Happy Birthday

Despite her protests to the contrary I think my mother quite enjoyed her 80th birthday party. We had tea, wine, sandwiches and cake in the company of the other residents. We didn't stay late and we cleared up afterwards and my mother even managed a smile for the camera! This is all of us! (Photo by Ian).

Some you win and some you loose

I have been trying to buy an ice cream maker for ages. I started by scouring eBay, but missed out on a few bargains. I bought a Magimix one from John Lewis but decided that it was rubbish (and it didn't work properly) so I sent it back and today I saw quite a nice one on eBay that was local, so would save me the £8.00 postage normally quoted. Ian  suggested I bid with 20 seconds to go with the maximum price I was prepared to pay. With 6 seconds to go I was the highest bidder, but in the end I lost out!  Never mind! I'll get the ice cream machine one day!

In the meantime Ian bid on a second hand dumper truck somewhere up near Birmingham and he won it, so is driving up on Tuesday with the trailer and then we are taking it down to France on Friday. That marks the start of our three week trip. I no longer call it a holiday since we spend most of the time working. The good news is that we should be getting our WiMax connected on the 9th August so no more walking up to the neighbours' garden to use their wireless network!

My Brompton

I have been trying to rid myself of some of my bicycles before I go to France. The Brompton, my folding bike that I have had since 1997, was on the list to sell. However, it has been saved by the possibility of the part time job in Bordeaux. The school is 6 km from the railway station, and as the train looks like it will be the best option for travelling, the Brompton will come in handy. Now we come to problem two. I rode Brommie for 5 years and did not one single bit of maintenance on it apart from mending punctures! Ian was horrified at my neglect and decided that we needed to do some work on it. I also needed some new handlebars after falling off and damaging the originals in the first three weeks of owning it. So.. we replaced the chain, cogs and jockey wheels, put a new front brake, cables and saddle; and I bought some folding pedals. We then decided to try a bit of customisation for the bars and brake levers and 'stole' some riser bars and mountain bike levers off of one of Ian's bikes. This is a bit radical as anything like that can affect how if folds. However we experimented, it worked and now I have the first ever' pimp  my ride' Brommie!

Brommie with riser bars

Ready to ride

And it still folds

Logo launch

So here it is.. the logo..

As explained in an earlier post, this was done by my neighbour Dave. This is a scanned picture of the original pen and ink drawing that we have. I may at some point experiment with a bit of colour but at the moment we have the black and white version for letters, cards etc.

Trendsetters!

We edge slowly towards France. Thinking about everything that needs to be done in a short space of time fills me with panic but each day more jobs get done. Ian arrived at the weekend with 30 packing crates and insisted that I start packing so that he has somewhere to put some of his things when his flat is rented. I went a good way to filling them up with my books, photos, and contents of some cupboards but Ian is most concerned that I start on my wardrobe! That is a job for later!

Today I took Mandelson the cat to get his pet passport. He was micro chipped, given two rabies jabs, and had a blood test (that can only be done at a government approved, i.e. expensive, laboratory) and today I had to go to pick up all the documents. Total cost was approximately £200  which makes it more than double the cost of my passport! There is a space on the document where I can put his photo but as I can never get him stay still long enough to take a photo of anything other than  his a*se I don't think I will bother!

My mother told me that she is waiting until her 80th birthday (in two weeks time) before renewing her passport, as then she won't have to pay.

Talking of Mandelson (this time Peter), I saw an interview with him the other week about his memoirs where he confessed that he wants to be a farmer. This is a quote from an interview with him from the spectator:

If you ask me where in 15 or 20 years' time I'd like to be, it will be probably on a farm somewhere close to the land, getting up early in the morning ... I want to be near land. I want to be able to grow my own food. Look after my own farm animals, worry about the weather and get the timing of my harvest right.

Where we go Peter Mandelson follows!

Black Nana

When I was younger and my grandmother was still alive she showed us this old family photo on a tin plate image. The baby was my grandfather, Thomas Welch, with his mother, Mary  Miriam Price and his father,  Thomas Welch who was a postman. The older man in the hat is my grandfather's mother's father, Luke Price, who was a lamplighter from Merthyr Tydfil and the old lady in bonnet was my grandfather's mother's mother,  Mary Du Prez. When I first saw this photo I said to my grandmother:

"who is the black woman in the photo?"

"Black woman!? She wasn't black, she just worked with coal and it tinted her skin"

No amount of explanation would ever make her see this any differently! After my grandmother died we had some contacts with the other side of the family who knew more about her and had a big picture of her on their wall. She was known to them as "Black Nana"

My Grandmother

I mentioned my grandmother in the previous post. One of the things that I did this weekend was to scan all my mother's old family pictures and I plan to post a few from time to time in case anyone out there is interested!

My grandmother was born in Camden Town, London. I can't remember the exact date but she was christened Dorothy Turner. There are quite a lot of old family photos and although they were not a rich family I would guess that they were probably what we would call upper working class at the time. This was her, I assume around 5 years old, in a wonderful posed picture! She was quite a character. She was quite short (not much more that 5 foot tall) and I remember her as being rather round in her younger days. However, whereas nowadays people may think of diets and toned bodies she thought of herself as a 'mere slip of a thing' and quite voluptuous! Here is a great picture of her in her bathing costume! She described the young Dorothy as being very popular with the boys! (Although in those days this had the much more innocent meaning of 'flirty'.)

She met and married Thomas Welch when she was about 19. He was a childhood friend and they had know each other pretty much all their lives.  He played the piano and piano accordion and she sang soprano. They loved music and seem to remember them saying that for a while they performed together in music hall. One of her regrets in life was that she was never able to train as a singer as her mother wouldn't let her. She was devoted to Tom, as she called him, for the following 60 years, although she also deeply resented the role that had been placed on her as a woman of her day. I think she was actually rather envious of her grandchildren for the opportunities that we had and in another life she would have loved to have been an independent woman.  

Thomas and Dorothy Welch on their wedding day (They got married on Boxing day, a common day to get married on as people would not need to take time off of work.

Weekly update: on destiny

Time for my weekly post. I seemed to have settled into a once weekly post at the moment. I would like to do more but will have to be content with this. There are no shortage of things to write about and I often compose blog posts in my head whilst on the way to some place, or when on the train, or when sitting at my desk trying to work! However I never seem to get time to write them all down.

I had plenty of time to think on Friday as most of it was spent sitting in the car park that is the M25 (composing blog entries in my head). I went  to Windsor to take my mum to a hospital appointment that lasted all of 20 minutes. What was nice was that we then had plenty of time to talk and have lunch together; a rare occurrence in these days. She will be 80 in a couple of weeks so we talked about that and also about my planned move to France. To her, this must seem like the end of the earth, but then she thought that when I moved from London to Eastbourne! Anyway, I think she is coming around to the idea. We looked through her old photograph album together and that prompted her to talk about my grandmother (her mother)

"She always wanted to run a bed and breakfast..she rather liked cooking and always thought it would be a lovely thing to do..it was one of the things that she regretted not doing.. ." (She had many regrets about her life)
Funny, I never knew that about her. I also never knew that my grandfather  learnt to speak French quite well at the age of 50. My mother couldn't remember why he suddenly took it up other than to say that he was rather good at spoken French (not something I have inherited!).

So, perhaps, somehow, without realising it, I am attempting to live out some of the unfulfilled dreams of my Grandparents by going to France, to breed llamas and run a small B&B. Mind you, unfulfilled dreams are always full of excitement, fun, positive thoughts, hopes and wishes, whereas the reality may be less dreamlike!

A good book

One of the problems with spending my days reading student work, documents, academic papers etc. is that by the time my head hits the pillow I am too tired and brain dead to do anything other than listen to the radio as I drift off to sleep or at best, do an easy Sudoku puzzle (on my tiredest of days I can't even do the simple ones). I used to like reading, but these activities are not condusive to sitting down with a good book. This is something I hope to rectify when I start my new life away from full time academic life. Occasionally however I find a book that breaks through my tiredness and inertia and I read it to the end. The other week I picked up an old copy of Tom Simpson's 'Touching the Void' from a shelf at work. Tom and his climbing partner were caught out in an accident whilst climbing in South America and, in what is now a well known incident, Tom's partner eventually had to cut the rope that was holding Tom precariously above a crevasse and leave him to what he was certain was his death. Tom survived and the book is really an incredibly powerful account of his survival. I'm not to into the climbing details but the book got my attention and I can recommend it. (Don't bother with the film, it doesn't come close to the actual words.)

The joys of summer

Summer is here in full swing. We have had about three weeks of warm, dry weather give or take a few showers. Summer is a little late. This time last year I was already picking the last of the blackcurrants but this year they are only just ripe enough and I am still picking the last of the strawberries! Nature in early summer is almost terrifying with the speed with which it takes over. I like it but it so quickly gets out of control. I can remember coming back to Eastbourne from Brighton after spending two weeks in hospital and rather than feeling pleased to see all the lush greenness of the Downs I found it rather overwhelming and that is how Ian and I felt looking at my garden this weekend! The weeds were waist high, the plants over grown, the hedges encroaching on the flower beds. We worked hard and filled three wheelie bins (mine and two belonging to the neighbours) and still only managed to do half!

Moving on

Ian is now back from France and taking stock before he finally finishes off his flat and rents it out. Of course he spent Thursday and Friday of last week looking at more pictures of heavy machinery. This time it was a dumper truck which he assures me he will need and an old ride on lawn mower (although we have no lawn yet!) Fortunately he missed out on the bidding which was a relief as I am not sure what we would have done with them between now and our next trip.

I got some ideas for out logo last week from my graphic artist neighbour, so we played around with them a bit and made a decision. All will be revealed when we have the final drawing! We are edging forwards slowly! Tomorrow I have my last French class.

C'est l'heure de dire adieu

Last week I was thinking about all the nice things about my job that I will miss. I have not had to wait long for a few things to happen to p*ss me off and make me long for the French fields!

A new government tends to galvanise  inactive civil servants into a spurt of action (in fear of their jobs and pensions no doubt!) I remember it when New Labour came into to power and it is no different with the ConDems. A young girl came from the Department of Health to tell us about how things will change. (I know I am too old when I refer to them all as 'young'). Apparently we are going to see fewer acute hospital beds (no change there, every government has tried to do this but no one has worked out yet that the only people misfortunate enough to stay in hospital are those who can't be anywhere else as they are too ill). We are also going to see more services provided closer to home. (Been tried before and in principal everyone agrees with this except services closer to home are more expensive than centralised services). Students are to be told (by whom? the government? ) that they must challenge practises they see that they think are wrong. "Well look what happened to me when I did that" piped up one student. Of course they should challenge but my experience of that is that it makes them unpopular and then they fail their placements. OK they should do it tactfully but they are STUDENTS and, as the word implies, they are still learning. The final one is this new thing that they are going to focus on called re-enablement; except that it is not new but another word for rehabilitation, which we have been doing since the end of the first world war!

You can't tax some perks

I was most disappointed to discover that one of the blogs I read regularly has been mothballed. The Jobbing Doctor wrote about life as a General Practitioner, with its ups and downs, frustrations and bonuses. I enjoyed his musings but know that for many Bloggers who write about work related matters,  no matter how hard you try to keep your identity a secret you are eventually 'outed'. It is usually not a problem if you don't have too many readers but as the Jobbing Doctor's posts got more and more widely read I would guess it got more and more difficult for him to stay unknown. Or..maybe he just got fed up with it and needed a rest. Either way I will miss his thoughts.

The lack of JD prompted me to search the blog sphere for other interesting blogs to read and one of them that I found was "Hold my hand": a social worker's blog by Doris Plaster. Her post about a dying resident in a nursing home was really very moving (The Language of Love) and caused me to reflect on my post yesterday, where I was bemoaning the lack of perks in the public sector. It made me realise that my professional life has been full of all sorts of wonderful bonuses.  I often tell students, when they are struggling to come to terms with the difficulty of the cases that they have to deal with, that as therapists we often get to work with people at the lowest point of their lives. We see people do amazing things, fight against all the odds, we see the best of people, the worst of people and in some cases we can make a very small difference to their situation. That is truly a privilege and, if you like, a perk. And the best thing about it is that David Cameron and readers of the Daily Mail can't do anything about it! So thank you Doris for helping me see my work in perspective! I am very pleased to be leaving this bit of it now but it is nice to be able to go thinking of the good things about it!

Health and safety man is alive and living in France

Ian is still in France. He has been hampered by rain and a rather officious inspector from the SPANC who took one look at Warren's carefully placed plastic pipe leading from the end of the filter bed to the middle of the field, shook his head, wagged his finger and said 'interdit'! Negotiation and discussion was therefore out of the question and so Ian and Warren spent last week digging a trench for the run off, consisting of two further 30 metre drains running across the slope, sand, gravel, yet more pipe and two further inspection holes so that the man from the SPANC could look into them on Thursday and check that they were draining properly! This is in spite of the fact that our neighbours' fosse empties directly into the ground and runs off into the corner of our field filtered only by the grass and the soil. The slightly smelly puddle that collects a the top of the field has been ideal for growing the twisted willow tree we bought from England 18 months ago and is also popular with Sid the snake so we are not too bothered by it but annoyed by the 'health and safety man' mentality that has found its way into the French countryside! If the drains prove to be ineffective then we have to get the run-off from our filter bed pumped up to the ditch that runs off by the side of the road!

You can just see both features in this picture. Over to the right, just in front of the hedge is a lush green patch, which is our neighbour's run-off and at the end of the muddy trench leading away from the filter bed is the forbidden pipe exit!









David Cameron and his ConDemmed party have appointed Lord Young to investigate whether health and safety has 'gone mad'. I think it is probably the people implementing all these policies that have gone mad. Interestingly when Cameron first mentioned these ideas before the election the LibDems emphatically disagreed with him. Funny how madness spreads.

I expect my wages to be frozen after the budget on Tuesday. Apparently my 'perks' are also threatened but as I can't think of any perks that I have had then I can't see what they can do. Public sector pensions are waved around like a red flag by the likes of the Daily Mail as being a perk. Yes, I have a pension and I have paid 7% of my salary every month towards it for  20+ years. Even if I work until I am 70 I will never be able to accrue the 40 years necessary for a full pension. A full pension would give me half my salary on retirement. I will get about a quarter which, without going into too much detail with regards to my salary would give me a pension of about £10,000 per year. Not what I consider a perk after 30 years of public service! Anyway, it will shortly not be my concern as I formally handed in my notice on Monday!

Nature

The day after I found out about Norma I was quite sad and Ian suggested that we stopped working and went for a walk around the land. I was particularly keen to see what had happened to the orchid field. We were quite a bit later than last year, when they were spectacular, but then it has been a long winter and a late spring so everything is a little later this year. This year the rain has meant that the grass has grown up a lot more but although past their prime, we still had an impressive array of pyramid orchids in bloom, along with a host of other wild flowers.

This was taken from the bottom of the field looking up towards the house. There were one or two bee orchids but these were really finished. Our plans at the moment are to leave the field as it is but maybe just to top the grass after the orchids have died back. We also saw lots of butterflies. My favourites were four really pretty black, white and grey ones, which reminded me of Norma. I have always liked the idea that the butterfly is associated with the soul and to me this is more meaningful than symbolic burials or cremations. So when I saw these butterflies floating around over the fields and flowers I though of Norma, free at last from the things that tied her down. Unfortunately they were flitting around too quickly for me to take a photo!

Grieving for a pet is different to grieving about a person. I was sad for a day, less sad the day after and now, apart from getting used to needing one less cat bowl my life goes on as before. With a person the pain lasts longer and is stronger.

When I showed people some pictures of the house after the last visit they asked me if the sky was always blue. Well, it isn't I'm afraid. The weather was quite changeable and we had some spectacular grey skies!

Digger man

Ian spent most of the week with the digger. He is still in France with her but today he has taken a 'day off' and gone to see a Tractor Pulling Contest! I am posting this picture because maybe some of you can identify with the look of sheer concentration and pleasure on Ian's face!

Homecoming

I was really looking forward to a long lie in bed this morning! I always sleep quite badly this time of year with the long hours of daylight and after a week in France with lots of work and a journey home yesterday I needed to catch up with a few hours sleep. However, this was not to be as in the very early hours the jackdaw nest fell down the chimney complete with jackdaw. This is pretty much an annual occurrence and I have discovered that the best way to deal with it is to open the window and the chimney and let the bird work it out for itself. Last time the bird flew out in about 2 hours but this bird is a bit more stupid and is still trying the loud squawks from inside the chimney in the hope that his mates will come and rescue him. Oh well, I hope he will work it out before bedtime!

France were playing in the World Cup on Friday and we went out for a meal in the town square. It was an ordinary Friday night except the local bar had a few more people than normal. Last night I arrived back at the railway station just a the England vs USA match was entering half time. The pubs were spilling over onto the pavement with drunken men wearing red and white and girls wearing very little. Police sirens were blaring as they tried to control the drunken crowds. I had 40 minutes to wait for a bus home so I got a taxi! It was not a great homecoming!

Mandi was pleased to see me but didn't seem to be missing Norma at all. In fact, he is relishing in being the centre of attention for the first time in his life!

Farewell Norma

I was worried about Norma before I left. I know that she had limited time left but seeing her condition as I left for Ireland I did wonder whether now was a good time to go away. I told my neighbour to phone me if she was worried. Last night, while we were enjoying a meal with neighbours in our dining room (complete with dust sheets as tablecloths, tools all around us and no ceilings) I got a call. Norma had been missing for two days and despite searches and contacting the vet she had not reappeared. The feeling was that she had taken herself off to die.

I spent the night trying to think about places that she might be. I went through all her secret hiding places in my mind and sent a text the following morning. As we were wandering round yet another hardware store I got a call to say that she had been found in a nearby garden and taken to the vets. She was almost dead so the vets had to put her to sleep.

I called the vets, tried to reassure everyone that they had done the right thing, and agreed Norma's funeral arrangements. (A few days in the freezer and the off to the pet crematorium..I am not sentimental about these things and don't feel the need to have some sort of memorial ).

So, Norma chose her time and is now at peace but when I return on Saturday the house will feel less like home without her.

Another day, another breakfast

Hotel breakfast buffets are all the same really. Turins full of curdled scrambled egg, drying bacon etc, plates of cheese and ham, yoghurt, fruit....I find it all a bit overwhelming and I can never decide what I want. Whatever I choose never lives up to my expectations. At breakfast today was a man who looked like the incredible hulk and wore a T shirt with 'World's Strongest Man' on it. I don't know whether he was a true contender or a hopeful but he was still tucking into the third course of his breakfast as I left.

We are off to France tomorrow. I am just there for a week and then come back but Ian has tasked himself with finishing the concrete slab for the garage before he returns. The miracle is that Warren claims he has finished the fosse. He asked us to pay him by return but as he has spent 6 months ignoring our phone calls and emails he may well have to wait a little for his money!

Small world

l am currently in a hotel room in Limerick on my final duties as an external examiner. For the first time I managed to arrive with a laptop that I can connect to the hotel's wireless network and so it is almost like being at home. Ryan Scare have withdrawn the late evening flight that I used to get and so I arrived a day later than usual without much time to do the required work. Consequently I have been sitting here reading scripts and trying to recover from the enormous meal I had earlier at The Cornstore. Should you ever find yourself in Limerick I can recommend it but working in the evening on a full stomach is not that easy!

On the flight over I found myself sitting next to a woman who turned out to be a good friend of my doctor! It's a small world!