the price of scenery

happy end

2006-11-06T23:28:25+01:00

I've been trying to get into this for a while, goodness knows what I was doing wrong
Silly poem; called Happy End
Tatiana Nikolayeva
the archetypal babushka,
the fat peasant on the Moscow Metro,
was a pianist.
Dimitri Shostakovitch
admired her so profoundly
that he wrote her a set of preludes and fugues
in the manner of Bach
Tatiana Nikolayeva
sitting there like a woolly teacosy
was playing with magisterial beauty
and she died

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happy end

2006-11-06T23:28:12+01:00

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happy end

2006-11-06T23:27:17+01:00

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life sentence

2006-04-20T16:07:30+02:00

We made a joke about it at work many years ago - if you get a life sentence you get remission for good conduct but there's no let-off from marriage.
At the time I thought it was funny (not very just mildly comical) Now with 50 years looming on the horizon there's no joke about it.
OK, so we have a niceish house and a lovely view, but I can't go for a little stroll to the shops to fetch the paper without a perilous hike along a single track road with lots of traffic, so that every few yards I have to take to the ditch. I do have an allover Scotland bus pass - anywhere at all for free, but I have to take the car 7 miles to catch the nearest bus.
Sometimes I wake in the morning and can't think what on earth I want to get up for. Husband is not sociable and can sit and watch TV or read the paper -occasionally a book. If I don't take the car to visit there are days when there's just him and me.
It was bearable with a day or two a week at work - not for the money, for the crack.
It's a luxury to moan at length when nobody I know reads it. Just be warned - don't spend the last few years of your life in solitary confinement. If you've got friends and interests in a town, don't allow yourself to settle for the truly rural.

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a fatal is only a statistic

2006-01-19T23:47:28+01:00

We don't have any motorways around here, but we do have accidents. Fatals are always a pest because the police shut off the road for ages while they measure and the only way round, if such there be, take 30-50 miles. We have stretches of straightish 2 lane A-roads mixed with blind corners and blind summits - or both together.
You hear about crashes and tut without thinking much more about it.
What happens if one of the parties involved is someone you've known for years?
Imagine a small peugeot coming along a narrow stretch of road when it meets a large subaru head on. The driver of the peugeot is killed and his passenger has an assortment of broken bones. They might as well have hit a tank.
Suppose it had been you in the peugeot - if I'd been that driver it wouldn't have been a tragedy as long as I was killed outright - I've had my allotted span. But a friend of my daughter's had a similar crash a year ago. After sundry operations and re-breaking bones she can only just struggle along with two sticks. I'm too old to put up with that.
If it had one on my children or grandchildren I'd shattered, griefstruck, angry and all the rest.
But how about the the driver of the subaru, whose fault it was. He was never a patient driver and once too often he passed when he had no way of knowing that the road was clear. So he killed a man.
His situation doesn't bear contemplating. It doesn't matter what penalties the law imposes on him, the guilt will stay forever (he's not the kind of man to shrug off such an accident as a bit of bad luck)
It reminds of me some far off transgression of my childhood, what is was, I don't remember. But I do remember a sickness of guilt, of wishing that day could begin again to wipe out whatever I had done wrong.
I had not killed a man. How does one live with that?

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the end of the line

2005-12-24T16:16:34+01:00

I know it's daft to be sad about having to retire - also rather cross, since the decision was forced upon me by rules and regulations. To go on working I'd have to do lots of courses, training, etc,etc, even though I was doing only 4-5 hurs per week.
After 50 years one gets addicted to the great British public. I shan't half miss my weekly fix.

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downfall

2005-12-06T18:02:25+01:00

Did anyone see Downfall?
More4 is useful for showing films before the crits have quite faded from memory - very useful if the nearest cinema is 50 miles away.
I remember Hitler's voice. Pa used to surf the crackly airwaves in the hot summer of 1939 and let me here the result. Ma scolded him, esp for subjecting the child to that ranting and raving.
Fascinating film. But my mind get throwing up some quibbles some of them quite beside the point.
'Hitler's' accent annoyed me. I know he came from Linz, and I've worked there and he didn't sound like the accent in my memory.
How did they produce all the rubble? From the end credits, I presume that a lot of the exteriors were St Petersburg which was still standing the last I heard of it.
How were the people in the bunker supposed to get all their supplies? Lashing of booze, endless packets of cigarettes, and enough food to be going on with.
Did a cyanide capsule really work so efficiently as all that? And did anyone ever find the children's bodies.
If he had lost it so obviously towards the end, why did some of the remaining generals not take charge and least limit the carnage?
How did the Reich ever can to power at all? Fanatics are not usually so efficent. It's always struck me as ludicrous that the great white aryan ideal was miles away from his gang and from Hitler himself.
The idea of loyalty to a sworn oath isn't one that comes naturally to me, or possibly to anyone else these days. It sounded like the old dramas we did at university (European, not Shakespeare, he didn't go on at length about honour)
The secretary really did survive and they had her on the TV quite a few years ago, and I know she's written her account of the last years. So how much of the film was accurate (I'm not sking if it was true, which is a very different question)
It was a fascinating evening

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past and future

2005-10-23T16:35:38+02:00

I had radio 3 on while I was reading the paper and something caught my ear.
An organist called Obrecht, employed at Bruges from 1485 on, who died of the plague in 1505 - exactly 500 years ago. How do they know? from old documents in musty vaults?
500 years from now will there be anyone listening to today's music - in fact will there be anyone around in the first place? Men have survived plagues before - how can we take anything seriously when the news bulletins talk about dead parrots? - but if the polar ice caps really do go into meltdown what happens then?
Looking back a future survivor will be drowned in a sea of information, He's not going to search for facts, he's going to have to pick out the gold from the rivers of dross.
'Celebrity' may fox him. What exactly is one of them? If he can see old TV programs with 'celebrity' guests, he'll be hard pushed to know what one of our contemporaries has to do to be given the label.
Will they know David Beckham's name in 50 years?

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65 years ago

2005-10-09T17:49:15+02:00

I look at the children and the grandchildren and wonder what they will remember in another 50 years - total recall or disjointed snatches?
Mum and I were sent to the country in 1940 because Dad had to go for his job, which was arranging evacuations for Glasgow schools.
You'd think that such an upheaval would be memorable, even after all this time.
Memorable for one thing - I cut the apron strings - not completely, of course - but Mum never mattered very much again.
She was too frightened, of the dark, the silence, of our landlord (I don't know why, Charlie blootered was fair game for his wee wife) and of cows.
Imagine being afraid of cows! The boys. as a test, told me to lie down in the field and wait till the cows came to have a look - soft wet noses and great big eyes.
What she didn't know wasn't going to give her conniptions.
- My friend Mathew shared his Woodbine with me, after he discovered I didn't like the milk he stole from doorsteps. Fags from the post office counter were more interesting.
- M. took us both on a swing so high that I could see right over the bar, me sitting down, M. with his feet jammed on to the swing. His surgical boot gave me bruises in a strange place. I can still smell my hands, after being wrapped round the rusty chain for dear life.
- Play with the policeman's chidren, Mum said. Better than hanging around that wee Glasgow keelie from the Gorbals. If we were in the police garden and I needed to pee, they sent me into the bit of garden that was picked out for the purpose that particular day. M. gave me a penny or two, now and then. It's your bum they were keeking at, that's your share.
- we set a field on fire (it must have been a good summer) We didn't mean any harm, our picnic fire just went on spreading until it reached the railway line. One rusty pump was no good. The boys sent me to phone the fire brigade - I had the kind of posh voice that would be believed.
- When I fell off a makeshift slide and broke my arm I just lay in the corner of the shed, not wanting to go home to Mum. I must have moved sooner or later,to give Mum the story she told over and over again. Going to the hospital with Charlie, wondering if he was sober and his car gave up the ghost. We arrived, as I was told many times, in a roadmen's truck stinking of tar.
We went back home in time to watch the glow over Clydebank as it burned, and to dodge the soldiers and police standing guard over Hess's lane. We all came back with our twistec souvenir.
Mum didn't know what we'd been up to. She was left in peaceful ignorance all the rest of her life

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incompetence

2005-09-13T16:40:18+02:00

It's all very well writing an entry, but it's irritating not to have the hang of connecting.
Say somebody makes a comment - what then? Can you get in touch with them directly? Suppose you invite a friend - what means of connection hve you to this person.
I really don't have the hang of the system at all

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The tyranny of things

2005-07-26T23:12:36+02:00

I look around the house and shudder for the offspring who're going to have to sort all the clutter if we're going the Loch Lomond road and come to a simultaneous sticky end.
I have books, music, records (everything from vinyl to CDs) and piles of paper, I could chuck out the music. One hand is affected by a stroke and rheumatism so playing the piano is a good way to drive me daft. I could chuck out half the paper - lots of old courses, including one about care of the elderly, and several not quite editted novels. They're never going to be editted now - another side-effect of stroke is dyslexia. My WP takes about 10x longer than it used to. One thing I'm good at weeding out is clothes. If you don't wear it in the past year, put it out.
The husband (L) hates to throw anything away - lots of old manuals for cars we replaced years ago, old textbooks, probably out of date. If I want to throw out any of his old clothes, I wait wait fot him to oout of the house for an hour or two.
The garage has got so much stuff that I wouldn't dare to put the car away - 3 strimmers, 3 lawnmowers, a cement mixer an old bike (sorry, that was mine) and tools of every shape---etc, etc. etc.
We have another garage with a sailing dinghy, which we'll never take out again. Its sails are part of the junk in the loft, along with numerous boxes (I don't know what's in most of them)
My Mother and ancient aunt (who moved in with Ma & Pa for a while in 1926 and stayed for the rest of their life and hers) drove me mad to flogging things to any old dealer who came to the door. My daughter had been promised a full teaset of Crown Derby collected at the beginning of the 1900s by the grandmother, one piece at a time. It went. That dealer must have thought Xmas had come, because the AA sold it for a song.
Now I can understand. It's very tempting to clear out the clutter.

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geriatric holidays

2005-06-22T22:32:37+02:00

They say that the easiest way for the elderly to get abroad in by air.
OK, first we have to fly to London. You arrive, you try to check in to your connecting flight, and BA assumes that you must be too late for Verona, since the Glasgow flight had been delayed. BA had put us on an earlier flight (also delayed, but arriving at Gatwick at the right time) We sit there, looking pathetic and elderly and you explain to himself what's going on. He doesn't hear very well. Success! An upgrade.
Coming back, Verona airport is hell. 3 flights to the UK all close together, so they try to make a bit of space by shovelling everyone into the 'departure lomnge'. No space, no seats, precious little air. After the first two have gone, you get a seat by a open door and try to breathe a bit.
Once back in Gatwick, you have hours to kill, so you fetch a cup of coffee for him, and fetch a paper for him, to give him a chance to sit in peace for a little while. By the time you go to bed you're knackered.
Tough luck! In the middle of the night you're jerked upright by what sounds as if the house is blowing up. A brlliant white light and a crash of circuits dropping out (as you realise later), a peal of thunder louder than you can remember in all your life. The house vibrates, the cat howls with fright and goes mad and scratching the door - it sounds more like he's trying to break the door down. The thunder rolls, the lightning flashes, the cat caterwauls.
In the morning, you feel guilty. You ought to have made sure that himself was OK. If that din hasn't roused him maybe he was past rousing (he was only fast asleep)
And the TV has been sabotaged. That's another episode of 'Heimat' missing
There now, I've had a nice moan. so I can remember the bit between the airports, when the Italian sun shone on the lake below the balcony and a very satisfactory dinner appeared on the table - no thought, just eat.

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the price of scenery

2005-05-02T14:03:54+02:00

Don't think that scenery is everything. After a week or two you'll want to have easy access to cinemas, theatres, concerts, evening classes, libraries, without having to drive 50 miles.
You might find that holding on to a little job is the only way to stay sane - thus missing the point of retiring in the first place.

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