White Haired Woman

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.

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.

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.

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!

Sneakily, I have written about a different subject and am advertising it here! It’s a mystery!

Many daily prompts have nothing to do with me but I like people to know what’s going on in my life. 😄

See: The Mystery of the Missing Splint!

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.

The first thing I can think of that I collected is rocks. I liked the little bits of mica which sparkled and I thought might be really valuable! That was when I was about 8 and I think my entire collection was from the path outside at the back of our house.

Another collection I had was of home-made paper dolls that I made and hid away from Judy, whose entire purpose in life seemed to be to make me cry! She must have found them hidden under the towels in the bathroom as I could never find them. I seem to remember that I never mentioned their disappearance in order to not give her a reason to be pleased!

My biggest collection was of pictures of movie stars. I used to buy movie magazines in the mid 1950s and, in the back were loads of different ads – there was an ad for a monkey small enough to fit into a teacup; another ad for something that would help you copy drawings! (I think it was a pantograph); and loads of adverts for movie star photos. I seem to remember buying several lots of them but, once I had them, I had no idea what to do with them! They all were left behind when we moved to the UK.

My collecting seemed to stop during my older teens, and my 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, except for books which I tended to buy and keep until we ran out of shelf space. Then, in my mid 60s, when I started buying and selling antiques and collectables, I started collecting buttons. I found that most auctioneers had no ‘Lots’ containing buttons and that they used to chuck them away! But, I bought them when I found them, then sorted them, sold a few interesting ones and kept the rest. The best I have are in a bag somewhere in my bedroom, the mother of pearl ones are in a big tin and the rest (glass, coloured glass, black glass, art deco, one-holed, brass, other metal etc etc) are in tins under the spare room bed! I still get them out and look at them from time to time. (I think my fascination with buttons comes from the fact that neither my mother nor my grandmother had button boxes for me to sort as a child!)

When I discovered old wooden jigsaws, I also found (and bought) Victorian and Edwardian sets of picture blocks. I have about ten sets which I really like!

But, nowadays, I tend not to collect stuff and think I really should start getting rid of a lot of things my heirs will not want, including the six crates of china, the brass ladles that, I think, come from Chilham Castle, the lovely tins, the early 20th century card games etc etc.

Below you will see 4 photos of one of my picture block puzzles. The ‘guide pictures’ which are usually with this kind of puzzle are missing but the picture on the top of the box is one of the guides, as seen in the first photo. Sorry some of the photos have shadows!

The pictures on the puzzles, like the one above were, I believe, printed in Germany in the late 19th century. I haven’t seen any books on block puzzles and, like old jigsaw puzzles, were not often put in catalogues so there is no way of knowing who made them unless they were branded, as few are.

I am so old that there were no antibiotics to fight bacterial infections in general use before I was born. Penicillin was the first antibiotic to be ‘invented’- as far as I know, anyway. It was actually invented a couple of years before I was born but was studied and refined for several years before it was in general use around the world.

Things I know about Penicillin:

Penicillin was first based on a natural fungus.

There are different types of antibiotics based on penicillin.

Penicillin cures bacterial infections but has no effect on viruses.

People who have been treated with penicillin quite often, sometimes find it has lost its ability to kill the germs that are making them ill. When this happens, penicillin can cause allergic reactions.

Luckily, scientists have developed other antibiotics that can be used instead of penicillin when it has stopped working on someone.

Some bacteria have evolved and are not affected by most antibiotics.

I have had an ‘allergic’ reaction to penicillin. (My lips swelled up!)

I have recently read that an allergic reaction to penicillin doesn’t mean I am allergic. Instead, it is an intolerance.

Penicillin is said to have saved over 80 million lives.

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I am thankful that antibiotics were developed and that Alexander Fleming first noticed the effect of the mould on bacteria and began to study it. I’m grateful that other scientists used his findings to carry on the study which led to the antibiotics that we have been using since those early days of my life.

I don’t know if any of the illnesses I had during my life were so bad that I wouldn’t have got over them without using antibiotics – it’s possible that my immune system would have been strong enough that my body would fight off those infections. Without antibiotics, any infections I had would have lasted longer and put a strain on my body. Even in my 80s my vital organs seem to be relatively healthy, though I have had to slow down the past few years.

My great grandmother (the Great Weller), my grandmother, Ethel, and my mother Patty, all lived until their early 90’s, though not without some health problems. The Great Weller had diabetes; Ethel had very early hearing loss and was somewhat addicted to alcohol and Phenobarbital (which was in the form of a green liquid, bottles of which she had in her bathroom cabinet); and Patty smoked and drank alcohol until she went to live in a nursing home at 90. All of them were alive at some point when there were no antibiotics and all survived until their tenth decade.