So I'm off to see the young lady out in the sticks who does my nails at her house, a three weekly treat to stop me from biting my cuticles. (Women will understand) I'm half way there when it occurs to me that I'm an hour early. Something to do with the clocks going back. I've never truly understood why. Something to do with the farmers and daylight I believe. Anyway I say a bad word, find a place to do a three point turn with out causing an accident and go back wondering how I can kill an hour without going all the way home. I decide to go to a little farm shop cafe I know. I park my little Jazz overlooking the fields and go to inspect the home made cakes on offer that day. I then spend the next hour enjoying frothy coffee and delightfully moist lemon cake whilst playing Words with Friends on my brand new iphone. After I've whiled away a pleasant half hour I get back in my car confident that my dependable little steed will get me to my destination at the right time. But fate had other ideas. I turn the key. Nothing. I turn it again. Still nothing. 'But it worked before,' I moan. Ah well. Just as well I've invested in Green Flag. I get out my brand new iphone and phone them but find that the wi fi down there keeps dropping. I am, after all, just about in the middle of a field. So I go back into the caf where the young staff, seeing that modern technology is beyond me. kindly treat me like their granny and contact Green Flag for me. (Sometimes young people come in very handy) Three hours, three slices of lemon cake and three frothy coffees later Green Flag phone to say they're on their way. I go down to the car to wait for them. Just for fun I turn the key. Yes, you've guessed it. The little blighter starts straight away.
0 Comments
So, I get home after an 18 hour plane journey, bog eyed and disorientated. My calendar reminds me I must attend a pre-med a day later for my op in a fortnight's time. Leaving a house littered with the contents of two suitcases I present myself at the hospital 16 miles away, where they weigh me (mmmm) measure me, take my blood and stick electrodes all over me. Two hours later I am seemingly fit enough to face the knife.. They shove a diet sheet in front of me and tell me if I don't stick to it the op will not take place. So I'm thinking, ' I can do without biscuits for a couple of weeks.' Then I read it!
'800 CALORIES A DAY?' I cry. 'DO YOU WANT TO KILL ME?' There was no sympathy whatsoever. So I went home and really tried hard, weighing everything in grams, cutting up lettuce, slicing tomatoes. After a week I'm growing long ears and a bob tail. Two weeks later having arranged with a long sufffering friend to pick me up at 7am the following morning I'm relaxing watching tele feeling very slim and ready for a nice relaxed sleep under anaesthetic when the phone rings. 'We're very sorry but your operation has been cancelled due to an emergency and no available bed.' My heart sank. All that starvation for nothing. 'We'll let you know an alternative date in the next two days.' Thinking that the op would at least be within the next week I went back to watching Coronation Street, confident of an early date seeing as they'd made me starve for a fortnight. When the letter arrived I was incensed. 26th June! Two weeks without biscuits all for nothing. How cruel is that? Excuse me whilst I eat my cream cake. I recently sailed from Southampton to Cape Town on that magnificent ship Queen Mary 2. It has been my ambition to do that trip by sea for the last fifty years ever since we lived in Rhodesia, or Zimbabwe as its now called; not because I wanted to see Cape Town, I'd been there several times, nor to experience that great ship. I just wanted to experience the crossing of the equator celebrations. Sounds daft I know but I can't lie. That was all I wanted to do. Well we boarded the ship in Southampton having managed to get there by train despite rail strikes. Everything was well organised. We sat in a specific area, I think we were in D. Each group was called to show their passports and tickets in order of the alphabet. It was all quite quick considering they had 3000 passengers to get on board. We entered the ship via a huge foyer with an enormous dripping chandelier, and soft carpets reminiscent of a posh hotel, I seem to recall a pianist tinkling on a grand piano but that might have been another day. Anyway eventually after getting a bit lost we found our cabin. It was fairly large with a balcony. Only trouble was a big yellow lifeboat hung outside obscuring our view of the sea. But that didn't matter. At least we knew we had one in case of emergencies :) There was lots to do on board over the following days, line dancing (which we were no good at, kept falling over our feet) table tennis (which we got better at), quizzes,films, shows; the usual entertainments, not to mention the day stops at pretty Madeira and rainswept Teneriffe (we came in on the wrong side of the volcano) and it was good to have someone else cook our evening meals and clean our cabin. The best thing was being on deck in the sunshine and wallowing in the bubble pool. Then came the day I'd been waiting for when they called all those wishing to take part in the 'crossing the line ceremony' to meet in the 'English Pub' at 10am. Here was my chance, my opportunity to be involved. There were 18 of us and I was first in the queue. I thought there'd be more but everyone isn't as daft as me. So now I was signed up. There was no escape. On the day people from all 12 decks were hanging over the balconies waiting to see us making spectacles of ourselves. There I sat in my swimming costume on a metal chair, my fat on display for the world to see, having spaghetti poured over my head. I managed to escape the boulognaise! Then we had to parade around the deck, kiss a dead fish and jump in the swimming pool. It was years since I'd jumped in a swimming pool but with all those people watching I couldn't chicken out. In I went and came back up again coughing and spluttering to cheers from the audience. So now I have my certificate, signed by King Neptune (the Captain) himself. One more to add to my bucket list. Passing this field earlier today I got to thinking how times have changed since I was a kid. We were very naughty. We'd run through the corn field just to annoy Farmer Davis as he was about to cut the corn with his new combined harvester. He couldn't see us but we could hear him cursing us. 'Bloody kids! Get out of there.' As the machine got closer we'd run out, get told off and redeem ourselves by helping to stack the newly tied sheaves into stooks. There were usually four sheaves to a stook and soon there were pyramids of corn all over the field waiting for Farmer Davis to collect them up in his truck... The next day we'd get on our bikes and ride over to Carrington where we'd be given a bucket each and go out spud picking. It was back breaking work picking up all those spuds but it was worth it for the two bob a bucket the farmer's wife gave us. That gave us enough to go to the flicks on Satuday morning and buy an ice cream. We'd sit with our feet on the back of the seat in front cheering the goodies and booing the baddies. Life was fun in those days. No technology, no online games, but we knew how to enjoy ourselves.
I arrived home at 10 last night and settled down to catch up with some TV shows I'd missed. During this time I multitask, one eye on the TV and the other on Words with friends on my iPhone. As a result I have to rewind quite a bit and only get half of what's going on. Anyway last night I settled down and felt around in my bag for my phone. But couldn't find it. I didn't worry at first as that had happened before and it always turned up hiding away in a corner . I turned out my handbag. There were receipts, sweet papers, a comb, a nail file, a couple of appointment cards for hairdresser and dentist, a purse -i but definitely no phone. Panic set in. It was as if I'd lost all my friends and family in one fell swoop. They were all in that phone not to mention all my appointments for the next 6 months.. Where was it? Maybe it had slipped out of my handbag and was down the side of the seat in the car. Out I went in the pouring rain and hunted around. No phone. Then I had an idea. I'd phone it and the ringing would locate it. But then I remembered I'd switched it off during the meeting. Now what? I had to find it. I couldn't afford a new one. And what about all those people inside it? Then at around midnight I had a brainwave. I'd use the iCloud find my phone feature on my iPad .Brilliant. It worked like a charm. There was my phone sitting on the map at the meeting place. on the Stratford Road. Now all I had to do was get out there fast in the morning and retrieve it. Before anyone else used the room. After a restless night I got in my car and left early enough to miss all the school traffic.. Fortune was on my side. Every green light stayed on till I got through, and I caught the early morning cleaner just as she was leaving.. she handed me my phone. What a relief. I shall never look down on kids with their obsession for their mobiles again.
I'm having a friend to stay tomorrow so I'm busy changing the sheets, as you do, and making everything look nice. I even pull out the bed and vacuum behind it. The poor old spiders don't know what's hit them. In the process I manage to pull the lamp off the bedside table smashing it to smithereens never to be mended again with super glue. This leaves me with just one lamp on the wrong side of the double bed. Wouldn't mind but I paid a few bob for those lamps 20 years ago. So I set to work looking for an extension lead in the garage so that the remaining lamp's flex would reach the plug point in the far corner. (The next house I buy will have a plug point every 10 centimetres along each wall!) When I finish it looks very nice so I close the door so the cat I'm fostering won't get in. Later that night, midnight to be precise, I wake up from my snooze on the settee in front of tele and prepare to wander upstairs to my bed. A pathetic miow is coming from beyond the downstairs bedroom door. The cat has been locked in the bedroom all day with no litter tray! (I still don't know where she hides. I'm convinced cats have this maddening ability to make themselves invisible when it suits them.) Yes you've guessed it. Pooh all over the clean bed linen not to mention a pee that could rival Windermere that's soaked right through to the mattress. #$@&%*!?
|
|