White Haired Woman

I loved watching cartoons on a Saturday morning in my childhood. I doubt if I had a favourite then; just about any cartoon would have made me smile or, even, laugh! Nowadays I tend not to have television channels on my tv but only do what is known as ‘streaming’. In the past few years I have watched all the episodes of programmes I had not watched for years (like Morse) and programmes I may have missed multiple episodes of (Lewis or Endeavour). After those I have watched other series which hadn’t even been on my radar, like Death In Paradise, Foyle’s War, and some more modern series, and foreign series like Astrid, the Red Door and others of which I’ve forgotten the names!

I will admit to watching, recently, South Park episodes which are very funny and very nasty about the present American government. These are the only cartoons I watch and I’m not likely to watch any others. So I guess you could say that that is my fave – but I won’t bother to watch any of the episodes that appeared before this year!

You’d think it would be easy to think of five things I’m good at, wouldn’t you? Well, it’s not!

If I were seven years old, I’d tell you that I am good at reading and I could carry on telling you that I’m good at reading until, really, it would be silly to tell you that, when most people who were good at reading at seven, would carry on being good at reading at twenty or fifty!

If I were eighteen, I might say that I am good at speaking French but at nineteen or thirty years old, I would have to admit that I was no longer good at speaking French as I had not had any practice for years! And the same goes for now, when I am eighty two!

If I were forty I might say that I’m good at reading stories to children out loud. In all my primary school classes I was quite good at finding interesting and/or amusing stories to read aloud. I had lots of practice with ‘Veronica’ from her babyhood right up until she was even better than I was at reading! And, later, in my fifties, I had further practice with Chloë.

What I could never say was that I am good at sports of any kind! I could never say that I’m good at science or astronomy or animal husbandry nor could I say that housework was my forte! I can admit, too, that I am not a good cook – though I can get an edible meal on to the table, given the right packets and other ingredients.

I was quite good at driving but not so great at parallel parking. Julian would tell you that I was too slow when I was driving, always keeping to the speed limit – but I think that that was something I was quite good at. I believe that the speed limits are set for a good reason! Now, I no longer drive, having decided at around the age of seventy six to give up when I realised that I was no longer confident that I could be fast enough with my reactions. As a ‘backseat’ driver, I’m still pretty good, though!

When I was selling jigsaws, I got quite good at putting them together to make sure they were complete but, with retirement and lack of practice, I have lost that knack to some extent.

While I’ve been wracking my brains searching for things I’m quite good at, I have just realised that I am quite good at wasting time! Otherwise, I would have been taking Lola for ‘walkies’ and I certainly wouldn’t have been playing solitaire on my iPad for forty five minutes! I am pretty good at solitaire!

I suppose the toughest decisions I’ve had to make in my life was whether or not to let several of our pets be put to sleep when they were seriously ill and unlikely to recover. I’ve written about Rosie* but there were a few cats in my life who were ill at various times and the vet said there was no hope.

One of these cats was called Tiggy. She joined our family when we were living in two rooms in London with our two cats, Moosh and Orpheus.

Judy and I were both students living in digs* in London with my daughter, Veronica, who was seven at the time. Patty had moved us all to West Malling in the summer before and she lived there with the two cats while we were at college during the week. At the week-ends we would drive down to the village which is a distance of about 35 miles, if you don’t travel via the M20. (The M20 had not yet been built!)

But some time after the Easter holidays, Patty and the two cats had to come and live with us while her cottage was being renovated. It wasn’t the best living arrangement but we were all relatively poor so had to put up with it. One day, Tiggy walked in and joined us. The other two cats were quite welcoming, surprisingly. We tried to find her owners but after several weeks of posters on lamp posts and knocking on doors, she became our third cat.

After the end of the summer term for us all, we moved back to West Malling. My car was full of all our belongings,the four of us and the three cats, each in a different carrier. Orpheus caused a bit of difficulty when he escaped from his during the journey but we made it after an hour or so.

We all settled in to the cottage which finally had a bathroom instead of the toilet at the bottom of the garden and the bath next to the kitchen sink! After the summer holidays we didn’t go back to live in London but, instead, commuted on the days we needed to be there, and Veronica started school at the West Malling Primary.

The cottage is on the High Street which at the time was exceedingly busy as the main route to various places. (New roads and Motorways were in the planning stages and eventually, the High Street was much quieter.) Because of the traffic, the cats weren’t allowed to go out front but could go into the walled garden at the back. They soon found their way out by climbing up and over the neighbouring building and across yards.

Tiggy was the first to be hit by a car in the night. Somehow she made it back home with a mangled leg! I took her to the vet whose immediate thought was to put her to sleep. I suggested that he amputate her leg, because cats can survive happily with three but he just said I should take her to another vet if I didn’t like his decision. I had no idea where to find another vet! Certainly there wasn’t another in West Malling and I didn’t want to leave Tiggy in such a state for much longer – she must have been in terrible pain! So, I gave in to the vet and Tiggy was put to sleep. (I never went back to him but found another in Maidstone.)

Moosh was next. Some years had passed. We had acquired two new kittens from a friend – Piggy and Tiggy (2). As before, the cats went in and out the cat door into the garden. One night Moosh went out and came back injured but the injury wasn’t visible on the outside. We only realised when he behaved strangely. I took him to the Maidstone vet and they were able to ascertain that he had, indeed, been hit by a car and his lungs were affected.

They took him into their animal hospital and treated him but, sadly, after 3 or 4 days, told me that he would not recover and I knew I had to ask them to put him to sleep.

That was all about fifty years ago. Since then I’ve thought a lot about euthanasia. I have realised that if I were struck with an illness that was only going to get worse I would want to be given a medication to put me to sleep when the pain was just too much to bear. But, cats can have a jolly good life with one leg missing and I think most modern vets would agree.

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*see post “Rosie Supposes her Toeses are Roses” (Oct 2017)

*digs = rented accommodation

Until I was 15 my family did all the same things most other American families did when holidays occurred – Easter eggs at Easter, BBQs on the 4th of July and big family meals of turkey, stuffing, and sweet potatoes with marshmallows melted on top at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

In the autumn after my 15th birthday, we moved from Ohio to the UK and carried on celebrating Easter and Christmas but the others, we forgot. Holidays like the 4th of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving were American and we lived among the British. Relatively recently, Halloween celebrations and decorations have made their way across the Atlantic but the other two are not likely to be taken up by those in Britain; the 4th of July, after all, is a celebration of the USA separating itself from the rule of the British! Sadly, we didn’t have sweet potatoes and marshmallows any more because you couldn’t find sweet potatoes in England in the 1950s or 60s and marshmallows were always white and pink together – pink marshmallows on sweet potatoes? No way!

I can’t say I miss celebrating those holidays much but I do miss the sweet potatoes and marshmallows! I’m afraid I have a sweet tooth, though it has changed with the passing of years. I don’t tend to eat many sweet items beyond fruit, nowadays although I am very fond of a certain brand of dark chocolate bittermints. While I am dieting I try to save enough points to have a bittermint most days.

So, dear reader, the answer to the question posed in the prompt is not really. I try to have a turkey for Christmas dinner though turkeys aren’t all that special nowadays, and also my son-in-law has gout and can’t eat turkey as it is high in purines which are bad for gout sufferers. He can, though, eat chicken and will be cooking our Christmas meal this year! (Hooray! I won’t have to!)

Happy hols wherever you are and whatever you eat! Enjoy!

From my title, you may imagine that my favourite people are my family – and you would be right!

My most favourite person in the whole wide world is my daughter who is known in these posts as Veronica. My second most favourite person is Chloe, my lovely grand-daughter.

I’ll put Julian next – I don’t want him to feel left out again (see my post “These are a few of my Favourite Things”). Julian is quite handy to have around – he’s good at filling the dish washer and emptying it, he changes the light bulbs I can’t reach, he helps with shopping, drives me to appointments and, occasionally, listens to me when I want to tell him something! (I hope you realise, Julian, that I am being light-hearted and amusing in this post!)

Then comes my sister, Jennie, followed by my half siblings from another mother – Lindsay, Una, Alex and Robin (although I haven’t seen or heard from the latter since he was about six years old!)

After these close family members come the in-laws, then the friends I see fairly often and those with whom I message weekly or monthly.

Though I am old and have known many people, I haven’t kept up with many of the people I would have had as friends during those many years. All the friends I had in Zanesville when I was a child, have disappeared – some have died, others have moved away. I remember them all with fondness, though, with aphantasia, it is impossible for me to picture any of them.

Friends I had at high school or college in both America and England, have almost all disappeared, too. Sylvia lives in Ohio, I believe, Bob disappeared after he joined the Marines, Skip is/was an admiral in the US Navy and did not want to have any communication with those of us who knew him at school (I read). I am in contact with Nigel and with Tim but not with Colin or Barbara. And, there are so many people I’d love to find but have no way of beginning the search.

I’ve possibly left out someone who is very important and if I have, please accept my apologies. My excuse is, I’m old. The real reason is that I am hurrying to finish this as I’m meeting up with a group of friends in a few minutes to discuss the film Mr Burton – on Zoom. I may be old but I still am busy! Bye bye till next time!

I think that the coolest thing I have ever found was the nerve to say no to my very controlling mother!

She wasn’t always so bad. When I was a child (between five and ten or so) we, Judy and I, were allowed to play in the neighbourhood. From my birth until I was 7 plus, we lived in Zanesville and most people knew us. We were allowed to go visiting friends down at the end of the street or across the road and I never heard her say, “Don’t go there.”

The first time she forbade us doing something was when my sister Judy was told not to ride her bike in the road because of the potential traffic – in 1950 there were few cars in the roads around us and fewer trucks (which Judy had trouble saying – the sound tr came out as f !). A friend or neighbour happened to see Judy riding her bike in a nearby road and nearly being hit by a truck. Not only did Judy have her bike removed, so did I! I was not pleased, but I understood. (We were never again to have bikes!)

We moved to Cincinnati when I was seven and life went on much as before. Judy and I walked ourselves to school and home again every day. I took myself to church on Sundays (not because I was religious but I wanted to sing in the choir). I would often go to visit my friend Carol who had a player piano with quite a few rolls of music. We used to put these rolls on and sing along. Our favourite was a song about a vagabond. After a while, Carol’s mum must have been sick of hearing us sing about vagabonds as we were forbidden to play the song again! (I wish I could remember that song but it is gone.)

Judy was a rebel. She once skipped school with her friend, Cathy. When questioned about it, Judy blamed it all on Cathy and I imagine Cathy blamed it all on Judy. After that, Judy had to stay with me during recess and before and after school so Patty knew where Judy was. (She trusted that I would not skip school – which I wouldn’t!)

Patty’s marriage wasn’t happy. We all knew that her husband, Bill, drank too much beer and was often in a bad mood, shouting and swearing and threatening. He often punished Judy, partly because she was a rebel but mainly I believe, because she didn’t like him and let him know it.

One day Patty decided she’d had enough and we went off to Reno where divorces were quicker to get. I’ve written about this before – see various other posts including ‘Where Did She Come From part one’ and ‘The Super Chief.’

After that, in 1958, something terrible happened in Patty’s life – the death of a man that Patty loved very much. That tragedy changed Patty. She began drinking a lot. She was in the last year of her degree in architecture and desperately wanted to finish it but had difficulty concentrating. This was when she started to rely on me, a 14 year old, to plan and cook meals – not entirely but enough to make me become the adult and herself the child from time to time. (Patty was 36)

She did finish her degree and got a job as a civilian architect with the US Navy, which brought us to England. We went to school at the American Air Force base in Bushy Park, west of London. We got to school and back by school bus which was usually quite fun. After two years we went to the crammers I have written about in ‘Where Does She Come From’ part three.

Patty was always happy if my friends came round to the flat but she was not always happy when I went out. I would have to tell her exactly where I was going, with whom and what time I’d be back. That’s okay for a fourteen or fifteen year old’s mother to ask but she kept demanding to know these things when I was eighteen or nineteen.

Once I went out with friends, including Shaun, a girl I had known for some years whom I had met at school. We went to a party in Crouch End, an area of North London. Why I rang Patty, I don’t know, but when I told her where I was and that I didn’t know the name of the person who was having the party, she demanded I come home straight away. She knew I was with friends whom she knew, but that made no difference.

Most young people would have refused; I went home. I was so conditioned by then, that I knew things would be worse if I didn’t. So, if I went to a party where I didn’t know the host, I just didn’t mention it any longer.

It didn’t get any easier when I was in my twenties, or my thirties! When we lived in West Malling, I hardly went out in the evening and if I did it was usually with members of my family. Patty was getting more demanding, though.

If she wanted to go around the corner to a dress shop (literally less than a hundred steps away from our front door) she would ask me to go with her. If she wanted a half bottle of whiskey or brandy or even sherry, she’d ask me to go to the off-licence* which was next door! I was her taxi driver, her personal shopper, her financial backer.

One day she asked me to go to the chemist to get her a bottle of a medicine called ‘Dr Collis Brown’. I went to the chemist, as I had before, and asked at the special chemist counter (where one handed in prescriptions) for a bottle of Dr Collis Brown. The chemist looked at me, standing in front of a few others who were waiting to see him, then said, “No. I won’t sell any more to you. You must be an addict!” and he showed me the place in his ‘Poisons Book’ where I had signed for Dr CB several times in the past.

I explained that it wasn’t for me but for my mother. He continued to refuse. Embarrassed, I turned away from the counter and went home. I didn’t set foot in that shop again until years later.

Another very embarrassing moment occurred one evening. I had a ‘date’, an almost unique experience when I lived in West Malling. He was, I seem to remember, a carpenter and I have no memory of how or where we met.

Patty had been drinking through the early part of the evening but seemed to be pleased that I was going out with a man. I was upstairs putting on the last bit of make-up when there was a knock at the door. Judy answered it, then called up the stairs for me. As I was walking down the stairs, Patty shouted out, “Remember, no f**king on a first date!”

Happily, I met Julian not many months after that. Still, I was asked to do shopping, accompany Patty to the doctor, etc until Julian and I bought a house in East Malling (a mile or so away from Patty’s house). She was not happy with my moving out. She had come to depend on a large share of my teacher’s salary to pay the bills and buy things. So, she decided to sell her cottage on the High Street and move to a small house in a terrace on a country road nearby.

In the time we were living apart, Patty would ring me three or four times a day! I had a few months’ relief when she went to America to visit her mother, then she and Judy came back and the telephone calls started again. Often, she would ring about five o’clock in the evening and ask me to pop into West Malling to get her a bottle of whiskey or whatever. One evening I said no. Patty argued but I was firm.

After that, Patty would ring the taxi company and ask them to pick up whatever she wanted and bring it to her. They didn’t mind; they made money. And I breathed a sigh of relief!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

(I loved my mother when I was young. I was always proud of how young and ‘with it’ she was. I know that my having a baby without being married was a terrible worry for her, but we survived that. I came to the conclusion some years ago, that Patty really shouldn’t have had children. Her life could have been so rich if she had become an artist or if she had been born 50 years later when women were not always expected to get married and have children. Her upbringing in a wealthy family did not enable her to be a mother of three living on only a little money.

As we both grew older, I found it more and more impossible to ‘forgive’ Patty. Underneath, I hope I still loved her but it wasn’t like when I was a kid. As I get older, I still don’t understand some of the things she did. I’m just glad that I am not an alcoholic like I’m certain she was. We are not, definitely, our parents and that’s something that pleases ‘Veronica’!)

*Off licence – a place to buy alcoholic drinks to take away

Sitting here in 2025 and thinking about famous or infamous people I’ve known, I’ve previously written about the few ‘famous’ people I’ve met, but my memory tells me there’s no one in the infamous line – except for one fleeting introduction to a young man who turned up for the evening in the flat that I was visiting with my boyfriend at the time.

The word ‘Infamy’ would suggest that all the readers, at least the ones in England, would know of this gentleman, but I should imagine that very few will recognise the name of Aloysious ‘Lucky’ Gordon.

Mr Gordon was a friend of the much more infamous young woman called Christine Keeler. Put her name into Google and you may find an article or two about how she was at the heart of ‘The Profumo Affair’ in 1963 which caused embarrassment to the Conservative government.

If you are at all interested in these characters, do have a look online to find out more about them and the whole scandal that had London aghast in 1962/1963!

*(Thanks to Frank Muir and Dennis Norden; also Kenneth Williams. You can look this up too!)

I’m 82 and a half years old. If I live for those three years, I will be 85 and a half.

I can’t really imagine that life will be much different apart from the fact that I might not be alive.

Of course, if Mr Putin should happen to decide to bomb the UK, I might be under that bomb or another one. Not a lot to look forward to.

If the present Russian ‘Tsar’ doesn’t bomb the UK, maybe I will carry on living at the seaside and eating out once a week, ordering food, cooking food, walking Lola (who will be 12 years old – not so old for a small dog like she is) and enjoying the fact that I am still alive!

It’s really difficult to predict what one’s life will be like in three years when one is as old as I am.