Danger Might Lurk

A dear friend came back last week from a quick trip to Sicily and being both generous and well brought up had gifts for us all. Mine was a heavenly lemon-scented bar of soap which joined the stash in my underwear drawer but not before I noticed the warning on the back of its pretty label

            "Prodotto Cosmetico   Tenere  lontano della portata dei bambini. "

 Yes, that's right . Keep out of the reach of children. In case they melt?   Anyway no worries, my stash of gorgeous soap is only for me and children just get scrubbed with the ordinary stuff

 Autumn seems to be beginning,

There are hardly any big boats going past any more

The municipal flower beds are getting a bit scruffy

and it rains every day.

But there's an upside : stalls full of corn cobs and pumpkins at the Friday market, curly kale's back in the shops and lots of apples and pears. The house smells of cinnamon again… It's time to fatten myself up for Christmas...

Strenuous Exercise

Part One:22/9/2019
I've spent the last month exercising my muscles. Well, some of my muscles….

When I broke my little finger at the end of July,  they put a couple of metal threads/wires/screws ( depending on who's talking about them) in the knuckle to hold it all together and they are due to be removed on Tuesday. I was given an exercise programme of extensive finger wiggling and told to stick to it faithfully. It doesn't seem to have made any difference at all but we'll see when I have the check up. I don't think Fagin would be impressed.

 I'll just be happy if I can knit and do some plain sewing (makes me sound like a Victorian maid).  I shall be just as useless at jigsaws as ever and my pastry making was never prize winning anyway, but it would be nice not to  fumble when fishing my travel card out of my pocket.  I've been going to the Hand en Pols man, he's one of a team of specialised physiotherapists and, as his title implies, seems to spend all day making people wave and wiggle their fingers and, astonishingly, it doesn't seem to have driven him mad.

 Meanwhile I've been glued to Netflix, library books and all the news about Brexit. I'll probably be stunted and boss-eyed by Christmas. I did manage to get to Amsterdam last week to meet Younger Daughter for lunch and a trip to Foam,the photography museum and their wonderful exhibition of Bressai's photos of Paris by night. Foam museum  Her boyfriend then cooked a delicious supper for us before I fled back north. Every time I wonder whether to renew my Museum Card or year's train card I think of days like this and know how much I'd miss them  There's an exhibition of Childhood in the 19th Century in the Teyler museum in Haarlem that looks fascinating,  for instance ….

Sitting on the balcony this morning, enjoying the sun, I  was amused to hear a fragment of conversation as two women wandered past, "She's a strange shape now she's 83..."  The mind boggles. I do hope I'm not exercising the wrong muscles?

Part Two: 29/9/2019
Well, so much for last week. When I went to have the metalwork taken out of my finger, the nurse told me it had been left in too long and would have to wait to be taken out by another surgeon ... in two days time. By now she was calling it 'pins'. Local anaesthetic, twenty minutes of digging by two surgeons and two nurses, three stitches and an impressive bandage later I can finally celebrate. ( The two pins were each 3 1/2 centimetres long, as thick as darning needles and are now in a plastic pot on my kitchen window ledge ready to impress family and friends) .

And I'm due back at the Hand en Pols man on Thurday.  This dratted pinkie seems to have become my new hobby

Just A Little Longer....

Received this overnight...
           "Bank Holiday Sunday at Safari Park, West Midlands. We all agreed that safari parks are over rated. Stuck in a long line of traffic with two fidgety boys in the back. Squinting to see the lions hiding in the bushes and trying not to run over the friendlier sheep and the African cows with giant car-scratching horns, or the rhino who wants to lean on our car."

 Rather Middle Daughter and family than me... it's really rather warm today, too … fine for hiding inside with the curtains drawn but not for running about being enthusiastic. Here, someone's having a birthday and we can hear a street organ playing round the corner with the Dutch version of Happy Birthday, followed by all the Abba hits. In the old days the organ would come round the houses and you'd hear it often … now it's not so common to get him specially, though he's often in town. Really, I suppose it's just that town's much more crowded. Must be a special birthday.

The summer's nearly over. The students are back and crowds of new teenagers are milling about in red, purple or green tee shirts.  Mind you, perhaps not the group who have taken over the top flat over the road….  they had a party last night. They were dancing on the roof around midnight …. and no it's not that sort of roof, it's rather pointy.

The ice cream shop's doing a roaring trade and the chip shop is opening again today. I've taken all the extra summer books back to the library and reached episode 49 of of the current telenovela but,  looking outside, its still a little to soon to start Autumn.  Next week, perhaps.

It's Always Good To Embrace...

I must be the only person in the world without a message on my teeshirt. Not that I can't think of a few … something uncivil to Johnson, perhaps. Or something liberating for one minority or another if it could be done without sounding vaguely patronising.

This strikes me as a good idea, too, even though it sounds slightly odd … and I'm not sure about the hair-do...
                                                           

 But I do like a good message

And I never get tired of a good old joke. 

Despite The Finger...

Well yes, I'd broken the little finger on my left hand. A bit painful but only a minor annoyance, especially since, these days, plaster of paris stays on for only a few days. It's just that my timing was all wrong... within a few days a few of us were supposed to be sitting in a converted barn in Brabant, the other end of the country. The two youngest members of the family were really looking forward to this … not so much the tastefully converted barn as the fun park nearby, as was their youngest aunt who'd been promising them this for ages.

 The only snag was that it seemed that first my finger needed to be rearranged parallel to the others rather than at right angles, by a plastic surgeon. And, since a Brachial plexus anaesthetic was to be used, I needed someone to be with me. ( The limb in question goes so numb that there's a danger of dislocation. ) It all required some rushing about by YD, who managed to go from two days above Germany with her boyfriend in a helicopter to chaperoning me and my numb left side and filling my freezer with chili and curries in Friesland to installing everyone in the barn and whizzing round fairground rides, avoiding only the ones where one hangs upside down squeaking.

  The barn was lovely; there was even a piano, sadly out of tune to Smaller Grandson's disappointment.




 Endless cats, endless tractors, a lovely garden and a giant sofa. An extraordinary number of freshly laid eggs. A raucous magpie. Nonstop talking. Lots of apples. And an open shower in the middle of the giant communal bedroom upstairs.

There was also  a day in Den Bosch, where Elder Grandson fell in love with a dial Phone telephone box in the Design Museum … "Did you ever use one like this?  Gosh, really?!

 and everyone ate too much. Lots of lovely statues were seen, including a rather Harry Potterish giant golden dragon . Giant chocolate choux pastries filled with cream were carried back in pink striped boxes and various tiny dogs were admired, especially the ones in coats.

 The next day we all packed up rather sadly and they went off to a couple of days in Amsterdam, while I came back north to start on the prescribed finger exercises ( to be done seven times a day!) and to begin on the lentil and spinach curry.

i must stop doing this

no, no capitals and only a photo if the wind blows in the right direction…

  i've done it again, fallen off my bike and broken something.  i mean, i don't do it every three months or so but this is the second time since i've been writing this blog
.attention seeking, perhaps.

 this time it really wasn't my fault or that of the other woman who fell off with me  , either.
we were waiting to cross a small side road when a car cut straight across in front of us, got out and checked his paintwork, bellowed  'sorry dames', got back in and drove off at speed , leaving the two of us and two bystanders stunned. i thought i was alright and actually rode off, but within half an hour i realised that , thanks to the new blood thinners,  my  left pinkie wasn't just a bit sore, it stuck out at a right angle and was dark, dark blue and sausage shaped. and a neighbour decided to drive me to the emergency dept. luckily reminding me , before we left, to take my ring off.

since there was a  procession of genuine emergencies all evening,  i finally insisted that she went home and i ended up hanging around till midnight, being bumped by sick children and 90 year-old grandmothers of fifteen. but eventually the fact that my pinkie looked as though it would explode led to about ten x-rays and a ginormous heaving and hauling by two nurses which has made it all look a bit better and feel more finger-like in an odd shaped plaster of paris. it does definitely feel a little better this evening but i'm to be checked out tomorrow by the pre-op people and will be put in a more permanent one on Friday.

 all because speedy gonzales took a corner far too fine. i hope he goes bald and bandy legged by the weekend.  and no, i didn't know the other woman…but i do hope she did better than me.

The Capsule Wardrobe

Do you remember when a key article every summer in every women's magazine was  " What To Pack For Your Holidays "? Then it just depended on whether you were headed to a week in Frinton, a fortnight in Torquay or a month in the Highlands. Whatever the destination, sunburn would probably occur and a rain hat might be carried by at least one of the party.

 Not everybody went to the sea-side of course. Maybe your granny lived in the country, maybe you had an aunty in Ireland but nearly everybody went somewhere. And , wherever you went, you took a heavy suitcase with you and there would be at least a couple of new things in it.

I was thinking of this on Friday as Younger Daughter and I wandered through the Amsterdam Uniclo on the way to my train. It's recently opened and I do like their clothes but I couldn't help feeling that, now I don't work, I really don't need to buy anything anymore. I've got a couple of warm coats and plenty of jumpers. I've still got dozens of T-shirts, since working with small children we'd be covered in sticky finger prints regularly. I've got plenty of jeans. I don't get dressed up any more.

 I'm obviously getting old.

 But really, more than anything else, we'd just spent an hour in the Historic Museum admiring a tiny collection of their Georgian and Victorian clothes. Only 75 items in all, each exquisite. And I found the Perfect Dress. If I could I would just wear this for ever more....... Isn't it heavenly?

Yawn...

Have you noticed? When someone asks you these days what you do with all the spare time you've got now you're retired, it's no use just saying that you read or knit. Unless you're walking to Compostela with Miriam Margolies or doing a Ph.D, no one will be remotely interested. You can try to mention a talk you went to ( was it really in February?  ) or a magnificent exhibition but nothing short of reporting that you've been volunteering at the South Pole will do. And it'll be useless without photos.

In my defence, I must say I have done the odd interesting thing when young… but since I don't have selfies of them I suppose they don't count. Even when Smaller Grandson went to a nearby Elizabethan Manor with his class a couple of weeks ago, they all stood there visibly dressed up as pirates … Middle Daughter even made a red coat and an eye patch for him ...so they were definitely there. Lots of snaps of tricorns  and stripey teeshirts.  I can remember the odd memorable Christmas … being in a banana plantation one Christmas for instance or people skating over lakes on another but I can't whip out my 'Phone and show them … ? So was it even real?

Many years ago, I was very fond of an old lady who'd been everywhere, long before the days before gap years. I remember watching television with her and every so often there would be an "I've been there" from her chair, usually over Pondicherri , Mombasa or Cape Town. Generations of the family could do it .Come to that, my grandfather could say it about Archangel or the Dardanelles .

Never mind, life now offers other excitement… I've had housepainters on the balcony all morning.  Full volume weather reports, local traffic reports and local ads. adding a bit of background to  all the goss. from the local football club, where they're going on holiday and what they did last weekend, with photos …  and tacky railings./ So remember, the next time you're queueing up for the peak of Mount Everest or windsurfing off Patagonia, take a PHOTO.
( A statue of Thomas Cook at Leicester Station)

I'm Real ! Blogger Agrees At Last

A bird's nest, washed out of Smitonius's hedge during a huge rainstorm this week, eggs and all. She was amused to see , woven into the nest, a pink ribbon pinched from a little bag she'd been going to put a jewellery order in.

 I've spent idiotic amounts of time trying to sign into my Blogger account for the last couple of weeks and had virtually given up, almost convinced that I didn't actually exist . An impression re-enforced at the hospital this week, when the young nurse tried to take a blood sample from my arm and failed three times. She rushed off to enlist the help of a colleague and I was left, wondering whether I was empty... Luckily her more experienced colleague managed to get enough to prove that I wasn't.

 Anyway… now I've been graciously reinstated , I can't immediately think of anything at all.   Perhaps binge-watching Nailed It ! on Netflix hasn't helped. Perhaps it was the heatwave that has been driving all western Europe to gay abandon  and to cavort in fountains … except that we here on Holland's north coast haven't been any hotter than normal, the heatwave missing us altogether.

 Never mind, it's pleasantly warm today and I've finally made myself a watermelon smoothie and a tortilla de patatas to celebrate. So now all that remains to do is to watch the boats on the river, read yet another whodunnit and admire my growing collection of lavender and its clouds of bumble bees.  I'll see if tomorrow my brain can dredge up anything slightly more interesting to post...

Breaking Out ...

It took me all week not to do that jigsaw … exhausting! It's firmly back in its box and will be going back to the recycling center next time I go. Still, it did force me out of the door and onto a train for which I'm grateful. Just a dash to Groningen, since I'd left it to mid-morning,  but I had enough time for lunch and a wander. I found a rather fine poster for a vintage shop and must go back some time  when it's open.
                                                                                       

 

By the market, my favourite climbing rose was having a good day … had I left it a couple of days later it would have been reduced to a couple of twigs; one storm after another this week has battered everything flat.

As always I dropped into the North African shop on the way back to the train and was fascinated to overhear a discussion between the owner and a possible buyer. Purchaser was wondering if he could redesign the front to make more sales room; 'modernise it all a bit'. He was told that the shop front's protected , "because it's been like this for the last twenty years." Considering the church round the back is at least a couple of hundred year old, the man looked a trifle puzzled but , of course, the street just used to be an alleyway.  Anyway, I realised then just how long I've lived here; I watched the facade being done. When we first came it was the only place to buy olives, proper tomatoes, good lentils and feta and, home-sick as I was, it was a lifeline. It's funny to look back and think that the only way to get chorizo was to go to Amsterdam! And Manchego cheese is still really only to be found at Christmas.

It's impossible to think of life  now without these things. I settled down the end but have always enjoyed trips to Groningen … in fact, I've just talked myself into another tomorrow. Lots of birthdays next week and presents to be found….

Still Shoeless, of Course

But I have got another Pyrex dish, seven more secondhand detective books and two jigsaws. In my defence I should say that I had taken five cookery books and a raincoat to  the charity shop when I went... as Kondo-ish as I'm likely to get.

 One of the puzzles is guaranteed to send me boss-eyed; by Tuesday I'll be seeing little red triangles on everything. Charity shop jigsaws only come in two kinds..."Views" like German Castles, Greek Temples or Shakespeare's Birthplace … or "Busy" like Biscuits, Fish Scales or Ferns. Well, this one is a Mayan mother with her baby, wrapped in a blanket, mostly blanket. Endless stripes and a straw hat. I think it's supposed to be soothing … we'll see. Anyway, I've got a big jar of olives and a chicken roasting in the oven. So happy me.

Boats chugging up and down the river. A large, lurid pink Geranium called Marjorie, a big bag of Minneolas and Summer's beginning.

Now the Keep fit group has shrunk for the Summer, the local paper is the source of all gossip again. It's funny how much has changed in the last few years. These days the mayor seems to attend endless 100th Birthday parties and Golden Wedding Anniversaries but a couple of weeks ago he outdid himself. A local couple celebrated their Platinum Anniversary and her 108 year-old father was there to raise his glass to them, too. My youngest aunt, who's going to be 80 next week, seems positively frisky in comparison … mind you, she and her husband still go on hiking holidays.  Don't think I've ever hiked …..

The Rain's An Hour Late...

Ten past five and it suddenly pours with rain for six minutes … Sitting comfortably on the sofa with some coffee, I'm not unduly bothered but do wonder if it's a sign of things to come.  I check the online edition of the Guardian again and it quite definitely says that it was going to rain here at four. Where will it end? And then it dawns on me... I'm not going ga-ga. I've been taken prisoner by the web.

Fortunately, after a couple of weeks of feeling like death after a bad reaction to some pills, I'm feeling almost human again and can put the laptop down and join the real world again. Perhaps plan a day out. An hour or two on the train, a good lunch and buying some new shoes will be quite exciting enough to start with … and I'll throw caution to the winds, not checking the weather before I go.

Everything...

Yesterday had everything …

An elephant dressed in Kevlar and lace, a quickstep with a terrier, a lead, his owner and her rollator ( it became rather macrame-like till we could all realign ourselves ), coffee with Shakespeare's Wife on the train, the chance to play with a four year-old and a silver foot ball and to top it all, a magic cookery book…

Or maybe, had the sun not been shining, I would just have written that the Groninger Museum had decided to stage an exhibition of everything animal-related hidden in their vaults, including the life-size elephant, a dragon and a conveyor belt. That the terrier had wound himself so successfully round the rollator's wheels that his owner was stranded between me and the bus and it seemed rude to shove her aside rather than help. That Germaine Greer's book, grabbed from the pile by my bed, was entertaining with breakfast on the train. Or that waiting in a draughty bus station, the little boy was having a wonderful time shooting penalties with a tiny football made by his big brother out of rolled-up silver paper from a few chocolate bars.

And the cookbook? My favourite secondhand bookshop had it in their 50 cent box, obviously unaware of the magic recipe inside … Above a yellowing early '60s illustration of something orange-ish, it promised everyone's warming favourite, Tomato Soup.  The list of ingredients is economical in the extreme: 1 litre of cold water, 5 tomatoes, 2 cloves. And the method? Boil for 35 minutes. Season if necessary.  Yum!

Plumper

When you're asked what you did at the weekend and you have to admit to going to a lecture on how to wean your pet onto a vegetarian diet, you'll get funny looks.When you do, just smile in return and change the subject. Don't tell them that you'd only been siezing the chance to sit down for a few minutes.

 In fact the whole thing was rather accidental. I had a free train ticket to use up … it hasn't been the weather to go anywhere recently … and somehow Veggie World, a vegan and vegetarian festival seemed to offer an interesting afternoon out and the chance of endless, interesting nibbles.

 I tried everything from non-dairy grated "Parmesan" non-cheese ( really non-nice!) to nuggets made from beans, quinoa and an alarming amount of chili ( not for children, then ), lactose free yoghurt, a gluten-free vegan lasagne (disappointing) and mountains of hummus and vegan mayonnaise, even an everything-but-sugar-free Caesar salad dressing which rather oddly seemed to glow in the dark.

 All the cakes, biscuits and pies were very nice as were all the juices and soups. All the teeshirts, posters and cookery books were beautifully designed and everyone was cheerful and obviously well fed.

I'm slightly reassured that Small Grandson who, at seven, seems to have already decided not to eat meat won't expire but, though I've cut down on the amount of meat I eat, I'm not ready to join him. When someone makes some really convincing bacon, I might think again. But I can certainly recommend it as an afternoon out.

Thought For Today:

      "Life is a near-death experience. Stumble around in giddy gratitude while you still can''  

This quote from Jen Sincero popped up in a book by Lisa Genova today and I thought I'd share it with you. I usually avoid all these homilies like the plague and don't have embroidered cushions exhorting my guests to count their blessings dotted about but this appealed because it describes this week perfectly.

 The sun shone, the birds sang and all the early bulbs are flowering. Sitting outside Starbuck's in the sun, hearing about Friend's homework and her teaching practice with young teens, I gave thanks for being old enough to retire.

There are things about retirement I don't much like. It can be very quiet at times and you miss the mid-morning gossip, but I don't miss the endless meetings about whether we should insist on every child only bringing fruit for snacks or allowing bread and butter as well or just  not having any rules at all and running the risk of biscuits or croissants. The political correctness got a bit wearing and, in fact, the one boy who I saw helping his mother last Christmas in the supermarket had invariably had an iced bun in his snack box when he was three. Rules per se  don't bring out the best in people and the average pre-schooler's morning doesn't normally revolve round having a banana or carrot sticks. I expect this lad was carrying four shopping bags and herding his mum to the bus stop out of affection.

But retirement does have its advantages … I find I quite like life on the wild side. I like being free to do what I please a lot of the time. I might well go in for some giddy gratitude tomorrow ...

It Happens To Us All

It's finally happened. I've turned into my mother, as we all do eventually.

While she was still alive, we'd usually all come together for Christmas, squash into our old house, eat too much, reminisce and enjoy each others company. Since there weren't quite so many of us then, we could all just about fit into the same car and go off in the afternoon for an outing. My mother would sit happily in the passenger's seat, listening to the radio.

Our local radio station had its firm favourites and a short playlist. That year it, like the rest of us,  had been impressed by Titanic. Wherever we went, the blasted song would come on before we'd reached the end of our road and my mother would pipe up , "Who's that singing?".  And everybody would  chorus, "It's Celine Dion, Granny".

The other day I was sitting in the hairdresser's, trying to remain positive about my fringe, when  there was something about the song on the radio …  "Who's that singing?".

Yes of course,  it was Celine Dion and her new song, whatever it's called…….

It Hasn't Snowed All Day

No, it hasn't snowed once today. Had it not been freezing, I would have drunk my coffee on the balcony.  Yesterday we only had a lot of wet white stuff that melted on its way down, at about knee height . The crocus are waking up in the park. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Winter even makes getting dressed in the morning rather boring . Hugely heavy thick green jumper or hugely heavy thick grey jumper? ( Am I the only person left, old enough to remember when sweaters came in a wide variety of colours every year? When we didn't all look as though we'd Xeroxed ourselves?)

 Last week it snowed every day and I spent most of it under a blanket, reading a pile of paper backs. I can really recommend  'The Watchmaker from Filigree Street', 'Half-Sick of Shadows'  and  'Moon over Soho', having thoroughly enjoyed them all, especially the first.

But now I'm all magicked out, I've mooned over a huge pile of American museum catalogues, made a variety of vegetable soups and have started to make myself bacon sandwiches again ( definitely frowned on by the cholesterol police ) so I'd better have my hair cut and go for a Day Out. The Femmes Fatales exhibition in Den Haag sounds good … the Dior exhibition in London sounds good, too, but unfortunately Days Out can only really last 24 hours in the real world.  Never mind, it's Blood Orange time again and three different people today assured me that the snow's finished for this year so it's onwards and upwards. ?? 

Smitonius kindly emailed me a shot of her baking and I thought  I'd share it with you to spread the cheer. If I've been overoptimistic and it snows again tomorrow I'll make some muffins and eat them all before the day's out … after another bacon sandwich.

Perhaps A Little Self-Restraint ...

 The party-ing is over. Huge fun while it lasted; a surfeit of fattening food … TWO Christmas puddings, eight sorts of cheese, three sorts of ham, far too many biscuits and Janet's Bubble and Squeak …. but it seems sensible to stop now before I go pop! 

Though, since it's snowed this week, there's a little voice in my head saying, "You need your calories, my girl" and I think of walking through the snow to school when I was quite small, sucking a boiled sweet my mother had given me 'to keep me warm'  (ironically she later became a dental nurse).


 Fortunately there's a bigger voice pointing out that if I want to button up my jeans, I'd better not eat a large bowl of porridge, two bananas and a leftover sausage every day for breakfast  … oh, alright, just this once, then…      
Trouble is having vivid memories of being housebound the last time we had days and days of black ice, I've stocked the flat with enough food to feed the neighbourhood for a fortnight.


Luckily there have been a couple of good exhibitions locally and wandering round the Fries Museum's  Rembrant And Saskia , Love and Courtship in the Golden Age a couple of times has kept me fit. Add to this a quick skip round Nubia, Land van de Zwarte Faroa's in Assen's  Drents Museum and I'm still only slightly chubby. And I've got a lovely post card of a white Nubian cat on my fridge door.