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.)
How I feel about flying. (And, the word is ‘turbulence’!)
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.
Last year I switched on my iPad and joined the class of other people interested in making abstract art. Our tutor gave us the task of taking a fingerprint with paint or ink, whatever we thought might work, then using the print as a start to a piece of work.
I looked around and found a tube of ultramarine acrylic paint, squeezed out a tiny bit onto my palette and stuck my finger into the blob of blue paint. I had a piece of paper on which to put my painty finger, which I duly did. ????? That’s strange…..where are the whorls and peaks of my fingerprint? It was just a smudge of paint!
So, I cleaned off my finger, added a tiny bit of water to the ultramarine paint blob, used a no. 10 round brush to thin down the blob. Now, I had a thin square of ultramarine. I touched my finger to the square of paint and tried again. Still no whorls!
I looked carefully at my fingers. I could vaguely see some of the lines that make up my fingerprint but there were other lines crisscrossing them.
Who knew that in old age one’s fingerprints wear down so much that they are almost invisible? It took until I was in my 80s to know this.
I wonder when my prints became so flat. Does it matter in the scheme of things? Not unless I turn to a life of crime in my 80s! (And I’m not gonna do that!)
I suppose that now, as an old woman who likes her own company and is often at home, my dearest belonging is my dog, Lola, closely followed by my iPad. I’ve written about Lola in earlier posts so I’ll write about my iPad and other dear belongings.
My iPad contains many of my thoughts, a large chunk of an autobiography, a lot of books, loads of music, messages to and from my nearest and dearest, photographs that don’t go back far enough, (but I’m working on that), tv and radio programmes, Wordle and other word games, all the newspapers and magazines that I could want, and shops from whom I can order my groceries, clothes, more books, even shoes – in fact just about anything I want or need!
If there were a slow-burning fire approaching my home, I would save Lola and my iPad first, then as many of my paintings and some of Julian’s as I could, plus a good few photographs which aren’t stored on my iPad, and then a few of my old games and jigsaws as well as some of my small wooden boxes and other items that I would miss. (See past posts on buttons, sewing tools etc). If I had time I’d grab the old bag of soft toys from my childhood and that of ‘Veronica’ and Chloe.
One of my paintings. It’s called ‘Not Rebecca’. If you’ve read the book you’ll know that we never see or learn the name of the woman who is the second wife of Maxim deWinter.
Though it would be useful to have some clothes and shoes, they would come quite far down on a list of things I must save. I hate to think that I would never again have my collection of jugs, the indoor plants, the furniture and ‘stuff’ that I have accumulated over the years and all the paints and brushes and sketchbooks as well, but I can’t imagine having enough time to save everything I would want to keep!
What I wouldn’t save is any of the many things in the cellar (fake Christmas trees, old flexes and wires, plugs, tins of paint that are so old they must only have dust inside, hammers and chisels, nails and screws – you know the types of things. I also wouldn’t bother with radios, tvs, or appliances of any sort.
LolaAn iPadAn abstract landscape I painted a couple of years ago.
This prompt prompted me to write about something that happened this morning.
I got up and went to have the first of many pees of the day (if you discount the ones I got up for in the night.) As I approached the loo, I looked at the wall to my right and caught myself looking at this old lady – in the mirror. I discovered something that I thought you should know about…….the worst wrinkles on the face are caused by sleeping on one’s side! The skin, most often on the left side of my face, squishes up (its being sort of loose, nowadays) and the squishing makes the wrinkles. Luckily, my facial skin is a little bit elastic still so that some of the wrinkles aren’t quite so deep as the day goes on.
My mother knew this fact when she was still in her 40s. She slept only on her back. She still got wrinkles. I have tried to sleep on my back but that is when I make snoring noises, which wake me up.
At 82 (nearly), why do I worry about wrinkles, anyway?
The answer to that is, of course, vanity. Everyone wants to be attractive, or else, why do so many, women especially, have so much done to their faces and necks even when they’re ‘old’ and no longer need to be attractive. Even if I could afford it, there’s no way I’m going to have a face lift. Women with those extreme face lifts somehow look worse, to me, than leaving their faces in a natural state. I suppose if they feel better because of it, that’s okay.
What do I find laughable about all this? I’m not really sure but it’s probably the constant seeking for ‘youth’ in one’s old age. When I was 12, I looked 10. At 20, I had to prove my age if I wanted to drink in a pub where you need to be 18. At 40, I started being quite pleased, that everyone thought I was in my late 20s and when I was in my 50s and was shopping with my 8 year old grand-daughter, most people got the impression that I was her mother. Suddenly, when I was 62 or thereabouts, I was very surprised when the bus driver asked if I had my ‘bus pass’. (In Thanet, people over 60 are entitled to free bus travel at certain times of the day.) I was surprised because all my life I had appeared to be quite a bit younger than my age and suddenly this driver knew I was old!
You have to laugh at the female folly!
How old do you think I was in this photo? (let me know) No one guessed so I’ll tell you – I was 40 in this photo!In this photo I am ?? and a little bit tipsy! I think I was around 70, maybe 72 n this photo.My mother at 90+ with her wrinkles.
Several weeks ago my right thumb ‘clicked’ when I unbent it. I thought something like, “Oh, that’s weird,” and did it again.
After trying it out several times and realising I now was experiencing ‘trigger thumb’, I stopped thinking about it and got on with whatever I had been doing.
You wouldn’t believe how many times a day one bends the thumb – not the whole thumb, but the midway joint. I soon realised that I had bent my thumb – and it hurt as it clicked! I decided to look on Google to see what was going on. Apparently, the clicking isn’t caused by arthritis, which is something I know is lurking within my body, but by an inflammation in a sheath inside my thumb. The suggestion is to sit with a packet of frozen peas on the inflamed joint but, for several reasons I didn’t want to do that.
My main reason was that the weather outside was really cold and there was a cold wind. The wind meant that any small gap in our house would allow freezing air to come inside and interfere with the heating. Despite new double glazing and a new boiler, the cold wind can always find a way in!
I can’t bear sitting still and doing absolutely nothing at all. I don’t mind sitting still, but to do nothing feels like a waste of time. Reading a book isn’t easy to do with one hand. Even an iPad needs two hands, particularly if there is a small dog also wanting attention! I could just sit and watch tv but I would get really restless after a while. If Dr. Google had suggested a time limit of, let’s say, 20 minutes, I might have searched the freezer for something to put on my thumb for that length of time but, there was no hint of timing. I had visions of sitting with a wet packet of peas for hours at a time…..
So, then I thought, there must be a splint I could make using an old lolly stick*. I went to the place where I keep a cache of lolly sticks but they had all disappeared! I complained to Julian that I didn’t have anything to make a splint from and he heroically found an old paint brush that had finally become unusable and cut it in half so that I had a small stick. I wrapped it with cotton wool and stuck it on my thumb with a plaster. The plaster wasn’t long enough to go round my thumb and the stick with its covering, so I used some sellotape to keep it in place.
That worked! My thumb didn’t bend. But, the stick stuck out beyond my thumb making it difficult to do things, like pick up a saucepan, cuddle the dog, use my iPad. Nevertheless, I persisted, removing it that night so I could wash some of the day’s grime away, then putting it back on for the remainder of the night. In the wee hours of the morning I was aware that my thumb was hurting – it felt like the sling was burning hot. In my semi- awareness I tore the thing off my thumb, and fell back into full sleep. (The adhesive on plasters* has a bad effect on my skin and makes it feel like it’s burning.)
Next day I looked on Amazon for a thumb splint. Several days later I received a packet containing six or seven little items, some plastic, some metal. I tried one of the plastic ones. It hurt my thumb – it wasn’t big enough; I tried the one slightly bigger which was okay-ish. You try walking around with a flesh-coloured piece of moulded plastic on your hand! It gets in the way, it is slippery so you have to be really careful when you pick up a heavy bottle or a dinner plate, and you still have to take it off numerous times a day when you wash your hands as it gets wet inside and is even more uncomfortable. I did try one of the metal ones but it was even more uncomfortable and still had all the same problems.
Back to Amazon. (I’m too far from shops to go out and look.) I found a fabric thumb splint that holds your thumb in place and wraps around your wrist, using Velcro to hold it in place. I ordered one and waited till my delivery day for it to be delivered. It came. After a little fiddling about, I got it on and spent the day wearing it. I still had to remove it to wash but it’s not shiny plastic or metal and I can pick up stuff and even cuddle Lola with it on.
Now for the mystery.
Yesterday was Julie day. Julie is in many ways my best friend, She comes to see me every Tuesday, plays with Lola, sits and chats while we have a coffee, then cleans all the places I don’t! One week it’s the downstairs and the next it’s everything upstairs. Yesterday was upstairs and after we played with Lola and had coffee, up she went with vacuum, cleaning materials etc. At some point before that she nodded at my splint and asked if it is helping. I said that it was and that I wish it would get better more quickly – so I know that I had it on at about 2pm and that I was downstairs then and didn’t go upstairs until bedtime – when I realised I wasn’t wearing it.
I went into the kitchen where I must have removed it before cooking – I have to wash my hands, rinse out pans etc so don’t wear it while I’m doing all that. I couldn’t see it anywhere so I went into the lounge. Nope, not there where I sit and watch tv nor on the floor next to my seat, nor on the bookcases behind the sofa where I sit, not on the chair where Lola sits and looks out the window, nor in the waste paper basket, nor in the hall on the chair, nor in the downstairs loo, nor in the utility area – not in the washing machine or the dryer – nor in the conservatory.
By now it was a bit later than I normally go upstairs with Lola, when we go through our bedtime rituals of cuddling, singing (I do that), sweetie eating (Lola does that), changing out of clothes and into pyjamas (me, again) etc etc. All that time I was searching for my splint – and I kept on bending my thumb, which hurt! I knew it wasn’t upstairs but I still kept looking! (I’m sure there’s a name for that kind of thing!)
Then, after songs were finished and I was lying in my place on the bed, I thought of places to check next day. I went through all the things I had done when tidying and cooking and remembered several places it might be: the red bag for recycling paper and card – I had broken up some Amazon packaging and put it in the bag; the drawer where I keep the hand towels and the food recycling bags (they break down into compost), where I spent a few minutes searching under the towels for the little ‘sticks’ that I put down the drain to help it clear the built up solids that seem to get down there: under the cushion on my chair at the table…..
This morning I came downstairs, thinking about my thumb splint. I looked in the red recycling bag where I had thrown all the paper and card last night – no, it wasn’t there. I checked in the drawer with the towels and looked between them – no, not there. In the washing machine, in the dryer, in the bin where I throw away the dryer lint, in the kitchen again where I keep spare cutlery, the drawer with dish towels, the hand towel drawer again and………I spotted a familiar colour – splint colour! And there it was! It wasn’t between the towels, it was off to the side and I just hadn’t spotted it earlier!
I had, of course also looked in the fridge! Old demented ladies put stuff in the fridge or the oven. I’m not demented! Hooray! I’m just short sighted. 👵🏻
I’ll start with my face cream. At almost 82 my skin has lost a lot of elasticity. There are quite a few creases and even a couple of crevices here and there. When I wake up in the morning, it often looks worse than the night before. I tend to sleep with my face partially buried in my pillow which leads to marks from the pillow case engraved on my face for part of the day. Sometimes I awake to find that I have been sleeping with my hand between my face and the pillow, so I have the imprints of my fingers on one or other of my cheeks. My face cream doesn’t hide any of the marks on my face but it does make the skin more supple. The face cream I’ve used for years is called Steam Cream. It is made in Japan and comes in lovely little decorative tins. I have a collection of around 30 of these little tins.
Next is my dog, Lola. She isn’t really ‘an object’ to me, more a companion. She can be funny, sweet, annoying, surprisingly loud if she sees the four red setters walking past our window, and often very clever. I have taught her to ‘wait’ – to wait at the kerb when we arrive at a crossing point, to wait before going out of the door and to wait during our bedtime ritual when I sing « Little Lola had a farm E-I-E-I-O » holding out a sweet. She sits in front of my hand, often looking above or to the side of the sweetie hand, and when I’ve finished singing, she waits until I hold out my hand and say ‘okay’, then will eat the tiny sweetie. The last song is about the EensyWeensy Spider climbing up the spout. When the rain has done its best to wash away the spider and the sun has dried up all the rain, the little spider climbs right back up the spout and Lola has the last sweetie (still very teensy) then lies down readying herself for final cuddles and sleep.
The final object is my iPad. From my iPad I keep in contact with my family and friends via email, Viber, Messages, WhatsApp (if I have my phone on), and I order my shopping – (since I gave up driving I have deliveries of essentials once a week). I also watch tv, catch up with the newspapers, doom scroll, have a quick peek at Facebook, BlueSky, X, and Substack. When I’ve read my fill of the news, I check weather reports, I might spend some time reading a book, write a blog post, check my bank account, and look for interesting lots on Auction sites. I used to attend 2 classes a week on Zoom but our local authority has put an end to most of the painting classes.
There are lots of other objects in my life that I would hate to give up but the objects above are the ones I rely upon most.
White Haired Woman 