Archive for October, 2008
Not quite the ton (that really would have been scary), but I reached national speed limit type velocity today on the A1. What’s more, both I and other drivers lived to tell the tale. (Mind you, you would hope so, with the driving instructor next to me.)
Driving lessons continue, and today included driving in the dark - though heading back into Edinburgh through an amazing sunset first. Doing 50 on the old A1, not many other cars about, you get the feeling that you might just be able to do this…or so I hope. The really scary part will be getting in a car on my own, and going from A to B. (Not to mention actually owning a car…Perhaps I really should have done this in my teens instead, when optimism might have outweighed natural wariness a bit more.)
I now take very seriously how people talk about getting tired doing motorway driving, as I certainly was tired heading back. But overtaking lorries seems a little more familiar now, though having a bus overtake me on the inside lane of dual carriageway on the way back into town was less helpful. Particularly when he’d parked somewhere silly outside Haddington earlier on in the journey.
I am doing other things than driving, but when the driving goes OK, it seems a bit more noteworthy. Maybe a different topic next time.
October 28th, 2008
I am trying to remind myself that learning is incremental, and that you don’t always move forwards. (Especially when you’ve tried reversing into parking bays for the first time.) Interest rates can go down as well as up, as well we know. But it’s frustrating when you’ve a limited chunk of time booked for driving lessons to start me off again.
Still, there are some good things - building up familiarity with roads I know I will need to use locally, gradually learning I don’t have to change down gear by gear every time I approach a queue of traffic. The sun has shone pretty much all week so far, which helps. I have survived driving roads which I worry about, like Sir Harry Lauder Road, and my roundabouts are improving a bit. I have even discovered what electric wing mirrors are for - only to be aware that I won’t have them in the car I’ll get to drive.
Was reading yesterday about kids’ behaviour deteriorating just before they master a big developmental change. Maybe I can claim the same, and some smoother driving is just around the corner…
October 16th, 2008
But can you name the tune the words come from?
I am having refresher driving lessons. Fifteen and a half years on from stunning my mother with my ability to pass my driving test (she took me out to lunch on the strength of it), I am actually behind the wheel again - and so far, actually quite good.
So, I can change up gears (changing down not as good), brake going into bends and accelerate coming out of them, and actually start to believe my driving instructor that I can do more in higher gears than I thought. I can also go over speed bumps…a necessity where I live. And I even got to practise putting fuel into a car for the first time.
Driving is definitely in the ‘feel the fear…’ category, but as it is moving into the ‘feel the need…’ category more, I think I might finally have incentives for keeping going. Even the fact that I am not back to complete beginner status is a boost to the ego.
The strange thing is being able to drive through areas that feel busy, because there’s someone at my elbow to tell me what to do. My bus journeys in the morning are a bit more interesting now, because I am even trying to read the road ahead, as though I were driving. (The only down side is, every time I think we should be changing up a gear, we pull into a bus stop. Obvious limitations with this form of virtual driving.)
I’m not even going to think about how many million lifts I owe in lieu of how many I’ve been given over the years. But at least some of them have been paid in cake or other foodstuffs, I reckon. And for those friends who live outside of the reaches of Lothian Buses, I might even be able to visit you. Not immediately, but a lot sooner than walking over, anyway.
Dan pointed out that we missed our window of opportunity to drive when fuel was cheaper. My inner Scot/Yorkshirewoman is going to be terrified by the cost of it all. But little by little, we’ll get there.
October 14th, 2008
Honest, it started as a book review, it is in no way intended to comment on any cabinet reshuffle…
Spent some pleasant time with Graeme and Shona over yesterday afternoon/evening and this morning, and discovered that one of the books in Shona’s recent acquisitions for her girls is Milly Molly Mandy.
For the uninitiated, Milly Molly Mandy is, as you can probably tell, very much a book that girls get to read at a youngish age. It fits in quite well around the Enid Blyton type stage. MMM (as I will now refer to her) lives in a little white cottage with a thatched roof, and has a series of shops at her disposal in the village. For added interest, there is a map of her village in the front of the book, to help you picture it for yourself.
I enjoyed MMM when younger, though to be honest any books that came within range were devoured from c. 6 onwards. Looking back it it, I realised I had to do a bit of explaining for Janna, my story time listener. Some of it is long changed: one of her friend wants to be a nurse, ‘with a hat with long white streamers’. Some of it seems up to date again: MMM helps her friend’s dad repaint a garden roller and a water butt. It won’t be so long until thatched roofs are back in, surely?
But after all, MMM speaks to all kids who want routine plus a little excitement. MMM has a group of friends, and they all talk about what they want to do when they’re grown up. MMM gets to mind one of the shops for an hour, and decides that, although she’d like to work in that kind of shop in the future, an hour is enough for now.
No one is talking of three day weeks just yet, as their economic strategy for surviving the recession, but perhaps an hour of work here or there, that you could happily stop when the owner came back, does sound attractive…
In these dark days, I do commend to you another childhood pastime which does well in adulthood: making up sequel titles with a given phrase. Perhaps it’s time to write “Milly Molly Mandy goes to Hollywood”, that long undiscovered follow up…
October 11th, 2008
I’ve come to realise that the way to get people’s attention online (or at least on Facebook) is to write about food. Mention your latest eating experience - or even, your anticipation of that - and you get lots of virtual joining in.
Is it the dark days of recession affecting us? We know that in times of economic difficulty, food sales still do well, if not better, as a cheering up device. Is it the onset of winter, hopeful that if we anticipate food, we will feel warmer, or at least better about the nights drawing in?
Maybe it’s more of the thirties malaise. We start to realise that we may not climb the corporate ladder the way we might have thought (most corporate ladders looking pretty rickety, at this point in time); we will not now wow the world with our looks or various other talents if we haven’t done so already. (I’m still holding out for a late-onset writing career - that area does seem to reward late bloomers.)
What’s left? Family, friends, TV…and of course food, which we can always anticipate, because of our need to refuel fairly often. (I’m not limiting life to these alone, honest. But they do all allow quite a lot of ‘me too!’, which is perhaps part of why online stuff is popular.)
So what foods are most likely to make you ‘write in’ in agreement? So far, risotto, peanut butter, classy macaroons and hot dogs, judging by recent comments on my Facebook wall and others.
It could be the start of a whole new ‘what’s your favourite food?’ discussion. I would also like to suggest a ‘guess how much I paid at the Co-op for…?’ game, which allows a spot of ethical consumerism to combine with (nearly) freegan activity, and some public endorsement of thrift…
I’m actually finding it hard to come down to a favourite food, but my inner five year old is still convinced that sausages, baked beans and chips are a good place to start. How about you?
October 9th, 2008
Yesterday I did some half-hearted moaning about life in one’s thirties; today there’s another phenomenon that seems to creep up with age.
It’s well known (or well alleged) that women end up becoming like their mothers; I think the process is accelerated if you become a mum yourself. Facing tiredness or shock, whatever the cause, the brain seems to think the easiest option is to revert to saying what you heard when you were growing up.
Earlier on in the summer, I managed to cut one knee quite badly. Between shock, disbelief, and a fair amount of pain, it became difficult to say what I had hurt where. But one thing I knew: I was ’in the wars’, a family phrase which I hadn’t heard or used for some time, but that dropped back into my mind when trying to work out what had happened.
Sure enough, when I phoned my mum on our return, the first thing she said was, “Oh dear, have you been in the wars?” I didn’t know whether to feel comforted by the reference, or confused about being returned to an 8-year old state (or equivalent), where mums need a good stock in trade of phrases to say when something goes wrong. (This was probably better than her asking if I had ‘happened’ my knee - another phrase based on my brother saying that he had ‘happened his finger’, which then became used for other situations of minor injuries.)
The funny thing was, commenting to Dan that I was ‘in the wars’ made me look at the phrase at face value. In comparison with soldiers coming into the line of fire, in Iraq or Afghanistan, an accident at home hardly counts. And yet, in a child’s eyes, a big fall or something else upsetting needs a suitably big statement to go with it.
So, feel free to use it for your own mishaps. Or send in your own equivalents. Life has its tumbles, and if language has its comforts, one of them is having a good set of sayings to get you through a situation and back to some sense of continuity.
October 7th, 2008
It’s not something I want to promote about myself. But a little bit of virtual aggro, via the Heroes application on Facebook, does seem to help when winding down for the day. (I can at this point blame David Wilson, who invited me to try this application. It all started with fast cars, too. It’s a slippery slope.)
Something funny seems to happen in your thirties, when it comes to letting go of what’s happening in the day. There’s not much of the day left to disconnect from, by the time you get home. How do you do it, without taking the evening over it?
Not being much of a drinker, alcohol got left out of the picture as a way to unwind, for a long time, but I think it’s trying to make more of an appearance on my weekends. That sense of ‘phew, got to the end of the week’ seems to need more celebration as I go on. (Food is clearly enough of a companion to my days, as you already know, so it’s not necessarily helping me hit the ’stop’ button in the same way.) Let’s say I appreciate the treat when it comes.
Gardening started trying to enter the race this year. And yes, coming home from work, and saying hello to the plants (watering them too, on occasion) was a good option. But now it’s wet, or cold, or both, and the garden is back into that phase of being left to its own survival mechanisms for the next few months.
There is blog writing - though perhaps I need a new injection of ideas. Perhaps time to start listening into other people’s mobile phone conversations a bit more. (As if. I could probably write a new radio show a week on what I ‘overhead’ (without trying) on the bus each day.)
And for points of trying to make mind and body agree to slow down in the adrenaline rush, there can be su doku. A nice long bath is a winner in this department.
Recently, I have been feeling more and more that my earlier ambitions to make a difference in the world, to contribute, are getting worn away in the need to keep up - and then recover afterwards - day by day. No claims of special workplace trauma - we all have it, in fairly intense ways for many.
Is the solution to find a ‘quicker’ way to unwind, so that I can make the most of time outside of work? I’m coming to the conclusion that letting go of one set of lists at work, only to pick up another at home, doesn’t seem that attractive.
Probably the thing that cheers me up, and therefore helps me let go of work, is finding out how other people are doing. Ergo Facebook in general. I might even finally put up some photos of my own, given how much I like seeing other people’s.
Perhaps it comes down to holding on, rather than just letting go - holding on to what is important to you, day by day. And on that note, I’m off to hug the hugsband.
October 6th, 2008
Off to Peebles last weekend to see my parents - and go to part of Peebles’ second ever autumn food fair. Not quite the highlight of the social calendar that the spring book fair is, but a good enough excuse to go and support a local event.
What I hadn’t quite bargained on was that there would be quite so much emphasis on meat. Fair enough in some ways, given that there’s farms around, proper butchers and the like. But if you were a veggie and/or had problems seeing meat, you would probably have had to avert your eyes for about a third of the stands…
Other friends have done the farm shop thing, and shared out half animals, that kind of thing. I must admit I thought it would hard to fit e.g. half a lamb in a freezer - and which end would you get? But then we saw what that looked like, which was certainly a lot of meat. We’re even thinking about splitting a half lamb order with my parents to make it a bit more affordable (at least, spending money on meat rather than a second freezer). Except I have to eat some more brambles first. Or maybe make rather a lot of risotto to clear out some stock. Etc.
It’s all nice and green and Guardian reading of me to want to get local produce - which I do. And help farms in Scotland keep going - which I do. But then I see the prices of the food and baulk a bit. Even the veg boxes are more than I’m prepared to spend, it seems, which is a shame for one who really likes fruit and veg.
So, as ever, we bought little things - though this does allow me to plug the Chocolate Tree, based (I think) in Gifford, East Lothian. Not only do they do the dark chocolate with interesting flavours thang, they also do a proper Nutella alternative. They even boast that you’ll never go back to Nutella after you’ve tried it. Now the difficulty is whether to open the jar - and fulfil their promise - or inflict that on someone else by passing it on as a present…Food for thought, one way or another, if not as much food for the plate.
October 2nd, 2008