White Haired Woman

Even at 82, I have a few goals. They aren’t long term like becoming a millionaire or becoming a famous model. No, they’re quite short or medium term, my goals.

My biggest medium term goal is to lose 3 stone. A stone is 14 pounds so my medium goal is to lose 42 (or more) pounds. If I had made this goal a year or so ago it would have been to lose 2 and a half stone, but I have enjoyed ice cream, chicken pies, cinnamon buns and have, sadly therefore, gained half a stone or more.

As of today, I have lost around 4 pounds but I’ve only been trying for a week. My meals have consisted of smaller amounts of food that I enjoy and, so far, I haven’t really felt hungry. I know I’m not going to lose this much every week – the first week’s loss is always the biggest. I’ll let you know how I’m getting on in a few weeks or so.

So, what are a few of my short term goals? I think the first is to finish the book I am reading. I read the one before it which was very readable and led to the one I started the other day. So far, I haven’t really got into it and I’m wondering if I ever will. (I’ll let you know.)

Another short term goal is to walk further than I do at present. Most days, Lola and I walk a certain route which takes around 15 minutes – that’s because I get tired easily. I’m hoping the tiredness is because of my weight and that I will find it less daunting to walk for, say, another 5 minutes – leading up to another ten or twenty minutes, later on – when I’ve lost some blubber.

Of course, I’d love to get back to some painting and, hopefully, that is a short term goal! At the moment we are undergoing some major decorating which has meant that my little corner of the studio is taken up with furniture from other places. I could paint in the conservatory but I worry about getting paint on the table, the chairs, the floor. Perhaps I should have a goal of being tidy when I paint!

Next week I’m going to a U3A quiz with some other members. My goal, there, is to remember all the weird facts I have stored in my brain over the years, in the hopes that some of them pop up in the questions. It would be good to contribute to our team winning! (I’ll let you know!)

The following week should be a really good week as ‘Veronica’ is coming to spend some time with her poor old ma and isn’t bringing her hubby as he is feverishly writing a book. The goal is to have some quality mum and daughter time!

Our plans are mainly to look at stuff – stuff that’s been stored for years, like Veronica’s and Chloe’s old toys. Also, books and games and china and bits and pieces that will belong to her when I am no longer here. Many of those things will have belonged to my mother and grandmother. Of course, she may not want all of that stuff and I can plan to get rid of it myself. (Another short term goal!)

I guess I do have one longer term goal – living until I’m 90 or even 100! If you’re still around, I’ll let you know! 👵🏻😆

(I realise I haven’t said ‘how’ I’m planning these goals. I guess making the goals is the ‘how’!)

1. ‘Veronica’, my daughter, who has made me so proud and happy over the last 60 years.
2. Chloe who is my very lovely granddaughter, who also makes me very proud and happy!
3. Lola, of course. It is her job to make me happy, I imagine.
4. Puppies and kittens
5. Human babies – always such a joy to see new life.
6. Things that grow in my garden.
7. Things that grow in public areas – including trees. We don’t have enough trees in Thanet.
8. Cake
9. Really cold dry white wine
10. Beautiful music
11. Painting
12. Julian – he should be higher up the list but I don’t want to change all the numbers!
13. Seeing old friends
14. My iPad
15. Blue skies
16. Trees silhouetted against blue skies, just when it’s getting dark.
17. Seeing bats flying (rarer nowadays, sadly)
18. Good food that I haven’t had to cook and won’t have to clear away
19. Memories of places I’ve been happy (Paris, Le Touquet, Avignon, Waterford, Zanesville, Cincinnati, Palm Springs, Reno, La Quinta, London, West Malling, East Malling, Bath, Wateringbury, Center Parcs etc etc
20. All the little wooden objects that I have collected over the years.
21. Christmases when all my family is here, eating and playing board games
22. Seeing clearly (after having had cataracts)
23. Not having my hands go numb (after having had carpal tunnel problems)
24. Being able to walk painlessly (yep, after 2 knee replacements)
25. Actually managing to live to 82 (so far)
26. Beautiful paintings,
27. Beautiful objects
28. Elephants, tigers, polar bears, lions, meerkats, slow lorises, monkeys, apes, and on and on and on…..
29. Days that are not too hot (writing this in summer 🥵)
30. Days that aren’t too cold (remembering what winter can bring🥶)

I’m not really certain that bringing back a dinosaur would be a great use of either science or money.

We all know about dinosaurs, don’t we? Except, of course we don’t, really. I remember reading about a time, in the not too distant past, when scientists realised that a particular part of a particular dinosaur was not a horn but a thumb – or it could have been vice versa. Since no one was around to see what went on in the time of dinosaurs, how could we know the outcome of bringing just one of them back?

I would far rather spend my time and money working to stop the decline in populations of elephants or blackbirds or butterflies. And, what about bees? We need bees to pollinate our food crops, and also need them in our gardens so we can watch them busily flying from flower to flower – our stopping what we’re doing to watch the bees (and the dragonflies and the butterflies and the ladybirds) is a useful pastime for Homo sapiens in that we can relax, forget about our worries and be a part of nature for a little while.

And then, there are the oceans with their populations of fish, reptiles, amphibians and mammals. We (homo sapiens again) have spent many long periods of time treating the sea and its creatures as a food store and a dustbin, to the point where some fish aren’t allowed to be caught by fishermen – and if you catch one by mistake and in catching it, it dies, you have to throw it back! I’d certainly rather spend my resources on making the sea as clean and habitable as it must once have been!

And again – another example of our caring and loving use of the world around us – have you noticed how few insects your car is catching in your headlights at night as you race down a country lane?

Some day – wayyyyyyy in the future, there might be a being who sets a writing prompt for a group of other beings which sounds rather familiar, but not quite: if you could bring back one mammal (or reptile, amphibian, bird, insect) which would it be?

If I won two free plane tickets tomorrow, I would give them to someone who doesn’t refuse to fly. If I had won them when I was 14, I might have used them as I hadn’t yet been traumatised by the plane journey from New Jersey to wherever it was that we landed in England. But, truly, I haven’t a clue where I would have wanted to fly to in 1957.

I know that flying is safer than driving or being driven – that doesn’t comfort me about flying! No, it puts me off travelling by car! In the 40 years that Julian and I have been together, I have been driven to quite a few places.

I’ve seen much of the west of England and the east of England, some of Yorkshire, Cheshire and Northumberland, bits of the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire, Derbyshire, Shropshire and Wales – all by car. I believe I have written about a few of these journeys.

I have always been of a nervous disposition, possibly because I was ‘taught’ to be nervous by my mother who, herself, was of a far more nervous disposition than I! Knowing that normal people do things like go on holiday in cars, I have gone along with Julian, often helping to plan these journeys but always feeling nervous when we were en route.

I, myself, was a driver for about fifty years. When I was driving, normally I wasn’t nervous – I was in charge of how fast the car was going, the route I was travelling, and the destination. I seldom drove further than ten or twenty miles, particularly when I reached my seventies and when I was going longer distances, I was usually going to an auction which was something I loved.

I gave up driving in the November before lockdown. I was paying for insurance, repairs, and road tax to drive fewer than 800 miles a year. It just didn’t make sense for me to carry on driving my poor old 20 year old Focus any longer.

I don’t miss driving at all. Julian, on the other hand, still loves driving and goes all over the place for a week or two, to paint, while I stay home and am not nervous.

At my age, I’ve had all the adventures I need.

I’ve been across the US on the Super Chief train (in 1956); I’ve been across the Atlantic Ocean in a plane propelled by propellers; I’ve been across the English Channel on a ferry, on a jetfoil, on a hovercraft and under the English Channel in a train that carries us with our car and, too, a train that carries us without our car.

I’ve gone from Calais or Dover, by car to Le Touquet, to Amiens, to Paris, to Alsace, to Switzerland, to the Dordogne, to St Tropez. By train I’ve gone from Calais (or Dover) to Paris, to Amsterdam, to Avignon, and to Nice (in 1959.)

And, long ago, I flew on a plane from California to Reno, Nevada and, not nearly so long ago, I flew on a plane from Stansted to Pisa then was driven on a bus to Florence. After that flight, which was perfectly unadventurous, I still would have taken a train back towards England if they hadn’t been on strike! (Flying is just too adventurous for me. Just ask Julian if you don’t believe me!)

In my living room I’ve been all over the world via books, photographs, film and tv. On those journeys I’ve seen the pyramids with John Romer: Rome and Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina and many, many more places, too. (Thanks to my sister-in-law, Julie, for her lovely photographic journeys where I’ve seen lots of places, also gorgeous animals)!

Personally, my goal is to live at least as long as my mother, (nearly 91) or my great grandmother (93, I think) or even to 100(!), but if the “G.R.” should decide it’s time for me to go, it won’t be a tragedy.

I have had an interesting and fun life, where I have met so many annoying (at times) children who have grown into friends, and have met so many interesting and sometimes unusual people as well as having the greatest daughter and grand daughter any one would wish for and also acquiring my extended family and all my in-laws and their families and of course, Julian and a wide circle of friends who have come, departed and returned over the years – those have been, in their own quiet way, the best adventures I could ever wish for. (That last paragraph was difficult to write and make sense and if it doesn’t make sense, please read it again!)😄

(PS I feel I should mention the pets and other animals I have known, especially the one who is sitting next to me trying to remind me it’s time for a bite of supper, but that list is so long that I’d be sitting here typing for another hour or so.)

I was not a very adventurous girl – had no wish to climb trees, disliked p.e., would never have become a parkour fan – never had a broken bone and had never been in hospital (except for giving birth) until I was 64.

We had lived in Broadstairs for about a year when I got a bit of a pain in my tummy. It wasn’t a terrible pain and I thought it would go away on its own but, after a few days of waking up and finding the pain was still there, I decided I should probably go to the doctor. That was the beginning of the surgeries I was to have in the ensuing 18 or 19 years.

It was appendicitis. The doctor sent me to the hospital. There I had various tests and it was decided that I should have my appendix removed straight away. (One of the tests was to see if the pain was being caused by gall stones. Interestingly, I was told that there were “lots and lots and LOTS” of stones in my gall bladder but they weren’t the cause of my pain. I’m still waiting for that!)

I got over the appendicectomy and went back to my normal life when, suddenly, I lost some of the hearing in my right ear. After tests the audiologist decided I should have a grommet put in my ear. I had that done in a day surgery and the only outcome of that surgery was that I couldn’t go swimming for a year or so – which was really annoying! The tiny grommet fell out eventually but my hearing didn’t improve.

Then came a year in which I had two surgeries – my right knee was replaced in June and my left was replaced in December. The first operation went really well and the new knee worked beautifully.

The second operation went well, too, but my wound didn’t heal quite so quickly. That was probably my fault. I am allergic to plasters and there was a big one covering the wound. It itched under the edges but I didn’t touch the plaster. My leg also itched lower down on my shin – and that, I scratched. Somehow, my leg became infected and I had two lots of antibiotics to clear up the infection. My new left knee worked just as well as the other. I’m happy to say that both knees are still working well after 15 years!

Since then I have had various other surgeries: 2 carpal tunnel ops, one on the right hand and the other – ten years or so later – on the left. I’ve recently had the cataracts removed from both eyes. That wasn’t exactly surgery, though they do make an excision to remove the cloudy lens and replace it with a clear lens.

That is the end of the surgeries I have undergone in the past 18 years. I won’t be sorry if I never have another!

I’ve always been good at ‘wasting’ time. Nowadays, as a retired old lady with no real work to do beyond preparing a meal or two a day and watering a few hanging baskets in the summer, I find I have lots of time to waste!

The newspapers and magazines on my iPad allow me to waste time finding out what is going on in the wider world. I spend from an hour to an hour and a half reading what terrible things are happening in the world, particularly what the man in charge of America is doing and saying. I refuse to call him ‘president’ and am loath even to say his name.

After my indulging myself with the news, I see what’s going on with visitors to my blog. Last week, for some crazy reason, quite a number of new subscribers appeared on my subscriber list. I am pleased that 23 new readers want to see my words but am confused as to why they all chose that one day last week to join such an exclusive group as those of you who automatically receive each post. I must say, they all have very strange names followed by lots of numbers and all seem to have the same avatar showing that they are reading on gmail. Several others in my list have the same avatar but they didn’t all join on the same day!

Occasionally when I go to my blog site, I see a ‘prompt’ that gives me an idea of what to write – as did today’s prompt, as happened today.

After this waste of time which can take anything from 2 minutes to over an hour, I move on to Wordle. I’ve been doing the game called Wordle for some years and am reasonably good at it. After I have finished that one to my satisfaction (or, occasionally dissatisfaction), I try the NYT mini crossword and Connections. I’m not great at either of those until I’ve had my coffee and maybe, also, have had my lunch. For those games, I need to be able to think clearly and sometimes, only an hour or two after I’ve got up, my brain isn’t working as well as it does later in the day.

With those finished I go on to the Solitaire game which I must have downloaded in the 20teens. Nowadays they do a one-off Daily game which I have a go at. Luckily, it allows me to start over if I haven’t been successful. I’m amazed at how many times I can play the same game but can do it slightly differently each time and, after 2 or 3 or 6 times, can ultimately succeed! This is how I have wasted the most time – I won’t tell you how many DAYS I have wasted with solitaire! (They add all the seconds, minutes and hours up and I can find out but I don’t do it too often. It’s a bit scary how much time I have spent over the last 10 or so years at this particular game!)

Until around 2016 I used to go to the swimming pool in Ramsgate 4 times a week where I spent time in an aqua aerobics class. Then, in their wisdom, the swimming pool and gym were demolished and I started to go to the ‘new’ Ramsgate pool in the middle of town. Strangely, I – and others I know from that group – preferred the old pool! I can’t figure out why. Anyway, on and off, I went to the class there but, when I gave up driving, I stopped.

Now, my exercise is walking Lola. The older I get the worse my breathing is, though, so our walks are fairly short. Instead, I carry on looking at stuff on my iPad or I pick up a puzzle book and work on a Codeword.

If you haven’t seen these I’ll give you a brief description. You have, in front of you, what looks like a crossword puzzle but each white space has a small number in a top corner. The numbers equate to a letter of the alphabet so go from 1 to 26. You are (usually) given a letter or two or three to help you on your way, so you go through the puzzle adding those letters in the boxes. For example, they show that all the boxes numbered 23 will have a D in them, all the boxes numbered 2 will have an A and that all the boxes with 13 will have an S.

I’ve always felt that the next thing you should do is find out where the Es should be. This is because E is the letter most used in the English language. Sometimes it’s possible to work it out by just looking to see which box number is the most prevalent, though this doesn’t always work and sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth finding it because it’s not obvious. Strange how some numbers stick out and you can see them easily. For example a 1. Even if there are lots of letters already filled in, it seems quite easy to see the 1s. But a number like 23 isn’t (necessarily).

In the early days of my working on these puzzles, I could take an hour to finish one. Once in a while I come across one where I have trouble getting into it but once I’ve cracked the code, so to speak, I can finish it – but it looks untidy! Usually, though, I can get through one in 20 minutes or so.

My other time-wasting time during most days is reading a book. I have loads of books that I haven’t read yet, on shelves in my bedroom and in the conservatory. I also have a Kindle app on my iPad so can buy books to read that way. In fact, most of the books I read are ebooks which I mostly buy when they are offered at 99p on Apple and Amazon. I am sent an email every day by a site called BookBub which tells me which are the books on offer each day.

If I see a book by a favourite author, I go to Amazon (or Apple) to find out what the book is about and whether I’ve read it already. If it’s a book by someone I’ve never heard of, I read the ‘sample’ which is usually the first chapter of a book. If it pulls me in, I might buy it. In this way, I sometimes find a new favourite author!

Well, I’ve wasted a bunch of time today and have just been reminded that we’re going out for lunch! I hope you enjoyed finding out about how I waste time and if I remember anything else, it might give me the start to another post. Off I go to enjoy a delicious Sardinian lunch!

When I was a baby, I spent most of my time with my mommy, I imagine. As a small child I spent most of my time with my sister, Judy, who was 18 months younger than me. Sometimes our friend, Rosemary, came across the street and joined whatever Judy and I were doing. I also spent some time with my youngest sister, Jennie but she was (and still is!) five years (to the day!) younger so couldn’t keep up with Judy and me for a good while.

As we grew up Judy and I spent less time together and the time we spent together wasn’t always pleasant! Judy found, at quite an early age (6, maybe 8) that she could make me cry! I really don’t remember the details but she seemed to exult in making me upset. She stole and read my diary; she stole and hid the paper dolls that I had made; she teased me with really stupid stuff like which boy I liked at school (Judy: I’m gonna tell him you want to kiss him tomorrow at school…Me: “waaahhhh”.)

We moved to England in 1958 and had to start making friends all over again. As we went to a school on the USAF base in Bushy Park and lived a 40 minute bus ride away, people we made friends with at school often lived too far away to get together with at weekends and during school holidays, so we spent most of our time together – again.

I met my friend Shaun in the autumn of 1960 and we spent a lot of time together. We were best friends for a year or two before our various interests got in the way. She went to art college, I went to 6th form college but we still used to go out together, mainly to a ‘club’ in Kensington where we could meet young men and dance.

We grew away from each other over the next few years but still spoke and had the occasional meal together. I had Veronica which meant I didn’t go out dancing and Shaun had a full social life.

So, for the next five or six years I spent most of my time with Veronica, which was a wonderful time. I loved watching Veronica grow and learn. She said her first word at around 8 weeks! Patty came past our bedroom and said ‘Good morning,” and was answered by Veronica’s, “Hi!”

This was the last time she spoke for a few months! In a notebook upstairs I have a long list of words and when she said them. I can remember that “shushie” was somewhere in that list.Shushie was her attempt at ‘horsie’.

The years passed – far too rapidly, though I didn’t think that at the time. There were multiple home moves, moves to a town in Kent, a move to the countryside, and back to the town and then to the seaside where we are today. I have worked out that I have lived here, in this house, for more years than I lived in any other of the houses (and flats) that I have lived in! That whole saga is the subject of another post to be written!

I started by writing about my young childhood, now I’ve come to my ‘oldhood’! In April I turned 82. Judy is no longer alive (she was killed by cancer just before her 46th birthday.) Happily, Jennie is still here though she has her own life. We chat on the phone once in a while and occasionally see each other – often at Christmas. She has 3 grand children, and soon will have a 4th! My own (only) granddaughter is 30 and I see her occasionally. We mainly keep in touch by WhatsApp. Veronica is working in Brighton. We keep in touch via Viber. She and Paul visit occasionally and I have been to visit them a couple of times.

I’ve not mentioned Julian! I suppose he is the person I spend most time with but he is out frequently, painting ‘en plain air’ on his own or with various groups. In the spring/summer months he often goes away for a week or two to meet other plain air painters.He’s been away several times already this year and has another week or two booked in Ireland. He’s out at the moment in Sandwich where his art group are having a weekend display (as long as it doesn’t rain too much and the wind doesn’t blow away the gazebo.) I could go with him but I am not a plein air painter, nor do I want to sit and watch other people painting!

I’ve never really minded being on my own. I enjoy going out to eat or to the cinema with friends, but I am very happy sitting here, writing this or reading a book or playing with Lola. In fact, Lola is the ‘who’ that I spend most of my time with, nowadays. She is sitting here to my left, trying to stop my typing so that I can cuddle her, so I’ll stop and give her all my attention for a little while.