White Haired Woman

I can’t think of any word I use regularly that I would want to give up. I don’t swear very often, unless I drop something heavy on my foot or burn myself and even then it’s usually not that bad. I need that word for when bad things happen!

I suppose I could give up onomatopoeia which I might say once or twice a year or maybe discombobulated, which I seldom, if ever, say. What about phlegm or diarrhoea – things I can very well do without, thank you very much. But, who knows, I might need to use one or the other sometimes!

Two words that are used together – carpal and tunnel – are words I hope I will never have to use again, soon. I’ve just talked to the doctor who will carry out a procedure on my c.t. in the next month or so. He was checking to make sure I still want that little operation to go ahead. I do! Those of you who haven’t been bothered with it can’t imagine how annoying it is and I hope you’ll never find out. If you are a female and over 35 or so, it is more likely you will than the male people out there, for some reason. Imagine your forefinger suddenly going numb, or maybe your first 3 fingers and thumb. The pinkie finger and the pinkie side of the ring finger, apparently aren’t affected by the annoying little problem, unless you also have something a bit wrong in your elbow!(No one has explained it to me though it has been mentioned in passing – if I want an explanation I will look for one on Google! It’s really enough to know that it does happen to other people, too!)

There are, of course, many many English words that I’ve never used and will never use but since they’re not in my vocabulary, it doesn’t seem right that I give them up – yet.

…..has sadly lost its rubber seal and, rather than replace the seal which would be difficult to find, I looked for a new little food caddy.

The purpose of the food caddy is to save all the kitchen scraps, avocado seeds, crumbs, old dog food etc inside a compostable bag and, once a week, put it out to be collected by the council at the same time as they collect other rubbish.

I used to have a composting bin in the garden. I would go to the bin several times a week to add coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells, chicken bones, sprouted potatoes, greens that have passed their use-by date etc etc but, every time I looked for compost, I found only bare earth!

Eventually it occurred to me that something was coming along, digging under the edge of the bin and carting away anything it thought edible to its family. It was probably rats!

We used to have a bird feeding station near the house. One day I saw a rat climbing up the post and taking peanuts from the feeder. Then it ran down the post and went under the big hydrangea bush we had. The bird feeder was given away as was the big compost bin! Where the rats have gone is unknown but the hydrangea bush is gone as well, so they’re not under there!

When we moved to Cincinnati in 1950, we got our first tv. As it’s that long ago, I’ve forgotten all the things we watched but I do remember some.

We watched Howdy Doody every day after school. My favourite was Princess Summerfall Winterspring. Watching the shows on YouTube, I can’t believe I liked it, but I did and so did my younger sisters.

Judy, my sister who was a year and a half younger, was particularly fond of Captain Video and the Video Rangers. She loved the Video Ranger who was the only one I can remember – he was her first serious crush at the age of six!

I also remember The Kate Smith Hour starring Kate Smith. She played the piano and sang songs from the 30s, 40s and early 50s, I think. (You can see her in YouTube) She wasn’t slim and made up, wearing interesting costumes and jiggling about. No. She dressed like a matronly 50 year old; her hair was styled like a matronly 50 year old; I imagine she wore the shoes of a matronly 50 year old. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing those things and have my hair like that and I’m 81! But that was back in the early 1950s and things have changed, thank goodness! Her theme song was one I’ve not heard since. 🎶🎶When the Moon comes over the mountain🎶🎶

Other shows I remember but not whether they were early 50s or later 50s are Dragnet, The Jackie Gleason Show, I Love Lucy, also What’s My Line. I didn’t watch the show that had teens dancing (like the one you see in the Grease, the film).

One programme I did see was The Ed Sullivan Show that had Elvis Presley on the first time. Before that, Judy told me that Elvis was going to be on and I said, no, his name is Alvis – or it could have been the other way round – I really don’t remember!

Ooh, I’ve just remembered another programme I loved was Ozzie and Harriet. I loved Ricky, Judy preferred David. It’s strange how these things come back to you….

Since those days I’ve watched so many shows on British tv, many of them American. I loved Rawhide, which had Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates. Little did I know that later in his life, he would be the Mayor of Carmel where my father lived!

I remember watching the tv on November 22, 1963 and finding that President Kennedy had been shot. It was so incredible that such a thing could happen! I was 20 years old and had a date with someone called Paul (I think). We went somewhere on a bus and everyone in the bus was talking about the terrible news – here in London, a million miles from Dallas, but so unbelievable! Now, people are shot in America and nothing much happens on British tv – it’s just what Americans do to each other. What a sad state of affairs!

When we left America, people had guns but rarely even thought of using them for anything but going hunting or shooting at targets, often old beer cans. Things have changed – and not for the better, regarding guns!

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that all the tv shows were in black and white and there were three channels. When we came to England, programmes were black and white and there were two channels. In America the tv day started around six am, in England, the tv came on around 1pm for an hour or so then went off until about six pm, closing down about 10:30. Strange to think of that now!

My favourite time of day really depends on what is happening on that day. In my youth I almost never had breakfast, possibly because my mother didn’t have food before lunch and didn’t understand the importance of having a full tummy before going to school. Nowadays I have breakfast not too long after I get up. In the colder months I have porridge with added oat bran and seeds. In the warmer months I have been eating Shreddies (a whole wheat, crunchy, cereal) with a little sugar, lots of cinnamon, and semi-skimmed milk, followed by a few prunes.

Yesterday, something rather special was happening so I got up a bit earlier than normal and had my breakfast. At noon Julian and I went to the Cataract Clinic near Herne Bay and I had the operation on the cataract in my right eye!

I would like to assure everyone that this operation is pretty well painless – and, during it, you see some wonderful colour combinations! Before the actual operation you are seen by a nurse who takes your name, date of birth etc so that the NHS has details to add to your record, then checks your eye-sight and puts some drops in your eyes, after which she takes you back to the waiting area. After a short time, a doctor takes you into an office where he looks at your eyes in more detail. I was informed that I, like quite a few other people, have an extra membrane in the back of my eye which means very little. He spent some time talking to me about the cataract in my left eye and why the right eye is being seen to first. (It’s worse than the left one!)

After another waiting area where I watched a silent (to me) tv, I was taken to a different nurse who took my blood pressure, checked who i am and when I was born, added some more drops to my left eye, talked a little more about what was going to happen, then sent me to wait outside the room across the hall.

A short time later a young woman came out, led me in and asked me to sit. She put some sort of scarf on my head, making sure that my fringe wouldn’t get in the way of the operation, then spread a liquid on and around my eye. (She mentioned it was iodine). Shortly, I entered the operating theatre and lay down on a ‘bed’. The doctor placed a piece of cloth over my eyes, then cut an area from the right side so that he could see my eye and I couldn’t see anything from my left eye. He proceeded to wipe various(?) damp substances across and around my eye. Then there was a period of time (five or ten minutes, I imagine) when I couldn’t really say what was happening. From where I was, all I could see was an ever-changing set of glorious colours – a light turquoise, fuchsia pink, brilliant orange yellow – then some little bubble shapes, then more colours. At the same time there was a strange noise coming from my right which changed slightly, stopping and starting irregularly. I have no idea what it was. Various ideas flashed through my head – could it be a sharpener for the scalpel? Or a laser? Or ???

I felt pressure on my eye and, I’ll admit, almost pain, which I feared would get worse but didn’t.

It was finally over. The doctor removed the cloth from my eyes, taped a plastic eye shield over my eye and said I could sit up, which I did. Then, supported by a nurse, I walked out to the waiting area. Shortly, a young lady came to talk to me about the drops for my eyes, (one drop, four times a day) the plastic shield for my eye (to be worn the rest of the day and first night, then every night for a while). She gave me a booklet with details and frequently asked questions etc, then Julian came and took me home!

Enough about eyes!

Lunch time used to be really easy! Until not too long ago I made a big pot of soup with beans, onions and tomatoes which lasted for at least 5 days. I think I just got fed up with making it because, for a while now, I’ve had to decide what to have for lunch rather than knowing what I would have. Sometimes, I have avocado toast (yum!) or egg on toast (yum) or tomato soup and toast with cheese (yum).

Which brings us to dinner.

I started cooking dinner (evening meal) for the family when I was in my mid-teens. I can’t really remember how I decided what we would have or, really if I decided what to have. My mother was finishing her thesis for her degree and I, being the oldest daughter, was the one who cooked.

After about 65 years of planning and cooking dinner (with days off during my teens, thankfully!), I have reached the end of my tether regarding evening meals! Damien and Harley (Julian’s younger brothers) learned from their mother how to cook but Julian didn’t and, even when he was single, ate a very strange evening meal diet of burgers, fish and chips or cheese on toast. At lunchtime he would eat in the canteen or, occasionally go to a carvery so, I guess had a few vegetable once in a while.

So, I decided, about 3 years ago, not to cook on Monday evenings. We have whatever we can find, separately, on Mondays . The rest of the week we have what I decide but from a limited store of recipes, nowadays. We don’t have much red meat so it’s usually chicken or fish. Sometimes, it’s pasta with a vegetable sauce, and, once a week – maybe – what I call deconstructed cottage pie. This is the filling of cottage pie – beef mince and vegetables accompanied by mashed potato. I can no longer be bothered to go the full way and put the mash on top of the mince and shove it in the oven – it tastes almost the same, has the same ingredients and is reasonably healthy.

At the moment, after our night time meal is my favourite time of most days. The work (such as it is) of the day is done (or not), the walking of the dog has been accomplished and it’s time for entertainment. If I have nothing else exciting on, I sit in my wonderful conservatory (if it’s warm enough) and stream tv programmes I’ve not seen before or saw so long ago I have forgotten.

At the moment I am working my way through Death in Paradise which I had never watched for some reason. In months gone by I have watched the whole of Morse, Lewis, and Endeavour as well as Silent Witness, Astrid – Murder in Paris, the Red Door and other Channel Four offerings. Montalbano, is a favourite of mine and I’d love to go to Sicily if I thought I’d meet him!

You can see what my taste is in tv programmes and, as it happens, books. I’m not sure why I have always liked crime and murder mysteries – I am very meek and mild and doubt if I could bring myself to murder anyone! Some people ask me if I have nightmares after watching, or reading, about horrific things. I don’t and I believe that’s because of my aphantasia. (See my posts on Aphantasia for explanations, as this post is just about finished!)

As a teen, I loved the evenings after school when I could meet friends and dance or go to the movies; as a young mum I loved the days when I could play with my little ‘Veronica’* and the nights when she was finally asleep; and as a grown up in my 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, I particularly liked the later parts of the day when work had been done and I could relax. I still haven’t got to the point where the morning is the bit I like best – getting out of bed is still the least enjoyable time of the day for me! I suppose I might prefer it when I’m really old, not just a spring chicken of 81!

*’Veronica’ is my daughter who doesn’t want people to know all the details of her life! Veronica is the pseudonym she chose.

The above was my name for about 40 years, not that I used it all, all the time. In fact, day-to-day, I have always used Candy.

Candida came, via my mother, from a play by George Bernard Shaw. The play is about a woman, Candida, married to a clergyman. If that’s what my mother wished for me, she was badly let down!

Call is my paternal grandmother’s surname before she married. When she met my paternal grandfather, she was already married – SCANDAL – but, luckily for my father and his twin, the scandal was resolved several years before they were born.

Jeffers is the surname I was born with, as it was for my father and his father before him. My paternal grandfather was the poet, Robinson Jeffers. He married Una Call Kuster after she and her first husband divorced, amicably. Several years later my father, Donnan, and his twin, Garth, were born. Much of their story is known in the US and the home Grandfather built for Una and his sons is open to the public in Carmel, California. Apparently, my grandfather’s poetry is/was studied in American high schools.

There are quite a few videos about Robinson Jeffers on You Tube, in some of which you can see the house and tower he built over-looking the sea. There are other videos in which some of his poems are read. (Looking down the YouTube page that starts with Jeffers, I came across some videos that have nothing to do with poetry or Jeffers. Maybe someone can explain that! It’s like looking along a book shelf about maps and finding a load of books on wrestling, pop music and carpentry! Why?)

Last year, Medea, a play written by Euripides in Ancient Greece and translated by Robinson Jeffers in the 1940s, was staged in London. My half-brother, Lindsay, who lives in America, was invited by the play’s producers to attend and he invited me and ‘Veronica’ to join him. We all met in the restaurant of @Soho (a very new theatre in London) and saw the play together. It was the first time I had seen the play, though I knew the story and it was superbly done! If I had lived nearer, I would have gone back to see it every week it was on! Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels brought the story to life on a circular stage. We were in the row nearest the stage and we could have reached out and touched the actors as they walked by. I just hope that a video of the play was made and that I can see it again!

So, as you can see, my name came from various places. I’m quite glad to bear such a grand name but am also pleased to have my married name which I wrote about a while ago! Lucky me!

I seriously doubt that I could recall 10 films that I would want to see over and over again. There are many, many films that I have seen which I have been happy to have seen. There are a few I might like to see again and maybe one or two that I would definitely like to see again.

I would like to see The Shape Of Water again, really just to see if I really liked it as much as I thought I did. I recently saw The Shawshank Redemption, again, and really liked it as much as I had the first time.

When I was young – back in the olden days for many of you youngsters out there – I’m talking about the 1950s – my sisters and I would go to bed and wait for our mother to go to bed and fall asleep, then get up and go into the living room and watch one or sometimes two, movies. (In the long school holidays in the summer.)

Those secretly seen films were mainly from the 30s and 40s and made a great impression on all of us. I remember watching The Fall of The House of Usher, more than once over those years. Other films I remember were those which featured Our Gang and similar films with Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall. I think there were some screwball comedies and more than a few noir films as well but the names have disappeared from my memory. And I’ve just remembered a film about a mermaid who came out of the water and pretended to be a woman.

As I got older I occasionally took myself to the Esquire, the movie theatre in our neighbourhood in Cincinnati. I saw Elizabeth II’s coronation film, and a film called Moulin Rouge which was about Toulouse Lautrec – nothing like the film of the same name made in the past few years.

Another memory – and I can’t have been more than five or six – was Joan of Arc with Ingrid Bergman. All I remembered as a slightly older child was the fire burning Joan; I couldn’t have understood the film and why things were happening at that age and I’ve no idea who took me to see it. It gave me nightmares for a while!*

My sister Judy was a great one for having favourite movies. She fell in love with Gary Cooper in High Noon and must have seen it tens of times over the years. She also fell in love with Peter O’Toole and TE Lawrence when she saw Lawrence of Arabia at the cinema! Slightly later, she added Patrick Mc Goohan and Max von Sydow to those screen lovers. I can’t imagine how many times she saw films with those particular men in them!

I liked the James Bond films when I was younger; I quite liked many of the musicals that I saw – The King and I, Oklahoma, West Side Story, South Pacific – and if they came on tv and I had nothing better to do (or to watch) I wouldn’t mind watching them again.

The last film I saw was Nowhere Special which was really good. I watched that on BBC I-Player for our fortnightly film group which meets on Zoom. My friend, Myrna, chooses the film from i-Player (because not everyone has other channels like Amazon), lets us know what to watch and then on every other Monday evening at six we have our Zoom get-together. We all enjoyed the recent film!

Last fortnight’s film was Florence Foster Jenkins and, not everyone liked it! Me, I like almost every film I watch although I didn’t like The Magnificent Ambersons at all and I refused to watch something that had animals being killed right at the beginning, when I started watching it.

So – I’ve probably listed more than 10 films and I’ve liked most of them but not so much I’d want to see them again. There are so many films I’ve never seen so I might as well see one of those!

We moved here almost exactly 19 years ago from a small town called West Malling where I had lived twice, the first time with my mother and sister along with Veronica, then about 15 years later, when Julian and I had a joint business where he had a furniture restoration business and I had a small shop selling antiques and collectables. All those years ago several things made us realise it was time to give up our jobs – people had stopped buying old stuff and, also, people had stopped having their old stuff repaired and restored. (They all started going to Ikea!)

We chose here after driving around all sorts of places. We looked at Folkestone, Lewes, Whitstable, Ramsgate but always came back to Broadstairs. Broadstairs was where I brought Veronica when she was young. Her best friend, ‘Betty’s grandparents lived here in Rectory Road and we used to come down to go to the beach just up the road from her house. That beach is in Stone Bay. At the time there were no ‘facilities’ so if any of us needed to ‘go’, we’d go to Betty’s grandma’s or to the nearest car park with a ladies’ room.

The first thing I can say about Broadstairs is that it is on the coast of the North Sea/English Channel (nobody in this house seems to known where they separate!)

We have a couple of gorgeous beaches (officially there are more which are not in Broadstairs), Viking Bay and Stone Bay and there is Louisa Bay, which is covered by the tide twice a day.

There is one main shopping street we call the High Street which runs more or less perpendicular to Viking Bay and which starts up the hill near the station and ends at Albion Street where, nowadays there are quite a few restaurants. I couldn’t tell you how many restaurants there are in Broadstairs, there are so many! I think we’ve been to most of them.

In the early 20th century, a farmer sold off some fields on the hill behind Broadstairs to an entrepreneur who built houses. In our road there are around 25, some built over 100 years ago, and a few much more modern ones. We live in quite a large semi-detached house towards the end of the road. It was built, I believe, just after the turn of the century (19th into the 20th). It has lovely big rooms and a small cellar which would be great for a wine cellar if it wasn’t full of old paint tins and tools from the furniture restoration days. We have updated the kitchen and built a wonderful conservatory on the back. I love my house and never want to move again.

It has faults – the Edwardians didn’t know about insulation so they built the house without a cavity between the two layers of brick. This leads to cold and damp walls. Also, the builders gave our houses, large sash windows and no double glazing. We’ve added double glazing but have had to forgo the sash windows, sadly.

We have a back garden which is full of shrubs and perennials and a large patch of wild flowers for the bees and other insects.

Now, there are lots of things besides the sea, all the restaurants and my lovely home, that are really great about Broadstairs. There’s the 111 seat cinema; the area called St Peter’s which was here even longer than the ‘old town’ down by the sea; Folk Week which has been celebrated almost every year for about 50 years; the Food Festival in the spring and in the autumn; the Dickens Festival, when everything Victorian seems to be celebrated; and so many other things that I don’t know about. The ‘39 steps’ are said to be somewhere nearby, though there aren’t exactly 39. There are stories about a pirate named Joss who lived back in pirate days, who smuggled stuff and has a bay named after him.

Broadstairs is between two other small towns, Ramsgate which has a Royal Harbour and Margate which has the wonderful Turner Contemporary as well as the famous Dreamland amusement park and entertainment centre. Each town has restaurants galore! (Do you sense a theme, here?)

There is also a modern area outside the towns with huge grocery stores, fast food places, and nationally known shops like M&S, Smiths and TK Maxx.

We have it all! Why wouldn’t I love where I live?

……if you’re with your dog, poo bags are the most important thing to carry with you. I am very fortunate in having a dog who was taught to do her business in the back garden only! Despite this, there have been four times (in 6 years) when she hasn’t waited to get home and, luckily, I have always had bags with me. When we went on a week’s break to Longleat Forest earlier this year, Lola seemed to remember what she had been taught and waited the full week until we got back home!

At those times when I am out on my own, I always try to have a little cash (what is that? Oh, yes those bits of paper and metal we used to use when buying something!) I also carry my phone, my bank card, my bus pass and my drivers license. My mother told me always to carry my identity details, just in case……

If I’m going further afield, say for a night or two in a hotel or family’s spare room, I usually remember my various tablets – the older one gets, the more tablets one has! Also, of course, clean underwear and socks, if not a whole outfit, and something to sleep in (old T-shirt or cotton nightie) and I almost never go far from home without my iPad and charger. Tooth brush and tooth paste, face cream, a few paracetamol tablets, indigestion meds, and a bag to carry them all in, round off my list of necessary items.

I also try to carry with me, my sense of humour, my intelligence and a few extra hairpins!

I answered this question in detail!

…..I have white hair, I walk more slowly than I used to, I always wear trousers or leggings, I am short.

That could be any one of lots of people?

I speak with a very soft accent that has evolved from Ohio American to not quite British English. I still say ‘banana’ rather than ‘banarna’. (American friends, the ‘r’ inside English words makes the vowel in front of it somewhat longer, it isn’t pronounced like the ‘r’ in ‘farmer’. Real, proper Brits don’t actually pronounce either of the ‘r’s in that word – it sounds more like ‘fah-mah’. But, the ‘r’ in ‘trend’ or ‘screen’ is pronounced just as in American English.)

I am overweight but trying to lose some. I’m more pear shaped than apple shaped. Even when I was skinny – from childhood until late 30s – I was the same – big hips, small bust.

I have short legs which are sturdy. Nowadays my ankles tend to swell in hot weather. Both of my knees have been replaced but I can’t fathom what it was that caused the cartilage in them to disappear! I have never been sporty, never run when I can walk, never climbed mountains or even monuments if there was a handy lift.

I wear glasses. When I was young it was discovered that my right eye had astigmatism and I was prescribed glasses. I found wearing them made everything look like it was tilted. I gave up wearing them almost immediately! In my 40s I discovered that I couldn’t see to read as well as I had so bought some over-the-counter reading glasses. I continued with those, changing the strength as necessary but, it was in my late 70s that I slowly found that my vision was so bad that I could no longer read LOOP on my local buses until they were quite close. (The LOOP is a great service here in Thanet, joining the 3 small towns of Ramsgate, Broadstairs and Margate.) So, now, I wear bifocals. (I tried varifocals but didn’t get on so well.)

In early 2018 I had white hair down to my waist and found it annoying to look after. I wore it up in some sort of bun but I always looked a bit messy 5 minutes after I finished fixing it for the day. So, I decided to go to the hairdresser and have it cut short. After the cut, I quite liked how it looked, then I washed it myself and it didn’t look so great. I bought a special machine that would give my hair a bit of a wave but, that was useless – so I had it cut, even shorter! I liked it when I came out of the hairdresser – and you can guess how I felt a couple of days later! It never looked great. Nevertheless I continued going to the hairdresser every few months and having it shaped and dressed.

In January last year (2023) I decided to let it grow. In April, around my 80th birthday, I had a big party and invited many of the people I know. My hair was just long enough by then to be pinned back and ‘up’ just a bit. Now (July, 2024) it has reached well past my shoulders. It is still messy – but occasionally, with a lot of hairspray, it stays in place for an hour or two.

I quite like being on my own, but not all the time. When Julian goes away, painting, I have a lovely time not cooking for two, in fact, not always cooking for one! He has been away for the past ten days and I have only turned on the oven twice, once to cook 2 chicken breasts and the other time to cook some salmon. On those evenings I also cooked some veges and ate hot meals. The second chicken breast was a lovely treat for Lola the next day but I had the second piece of salmon, cold for lunch with salad – salmon is my favourite fish. (Tuna is a close second!)

I am a quiet person. I don’t generally raise my voice though there are some people, now in their 50s I think, who might disagree. I was a primary school teacher for about 10 years and I often seemed to be raising my voice to be heard above the cacophony of 30-odd young people. I’m happy to say that many of them don’t seem to hold it against me!

I have blue eyes, almost no eyebrows (I’m not sure why). I have a small nose, a rather long upper lip and a small chin. When I smile I almost look like I have cheek bones and try to remember to almost smile rather than let my face fall into repose which either looks like I’m going to burst into tears or that I am angry or very bored! When I was younger, people passing me in the street would say, “Cheer up, it may never happen!”

Well, I can’t think of anything else to describe me so will end here. Cheerio, ‘til next time!