Final

 Dear Blog friends far and near,

After goodness knows how many years of doing this blog I have finally decided to call it a day.   As you know I am on 'End of Life' care for cancer.   I am still doing alright but even with carers I  manage to fill my day with various little jobs.   I read my e mails and deal with them every morning and do the Mind Games in The Times and that more or less fills my day.

I often got my ideas for a post from reading my daily paper (without which I would be totally lost) but now find I have lost the impetus needed to convert my thinking into words on the page.   I still read your posts and occasionally comment but as my faculties begin to fail this gets harder and is in danger of becoming a chore.

Sorry Dylan (Thomas) but I am happy to go 'gently into that goodnight'.   There is no rage - ninety years is a good innings (and I have lived to see the election of a Labour Goverment!).   My eyesight is poor, sometimes I find it difficult to keep my mind on the subject and even if I do, transferring my thoughts into words on the page is not easy with my trembly fingers.

I shall miss you all.    You have been good, faithful followers and you have taught me such a lot.   I don't want to mention anyone in particular because you have all given me hours of pleasure with your chat about where you live, what you are doing, where you have been - and taken wonderful photographs to prove it.

So a final good-bye.    To the several who I know are in a similar position to me healthwise - I say - be of good cheer.   We walk the road together.   And to you all - sincere thanks for many happy hours in your company.   We never have managed to all get together in one room and 'chew the fat' with a drink in our hands.   But you know what they say - it is better to travel than to arrive.

Thank you all.   And good-bye.

Going, going, ....

 Yes.   At last, after a gruelling fortnight, much of which has been spent lying languidly on my bed, my Covid test this morning tells me 'good-bye'.   One more test to go and then hopefully I shall feel better.  (difficult when one is going 'downhill' to decide when one feels 'better' from Covid but the wonderful herbaceous geraniums and roses are definitely making me feel more human (as long as I don't try to do anything!))

The sun certainly does the old bones good.

The irritant at the moment is that the batteries need changing in my garage door.   I have them here but cannot change them because it needs two hands.   My electrician is on holiday but is coming home today  (must be hard as the joyous background 'noise'  (or should I say 'nature's music') sounds so very tempting.  He  says he will pop round and change them for me this evening.

Off now to look for something tempting to eat (for  the past fortnight everything has tasted like cardboard).

A Hurrah for Newspapers

 I understand that Newspaper sales are not what they used to be. Folk these days rely on TV, their mobile, all the fancy ways now of getting to know what's happening without spending their money on a daily wad of paper stuck through the letterbox, three quarters of which they never read (and if you don't catch the arrival of the paperboy quickly on a pouring wet morning then the half of it sticking out of the letterbox needs pegging on the line to dry out).  You can easily rustle up an argument to understand why sales are down.

But I love my newspaper.  Perhaps it is a family thing.  My father took The Daily Herald until it disappeared from the newstands in about 1964 just a few years before he died.   It doesn't need saying that he was  staunch Labour Movement man but as a child I found it very boring.

My first husband's father was a Daily Mail man.  Each morning an unopened edition was by his place at the breakfast table.  Woebetide    anyone who had dared to read it before him.  My husband loved Teddy Tail of the Daily Mail (a strip cartoon) and he would carefully open the paper and read him each morning (|if there was an accident  and the page got ruffled his mother would iron it before she folded it by 'the Old Man's' place).

I am addicted to The Times and wait for its arrival each morning in anticipation of a good read.   It is like a best friend who saves up special things to tell you; little snippets of information -useless information some would call it- that stir up the old brain cells and start the day off well.

 I have just spent an hour (after spending a similar length of time on the Mind Games)  reading snippets and I thought I would share one or two of the interesting snippets with you:

Did you know that it is exactly 105 years ago today since Alcock and Brown took off in a First World War biplane to attempt a flight across the Atlantic? After a nail-biting, hair-raising flight they made it, thus winning a £10,000 prize for the first non-stop flight over the Atlantic.   That landed in what they thought looked like a flat green field in Ireland but what turned out to be a bog, so they came to a halt nose first but unhurt after 1890 miles in around 16 hours 10 minutes (120 mph) - at that time the longest distance flown by man.   They were both knighted by King George Vth.   That's surely worth keeping in the brain's memory box for next time the Red Arrows scorch through the skies leaving a red white and blue vapour trail and gone before you can blink.   (Thank you for that Paul Simons)

Then a quick turn to the Comment section to find out what snippet Jonathan Tulloch has today in his beautifully written Nature notes.   They are never a disappointment (just a tiny bit of irritation that this neat, always nicely illustrated, snippet never appears on a Saturday).   Today's is about the Water Vole (or as he points out), Ratty in Wind in the Willows.   He is apparently becoming more "fossorial" (hands up those of you who knew that word - it means 'adapted for digging') and can    now be sussed out at Easterhouse near Glasgow where he forages above ground but lives in subterranean holes.  Apparently Water Voles feature quite heavily on the menu of American Mink so I hope he has done his homework thoroughly.

There you are.   Two snippets for your digestion.

Covid still taking its toll but we are getting there.  Bad sleeping and poor appetite but improving.   And it is snippets like these that keep  me going!

COVID

 Just a quickie to let you know I have a nasty bout of COVID!!!   Started on Sunday - have had a couple of days showered and dressed then laying on my bed under a blanket all day.

I am beginning to feel better today.  But couldn't help thinking how I said in my last post to always look for the good things.   Well I wasn't tired, just weak and unable to even read the Times.   But my garden is fully visible from my bed if I pile up the pillows and what joy it has given me this week.  It is ablaze with colour:

Pink Valerian all along under the hedge,    then pink Osteospermum, purple and yellow iris, foxgloves - both pink and white, two huge clumps of bright pink rock roses separated by a Heuchera with dark  purple/brown leaves, deep purple campanula, the last of the aquelegia, a big patch of tall purple thistles well within chatting distance of a dozen or so tall pink foxgloves, vying to see who can grow tallest, my rose Gloire de Vivre - pale apricot/pink- 7 blooms out and another seven buds and a lovely patch of summer bedding pansies - so far apricot, purple, white and yellow out.   There are a lot of herbaceous hardy geraniums to come shortly - white one and pale pink (very invasive) one are out - waiting for the others.  Anyone who says it is boring just laying on the bed all day needs a garden to look at!

And that is without the tiny wren in the garden all day flitting from pillar to post - so tiny that if it stands still  it is easy to miss, Mr and Mrs Blackbird searching for food for their nestlings and visits from various other feathered friends.

The sun has just broken through and is making everything look brighter.   I am trying to stay upright today and also trying to eat after two days of almost fasting.   I am off to make myself a hot choc and with it a couple of chocolate digestives.  Life is returning to normal .

Be Happy

 D Day and the 80th commemoration is upon us.   Speaking to a chap who was not born until the late 1950's yesterday, was interesting.      He felt the 'fuss' being made was really a bit 'over the top' after all these years.

I could not agree less.   Remembering  those young men in the prime of their lives and the sacrifices they made in the wiping out  of Fascism in Europe at the time should not be forgotten just because it is 'a long time ago'.   I believe over 2000 a day were killed in the first fortnight - many before they even got their feet wet - being shot at by snipers and the German guns as the jumped down from the landing craft into a jolly cold and rough sea, many drowning.  Those who reached the shore after pushing their way through their dying and dead comrades experiencing things most if not all of them who survived the war never forgot even if they rarely spoke of it.

I intend to watch the first ceremony in half an hour on TV but first I just wanted to say this:

We owe it to ourselves and each other to search out the good, the beauty there is in the world - the good people there are everywhere.   Not everything is bad even though the News bulletins do tend to dwell on that side of things.   So here are one or two things in today's Times which cheered me up no end.

Remember those two tunaway horses spooked by a noise on a building site as the Household Cavalry rode past?   Do you recall the pictures on TV and in the papers of the black and the grey horses, covered in blood, galloping wildly through London streets, riderless, bumping into vehicles, thoroughly scared?   Well, they are almost better and ready to return to work.  In today's Times there is a photograph of the two of them hob-nobbing over the fence in adjoining buttercup-strewn fields, noses touching, communicating as horses do, saying who know what (unless one is a horse).  What pleasure I got from looking at them this morning - not in their usual environment but 'on recuperative 'holiday'- the shot gladdens and uplifts the heart.

And want a laugh - or at least a smile (especially if one has been a parent of a young boy)?  In the US a Congresman is denouncing Donald Trump's conviction.   Goodness knows why but he has taken his seven year old son with him and there are three photographs.   In the first his son, Guy, who is sitting behind him, is leaning into the picture and smiling at the camera (aw - lovely little red-haired boy proud to be in a photograph with Dad) but by the time the other two photographs are taken boredom with the proceedings is setting in. (with a vengeance).  In one his head is lolling to the right and his little pink tongue is  poking out.   By the time the last photograph is taken boredom has really taken over.   He is sitting upright but his shoulders have flopped, his eyes have taken on a vacant look and his tongue is poking out and touching his left cheek.  Talk about a picture being worth a thousand words.

Life is so full of posturing politicians, we read what is written, we never know the whole truth - only what is fed to us.   Sometimes it is good - after admiring those wonderful old men - and women - now all in the nineties and some over a hundred, who tearfully (me included here) listened about, in some cases talked of ,their fallen comrades who they all said deserved the medals far more than they did, voices choked with tears sometimes, many with loving family members there for support,  sometimes its good to find something to smile about, to get a good feeling about.

Heaven knows almost every page in the newspapers at the moment is doom and gloom, wars, election promises we all know will be broken, crooks, staabbings.   Follow my example, search for something/s to make you smile, to give you a good feeling.   You know it makes sense.

 

Eva Petulengro

 I see in the Times Obits today that Eva Petulengro has died, aged 85.   As this is 6 years younger than me then the figure who I heard of regularly during my childhood was obviously her mother - also Eva Petulengro - quite a well-known figure in the 'old days'.

The family had a history  of being Clairvoyants and reading through the Obituary today made me think about the 'old days'.

My father always assured us all that my Mother had Romany blood -she always played it down although never actually denying it.   I am not suggesting they were related to one another but it is interesting to read that Romany families were frequently found in the Lincolnshire Fens, which is where my mother came from.   As a young woman, looking at photographs that I have of her, there is no doubt she was a very beautiful young woman.   Also she was black-haired as are most Romanies.

My Dad spoke often of visiting her Grandfather, who lived on Bardney Common in a Caravan and who my father insisted kept his Sunday Joint in an enamel bucket under the van with a sod of grass for a bucket-lid!

I don't know - and I suppose never will know - the truth of the matter and to me it doesn't really matter in the slightest.   All I do know is that Mother wished me to be called Rebecca, but considering the political 'climate' in the World at the time (1932) and the association of the name in both Jewish and Romany communities my parents decided against it and called me Patricia Ellen instead.

Now, as Romany and Traveller communities are trekking through Wensleydale this week on their way to the Appleby Horse Fair which begins next week-end (and holding up traffic a bit), and now today reading of the death of Eva Petulengro, I recalled the old days, when country folk (as we were) did rather believe in such things; how she grew up in a traditional Vardo having a Romany mother and a gorger (non-Romany) father and how her father embraced the traditional life of the Romanies;  how the family always travelled in a convoy of three wagons, each drawn by black and white cob horses, the wagons painted red and gold; it does make me wonder.   My mother's favourite novel, throughout her life, was a book called "Red Wagon" (I believe by Lady Eleanor Smith).

The obit speaks of their food being wild mushrooms and illegally bagged pheasant and partridge (and hotchi - hedgehogs - baked in clay (ugh!) and tells of male members of the family carving clothes pegs from lengths of willow and the woman tying them in bundles and selling them in the villages of the Lincolnshire and East Anglian Fens.  (these were always the pegs of my childhood)

And one final note about how Dads toughened up their kids to suffer what were definitely the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' in those days:

Her Dad would encourage her to jump from the steps of the caravan into his arms and then at the last minute step out of the way so that she fell on her face in the mud.  (Can't imagine any child not being wise to that after trying it once).

The Portrait

 It seems the nation (well, those who take an interest in such things) is split down the middle on the subject of the recent portrait of King Charles by Jonathan Yeo.

I will come straight out with it - I love it.

The Divine Right of Kings has thankfully disappeared into Antiquity but Queen Elizabeth II was catapulted into her role in a totally different age to the one we live in now.  She tried hard to come across as a 'woman of the people' but I think she sometimes found it difficult.  I think we must realise that however hard we try we can't imagine the life they, the Royal Family, lead.    She was a figurehead and worked jolly hard throughout her life to live up to the standards she had set herself.

King Charles waited a long time to take over her role.   Prestige, money, privilege, trecking about the World always in one's best clothes or worse still Dress Unif orms - the life of a King is not all it is cracked up to be - always on display, always on one's best behaviour (we'll ignore the tussle with the pen), every tiff, every action likely to become headline news if one puts a foot wrong.   And add to this in the case of HM cancer, close family eruptions disturbing the water and a past life that was by no means 'plain sailing.'

I think (whether I believe in having a Royal Family or not) that the King is doing his absolute level best.

Most past Royal Portraits and indeed those of so-called 'important figures' , have been on the whole a bit wooden**.   Holbein's Henry VIII - like many earlier portraits of Kings and Queens = shows nothing at all about character.   It just shouts out loud and clear - I'm the King and don't mess with me - the face shows nothing of what the man is really like.

And here Yeo has given us - standing out so clearly that is is almost painful to see - the man.   His seventy odd years are etched into his face - his years at a hated school,  his unhappy marriage, his struggle to find a role for himself and the sudden transformation of a love for Nature, for wild life, and a marriage to the woman he truly loved.

I think Jonathan Yeo has captured it all so well.   All the King's troubles and family worries have become public knowledge - not an easy burden to bear.    The face of the King in this portrait I think gives true meaning to the phrase 'A picture is worth a thousand words'.   You have only to look at that face to know for certain that for all his money,  all his privileges, he is - like all of us - a Human Being - has lived through all life's ups and downs and weathered them.  

One things is for sure.   Yeo has - in that face - and those hands - shown us the real man - not the king but a man like the rest of us who has suffered 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' and pulled through.   Oh and, by the way, that Monarch butterfly on his right shoulder (I understand suggested by the King himself) is a stroke of genius.

**   I rather think that in the seventies Graham Sutherland's portrait of Winston Churchill was chopped up and burnt by Lady Churchill because looking at it gave Churchill such distress.

5am

If only I could be up every day when most of the Estate is still asleep.

This morning, drinking my first cup of tea  and looking out onto the plot opposite I saw such an  interesting series of events.

As usual all  was quiet.   We caught the tail-end of a storm last night and had a rain just as I went to bed.   This morning all was fresh and green.

In one of the ash saplings sat 5 jackdaws (they spend a lot of the early morning poking their beaks into my quite large front lawn looking for grubs).

Then I suddenly saw the barn owl arrive.  As one the five jackdaws rose and attacked him, chasing him off between my bungalow and M's next door.   They flew right by my window and I got the best view ever.

So all you bird folk out there - I presume there were jackdaw nests with young nearby (a lot of the bungalows have chimneys and most are protected with a wire chimney guard  to stop nesting birds.) but where they are I have no idea.

Were the birds consciously waiting for the owl's arrival?

Do owls eat young birds from nests?   I have always assumed they hunted for vermin. 

Had they plotted the attack?  (ie  are they intelligent enough to do such a thing?)

 There is only one thing I am sure of.   That owl beat a very hasty retreat when those jackdaws took off from their sapling perch.

Sun is out.  Have a nice day. 

TIME

Early on a bright Spring morning; early, before I do anything else like going round the bungalow to check that everything is 'shipshape' and I can relax knowing that nothing is going to disturb me until my Tesco delivery man raps on the kitchen door just after noon, I have come into the computer room to write a post.   I apologise for writing so infrequently but I tend to be brain active these days but not so body active. But not a bad thing.

Knowing that the time one has left on this earth is - although no-one has specified how long that time will be (things, including malignant tumours, take their time when one is 91)- going to be limited, but is such a great 'mind-concentrator'.

What is important suddenly narrows down to just a few things.  The dandelion 'clocks' with their hundreds of seeds for next year's flowers, are so beautiful in the early morning sun.  They can stay - I shalln't  be asking the gardener to mow them off quickly before they are moved all along the Grove's gardens.  I shall instead take the time to watch the gentle West wind do it's best.

Sorting out 'things' becomes paramount.   Even the order in which this is done - jewellery? books? financial affairs? weeds in the flower garden? cupboards? drawers and wardrobes?

'Financial affairs' has to be first and once that job is done as well as possible, leaving everything as ordered as possible for the next generation to 'sort things out', then relaxation and reminiscence take over.

R and R.  One job a week.   This past week it has been holiday photograph albums.   Mentally it has been good.Physically not so good as huge, heavy albums take some lugging about.  So far I have re-travelled the coast of Norway, over the Arctic Cicle and round the top to the Russian Border, photographing the midnight sun on midsummer's day while wearing a winter anorak!

I've been round the Alhambra, stood in the oldest bull ring in Spain, wandered through the cork-oak forests of Spain and Portugal, been round the lovely gardens of Dumfries and Galloway, stood on the Athabasca Glacier.  I have re-met folk we met in all these places and promised to keep in touch with but didn't. (who are Tom and Rosie in this photo? we ate each night with them, first there saving places because we got on so well.  Now just 'ships that passed in the night').

The difficulty is concentration.  There is so much beauty as - at long last - we have had a whole week of warm, Spring-like weather.   My window by the computer looks over the garden. At the beginning of the week the Bearded Iris had one emerging flower stalk; at the end of the week there are twelve.  That is certainly worth stopping to look at and count isn't it? 

Two years after M, my husband of 39 years, died, I occupied my time by photographing farming life in the village.    Now two large albums of these photographs - blackthorn blossom and marsh marigolds along the beck, ploughing, harrowing, fertilising, the first day the cattle are released from Winter captivity and gallop round the pastures with joy at being back where they belong, lambing, silaging, hay-making, Show,-time, winter's arrival.   Now what will happen to the albums?  Thirty years old.  Helpers in the school holidays now grown-up and farmers themselves, quaint, rather old fashioned machinery, middle-aged healthy farmers now some gone (like my own dear farmer) and the rest in their seventies and most of them arthritic!  Hopefully somebody will take the albums and preserve them for future generations to look at.   The search is on.

No more albums this week - the major job today will be putting away the Tesco order. And the rest of the day - thinking, reading The Times, chatting to anyone who calls (the Tesco delivery men are marvellous at helping, chatting and generally brightening up the day), walking once round the garden circuit to keep my legs working (I must keep doing this to stay upright although a bit wobbly), reading, dozing and above all else thinking.   No rest for the wicked as they say.

The sweet sights and sounds of Spring!

 Yes, I dare to mention it this morning because the sun is shining, the weather forecast is 'improving' and I feel better than I have done for some days.

My bathroom window is one of those 'tilting' ones that opens from the bottom.   Each day - unless it is very windy - my Carer opens it a tiny bit.   I keep it open as long as I can (if the wind gets up it can blow the window wide open), especially at the moment.   Why?  Because Mr Blackbird has to advertise to the world (and, unfortunately to every nasty thieving magpie in the area) that ere long baby blackbirds are due!  One of the side effects of colon cancer is frequent loo visits and it is so wonderful to be greeted every single time I visit the smallest room, with the wonderful song of the blackbird (not quite as melodious as his cousin the song thrush but that is a sound I haven't heard since I left the farm).

'When does he eat?' I ask?   I think he gets most of his food intake from my front lawn where he hops up and down very early in the morning poking his beak deep into the ground every now and then.   But, believe me, he gives me such a lot of pleasure.

As to my lawn!!!   A week ago I sent my gardener a text saying that within a day of his last mowing there were 49 dandelions in full bloom.   Today I started counting them and got to eighty then lost my place. (they don't grow in straight lines so when the numbers rise counting is difficult.)

They are such beautiful flowers,   The piece of ground opposite has a thick border of them in full bloom,   They might just as well have a sign saying "You'll never beat us so why not join us".   In a couple of weeks those beautiful yellow flowers, which are so beneficial to so many insects, will be dandelion 'clocks', each one carrying hundreds of seeds.   And every time there is a Summer south wind blowing gently (well we can hope can't we?) those seeds will find a new home in my front lawn. Don't know whether to smile or weep.

My side lawn, not to be outdone, displays three large clumps of mushrooms.   Not dainty fairy ring types but great hulking fully grown things - not edible, but distinctly noticeable.

It has not been lawn mowing weather.  Monday is my gardener's mowing day.   I expect he began doing just that yesterday but soon after lunch we had a couple of hours of heavy rain.

I shall now put on a coat and have a walk round my bungalow, looking what is out (from the patio it looks as though    Asperula Odorata has colonised a large area at the top.)   The white flowers are just coming out and as they emerge I can just about see them.   They are so pretty but need watching otherwise they take over.  The Mare's Tail - (my enemy although it is quite attractive)- will be well up now and every clump needs cutting off at ground level to discourage it. (You will never get rid of it if you have it, but never be tempted to pull it up - always cut it off.   There is nothing the roots of Mare's Tail like better than a chance to put out another hundred or two shoots from a roughly pulled up clump.

So all you gardeners out there - good luck with your garden this year and remember a plant is only a weed if it is growing where you don't wish to see it.   I have a single dandelion out in the middle of a clump of Grape Hyacinths of the deepest blue.   It can stay (for now at any rate) - it looks divine.