My neighbour from up the road just texted to see whether she could drop into me about something. Mysterious, what could it be? Anyway, she’s coming at 8 during time set aside for blogging so tonight’s entry is well, entry level. Am I phoning it in? It is possible. Stay tuned for an update tomorrow on what she could have wanted.
Archives for November 2024
Early Adventures in Literature
I was thinking recently about “Stories for Eight Year Olds” which I presumably first read when I was eight. I remember it being quite a hard read the first time but enticing. It’s a great selection – with many scary and strange stories. Still occasionally I think of the story of the little girl who had a magic fishbone (if memory serves) which she could only use when the family were down on their luck. Her father kept wanting her to use it and asking anxiously “You have not lost it?” “No papa.” “Or forgotten it?” “No indeed papa.” After all these years I still remember her refrain and her capably finding solutions to problems while her father despairs. She uses it in the end though, I think the consequences were…good.
I still love to read but nothing, I suppose, will ever match the intensity of my love for those early books from the “Cat in the Hat” to the “Famous Five” and the Narnia books. I remember disappearing into the spare room and spending the whole day reading “The Swiss Family Robinson” under the bed (where I, presumably, was unlikely to be found and told to carry out unwelcome tasks).
I loved to read and it was such a gratifying habit as everyone seemed to feel it should be fully indulged except late at night when reading under the blankets was frowned upon. My parents were slightly down on comics, however, which I also adored. Cissie who minded us used to bring me a comic when she came back from her day off. It was about a pet lamb called “Lamb chop” which my parents found hilarious for reasons I did not at all understand at the time. My best friend got Mandy and Bunty and I burned with envy.
What did you like to read as a child?
It’s Not Too Early
I used to be really indignant about how Christmas started shortly before Halloween but not any more.
I have thrown my hat at it, I rejoice at the sparkling decorations. I am ready for Christmas music. I will get many of my decorations out of the shed at the start of December and I will deploy my Christmas ware shortly (incidentally, the Princess tells me she loathes it, I am crushed; someone else will be getting it in the will is all I can say.). I won’t even wait for the traditional starting gun of December 8 (Feast of the Immaculate Conception and formerly a holiday when the whole country did its Christmas shopping now deep in the Christmas season).
Slightly related, I see that vandals have destroyed Scrooge’s gravestone in Shrewsbury which my friend took me to visit when I was there. What a shame and hardly in the spirit of the extended season.
In final early Christmas news, even I draw the line at the rather gloomy Christmas decorations that have appeared in the corridor at work. Somehow worse than nothing at all.
Tell me, where do you stand on Christmas in November?
A 20th Century Person
I was born in 1969 and although, if everything goes according to plan, I will live most of my life in the 21st century, I am completely and utterly 20th century in my way of being. My four grandparents were born in the 1890s. They were children at the start of the 20th century and I feel through them I have a direct and tangible link to what life was like then. My parents were born in 1925 and 1936 and through them, I know an earlier Ireland when times were pretty tough but there were definite compensations for middle-class people like my parents who sat near the top of the social heap.
The 20th century is familiar but the 21st century is constantly surprising me with weird things. Mr. Waffle likes to say that I had the last Victorian childhood (didn’t everyone rush to bring father’s slippers to the drawing room when he came home?) and in some ways it was a bit old fashioned. My parents were older and when I was a child we lived in a reasonably big house. My parents had to join a formal dinner so my brother and sister and I ate separately in the kitchen with Cissie who minded us, cleaned the house and lived in a bedroom up the back stairs. The gardener came two days a week and we all loved him. Cissie would make him poached eggs and he would sit and eat them in the kitchen and I was not encouraged to come in and torture him with my chatter although I was keen to do so as he was a very kind, gentle and patient man. It was a time when people said all the time “Children should be seen but not heard.”
My parents had yielded to Cissie’s entreaties and ours and in the playroom there was a small black and white portable television on a high stand (or so it seemed to me) and, inadequate though it was compared to my contemporaries’ set ups, I loved it. I don’t ever remember my parents watching television in the 1970s – can this be true? It was not the 50s but in lots of ways, looking back, it felt a bit like it. Ireland was more detatched from the rest of the world then too. Air travel was still glamourous and exotic and ruinously expensive. So just to say, I may only have been born in 1969 but I feel I definitely had a link to a slightly earlier life. Sometimes, it seems so far away and alien to me; can that have been me kissing the bishop’s hand and receiving a 50p piece when he came to visit?
I suppose the really important thing is that I was 31 at the turn of the century and some of the most formative moments of your life are lived by then. Tell me, are you a 20th person or a 21st century person?
You Gotta Hoooold on for One More Day*
I am nearly at the end of November. Content is very limited indeed. I played tennis last night and woke up this morning with a sore shoulder, a sore wrist and a sore lower back. I recovered over the course of the day but I would describe this as an ominous development.
Today is the general election. I voted.
A man came and cut back everything in our garden. I am simultaneously delighted and horrified. I suppose the weeds will all grow back in due course. I took a before picture but it’s too dark for an after picture. Something for you to look forward to next week.
Tomorrow at the crack of dawn (10.00), I fly to England to visit herself.
*Just in case you need the reference. Unlikely I feel but you never know.
The Schedule
When the Princess was at Oxford (at the same time as an actual real Princess – Elizabeth of Belgium with whom she mildly overlapped socially, I mean, to say hello to not enough to be invited to Laeken for the holidays), I used to visit occasionally and at some point in this process, herself introduced the schedule.
This has been the best thing for our relationship and everyone’s sanity. Term is busy at college and she would always have lots of things on and need to write essays and study as well. Before the schedule, these things would arise at short notice for me anyway (there is no point expecting me to remember details of a social or academic engagement conveyed to me some time ago) and it was a bit unsatisfactory for both of us. Part of the problem was that I was coming for a relatively long time. I was visiting from Ireland so always came for a couple of nights at least rather than a day or even an afternoon which was much more feasible for parents based in London, say.
The schedule changed all this. I knew when she was available and when not. I was able to get dropped off at the lovely little art museum in Christ Church (recommended) or go to the shops or some other fun thing suggested by herself while she went to her tutorials or whatever. It was, as the annoying expression goes, a game changer.
I am visiting her this weekend (bringing this to you live from a glamorous airport bus station) and the schedule has just dropped and it looks amazing. I am v excited.
The schedule is now a fixture. For example, in summer 2023 I was supposed to join her in Florence for the weekend after she finished her art history course and below is the schedule she prepared. Alas, neither of us got to enjoy it. My favourite aunt died and we went to her funeral instead. But maybe we will live the Florentine adventure another time. As my London sister-in-law says, “Life is long”.
Thursday 20th DOWNTOWN
1pm Arrival
1:17pm Il Santo Bevitore for lunch
3:30pm Uffizi
7:30pm Osteria Antica Mescita San Niccolo
9:45 pm Romeo and Juliet at the Uffizi
Friday 21st SANTO SPIRITO
Brancacci chapel
8:15pm Loggia rooftop
Saturday 22nd NORTH
Museo di San Marco
8pm L’Ortone
Sunday 23rd DOWNTOWN
Market
2pm departure
It’s a lot of work for her but honestly I think she thinks it’s worth it. It’s an opportunity for her to show off a place she knows to me and both of us know what to expect. The effort she puts in to planning and booking things she knows I will like fills me with joy. In some ways no one knows me better than her and she can always judge what I will enjoy so in addition to the warm feeling I get from all her effort, I really look forward to doing the things proposed and they always deliver.
I say all this in case anyone else out there thinks spontaneity can be a bit overrated sometimes.
Also it’s the last day of Nablopomo. Posts next month will be more…spontaneous.
