A meaningful conversation

This morning, Keith and I had a conversation which we have never had before. Before anyone's imagination begins to race, it was about football, or more specifically, about the apparently disappointing result of last night's match. Regular readers will be well aware of my attitude towards football and will no doubt gasp in astonishment and step back in amazement, and these reactions would be particularly appropriate when they learn that Keith not only  shares my degree of interest in football, but his antipathy could even be said to surpass mine.
Anyway, having seen clips of Wayne Rooney's succinct and direct reaction to being booed by the fans and Fabio's apparent bemusement and total lack of histrionics as he made his way 'backstage'  (sorry but I'm not conversant with the correct terminology here), we began to jointly wonder why anyone would be surprised that Fabio was not upset by England's performance as he is Italian, not English. I said I thought that the fact that he is raking in five million pounds per annum should be reason enough for him to show a little concern and interest, but Keith was adamant. He's Italian, so he will be rooting for the Italian team. Actually, we weren't sure if Italy is playing, but assumed they are. This in turn led us to speculate on why in the name of sanity so many of the managers and owners of the British teams are quite obviously not British and, come to that, neither are a large proportion of the players. Does the UK produce so few decent players that it is impossible to cobble together at least a few teams using solely British players?
By this time, Paddy was fixing me with the doggy glare that means, 'Are we ever going for a walk today?' so that was the end of our conversation, except to bemoan the fact that there are still a lot of 'World Cup' days to get through before I can be sure of seeing Emmerdale and Coronation Street at the proper times again.
Oh, and if anyone thinks they can answer our queries, please feel free to use the comments box - but no hate mail, please!

Text messages

When I take Paddy out for a walk, I wear trousers, jogging bottoms, whatever, but they have to have deep pockets. This is so that I can carry tissues, treats for the times when Paddy actually manages to walk past another dog without having an attack of hysterics, poo bags (self-explanatory) and my two mobile phones, one being my personal one for use in case I am suddenly attacked by a manic axe murderer (well, you never know) and the other being my 'work' phone. When the message tone on that one beeps, I can be fairly sure it will be from a client wanting to cancel an appointment or having forgotten the time of said appointment, but today, it was different.
The message read, "Hi, how are u. Wot u up to this mornin?"
As no-one I know is that into textspeak, I could be fairly sure that this was not from a client, not even one who wanted an appointment at short notice, so I ignored it and carried on walking.
Minutes later, the phone beeped again.  "Where r u mate?"
I considered texting back to put the sender out of his misery by informing him that I was not his mate, but I didn't, at least, not until we got home when I sent a text saying, "I'm afraid you have the wrong number"
to which I got an immediate reply: "R u not rod then?"
"No" I replied. The novelty was wearing off by now.
"Who r u then?" was the next message.
I was tempted to reply "Not Rod" but decided against it. Surely if I ignored him, he would finally get the message. How hard can "I'm afraid you have the wrong number" be to understand?
But no, our friend was not ready to give up yet.
"R u a lady?"
Yessss! Recognition at last!

My present

Back in November, my friend Gill, she of 'ladies who lunch in Chester' fame, gave me a little cyclamen plant. Here it is in the kitchen. It looked just like this when she gave it to me and we both thought that the flowers would last a few weeks at most and then, its job done, it would be sidelined.
But this little plant obviously had other ideas, for, not only is it flowering again now but it also flowered again in the middle of winter, which was very cheering as, looking beyond it out through the window, there was nothing but snow as far as the eye could see.
It probably helps that it is on the kitchen window sill, which means I remember to water it, but I think it has done very well. A present and a half!

What a decade

We're nearly half way through this year already and I find it a little worrying that each year seems to pass more quickly than the last; one of the effects of getting older, I suppose. Whereas at one time, my years were divided into three parts, following the pattern of the academic year, now I tend to look only a week or two ahead as I book in my clients for their next appointments.
But yesterday, I fell to thinking about the events in my life over the last ten years and I was quite surprised at all that has happened. Since New Year 2000 was rung in:

• I have become a grandmother three times over, although I only have access to one of my grandchildren for reasons that I still don't understand.
• My mother died, after a long time in poor health but I am glad that, as a family, we were able to keep her at home until the end.
• My two daughters graduated and began their careers, one as a doctor and one as a teacher.
• My marriage ended and I set up home on my own, which was strange after so many years.
• I continued to become more disillusioned with the world of teaching, stepping down from my position as deputy head of a primary school and eventually leaving full time teaching for a few years of supply teaching.
• I retired from teaching, having stuck it out until a few months before my official retirement age.
• I became interested in counselling and embarked on four years of training before qualifying as an integrative humanistic counsellor.
• I met Keith and moved to North Wales, where we set up home together. That was the high point.
• I lost my elder son when he took his life last year - most definitely the lowest point.

I always see myself as living a quiet, uneventful life, but looking at the list above, I seem to have done a lot of living over the last ten years, some good, some not so good and some devastating but life goes on.
It's probably just as well that we can't see into the future though!

Football fever

I don't always follow the news and current affairs that closely, but I have the feeling that, somewhere, some time recently, I have heard mention of the World Cup. It only seems like five minutes since the last one, but, hey, life's too short to quibble. Anyway, it occurred to me that there are going to be more than a few wives, partners and girlfriends out there who will spend the next few weeks tiptoeing around, providing constant supplies of food and beverages and being deprived of any choice whatsoever on daily TV viewing. In addition, they will be expected to rally round, offering consolation and copious boxes of tissues when the results are bad and, most importantly, refrain from saying, "Well, it's only a bunch of idiots kicking a bladder of wind around a field, darling!"
Now all this emotional support is bound to take its toll, so I thought it would be a good business opportunity for me to offer counselling to all football widows for the duration. No, really, it's the least I can do!
However, offering bereavement counselling for the fans in the unthinkable event that England will lose ...
No, sorry, that's a step too far.
Well, I'd have to care, you see!

Car washing

I no longer go to Sainsbury's to do my main shop each week. I got tired of being pressurised by over-zealous assistants to use the self-scan tills (I consider that I do quite enough by actually having to go up and down the aisles to collect what I want, without having to scan it all as well!), and of having to beg under-zealous assistants at the tills to help me pack. (Don't they realise that it moves the queue along because the people behind are not having to wait for me to finish packing after I have paid?) I do still (dimly) remember being able to go into shops and be served by a friendly, smiley assistant so this 'take it or leave it' approach seems less than impressive, but enough about that. One of the other things recently introduced by Sainsbury's is a band of roving car-washers who accost anyone who parks there to offer a car-wash service while they are doing their shopping. I believe there are mixed reactions to this but, for all who are not keen on the service, I have a solution.
Since I have taken to drawing up on the car park in my Mitsubishi Pajero, not a small car by any stretch of the imagination, I have noticed  that, far from flocking over to persuade me to let them wash my car for a fiver, the car-washers are suddenly conspicuous by their absence, looking frantically around for another car, any normal sized car. After all, who wants the extra square footage if they can find a nice little mini?
Problem solved!

Anniversary

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of this blog. Over the past few evenings, I have been looking back over some of my past posts, particularly those written whilst on holiday in France. One of them was this one about our very brief foray into Spain, promping a text message from Hugh. A few tears were shed as I read this unexpected reminder of him but that's how it is. Every now and then something will happen, be said or  be shown on television that gives me a sharp reminder, in addition to the ever present memory running constantly in the background of my brain, of course.
This morning was also a brief jog down Memory Lane. In the field next to the one where Paddy and I were walking are some horses and today there were two beautiful white ones, unfortunately not close enough to be photographed, but they immediately reminded me of White Horses.






I don't remember the TV series but I loved the music and had the 45rpm record. At the time, I was at college, so seeing the horses in the field momentarily transported me back to those carefree days of student life, and particularly all the revision for exams which used to fill the bulk of our hours at this time of year! Maybe not so carefree then...