November...ing

 

It’s not been a great month for us. Inspired by Christina ’s post, I’ll give you a flavour of my November. I’ve been:

Looking after husband who has injured his ankle after being pulled over by over-excited dog lunging at crow while he was picking up her ball;

Persuading him to contact medical professionals for advice on his ‘torn ligament’  rather than trust Dr Google;

Trying not to say I told you so when he eventually gave in, three whole weeks after the original injury,  and discovered he had a fracture when it was x-rayed;

Walking the darned dog on my own and trying to avoid any further injury;

Watching in horror as the lawn, now the location for ball chasing, is transformed into a muddy field;

Planting half dead looking bare-rooted strawberries and a rose called ‘Silas Marner;

 Hoping the garden will recover in the spring. 

On a more positive note I had some success with the NaNoWrite project which I signed up for. So I have been:

Writing around 1000 words a day of my ‘family saga’;

Reimagining real events using research, memories and things older relatives have told me;

Exploring the British Newspaper Archive which has given me access to old copies of The Mid Ulster Mail;

Using the details from the newspaper stories as inspiration for my writing;

Feeling like a granny when I joined the local NaNo online forum and encountered rather geeky young men in hoodies;

Accepting that ‘word sprints’ where you race others to write as many words as you can in a set time with no concern about quality are not for me;

Discovering that most of the local participants in this project are writing fantasy and other worlds;

Failing to reach the NaNo target 50000 words;

Feeling happy, nevertheless, that I have written 25000 words and have enjoyed the experience. 

For the Record

 It strikes me that this is a very significant moment in history so I’m going to record my experience of it.

We are waiting for the result of the US election. It is extremely close. This is scary.

My daughter is self-isolating in her student flat in Sheffield because her flatmate has Covid.  She is missing two weeks of face  to face seminars because of this- her course isn’t online. The flatmate had a message on the NHS Covid app on Sunday to say she’d been in contact with someone who had tested positive. At the same time started to feel feverish. She went for a test. It came back positive on Monday. She’d watched Strictly on Saturday evening in the same room as her flatmates. Including my daughter.

I am trying not to worry. My daughter, usually a worrier, is fairly relaxed about this. No symptoms yet except a slight headache tonight. 

Her flatmate with Covid is fine. Yesterday she cleaned the house. She has now lost her sense of taste and to check this out she ate a whole chilli, drunk a shot of vodka and one of vinegar. She couldn’t taste any of these.  A young person’s response to the virus. 

As part of the ONS survey we signed up for Paul and I have had five Covid tests. We are getting paid for this in shopping vouchers though we’d have been happy to do it for free. We had weekly visits where we answer questions and complete the test ourselves. You swish a long cotton bud type thing around the back of your throat and then up each nostril. It makes you gag but isn’t a big deal. They’ve all been negative so far. 

This week I’m nervous that I’ve caught it too as I’ve been to a pub with friends (outside in a ‘beach hut’) and to the hairdresser before lockdown begins. There are many people with Covid in the local area. A friend who has a small business has nine staff off with the virus.  I’m torn between wanting to stay in all the time to avoid any chance of infection and wanting to make the most of the time left before lockdown.

Life is very different to this time last year. 

Lockdown is coming

 So it looks like we’re in for another period of lockdown if the BBC news this morning has got it right.  It’s going to be harder this time with winter weather and also just the two of us at home. In April and May much time was spent gardening but now there’s not so many things I can do outside especially in the unrelentingly wet weather we’ve had recently.  I picked the last sunflowers which looked unlikely to open and persuaded then to flower inside for a last splash of sunshine. There are tulips to be planted - Monty on Gardener’s World says wait until November - and possibly a bare-rooted rose but that’ll be it until it’s time to chit the seed potatoes again next January/February. I’m turning my attention to expanding my houseplant collection.  This can get expensive but I’ve discovered you can buy small versions in shops like Lidl, Morrison’s and my favourite venue for garden purchases, Home and Bargain. I bought a dahlia from there which has flowered all summer.  I also grew the coleus below from a cutting and then took a cutting from it for my sister which has also flourished. I love these plants with their pink leaves - my dad used to grow them and they lined the kitchen windowsill back home.

 

And of course as you can see above spider plants have babies.  I’ve already potted up two from this plant and there’s another ready to go here.  Thanks toGanching for inspiring this post with the tale of her spider plant.

To keep me busy in November I have signed up for NaNoWriMo, a challenge where you attempt to write a novel of 50000 words in a month.  The name makes me cringe and it’s all very American but I’m hoping that this little bit of accountability and a deadline will help me establish a writing habit.  I’ve got plenty of time now though I am back Zoom teaching a few hours a week. And I have plenty of ideas.  I envisage a kind of family saga loosely based on my own family a bit like The Cazelet Chronicles, my favourite books. Lofty ambition for someone who can’t even establish a weekly blogging habit. We’ll see! 

Looking back to 1999

 

This photograph of my parents taken outside our family home In Ballyronan during August 1999 was posted on Facebook this week by Ardboe Galleries.  A lovely surprise as neither my sisters nor I had ever seen it before.  I rarely bother with Facebook but this time I enjoyed reading all the comments and seeing the list of familiar names who ‘liked’ the photograph.  I’m pleased to see they have not been forgotten.  My mother was the village postmistress for over 35 years and when this was taken she had just retired. The photograph was taken by Pat Grimes who was in the village that day taking pictures for a magazine called Loughshore News. I contacted him and he has kindly sent me copies of the photographs and given me permission to use them here. His website features many other old photographs including some from the local newspaper. I found one of myself pictured with my Girl Guide group when I was about 12. 

Later that same year in October my daughter Kate was born so next week she’ll turn 21.  We’ve had to bring forward the celebrations as she’s at university in Sheffield which is in Tier 3 measures from today.  So on Thursday night we met her and her boyfriend in a pub/restaurant in Hathersage, a short drive from Sheffield in the Derbyshire Dales.  We had to sit at separate tables to keep within the rules but nevertheless had a lovely evening.  Here she is with her cake.  I think her grandparents would be very proud of her if they were here today. 

September Sunshine

September is here and for the first time in many years I am not returning to work after a summer break.  I now feel that my retirement has started for real even though I haven't done any real work since July.  Everyone else has gone back to school/ work now and, after a few days of missing the excitement of the new term, I am now pleased that I haven't gone back to work having heard how difficult it is to teach with all the new regulations in place. 

It's also been the first time I've ever been able to take a holiday in term time.  Kate and I had a mini-break - very mini as in one night -  in Conwy in North Wales last week before she returned to Sheffield this week ahead of the start of term.  It's not Palma where we planned to be but was very pleasant and only an hour away in the car.  We left the dog and Paul behind this time - I have another September holiday with them planned later in the month.

Conwy is dominated by an impressive castle which was unfortunately closed last Thursday when we were there.  We explored the town, walking along the estuary to Conwy Marina and stopping at a pub overlooking the Great Orme. The town itself has plenty of the kind of shops which I like and Kate doesn't, selling clothes from Sea Salt and White Stuff.  It has changed a lot from when we visited to explore the castle when Kate was little.  It seems to have gone upmarket - a bit like the Padstow of North Wales. There is even an independent bookshop.  I resisted the clothes but did buy a book (Nick Laird Modern Gods. More on my recent reading soon).  In the evening we sat on the quayside drinking overpriced G&Ts from plastic glasses in a pub called The Liverpool Arms which Paul recalls visiting as a teenager with his mates.  It was apparently the only pub in Conwy they hadn't been asked to leave.  Possibly why it's called The Liverpool Arms.  The sun was going down on the estuary and for a few minutes reflected off the windows of the buildings opposite making them look as if they were on fire.  Kate took this photograph.

We stayed at a B&B which was conveniently situated on the High Street.  After a not so great night's sleep( I snore, she objects, I try not to and remain awake as a result), we spent the next morning at Bodnant Gardens which I'd visited with Paul back in February.  It was good then and even better in full bloom, though I still haven't seen their Laburnum Arch as, of course, we couldn't visit in May. Then Kate drove home as I was too sleepy to be trusted behind the wheel and she's now a more confident driver than I am.  

That's it for now.  Have good intentions about blogging more frequently now I have time.  

Kate

For years I have been forbidden to make any more than a passing reference to my daughter Kate in the blog and so have got into the habit of not writing very much about her.  Now it seems she has changed her mind -she recently asked why I never write about her! So today’s post is all about Kate though I suspect what you get will not be what I am writing right now as I will give her a chance to edit for fear of reprisals - (that word will be out for a start).

I’ve seen a lot of Kate of recently, much more than last year, since she’s been living at home since lockdown began in March.   She’s 20 now, 21 in October and so properly grown up so it’s been hard for her to return to living at home after being independent for over a year. Hard for us too negotiating new boundaries and trying not to get irritated by the trivial stuff like the leaving open of kitchen cupboard doors - I’m better at this than her dad.  Even though we’ve had occasional grumpiness, having her here been one of the bonuses of lockdown. She arrived accompanied by her boyfriend, Calum, and he has fitted in very well, even when confronted by the worst excesses of family bad behaviour. (I’m including myself in this as I can be very snappy if I’ve had a bad night’s sleep, a rather too frequent occurrence recently.) 

Kate has now finished her second year at Sheffield University where she is studying History and Politics.  Having missed a great chunk of university life this year and also concerned about the unpromising jobs market, she’s considering doing a MA when she finishes next year. At least she is going to have some face to face teaching on her course and so will be going back to Sheffield in September. I’ll miss her as I’ve got used to having her around again. Clearing up the devastation her dad leaves behind after dinner is more fun when she’s there and we are kitchen dancing along to her Spotify playlist, fuelled by M&S mojitos from a can.  She offers opinions on my clothing choices,  plucks my eyebrows as I can’t see to do it, and this week helped me choose new glasses as apparently my old ones, as well as being bent and having puppy teeth marks on the frame, were  ‘too old lady’. We watch rubbishy TV together - something on Prime called The Amazing Mrs Maisel is a current favourite. I draw the line at The Real Housewives of Beverley Hills so she’s persuaded her boyfriend to watch that with her when she can drag him off his X-box. Now he’s a fan, it seems. 

We’ve also had a few outings recently, though both of us are still a bit Covid cautious. She’s become more tolerant of my garden visiting and accompanied me to Tattenhall Hall on a NGS opening. We’ve not bothered so much about shopping trips though there has been plenty of comfort clothes buying with Asos parcels arriving rather too frequently for someone supposedly living on a maintenance loan.  I have been spending unwisely too though my purchases are more often things to adorn the garden. This week we went blackberry picking and I recited the Seamus Heaney poem about this to her en route, misquoting wildly.  She says she misses studying English Lit and has had time to read for pleasure, choosing ‘The Beekeeper of Aleppo’ which she said reminded her a little of ‘The Kite Runner’ which she loved when studying it for A Level.  We’re planning a few more trips in the next few weeks before she goes back,  including an overnight stay in Conwy, North Wales to replace our planned trip to Palma which had to be cancelled. 

Kate loves dogs and really misses our lovely Irish Terrier, Ronan, who we lost last year.  He was very much her dog. Booshka, our White Swiss Shepherd is without question Paul’s dog.  She (the dog) likes having Kate and Calum here. Kate lies on the floor with her, cuddles her and scratches her belly.  Occasionally this leads to overexcitement, squealing and puppy biting and then Kate compares her unfavourably to Ronan who, she says, would never bite like this. Fortunately Calum also loves dogs, though is perhaps not so keen on the white hairs that he sometimes finds in his dinner.  Paul and I have no doubt consumed many of these as our eyesight is too poor to spot them.

Kate can be quite a demanding daughter and this isn’t about her asking for stuff. What she wants is my attention, lots of it.  It was the same when she was little. I don’t recall my mother ever playing with us, yet I’d spend hours playing with her in the Tweenies pop up tent, or dressing Polly Pockets in tiny rubbery outfits or playing games based on the Rainbow Fairies books.  But then my mother had four other daughters, whereas Kate is an only child. As my sister once remarked as she watched some fairly spectacular toddler bad behaviour, Kate knows I’d do anything for her.  She was right and it hasn’t really changed.  I have plenty of time to spend with her so this is fine with me.  And I’m conscious that she’ll be going again soon so am making the most of this unexpected time together.

Changing Times

Picture on card from Rosie made a Thing. According to my sister this a good likeness. Hope my nose doesn't look like this!

I finished work for the summer term on the 10th July and this year I won't be returning to school
in September.  This is quite a life changing event and I've been feeling a bit unsettled in the past couple of weeks. Even though I know it's the right decision, I sometimes find it hard to cope with change. It was sad too not to be able to have a proper leaving do to mark the occasion. I've been thinking back over my years in teaching and wrote quite a long goodbye email to colleagues with all my memories of the past 15 years at the school where I finished my career.  It was a bit self indulgent really and I am quite sure many of the younger staff didn't bother to open the attachment, but others did and responded positively.  

I was able to have a bit of a celebration here with my closest work friends in the English department coming round on that Friday for a few socially distanced drinks and lovely food cooked by Paul who was universally admired for his culinary skills and witty repartee.  Having frequently complained to these same colleagues about him and his irritating habits (foolish purchases, grumpiness,  etc), I was told to stop moaning and appreciate what I've got. They have a point.

Both Paul and I have July birthdays and we celebrated then fairly quietly this year.  On Saturday which was my birthday, it rained all day but we went ahead with our planned trip to Dunham Massey, a National Trust property near Manchester with an impressive garden even in the rain.  Back in February we took out membership of National Trust thinking that with my imminent retirement we'd be able to get our money's worth this time.  Then lockdown happened.  Now that the gardens are open again, we've been visiting the local ones. The best so far was the Japanese garden at Tatton Park which I visited on my own as dogs aren't allowed in there.  The rest of the family walked the dog in the deer park and spend a considerable amount of time chasing her as she chased a deer which unfortunately had strayed from the main herd. Paul hadn't spotted it so she was off the lead. Kate said it was like something out of David Attenborough.  It was apparently a very stressful experience which I am glad I did not witness.  I was in this peaceful garden.