Recently herself said to me, “You know when people say that women talk a lot, what do they mean, compared to whom?”. “Men, maybe,” I said. “But we know that men talk more than women in meetings and lectures and tutorials and all kinds of settings,” she said. “We do,” I said. And I know it myself from living in the world and working in a male dominated environment. “They talk a lot compared to nothing,” she said. As someone who has always been gently mocked by others and, indeed myself, for talking a lot, this really made me think. I’m still thinking about it.
Before the Triumph of the Car
One of our neighbours was 70 recently and another neighbour had everyone round for a mild afternoon celebration. It was nice in a low key way. The 70 year old was born on our road and had all kinds of stories. He remembered when only five families on the road had cars. One of them was the family who lived in our house. The father would take the battery out of the car and bring it in to the house every night to make sure that it didn’t get too cold. The 70 year old remembers that one morning he heard the man who lived in my house offer a girl from another house a lift to school with his own daughter. “No thanks Mr. R,” she said, “I’m in a hurry.”
Out on the Town
When I was in Cork a while back, I very kindly and generously gave my brother a lift back from the pub about midnight. As we got back to what I suppose at some point I will have to stop calling my parents’ house, we saw a girl – late teens maybe – sitting on the pavement, propped against a wall, alone and passed out.
We parked the car and went back up the road. She seemed extremely vulnerable to me in her skimpy summer outfit. We tried to wake her up but to no real avail. Then her phone beside her started to ring so I answered it and it was a friend looking for her. I told him where we were. In the interim, the girl woke up and threw up on the pavement several times. She got up on to very shaky feet, pulled down her skirt and started to talk. I was actually surprised by her level of recovery. Her friend arrived and we handed her over and she wended unsteadily off into the night with him.
I suppose I know that young people get drunk. It’s not like people were particularly sober when I was in college. But I don’t ever remember seeing someone abandoned by friends like that on the side of the road. Maybe she slipped away from her friends. I’m not sure what the moral is here – I mean several leap to mind but who am I etc – but it made me feel a bit gloomy all round.
Lucky
Michael had his first ever Covid test a couple of weeks ago. I can’t believe he got away with it for so long. He didn’t like it much. Given my recent travails, my sympathies are limited.
Adventures in Jam
Cat, one of my commenters recommended trying rose petal jam. I was intrigued. We have a lot of roses. I tried it out. It’s a very instagrammable process but sadly I have given up instragram. I only made a small quantity. “Handmade in small batches” is very apt here I can tell you.
It’s fine but tastes more of lemon and sugar than roses. Maybe it needs to sit for a while. If you have rose petal jam recipes, I would be interested. Yes, yes, I have taken some time off work, why do you ask?
He’s Hilarious
Me: I see Microsoft have suspended new business in Russia and are scaling back operations.
Mr. Waffle: Russia has performed an illegal operation and will now shut down.
