipped most of it.

But at least the housework had been done, so mustn't grumble, hey.  And we spent today with Al and co at their new house, where they are settling in happily.

happy Christmas

The joy that is Z for you : - D

Travels next year are likely to be confined to this country however so, much as I'd like to visit far-flung friends (I won't be able to say that three times after I've drunk the champagne we're about to open), that will be a treat for the future.

Love from all at the Zedary

Z nearly ran out of puff

Darlings, I'm not going to get around to wish each of you a wonderful Christmas, so please accept my apologies, lots of love and very best wishes.

This evening, the Carol Service was held in the church and it was a bit - well, we made the best of things.  I arrived and had a quick run through the carols I was playing on the organ - "Ah," said Andy, "Could you play O Come All Ye Faithful in a different key?  Um, A flat?"  That's four flats.  I'd expected to play it in G.  One sharp.   The arrangement was quite different, to boot.  I - oh, I winged it.  I mean, JFDI, OK?  But worse was to come, dear hearts.  There should have been a bit of nifty switching around of instruments and the electronic organ, the proper organ, the guitar and the clarinet come together in various duetty combinations, but none of them was quite in tune with each other and in the event we did nearly everything as solos, one or the other of us.  I was left with the more swingy numbers, plus Away in a Manger.  Candles were lit whilst that was being sung and the next carol, which was Andy's, was sung by candlelight - or, since I'd missed out on the candles, by the light of an iPhone candle app.

We spent last night with Weeza and family, which was absolutely lovely and a great treat.  I couldn't say anything about it last night of course, because the house was going to be empty, though a friend called in a few times, to feed and shut up the chickens and let them out again this morning.  And talking about this morning, I was woken rather early, about 4 o'clock, by the rain and couldn't sleep again.  We've not had that much in comparison to the rest of the country so no grumbles at all.

The word 'merry' is such a splendid one, isn't it? A pity it's rarely used except in one particular context.

Merry Christmas, lovely internet friends.  Thank you for another year and if you do, please carry on blogging.  If you will, I will.  

The Sage is impossible to please

In truth, I'm a lot easier to buy presents for than the Sage.  There are plenty of safe options if inspiration doesn't strike - I'm quite feminine enough to like jewellery, perfume and really nice toiletries, I always wear attractive underwear and the size is easy enough to check, I'd be quite open to being taken shopping for shoes and clothes and anyone who has known me for over forty years should know that I love books, music and films and might be able to guess what I'd like. I also love tools and don't think it's at all peculiar to be given them, and I love pens and stationery in general.  So it shows a distinct lack of imagination that the Sage has, more often than not, been completely clueless about a possible present and has, several times, effectively given me nothing at all.

Mind you, he's just at bad at receiving presents.  It is not unusual for him not to bother to open them at all, if he thinks he knows what they are, or just to tear the paper enough to look.  Several weeks later, there will still be a small stack by his chair until I lay the law down and make him move them.  And I think there are few things more boring than a wife who is houseproud and nags a husband about his stuff, which he has every right to leave just where he wants because it's his house too.  I don't want to be pushed into it, but honestly his stuff stays where he dumps it until the cobwebs grow dusty, he'd literally never bother to put it away.  I've tried leaving things and always am the first to crack, though sometimes it's taken a couple of years.

But even if a lot of thought has been given into a present, it'll probably not be appreciated.  For example, a couple of years ago I thought I'd had a brainwave.  We had a very dear friend, Norman, who was a professional musician, a pianist.  He played regularly in the restaurant at the Ritz, in nightclubs and variety shows, in orchestras in the theatre and on television, that sort of thing.  And once he was on the Morecambe and Wise Show.  He played for them regularly, but didn't appear on stage except that once, when he was mentioned on the credits.  And I was thinking of him (he died several years ago) and looked him up on IMDB and found the episode, tracked it down on Amazon and bought the series for the Sage.  It took quite a bit of time to do.  I'd already got the Sage's present, a peculiarly unattractive antique mug that he wanted, so gave it to Ro to give his father.

It seemed to tick all the boxes.  The only visual record of one of the Sage's oldest and most-loved friends, the Sage loves nostalgia and, though he's not that interested in television, even he enjoyed Morecambe and Wise and might reasonably be expected to watch the whole DVD, not just the bit with Norman in it.  I thought it was a brilliant idea.

But. He's never bothered to watch it.  I reminded him after a few weeks and again after a few months, when I asked if he maybe didn't care to watch a video of someone who had died, which he said wasn't the case.  I watched it myself in the end and it was lovely to see darling Norman again.  But the Sage has never seen it.  So, pfft.  I won't be imaginative again.

It's only fair to redress the balance a bit and I'll write about some of the excellent presents he's given me.    But it's proved to be safer by far to lower my expectations way down.  I don't care for disappointment.

Bottles

Those bottles are far too handsome to hide away in the fridge, so I've bought some extra.  Here are a couple of them.

Oh.  The photo gizmo isn't working.  I'll put the picture in later.

I've got to email round the family and find out what we're doing about presents.  We're seeing Weeza and co tomorrow, Ro and Dora on Tuesday, Al and family on Wednesday, and the next Tuesday everyone is coming here for lunch.  So are we keeping the family ones until we're all together, opening them when we're with each of them or just handing them out for everyone to open on the Day?  I don't mind, but we'd better agree.  Actually, I'll do that now.  Back in a minute.

I made a big pot of minestrone this afternoon.  I like making soup when the weather is gloomy.  Cheers me up.  We had some of it (oh yes, it'll last a couple of times more) with some cheese scones this evening.

It seems that most wives buy their own presents and hand them over to their husbands.  I think it's a poor do, frankly, bearing in mind that most of us also buy everyone else's and wrap them too.  You'd think that they'd at least be on the alert for the hint sophisticated, clear enough to tip the wink yet subtle enough to make them feel clever about it.  But no.  Although I suppose a man who gets it horribly wrong is worse.  Difficult, isn't it?

Here is the picture, above.  When it finally decided to work, it inserted itself randomly.  Sugar in one, coffee beans in the other.  Others contain raisins and beans and so on. The bottles are a nice useful size with a wide top and comfortable to hold and pour from, I like them very much.  I forgive them for not being pint size because they're more useful this way.

Chin chin!

I was going to say that not a lot has happened today, but now I've thought about it I've changed my mind. Momentously, I moved every stick of furniture in the drawing room (not counting the TV) and hoovered the whole room to bugge... - well, it's cobweb free.  And the reason for this enthusiasm is that I was planning to bring in the Christmas tree.  It's only little, I can't take it seriously, but it's sitting in its pot on the revolving bookcase.  Not decorated, obv.  Far too early.

I remembered last night that I'd been phoned a couple of days ago by someone wanting me to write to someone else (yes, that's the sort of thing I do) and I'd written down the name and address but actually it wasn't the most convenient time.  So I left it until *later* and totes forgot, darlings.  Fortunately, I remembered again, because I hadn't yet emptied the waste paper baskets.  So, while filling them with odds and sods, I warned the Sage against binning anything before I'd found this wretched piece of paper.

Turned out I'd put it in a sensible place and not in the waste paper basket at all.  I wasn't a bit surprised, honestly, but there's never any harm in taking precautions.

It's worryingly clean and tidy in here at the moment, apart from my computer and one - yes, darlings, only one so it's quite all right - of the printers.  And the Sage's stuff, but he's impossible so has to be shown every indulgence.  And, talking of every indulgence - well, the Sage occasionally gives a brilliant present but usually it's rubbish.  Last year, for instance, he paid the bill for my iPhone, £140.  It was just a credit card bill, I'd already bought it and over the year I pay rather more in monthly fees.  I spent £500 on him.  And I wrapped the present and gave it to him.  He gave me nothing on the day.  Bitter?  Well, frankly yes, but I'm also sensible, so I went out and bought some clothes and told him how much I'd spent and he gave me the money.  He also suggested I might wrap them, but I - no loves, I was perfectly polite.  I just gave him wrapping paper and sticky tape.

Oh, and the Sage looked out to show my friend Mary, who took me out to lunch today, a picture of me from 1963.  It's also got my good friend Lynn, who is the only person I've never lost touch with (a few more I've regained touch with, but Lynn and I have been stalwart and I'm godmother to her daughter) and other erstwhile good friend, but with whom I'm not in touch, Angela.  And after that, I'll have to scan and post it.  Watch out for the Z chin.  It's remarkable!  

Z counts blessings if not pennies

I'm way ahead of myself.  In the event, which seems most unlikely, that we all die tomorrow, I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm out of debt six weeks before I need to be: I have paid the taxman.  I know, it's usual to wait until the last possible moment but actually I think the country needs the money, paltry sum as it is, more than Barclays does and it's only sitting in my current account at present.

So, having been to the accountant first thing, I dropped the Sage off with Weeza as she was bringing him home again, then toddled off to the hospital.  Encouraged by being seen by a nurse for a completely unnecessary check on my eyesight, some five minutes before my appointment time, I was disappointed to wait a whole hour before being called to be seen by the surgeon.  Not the one who sliced into my eyelid, but a nice chap.  I was there all of two minutes, was given a clean bill of health - I hadn't expected anything else but am glad to know for sure I didn't have any malignancy in my eyelid - and came out again.  At least I finished a whole level of iAssociate while I was waiting.

I'm luckier than a small boy I know, whose parents have just been told that an operation that, it would hoped, would save the sight in one eye has failed.  He's hardly aware of a problem himself as yet, as he's never seen much with it - at least his other eye is all right.  But goodness, poor little chap.  He's only five.

Small pleasure of the day - writing a cheque with the date 20/12/2012.  Easily pleased, hey.  Other pleasure was having Weeza and Gus over here for lunch, and Dilly, Squiffany and Hay for tea.  I made scones.  Squiffany was very complimentary about them.  Charming girl.

Z accepts the inev

I've wrapped the presents.  I'm vaguely disappointed as it's usually done somewhere near midnight on Christmas Eve whilst I eye the whisky left by the fire for Father Christmas, wondering if he'd mind if I had a swig.  But everything has been bought so they might as well be wrapped.

We are organising a whole-family get-together, which at present seems to be likely to be on the 1st January.  We're waiting to hear from Ro and Dora, who are the only ones going to have a jolly on New Year's Eve so may be disconcerted to find they are asked to be out of the house and on the road by noon or so the next day.

Talking of Father Christmas, I realise that the contest is lost, he's irredeemably Santa.  Not even Santa Claus.  I can't bring myself to say it myself, but I've given in.  In the same way, it's Thomas the Tank, uni ... look, I've nothing against abbreviations in principle* obv, but I like them to make sense.  So, whilst While Shepherds Watched is okay, In the Bleak and Once in Royal are not.  Anyway, Santa - children think it's his name, so it is.

The other thing I did today was to turn out the main food cupboard in the kitchen.  I found all sorts of things.  I threw away some of them.  I have resolved to buy no more pasta until I've at least used up the opened packets.  It's slightly unfortunate that it was only yesterday that I bought some spaghetti and penne, but never mind.  I won't need to buy coffee for a while either.  On the other hand, I was a bit dismayed to discover that there's not a chocolate biscuit in the house.  It's not that I eat chocolate biscuits, but it's good to know that they're there in case of emergency.

*waves at AQ

Land ho

Watching the programme Wartime Farm Christmas on BBC2 reminds me of something my mother used to say after her experience working as a Land Girl during the war.  "The hedger and ditcher is the most important man on the farm!"  Good to see the job being marked as vital on the programme too.

Squiffany and Pugsley had, respectively, Brownies and karate tonight so, after Pugsley's nativity play in the church (he was a shepherd) they came here for tea.  I got back at 3.15 and it dawned on me that I'd made no preparations at all.  Their mother had said I needn't worry as they'd had school dinner so only needed a snack.  All the same...

Eggs on to boil, sugar, more eggs, flour, butter, baking powder and vanilla essence in a bowl, beaten, put into paper cases and in the oven.  Squiff and Pugs arrived in time to help with that bit.  Into the oven, shell and mash the eggs, make sandwiches, also cheese sandwiches, remove cakes from oven, make glacé icing (icing sugar, water, slightly too much cochineal), spread on top, add sugar sprinkles.  Make drinks for children, tea for the rest of us, open pack of Hula Hoops.

4 o'clock.  Serve tea.

4.10.  Make more egg sandwiches (I had reserved surplus eggs for tonight's fish pie, but we did without), as Dilly and the Sage were scoffing them too.  Open more packs of Hula Hoops.

4.20.  Make more tea.

It all seemed to go quite well.  Dilly said that I make the best cakes, which rather surprised me (and pleased me no end) as I don't do a lot of baking any more.

I was just remembering (again, as a response to the same programme) the time when my mother took pottery evening classes at L'toft college.  Some 40 years ago, evening classes were very popular.  Wink and I did motor maintenance, being of a practical bent.   The Sage started to reminisce about the College Principal, but I didn't know the one he spoke of, except by name.  I said he must have retired by the time my mother was on the town council, the one I knew slightly had a surname beginning with B but there was no hope of my remembering it.

And then I did.  Alan Boddy.  I've always thought that no one will notice when I lose my marbles because I've got such an abysmal memory already.  But maybe they will.

Z ticks boxes

The speech has been delivered, having been written last week, rewritten last night and again this morning.  I might just as well have left it to the deadline and got it right first time.

I had to open an account with German Amazon today, to send a present from Elle to her father.  It's a long story and let's not bother with it.  I thought I could bluff my way through reading a number of languages - well no, I can, just not German. Or Dutch or Flemish come to that, and I think I detect a linguistic theme.  I remember visiting Weeza when she was working in Brussels and we went out for dinner and I couldn't read the menu at all.  I had rather expected it to be written in at least two languages but it was only in Flemish and I couldn't decipher anything to speak of.  Well, to speak of, blimey, I wasn't going to even try to pronounce any of it.  I pointed and hoped I wasn't ordering horse.  It was very nice actually and not a bit horsey.

Anyway, I had great difficulty in getting started because, although I was able to work out that I needed to fill in my name, address and phone number, I couldn't quite cope with my country.  Look, how was I to guess the German for United Kingdom?  You may know it's Vereinigtes Königreich but I saw no clue in the name at all at the time, although now, with the benefit of hindsight, it seems quite a bit more obvious.   And then I had to work out how to put in another delivery address from my own.  I got quite agitated.  By the time it was finally done, I had little time to scuttle upstairs and put on the Smart yet Appropriate Frock for the Prizegiving, and it was a jolly good job I'd already printed out the speech and put it in my handbag, or I'd have had to ad lib. I'm slightly concerned that I might have signed up for a trial of Amazon Prime in German, but I hope not.  I'll ask Elle to check it out when I see her.

I seem to have done most of my Christmas shopping, almost without noticing.  I spent five minutes in a shop in the town and cleared up the last three people - well, apart from the Sage and he's impossible so doesn't count.  There are only three options for him: clothes, china or vesta cases.  I've given him china for the last two years and I think I'll buy him a new coat.  He doesn't wear enough and it makes me feel cold.

Z thanks the Bishop

I shouldn't be grumbly, so you'll have the pleasure, hem hem, of another post tonight.

The Bishop called.  Not here, at the church.  There are suffragan bishops and diocesan bishops, the latter being senior in rank - to the extent there's a hierarchy, I don't understand it.  It was confusing enough at my Catholic primary school when they tried to explain the difference between seraph, cherub  and angel.   It didn't sink in, I thought for some time that a seraph was different from *a* seraphim.

Anyway, Bishop Alan turned out to be a jolly good sort (he's been in post a couple of years or more but I hadn't met him before) and he understood how to programme the church boiler.  The churchwarden had tried to do it yesterday but had somehow managed to convince the system that today was Monday and I couldn't change it back.  He could.  Good man.  He was, quite rightly, impressed with the quality of refreshments - proper coffee and really nice home-made food.

I have no idea why anyone serves poor tea and coffee.  Stewed tea and the cheapest instant coffee made too weak are nasty.  The Fellow (my former fellow-churchwarden, neither of us being in that position now) used to say "Good coffee is part of Mission!"  I'm not really into mission, but I am into decent coffee.

Tonight, I cooked dinner rather early.  Butternut squash risotto and sausages.  Once the three and a half remaining squashes are eaten, that's the rest of this year's food crop apart from the Jerusalem artichokes.    Al, with Dilly's brothers-in-law, took out the rest of the furniture from the bungalow tonight.  There must be more stuff left as they haven't returned the keys yet, but I think the big stuff has gone.  The bungalow is too far from us to hear them, so we won't really be aware of their absence.  Still, end of an era.  

Z might as well get the Christmas grumble out of the way early

My mother used to go to a huge amount of trouble with the Christmas meal.  As a result, I simplified things down ... well no, I didn't really, it just seemed less fuss than when I was a child.

It started several days before Christmas Day with the Decorating of the Table.  She always used an elaborate layout with red and green satin, lots of flowers and candles and it was very pretty.  Afterwards we ate at a small table in the study or on our knees in the sitting room because the dining room was out of bounds.  And on the day itself, she spent the entire day in the kitchen getting hot and flustered, except for the brief moments she allowed herself to eat or when, much later in the day than Wink and I wanted, presents were opened.

I've said in previous years that people were always invited for the day, elderly people who lived alone and did not have relations to go to, and usually my grandfather came to stay too.  So in the morning, our father went off to fetch them whilst Wink and I helped prepare vegetables and so on.  By this time, the massive turkey had been in the oven for some time, while a whole ham on the bone was simmering and so was the Christmas pudding that had been made for us by our cook from Weymouth hotel days, Mr Dyke.

The thing is, a roast is the easiest meal to prepare for a lot of people.  You shove it in the oven, having weighed it and written down the cooking time.  You've prepared and inserted the stuffings already of course, and there's plenty of time to parboil the potatoes if it wasn't done the day before, get the bacon and chipolatas ready to go in the oven and so on.  It's all a matter of having a time-plan and remembering to put everything on it.  And if something was forgotten, then forget it altogether.  There's too much food anyway, who cares?

My ma did.  Looking back, I can see why the food took a long time to cook, but not why she had to spend the whole day in the kitchen.  The first course was tinned consommé, for goodness sake, with a generous slosh of sherry (this counted as sophisticated in the mid-1960s).  It was quite sensible actually, the vegetables could cook while you were eating it but it didn't fill you up at all.  Then the turkey (which had a dreadfully dry breast, she was an excellent cook normally so I don't understand) and ham (gorgeous) and everything else, and then a pudding that had looked after itself for about three hours, then a Stilton.

It was quite boring for Wink and me, because Daddy kept out of the way of the bevy of old ladies and we weren't allowed to open presents.  So we sat there being polite for several hours while they drank sherry and bickered gently.  After we'd eaten, they bickered again as they compared presents while we watched Disney Time.

So, when I had children, I wanted it to be different and I wrote a time plan that scheduled in break times to be with the family.  I accepted help if the Sage offered, which was usually peeling potatoes (yay!) and otherwise just checked the oven at appointed times. I'd prepared veg the day before, it was simple.  For a few years, Weeza didn't eat meat so I made a separate meal for her.  The first course might be wontons or blini or something like that, which were made on Christmas morning.  And for the past 20-something years, I've scheduled in playing the organ for the service at 10 o'clock too.  And none of us wanted more than a mouthful of the pudding, so I always made another dessert to go with it.  But there was always a couple of hours, in chunks, to stop work and be with the family, because that was what we all wanted.

I can only assume, however, that it wasn't what she wanted.  Otherwise, why would a superb hostess be red-faced and flustered in the kitchen for hours when I, admittedly efficient but much less practised, could spare hours of my time to be with my children?

I have to say, however, that Weeza's memories aren't the same as mine.  Because when I had my half-hour breaks, we'd open a couple of presents and I reckoned that would enable them to appreciate what they had, and I'd not miss out on the fun.  But what she remembers is the pile of presents that was not opened until noon, when champagne was opened and the blini or whatever served.

The last few years, we've been invited to the family, either Weeza's or Al's.  This year, I'm doing it again, but there will only be four of us, me and the Sage and Ro and Dora.  We've decided on roast pork, because Dora, who had never eaten crackling until I served it to her (her family background is Muslim, though she has no particular religion), adores it.  We'll have the proper Christmas roast beef (turkey, pah!) another day when we're all together.

Z goes from dairy to diary

I'm afraid I'm stealing an idea again, this time from Tim's post about diaries.  Thank you, Tim.  You thought so that I didn't have to.

I have always been quite specific about my requirement in a diary.  A week to view with 4 days on one side of the page, three on the other (every day has the same amount of space) and the last section for notes.  Slim enough to go in a handbag but big enough to be able to get several appointments in per day.  It's not necessarily that I have lots of appointments every day, but that it's so easy to forget details. My mother, for example, regularly used to say something like "Have I told you what I'm supposed to be doing on Thursday darling, because I've got EL, Norwich, 10.30 and I have no idea what it's about."  So whole names and specific places and a reminder of what I had to take or do, which takes a fair bit of space.

This wasn't necessarily that difficult to find, but it wasn't the only requirement.  I plan ahead, sometimes by several months.  So a diary that started in January and ended in December was useless, I needed overlap.  Ideally, a diary should include the whole of December, so that I could do the changeover early, and finish at the end of January or later, because I'd have quite a bit to write in by then.  I've got engagements on 19 days in January so far, for example, and 12 in February, and I'm not as busy as people with a proper job.  I never managed to find a diary that gave that much scope, though.

It wasn't bad when my mother had an account with Coutts.  They had jolly good diaries, and actually she had two accounts so received two diaries and gave the spare to me.  It came as close as I ever found to my requirements and was the right size and thickness.  But it all became too expensive in the end, it's a sad day when you can't afford your banker any more - and it wasn't the same when they'd been taken over by Nat West, in any case.

So I used to spend ages leafing through all the diaries in the shop and what I bought was always a compromise.

Buying an iPhone and discovering the diary was a happy day.  Not only could I set it up to repeat regular events so that I didn't have to write them all in individually, but it all backed up on to the computer so that, in the event that my handbag was stolen (this happened once about 20 years ago: fortunately in October so that my year wasn't a complete bewilderment, only a couple of months of it), I didn't lose a single appointment.  To a belt, braces and bailer twine woman like me, this was immensely reassuring.

For the first year, I carried a paper diary too, because I have to acknowledge that it's quicker to jot something down than type it in, on a phone's keypad at any rate.  But I couldn't be bothered to fill it in very often, so it was never up to date, and I haven't bought one since.  Life is so much simpler now.

Ho, ho, oh

Wink has arrived on her Father Christmas run.  She's just here for one night, with Weeza and co tomorrow and then home again.  She's marvellous, such a darling to go to the effort, she had a dreadful journey in the rain.

Elle has been away for a couple of weeks and called in to pick up and wrap some presents for her family that she had ordered over the internet.  We're planning to go to Norwich tomorrow to see The Hobbit.

The Sage has been off on the train today visiting old and close friends and distributing presents.

I've done housework and not a lot else.  What else I have done was mostly chillin'.

Al and Dilly's house purchase has gone through and they are moving over the weekend.  The Sage and I will rattle around like marbles in a steel drum.  Still, we're both the solitary types.  He has already declared that my piano can go through into the bungalow so that I won't bother him - politely, he didn't say the last bit, but that was what he meant.  I offered to move through there entirely, but he didn't quite want me to do that.

I have picked up a milk bottle for Blue Witch.  If anyone else would like one, let me know.  I think they would make attractive storage containers, I will acquire a few more.

Very sadly, a calf was stillborn here today, a breech birth that was unexpectedly early, though this seems to have been a mistake in terms of dates (not the farmer's mistake, what he was told) rather than prematurity.  The mother seems okay, she had a rough time though.  When I went to the farm to tell Jonny about the cow in trouble, I managed to wade through some slurry and I think my trainers will be whiffy forever more.  I don't mind the smell of cow myself, but I might not make friends.  Still, dogs will like me.

Chuffed! Granny's grin of triumph...

...when she got the baby to sleep, when everyone else had failed.

Yes, it's dark.  It was past his bedtime, we were on our way home from York on a steam train.

Now drinking whisky and Lapsang Souchong and eating Stilton and oatcakes.  Will I sleep afterwards?  It's *maybe* every night, so it makes little difference what I eat and drink.

I may be back later, darlings, but Wink is arriving at lunchtime, so jollity overload could happen and short-circuit blogging until tomorrow.

New from the farm

Jonny has had these bottles commissioned for the sale of milk fresh from the farm.  Very cool.

Tuning in

Pixie Mum was talking about a change in her listening habits, and I could say much the same, although this change happened quite some time ago.  When my children were little and the Sage worked full time, I didn't listen to the radio all that much because I prefer the speaking voice to music channels on the whole, and was far too polite to listen to Radio 4 when I should be giving my attention to my babies.  But I did listen while I was cooking in the evenings, and once Al and Weeza went to school I listened to the radio much of the day.  There were a couple of programmes on Radio Norfolk I liked too, but then the presenters went to jobs in television and their replacements weren't nearly as good, so I didn't bother with the station after that.

When I was in my teens, it was the pirate radio stations and Radio 1 much of the time, when I was in my room at any rate.  Like many teenagers, I reckoned that I couldn't concentrate on my homework if the place was silent, so it was music all the way.  Downstairs - goodness, when did Radio 4 start?  I remember the Home and the Light stations, though I'm not sure what programmes were on which. But the radio was on a lot of the time.  All the stuff that's still being repeated on Radio 4 Extra, from the Goons to the Archers, My Word to the Navy Lark.  And music - I suppose a lot of people of my age remember Sing Something Simple and suchlike.  H'm.  I don't remember thinking much of it then, have no idea whether it was as dreary as my memory recalls - it carried on for years so it can't have been all bad?  It must have been my father's choice, because after he died the radio was played rather less, though my mother liked the comedy and quiz shows at lunchtime and early evening.

My father was the Archers fan, not she, though I listened to it from soon after I got married to a couple of years ago, nearly, when Nigel was arbitrarily killed off and I stopped - not because it was ruined without him as because the producer rather cynically killing off a favourite character to mark an anniversary of the show made me think, Alice-like, "But they're nothing but a pack of cards."  Not that I'd 'believed' in them, but the courtesy of illusion and the suspense of disbelief was broken.  I catch a bit of it sometimes, but it doesn't engage me any longer and if any of the drearier characters is on, I switch straight off.

So, while the Sage was at work and I was a housewife at home - this is about 30 years ago - I had the radio on all day more or less and I really enjoyed it.  But then he sold his partnership in his full-time auctioneering business and struck out entirely on his own, and then we moved here and we decided that he'd semi-retire and work as much as he needed to for enjoyment and income, but to have a simple lifestyle that didn't need much of the latter.  And I'll come back to that another day, but stick to the point here, which is the radio.

Because, that almost finished off my radio-listening, except while I was cooking dinner in the evenings, because the Sage was mostly about - which also made me a much less efficient housewife, by the way, but that would also be a digression.  Again, it didn't seem polite to be engrossed in a radio programme (he wasn't interested in it) when he was with me.  In addition, and I wonder if anyone else has noticed this too, people don't think it matters if they interrupt your listening.  So, if I was cooking or ironing or whatever and listening to a programme, and the Sage or maybe my mother (who lived next door by this time) came in, they would start talking straight away - and how is it that this always happens at a crucial point? If the television is on, it is more of a presence in the room and people look to see if it's a good time to speak, but music or radio is disregarded.

I could carry on about the peculiar things that happen in the name of 'comedy' on Radio 4 now, but I'll only depress us all.  

Jane leaves the Land Army

I'm trying to remember if there were other stories about working on the farm, but I can't think of them.  A few anecdotes, perhaps - like the time she went to visit an old chap who gave her a glass of his cowslip wine.  As I said yesterday, she didn't drink alcohol normally but this tasted quite innocuous and she accepted a glass or two more - and went home rolling drunk!

Then there was the time she and the men were sitting down in the field for lunch.  "What you got, Fred?" someone asked an old codger (who was probably younger than I am, come to think of it).  Fred inspected the meagre contents of his sandwich sourly.  "Piece of bread, cut with a hammy knife," he said - which entered the family phrase book.

I'm not even sure how long she was in the Land Army, now I come to think about it.  It's a funny thing, she had so many stories about her early life, but they were always the same ones and it's only been in the last few years - since she hasn't been about to ask - that I've realised how many gaps there are.

Hang on, I can work some of it out.  She'd have been 18 when she went in, I suppose, if she was coming up to 16 when the war started, left school the next summer because education had just about come to a dead halt and went to secretarial college for another year, and then volunteered before she was called up.  So it must have been two or three years, because I do know what happened next.

As I said, she was stoical about pain, and sympathy for ailments wasn't forthcoming in any case, so she endured the pain she was in until it became unbearable.  As a result of that, by the time she was taken to hospital, her appendix was in a bad state and it was a tricky operation that she took some while to recover from.

And it wasn't long after that when she caught measles, and I know she was aged 21 then.  She was living back with her father then, which was just as well because she was terribly ill.  She said she was blind for three days, delirious and very ill indeed, and the doctor called twice a day.  Though I'm not sure what good that did, it must have reassured her father.  Remarkably, her sight recovered completely - she had excellent sight, far better than mine ever was, and she was well into middle age before she needed reading glasses and never needed them for distance.

This must have been in 1945, if she was born in November 1923.  The doctor said that she had to take a long break from farm work while she convalesced, and then the war ended anyway, so she never went back.  I suppose her things were packed up for her and sent on - she was surprised to be told to send all her uniform back to *wherever* - the Ministry of ... look, I don't know, this isn't a carefully researched article, it's just me waffling as usual.  Anyway, I'm not waffling at random, the point is that her badge was missing, and when she'd sent off her rather worn out breeches and belt and shirt and so on, they pointed out that, if she couldn't produce it, she had to pay for it.  She wasn't entirely thrilled about that, but she refused to pay and they didn't press the point.

I wish I had some photos of her when she was a girl, but I'm afraid not.  In later years, my grandfather lost his sight and he decided to get rid of all ephemera.  My mother, who was about forty by this time, was very upset when his housekeeper told her that he'd had a bonfire and burned all the photos and other papers from her childhood and pre-marriage youth, including pictures of her grandparents and parents.  I know what her grandmother - her father's mother - looked like because I have her portrait (one of those portrait-sized photographs, coloured up) but all I know of her beloved grandfather is that his blue eyes twinkled when he was about to tell a joke.

Young Jane, the Land Army, over here

I said that Jane would have nothing to do with the black market and she wasn't tempted either by the American servicemen who seemed to be able to offer everything a girl might be tempted by - stockings, chocolate, a good time.  The English boys didn't have much money to spare and no access to those sort of treats.  But in any case, she didn't ever mention any romantic attachments at that time and I'm fairly sure there weren't any.  She used to go to the village hops (dances) but she was careful of her reputation, she neither smoked nor drank and she wouldn't have let any of the lads 'go too far,' she was never that sort of woman all her life.

All the same, they were great fun and she reminisced with pleasure about the social life at the weekends.  If it gives a flavour of the innocence, she said they particularly enjoyed walking home through a ploughed field, one foot in the furrow and the other on the ridge, bobbing up and down until they almost fell over with laughter.

The farmer was a young man called Bobby, who had inherited the farm from his father - mother was still fit and well and ran the house and farmyard.  Bobby would have volunteered, but had poor sight and was more use to the war effort where he was.  Jane and Bobby were good friends,  but there was nothing else between them and I don't think that she would have got on with his mother, who was tough and unsentimental - it was she who wouldn't give her an alternative to bacon.

There was a dreadful accident once, when there was a young woman staying on the farm.  I can't remember why, because I seem to recollect she was American and I can't think how she'd have come to be in England at that time.  She was lovely apparently, a pretty, laughing girl, and she loved riding.  But one day, out for a ride with Bobby, she fell off her horse.  She landed hard and Bobby was concerned and said they should turn back and wanted to walk back with her, but she laughed and remounted and said she was fine.  But she wasn't.  She fell again.  "I have hurt myself this time", she said, and she fainted.  Bobby had to leave her on the ground and galloped back for help.  She died in hospital later.

The coroner was critical of Bobby, who blamed himself too, but there wasn't much he could have done.  He could have left her after the first fall and gone for help, but she insisted she was fine.  I'm not sure whether it was a fractured skull or a subarachnoid haemorrhage, but it's quite likely it would have killed her, whatever he'd done.  To make things as much worse as they could possibly be, she had been an only child.

Although Jane was strong, she wasn't that robust, because she suffered badly from migraines.  She wouldn't often have been given time off for a 'sick headache' though, she remembered being literally sick with pain and then carrying on with her work again.  There were several hot summers in the 1940s and she wasn't good in the sun, she had a fair skin and didn't do well in the heat.  But she was immensely stoical and had a high pain threshold, so just kept going.