Well, it never really took off for me. I started it as an experiment, a self-imposed challenge, to write a short piece each day about something in my life that had amused me or made me go hmmmn. It was supposed to be an exercise in that most difficult of genres, comic writing, and when we lived a busy life in the Northern Home Counties with the Husband at work, and The Lodger, and The Dog and a cast of other characters such as The Daughter and The Naval Nephew flitting in and out it worked for a while. Living as the only female in an otherwise male household used to amuse and fascinate me endlessly. It was grist to my mill.
I've kept it going fitfully since we retired, but there is so much less to say, so little to write about, there are so few incidents and occurrences I have struggled some weeks to raise a titter even remembering an episode or interlude. It's not that our life is dull now, it's just a wee bit too dull and uneventful for other people to have to read about, so now I am bowing out. No Farewell Tour. No Testimonial Matches. I an just quitting the stage and putting away the greasepaint.
My job here is done. Cue curtain.
House lights UP. Please leave the theatre in an orderly fashion, your limos await.
Goldenoldenlady has left the building
Monday, 24 March 2014
Monday, 10 February 2014
Apres Nous, Le Deluge...
On 23
December 2013 I drove our little family (your correspondent, The Husband & the Dog) the 150-or-so miles from mid-Wales to Oxford to
spend Christmas with The Daughter, mostly along the A44. It was a hideous
journey through driving rain, wheel-arch-deep puddles and streams of
run-off almost all the way. After we had got there safely we breathed a huge sight of relief, unpacked our bags and put the presents under the tree. When we walked around the corner a step or three to go out for a pub dinner that
evening, on neighbouring Osney Island in SW Oxford, the tributaries of the Thames which surround the
area were sludgy brown, high, fast, fearsomely full and in many places spilling over the banks, which they continued to do well beyond Boxing Day.
A few days later we read with sadness the national news report that a disabled man in his forties in a wheelchair had seemingly got stuck trying to go along a riverside street on Osney Island and couldn't find a way out or back, so that his wheelchair slipped off the treacherously muddy bank into the swollen river and he drowned.
We have had a severe sou'wester rain, wind, sleet and hail storms blowing in off the Atlantic about twice a week ever since. Sometimes they have coincided with high tides, to calamitous effect, as in poor Aberystwyth and Dawlish. The people who live in the Somerset Levels have been in despair for weeks.
And yet only NOW, when it hits the Thames on the affluent suburban outskirts of London, is the flooding such a major issue that BBC News 24 today mentions virtually nothing else except the Winter Olympics. And the cabinet has woken up from its Westminster Dream, the dream where it thinks it has the will and support of the UK people for this hastily-hatched and cobbled together Coalition Government behind it
If he plays it right, this could be Ed Miliband's finest hour, setting the opposition up nicely for the next General Election. It's an ill wind...
...if we just get shut of the jelly-jowelled, disdainful pomposity of Eric Pickles it'd be a start. Perhaps these quotes, all from Eric Pickles over the last week, will help explain my present feelings of personal animosity for the man. Check this lot out for slippery-slimy;
05/02/14
on World at One, BBC Radio 4
on BBC News Channel
on Andrew Marr
He needs to eat some raw sewage, with a side order of humble pie, and then resign.
A few days later we read with sadness the national news report that a disabled man in his forties in a wheelchair had seemingly got stuck trying to go along a riverside street on Osney Island and couldn't find a way out or back, so that his wheelchair slipped off the treacherously muddy bank into the swollen river and he drowned.
We have had a severe sou'wester rain, wind, sleet and hail storms blowing in off the Atlantic about twice a week ever since. Sometimes they have coincided with high tides, to calamitous effect, as in poor Aberystwyth and Dawlish. The people who live in the Somerset Levels have been in despair for weeks.
And yet only NOW, when it hits the Thames on the affluent suburban outskirts of London, is the flooding such a major issue that BBC News 24 today mentions virtually nothing else except the Winter Olympics. And the cabinet has woken up from its Westminster Dream, the dream where it thinks it has the will and support of the UK people for this hastily-hatched and cobbled together Coalition Government behind it
If he plays it right, this could be Ed Miliband's finest hour, setting the opposition up nicely for the next General Election. It's an ill wind...
...if we just get shut of the jelly-jowelled, disdainful pomposity of Eric Pickles it'd be a start. Perhaps these quotes, all from Eric Pickles over the last week, will help explain my present feelings of personal animosity for the man. Check this lot out for slippery-slimy;
05/02/14
on World at One, BBC Radio 4
“The Environment Agency has got a lot of stick but I think you have to see the other side of the coin that right the way through from the beginning just before Christmas, that big tidal surge, the Environment Agency has been remarkably good in giving good, accurate information to people and remarkably good I think in terms of preventing more flooding damage than might otherwise have been the case."06/02/14
on BBC News Channel
"I'm trying to get [in touch with] the Environment Agency to give them some credit for what they've done in the rest of the country and elsewhere. Actually, there will come a time where we may want to apportion blame, we may want to say it was a mistake by the Labour government."09/02/14
on Andrew Marr
“We made a mistake, there’s no doubt about that, we perhaps relied too much on the Environment Agency’s advice. I’ll apologise, I apologise unreservedly and I’m really sorry we took the advice of what we thought we were dealing with experts,"
He needs to eat some raw sewage, with a side order of humble pie, and then resign.
Saturday, 8 February 2014
In the Land of Song
My classical musical life has taken off hugely since we retired to Wales two years ago.
I have almost regained the level of listening, watching and doing I enjoyed when I lived in the Oxford area from 1981-2000. Today I sang and sang and sang. Yesterday I listened - intently.
Last evening The husband and I bade farewell to The Dog (sorry, old boy, but you can't come, they don't do "dog" tickets) and drove a dozen miles to see Mid-Wales Opera put on a performance of Acis and Galatea, by GF Handel.
Here is a review, which enthusiastically agrees with my own assessment of the show and names all the right names.
I was enraptured, ravished, seduced. We both were. It was a rather silly pastoral mythical plot, as befits a baroque masque, but it was awfully well done. I already knew the music, but I'd never seen it staged. To have both sound and vision was wonderful.
Et In Arcadia Ego, I thought.
I then again drove the same dozen miles first thing this morning to attend a lengthy Saturday rehearsal of Rossini's Petite Messe Solonnelle, which will be performed by Montgomeryshire Festival Choir on the second weekend in May, in the same theatre where we saw last night's Handel.
It's a stonking piece, in the same lustrous and luxurious C19th Italianate vein as the Verdi Requiem, only on a smaller scale; a delicate, delicious Rossini religious chamber work as opposed to Verdi's marvellous mega-bucks spiritual grandiosity.
But I think none the less of it for that.
If you live in Montgomeryshire, I will be able to order tickets for you in March.
If you aren't, I know several good B&Bs
I have almost regained the level of listening, watching and doing I enjoyed when I lived in the Oxford area from 1981-2000. Today I sang and sang and sang. Yesterday I listened - intently.
Last evening The husband and I bade farewell to The Dog (sorry, old boy, but you can't come, they don't do "dog" tickets) and drove a dozen miles to see Mid-Wales Opera put on a performance of Acis and Galatea, by GF Handel.
Here is a review, which enthusiastically agrees with my own assessment of the show and names all the right names.
I was enraptured, ravished, seduced. We both were. It was a rather silly pastoral mythical plot, as befits a baroque masque, but it was awfully well done. I already knew the music, but I'd never seen it staged. To have both sound and vision was wonderful.
Et In Arcadia Ego, I thought.
I then again drove the same dozen miles first thing this morning to attend a lengthy Saturday rehearsal of Rossini's Petite Messe Solonnelle, which will be performed by Montgomeryshire Festival Choir on the second weekend in May, in the same theatre where we saw last night's Handel.
It's a stonking piece, in the same lustrous and luxurious C19th Italianate vein as the Verdi Requiem, only on a smaller scale; a delicate, delicious Rossini religious chamber work as opposed to Verdi's marvellous mega-bucks spiritual grandiosity.
But I think none the less of it for that.
If you live in Montgomeryshire, I will be able to order tickets for you in March.
If you aren't, I know several good B&Bs
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Time To Talk 6 February 2014
It is almost 24 years since I was first admitted to a psychiatric ward and diagnosed with manic-depressive psychosis (now more commonly known as Bipolar 1) at the age of not quite 33, and given the horrendously powerful and now rarely used drug haloperidol to "bring me down". My only child had just had her 9th birthday.
Next month she will be 33, so she is now the exact age I was then.
I had a further five admissions as an in-patient in the following 7 years, until I finally screwed up my nerve, all my energies and determination, to leave and then divorce my first husband.
I have never been an in-patient since, although I continue to take stabilising medication as my brain chemistry was permanently altered by the high cortisol levels induced by the intolerable stresses in my first marriage.
On some very rare occasions I have been abused, criticised and marginalised by people I had regarded as good friends, once with scathing comments about being "on tablets" as though that automatically made me inferior to her and not a fully paid-up member of human society.
Our paths have not crossed since.
However, my adorable second husband often tells me he married me because I am mad, not in spite of it. He loves the way my mind works, its flashes of startling brilliance, its sideways-on humour, my compassion for the sufferings of others, having once suffered so much myself.
I am a survivor. I own my illness, always have, and no-one will ever make me feel ashamed for having developed the abnormal brain chemistry that prevails in 2%+ of human beings worldwide.
If you have a problem with it, dear reader, then I promise you, it is YOUR problem! LOL (manic cackle, of course...)!
Monday, 3 February 2014
A Front Row Second Soprano in the Celestial Choir
Many years ago, when I had done a going-the-extra-mile kinda good turn for a young friend who was really struggling at the time, he exclaimed afterwards that my "place in heaven is assured". I thought it was a sweet thing to say, but paid it no mind as
a) I don't believe in an afterlife
and
b) even if I did I thought there might be a bit more TO it than that
But the Jewish faith has it that whosoever says one life saves the world entire. My friend was struggling with a profound and all-pervading depression and quite powerful suicidal ideation, so maybe he might have had a point.
So even now, some fifteen or more years later, his words stray across my mind from time to time and I think to myself, well what if this life ISN'T all there is to it and The Husband is right when he quips that there is just this life, and the afterlife and THEN there is nothing? I then wonder, if I could create my own Marion-made heaven rather than just buying into a pre-manufactured one from some established faith, what shape and form would it take? After all, if it is to be perpetual bliss, all tastes do need to be catered for, right?
I'd like it to be musical. Very musical, with opportunities for all. I'd like to join a celestial choir rehearsing great works like the Verdi Requiem, or the Mozart Mass in C or the J S Bach B Minor Mass, and I'd like the rehearsals to be taken by the composers.
I'd like to have occasional tea parties where we get to have a chat with our dear departeds who have gone before, but I wouldn't like to live with them, you understand. Too many other people to meet and greet. I don't want to have a house prepared for me in heaven, but a little bedsit might be nice.
I hope there are pets. But if not, I hope we get video links to pet heaven, like cute YouTube clips available in perpetuity of our particular furry and feathered chums having a whale of a time.
I'd like there to be no rancour if I bump into anyone I ever fell out with in any permanent sort of a way whilst on earth. I'd like to assume that our final moments, our terminal illnesses and death throes will have be enough of a transformative experience to make anything we once quarelled about seem stupidly trivial in comparison.
I'd like not to have to bathe, or wash my hair, or pay any particular attention to any part of my physical entity that might remain. Except for eating and drinking. I'd like to eat and drink and socialise convivially without any digestive processes whatsoever, just a sensation on the tongue or in the mouth. But I do NOT want "foie gras to the sound of trumpets". I'd love trumpets of course (the Verdi Dies Irae would be pale relation of its earthy version without trumpets) but I cannot abide foie gras.
I'd like to sleep as much or as little as I wanted and always awake refreshed.
I'd like not to have osteoarthritis.
And I'd like to be still married to The Husband. THIS husband. Not The Daughter's Father. But in a chummy easy-going sort of a way where we each get to do his or her own version of heaven without the other ever feeling in any way neglected or ignored. Perhaps we could meet daily over one of those delicious meals where we savour but don't digest, to compare notes on which great mind he'd heard lecture that afternoon, or which great master painter I had had an art class with in the morning.
And after dinner I'd like us to be able to dance - effortlessly and elegantly - to a cracking 1930s big band in a divinely beautiful ballroom, waving nonchalantly to Fred and Ginger as we pass
All in all, I'd like heaven to be a very, very large and stimulating University of the Fourth Age on classy cruise ship in never-ending fair weather.
But I expect I shall get what I am given. We all will...
a) I don't believe in an afterlife
and
b) even if I did I thought there might be a bit more TO it than that
But the Jewish faith has it that whosoever says one life saves the world entire. My friend was struggling with a profound and all-pervading depression and quite powerful suicidal ideation, so maybe he might have had a point.
So even now, some fifteen or more years later, his words stray across my mind from time to time and I think to myself, well what if this life ISN'T all there is to it and The Husband is right when he quips that there is just this life, and the afterlife and THEN there is nothing? I then wonder, if I could create my own Marion-made heaven rather than just buying into a pre-manufactured one from some established faith, what shape and form would it take? After all, if it is to be perpetual bliss, all tastes do need to be catered for, right?
I'd like it to be musical. Very musical, with opportunities for all. I'd like to join a celestial choir rehearsing great works like the Verdi Requiem, or the Mozart Mass in C or the J S Bach B Minor Mass, and I'd like the rehearsals to be taken by the composers.
I'd like to have occasional tea parties where we get to have a chat with our dear departeds who have gone before, but I wouldn't like to live with them, you understand. Too many other people to meet and greet. I don't want to have a house prepared for me in heaven, but a little bedsit might be nice.
I hope there are pets. But if not, I hope we get video links to pet heaven, like cute YouTube clips available in perpetuity of our particular furry and feathered chums having a whale of a time.
I'd like there to be no rancour if I bump into anyone I ever fell out with in any permanent sort of a way whilst on earth. I'd like to assume that our final moments, our terminal illnesses and death throes will have be enough of a transformative experience to make anything we once quarelled about seem stupidly trivial in comparison.
I'd like not to have to bathe, or wash my hair, or pay any particular attention to any part of my physical entity that might remain. Except for eating and drinking. I'd like to eat and drink and socialise convivially without any digestive processes whatsoever, just a sensation on the tongue or in the mouth. But I do NOT want "foie gras to the sound of trumpets". I'd love trumpets of course (the Verdi Dies Irae would be pale relation of its earthy version without trumpets) but I cannot abide foie gras.
I'd like to sleep as much or as little as I wanted and always awake refreshed.
I'd like not to have osteoarthritis.
And I'd like to be still married to The Husband. THIS husband. Not The Daughter's Father. But in a chummy easy-going sort of a way where we each get to do his or her own version of heaven without the other ever feeling in any way neglected or ignored. Perhaps we could meet daily over one of those delicious meals where we savour but don't digest, to compare notes on which great mind he'd heard lecture that afternoon, or which great master painter I had had an art class with in the morning.
And after dinner I'd like us to be able to dance - effortlessly and elegantly - to a cracking 1930s big band in a divinely beautiful ballroom, waving nonchalantly to Fred and Ginger as we pass
All in all, I'd like heaven to be a very, very large and stimulating University of the Fourth Age on classy cruise ship in never-ending fair weather.
But I expect I shall get what I am given. We all will...
Friday, 31 January 2014
Another New Year Already?
Welcome to the Year of the Horse, one and all. The Husband and The Dog and I are going to mark the Lunar New Year with this recipe, courtesy of an FB friend who gave me a link to it. It is from a blog by a woman called Fuchsia Dunlop.
Photos to follow, which will be added and inserted when I have some, including action shots of The Husband sparking up his beloved double wok burner which resides splendiferously in the middle of our range cooker hob.
Gong Bao chicken with peanuts
gong bao ji ding
"This dish, also known as Kung Pao chicken, has the curious distinction of having been labelled as politically incorrect during the Cultural Revolution. It is named after a late Qing Dynasty (late nineteenth-century) governor of Sichuan, Ding Baozhen, who is said to have particularly enjoyed eating it – gong bao was his official title. This association with an Imperial bureaucrat was enough to provoke the wrath of the Cultural Revolution radicals, and it was renamed ‘fast-fried chicken cubes’ (hong bao ji ding) or ‘chicken cubes with seared chillies’ (hu la ji ding) until its political rehabilitation in the 1980s.
"Ingredients
2 boneless chicken breasts (about 300g or 3/4 pound in total)
3 cloves of garlic and an equivalent amount of ginger
5 spring onions, white parts only
2 tbsp groundnut oil
a handful of dried red chillies (at least 10)
1 tsp whole Sichuan pepper
75g (2/3 cup) roasted peanuts
For the marinade:
½ tsp salt
2 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp Shaoxing wine
1½ tsp potato flour
1 tbsp water
For the sauce:
3 tsp sugar
¾ tsp potato flour
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 tsp light soy sauce
3 tsp Chinkiang vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp chicken stock or water
"Serves 2 as a main dish with rice and one stir-fried vegetable dish, 4 with three other dishes
Photos to follow, which will be added and inserted when I have some, including action shots of The Husband sparking up his beloved double wok burner which resides splendiferously in the middle of our range cooker hob.
Gong Bao chicken with peanuts
gong bao ji ding
"This dish, also known as Kung Pao chicken, has the curious distinction of having been labelled as politically incorrect during the Cultural Revolution. It is named after a late Qing Dynasty (late nineteenth-century) governor of Sichuan, Ding Baozhen, who is said to have particularly enjoyed eating it – gong bao was his official title. This association with an Imperial bureaucrat was enough to provoke the wrath of the Cultural Revolution radicals, and it was renamed ‘fast-fried chicken cubes’ (hong bao ji ding) or ‘chicken cubes with seared chillies’ (hu la ji ding) until its political rehabilitation in the 1980s.
"Ingredients
2 boneless chicken breasts (about 300g or 3/4 pound in total)
3 cloves of garlic and an equivalent amount of ginger
5 spring onions, white parts only
2 tbsp groundnut oil
a handful of dried red chillies (at least 10)
1 tsp whole Sichuan pepper
75g (2/3 cup) roasted peanuts
For the marinade:
½ tsp salt
2 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp Shaoxing wine
1½ tsp potato flour
1 tbsp water
For the sauce:
3 tsp sugar
¾ tsp potato flour
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 tsp light soy sauce
3 tsp Chinkiang vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp chicken stock or water
"Serves 2 as a main dish with rice and one stir-fried vegetable dish, 4 with three other dishes
- Cut the chicken as evenly as possible into 1cm strips and then into small cubes. Mix with the marinade ingredients.
- Peel and thinly slice the garlic and ginger, and chop the spring onions into Icm (1/2 inch) chunks. Snip the chillies into 1.5cm (3/4 inch) sections, discarding seeds as far as possible. Combine the sauce ingredients in a small bowl.
- Pour a little groundnut oil into the wok and heat until it smokes, swirling the oil around to cover the entire base of the wok. Pour off into a heatproof container. Add 3 tbsp fresh oil and heat over a high flame. When the oil is hot but not smoking, add the chillies and Sichuan pepper and stir-fry for a few seconds until they are fragrant (take care not to burn them).
- Add the chicken and continue to stir-fry. When the chicken cubes have separated, add the ginger, garlic and spring onions and stir-fry until they are fragrant and the meat is just cooked.
- Give the sauce a stir and add to the wok, continuing to stir and toss. As soon as the sauce has become thick and lustrous, add the peanuts, mix them in, and serve immediately."
Thursday, 30 January 2014
I Feel Like Goulash Tonight...
...'cos it's just that sort of a day. The wind has dropped, it is still and relatively dry, but relentlessly, in every bloody direction you can see, GREY. Like being under a gigantic Eastern European, Cold War army-issue blanket.
There was some foolish talk on the national (i.e. UK, Scotland hasn't voted yet...) weather forecast of the possibility of snow on high ground (near) here, but good ol' Derek on BBC Wales was much more cautious and circumspect. He said there maybe some snow on the Black Mountains with the odd flurry in Powys possible this afternoon.
Powys is a very large county. I don't think my Dear Old Uni Chum who commented on my FB page last night saying that the BBC had said the rain would suddenly turn to snow at 7.00pm "where you are"quite appreciates how big. Even though she and her husband visit here us at least once a year its very size and scope and variety of terrain may have eluded them. Our fault for being such good hosts and so generous with the drink.
They actually met at our wedding, these friends, which happened in the Montgomeryshire bit of Powys on a glorious late-May day. He was the handsome be-kilted usher in charge of The Dog (who was a mere one-year-old whippersnapper when we married in 2003) and sat with his charge on his tartan knee in the back pew nearest the door during the service. A good-looking Scotsman in a kilt attending to a lovely wee West Highland White Terrier? Oh how cute, you cry and yes! They looked divine!
There was also a black lab in a side aisle, with her human family, but I am not sure the vicar (aka Perpetua from Perpetually In Transit) knew about that. It was too hot to leave a dog in a car for forty minutes even with the windows chinked. Needs Must, and we are all God's creatures.
Our usher heard his destined but not-yet-met beloved give the Old Testament reading, from The Song of Solomon, yes that one. She did it beeeaaauuutifully.
They got talking at the reception. And haven't stopped talking to each other since. They got married three years later. I love that story. "Out of a wedding comes a wedding" goes the proverb, and in our case it actually happened. When you think of the words he heard his wife speak before he'd ever even clapped eyes on her it is an uncanny, even slightly spooky tale.
Cue Twilight Zone music...
Anyhoo, no snow here. It doesn't feel like snow, and I've stuck my nose out of the door and it definitely doesn't smell like snow, either, but in any case it's still goulash for us, 'cos it's just that kind of day.
There was some foolish talk on the national (i.e. UK, Scotland hasn't voted yet...) weather forecast of the possibility of snow on high ground (near) here, but good ol' Derek on BBC Wales was much more cautious and circumspect. He said there maybe some snow on the Black Mountains with the odd flurry in Powys possible this afternoon.
Powys is a very large county. I don't think my Dear Old Uni Chum who commented on my FB page last night saying that the BBC had said the rain would suddenly turn to snow at 7.00pm "where you are"quite appreciates how big. Even though she and her husband visit here us at least once a year its very size and scope and variety of terrain may have eluded them. Our fault for being such good hosts and so generous with the drink.
They actually met at our wedding, these friends, which happened in the Montgomeryshire bit of Powys on a glorious late-May day. He was the handsome be-kilted usher in charge of The Dog (who was a mere one-year-old whippersnapper when we married in 2003) and sat with his charge on his tartan knee in the back pew nearest the door during the service. A good-looking Scotsman in a kilt attending to a lovely wee West Highland White Terrier? Oh how cute, you cry and yes! They looked divine!
There was also a black lab in a side aisle, with her human family, but I am not sure the vicar (aka Perpetua from Perpetually In Transit) knew about that. It was too hot to leave a dog in a car for forty minutes even with the windows chinked. Needs Must, and we are all God's creatures.
Our usher heard his destined but not-yet-met beloved give the Old Testament reading, from The Song of Solomon, yes that one. She did it beeeaaauuutifully.
They got talking at the reception. And haven't stopped talking to each other since. They got married three years later. I love that story. "Out of a wedding comes a wedding" goes the proverb, and in our case it actually happened. When you think of the words he heard his wife speak before he'd ever even clapped eyes on her it is an uncanny, even slightly spooky tale.
Cue Twilight Zone music...
Anyhoo, no snow here. It doesn't feel like snow, and I've stuck my nose out of the door and it definitely doesn't smell like snow, either, but in any case it's still goulash for us, 'cos it's just that kind of day.
Saturday, 25 January 2014
Oh, OK, then, you CAN have some photos...but only a handful
Mrs Charlotte Dolly and her adopted daughter,
Miss Amelia van der Graff, finish breakfast
Miss Amelia van der Graff, finish breakfast
Edith the nursery maid checks on baby Louisa Dolly
Edgar the white terrier and Lionel the spaniel grow hopeful that
Old Mrs Dolly will soon take them on their morning constitutional
In the afternoon visitors call by to practise their music together
and entertain Old Mrs Dolly with Beethoven's Archduke Trio
and entertain Old Mrs Dolly with Beethoven's Archduke Trio
The dogs think string instruments sound like cats,
but are well-trained in not barking
but are well-trained in not barking
Friday, 24 January 2014
By Popular Demand...
I woke
up at 8.30am this morning and then - wait for it - got up, put on
some socks and a cardie over my PJs and then came down and made the
coffee. This is some sort of record for late January. However, I am now at a slight loss now to know what to do with the extra time, so I thought to myself, I thought, erm, well may as well BLOG.
Because we are by way of being neighbours (five miles is cheek by jowl, almost, in the blissfully underpopulated stretches of rural mid- Wales we inhabit) I see more of my Big Sis (aka Perpetua of Perpetually in Transit on Blogger) than I do of any other family member apart from The Daughter, The Husband and The Dog. Of late she has been encouraging me/repeatedly requesting/nagging me (strike as you think appropriate) to do a blog update on The Dolly House, which has taken shape and form, been decorated and furnished by me and had lighting and twinkly fire grates installed (thanks to The Husband) and is populated by a large extended family of dinky little dolls, all set in the early Victorian era of about 1845-59.
The menfolk are between 5.5" and 6" tall in this 1:12, inch-to-a-foot miniature world, the ladies and their female servants are about 5" to 5.5" and the children considerably less, right down to the baby who is an inch-and-a half long and meant to be about three months old. It took me quite some days to get into the swing of dressing them in handmade clothes to my own design, the very smallness eluded me at first, and my early attempts were clumsy and ungainly. I ordered some specialist books, and watched various YouTube videos, and then I gradually got the hang of the scale, started using very fine fabrics (fine cottons like Liberty Lawn are particularly good but silk is a nightmare to handle), cut the pattern pieces small with a narrow seem allowance, pressing them open as I went and hand-stitched everything in the teensiest stitches I could muster. I have even learnt to repaint the faces in modelling enamels, where I felt the need, and my crowning achievement has to be learning to re-wig dolls in viscose or mohair fibre, and add facial hair for the chaps.
I have been Very Busy. I said so yesterday, didn't I? NOW do you believe me?!
I fit and stitch straight onto the dolls, which have soft arms and legs and torso over a flexible pose-able wire armature, but have porcelain arms/hands, lower legs/feet and shoulders/neck/head. So a lady has pantaloons fitted first and stitched to the body at the waist (and gathered at the ankle if the design demands), then petticoat skirts after that, then her outer dress skirt over that, and then the sleeves stitched at the shoulder, and finally the dress bodice over that, with any trim or lace added beforehand in the case of cuffs and at the hem, and afterwards for the collars or neckline.
I have a taken about a gazillion photos of the process, step-by-step, and also of the room settings and the dollies going about their daily dolly business. I have put lots of albums of the best of these photos on Facebook. I could edit it down to half a dozen and add them to this text, but the story and weeks and weeks of work would be lost in such an abridgement, and the choice of which to use will be very time-consuming for me, so I am now going to go over to my Facebook age and change the privacy settings to "public" on all the dolls house albums. That way, you can find Marion Griffin Bulmer on Facebook and view the photos at your leisure when it suits you, and leave the odd comment next to them if you like.
So there, Big Sis, you can stop your "encouragement" now. I have at last done as I was told. Obedience has always been slightly eventual for me. The Dog takes after me in that.
Enjoy!
Because we are by way of being neighbours (five miles is cheek by jowl, almost, in the blissfully underpopulated stretches of rural mid- Wales we inhabit) I see more of my Big Sis (aka Perpetua of Perpetually in Transit on Blogger) than I do of any other family member apart from The Daughter, The Husband and The Dog. Of late she has been encouraging me/repeatedly requesting/nagging me (strike as you think appropriate) to do a blog update on The Dolly House, which has taken shape and form, been decorated and furnished by me and had lighting and twinkly fire grates installed (thanks to The Husband) and is populated by a large extended family of dinky little dolls, all set in the early Victorian era of about 1845-59.
The menfolk are between 5.5" and 6" tall in this 1:12, inch-to-a-foot miniature world, the ladies and their female servants are about 5" to 5.5" and the children considerably less, right down to the baby who is an inch-and-a half long and meant to be about three months old. It took me quite some days to get into the swing of dressing them in handmade clothes to my own design, the very smallness eluded me at first, and my early attempts were clumsy and ungainly. I ordered some specialist books, and watched various YouTube videos, and then I gradually got the hang of the scale, started using very fine fabrics (fine cottons like Liberty Lawn are particularly good but silk is a nightmare to handle), cut the pattern pieces small with a narrow seem allowance, pressing them open as I went and hand-stitched everything in the teensiest stitches I could muster. I have even learnt to repaint the faces in modelling enamels, where I felt the need, and my crowning achievement has to be learning to re-wig dolls in viscose or mohair fibre, and add facial hair for the chaps.
I have been Very Busy. I said so yesterday, didn't I? NOW do you believe me?!
I fit and stitch straight onto the dolls, which have soft arms and legs and torso over a flexible pose-able wire armature, but have porcelain arms/hands, lower legs/feet and shoulders/neck/head. So a lady has pantaloons fitted first and stitched to the body at the waist (and gathered at the ankle if the design demands), then petticoat skirts after that, then her outer dress skirt over that, and then the sleeves stitched at the shoulder, and finally the dress bodice over that, with any trim or lace added beforehand in the case of cuffs and at the hem, and afterwards for the collars or neckline.
I have a taken about a gazillion photos of the process, step-by-step, and also of the room settings and the dollies going about their daily dolly business. I have put lots of albums of the best of these photos on Facebook. I could edit it down to half a dozen and add them to this text, but the story and weeks and weeks of work would be lost in such an abridgement, and the choice of which to use will be very time-consuming for me, so I am now going to go over to my Facebook age and change the privacy settings to "public" on all the dolls house albums. That way, you can find Marion Griffin Bulmer on Facebook and view the photos at your leisure when it suits you, and leave the odd comment next to them if you like.
So there, Big Sis, you can stop your "encouragement" now. I have at last done as I was told. Obedience has always been slightly eventual for me. The Dog takes after me in that.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, 21 January 2014
I've been Very Busy - OK?
No blogging done, at least not by way of writing my own, since August 2013. The Dolly House took over, and then my annual episode of SAD shortened my waking time by two or three hours a day, then there was Christmas, and then visitors and visiting. But today I thought, oh go ON write one, so I shall.
I have been awake, up and about, with weary smeary bleary blurry eyes, but awake since 10.30am! The Husband and I both have sight test and eye examination this afternoon. The ophthalmologist is likely to take two steps backwards and exclaim Mrs Bulmer, how have you been getting around without being covered in bruises from bumping into furniture? and hand me a white stick. Either that or he will pop out my eyeballs, sigh heavily, give them a good polish with a lint-free cloth, and then fit them back in.
Mild exaggeration, but I expect tutting. Last sight test I can remember was December 2005. There may have been one since, but I didn't have any new specs made up, and I rarely wear the distance ones I had made in 2005, and only use off-the-peg readers for music and the instructions on packets. Use it or lose it is my approach to my eyes...the only part of my body I exercise apart from my vocal cords. I have about four pairs of sun glasses and even more reading specs from 1.5+ to about 2.5+in strength, so I am guessing my reading add has gone up. Otherwise, except for the mornings, my eyesight is pretty much OK.
More to the point, The Husband is being tested. As he has Type II Diabetes (controlled by diet) and a family history of glaucoma, he really needs to be checked out every couple of years without fail. And because I am the female spouse it is rather down to me to arrange it, as I am in charge of the calendar and pretty much everything that goes in it. T'was ever thus when a couple marries, no?
The Husband calls me the Social Secretary, when he is not referring to me as the War Office.
And yet, I let him live...
I have been awake, up and about, with weary smeary bleary blurry eyes, but awake since 10.30am! The Husband and I both have sight test and eye examination this afternoon. The ophthalmologist is likely to take two steps backwards and exclaim Mrs Bulmer, how have you been getting around without being covered in bruises from bumping into furniture? and hand me a white stick. Either that or he will pop out my eyeballs, sigh heavily, give them a good polish with a lint-free cloth, and then fit them back in.
Mild exaggeration, but I expect tutting. Last sight test I can remember was December 2005. There may have been one since, but I didn't have any new specs made up, and I rarely wear the distance ones I had made in 2005, and only use off-the-peg readers for music and the instructions on packets. Use it or lose it is my approach to my eyes...the only part of my body I exercise apart from my vocal cords. I have about four pairs of sun glasses and even more reading specs from 1.5+ to about 2.5+in strength, so I am guessing my reading add has gone up. Otherwise, except for the mornings, my eyesight is pretty much OK.
More to the point, The Husband is being tested. As he has Type II Diabetes (controlled by diet) and a family history of glaucoma, he really needs to be checked out every couple of years without fail. And because I am the female spouse it is rather down to me to arrange it, as I am in charge of the calendar and pretty much everything that goes in it. T'was ever thus when a couple marries, no?
The Husband calls me the Social Secretary, when he is not referring to me as the War Office.
And yet, I let him live...
Monday, 12 August 2013
It All Makes Work...
The Husband and The Naval Nephew (who is staying a couple of days druing his summer leave from the Royal Navy) are putting up the new tent in the front garden as a trial run. No problem, I hear you cry, two strapping chaps, and both technically trained engineers/mechanics. There are one or two obstacles;
1) The tent was an eBay "bargain" and came without poles or pegs
2) The manufacturer failed to give us the specs for replacements when I e-mailed, but merely answered with a pro forma about suppliers/retailers doing all that sort of thing
3) So we looked at what The Husband calls The Destructions that came with the tent, and also watched (several times) a 5 minute YouTube video showing two people from a major supplier putting up the very same tent in a very neat and orderly fashion1) The tent was an eBay "bargain" and came without poles or pegs
2) The manufacturer failed to give us the specs for replacements when I e-mailed, but merely answered with a pro forma about suppliers/retailers doing all that sort of thing
4) Then I did a back-of-an-envelope calculation (actually on the back of an envelope, how good is that?) and ordered replacement kits for the three main poles and the window frame structure, and several guy and tent pegs
which all arrived today, so
5) The men have spread the tent out in the front garden and discovered it's probably bigger than the lawn
6) The lawn is on a slope. Quite a steep slope
7) The Naval Nephew hasn't had breakfast yet, and he's a lad who values his food
8) I have bribed them with the promise of sausages sarnies as soon as it's up and recognisable as a tent, albeit a tent on a slope
It looks robustly tent-like and quite sensible from this angle, wouldn't you say?
But go round to the other side and the tribulations of trialling a tent on a slope are all too evident
We may have to wait quite some time for weather warm enough to give us an incentive to leave an actual real house with beds, bathroom etc and instead take up residence in a sky blue lightweight fabric igloo. Last time we camped, in Anglesey in July, it was during an Azores High with temperatures in the upper 20s or 30s centigrade. Today it is 17c and cloudy.
Maybe next year...
Maybe next year...
Wednesday, 7 August 2013
Picking Up Threads
It's quite a while since I troubled the ether with my inconsequential tippy-tap-typing, which is usually a sign that there is nothing happening worth setting down, or so much happening I don't have time to gather my thoughts and write. As ever, it's a bit of both. When the weather is warm and dry I am outside in it, if it is overcast or raining, I am catching up on the chores that were neglected when the sun shone, and if we have visitors I am too busy nattering to them to natter on th'interweb.
We have also been away again, on a sort of royal progress through Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire staying with close family and dear old chums. Last Thursday we drove the MGB over to Gloucestershire on a very hot and sticky day, and stayed with my nearest-in-age sister. Her husband was away elsewhere, so it was just the three of us humans, and two dogs, ours and her new granddog, a five-year-old chihuahua.
He elder daughter has taken this little creature into her life as an urgent re-homing and into the family's hearts, but she was away on holiday so the granddog was with granny. The little dog has had a troubled and unsettled past so is an anxious creature, and as is often the case with little dogs this anxiety can translate into a huge show of aggression with strangers. We ignored her yapping and snarling and snapping at our ankles and let her approach, held out the back of our hands to sniff, and - eventually - lick, so that after a time her neurosis abated and she let us fuss her and even pick her up for a cuddle. Trouble was, every time we left the room she forgot who we were and so the whole rigmarole started up again!
Thankfully she is fully accepting - but unfortunately a little too protective of - her new female humans, my sister and my niece, but slightly less so of my brother-in-law, who occasionally comes in for the being-kept-at-bay treatment. But it has only been five weeks, so her confidence that she is somewhere safe and accepting has yet to grow.
It's lovely to see my sister fussing over a little life as, like with me, there are no grandchildren even on the horizon yet, even though our three daughters are all in their thirties. She chatters away to the dog very soothingly, so it's easy to see why she is one of the humans the little creature has bonded to and feels protective of, even if the expression of her attachment can be this annoying running up and snapping at ankles. On the second day I decided to show some irritation with it and barked at her to get in her bed, which she did immediately, somewhat stunned, so that may be the way to go in future!
Our next port of call was the Cotswold market town of Witney, where I lived for two decades whilst in a relationship with and then married to The Daughter's father. He has moved to France since he retired, renting out the erstwhile family home, so I could relax knowing there could be no annoying bumping into one another on the street. See some of my earlier postings for why I feel like this! It's mostly that he goes on and on about himself and shows nothing more than a fleeting perfunctory interest in our doings, The Husband's and mine. The Young People would say he is a long way up his own arse.
An excellent expression for extreme self-absorption, don't you think?
We stayed overnight there with old friends of mine I have known for almost thirty years, our daughters were playmates and school contemporaries, we socialised and helped each other out with childcare, all that young parents sort of stuff. The husband is a recently-retired GP, and the wife is a part-time singing teacher and choir conductor, she and I have done a lot of gigs together over the years, and shared the same singing teachers when younger. A lot of growing tendrils are intertwined which - although we see each other only annually, at most - means the conversation never wanes when we are together. There is something so comfortable about conversing with people who need little or no explanation and background-filling. Picking up the threads and catching up is so easy.
Of course, The Husband has only known them a relatively short time as he isn't from the same area and only knows them through me, but he and the husband of the other couple share a surprisingly large number of interests and get along famously.
The sun shone, we sat at the shaded outdoor table in their pretty walled garden and felt easy and relaxed. I suppose as one ages one appreciates the friendships that go a bit deeper even more, without actually relying on them. After all, we all have our families and other friends we see more often to turn to in emergencies, and the like. The more distant Old Chums aren't for that. They are for touching base with who we used to be and celebrating who we have become, they are a way of plotting the journey, and sometimes even the struggles, between the two.
So after an enchanting interlude of twenty-four hours with them we moved on to Oxford itself, where The Daughter, Her Husband and Our Grand-dog live. We had two nights with them, another couple of days of ease and relaxation with nothing intense or jarring about it. They have been together for seven years now, married two of them, and we have gradually got to know our son-in-law in that time and to see him for the sterling character he is. Of course, The Daughter wouldn't have chosen him, and married him, had he not been, but it's wonderful to have it confirmed every time we see him.
Their dog, a beautifully bonkers springer spaniel, is also a re-homed animal. They acquired him two years ago when he was five. He is affectionate, calm and welcoming to both us, and also to his "uncle" (our Westie), who is a senior statesman next to him, being now eleven to his seven. There has never been a growl or a snarl between them, they just co-exist alongside one another with perfect equilibrium.
How different would our lives be if The Daughter had that chihuahua, and not my niece! EEEK! Funny how life pans out for the best...
We have also been away again, on a sort of royal progress through Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire staying with close family and dear old chums. Last Thursday we drove the MGB over to Gloucestershire on a very hot and sticky day, and stayed with my nearest-in-age sister. Her husband was away elsewhere, so it was just the three of us humans, and two dogs, ours and her new granddog, a five-year-old chihuahua.
He elder daughter has taken this little creature into her life as an urgent re-homing and into the family's hearts, but she was away on holiday so the granddog was with granny. The little dog has had a troubled and unsettled past so is an anxious creature, and as is often the case with little dogs this anxiety can translate into a huge show of aggression with strangers. We ignored her yapping and snarling and snapping at our ankles and let her approach, held out the back of our hands to sniff, and - eventually - lick, so that after a time her neurosis abated and she let us fuss her and even pick her up for a cuddle. Trouble was, every time we left the room she forgot who we were and so the whole rigmarole started up again!
Thankfully she is fully accepting - but unfortunately a little too protective of - her new female humans, my sister and my niece, but slightly less so of my brother-in-law, who occasionally comes in for the being-kept-at-bay treatment. But it has only been five weeks, so her confidence that she is somewhere safe and accepting has yet to grow.
It's lovely to see my sister fussing over a little life as, like with me, there are no grandchildren even on the horizon yet, even though our three daughters are all in their thirties. She chatters away to the dog very soothingly, so it's easy to see why she is one of the humans the little creature has bonded to and feels protective of, even if the expression of her attachment can be this annoying running up and snapping at ankles. On the second day I decided to show some irritation with it and barked at her to get in her bed, which she did immediately, somewhat stunned, so that may be the way to go in future!
Our next port of call was the Cotswold market town of Witney, where I lived for two decades whilst in a relationship with and then married to The Daughter's father. He has moved to France since he retired, renting out the erstwhile family home, so I could relax knowing there could be no annoying bumping into one another on the street. See some of my earlier postings for why I feel like this! It's mostly that he goes on and on about himself and shows nothing more than a fleeting perfunctory interest in our doings, The Husband's and mine. The Young People would say he is a long way up his own arse.
An excellent expression for extreme self-absorption, don't you think?
We stayed overnight there with old friends of mine I have known for almost thirty years, our daughters were playmates and school contemporaries, we socialised and helped each other out with childcare, all that young parents sort of stuff. The husband is a recently-retired GP, and the wife is a part-time singing teacher and choir conductor, she and I have done a lot of gigs together over the years, and shared the same singing teachers when younger. A lot of growing tendrils are intertwined which - although we see each other only annually, at most - means the conversation never wanes when we are together. There is something so comfortable about conversing with people who need little or no explanation and background-filling. Picking up the threads and catching up is so easy.
Of course, The Husband has only known them a relatively short time as he isn't from the same area and only knows them through me, but he and the husband of the other couple share a surprisingly large number of interests and get along famously.
The sun shone, we sat at the shaded outdoor table in their pretty walled garden and felt easy and relaxed. I suppose as one ages one appreciates the friendships that go a bit deeper even more, without actually relying on them. After all, we all have our families and other friends we see more often to turn to in emergencies, and the like. The more distant Old Chums aren't for that. They are for touching base with who we used to be and celebrating who we have become, they are a way of plotting the journey, and sometimes even the struggles, between the two.
So after an enchanting interlude of twenty-four hours with them we moved on to Oxford itself, where The Daughter, Her Husband and Our Grand-dog live. We had two nights with them, another couple of days of ease and relaxation with nothing intense or jarring about it. They have been together for seven years now, married two of them, and we have gradually got to know our son-in-law in that time and to see him for the sterling character he is. Of course, The Daughter wouldn't have chosen him, and married him, had he not been, but it's wonderful to have it confirmed every time we see him.
Their dog, a beautifully bonkers springer spaniel, is also a re-homed animal. They acquired him two years ago when he was five. He is affectionate, calm and welcoming to both us, and also to his "uncle" (our Westie), who is a senior statesman next to him, being now eleven to his seven. There has never been a growl or a snarl between them, they just co-exist alongside one another with perfect equilibrium.
How different would our lives be if The Daughter had that chihuahua, and not my niece! EEEK! Funny how life pans out for the best...
Saturday, 20 July 2013
Mr Wonderful
This man is - in my admittedly biased opinion - a near saint, a legend, an icon and an undoubted genius.
I shall love him until I die. If he goes before I do, and if I still have an ounce of awareness left in me, when I hear he is gone I shall weep. I do not feel this for anyone else I have never met.
I guess that is what it is to be a fan, then.
In case you were wondering just who inspires me to write thus, please read on
I shall love him until I die. If he goes before I do, and if I still have an ounce of awareness left in me, when I hear he is gone I shall weep. I do not feel this for anyone else I have never met.
I guess that is what it is to be a fan, then.
In case you were wondering just who inspires me to write thus, please read on
Thursday, 18 July 2013
Hotter Than July (Part II)
Yesterday's BBC Regional News in the evening had two interesting Welsh
weather statistics for us to chew on whilst we sweltered gently in a
post-prandial haze; Wales has been the sunniest (but not hottest) part
of the UK in this present bout of serious summer. Other areas have had
higher temperatures, but we have had more hours of sunshine. Add to
which the fact that by yesterday - 17 July - we had already had
our average July monthly quota of sunshine, even though we were only just
past the half-way mark for the month.
I was suitably impressed.
It will explain why the North Welsh resorts and historic sites we visited in our three-day break away from our mid-Wales country fastness had an exotic continental feel to them. We sat in pavement cafes and the outdoor seating areas of restaurants, dog under the table grabbing what shade he could find, all of us heavy with heat, soporific with sunshine, our walking pace slowed to an idle saunter, and even that felt a mite rushed at times.
I was suitably impressed.
It will explain why the North Welsh resorts and historic sites we visited in our three-day break away from our mid-Wales country fastness had an exotic continental feel to them. We sat in pavement cafes and the outdoor seating areas of restaurants, dog under the table grabbing what shade he could find, all of us heavy with heat, soporific with sunshine, our walking pace slowed to an idle saunter, and even that felt a mite rushed at times.
Our View at Lunch in Criccieth on Monday
We ate virtually all our meals out of doors, but for one late-night
curry and the breakfast part of the B&B we had booked for our first
night away. The dog was in our bedroom with a deep bowl of cool water
and the telly on low while we went out for the first of those, as all
the open restaurants with outdoor seating areas in Criccieth were
already fully booked, and its being Monday most other eating places were
enjoying their night off. Good old curry houses! Open until eleven,
seven nights a week. Boy! Do those Bangladeshi chaps WORK?! I suppose
you were aware that the vast majority of "Indian" restaurants in the UK
were run and staffed by Bangladeshis. If not, please accept this
curious fact with my compliments and a liqueur on the house. We always
get given a liqueur on the house after a curry, don't you?
My Boys at Aberdaron
Abersoch Bay
Some of the Smaller Houses with Sea Views
The first afternoon away we spent on the very lovely Lleyn Peninsula,
spending the afternoon on the beach at Aberdaron where I swam in cool crystal-clear water and emerged exceedingly refreshed. The
Husband and The Dog merely paddled sedately (see above), being boys and therefore frightened stiff of a drop of cold water. Later
we took a walk around the harbour walls at Abersoch, which is like a
Celtic St Tropez, lots of yachts and motorised gin palaces moored in the
harbour and the bay and socking great detached houses, millionaire
nests every one, overlooking the water from the wooded hills above (also
see above). All exceedingly couth and expensive, and in the weather we
were having exactly like the French or Italian Riviera, on a smaller
scale, and all the prettier for that.
After our night at Criccieth, we headed off to Caernarfon, parked the
MGB slap bang next to the castle and set out to explore the grids of
streets of brightly painted houses inside the old mediaeval walls. We
drank a pre-lunch drink under a huge umbrella outside a timber-framed pub
which was festooned with flowers, people-watching as the streets filled
with tourist parties from Spain, and then America, and then the Far
East. Not being schooled in oriental languages I can't be more precise
than that. Once they would have been almost certainly Japanese, now
they are more likely to be South Korean or Chinese, I guess.
On the swing bridge at the entrance to Caernarfon harbour
Then, amongst the throng I suddenly spot a familiar face from home! My choir conductor and her husband are also gadding about spending their Grey Pounds on a couple of nights away from home, we are told. They joined us at our table and another round of drinks and much hilarity ensued. The four of us having exchanged local musical gossip and put the world to rights the two couples settled up and went their separate ways in search of lunch.
Mid-afternoon we drove along the Menai Straits to the first road bridge and crossed over to Ynys Mon - aka Anglesey. We had thrown our tent, bedrolls and sleeping bags in the boot of the MG and the plan was to camp somewhere on the island the second night. After tootling through the lanes and along the coast to Beaumaris and slightly beyond we decided that our fondness for watching the sun sink into the waves rather dictated we look on the SW side of the island for somewhere to pitch for the night, and so we crossed over the middle of the island and started to look for a billet.
In the end we settled on Rhosneigr, which is right next door to RAF Valley where Prince William works as a search and rescue helicopter pilot, and it is also the nest for the supersonic fighters we love so much which contour-chase through the part of the Severn Valley where we live. It would be fun to see them take off and land during working hours (8.30am-5.30pm on days of good clear weather), we thought. What we hadn't appreciated was that the Sea King helicopters took off, landed and flew very low overhead at night as well, with one roaring thundering flight crossing the sky just above our tent at 2.00am! That, and the baked-hard ground and our very thin and totally inadequate sponge rubber bedrolls, added up to a fitful night's sleep, and by 9.00am the tent was far too hot to stay in and doze to catch up on zzzs. We were going to be in for another sweltering day.
Having struck camp and packed up we drove the short distance to Aberffaw, where we had a Full Welsh Breakfast in a delightful cafe, in a rose-filled courtyard, and then we walked to the little rocky bay where can be found The Church in the Sea. I'd love to show you our photos of that, a small white-washed stone church on an island that can only be reached at low tide, but we haven't got round to uploading the photos off The Husband's smartphone yet.
We crossed back to mainland Wales at about noon and decided to take the Snowdonia route home, breaking for yet another al fresco lunch in Beddgelert. Such self-indulgence! Not for us home-made sandwiches and flasks of tea in a lay-by, I am afraid. We like to eat out and eat well, in comfort, with bar staff and waiters and loos nearby. I have got soft in our old age, and The Husband also has a lifelong dislike of picnics, and sandwiches full of sand, or butties full of bugs.
We were back home by late teatime, hot from the journey in an open-topped car in temperatures in the upper 20sC or possible even 30C, and tired after our restless night under canvas (well, two layers of thin nylon, in the interests of accuracy), and glad to be back, to feed the birds, water the plant pots and catch up on some sleep. Next adventure we aim to head south, to New Quay, and Tenby, and The Gower, and do more camping. As this weather is set to last at least another week, perhaps even a fortnight, that may happen sooner than you'd think, but not until we've bought an inflatable double mattress and a pump!
Sunday, 7 July 2013
Hotter Than July
At last we are booked in for some proper summer weather here in the UK, well most of us are. After the summer we had in 2012 seeing a row of yellow orbs lined up in the BBC website's five-day forecast is a strangely unfamiliar sight. Today is Men's Finals day at Wimbledon, and temperatures of up to 30C have been mentioned for that part of London. Inside the Centre Court is will be sweltering.
So all the best to the finalists in withstanding that heat, as well as four or five hours of gladiatorial combat. I am not the least bit bnothered who wins, as I know in advance that it will be the best man on the day. That's juist how tennis works, and no-one ever makes excuses for themselves if they lose, not in public or in interviews anyhow. That is part of the reason I love watching Wimbledon, that and the ingenious scoring method in tennis which makes it so very exciting to watch.
I am not partisan in nationalist terms. I find it impossible to support a team or a person just because they come from some part of the UK. However, I have a sneaking and growing admiration for the Welsh rugby team, and support them (in the sense I am pleased to see them do well) in their televised matches, mostly beacuse I know how much it matters to many of our lovely neighbours.
I must tackle learning the Welsh National Anthem in Welsh. It's a wonderfully stirring one, on a par with the Marseillaise. A bloody good sing!
Here in mid-Wales the mercury will hover around 25C-26C at the warmest point of the day, we are told. That's just nice. Mid to upper 70sF for those of you who prefer old money. Any cloud that floats by with be white and fluffy, my very favourite sort of sky. I know a lot of people love a sky of pure peerless blue, but like an occasional lofty cloud to enable me to fix on it and get some sense of the height of the atmosphere towering above us, miraculously giving us air to breathe and shielding us from excess harmful rays. When I was a kid I used to love to lie in a field or on the heather, sprawled on my back in total relaxation, watching the billowing clouds float across the sky. I guess I was a bit of a solitary dreamer, even back then. I still need a few minutes or hours a day of quiet to think my own thoughts, or I can feel very overstretched and pulled tight.
My love of the sky has given me a great enjoyment of flying (I even feel excited at take off and landing) and enabled me to screw up my nerve and be a passenger in a friend's microlight (which is exactly like flying strapped into camping chair attached to a lawn-mower engine) a couple of years ago, despite my slight fear of heights. I loved it but for the fact I could not bring myself to look straight down, to see my own foot dangling 2,500ft above the ground. Too freaky! Also, it was jolly cold up there, even on a sunny day in August. My ankles and neck were freezing despite wearing a borrowed ski suit.
So today is my perfect sort of temperate climatic offering: hot but not sweltering, blue skies with whisps of white cloud, and a do-as-you-please Sunday stretching ahead of us. Sorry if that sounds awfully smug, but it happens too infrequently in the UK for us to feel complacent. Let us enjoy it while we can !
So all the best to the finalists in withstanding that heat, as well as four or five hours of gladiatorial combat. I am not the least bit bnothered who wins, as I know in advance that it will be the best man on the day. That's juist how tennis works, and no-one ever makes excuses for themselves if they lose, not in public or in interviews anyhow. That is part of the reason I love watching Wimbledon, that and the ingenious scoring method in tennis which makes it so very exciting to watch.
I am not partisan in nationalist terms. I find it impossible to support a team or a person just because they come from some part of the UK. However, I have a sneaking and growing admiration for the Welsh rugby team, and support them (in the sense I am pleased to see them do well) in their televised matches, mostly beacuse I know how much it matters to many of our lovely neighbours.
I must tackle learning the Welsh National Anthem in Welsh. It's a wonderfully stirring one, on a par with the Marseillaise. A bloody good sing!
Here in mid-Wales the mercury will hover around 25C-26C at the warmest point of the day, we are told. That's just nice. Mid to upper 70sF for those of you who prefer old money. Any cloud that floats by with be white and fluffy, my very favourite sort of sky. I know a lot of people love a sky of pure peerless blue, but like an occasional lofty cloud to enable me to fix on it and get some sense of the height of the atmosphere towering above us, miraculously giving us air to breathe and shielding us from excess harmful rays. When I was a kid I used to love to lie in a field or on the heather, sprawled on my back in total relaxation, watching the billowing clouds float across the sky. I guess I was a bit of a solitary dreamer, even back then. I still need a few minutes or hours a day of quiet to think my own thoughts, or I can feel very overstretched and pulled tight.
My love of the sky has given me a great enjoyment of flying (I even feel excited at take off and landing) and enabled me to screw up my nerve and be a passenger in a friend's microlight (which is exactly like flying strapped into camping chair attached to a lawn-mower engine) a couple of years ago, despite my slight fear of heights. I loved it but for the fact I could not bring myself to look straight down, to see my own foot dangling 2,500ft above the ground. Too freaky! Also, it was jolly cold up there, even on a sunny day in August. My ankles and neck were freezing despite wearing a borrowed ski suit.
So today is my perfect sort of temperate climatic offering: hot but not sweltering, blue skies with whisps of white cloud, and a do-as-you-please Sunday stretching ahead of us. Sorry if that sounds awfully smug, but it happens too infrequently in the UK for us to feel complacent. Let us enjoy it while we can !
Saturday, 6 July 2013
Tomorrow...
...we are going to pack up the car with an overnight bag and stay at Gregynog Hall for a night's B&B.
The Formal Gardens, seen from the terrace
The Main House has a mock Tudor facade, and was built in the mid C19th
The Stable Block has been converted into accommodation and a daytime restaurant
This may seem a crazy idea to most people, as this country house is only half an hour away by car, but it is set in 700 acres of formal gardens, grounds and farmland, and there are rooms to be had at a reasonable rate for an overnight stay with breakfast. We shan't be in the main house. I suspect that is kept for major block bookings, such as weddings and conferences, when the place can be fully staffed overnight (for security reasons, as it is full of antiques, paintings and valuable books). We shall be staying in the converted stable block, next to the restaurant. There is no evening meal available, but we can have lunch and afternoon tea, and I shall have a conducted tour of the house whilst The Husband and The Dog avail themselves of the extensive outdoor facilities: Italianate gardens and rambling shady wooded grounds full of Californian Redwoods and other large conifers, under planted with rhododendrons.and azaleas.
My plan is to pack up our own food and drink and have an evening picnic on the lawn or in our room after sunset. Perhaps then we shall be able to catch up with the men's Final at Wimbledon on the TV, having missed it to spend the afternoon doing something a little out of the ordinary.
Of course, we will fetch up there in the MG with the hood down (as the weather is set fair for the whole weekend and then some) with our case and our picnic things, and then I shall flan about like Lady Muck, just as though I were attending a country house weekend in a novel by PG Wodehouse, or Evelyn Waugh or Agatha Christie.
Preferably one of the the first two. Don't much fancy the idea of a body in the library - especially not being the main exhibit!
Tuesday, 2 July 2013
Family Portraits
Mrs Pearl Blue, with her human sister's wedding photo in the background
Mr Mervyn Green, with Mrs Blue keeping an eye on him
Other Family Members
I've been blogging for quite a while now, about three years, and I have mentioned a few Dramatis Personae in that time: Goldenoldenlady (as was) which is Yours Truly, The Husband, The Daughter, The Dog, one or two of my vast stock of sisters (four in all, two who live quite a long way away and I never see these days), The Lodger (long gone), some chums, and latterly Our Ma (now deceased). But I haven't mentioned the smallest members of the clan - The Birds.
What an oversight! Especially as where I sit to poot the day away is right next to their little house (aka their cage, but that doesn't sound nearly as pleasant) and one in particular, is very noisy indeed.
We have two budgerigars, had them since 2008, and they have had a suprisingly interesting history for two such tiny creatures. Now read on...
When The Husband and I were first cohabiting, when he was The Boyfriend, we had at first no pets. He and his first wife had had cats - four at the same time, at top whack - but she had taken then with her when she left in 1997. You can imagine how upsetting that must have been. He has a wife and a feline family, and then they go and he has no-one but himself. It made him very wary about two things - proposing to me and getting pets. It took a year for him to concede on both points, and he crumbled on the pet thing just ahead of the betrothal thing. In 2001 we got a cock budgie, a handsome blue fellow we named Gordon, and the following month we got engaged. I guess The Husband must have regained his ability to trust.
Gordon was such a character. He chattered in budgie and human (Good boy, Gordon, handsome, handsome. I love you, yes I do. Night night, sleep tight. Lots of phrases, mostly taught him by The Husband) and flew onto our fingers when called, or landed on our heads or shoulders, a very tame, very happy, little chap.
The following year I left full-time teaching and took up private tutoring instead, which I did in the late afternoon and evenings. So as The Husband came in from work, I was just going or had already gone, but there was someone at home the vast majority of the time. And so we got The Dog, or to be more precise, The Puppy, as he was then.
So we had a feathered friend and a hairy toddler and our family was complete, or it was until Gordon died, very suddenly, and without warning, one Saturday evening in February 2008.
I was bereft. It was crazy how much I missed him and grieved for him. That first week at home without him, when the Husband was at work, the house was deathly quiet, even though The Dog continued to be my faithful little white shadow following me wherever I went around the house. No cheerful chatter, no amusing acrobatic antics, nothing but silence in the dining room where his cage had stood. I couldn't stand it. A week later we were back at the same pet shop, looking for another bird to fill the sad little silent space he'd left.
And so we acquired Archibald Periwinkle, another blue bird, this time with hints of violet in his plumage, as the name might suggest. He was soon hand tame, but not as chatty as Gordon or any of the other cock budgies we'd both had as children. He mostly liked to imitate the wild garden birds he could hear when the patio doors were open. He obdurately refused to pick up any human, and so we resigned ourselves to having chosen a non-talking budgie this time.
Later that same year, when Archie had been with us about six months, we had weekend visitors who were not pet owners and found our decision to have a bird a little puzzling. They asked a lot of questions, and (their both being doctors) some of them were quite scientific. Eventually, they asked how do you tell the sex of a budgie. "Oh it's easy," I decared confidently, "it's in the cere. You look at the area above the beak where the nostrils are, the colour of it. Here, I'll show you. A boy is blue a girl is brown or pink."
I opened the cage door and persuaded Archie onto my finger. And then I looked at him a little more closely than we had of late. His cere was no longer pale blue, it was pinky brown and crusty. This, I knew, was not a sign of illness. This was a sign of a more mature hen bird coming into potential mating condition. Archie was a girl!
My, how we laughed. Suddenly he/she needed a new name. I decided on Pearl. Pearl the Girl. And because we knew nothing of keeping females I did quiet a bit of Internet research that week, and somehow got it into my daft head that girls related less well to humans, hence were less likely to talk, and preferred to have a companion bird.
So, I got her one. Another beautiful hen, a jade green stunner, which we called Myrtle. Myrtle and Pearl. Sisters, room-mates, lifelong companions in the making.
Myrtle was a very difficult little thing to handle. She pecked and panicked and flapped and fluttered and would not accept a finger to perch on. After a couple of months of trying to train her I gave up attempts to handle her physically, and relied on psychological training. She was happy to return to the cage once her sister was back in, so they could both have flying exercise and go back to their little house when we needed them to return to it.
How on earth could we have got it so wrong about Archie/Pearl, though, I hear you query? Well, the simple explanation is that very young or even juvenile budgies do look awfully similar, the cere is a pale violet or very light blue in both sexes, so is maybe not as reliable an indication of gender as we'd been led to believe.
Really, REALLY unreliable, as we were to discover after a few more weeks, when Myrtle's cere began to change, not to pinky brown, but a deeper brighter much more distinct shade of blue. Myrtle was a boy. We had got it wrong again! Instead of sisters, we had a hen and a cock. Oh Lordy!
Another name-change was necessitated. Myrtle became Mervyn. Over time this complication and uncertainty about changing their names confused even us, so for quickness of identification they became Mr (Mervyn) Green and Mrs (Pearl) Blue. We even started addressing them in a Bronx accent, as their names had come out so very Jewish-sounding. Moyvyn and Poyl. But mostly just Mr Green and Mrs Blue.
Which they have remained to this day, five years later. The only pair of transgender budgies we have ever heard of - only in the Bulmer household, eh?
Oh, and before you ask, no, no eggs. Not even unfertilised ones. We do nothing to encourage breeding, we don't give them a nesting box, or nesting material, we do not change Mrs Blue's diet to get her into breeding condition. And I have recently read that one needs an aviary of at least six birds, three female and three male as a minimum, to encourage the flock to go into full mating behaviour, as being flock birds that's how they behave in the wild, with cocks challenging one another for the best females. I have occasionally mused about having an aviary in the sunny back garden here in Wales, but The Husband just blanches and sets his mouth in a firm straight line.
That's one of his three NOs a year. The other being in answer to my occasional suggestion that we get another dog, and the third kept spare for whatever especially silly scheme I dream up that year. Three NOs a year, max. Quite a few unsures, of course, but I usually win him round. Hey ho! Happy Days.
What an oversight! Especially as where I sit to poot the day away is right next to their little house (aka their cage, but that doesn't sound nearly as pleasant) and one in particular, is very noisy indeed.
We have two budgerigars, had them since 2008, and they have had a suprisingly interesting history for two such tiny creatures. Now read on...
When The Husband and I were first cohabiting, when he was The Boyfriend, we had at first no pets. He and his first wife had had cats - four at the same time, at top whack - but she had taken then with her when she left in 1997. You can imagine how upsetting that must have been. He has a wife and a feline family, and then they go and he has no-one but himself. It made him very wary about two things - proposing to me and getting pets. It took a year for him to concede on both points, and he crumbled on the pet thing just ahead of the betrothal thing. In 2001 we got a cock budgie, a handsome blue fellow we named Gordon, and the following month we got engaged. I guess The Husband must have regained his ability to trust.
Gordon was such a character. He chattered in budgie and human (Good boy, Gordon, handsome, handsome. I love you, yes I do. Night night, sleep tight. Lots of phrases, mostly taught him by The Husband) and flew onto our fingers when called, or landed on our heads or shoulders, a very tame, very happy, little chap.
The following year I left full-time teaching and took up private tutoring instead, which I did in the late afternoon and evenings. So as The Husband came in from work, I was just going or had already gone, but there was someone at home the vast majority of the time. And so we got The Dog, or to be more precise, The Puppy, as he was then.
So we had a feathered friend and a hairy toddler and our family was complete, or it was until Gordon died, very suddenly, and without warning, one Saturday evening in February 2008.
I was bereft. It was crazy how much I missed him and grieved for him. That first week at home without him, when the Husband was at work, the house was deathly quiet, even though The Dog continued to be my faithful little white shadow following me wherever I went around the house. No cheerful chatter, no amusing acrobatic antics, nothing but silence in the dining room where his cage had stood. I couldn't stand it. A week later we were back at the same pet shop, looking for another bird to fill the sad little silent space he'd left.
And so we acquired Archibald Periwinkle, another blue bird, this time with hints of violet in his plumage, as the name might suggest. He was soon hand tame, but not as chatty as Gordon or any of the other cock budgies we'd both had as children. He mostly liked to imitate the wild garden birds he could hear when the patio doors were open. He obdurately refused to pick up any human, and so we resigned ourselves to having chosen a non-talking budgie this time.
Later that same year, when Archie had been with us about six months, we had weekend visitors who were not pet owners and found our decision to have a bird a little puzzling. They asked a lot of questions, and (their both being doctors) some of them were quite scientific. Eventually, they asked how do you tell the sex of a budgie. "Oh it's easy," I decared confidently, "it's in the cere. You look at the area above the beak where the nostrils are, the colour of it. Here, I'll show you. A boy is blue a girl is brown or pink."
I opened the cage door and persuaded Archie onto my finger. And then I looked at him a little more closely than we had of late. His cere was no longer pale blue, it was pinky brown and crusty. This, I knew, was not a sign of illness. This was a sign of a more mature hen bird coming into potential mating condition. Archie was a girl!
My, how we laughed. Suddenly he/she needed a new name. I decided on Pearl. Pearl the Girl. And because we knew nothing of keeping females I did quiet a bit of Internet research that week, and somehow got it into my daft head that girls related less well to humans, hence were less likely to talk, and preferred to have a companion bird.
So, I got her one. Another beautiful hen, a jade green stunner, which we called Myrtle. Myrtle and Pearl. Sisters, room-mates, lifelong companions in the making.
Myrtle was a very difficult little thing to handle. She pecked and panicked and flapped and fluttered and would not accept a finger to perch on. After a couple of months of trying to train her I gave up attempts to handle her physically, and relied on psychological training. She was happy to return to the cage once her sister was back in, so they could both have flying exercise and go back to their little house when we needed them to return to it.
How on earth could we have got it so wrong about Archie/Pearl, though, I hear you query? Well, the simple explanation is that very young or even juvenile budgies do look awfully similar, the cere is a pale violet or very light blue in both sexes, so is maybe not as reliable an indication of gender as we'd been led to believe.
Really, REALLY unreliable, as we were to discover after a few more weeks, when Myrtle's cere began to change, not to pinky brown, but a deeper brighter much more distinct shade of blue. Myrtle was a boy. We had got it wrong again! Instead of sisters, we had a hen and a cock. Oh Lordy!
Another name-change was necessitated. Myrtle became Mervyn. Over time this complication and uncertainty about changing their names confused even us, so for quickness of identification they became Mr (Mervyn) Green and Mrs (Pearl) Blue. We even started addressing them in a Bronx accent, as their names had come out so very Jewish-sounding. Moyvyn and Poyl. But mostly just Mr Green and Mrs Blue.
Which they have remained to this day, five years later. The only pair of transgender budgies we have ever heard of - only in the Bulmer household, eh?
Oh, and before you ask, no, no eggs. Not even unfertilised ones. We do nothing to encourage breeding, we don't give them a nesting box, or nesting material, we do not change Mrs Blue's diet to get her into breeding condition. And I have recently read that one needs an aviary of at least six birds, three female and three male as a minimum, to encourage the flock to go into full mating behaviour, as being flock birds that's how they behave in the wild, with cocks challenging one another for the best females. I have occasionally mused about having an aviary in the sunny back garden here in Wales, but The Husband just blanches and sets his mouth in a firm straight line.
That's one of his three NOs a year. The other being in answer to my occasional suggestion that we get another dog, and the third kept spare for whatever especially silly scheme I dream up that year. Three NOs a year, max. Quite a few unsures, of course, but I usually win him round. Hey ho! Happy Days.
Sunday, 30 June 2013
Getting Back To Normal...
...or, rather, what passes for normal in our house. OUR normal. The easy-going pace of life that we prefer is again possible after the travelling and co-ordination needed for us to attend the very wonderful day The Husband's sister arranged for the family and closest local friends to gather to say goodbye to the matriarch.
Sleep Tight, Our Ma.
It was colourful, cheerful, and very musical interlude, lots of laughing and smiling through tears during the service, and just laughing, reminiscing, teasing, eating, drinking, hugging and kissing the rest of the time. It was truly perfect. How often can one say that about a funeral?
So, we are back in our country fastness now, and a bit reluctant after all the emotions, and the exertions of travel, to stir our stumps beyond the weekly supermarket shop and a spot of light gardening. As I sit on "my" sofa tapping away on my laptop, The Husband is perusing the screen of his laptop, sitting opposite me on "his" sofa, one either side of the fireplace facing one another. It's like that glorious vision of quiet domestic contentment that Gabriel Oak has during his first proposal to Bathsheba Everdene: "Either side of the fire we shall sit, and when I look up there shall you be, and when you look up there shall I be."
I have loved those words ever since I first began to read Thomas Hardy in my mid-teens. And now, forty years later, in our retirement, they have come to pass. Thank you Our Ma for bringing up your baby boy so wonderfully well he has become a man so cheerful, so calm and comfortable to be around, that I know of no-one who has ever taken a dislike to him.
My Gabriel Oak.
Sleep Tight, Our Ma.
It was colourful, cheerful, and very musical interlude, lots of laughing and smiling through tears during the service, and just laughing, reminiscing, teasing, eating, drinking, hugging and kissing the rest of the time. It was truly perfect. How often can one say that about a funeral?
So, we are back in our country fastness now, and a bit reluctant after all the emotions, and the exertions of travel, to stir our stumps beyond the weekly supermarket shop and a spot of light gardening. As I sit on "my" sofa tapping away on my laptop, The Husband is perusing the screen of his laptop, sitting opposite me on "his" sofa, one either side of the fireplace facing one another. It's like that glorious vision of quiet domestic contentment that Gabriel Oak has during his first proposal to Bathsheba Everdene: "Either side of the fire we shall sit, and when I look up there shall you be, and when you look up there shall I be."
I have loved those words ever since I first began to read Thomas Hardy in my mid-teens. And now, forty years later, in our retirement, they have come to pass. Thank you Our Ma for bringing up your baby boy so wonderfully well he has become a man so cheerful, so calm and comfortable to be around, that I know of no-one who has ever taken a dislike to him.
My Gabriel Oak.
Tuesday, 25 June 2013
Celebrating a Long Life, Well Lived...
...is not yer average funeral. Nor was Our Ma yer average woman. She was bright, bold, brave, cheerful and kind. And so, in the same way she lived, we will mark her passing.
No lugubrious music and mournful black. She will come in to Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller, and pass through the crematorium curtains to What A Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong. Those attending have been asked to wear their brightest garb, and if we clash, all the better!
The five foot long spray ordered by the family to lie along the length of her coffin will have huge colourful lilies, and vibrant strongly-scented freesias, and it will be augmented by several extra-large Chuppa lollies stuck in here and there. In her latter years, especially when in the home, she often asked visitors for a lollipop (or a stick of rock if we said we were going away for a weekend or a holiday) which were duly brought along on the next visit, greeted with enthusiasm, the popped in her handbang, or a drawer in her room, and then utterly forgotten, and never eaten. The sister-in-law, when she visited Freddie's room the home last week, found lots of lollies about the place, and so was magically inspired to include them in the main floral tribute.
I guess a stranger, viewing the garb of those attending, or the flowers, will assume it was young person, a child even, who has died. In a way, and not just because her dementia ushered in a "second childhood" of fragility and high dependence on others, it would be almost appropriate if they thought that as Our Ma never entirely 100% grew up. It was this fabulous childlike quality (which The Husband has inherited in spades) that made her such a marvellous mother; imaginative, playful, inventive and full of enthusiasm for life.
So it is Girlie (her childhood nickname) we are commemorating, as well as Mrs Winfred Bulmer. And because she lived to fulfil all her potential, and well beyond the average life span, it has that element of remembering the infant and the younger woman, but no sorrowful sense of a life cut short before it had been fully lived. Her life WAS lived, and THEN some!
All of us there will be thinking, I guess, we should be so lucky. Her life has shown us the way to squeeze every last drop of delicious juice, extract every minute of joy and fun, from the energy and time one has been granted on this earth.
Her true memorial will be if we all try to remember to do that, if we can, and not grouse or grumble our way into later life feeling bloody sorry for ourselves.
No lugubrious music and mournful black. She will come in to Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller, and pass through the crematorium curtains to What A Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong. Those attending have been asked to wear their brightest garb, and if we clash, all the better!
The five foot long spray ordered by the family to lie along the length of her coffin will have huge colourful lilies, and vibrant strongly-scented freesias, and it will be augmented by several extra-large Chuppa lollies stuck in here and there. In her latter years, especially when in the home, she often asked visitors for a lollipop (or a stick of rock if we said we were going away for a weekend or a holiday) which were duly brought along on the next visit, greeted with enthusiasm, the popped in her handbang, or a drawer in her room, and then utterly forgotten, and never eaten. The sister-in-law, when she visited Freddie's room the home last week, found lots of lollies about the place, and so was magically inspired to include them in the main floral tribute.
I guess a stranger, viewing the garb of those attending, or the flowers, will assume it was young person, a child even, who has died. In a way, and not just because her dementia ushered in a "second childhood" of fragility and high dependence on others, it would be almost appropriate if they thought that as Our Ma never entirely 100% grew up. It was this fabulous childlike quality (which The Husband has inherited in spades) that made her such a marvellous mother; imaginative, playful, inventive and full of enthusiasm for life.
So it is Girlie (her childhood nickname) we are commemorating, as well as Mrs Winfred Bulmer. And because she lived to fulfil all her potential, and well beyond the average life span, it has that element of remembering the infant and the younger woman, but no sorrowful sense of a life cut short before it had been fully lived. Her life WAS lived, and THEN some!
All of us there will be thinking, I guess, we should be so lucky. Her life has shown us the way to squeeze every last drop of delicious juice, extract every minute of joy and fun, from the energy and time one has been granted on this earth.
Her true memorial will be if we all try to remember to do that, if we can, and not grouse or grumble our way into later life feeling bloody sorry for ourselves.
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