Move Down the Galley!

A few years ago, when I had a motorhome, I acquired four pieces of carpet on Freecycle and, making good use of a sunny afternoon and an empty car park, cut them to fit into the awning.  They worked well until the day when I made an overnight stop on my way to somewhere else.  There was no need to erect the awning, but the only place to store the carpets - at least the two biggest pieces - was down the middle of the vehicle ... where they were in the way.

The solution was to place them about three feet below that, in other words, beneath the motorhome where, on the hard standing they would be perfectly safe and dry.  All was fine for the night and once breakfast had been concluded, I fastened everything in 'on the road' mode, and set off for my final destination.  It wasn't until I was some thirty miles down the road that I suddenly remembered the two rolls of carpet.  They were still marking the spot that I'd left an hour or so before ... unless someone else had arrived and claimed them, or the management of the site had disposed of them.

The kitchen in the flat

I decided that it wasn't worth the uncertainty and hassle of returning for something that I'd not paid for in the first place.  But there was the question of what to do with the remaining, smaller pieces of carpet.  I decided that there would be enough between them, once cut to shape, to cover the tiled floor of the tiny kitchen of my flat.  The space between the units, fridge and washing machine was neatly filled and remained a cosy enhancement to the flat until the day I left.

History has a habit of repeating itself.  I remembered this occasion when I stood in the kitchen of my new home, making my breakfast on a chilly February morning.  This kitchen is tiled with big stone squares; they look quite smart and are easy to keep clean but, in a room where the only heat is from the cooker, their attraction is, to say the least, dimmed on a cold day.  'Why don't I fit some carpet?' I thought.  I'd done it before, I could do it again.  While scanning the modern equivalent of Freecycle, Trash Nothing, without success, I attempted to scrounge an 'end-of-roll' piece from the local carpet shop ... but they were closed when I walked down to see them.

My present kitchen

Then the other Saturday, I spotted some pieces on offer from an address in Sheffield.  'I could collect later today', I eagerly replied, and by 4.0pm they were laying in the lounge.  Of course, I couldn't leave them there - in the way, and with no under-floor storage this time! - so, whether convenient or not, the only thing to do was to get on with fitting them.  One piece was almost big enough to do the job on its own, but needed cutting down to fit between the fixed furniture.  Fighting with a piece of carpet in excess of two metres square in a confined space is no joke!  The task also involved fitting it around the feet of cupboard units that are off the ground.  It was, however, a 'Mastermind' problem:  I'd started so I had to go on to the finish.

By 8.0, after a swift and delayed tea, it was 'all done bar the shouting'.  The final piece wasn't finished until earlier this week, but I'm pleased to report that, although it bears visible signs of not being a professional job, my mornings are much warmer now ... and it's not just due to the high pressure drawing warm winds across the Atlantic!

Mono-focused

We can read in the Bible about a man who had just bought five yoke of oxen and wanted to go and try them out.  He pleaded this as the reason for turning down the invitation to a meal.  It's no surprise that his would-be host was - to say the least - somewhat put out.

Five years ago, I found myself in rather a similar position as that man.  I had not only planned to go on a bell-ringing outing, but had undertaken to provide transport for my friend, who was anxious to travel 'top-down' in my sporty little car.  What I hadn't realised until it was too late, was that that very weekend coincided with my cousin's Golden Wedding Anniversary.

Fortunately, although bitterly disappointed, she did forgive me, but during the last year she's made one or two pointed reminders about the Emerald Event this weekend.  Needless to say, the date has long been engraved not only in my diary but in my memory, too.

But that's far from my only experience that matches that of the man in the Bible story.  The excitement of, and attraction to, something new is a common emotion in the human psyche.  I remember it especially from last summer, when one thing after another seemed to get in the way of my moving into my new home, not least in the early days when the anxiety was whether or not I would be accepted as a potential tenant.  Now I'm in, and getting established - slowly, and as yet to a very limited extent - in the community.  

During the autumn I responded to a plea for a new church treasurer and, after a prolonged period of suspense, it was only this week that, as a consequence, I took charge of a whole bag of files and paperwork stretching back over quite a number of years.  And that same 'must try them out' feeling was here again.

I couldn't wait to get to the end of my current WEBBS assignment so I could spread those files all over the desk and distinguish the real antiquities from what will be useful and essential for the preparation of last year's accounts.  Now that examination has been made, calm is restored, although the many unknown challenges of a newcomer taking on such a responsibility sometimes take over my dreams.  I sometimes wake up in what my mother used to describe as 'the biggest of muddle' and then don't properly sleep again until getting-up time.

By the time you read this, I shall be on my way, shall have just arrived, or shall be celebrating with the rest of the family, and for the weekend all thoughts of bank statements and spreadsheets will have been put to flight ... even if, like this blog, they will be 'back next week as usual'!

Happy Families

Long long ago, there was a card game with this name.  A gentle tap on the door of my friend Wikipedia reveals that it was created just before the Great Exhibition of 1851.  I understand that the cards are still being made, although I have no doubt that those of the present age (I haven't actually seen any) will lack the atmosphere of those that I played with a lifetime ago.

One thing that Mr. Bunn the Baker and his family lacked - apart from any imagination in naming his offspring (always Master and Miss, just like the neighbours!) - was the grandparents, an even more  essential component of the family in the days when the game was introduced than today.

I was reminded of this scenario as I looked out of my window the other day and spotted small figures running around in the garden opposite.  The scene complemented the fact that I had been doing some more research into my family history; that's the go-to occupation when other work dries up.  It's certainly higher on the list than housework although, that said, I did do some of that this week as well.  With families of one sort or another on my mind, thoughts went back to my own childhood.

One of the regular vlogs - the video version of the blog - that I watch regularly on YouTube features a woman in New Zealand who is experiencing the challenges of setting up a self-sufficient homestead amidst the demands of a tiny one, who is just beginning to crawl.  Doing things with constant interruption is not only inefficient, it is also a source of increasing frustration.  But many of my readers will already be aware of that!

My imaginative recollections led me to my grandparents' home in Norfolk.  It was handy that they lived quite close to us.  As the proverbial crow flies, it was about 200 yards away, but to walk around the block in either direction it was about half a mile, so still easily manageable.  It was easy to plan a pattern of regular visits by my mother and her sister - who lived only a short distance further away - to their parents, prima facie to keep an eye on them as they got older, and more so because my grandmother suffered from arthritis.

Another reason for such visits might well have been to relieve the restrictions imposed by their small children, especially as we grew older and, bored with toys, would find far greater interest in following our mothers around the house as they tried to do housework, faced with a constant barrage of 'What is this for?', 'How does this work?', 'Why do you do that?' and the like.  Even worse was the fear of little fingers prying into places where they shouldn't go, with the potential for damage to either the aforementioned fingers or to what they were exploring!  No doubt there would also have been times when my cousin or I - or both of us - would be parked with the older generation to enable shopping or other things to be done in comparative freedom.

I begin to see a less philanthropic motive for my mother teaching me to read.  Once I could do so, I could be parked with a book and she would be free to do whatever was necessary without the constant 'tail'.  Memories include Rupert annuals, Jack & Jill and Enid Blyton's wonderful series of Noddy books.  

Consequently, I have fond recollections of my grandmother's home, of climbing on her armchair to look at the books on the shelf above the wireless (radio set to my younger readers), or of playing on the hearthrug.  In fine weather, of course, the garden could be explored, allowing mud pies to be made or the behaviour of worms to be studied, and there is photographic evidence of grandad supervising a visit to the chicken run at the top of the back yard.

Whether it is 'toddler elements' in my YouTube watching, or the visitors who come to my neighbours, or simply the rose-tinting of the past that results from advancing years, these things have become of sharper focus just now, and seem worthy of being shared.

The Danger of Overload

I've written here before about my seemingly permanent need to have 'a project' on the go.  It's as if I long for something to dominate my life.  Is it a case of wanting something to blame when essential but unattractive aspects of running a hone get neglected?  Or conversely does this craving stem from a need to be wanted, to have some purpose in life?  In trying to explain this phenomenon, I might have stumbled on something that is critical to my understanding of my own psyche. However, I'm going to park this for now, albeit under that general classification of 'unattractive essentials'.

After half a week of feeling under considerable stress, I've been thinking about the way that bits of what I consider 'normal activity' can suddenly grow into new 'projects' and try to take over my life.  Often when this happens, it's not because of external pressure, but due to either some force within me or, conversely, a lack of self discipline in organising my life.

Regular readers will know about my work for WEBBS.  This is voluntary work that I do because I enjoy it, because I'm in sympathy with the charity that runs it, and because I find satisfaction in what I achieve by doing it.  In recent weeks, there has been an increased incentive, because I've been working with a familiar language: the Welsh tongue that I've been grappling with on an almost daily basis since I retired.  These two interests have coincided but, while my WEBBS controllers appreciate that my knowledge of the language means that I can be more useful than usual to them, there is no means of offering this real-life exercise to the on-line course that I'm following as a means of reducing the daily demand for time spent with that.

Like many voluntary jobs, control of the flow of WEBBS work is in my own hands.  I can work at whatever speed suits me, and return stuff when it's finished.  Within a day or two of my doing so, another batch is sitting in my inbox, and the cycle begins again.  If I want a spell of time off, I just have to say, and then let them know when I'm ready to pick up again.  It's just not in my nature to work slower than I know I'm able to when the work is there.

The trouble of letting something take over like this, is that other stuff, just as enjoyable, but less motivated, gets squeezed out, unless I actually 'carve out time' to allocate to it,  I've achieved this with my work for FreeCEN, transcribing the 1861 census, so that fellow researchers can use it without the need to pay a subscription.  This now conveniently fits into Sunday afternoons.  I'm on the verge of making similar arrangements for my own family history researches, by promising myself that I'll not do anything on the current batch of WEBBS work at the weekend.  This has the effect that the only competitors for family history are Church, football and housekeeping.

So what, I hear you ask, has made this week so pressured?  For upwards of thirty years, I have been a great devotee of spreadsheets.  It started so long ago that I can't remember the name of the first program to have captivated me, but I passed through Supercalc, Lotus 1-2-3 and briefly Symphony, before the present leader, Excel took control.  During the autumn months I followed up an appeal for someone to take over as treasurer of the Quaker Meeting that I now attend regularly, and the time is now approaching to process the data for last year.  The obvious tool for this is - you've guessed it - Excel.

Over the last few weeks I've been getting familiar with the previous year's reports and preparing my own workbooks ready to enter data as soon as it's provided to me.  Yes, a new project has hit the ground running to compete with everything else.  Add to this the fact that a few normally low profile but regular interests have also bubbled up and, as minutes turn to hours and hours into days, you can see that time can easily get out of control. 

I think the extreme pressures are past now, but the experience has certainly provided encouragement for thought and a bit more personal discipline!

A Four-legged Friend with a Two-legged Name!

If the bedside alarm wakens me in the morning, I'm greeted by either some classical music, the traffic bulletin or the news headlines.  A few weeks ago I awoke to the news that the road I needed to use that morning was closed because of an accident and I had the opportunity to plan an alternative route should I need it.  Fortunately that proved not to be necessary.

Like many others, on Thursday morning this week, the first thing I heard was the shocking - but realistically not unexpected - news of the Russian incursion into Ukraine.  I was stunned by the violence, saddened that diplomatic efforts had failed, angry at the Russians for taking this action and sympathetic to Ukrainians whose whole world had been turned upside-down.

At times like this, whether international or personal, I find it helpful to remember something happy and peaceful.  Luckily, I didn't have to turn back the pages of memory very far.  Last weekend, I seemed to have started a cold and decided that it would be socially preferable to keep my snuffles to myself.  Instead of taking my usual drive to worship, I made a cup of coffee and settled down in the sunshine of my lounge.  Instead of my usual armchair, I made myself comfortable in what I call 'the Maureen chair', facing in the opposite direction.

You might think it strange to give a name to a piece of furniture; you could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps it was given to me by someone called Maureen.  But you'd be wrong; in point of fact I passed it sitting by the roadside one Saturday morning as I drove to make a delivery.  When I returned with an empty van, it was still there, bearing a conspicuous notice, "Free - please take me".  I'd had the second half of my outward journey and the beginning of my return to think through whether or not I wanted it, and what I could do with it so, having examined it and found it to be undamaged, I loaded it into the van, muttered a prayer of thanks to the householder who had put it there, and the rest, as they say, is history.

In the settled days pre-Covid, I was in the habit of leading a regular Bible-study meeting and every fortnight or so, that chair was occupied by a charming, diminutive octogenarian named Maureen.  Because for the remainder of its time the chair rested in my bedroom as a 'dumping place' for my clothes, rather than somewhere to sit, Maureen was the only person who ever sat in it.  She has been happily married to John for over sixty years.  

They've had their ups and downs, like any other couple, but, so far as I know, they've faced everything together in a positive manner.  When there were disagreements, these were, it seems, accepted and eventually reconciled.  Life has taken them to a variety of homes in this country and for short periods elsewhere in the world.  To see the two of them together - let alone to converse with them regularly - was to be infected by their love, peace and understanding.

As I sat in my armchair with my early-morning cup of tea on Thursday, I remembered the time I'd sat in the other chair only a few days before and, inevitably, thoughts of the chair led me to recall its regular occupant, and the sense of peace that those thoughts brought me set me up for the rest of the day.

Air-raid Precautions!

I admit it could be a product of advancing years, but I confess to having great feelings of dissatisfaction over the last year or so.  There is so much wrong with this world.  I listen to the regular news bulletins with their stories of political wrangling, most recently the build-up of tension over Ukraine.  I hear reports from nearer home and am faced with politicians unable to follow simple instructions that they themselves have imposed, while their colleagues - or they themselves! - are processing new laws that will curtail individual freedoms in a variety of subtle, and not-so-subtle ways.

Meanwhile, the world, we hear, is drifting slowly to complete melt-down resulting from, inter alia, our seeming insurmountable dependence on fossil fuels ... quite apart from the problems caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which is far from over, may never end and is causing us to re-think our lives in terms of 'living with Covid'.  There is so much famine, violence and hardship in the third world; boatloads of refugees are arriving daily on our shores - 25,000 last year, did I hear this week? - preferring, it seems, to be shut up in near prison conditions, in fear of deportation, to staying in the countries from which they have fled.  Are they being deceived by stories of a much better life here, or simply being let down by the unrelenting selfishness of the natives?

I'm dissatisfied because I can't see a way through all these problems - notwithstanding the immeasurable difficulties of executing any solution - and I realise there is virtually nothing I can do about them.  I can send donations to the Salvation Army and other relief agencies; I can support UNHCR, contribute to appeals for food in Yemen, medical aid in Ethiopia or hurricane relief in this or that country recently hit.  But how much can the few pence that I send help to reduce the problems?

I can write imploring e-mails to my MP, but I'm afraid that he won't read yet another boring contribution to his inbox that is just like the other hundreds he gets.  And even if he did, since he's only the Shadow Defence Secretary, I guess there is little he could do anyway.  If we had a better, more co-operative system of government than the present adversarial system - did you know that the two front benches in the House of Commons are two sword-lengths apart ... and why? - then there might be some hope.

HOWEVER ...

Amidst all this macro gloom and doom, there are micro-shards of the light of satisfaction.  In the strong winds of storm Malik the other week, my back gate jammed.  It was a one-off incident and it passed out of my mind.  Then this week storm Dudley had a crack.  This time the problem was far greater; I couldn't wrench the gate free by pulling it from the inside, and had to resort to strolling innocently around the block armed with a hammer, and thumping it into submission from without.  Close examination revealed what was making this situation possible so, when I later contacted the landlord's agent to report the problem, I was able to suggest at least one possible remedy.

I had scarcely put the phone down when I looked out of my window to see that the wind had once again released the gate from its moorings and was thrashing it to and fro once more.  I needed little thought to hit upon a temporary remedy.  When I re-modelled the garden last autumn, I unearthed a large slab just smaller than the others that were there, about the same weight but, unlike them, not made of concrete.  I hadn't known what to do with it, so it has stood against the shed wall ever since its discovery.  I've now found a use for it.  It holds the gate in the closed position, at an angle that - I hope - will not allow it to be blown out of place by storm Eunice, whose winds are beginning to be felt as I write.

I end with a picture of this week's 'air-raid precaution'.

Good Grief!

I must apologise at the outset if this post seems a bit of a hotch-potch.  I'm rushing to pull together some thoughts that have been running through my head in a busy week before leaving for a family birthday celebration. 

The key words on which these thoughts congeal seem to be grief, mourning and regret.  If in doubt, I often find it's a good idea to turn to the good old Oxford Dictionary.  Grief is undoubtedly the extreme, a deep and intense feeling of sorrow. Next of these three is mourning, which seems to be time-limited in nature but also extends beyond the human, to embrace things and events. And finally regret, which is an expression of sorrow that is directed, or at least focussed on a living third party.

Looking at the WFA calendar above my desk, I see that later this month comes the anniversary of the second battle of Kut.  I know very little of my uncle William's service in the First World War.  It is confined to just four words uttered by my father in answer to a vague question in my youth, "Will was at Kut,".  Will was born in 1898 and I've come to realise that, allowing for a period of training, and perhaps overstating his age on recruitment, the earliest he would have seen action would be in 1916 or 1917.  So my interest is excited at any mention of Kut (in full, Kut al Amara) and my desire to explore Will's involvement is revived.

The second battle of Kut, which took place on 23rd February 1917, was a short engagement, not really a battle at all.  It was part of the British advance to Baghdad and a force of some 50,000 recovered the town of Kut which had been lost to the Ottomans a year or more earlier.  The much smaller Ottoman force in the town decided to leave.  The key factor for me is that most of the 50,000-strong British force 'had come from India'.  Now, were they Indian battalions, or British battalions previously posted to India?  And, if the latter, from which regiments?  I haven't so far found answers to those questions.

I regret not talking to Will before he died at the end of 1976, but he lived in another part of the county, and I think I only ever saw him twice, so it wasn't as if we had some familiarity that could have been developed.  His death pre-dated by decades the start of my interest.  I joined with my father and mourned at his graveside at the time, but in no sense does his passing cause me grief.

Someone quoted a few days ago in my presence, "Grief is like love with no place to go."  I believe the speaker disagreed with this idea ... I couldn't clearly hear the rest of her remarks.  My immediate, but unspoken, reaction was, 'No, it's love reflected by the persona of one no longer able to receive it.'  You may or may not agree.

A friend, recently-bereaved, described on social media being most upset by being told, "That was six months ago - you should be over it by now.".  What right has anyone to determine how long someone else's grief should extend?  Many will agree with me that, though it might vary in its intensity, grief is never-ending.  You never 'get over it'.

I'll finish with a sort of 'reverse illustration'.  A few months ago I got a coat from a charity shop.  As I brought it home I realised that it bore the characteristic smell of whatever it is that such places use to treat second-hand clothing to purify them.  At first I was reluctant to wear it because of the smell, but within a week or two, I noticed that the smell had gone.  The coat itself, however, is as good as the day I bought it.  The immediate impact of bereavement is very deep. As one recurring event after another comes around and has to be attended alone, each forms another painful reminder of the loss.  After that sequence of 'firsts' is over, the pain might be a little less and there is possible encouragement from the fact of 'having managed it last time'.

I saw a useful graphic on social media only this week, saying "Some people say that grief gradually gets smaller.  They're wrong.  Grief stays the same size, but life just gets bigger to accommodate it."

Like the coat that's still keeping me warm, the emptiness of grief is there to stay, and life has to adjust to that fact.  Grief becomes part of a life that takes on a new shape: a shape that, however unwelcome, is here to stay.