September

It being the last day of the month I have pinched one of Di's ideas and give you my September poem.

I love this description of the children back in school after the long summer and was reminded of it when the grandsons the other evening were moaning that they could only play at 'night' now!!

(Part of) September
from the Shepherd's Calendar

As yet no meddling boys resort
About the streets in idle sport
The butterflye enjoys his hour
And flirts unchaced from flower to flower
And humming bees that morning calls
From out the low huts mortar walls
Which passing boy no more controuls
Flye undisturbed about their holes
And sparrows in glad chirpings meet
Unpelted in the quiet street

None but imprison'd childern now
Are seen where dames with angry brow
Threaten each younker to his seat
That thro' the school door eyes the street
Or from his horn book turns away
To mourn for liberty and play


John Clare

I don't exist

Two days ago I spoke to my mother, as I do every day, and she had siezed up from a fall the previous week. I tried to contact her house manager and left a message. Since this lady was in a different part of the building, my mother decided to press the emergency alarm. Help arrived immediately, the cavalry in the shape of the manager, her cleaner and the doctor whom I had summoned independently. WH and I set off on the 150 mile drive to to her flat.

The upshot of all this is that she is now in respite care for two weeks and I must arrange help for when she returns home. Not easy anywhere here but the problem is compounded when you are so distant. The doctor thanked me for giving her my phone number, they only had that of my sister in New York. WHAT?????? WHY???

Removing all valuables from Mother's handbag before the trip to the nursing home, we found a diary. 2005.

'Oh it's brand new' says Mother.

'It's last year's' says me.

'Oh I know, I keep it for phone numbers' she realises.

She looks through its' blank pages. On the very last page there is something written. "My Daughter: XXXXXX Phone Number XXXXXX. Address: XXXXXX New York."

I always knew. Now I have written confirmation.

It's that day again

when I add another year on the clock. Think I'll stop counting soon.

Sulphasalazine sucks

I'm doing really badly on this. I'm still only on half a dose daily and I am so tired I could sleep for England. Factor in a period of nausea each day after I have taken the second tablet and you get the picture? It's not a pleasant one. I am fit for nothing after dinner and just want to crash out. I am sleeping about 14 hours a day right now, almost double my usual 8.

All this is somewhat depressing as my hands are like wood again, my knuckles have disappeared under a load of swelling and it takes a good 90 minutes each morning for them to uncurl sufficiently for me to do anything. The Raynauds is worse than ever, my feet hardly ever seem pink at all now and I am wearing 2 pairs of thermal socks most of the time. I am already wearing gloves for part of the day too.

Yesterday we discovered that due to clients holding-up WH's work when they have hitherto been overly concerned that the job go ahead as fast as possible, we could have had our customary autumn trip to Greece after all. We had been thinking of Lesbos again; the birdwatching now is brilliant as the autumn migration gets underway.

All this conspires to make me feel worse, particularly as it was so cold in August here. It seems like winter is going to be very long this time round.

This week mostly .....

I'm watching.....

Misty and his brother Nelson playing in the house more, now that the evenings and nights are colder. Misty has a new sleeping place, in the wash-basin in the bathroom. Funny how he curls his little body into a perfect fit, just his ears sticking out over the rim!

I'm listening.....

to the sound of next door's new puppy chewing their stair-gate throughout the night. The gate is on a quarry tiled floor and the sound of the metal gate banging on that all night is enough to waken the dead. We have had words already as 5 nights running we were awoken by this. Just hope it stops soon or I will be forced to turn into angry neighbour mode.

I'm eating.....

blackberry and apple crumble. It must be autumn as thoughts turn to hot puddings and especially those whose ingredients are 'free'. The scent of the hot fruit and the toasty topping is divine, just makes you want another helping!

Worth the wait

I'm writing this half way through today's family festivities. The ceremony over, the wedding breakfast eaten, we now have a couple of hours respite to catch our breath and let everything digest before this evening's marathon party in the local village hall. WH is in classic position, head back, eyes shut and mouth wide open. Even the large black and white cat on his lap doesn't bother him.


My stepdaughter looked radiant and her groom ecstatic when he saw her in her 'Once in a Lifetime' dress. Not just 'wedding dress' but 'any dress'. This tomboy doesn't do skirts of any description and her knees have not seen the light of day since she was at primary school. For one day, our capable, miss-fix-it with the totally laid-back style of motherhood on the side, just to confound all who meet her, looks like an angel. Gone are the familiar trainers and baggy jeans and instead here is a swan who according to one dumbfounded relative looks more beautiful then Julia Roberts and has an even better figure. A figure never before seen in public. So stunning the transformation the whole room was silent when she walked in on WH's arm.

So now I'm off to revive my own flagging hairdo, put on the glad rags and sit back and witness another hundred people being stunned at the site of our own beauty on the arm of her new husband who has waited ten years for this priviledge.

By golly it was worth the wait.

To Eldest Stepdaughter and her lucky, lucky man, we wish you all the happiness in the world.

It never rains but what it pours...

All geared up for the Big Day on Saturday and now Mother in Law has had a mini stroke. This has put our last minute plans completely upside down and WH, who is always very last minute, is now wishing he had actually done a few things earlier! Hard lesson to learn and not really the week to be learning it.

On the bright side, today I kept a long-standing date to meet two of my cyber friends whom I have known in the ether for almost 5 years. It was so good to actually meet in person at last and the strange thing was, you thought you'd only seen them yesterday. Totally weird, but it was great to put voices and actions to the dialogue. Now we are even better friends.

Just a little bit busy

I'm still here and still in one piece but extremely busy as we have a wedding in the family in the next few days.

No, no NOT WH and me but someone close.

More details later.

Meanwhile I am learning the art of doing 5 things at once as opposed to the usual 4 things that we women do!

8 things I have done in the last few days

1. Visited my mother
2. Eaten crab salad at the Sea Shanty
3. Sat in the sun on a Devon beach
4. Read 3 family tree magazines cover to cover
5. Been clothes shopping...woo hoo..
6. Watched squirrels chasing each other up and down a stand of ash trees
7. Bought a handbag
8. Had another blood test

What have you been up to????

Replies on a postcard please....

Hard Times

I've recently been transcribing some census sheets from the 1861 Census of England and Wales for an internet genealogy project. I do this most of the time but have a had a break over the summer and have taken up again in earnest over the last week or so. What interesting things I find out. Today I had a family of 8 living in the same house and three of the children aged 11, 9 and 8 were working as Nail Strikers. Now my eldest Grandson is 8 and I just can't believe that children of this age worked. Well I know that they did, we have long had all the historical evidence to support it, but I just can't conceive of the sort of life they had. Grandson would be hard pushed to leave his play station for 10 minutes let alone do a days work!!

Another family was somewhat extended with an elder son, his wife and toddler in the one house. I then realised that the married son had a younger brother who was younger than his own son. It was not unusual to find families of 10, 11 or even more offspring all living together. The poor mothers must have been exhausted after all those years of child bearing. I go down through the lists of children and they are regularly spaced at generally 2 years apart. If a bigger gap appears you can be almost sure that a child had died, or else had gone to work in service somewhere else. Some of the families have widowers and widows in their twenties, such things we feel are catastrophic nowadays but quite common place then.

Occupations are interesting too, today I had a striker, in an iron works no doubt, a lot of steel makers, and a new one on me: a gas pumper. Blacksmiths, whitesmiths and brass founders abound, after all I am studying the City of 1000 trades. As for the wives they are often occupation-less unless they happen to be washerwomen, greengrocers, knitters or dressmakers. Sometimes they are identified by their husband's work, baker's wife, bedstead painter's wife, coalman's wife, as though it were an occupation in itself. It probably was!

All this has reminded me today rather graphically that however much we think times are hard now and problems beset us which are hard to solve, we have an incredibly easy life now compared with our ancestors. it's about time we started being grateful.