We’ve all heard it - London grinds to a halt. The Midlands gets snow, and Edinburgh…not a lot.
What we do get is ice crystals on bus stops that look like Jack Frost is a grafitti artist. A girl goes past a bus stop in a woolly hat - bonnet style, strings underneath, but with a woollen mohican incorporated. And our pond freezes over…well, the dip in the back garden that fills up with water every now and then.
It’s not as fun at the chinchilla pushing a snowball on the BBC site. Or the harbour freezing over at Padstow. But then we do promise that you can access the blog without the site crashing…or the buses coming to a halt.
February 5th, 2009
So, who got the latest Guiness Book of Records? More to the point, who’s prepared to own up to it? For years, it seemed to be standard issue that someone, somewhere, would be understanding of small boys’ needs for Facts, and make sure that the latest collection of Useful Information was dispatched. Henceforth, and, indeed, forthwith.
We happened to see a current Guiness Book of Records earlier in the year. Dan quickly checked key info - world’s oldest man, world’s tallest man etc. It’s rather more glossy now, and probably all highly weblinked, which partly defeats the point, in a way. In pre-internet times, that was why you needed the book, with all key info in one place, to be able to ensure that the world was still spinning as before, with the correct number of baked beans in a bathtub, and so on.
So, I didn’t receive the book, though my brother did, and I peeked over at it from time to time. I did however gain a love of facts, particularly offbeat ones which can be brought out as conversational morsels when the need arises. Which is more often than you think - particularly if you are in the company of others who also like facts.
Imagine therefore my happiness in discovering a new fact, courtesy of the Economist, in a book review. The book was all about hedgehogs, and I discovered that not only does North America not have any native hedgehogs (ie all imports), but also that hedgehogs have species-specific fleas. How mindboggling is that?
Sadly, I don’t think these elements are incorporated into Trivial Pursuits (favoured category brown (literature), general preference to avoid all questions on sport), but the flea one should definitely be incorporated into a family version. Small boys everywhere will be in agreement on the importance of knowing about fleas (if not, hopefully, being too closely acquainted with them).
This just leaves me time to pass on my favourite piece of information of this kind: that Sweden imports dust for use in scientific experiments. (I think it has something to do with not weighing things in a vacuum, so you add dust to an experiment so that it simulates normal conditions, or something like that.) Yes, I knew you’d thank me for that one.
I leave it to Robert Louis Stevenson to add his stamp of approval to the value of facts:
“The world is so full of a number of things// I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
January 1st, 2009
We had a bit of a shock on Saturday when found out that our friend Neil had had a heart attack.
It happened while he was in Tesco pointing out an offer on ice cream (the 3 for 2 of the title) to the assistant at the checkout. Whether it was the stress or just that it struck at that point, he doesn’t know, but it was enough to make him sit down for a few minutes.
When the pain in his chest had subsided (at this point he didn’t know what it was), he cycled home. After carrying the shopping up a flight of stairs he felt bad again and took to his bed for a few minutes. Realising it wasn’t going away, he asked his lodger - a nurse - what she thought about his symptoms.
She whisked him off to the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh and after an aspirin and a shot of morphine, he was pretty much straight into a laboratory to have a stent fitted (up the artery in his arm, across his chest and into his heart). As shocked by it all as anyone, Neil then asked that a few people were called to let family and friends know what had happened.
I visited Neil in hospital yesterday afternoon and he appeared to be very well; mentally adjusting to needing to put off decorating the flat himself for a little bit and giving himself two months off work. He had a second stent fitted this morning and is fine.
Fragility and care
What it brought home to me was just how fragile we are and that someone who I think of as being the most sensible person I know (healthy eating, cycling everywhere), was vulnerable. I should point out at this point that he is in his 50s and only last year became a grandfather, so he’s not a contemporary. His lifestyle however is probably healthier than mine and so it was a bit of a wake up call.
So, lessons to learn even before the New Years resolutions can be put to paper:
- Get your cholesterol levels checked to give yourself a base for future comparison
- See if your blood pressure is where it should be
- Adjust your lifestyle accordingly
I need to sort number 1 and then see what I can do with number 3 (number 2 is fine).So the moral of this story is not to be too intent about getting your moneys worth on 3 for 2 offers on ice cream tubs.
1 is enough and when you get it, it’s best to share.
December 29th, 2008
It’s a children’s classic in the making, I just have to work out how to write it. Socks are making a reappearance as a welcome Christmas gift, if only on for fuel economy reasons. (Or maybe early onset circulation options. Take your pick.)
It’s interesting seeing the Saturday supplements reinventing present giving for tough times. Evidently you can give cheap gifts if you buy them in multiples. So buying lots of groovy socks for someone is acceptable, particularly because they are Useful. (Unlike many of the options available in Saturday supplements.)
I had thought it one of the unwritten rules of life that not only do the meek inherit the earth, a wife can inherit her husband’s socks. Oddly, this seems to work even if the husband’s feet are quite a lot larger than the wife’s. At any rate, it’s got me through several years of marriage and much foot pounding up and down the Royal Mile to work and back.
So it was a nice surprise for Dan to come home from the sales with socks for him and for her. After years of black socks that eventually turn grey, I have some jazzy ones with stripes. Dan has ones with matching heels and toes, in a range of colours, so you can do the conformist turn while shoes are on, while secretly aware that your socks are much more fun than anyone might suspect.
Sadly, there’s not a lot more I can write about socks without jokes about smelly feet. That didn’t stop Spike Milligan coming up with an idea for a sound effect of hitting the wall with a sock full of custard. He actually went to the BBC canteen to get custard to try it out, but evidently it didn’t sound as good in real life.
Shame. But maybe if you are still looking for a use for leftover stuffing, this could be just the thing…
December 29th, 2008
Christmas tree a go go. After a few years of being in London at Christmas time, the fixture is back to Scotland, and we’ve got ourselves a tree again. I can peer at it happily over my laptop as I type.
The nice ‘green’ feature writer in the Times made me very happy recently when she confirmed that it’s better to get a real tree than an artificial one - real trees put oxygen into the atmosphere while growing, can be pulped down afterwards (should your council be so obliging) and can of course be replanted if you buy one with a root one. My family tried this one year, but the tree lasted until November, and then went yellow, which was particularly sad with only a month to go.
The whole point of real trees, it seems to me, is the smell. For others, scent of pine is reduced to male bath products (or possibly loo cleaners), unless you’re out walking in the woods on a regular basis. But if you are prepared to sit under the tree for a while, preferably when it’s already dark and the only light in the room comes from the tree, then it’s nigh on perfect. (The second scent of Christmas, incidentally, is the citrus of satsuma. You can sit under the tree to consume your satsuma - and if it’s come from your Christmas stocking, so much the better.)
I’ve written before on knowing I can’t go back to earlier experiences. But somehow, scent always gives you that hope that, in fact, you have, even if the rest of you is saying something different. Yesterday, Dan only had to bring the tree into the house, and I knew, before I had even seen it, because of the scent of it, stealing ahead into the sitting room, working out where it was going to be placed.
It’s in our study, in fact, and because there’s no door between that and the sitting room, you can sit on the sofa and see the tree. I’m quite pleased with that, as the thing of being by the tree seems to be one of being quiet, even on your own, and putting the tree into the study seems to allow for that. We went and sat under it last night, just for a while.
So is it real? It’s a ‘real’ tree. It’s a real memory. And it’s a real tree in the here and now, evoking this set of responses right now, as well as triggering memories. Some may be unhappy at the symbolism of the Christmas tree, but I think we are all hoping for a little mystery at this time of year, something that pulls us beyond our surroundings, and our immediate thoughts, into other notions of how to view this strange and wonderful time of year.
Merry Christmas.
December 24th, 2008
I’ve not ventured into Second Life - first life quite occupying, thanks. But there are still some attractions to having an alter ego, maybe particularly online, but perhaps a few variations in the everyday too.
Before this all starts sounding too ‘multiple personality’, we all do it - because we all fit into each others’ lives in different ways. I’ve sat in on those team build-y type exercises where you have to describe who you are - and often it’s in terms of labels, many we give ourselves and some we let others give us.
Back to online: I was expecting a few more pseudonyms in some of the Facebook applications, particularly the ones which allow you to beat up people who have (probably unwisely) agreed to be your friend. Given that a lot of superheroes do have alternative names, I decided to be Superfrau for the purposes of the game. (Superfrau has a real life aspect too: it’s written on a small soft toy key ring I was given by the German interviewer of the students I send abroad.)
Sadly, only one other person I knew picked out an alter ego, although there are plenty of others out there on Facebook who are perfectly happy with their pseudonyms, mostly nicked from the TV show Heroes (which seems fair enough, as the game I play is based on that premise). But it got me thinking about which of our alter egos we keep as we go on in life.
When I was 19, I did the gap year thing, went to Poland for half a year. And yes, it was the life-changing experience that gap years are heralded to be - in loads of different ways. I hadn’t expected to, but I linked myself with Poland. It influenced how I decorated my room at university, how I cooked, the kind of music I listened to. It had a major impact on how I viewed things like hospitality, and other positives I wanted to emulate, when back in the UK.
Part of this was also what I told others about myself. For some time, any connection with Poland - even if it wasn’t the exotic gap year that some had had - seemed unusual for a UK citizen with no family ties there. I enjoyed a perspective that was European, but a different kind of Europe.
Now, over 15 years since I first went there, I find myself identifying myself less with Poland. It’s not that the significance has faded. But Poland is less part of my life than it was. My point is, it is unlikely to regain that position it had - because I have moved on too. Other identities have entered my life, many of which get lived more on a daily basis than the Polish aspects I hung onto.
So what? Life today offers vast amounts of change, choice, alternatives. Perhaps I put more stock in particular identities because I don’t have the consistency of belonging that some do. I don’t come from one particular place - though Edinburgh does offer the best option, having been home for a good number of years.
There are other identities that we gradually realise have been passed on to others. Mid thirties, the desire to change the world quite so much, the capacity for large amounts of caffeine, these seem to have slipped quietly out the room, probably when I was doing something significant like hanging up washing.
Perhaps what I’m struggling towards is a notion of letting go of some aspects of who I’ve been - but not feeling diminished in the process. Quite enjoying a little more space - equally, not rushing to fill it. Meanwhile, can I recommend Captain Fantastico for your day to day superhero requirements?
December 21st, 2008
You know it’s Christmas when the fridge is full of cheese (a slight exaggeration, but happily, only slightly) and Aardman has decided to issue a new Wallace and Gromit. My cup, mulled or otherwise, runneth over.
We’ve got rather used to Wallace and Gromit now, but what the animators achieve, painstakingly, lovingly, is indeed a present of great proportions. Yes, they’ve done a film, but really, it’s in the half-hour special that they truly come into their own.
Flicking through the TV section in the bumper two-week listing (more on that later), I discovered that I had shared a ‘Wal and Grom’ moment with Russell T. Davies, no less (a chap also somewhat linked to Christmas, what with Dr Who specials).
It’s the moment in the second animation - the one with the dastardly penguin - when Gromit is chasing the penguin on a model railway, runs out of track, grabs the box and starts to lay new track. I too remember that delighted ‘no!’ moment, when you don’t know what is coming next but you know that it is going to be amazing…
Part of the enjoyment is an opportunity to rediscover my inner Yorkshirewoman, and soak up all the deadpan jokes. Wallace allows us to remember how British the slightly potty inventor is - British too the elevation of pets to equal, if not greater, characters.
We’ve become used to televisual sweetmeats, TV treats at Christmas time. But amid all the reruns - and reissues of previous comedy programmes - Wallace and Gromit are, like cheeses at Christmastime, something you can always take a little more of.
December 21st, 2008
I suspect it won’t become a hit single. But after fairly relentless wind and rain (both of us ended yesterday with broken umbrellas), a spot of sunshine today needs a mention, if only for how it changes your view on life.
Tomorrow is the shortest day, and after that, even where it’s not quite believable, let alone visible at that point, we’ll start to get more light again. I read a Monty Don book on gardening one time, where he talked about the time between the clocks going back, and the shortest day, as the hardest point in the year. Forget whatever date in January is meant to herald mass depression, being low on daylight makes it harder to add joy to whatever seasonal comfort you may be indulging in in December.
Last year, I felt very aware of looking out for this change, perceiving the creeping extension of daylight during January. This year, I know about it, but that doesn’t always bring the acceptance of it that I’d hope for. Different features of it seem to affect different people: some hate it being pitch black when the alarm goes off in the morning, others find the darkness so early in the afternoon a difficulty.
In my gap year, I spent the first half waitressing, and realised how easy it was in the winter not to really see the sun at all, especially where you are facing in from a shop window rather than looking out. In an office with large windows, or a home with a good amount of light, it’s a bit easier, but not that much. I should probably try to go out at lunchtime, while it is genuinely light, but that requires a bit of energy, which is also harder in the winter.
Somehow, when you’ve closed the curtains and settled in to lower levels of light for longer, it becomes easier. One of my friends referred to the season of ‘candles and snuggly blankets’ returning, and that helps it seem a cosier prospect.
What I’m trying to suggest is that this is a time of year for needing a little encouragement. Whether that’s enjoying a spot of sun, an extra slice of stollen, or a longer letter from a friend you’ve not heard from for a while, it makes it possible to go on living in the dark for a little longer, with some indication that there is light still to come.
December 20th, 2008
Star Wars Monopoly…The festive season is now complete - or at least, the activity while hanging around indoors with people bit. Following Dan’s brainwave for a present for his cousin, who at a tender age has embraced the excitement that is Star Wars, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get a set for ourselves too.
So it was lovingly unwrapped and put to use yesterday, having a social for our church small group yesterday. We knew that one of the others was well set for board games, having seen her in action on our June holiday, but were waiting to see what happened for the other group member…who promptly walked off as the highroller of the evening.
Having ticked the review category, I feel I should give you an overview of what it’s like. You get nice little figures as pieces to move round the board, ie familiar characters from the films. Dan noticed that there are five goodies to three baddies, but then I think that’s as it should be, really. You also get currency in credits (I think), rather than pounds, and instead of building houses or hotels, you build colonies (small space ship pieces), working up to star ports (larger space ships - in this case, a Millenium Falcon).
You also get to swap the familiar destinations of London for Star Wars ones. It doesn’t take a lot of thinking through to agree that Yoda’s swamp is the least attractive (or rather, cheapest) location on the board, with the heart of the Empire, Coruscant, as the most expensive. A few elements of the board could have been jazzed up a little, in line with the theme - why not go to a penal colony, rather than jail? Or use a star ship motif, rather than a car, in Free Parking?
But aside from this, there is of course great opportunity to a) listen to Star Wars soundtracks while playing (check), b) swap Star Wars viewing stories (check), c) make noises like the characters when doing well or thwarted (no we didn’t do this, but I’m sure it should be mandatory from now on), etc.
And of course, you can mortgage all your properties, all too swiftly, in keeping with this year’s financial theme, sadly. But if you lose, hey, it’s all in a galaxy far far away…
December 18th, 2008
An infrequent occurrence - out for drinks on Friday night last week, meeting Dan’s colleagues and their partners/wives/girlfriends etc. Some of the talk circled, unsurprisingly, around Inigo and other techy stuff. But I also got chatting to one of the women there about what it’s like not to work full time any more - and how we’re both finding surprising stresses in it.
You can boo me offstage at this point (panto metaphor appropriate at this time of year), but even changing to a 9-day fortnight has had more of an impact on me than I expected. The person I was chatting to had reduced her working week too. We both felt better for it. But we also felt guilty, less in control at work than before, perhaps a little smug that alternative arrangements weren’t quite such a good replacement for us at full-time work.
One of my theories in this is that it’s partly a generational thing. At school, as a girl, you got encouragement to keep going if you did well. But the image of keeping the home as well wasn’t out of the picture, maintaining a lot of the ‘knitting things together’ tasks that often fall to women. Even if you didn’t put yourself as part of the knitting brigade.
Somehow, the two of us realised, we keep looking for more ladders to climb, more things to do, being capable. It’s a drug, doing well, being measured by others’ comments on our achievements. Which is also a bit concerning in an era where more and more, pay is performance related. It’s not that that is such a bad thing per se. But it’s the constant increasing of required activity, in so many jobs, that makes it harder and harder to keep achieving at the same level.
So what happens if you do less - if you’re not there all the time? A sneaking suspicion that you’re not quite pulling your weight. An added pressure to ENJOY! when you are away from work - which can itself be a pressure, at the very time when you were meant to be reducing the pressure…
A few months ago, earlier on into the shift of working pattern, there was also a sudden realisation - that you can work fewer hours. The world does not fall apart. Ye verily, there are even others around working fewer hours than me. There comes the smugness again - but also the the thrill and anxiety combined of doing less. And getting away with it.
Sometime I hope, there will come a middle ground, or at least less of a rush up and down the xylophone of opposing feelings. And less of a desire to check that this is still acceptable, permissable. Which is needed, given that I will be trying out this working pattern at a particularly busy time of year, in another few weeks.
I’ve heard often enough of the injunction to be a human be-ing rather than a human do-ing. At least the wind-down in the year, with Christmas, suggests an opportunity to practise being for a while - if that isn’t too active a response.
December 15th, 2008
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