Challenges I set myself

Well I always knew it was going to be a challenging year so juts in case the sudden realisation of incipient old age and the fact that one was now truly redundant as an economic unit, a parent and sex goddess I set myself two more challenges.

The first challenge was to learn to swim and not unconnected to the second challenge. Having freed up some time and being taken by a mad fit when outside the local swimming pool which is a few minutes away from my house I singed up for a course of 'Learn to Swim' lessons which worked out very economically at £4 per lesson. So far so good. Day of the first lesson arrives and I arrive eagerly at the pool waiting to enter the small training pool with a group of equally terrified non-swimmers preferably female. No No No says Dame Fate. You shall enter the big scary pool with a lot of people who can already swim but want to improve! Aargh well I've paid up front now so here we go. Instructor (Helen) is aghast that I cant swim at all as a) she has to spend more time with me than she planned and b) the other students are not happy that 1) I want the side of the pool near the steps and 2) I think its funny that they are not happy - aren't we supposed to be having fun? No apparently not. Still tutor is kind gets in the pool and makes the unreasonable suggestion that I get my face wet. Bad start. Four lessons later  with the help of woggle I can puggle up and down in the shallow end with bottom half of face wet. Helen suggests I join a smaller group in training pool on another day. * weeks later I can swim widths of the training pool. See told you I couldn't do it in the big pool but Challenge No 1 Learn to swim in 60th year completed.

Challenge 2 is more painful - have foot surgery see next blog to see how these two things connected.

Reflection, rage and reconciliation

Well I haven't been here for a while but its only 8 months to the awful day so here I am feeling reflective and wondering how I got here. Looking back or reflecting as the pyschobabblers would say is not without its hazards. I often feel full of rage at the things that happened and the things that didn't happen that I felt should have happened. The rage lasts on a bit and although it dilutes I'm still left with a low mood and a sadness about missed opportunities and lost friends. I blamed much of this on not being like other people, mostly being overweight.

I abandoned this blog for a while as I fet I had nothing to say and indeed was nothing, was becoming invisible, had no contribution to make as I got older and had retired from paid work. I was also getting fatter and fatter as I comforted my inner self with eating and drinking. I decided six months ago to try to take some kind of control. I spent all my adult life feeling that if I lost weight everything would be better jobs, relaitionships, opportunties, everything. So I've done it. Lost four and a half stone. I look normal weight even though I could also lose a few pounds more. Do I feel different? Not really. I feel thinner but not different. So what does that say? Should we bother to lose the weight if all we will feel is good in jeans? I don't know the answer. All I do know is having the weight on made me feel bad. It would have probably have made me ill. Lets hope the inner rage subsides with some positive thinking now instead of some pretty negative eating.

A salutory tale.

She unloaded the car on to the driveway. Bags and boxes surrounded the vehicle as she flapped about in and out of the car, leaning over to the back seat dragging designer bags with famous names emblazoned on them, heavy gold ropes acting as handles. A huge bunch of lilies tied with natural raffia filled her arms as she fiddled with the door key. The burglar alarm in the house went off screeching and pulsating, shattering the quiet street. She went in and banged the door shut leaving her parcels and packages strewn on the driveway.

Seeing all this from behind the wooden shutter in my living room, not that I was looking just dusting you understand. I blew a large raspberry to myself and thought about taking over the parcel which had arrived for her earlier.  I also thought about keeping it as I hadn’t signed and had come from a rather plush well known department store where I didn’t shop. It must be something I would want or possibly need I thought.  I prodded it. It was soft and squidgy. A cashmere cardigan perhaps, like Nigella’s in crimson with satin covered buttons? Lovely! Oh but no. Crimson will clash with my grey roots, I don’t want that. Years ago I suited crimson. My hair was almost black, glossy with softly falling curls and waves. Sophia Loren my father said. Now it was greying in patches like a badger. Hard bristly hair, frizzy in the rain, flat and dull when I coloured it – couldn’t go to a salon, too pricey.

I prodded the parcel again and turned it upside down, shook it, squeezed it. A silk dressing gown perhaps?  A fuchsia kimono with a dragon or a sea creature on the back – Octopussey! Fun with that one tonight.  That would shock him. Make a change from my comfy pyjamas and sheepskin slippers. It’s too cold in my house for silk kimonos and he wouldn’t notice it. Fluffy pink spotted, fleecy robe is what I wear to watch Midsummer Murders.

Perhaps it’s something lovely for the house. I take the parcel into the kitchen and hold it up to the window.  I can’t see through the packaging but I hadn’t noticed before on the back were some words under the store name. LUXE it said. Now I was even keener to keep it. LUXE.  All the big fashion and house making magazines only used that word when it was really expensive and special. I don’t think I had ever had anything that could be called LUXE.  Perhaps it’s couvert cloths woven with gold thread to be laid on a highly polished table for an elegant dinner party. Crystal goblets shimmer under the crystal chandelier, champagne bubbles fizz and pop on the surface. That won’t do either.  My glassware, well the five that are left, are heavy green recycled bottle glass, very trendy thirty years ago, very Bistro, very Shepherd’s Pie. Anyway champagne gives me indigestion.

I’d better take it over. It won’t fit in with this household. I put on my old clogs, wrap my cardigan around me and clump over to the house opposite. She opens the door, a cloud of nauseatingly sweet perfume hits me but what I see is the black mascara running down her face and the crystal champagne flute  in her hand. She is drunk. Very drunk indeed. The running mascara is the result of laughing and screeching which she always seems to be doing.

‘Anything up. Need any help? I ask not really meaning it thinking she seems to be helping herself quite nicely here.

‘Need any help. Need any help’, she screeched.’ Why would I need any help from a poor, sad, fat old bag like you’. She snatched the parcel and slammed the door.

I climbed back over the parcels on her drive and kicked a few into the flower beds.  Once back inside I looked around. My house was huge, the largest in the road much larger than hers. My garden was massive, much larger than hers. My bank balance was enormous having won the Euro lottery some months before.  Despite all this I was inferior, fat, old and worst of all lacking in any kind of style. No amount of money will ever change all that for me will it?

Sod's Law.

Have you ever suspected that Sod's Law was postulated as a direct narrative about your life and no-one elses? Why are you the only person you know who gets the car that breaks down all the time, the central heating boiler that goes wrong in the middle of winter always on a Friday night so you have to wait until Monday until you can do something about it, the one who always misses the payroll update or in  my case the state pension payout by another three years? Why is it that your the only one whose GP won't give them antibiotics for  real 'flu not man flu, whose prescription for HRT is cancelled due to an unspoken age policy at your surgery and whose beauty parlour manages to give them nail fungus from pedicure spa baths. Why is it when you queue at the supermarket your assistant is the one who can't scan the goods of the person at the  front of line, the next person wants to pay in vouchers clipped from the Radio Times most of which are out-of-date and the person just in front of you drops a pot of jam on the floor just in front of your feet? Worst of all when your in a huge hurry its pouring with rain you've have left the brolley in the car and you need cash asap, there's no-one waiting until you cross the road to the machine when three people snuck in front of you. The first one decides to rearrange their entire share portfolio, the second one tries to take over a multi-national company and the third one thinks its a toaster. Sods' Law invented just for me!

A university education?

Well poor old Blog havent been here for a while - busy busy- family, gardening golf etc etc. But what news today. Well I received the results from my Open University Creative Writing Course examination a good pass but a better one would have affirmed my delusion that I could be a writer. So how do I reflect on this mediocre acheivement, its difficult. The OU in its wisdom has decided that there shall be no feedback from this exam other than the scores so for a Creative Writer manque this makes it difficult to know where you did well and what needs to be improved. The course itself was heavily weighted towards contemporary poetry and modern writing. Students whose preferred genre was anxiety texts about the meaning of life, experiences with mental health problems and drug disorders appeared regularly on the course website to the unqualified applause of their peers and tutors. Imagine then this nearly sixty year old ex-hippy who wants to write about sex and shopping and the reception she got!!!. One third of the course is devoted to contemporary poetry, by that I mean the ungrammatical navel gazing stuff that doesnt ryme. My critique of the Lady of Shallott also went down like a lead ballon. Shall I give up? Not on your nelly. The bookshelves are full of the kind of pulp I want to write so sorry world its coming whether you like it or not!

What newspaper can I buy?

Wll Mr Murdoch has put me in quite a dilemma now. What newspaper can I buy that will fulfill the three main objectives I have set for newspaper conspumtion?

1. Inform and entertain me.
2. Make me look intelligent when I tell people what I read.
3. Make no contribution to the Murdoch empire.

I used to take The Guardian in my working years mainly for the jobs section but when learned conversations took place I could look right on and politically correct or as my husband observed a Champagne Socialist - more like Cava I thought on a nurses pay.

I graduated to The Times on Sunday after exhaustive research of all the colour supplements revealed a paucity of quality shopping opportunities and fashion advice. Later in my fifties I began to enjoy the gardening, travel and book sections and howling with derision at the Home section where impoverished middle clases bewailed the lack of Georgian rectories in the country for sale under £800K.

Recently approaching the dreaded landmark birthday The Telegraph on Saturday holds my interest for the Weekend, Gardening and Review sections although I still contemptuously read out loud the plight of middle class ladies 'juggling' work and motherhood on salaries in excess of £100K its wonderful to hear that they have left the 'rat race' moved to Cornwall and set up a small but lucrative business selling artisan pin cushions and Peruvian birthing stools whilst having baby number 5.

So this Sunday best beloved strode out on a fine summer morn to garner the best Sunday paper unbesmirched by the dead hand of the Murdoch empire. We tried The Independant- adequate but woefully short on fashion, make up, sex and gardening.

So my objectives remain unfilled as befits a retired NHS Manager- shouldn't I get some sort of promotion for this?

Catering gone to pot!

I'm having a rant about the standard of service in catering outlets today. I am really fed up with catering assistants, waitresses, waiters etc greeting me with the words 'Are you alright there?. Can't somebody train these dear people to ask 'What can I get for you ? or how can I help you? Sir or madam on the end would be too much to ask. When oh when will they stop ordering me to' Enjoy your meals'? I usually reply 'I'll do my best but its up to you really', my husband is sick of hearing this. Do we not have catering colleges anymore where people learn how to service the public? I fully appreciate waiting table is a low wage low status occupation but as it is so dependant on tips why don't the staff work a bit harder on their customer care skills. I certainly don't leave a tip for someone who has got my order wrong, forgot to provide me with cutlery, spilt the food, brought my meal later or earlier than my dinner companion and forgot to attend to my drinks order. Today the last straw. My golf club holds a major in club tournament and the caterer has no bread for sandwiches (despite being close to a major supermarket) and when the rolls which were left were brought out no serviette or cutlery. Its not the fault of young staff that they dont have the social graces involved in the catering industry they have to be trained, supervised and managed. thast your job restaurant and cafe owners!One would have thought a golf club would be the last bastion of appropriate social behaviour.