On Mothering Sunday

Edward is home, lunch will be cooked for me and I have some beautiful flowers on the windowsill. 

There are more flowers here too, for my m-i-l, who will join us for lunch and the two of us will be banished from the kitchen as the men take charge.  I expect the conversation will include a few family stories because we’ll be thinking about our own mothers today.

My Mum loved to play cards.  A childhood spent in a strict Methodist household where Sundays were observed meant that her family would gather around the card table for a game of whist or rummy on Sunday afternoons.  Though the cards didn’t come out very often at home, I recently found this photograph from 1965 of Mummy sneaking a look at my Nan’s hand.  Judging from the pile of pennies alongside her, I think she’d hit a winning streak!

Being an only child meant that my Mum was always there for me and of course, I miss her as much as ever.  All kinds of things throughout every day prompt sweet memories but, on one day a year, it’s especially good to sit down and acknowledge what an amazing woman she was.

There once was a bear from Peru…

As the story goes, his Aunt Lucy came to visit him, ostensibly to watch a rugby match but then she decided to stay and the rest is history.

When she first arrived, she was dressed in Peruvian style, but over the years, her clothes have become shabby and have been replaced by other, seasonally appropriate outfits, often matching those of her nephew, with whom she stands at the top of the stairs.

St Nikolaus  on the 6 December in particular is always a big day in terms of special outfits.

When we were in Peru, I thought often of Aunt Lucy and her clothes and thought that perhaps, she would like to return to wearing a traditional outfit, as befits a Peruvian lady of a certain age.  Whilst out shopping, I bought a piece of fabric with the thought of making her some new clothes.

What do you think?

She has a skirt and matching shawl, worn around her shoulders just like the old ladies we saw.  She carries a bundle too, though bearing in mind her advancing years, it’s filled with polystyrene packing chips.

Sadly, I’m defeated by her hat and need to think a little about how to make her a new one.  Recently, she’s been wearing a little bowler hat, but it’s really too big for her and she can’t see a thing when she’s wearing it!

Maybe I’ll have to make her one like Julissa’a Mummy, whom we met in Ollantaytambo?

Vision statement

I don’t generally worry about my age and accept the white hair, the wrinkles and other effects of gravity with – I hope – good grace.  But there is one aspect which has always niggled me and that’s declining eyesight.  The need to have a pot of cheap Primark magnifying glasses by my computer began some years ago but steadily I progressed to proper glasses from the optician.

The pot of cheapies were put to one side for a while as the more serious prescription glasses became ever more necessary.  I didn’t worry about that one jot, except that having to wear them to read began to change my habits.  I could no longer just pick up a book and start to read – first I had to find my glasses.  I muttered in the car when trying to read the map wearing my sunglasses and sometimes resorted to wearing my sunglasses over my reading glasses, bringing back memories of my Nan, who would improvise and create her own bifocals by wearing two pairs at once when she was watching TV and knitting at the same time. 

When I became tired of putting them on and off, I tried a pair of varifocals, but found the reduced field of vision a real nuisance.  The optician I’d consulted told me that I should try moving my head a little more – and as a result, I found myself a new one (optician, that is, not head!) 

With much better advice and service from people who were more interested in my eyesight than the frames they were selling me, I acquired a great pair of varifocals which were much more comfortable, though I still didn’t feel I needed them all the time and continued to take them on and off as necessary.

But recently, I found myself peering at the computer screen rather and from time to time I got a crick in my neck from trying to look through the right bit of the lens which wasn’t necessarily the bit I should have been looking through.  A pair of stronger magnifiers which I’d been given as part of a “two pairs for one” offer found its way to my desk and I thought it was time I went for another eye test.  I explained to the sweet ophthalmologist about feeling sad that I needed to wear glasses and if I could choose one thing to change about myself, it would be to have my great eyesight back.  He was most sympathetic and said that he thought he had the answer.

Contact lenses!

Would I like to give them a try?  Yes!  Would I like to try now? Yes!  Did I mind if he put lenses in right now?  Ooooh!

He disappeared and came back very excitedly with a couple of boxes in hand and within two minutes had fitted them and we were both smiling.  Perhaps he’d never had such an enthusiastic response before?  Perhaps he’d never been able to fit them so quickly or easily?  Either way, he had one very happy potential contact lens wearer in front of him!

He explained that he would advise wearing two different prescriptions: one for reading in my left eye, one for distance in my right eye and promised me that my brain would work it all out and enable me to go about my everyday life reading and looking into the distance seamlessly.  Mind you, he warned me that the optimum age for adjusting to such things was 47! 

Never mind

Here we are, two weeks on.  I have been taught how to use the disposable lenses and have put them in and taken them out several times under supervision.  I know what to do and what not to do whilst wearing them and have been given a sample pack of ten pairs to try.  I’ve worn them for four whole days and this morning, took a deep breath and drove whilst wearing them.  They are incredibly comfortable and I forget that I’m wearing them. 

It’s as if I’m 47 again!

Except my bedside table gives the game away.

Happy

I don’t normally choose mixed colours when choosing flowers, but I couldn’t resist this gorgeous bunch of tulips whilst shopping last week.

Sure enough, they’ve opened into a glorious blaze of colour on the kitchen windowsill and I just had to get my camera this morning, when the light was just right.

There hasn’t been much time to sit at the computer and review the days recently, as my diary has been filled with my favourite mix of work and fun.  Most of the time, work is fun, especially now we’ve learned the OFSTED outcome – note the “outstanding” visual arts!  Just now, the work-life balance is pretty good around here.

 

On Saturday, we enjoyed another trip to the pictures in Cheltenham – getting to be a habit, this – to see Jonas Kaufmann as Werther in another of the Met Opera’s Live HD shows.  Wonderful stuff, especially with such a star hunkentenor in the leading role  

The bright, Spring like days we are having right now are gorgeous, even if this gang of goldfinches did start their chorus a little earlier than I’d like this morning.  At lunch with our delightful neighbours yesterday, the conversation moved briefly onto the subject of gardens and I felt quite inspired to get out there and make a start – well, for about five minutes, anyway!

With such an optimistic and cheerful frame of mind this morning, I went off to a meeting in a favourite place and came home thinking I’d catch up on one or two things before doing something creative.  Before my mood changed though, I deleted a whole page of snarky comments on one of the travel forums I follow without even reading them.

I’d much rather choose happy.

A tale of two tribes

I

I was in Cheltenham unusually early yesterday morning.  For most of us it was a normal Tuesday morning and the majority were going about their everyday business as usual.  But there were young men with signs here and there, advertising breakfast.

The names on the street were William Hill, Paddy Power and Betfred and the biggest pile of newspapers in WH Smith was the Racing Post, with an only slightly smaller pile of the Irish Times alongside.

Some young women were dressed in more eyecatching outfits and were attracting attention from the groups of (mainly) men, which is of course, exactly what they intended.

It’s Gold Cup week in Cheltenham and 50 000 race goers are heading to the town each day.  Anyone with any sense steers well clear of the place during this week, unless they have a business, of course, in which case it’s quids in!  But I have no sense, because I have to be in the town three days running.  What was I thinking?

So, whilst the gents in their tweeds and polished shoes join the lads in their blue jeans and hoodies on the way to the racecourse and pass the jewellers’ windows packed full of tempting trinkets for spending the winnings later, I joined an altogether different tribe for a Crafts Council conference about Crafts Education and Training.  Definitely no tweeds to be seen there!

But someone had yarn-bombed the hare and the minotaur in honour of the occasion and I thought that could be a good sign.

Sadly, though, I’m not sure it was.  Wearing two hats at the conference – both my Adult and Community Learning cap and the always-chic WI version – I was in the minority it seemed.  In a room full of “makers” and “craftsmen”, much of the talk was of the high level stuff, of degree courses and PhDs, of career artisans making a living from their skills and whilst I fully support the agenda to enable these talented people to enrich our lives with the fruits of their labour, I thought that the point was missed somewhere.  In my more mundane world where many of those lofty ideals and the concept of haptic education would involve the use of a dictionary, it’s the Great British Sewing Bee which drives the agenda, an idea to use some recycled materials to create something for the garden or even the opening of a new wool shop in the local town.  Most of the people I work with everyday are not looking for a new career when they begin their craft adventure, but life has a way of turning up the unexpected and occasionally a simple jewellery making class or learning the basics of upholstery can lead to unimagined career changes.  And whilst I don’t want to be ageist about this, many of these people thought they’d completed their formal education some time ago but are returning, newly motivated to learn a new skill or to develop it further having acquired some experience along the way.

Unfortunately, this type of crafts education wasn’t really on the agenda and warranted a mere passing mention.  What a missed opportunity to explore the lack of support for adult education classes in crafts, for encouraging the acquisition and passing on of traditional skills to the many, not just to the lucky few.  If the Crafts Council were more willing to step down from the lofty heights from time to time and acknowledge the huge benefits of acquiring new craft skills and putting them to creative use in everyday life, we might get somewhere.

Wouldn’t it be great if the money which changed hands on the racecourse and beyond yesterday was available for crafts education?  (Speaking in 2010, Peter McNeile, Cheltenham's director of sponsorship, said that his information suggested that around UK£1 million was being bet on each race on-site in cash alone. "We estimate that the total turnover on races during Festival week is about UK£500 million," McNeile said. "If you talk to any bookmaker, I think you'd find the normal turnover for a week would be between say UK£320 million and UK£350 million. There's a big, big spike there.")

What a good job quality of life isn’t measured in money.