Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The young and the old





Talking of dementia - the day after my last post about my choir friend who's been diagnosed, I sat down in the dentist's chair, swung my feet up and noticed that I was wearing odd shoes - both black and flat, but from two different pairs. Then I went home again and Mr Life pointed out that I'd buttoned my shirt up wrongly - one too many buttons at the top, one too few at the bottom. Hmm!



I remember this stage so well with our own children: when they know things and can do things that we didn't and couldn't. And it's so interesting and heart-warming. These are cereal packets that Big Grandson designed in some class (Craft, Design and Technology?) at school. I couldn't do this on the computer if my life depended on it. The flavours, by the way, are: Classic Oat & Wheat, Chocolate Chunks, Lemon and Lime, Canadian Maple Syrup and Blueberry. I like his wording as well as his pictures (though I am his granny). 

Of course, the next stage is that they become so competent that they grow up and move away... .

Biggest Granddaughter is now 11. She's at that grown-up-in-some-ways stage. For her birthday cake, she requested that Daughter 1 make a sophisticated unicorn. Sophisticated, she decided, meant in this case black. She and her friend went ice-skating at the rink near us "and then we're coming here for pizza and ice cream, Granny". What, my house? Oh, ok. So they did and it was lovely! 

Littlest Granddaughter took pictures of her gap and her very wobbly tooth with her mum's phone. 

I'm sitting here listening to Rheinberger's Mass in D, opus 194, which we're singing at one of my choirs. I'd never heard of Rheinberger until a couple of years ago, when we did something else of his (can't now remember what...) but he's wonderful and should be better known. 

So yes, nothing's really happened, though I'm nearly at the end of Biggest Granddaughter's second quilt. I made the mistake of including a few bits of Peter Rabbit fabric in the one I made for her when she was 5 and wanted "bunnies and hedgehogs" and now it's too babyish. Ooops. She requested a dragon quilt like the one I made Middle Granddaughter, though I'm dubious that she's going to want that when she's older. Ah well, I can make a third... if I'm spared... .


 

Thursday, March 07, 2024

Fine

We went up to Son's at the weekend and saw him and the UnBloggables, who're now 7 and 4 and delightful. This is the view from his garden. Ideally, I would live somewhere like this too, though it wouldn't be practical as an old person if one couldn't drive. In town, we can walk or get the bus. There, they drive everywhere. Anyway, with one child north and one south, we have to stay in Edinburgh, which is gettatable from both directions. But at heart, I'm not a city person. I would prefer to live in a small town in East Lothian, with views of the sea, and just visit the city from time to time. 

Hey ho. 

It's fully spring now, and we've had some very pleasant weather. This gorse by the riverside smells wonderfully coconutty. 

And of course we went to the Botanics the other day, which always lifts the spirits. 

Yesterday we visited friends in the west of Scotland. We walked along Loch Winnoch in the sunshine. it was lovely: good company, fresh air, sunshine, swans, delicious food. 

So: nothing's happened. But this is all right. 

I sat down beside another soprano in choir yesterday evening and said, "How are you?" 

"Fine," she said, in an obviously not-fine way. 

"Oh dear," I said, "what's the matter?"

"I've been told I've got dementia," she said. 

It's what everyone our age dreads, isn't it? Hard to think of words of consolation - well, there aren't really any.  


 

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Bright!

In my fairly unproductive life these days, nothing very much happens - which is on the whole good, but doesn't leave a lot to blog about. I see quite a lot of friends, which is lovely: two separate groups of school friends, friends from the one school and from the two colleges that I taught at, other friends from my youth and some from more recent years. I feel very lucky to have all these people in my life and am very aware that we're all getting older and must treasure these friendships while we're all still able to get about. 

For example, I had coffee today with four women with whom I started teaching at a high school in 1973 - over 50 years ago. One by one we all left that school to have children or teach elsewhere, but we've kept seeing one another ever since. We've been married (and, apart from one who's widowed, are all still married), four of us have had children and grandchildren and we've all had ups and downs and house moves and mainly minor ailments and some of them have had major troubles and one's had a stroke but - we chatter on, and it's lovely.

I know I often blog about flowers, but here are more. I went to the Botanics the other day and some of the rhododendrons are in full flower - mainly the pink ones. Filling one's gaze with colour is very therapeutic. 





Yesterday, Mr L and I visited Shepherd House in Inveresk, which is really joined on to the eastern side of the city now, though it used to be a separate village. We've walked past this house before, but never when the gardens were open. The house was built in 1650ish but has been owned since 1957 (yes!) by very keen gardeners, who have over the years made it really beautiful. Now in their nineties, they still open the gardens sometimes for charity. 


There are various jolly touches. This is a yew sheep.

A bunch of tulips in pebbles.



I really want some of these yellow-headed snowdrops, but alas, none of the stockists I can find have any actually in stock. 

The hellebores were stunning. 







I know what he means! 

 This is Inveresk village - it's picturesque, despite the orange - which is a traditional colour for old Scottish harled (pebble-dashed) buildings. A mistake, I feel, but at least one hallowed by centuries. 

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Flowers, flowers, flowers


It's definitely spring in the garden, which is full of crocuses. 

I think I like these pale yellow ones best, 

but really,

after the winter, any colour is welcome. Well, apart from orange - though the crocus stamens are acceptable. 

Compared to my life as a teacher, which was a whirlwind all day and a frantic round of marking and preparation all evening, our current lives are - I hesitate to say dull, because it's on the whole lovely to be able to potter around, drink coffee with friends and so on - but certainly much less eventful. However, the joy is that we can do things such as, the other day, going to Dawyck Botanic Gardens in the Borders to see their snowdrops. 

They have lots of different varieties, though really it's the huge numbers that are, to me, more impressive. 


They're beautiful individually, especially if you upturn their little faces, 

but in huge swathes,

which frankly don't come out particularly well in photographs,

 


they're stunning to stand and look at.

Wise of them to bloom in early spring, when there's not much competition and we're starving for flowers and beauty and hope. 

Mr L is off to Glasgow with Big Grandson to see the model railway exhibition, so I'm going to take myself off to our Botanic Gardens for a walk in the sunshine. 

Friday, February 16, 2024

Mistakes

We've been in London visiting Daughter 2 and family, taking with us Big Grandson so that he could ride around on London's transport. No accounting for tastes... . Anyway, he and Mr Life did this on Saturday, Monday and Tuesday. On Sunday, we all went to the Post Office Museum (which includes a post-train ride), and on Monday and Tuesday I looked after Littlest Granddaughter while her parents worked. 

We had a busy time. She tried five times to teach me how to assemble her toy aeroplane. I got better at it, but never entirely succeeded without help - there must be about fifteen bits. She's 6 and I'm 73. I'm not mechanically minded. I confess I wasn't really trying at the beginning, but started to concentrate once I realised that I was probably going to have to keep doing it till I succeeded. It turned out that even my full concentration wasn't enough. 

And now we're home and it's amaryllis time again, and today was beautiful and I got some gardening done, hurray. 

I'm learning things I didn't know about American English through Duolingo, which requires one to translate from the French and German which I'm brushing up. It marks one wrong when one doesn't guess what it wants one to say. For example, when I translated from its French, "I didn't wash before work because I got up late", it wanted me to say, "I didn't wash up before work because I woke up late." Do you really say this, Americans? Here, washing up refers to doing the dishes. And it doesn't allow you to say "football" when it wants "soccer" (I mean, "fussball", Duolingo!), and objects to your saying "in my break" when it wants "on my break". It's interesting, though, if a bit frustrating. 

I'd try some Scottish English on it (we say, for example, "amn't" as in "I'm right, amn't I?") but you only get five mistakes ("mistakes") and then you have to buy more credit, so I don't think I will... . English people would say "aren't I?", which sounds odd to me. We don't say, "I are", after all. How about Americans? Australians? New Zealanders? Are you of the "aren't I?" persuasion. 

Thursday, February 08, 2024

Spending


It was such a beautiful day yesterday, and one thought: Spring! But today was very chilly. Winter!

I was walking along the other day, mind idling, and suddenly thought about the verb "to spend". I suppose it's obvious, but I had never really realised how significant it is that we use this verb about both money and time. We spend our money and it's gone. We spend our time and it's even more gone - no possibility of earning more. 

We talk about spending time wisely - but when you're my age (73, with the time-purse getting rather empty), what is the wisest way of spending it? 

Answers on a postcard, please... 

(Maybe it's better just not to think about it.)

Saturday, February 03, 2024

Sunshine

The weather was beautiful, if somewhat chilly, today and we went up to visit the UnBloggables in their home territory, an hour and a quarter's drive away. 

We had a detour via a friend's house, and then cut through somewhat alarmingly narrow roads, up and down and round corners, to the park where we were meeting the UnBloggables. 

Would you like to live in this house? I would, in daylight and in summer. But in the dark, or in winter, I prefer to be nearer other people - being of a somewhat nervous disposition. 

This is the park where we spent the morning. It was lovely to see Son and the little ones - the first time this year. Medium Granddaughter is so chatty and affectionate. I wish we could see more of her and her (also lovely) little brother. But hey ho. 


This death announcement was in The Scotsman  (newspaper) this morning. Hmm. There's a story there, one feels. 

The light is returning and the spring flowers are coming out. But it's only February and winter could have a few things in store yet. I hope it hasn't!