Who is Cassell Rue?

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Candy

When I was around twelve or thirteen someone gave me a slim red book with the title  MY HIM BOOK. The book had around fifty pages and in it I could mention all the boys I had met, those whom I fancied, those who were poetic, those who were musical, etc., etc.  I still have this priceless (!) treasure and I occasionally have a look at it. It is missing its hard cover, nowadays, but still contains all sorts of interesting memories via the names of those mysterious boys.

Being an American teen-aged girl in the 1950’s could have been quite exciting, though it was essentially innocent compared to today. As a twelve year old girl, of course, I didn’t yet ‘go out’ with boys but, what with tv and girls’ magazines and stories overheard from older girls, I had hopes that it wouldn’t be too long before I found my prince and lived happily ever after (what a lot of baloney!)  Despite being the product of divorced parents I still believed that it was true.

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Looking at the first page I see that I was living in La Quinta, California. My mother had recently taken us all on a cross-America train trip to Reno where ‘we’ had got ‘our’ divorce from my step-father, Bill. We arrived in Reno just at the beginning of the school year in 1956,  and spent the first semester at Huffacre Elementary School while living on the Whitney Guest Ranch just outside the “Biggest Little City in the World”. After Christmas 1957 we packed up all our possessions, including all our presents, and drove to Palm Springs where my mother’s father, Fred, lived with his second wife, Mary and their youngest daughter, Sandy. It was a great place to live but mother and Mary didn’t really get on too well so, after the first month or so, we moved to a rented house in La Quinta. This period of several months is a story for another blog!

We went back to Zanesville, Ohio around May of 1957 where we stayed with our Grandmother then, eventually –  and via Columbus, Ohio – we went home to Cincinnati. In Cincinnati I went to Hughes High School (quite close to the University) for a year before I moved on to Walnut Hills where I spent my freshman year.

Why am I telling you in such detail?

Well, a couple of months ago I was looking in the little book to see if I had remembered my Cincinnati phone number right (I hadn’t) and I started looking through, reminiscing about my last few months in America and the months and years following my arrival in England. On page 39 the heading is Brilliant Hims, the first sub-heading is Science Wizards and the second is Intellectuals. Under this heading the first name is Cassell Rue. Now, I recognised almost every one of the names in the book but this name did not and has not rung any bells at all! I sat for a fair amount of time wondering, first, if it was really a name and second, where or when I had met/seen this person. Why is he under the heading of Intellectuals along with my friends Nigel, Paul and Tim? I looked up the name on Google and did find someone of that name and approximately the right age living in Florida but, possibly, with some connection to Ohio.

Perhaps, if you know Cassell Rue and where he went to school, you could put me out of my – I won’t say misery! – lack of knowing, I suppose is what it is. It would just be nice to know why I would have written the name of someone who meant, essentially, so little to me that I don’t even remember knowing them!

(The photo which I used above is of  my sister, Judy and me, possibly taken in 1954. I was the family photographer(!) so there aren’t many photos of us three girls together. I am the oldest, Judy was next and Jennie came last, precisely five years to the day after I was born – “the best birthday present I could have wanted”, I said. Judy said, ” Her name is Jennifer and I don’t like her,”  but she grew up to love her. Jennie and I are the only two left now as Judy died just before her 46th birthday. There are so many things I’d like to talk to her about – including, who is Cassell Rue? – but it’s too late. I miss you, Judy.)

 

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A quick update on tinnitus

Posted on August 2, 2017 by Candy

This afternoon the phone rang, I answered. It was for me from a jolly fellow who wanted to help me get back my PPI. His mate had rung yesterday and I had told him that I had never had PPI and he had been very pleasant, apologised and hung up but this guy was determined that I MUST have had it! I may have raised my voice after he kept going on about it though I didn’t shout – then he shouted at me. When I hung up on him (best thing to do!) I felt that I had gone a bit more deaf in my right ear.😳

Several hours later and I’m just finishing my dinner while watching Corrie. The commercials come on and suddenly I realise that there’s no noise! After a minute or two more I realise that the tinnitus has gone! Sitting here now, I think I can hear a little sssssshhhhhhhsshhhhhing in that ear but I’m enjoying the loud noise being gone – if it’s only for an hour. After eight or nine years, the silence is truly golden!😄

(The next morning – it’s back😰 but I DID enjoy a few hours of peace!)

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Where DOES the time go? Twitter!

Posted on July 31, 2017 by Candy

I said to Julian (husband) this morning, “There just isn’t enough time to do all the stuff I need to do.” [weeding, housework, blogging, clearing out my old stock room so it can be used for stacking his and my paintings, painting, catching up with tv programmes I MUST see, finishing several books etc] Then, I rushed back to my iPad to see what is going on in America, vis á vis Trump, Russia, Korea et al via Twitter.

A few weeks ago I had a look at the ‘proportion of battery used by each app’ on my iPad. Half of all my use that day had been on Twitter. Now I am more often than not to be found surfing on my iPad – emails, blogging, the News, occasionally Facebook, Youtube, Viber, taking photos and looking at them – and Twitter – so that half of that time was probably something like three or four hours! What a disgraceful use of the few years I might have left and yet…….I have become addicted!

It all started when two things happened almost simultaneously, the looming of the American presidential election and my getting fed up with Facebook because there wasn’t enough serious news about the election on it. This last couple of years is the first time I have been political in my life, really,  and who can blame me? Of course I’ve thought about policies and ideas and worried about what was happening in the world but I didn’t really get worked up about these things, just quietly worried.

What changed? Until 2015 I had never come across Trump except for his name which meant nothing to me beyond ‘a rich guy in America’ but his name and some of the things he was saying started coming up again and again in the news or on Facebook and I listened to what he was saying and was appalled. I wanted to do my bit to stop him becoming president but I had left the US before I was sixteen and hadn’t bothered to register at the Embassy so that I could vote when I was old enough. (Also, I have never become British and have never voted here, either and I was beginning to wish that I could. Brexit had raised its (ugly) head and I didn’t have a say). I decided that, perhaps, I should try to register to vote in the upcoming American election.

Using my favourite method, I looked up on the internet about expats signing up to vote, wrote to the person in charge of Ohio voting (I had last lived in Cincinnati), filled in forms and was then told several weeks later that I couldn’t vote because I don’t have a Social Security number (or, if I do, I’ve never been told it and haven’t a clue how to find out what it is.)

Maybe my not being able to vote in the primary for Bernie, which is what I wanted to do, is responsible for the even greater desire to become involved in some way but it wasn’t until the candidates had been chosen and the campaign was on its way that I started spending lots of time on Twitter as well as avidly watching the news via Apple News, becoming at first certain that Hillary would win then suddenly not so sure but still hopeful. Then the worst possible thing happened and I, along with many, many others was in shock!

You turn to your friends at times like this but none of my British friends was really that interested and, I knew from Facebook, that some of my relatives were actually in favour of Trump! Twitter became my main friendship group. I’ve found many tweeters whose thoughts on this administration are very similar to mine; I’ve glanced at and rejected others who seem to be overjoyed about the outcome of the election; I’ve read many interesting articles and have been awed at the things people can do in their research into all the goings-on of people who in many ways seem to control the way things will be in the future and I have had the opportunity to put forward my ideas (in 140 characters or fewer).

But, I’ve also wasted so much time when I could have been doing all the things I listed in the first paragraph but didn’t – and here am I, spending time telling you about my tweeting and not eating lunch, going to sign up for exercise classes or tidying the kitchen!

By the way, my Twitter handle(!) is nosgames, just in case you want to join me there for a natter.

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Who else has Aphantasia? Probably not you!

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Candy

I was standing in the field which surrounded the school I was working in with two of the fifteen year old girls I had been teaching. I think I had asked them to remember my earlier instructions or some such thing and said something like, “Listen to the words in your head!” They both looked at me as if I were daft.

Several years later I was at a meeting and the group was asked to ‘meditate’ by visualising a flower. I dutifully closed my eyes and tried to visualise a flower but all I could ‘see’ was black with a bit or orangey light floating around behind my eyelids. I tried hard but had to give up and pretend.😳

Another few years went by. I was at a party with a group of friends, just sitting around and chatting, when one of them said something that made me realise that she could actually ‘see’ pictures when she closed her eyes and thought about things. Other people talked about the pictures in their heads and I suddenly realised that I was the odd one out.

I spoke up and told the group that I don’t have pictures in my head when I think; rather I have ‘words’. Immediately one of my friends said, “What, words float by behind your eyes?” They all found it as difficult to understand that I couldn’t see pictures as I found it difficult to understand that they could. We spent the rest of the evening wondering at each others’ thought processes and it made me think about why I should be so different – even alone – in thinking the way that I do.

So much of my life started to make sense! My sister, Judy, spent much of her primary school years ‘day-dreaming’, for which she got into terrible trouble at school and she was even held back a year because they thought she was stupid. She wasn’t. She was exceedingly bright and found school exceedingly boring so imagined an on-going story in her head. When she told me about this day-dream I thought I’d have a go but I found that I was telling myself a story, not seeing it in my head like a tv show and, what was worse, I had to start it at the beginning if I wanted to continue the next day. Obviously, I was doing something wrong!

After I realised I had this inability to visualise I made it a point to ask everyone I met if they ‘saw’ things when they closed their eyes. Almost always they would look at me as if I were mad then say that of course they did! Didn’t I? When I replied in the negative many people were unable to grasp what I meant. One young woman was adamant that I must be able to see things if I could remember and recognise things and was astonished to hear that I have quite a good memory  and can recognise, for example, an elephant each time I see one or remember which of the many colours, ‘blue’ is even though I can’t visualise it. Also, and this surprises me, I am quite a good speller but only know a difficult word is correct if I see it.

When I am reading a novel I am most annoyed when there is lots of description as it means little to me. It’s okay if the author says that the hero’s eyes are blue and hair is  black but if she starts describing in minute detail the building he walks into, the people he passes, the noise of the lift, the office furniture, the fabric on the chairs, I don’t see (or hear) those things in my mind’s eye – if there is a reason to remember any of those things I am out of luck. I suppose that people without aphantasia can see those things and remember them via some sort of picture in their head but I would have to remember all the words – and I really want to get on with the story. Maybe this is why I have difficulty remembering which names go with which faces, at least until I know people more than just casually.

Think of a phone call you’ve got to make or a meeting you have arranged with an old friend. You will probably be able to picture what you imagine is going to occur during that call or meeting in some detail, rather like watching a programme on tv. I can’t do that! What I do is, I think the words – it’s like talking to myself. I imagine whole conversations, word for word as well as setting the scene. I say the dialogue for both of us – or all twelve – although remembering who said which words then becomes very difficult. I don’t have a video in my head recording it all!  I think of the words that will be said and I ‘say’ them in my head; if I go over it, the words are different though, usually, the meaning remains the same. This is what I’m doing now, as I’m writing this.

How do I find my way? If I don’t see things behind my shut eyes, how can I tell you how to get to my house from yours? I don’t know! I am sitting here at this moment trying to describe, in my head, the way to get to the nearest beach. I find myself ‘almost’ having a picture but I think it’s more like a physical memory of which roads to go down, where to turn, where it’s safe to cross the road. It is definitely a memory rather than something I ‘see’.

I don’t think that aphantasia is from some sort of brain injury or disease; it doesn’t severely curtail your enjoyment of life or have an impact on the subjects you study or the grades you get on exams but it might be important to remember that not everyone ‘thinks’ in the same way when it comes down to the way children are taught.

Before you pity me completely (assuming you don’t have aphantasia), I do dream in pictures! I love my dreams, normally. They don’t make a lot of sense, they don’t look like a Salvador Dali painting but they are usually fun, sometimes exciting! I don’t normally remember them when I wake up but I remember the essence of them – whether they were fun, full of adventure or – and this is a typical woman’s dream, I think – whether I needed to find a place to pee that was not in front of all and sundry!

Two things before I finish. First, there are probably other ways people ‘think’. One person told me he thought ‘in music’, another that she sees her thoughts in terms of film. I can’t begin to guess what either of those means. Second, I found a very interesting account of aphantasia on Google the other day while I was looking up how to spell it! It’s by a fellow sufferer, Blake Ross, who is a ‘real’ writer and whose story is fascinating so, if you are interested, go take a look!

 

 

 

 

 

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Pop-up subscriptions

Posted on July 26, 2017 by Candy

This isn’t a blog post, just a quick message to anyone who subscribed via a pop-up on the site earlier today. As there were various problems with that pop-up, I have removed it. If you still want to subscribe there should be a place to do that on the right hand side of this message. Sorry about that but it just got too complicated!

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A good night’s sleep

Posted on July 26, 2017 by Candy

For the first fifty five years of my life I had no idea what people meant when they said they had trouble sleeping. Whatever I had done during the day – sat around watching tv with my family because there wasn’t anything else much to do; tried to teach a rabble of third years the basics of French; spent the day at my allotment – I would get into bed, most likely read for half an hour, turn off the light and go to sleep.

Then it all changed! Life was a bit hectic around that time as I had a young grand-daughter whom I helped look after when her mum was ill (quite often, in those days) or just to give her parents a break. As they lived about two hours away, ‘looking after’ meant first a one hour train ride to London then about an hour’s journey across London to Chiswick, a lovely ‘village’ within London where I had lived for quite a few years. It also meant spending the night there and returning home the next day.

Around the same time my husband’s and my social life had expanded and there were new and exciting outings and people around us which kept us both busy; we started a new business which kept us occupied eighteen hours a day or more and we moved to the busy High Street of a nearby town to carry on said business. I started buying and selling antiques and collectables. I would go to auctions and find the most wonderful (to me) items which I would buy at a reasonable price and sell at a slightly higher but still reasonable price.

Altogether these activities seemed to take their toll on my sleep. First, I would lie in bed thinking about the day’s activities for too long, sometimes three or four hours! Then I started realising that I was still awake at two, three, four, even five o’clock. I now believe that I had been sleeping a bit but not the kind of sleep to dream and so felt as though I had just been lying there.

I took herbal medicine to sleep and found myself even more wakeful; I gave up coffee and found I still couldn’t sleep. I didn’t actually drink alcohol at the time so it wasn’t that; I wasn’t worried or anxious so it wasn’t that. I still don’t know what it was and still is.

Since then I have tried getting really tired, aqua aerobics, the gym, walking, eating carbs last thing at night (supposed to make you tired), flower remedies, other herbal remedies, relaxation techniques……

Some nights I do sleep. I get up, of course, to pee, but can get back to sleep quite quickly but the majority of nights I either go to bed and lie there for two or more hours or I go straight off to sleep and wake up about two hours later. I was awake for the great Broadstairs earthquake (though I had just started to doze!) and I was awake for the great Broadstairs attempted-lead-theft from Pierremont Hall with helicopter hovering and police voices over loud-hailers urging the thieves to remove themselves from the roof, post-haste. Needless to say, sleep eluded me for the remainder of those particular nights.

What has really annoyed me over the years has been the times when I’ve been asleep and then been woken by a sound. In West Malling High Street we lived above our shop. One night I was awoken by a really loud crash. I looked out the small window at the top of our 18th century building and saw what I, in my befuddled state, believed to be a very large and scary animal trying to take bites at a building up the road. As my mind cleared (sleep does strange things to one’s mind!), I realised that the ‘animal’ was a JCB which was attacking a building. My next thought was that it was a disgruntled husband or wife who was trying to hurt their partner but I swiftly came to the conclusion that it was, in fact, an attempt to steal a service till.

I ran down to the next floor where our telephone was, dialled 999, was answered, told the operator what was happening and she did whatever they do when they get that kind of call — but nothing happened! She couldn’t get through to the police. She kept trying, I held on. Eventually she said she’d have to try a different way which she did but there was still no reply. I wanted to hang up, get dressed and sneak up the road to see what was going on (silly me!) but she said I had to stay on the line. In that instance, the police NEVER answered the call but, luckily, someone had been able to contact them (I think via the fire service, though I don’t know how that bit of info entered my mind) and a car with two young police women approached very quietly and calmly from the direction of the A20. The car stopped just about outside our place and the police got out and surveyed the scene. Though I couldn’t see the people with the JCB it was obvious that they could see the police as, quite suddenly, the JCB backed away from the building society it was attacking. I couldn’t see what happened next as that part of the High Street gets wider but I found out later that the JCB, with the important till full of money in its bucket, tried to back down the little road opposite its position and failed because the road was just too narrow. The thieves, apparently, jumped out and got into a Landcover and made a dash for freedom which they achieved. I do hope they are one of the groups who have been picked up since then for the same kind of activity! My sleep that night was wrecked! (An aside: what would have happened if, that night, thieves had broken into our shop thinking that we sold high-end antiques? What if they came looking for safes or jewellery which we have never had?)

This has turned into a short thriller rather than a description of poor sleeping.

Be assured, those of you who have not yet reached old age.  Not everyone who gets old(er) has this problem. My husband gets into bed and is asleep within five minutes. He sleeps through everything including the earthquake, the lead-theft and the JCB building attack! He even fell asleep when the ceiling in his studio fell down…..another story for another time!

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The day I realised I was getting old

Posted on July 24, 2017 by Candy

It was a Tuesday in, I think, May, 2006. The plumber, Colin, was here working in our downstairs loo which was also the only bathroom in the house at the time. I was sitting on the settee in the living room, perhaps reading or just thinking. Suddenly I realised that my right ear was ‘stopped up’, as though I had gone up a steep hill or was on an airplane. I cupped my hand over my ear and made a vacuum, trying to clear what was obviously some sort of obstruction in it. It didn’t work and I realised I was “hard of hearing” in that ear. This was the day I started to get old. Continue reading →

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About me

Posted on July 23, 2017 by Candy

IMG_1496I am an 81 year old American woman who has lived in the UK for over 65 of those years, married to an Englishman with one daughter and one grand-daughter. My family in America (half-siblings, cousins and one uncle) are scattered around the US. I refuse to fly (bad experience on flight to Britain in 1958) so will probably never again see most of them or the natural beauties of the country.

I spend my time enjoying working in the garden, making weird paintings with oils and doing all those things women seem to do around the house – clean, shop, wash, cook – but only when absolutely necessary! Mostly, I potter. I listen to music (all kinds, even pop though I don’t always appreciate it), sometimes I read, mostly mystery/thrillers but I also love Barbara Kingsolver books, especially The Poisonwood Bible  and The Lacuna. I try to read for half an hour every day but don’t always manage it.

I was an avid Tweeter and sometimes found that whole chunks of time had disappeared while I was tweeting (mostly) about American politics. I am writing this at the weirdest time in American political history! I gave up spending long hours on Twitter before it became X! Now, I look at it to see what those I followed have to say but typically spend barely ten minutes finding out – and I often forget to tap on the X button for days!

I live in Kent on the very tip of the eastern-most bit with the North Sea about ten minutes’ walk away. There are seven beautiful sandy beaches but I only go to one or two of them occasionally. (We recently came back from a holiday in Avignon, France, which was the third time we visited that lovely town. The food was wonderful, the wine was plentiful, the sun was hot….it was great!) That last paragraph was written in 2017. Since then most holidays have been spent at home!

My blog posts are about me, my raging aches and pains, my thoughts on almost any subject…art, science, grammar (I tend to be a grammar nazi!), tv, films, books, politics, my family….on and on. If you enjoy one or other, please let me know and, possibly, pass on my site name to friends!

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First blog post

Posted on July 23, 2017 by Candy

IMG_1496Welcome to everyone who reads my posts. If you’re under sixty please don’t worry about getting older….it’s not so bad. The problems I have had aren’t necessarily the problems you will have and mine haven’t been so bad that I’m not glad I’m still here! It’s not all doom and gloom, getting older! There are compensations including the recent findings that older people are happier than younger. Also, once you have retired you don’t have to get up to go to work every day. I carried on working one way or another until earlier this year but only because I enjoyed what I was doing. Now my work is this blog which is good as I am beginning to creak when I move!😃 Please get in touch and let me know how you feel about my blog. Perhaps you could give me suggestions on things I could blog about.

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