On the road

On the drive to Cornwall, we flexed our literary muscles - Carenza read me some of Thomas Hardy’s poems and we listened to Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse” on Audible.

But mostly, we chatted.

The campsite at Trebyla Farm was exactly what I’d been hoping for: small, quiet, with generous pitches.  No ping-pong table or fast food kiosk.  A view of fields in one direction and a deep valley down to the sea in the other.

And the feeling that there should have been a few more loo/shower cubicles.

Within an hour of arriving, we had erected the tent and got organised.   There was time for a walk around Beeny Head before sunset, one of the places where Thomas Hardy courted Emma Gifford, his first wife.

The coast was rugged – a kestrel hovered; a waterfall poured out over rocks; the salt wind blew in our faces.

“It’s amazing that just this morning we were setting off from Hertfordshire and now it feels we’re a whole world away.”

“Really?” says Carenza, “What I think is amazing is that we managed to get the tent up without arguing.”

Adventure

We thought about inter-railing.

“Yeah,” we said, “Yeah. Great.” not quite meeting each other’s eyes.

We even got as far as getting out a map of Europe and stabbing our fingers at it.

By this time next year Carenza will be in some serious grown-up job and it could be our last chance for a mother and daughter road trip.

But traipsing round European cities in the heat of August and doing what? Going to student hostels or going to grown up hotels…Were we students, were we a family?  And where was the meaning?  What were we doing it for?

The next day, Carenza says  – “You know, Mum, although you’re Cornish, and I’ve got a Cornish name, I don’t feel I know Cornwall very well at all.  It feels like my friends who go there on holiday know it better.”

It’s true.  Nowadays, visits to Cornwall mean sitting in my parents’ living room, punctuated only by the walk to Sainsbury’s for the daily paper.

There are so many amazing places in Cornwall that I haven’t seen for years.

Quickly we agree on a Cornish Odyssey. 

The themes will be history and mythology. Basically any stuff that interests US.

We will take the tent.

We look each other in the eye and smile.

Edinburgh Fringe

Pascoe lives in Edinburgh and once again, Nigel and I visited him for the Fringe Festival.

There’s only one show that we book in advance – the amazing Mark Thomas.  His new show, Red Shed, is a trip down Memory Lane to the Miners’ Strike of 1984/5.  It so happened I have vivid memories of this since I was living in Newcastle upon Tyne at the time.  Mark Thomas was involved in Yorkshire and that’s where the Red Shed is – in Wakefield. 

Mark Thomas was exploring to what extent he had embellished his memories:  “You know how it happens – you get your old, well-loved story down off the mantelpiece to polish it, a bit of truth drops off and you just kick it under the sofa.”

When I said that we always booked Mark Thomas, you might assume that it was my idea – I’ve been watching his performances most of my adult life.  However, Mark Thomas is Pascoe’s enthusiasm.  But I don’t think his nostalgic Red Shed show will have answered any of Pascoe’s current questions.

It’s a more complicated world now than in 1984.

Today’s youth are also fighting battles they will one day look back on with pride and nostalgia. 

I see Pascoe waging war on consumerism and climate change.  But for all our sakes, I have to hope that, unlike the miners, he wins.

Goodbye to all that

Carenza has completed her degree and left Oxford.

When I started writing this blog, the twins were in their last year at school and I was getting maudlin about a whole landslide of “last”s.  Last school concert,  last parents’ evening.

Some of the lasts weren’t lasts at all. We have continued to rally the complete set of offspring for summer holidays.  Until now, anyway. 

However, as Carenza’s undergraduate life came to an end, I was experiencing another set of lasts.

The question is, were they mine or hers?

I had to confess that it was like saying farewell to my own university days once more.

After a mere deluge of hints, Carenza graciously invited me for a last sleepover earlier in the spring and we went to a cocktail bar on a roof overlooking twinkling Oxford.  Fortunately afterwards I didn’t have to re-enact my student experience of sleeping on other people’s floors as Carenza let me have her bed.

A few weeks ago, Nigel, Perran and I had moved Carenza’s worldly goods from the highest, furthest corner of her accommodation block out to our car and she was about to lock up for the last time.

“Don’t you want to go back in and say good-bye to your room?”

“No, Mum, I did all that last night.”

So it was me who quickly darted back in and said, “Good bye, little room. It’s been fun.”

Dancing in the Rain

On our family holiday this year, we rented a house near Carcassonne for several days.  The house was homely and welcoming but there was one aspect I disliked.  Hanging from every hook were wooden signs with bons mots. 

“Home is where the heart is.”

“Live, laugh, love.”

However, on the door to our balcony was one I hadn’t seen before.  It struck me as being so true that at dinner in the garden I repeated it to the rest of the family:

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass – it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

“That’s so true,” agreed Carenza, “You just have to get on with your life even when things aren’t perfect.”

Flash forward three days –  

A stroll by a lake has been curtailed by a thundery downpour. 

Luckily, there is a bird hide to shelter in.

We have been there twenty minutes and are beginning to lose faith that it is a passing shower. 

Tetchiness is rearing its ugly head.

“Shouldn’t you go out and ‘dance in the rain’, Mum?” asks Perran.

“I didn’t expect the rain to be this er heavy.”

Twenty minutes later and I’m feeling distinctly under-dressed and cold.

“Come here,” says Pascoe, “We can practise Scottish reels – that’ll warm us up.”

And that’s what we do.

“Look Nigel, I AM dancing in the rain.”

But Nigel isn’t there – he can stand it no more and is jogging the half mile back to fetch the car.

Probably more useful than dancing in the rain.

Clare’s Knee

Blue, purple, green and yellow – just some of the colours my knee has turned.  

Every summer, I seem to do violence to my knee, right at the start of the holidays.

I have knapped my kneecap on a boulder in Cappadocia and  plonked my patella on a rock at Kaikoura. 

Two years ago was the most spectacular: on our first day in Cornwall I fell down down a step going into a pub.  (“Into”, I tell you.) I landed on both knees on concrete and was writhing on the ground with agony.  

The children tell me I wasn’t very polite to people trying to help me up.   A kind bystander disappeared and returned with plasters from her house, but I had skinned my knees so thoroughly that there was nothing left for the sticky bit of the plaster to adhere to.

This year we were in a wood in Languedoc.  We had just climbed a hill by means of a track slippery with smooth limestone.  The ascent was arduous in the heat and the descent treacherous.  As it levelled out at the bottom, I relaxed, took my eye off the ball and slipped over.

However, it could be worse – and at least now I have a grazed knee, I know that it is truly the summer holiday.

Resigned

I have quit my job.  I am moving on to become a freelance Latin teacher offering twilight sessions at four state-maintained secondary schools locally.

It is an exciting prospect to offer Latin to a new set of students who have not previously had the chance to study it and I am already working on plans to make the lessons interesting and varied.

It’s been a bit nerve-wracking – the date by which I had to hand in my notice at school raced up before I had secured my work for next year. 

I asked friends their advice.  And I prayed.  Then I took the step of faith and certainly, now, next year looks bright.

Plus, when I quit my job, I also quit a very congested and very early commute.

The new work should suit my biorhythms better.

I am not a morning person.

The question that colleagues most frequently ask me in the mornings is “Are you all right?”

I think I must present as rather silent and stary, early in the day.

For me to drive a long distance in the mornings is tempting fate and has not been without incident (see 2015 posts, Speed Awareness & The Mummy Car).

Hopefully the pupils whom I teach in the late afternoon will see me at my finest.

And maybe I can even cycle to my new schools.

But let’s not get carried away.

House Wine

Sadly, Helen’s elderly father died.  As we all shall, he left some things unfinished.  Every so often, Helen comes across a batch of his wine which still needs some work.

When this happens, she passes it on to Nigel for completion and we share the result.

The latest was a batch of cherry wine which she handed over in church on Sunday.

After the service, everybody crowded into the church hall for coffee and Nigel was just looking at the bottles of wine when he noticed a lump in the bottom of one.  He brought it close to his specs.

“Sh*t.”

When I arrived with my coffee, he showed it to me.

“Sh*t.”

“How did a large mouse like that, get in through the tiny bottle neck?”

“At least it must have died happy.”

Then Nigel said; “I’ll go and show Helen.”

“Don’t! Don’t!” I cried, “She’ll be so embarrassed she gave you wine with a mouse in it.”

“It’s a bit late for that,” he said – I’ve already shown William.  (William is her brother-in-law who attends the same church.)

I looked across the crowded hall – William was talking to Helen.  Would she be upset?

I could see her shoulders shaking.

Oh dear.

But then she turned and called across to us,

“I just told William it must be a mistake – I said I ordered a bottle of the House Wine – not a bottle of the Mouse Wine!”

Nice one, Helen.

Aftermath

On Friday 24^th June, Nigel and I were sitting in the acute admissions waiting room of the hospital.  It was Nigel who was waiting to be acutely admitted. 

We had thought that by exercise and a largely vegetarian diet he might have outrun his family’s long-running flirtation with angina.

 But finally the condition had caught up with him.  As we sat in the waiting room we didn’t know whether Nigel would be facing the insertion of a stent, a life-saving operation which is undertaken under local anaesthetic, or whether he would need full bypass surgery.

There was a TV there.  It was the morning after the referendum and it looked as if it was not only Nigel, but our country itself whose heart was in danger.

A young couple were being interviewed in Manchester.

The guy said, “I’m studying economics, so I voted to stay in.”

His partner said, “I voted to leave.  I don’t know why really.  And now I wish I hadn’t.”

 I can only draw a veil over Nigel’s  response to this.

On Monday, they examined Nigel  and inserted a stent into his coronary artery there and then.  The threat had been grave but the process of recovery is now straight forward.

Can our country be fixed with some straightforward procedure, or do we need bypass surgery?  And if so, just who should we be bypassing?

Moving On

Post referendum, my incredulity has given way to mourning.
It is likely now that my children will leave this backward country in order to make a living.
And I wouldn't blame them.

But any day now I am going to rally and begin once more to blog about domestic trivia.
As if our world had not been shattered.

Diamond

I kinda missed the Queen’s birthday.

Which is a shame, because she was kind enough to send a card to my parents.

They were celebrating their Diamond Wedding.

I drove down after work the day before. On the Diamond Day, I took them out to Trelissick National Trust  property and we watched house martins nesting in the eaves.  We had our lunch there in the mild Cornish air of the courtyard.

Mark and Helen invited us for a hearty roast dinner, and Mum and Dad enjoyed the company of their grandson, Dan, and his cockapoo dog, Scout. My kids phoned, wrote and texted their best wishes.

For me, the day might have seemed a little quiet, but Mum and Dad thought it was perfect.

If ever I am lucky enough to reach the day when I am in my eighties and have been married for sixty years, perhaps I shall feel the same.

IN

I have to say it.

I’m IN and so is my family.

IN isn’t perfect, but if you want to change things in our favour, IN is the place to be.

It’s not immigrants that are causing “shortages”, it’s austerity measures following the financial crisis.

I’m with David Cameron, Barack Obama, the Labour leadership, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Captains of Industry, not self-seeking Bullingdon Boris.

I want a future for my children.  And actually, I’m not done yet – I want a future for me.

Exorcise your racism, paranoia and xenophobia.

And if we do end up subsidising poorer European countries, it’s to make a better environment for all of us.  Acting as a larger community is in our own self interest.

Vote IN for the sake of your country – you have far more to gain than to lose.

A different kind of trip

Perran was staying with Carenza at Oxford for a couple of days and I drove over to catch them both for lunch.

Not only had I not seen the twins since Easter, I also wanted to remind myself of the amazing halcyon of sunshine and socialising that follows Finals.

Unfortunately there appears to be a fly in Carenza’s ointment.  I arrived just after she returned from hospital with a sprained ankle.

“How did it happen?”

“Well, I was just coming out after the History Dinner, and I was wearing heels, and I came down this step.”

“That step there?  It’s not very big is it?”

“No, but there was darkness and I tripped on it.”

“You tripped up on darkness?  Well all I can say is, I’m relieved to hear it had nothing at all to do with alcohol.”

 

School Trip

If you noticed a gap in my blogs it was for a reason.  I was one of four teachers accompanying 43 fourteen and fifteen year-old boys to Classical sites in Italy for 8 days. 

We came back a few days ago, but I have found it challenging enough to take my school classes and wash all my dirty clothes.  I’ve also spent a fair amount of time staring blankly into the middle distance.  

It is only now that I feel half human again.

The pupils, however, were very much themselves after a good night’s sleep. 

And  that, my friend, is the difference between being fourteen and fifty-three.

Although I did discover another difference – teenagers overwhelmingly have an eerie sixth sense for detecting free wi-fi , even on the beach.

As a parent, I have often helped to pack bags for my own children’s residential trips, but never seen the outcome at the other end. 

I can now say with certainty that “less is more”.  The less they take, the easier it is to keep track of, particularly when mingled promiscuously with the socks and sun cream of others on the floor of a shared room.

It reminded me of the story of my friend picking up her eleven-year old daughter after her first away trip.

“Mum, I’m afraid I had to put on dirty pants this morning.”

“That’s perfectly alright, love.”

“And I’m pretty sure they’re not my pants either.”

Unplanned Garden

We moved to this house a year ago, and the back garden was a recently-turfed green rectangle.  It was without features.

We really needed to plan carefully what we did with it, not just rush in with a shovel.

As a result, we have done nothing.

We attempted to watch the Chelsea Flower Show footage for inspiration, but were overwhelmed with shame and guilt when we saw the achievements of others.

On our patio is a crowd of around 30 plants in pots, cuttings brought from our last garden . 

One by one they are beginning to fall be the wayside – too wet or too dry or too sluggy.

And it matters because so many of our plants are gifts from friends and relations, so our garden will grow layers not just of colour, but also of meaning.

But Nigel has saved the day by rushing in with a shovel.  He has established a holiday camp in a sunny corner of the garden. 

Here our plants will be able to spread their roots and thrive, before we divide them up and move them on once again to new carefully-planned positions.

One day, the technology will be developed that will detect the noises plants make.  And when that happens, it will be able to prove that our now happy flowers are purring.

Worried

Our family usually says a little prayer before meals.

On Sunday Nigel and I are thanking God for our soup and go on to ask a blessing on Carenza taking her finals and Perran his end-of-year exams.

We have just looked up and raised our spoons when Nigel’s mobile gives the bright sound of a text arriving.

It says, “Avalanche has blocked path.  Having to go around the long way.”

Our eyes meet.

Amid the exam stress we have forgotten that Pascoe and Matt are climbing the UK’s second highest mountain, Ben Macdui.

Now we recall only too clearly the twenty mile walk to the foot of the mountain, the camping over night, the snowbound ascent and descent, the ten mile walk back to public transport.

We put down our soup spoons and add another prayer.

Sunday night we are relieved to receive a photo of Pascoe still with the full complement of limbs and without frostbite.

Guess we can go back to worrying about exams now.

Family Motto

Hannah once said, “The Harveys always go too far.”

Probably it was after one of our joint family outings where somebody (usually David) got water thrown over them.  Or maybe Nigel or I had made a joke about s_x.  Maybe one of us had done a little dance in a public place.  Possibly all of the above.

Pascoe, Perran and Carenza felt that it would make an appropriate family motto.

It remained only for me to translate it into Latin.

“semper longius”

semper means always.  But longius can mean either further or too far.

So a stranger will believe we have a wholesome aspirational family motto, “always further”

Only those who are acquainted with us will know the true meaning: “always too far.”

But then, they could probably have guessed that anyway.

Foraging

Nigel and I started foraging as newly weds on the slopes of Penshaw Hill above the River Wear. We had very little money and the wild blackberries and crabapples were frankly welcome.

And a forager can always tell who their friends are.

Autumns past, we have fried up a bunch of knobbly, unfamiliar toad stools and served them up on toast to a group of… “But wait – where did everybody go?  They were here a minute ago.”

At least Spring foraging is less controversial.

Recently, I’ve made a load of wild garlic pesto (not to be eaten the night before a big meeting).

And pictured is my variation on saag aloo, made with three cornered leek.

So thirty years after we began, foraging has become fashionable. 

Now, in one fell swoop, we can boost not only our diet, but also our smug middle class credentials.

Fair Weather Friends

Last weekend I had composed a careful To-Do List of work tasks and household chores.  But, as ever, the sight of a long list of jobs did not make me wish to gird my loins (whatever that means). In fact, the opposite.  (Is it possible, or even decent, to UNgird one’s loins?)

And then the weather was gorgeous.  All blue and green and Mayey.  And there was every possibility that this actually was the only British Summer that we would get. 

Tossing the To-Do List over my shoulder, I got out the OS map.

I rang friends.

I had a great walk with Rosie and she gave me a tutorial which would be valuable in taking my Selfie Project forward.

And on Sunday, Nigel and I joined Jenny and Terry (with spaniels, Hamish and Boris) at Wendover Woods.  Jenny  proved that even though the car park was jam packed, we only had to walk for ten minutes to completely evade the milling Spring crowds.

This weekend, sure enough, temperatures had dropped by nearly 10 degrees and I began to snivel with an unseasonal cold. 

But by next weekend I aim to be well again.

So that I can tidy up my To-Do list?

Nope, so that if the sun shines again, we can get out in the countryside for another walk with our friends.

Projects

My great worry is that my children do not have enough to do.  After all, revising for degree exams can’t be that hard.

And FaceBook’s gone awful quiet so they really can’t be doing that much.

What they need is wholesome projects.

In order to give them a worthwhile occupation and fill all that spare time, I have posted them crystal trees, cress farms, a cress hedgehog and a magic bean.

All they have to do is add water.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the washing up awaits me.

All I have to do is just add water, but suddenly I am far too busy too.

A Room of One’s Own

The people who owned our house before us had annexed a room from the back of the garage.  The result is that the only type of car which would now fit in the front of the garage is a Smart Car. A Smart Car on a diet. 

However, Nigel has packed all his Man Things into the remaining garage and although its capacity is compromised, its masculinity is not.  If you need an adjustable spanner or a torque wrench, that is where you will find it.

But, having created the new room at the back of the garage our predecessors seemed unsure of what to do with it.  When we were prospective buyers, they didn’t really want to show it to us. 

They hedged. 

We insisted. 

The wooden door creaked open.  There was nothing except, against the opposite wall, an antique piano, and in the middle of the floor, a heap of straw and a live chicken.

Ourselves, we have no need of a Chicken-and-Piano Room, but we have not been short of ideas. 

Nigel dreamt of a still-room for his wine-making.  I yearned for a workshop for my enamelling.  Eventually I won on the grounds that his hobby can be pursued in the kitchen while each of my pots of enamel powder sports its own little skull and cross-bones label.

Magnanimously, Nigel built shelves and installed a beautiful workbench for me.

As Virginia Woolf once advocated, I now have a room of my own.

Crafty

For odd periods of my life, I have been too busy to pick up a paintbrush or wield a needle.

With my new responsibilities as a teacher, now is one of them.

But whenever Carolyn and I have met up over the years, we have taught each other crafts. 

We were meeting up at Bank Holiday and I was not going to be defeated.

I would bring the gear to do microwave silk painting (don’t ask).

Carolyn would supply the kit to crochet an owl.

Crochet an owl.

“You do crochet, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.  Of COURSE I crochet.”

Carolyn has always been (as TS Eliot once said of Ezra Pound) il miglior fabbro.

Her silk scarf turned out vivid and dashing.

However, when I attempted the owl, I kept accidentally adding in more stitches.  Soon my crochet could no longer be viewed even as an obese owl.  It had taken on the characteristics of a fruit bowl.

Looking at me almost cross-eyed with concentration, Carolyn leant over and said gently,

“Why don’t you stop now?  You can have my owl.”

Thank you, Carolyn.

Without kids

When we first had our children we were living in the North East.  Carolyn and David lived close by and they are Pascoe’s godparents.  We have now lived in the South East for nearly eighteen years but have kept alive the friendship between our two families.

Sometimes we meet up for a long weekend in Derbyshire, the midpoint. 

Nigel and David haul gallons of real ales, sacks of gastro-crisps.

Carolyn and I bring a craft to teach one another.

This Bank Holiday would be the first time without any of our kids.  Would it be okay?

We had plenty of time to chat and plenty to chat about.  The kids probably picture us discussing them and their plans, and we’ll let them think that.  In fact most of the conversation was actually about us, our jobs, our hobbies, our churches and communities.

With four of us rather than nine, we could easily opt to eat out.  Gone were the days of Carolyn and I stood grimly side by side at the kitchen bench, me slapping margarine on dozens of rounds of bread, her dolloping the tuna mayo.

We had modest lie-ins – not the doze marathons of teen-age children.  We walked modest walks, then chatted over salad lunches.

Did we think of the kids at all?  I would love to say “Did we, Hell?” but in fact they each have in their inbox texts showing lambs and bluebells. 

So we do miss them – but even so, life goes on.

Bluebells

When I scroll through my photos, there is a visual key to the turning of the year.  My pictures turn from the flamboyant golds of Summer hedgerows, through the copper of Autumn woods to the iron of Winter fields.  These are the walks I have taken with my friends and families.  And in Spring, the colour has always changed to a purply blue.

But this year, I set out with my girlfriends and we were surprised to see thronging the woodland floor, a host not of thousands of bluebells but of hundreds of sightseers.  There were so many that they were trampling the flowers!  The narrow paths had spread to become great muddy runways.  The pools of bluebells were clogged with idiots taking selfies.

It seems the National Trust has been advertising bluebells and people have listened.

I’m torn: is it good that more people are getting out in the countryside, or bad that they are wrecking it?

The next week we walked to a lesser-known wood far from a car park. 

The undisturbed bluebells lapped up to the edge of the path and the air above was freckled with bright green hornbeam leaves.  We sighed happily and took our annual photos, none of them selfies. 

And above our heads appeared the first swallow.

Badge of Honour

Clearing out a drawer, I finally found it.

I’ve been looking for it for years and there it was, in my hand. At last.

I’d heard it could be worth a fortune.  Attractions offer free entry to somebody with A BLUE PETER BADGE.

I checked out the website. 

Yep, serious scrolling was required to view ALL of the attractions involved.

“You are gold, my little badge.”

There was a slight catch – badgeholders were only admitted free “when accompanied by a full-paying adult.

That would be okay.  Nigel just about qualifies as an adult.

But what was this?  “Badgeholders must also present a valid pass.”

That would be fine too.  In the envelope, I still had a copy of my letter signed by Peter Purviss, John Noakes and Valerie Singleton.  That must be the “pass”, mustn’t it?

I checked with a colleague who had younger children.

According to Georgina, ankle-biters may now simply write to Blue Peter and they will get a badge.

WHAT!?! 

I had spent days painting an intricately detailed imaginative recreation of a yeti in order to be a runner up in one of the Blue Peter art competitons.  Mine was a Badge of Honour.

Discovering that all you had to do now was write was nearly as bad as, back in the day, seeing Valerie hold up the winning picture and realising that the kid had copied an illustration out of The Phantom Tollbooth.  Come to think of it, that was probably the moment when a tiny seed of cynicism was planted deep within my young soul.

But there was another problem.  Georgina told me that to get a valid pass, I had to be under sixteen.

The world has changed since my heady Blue Peter days: it has become a cold and cruel place.

Revision

The offspring are safely back at University and I am back at school.  As I prepare my Year 11s and Year 13s for their exams, I think about my own children cramming.

During exam periods  I used to try to provide some small treat for our children to look forward to – chocolate biscuits when they got in.  Watching telly in front of the fire at the end of the evening. 

But now, long distance,  I can’t create a sanctuary any more. 

Even if I posted chocolate biscuits, and even if they survived the journey, the welcome would be a tad tepid. 

“Don’t you know they’re bad for you, Mum?”

At least we can use texts and WhatsApp to jolly one another along.  True, it is banter rather than a deep sharing of empathy.  But at least it’s communication.

Although, it can go wrong. 

Last night, Perran and I had each been out with friends for a curry and, I suspect, a drink, and we were comparing notes by text.  I asked him how his thali had been.

“What on earth do you mean, Mum?”

 I checked my text.  Autocorrect had changed it to “thalidomide”.  

Come to think of it, Autocorrect is clearly ignorant of curries, as over Easter I accidentally asked Nigel to order an “organ josh” for me. 

“I thought you were vegetarian, Clare!”

Even in spite of the biscuit deficiency, I hope their Mum’s silly mistakes keep the kids grinning through their revision.

Foundlings

All the children made it home for Easter. 

Exams are afoot, especially finals for Carenza, so we had a quiet time. 

Except for Saturday when we visited London.

First, Nigel, Pascoe, Perran and I visited the Foundling Museum.  Carenza would join us in the afternoon, having done some work.

At the Foundling Hospital, it was heart-breaking to see the tokens which desperate mothers had left with the illegitimate babies whom they had no means to raise – a scrap of embroidered ribbon, a tiny ring.  They hoped that their child would survive and seek them out again one day.

Handel had been a great patron of the Hospital and on the top floor were some leather arm chairs which played his music through speakers  at ear-height.

That was when I realised how much the previous term had tired me and how much I needed a rest.

I found it easy to sit down, hard to get up. I listened to the music and thought about the little foundlings.

After the sadness of the Foundling Museum, we were to meet up with Carenza  for the zingy Botticelli exhibition at the bustling V&A.

Even after only a few hours of separation, my heart gave a little jump when I saw her face through the crowd.  All five of us entered the exhibition chatting together. 

Time to count my blessings.

Sensible

I guess I kind of assumed there’d be a natural point in my life where Sensible would kick in.  Perhaps my thirtieth birthday.

My thirtieth birthday is now as far behind me as the imaginary line which Carenza sometimes tells me I’ve crossed.  And Sensible is still not fully in charge.

Last weekend, we took the family to Paris.   On Friday night we were returning from a bar.  The street was littered with rubbish and I spotted a green cardboard arrow, with something about “lampes” written on it.

Could it be?

From the debris, I pulled the perfect ironic gift for a man who recycles lightbulbs for a living.

I handed Nigel a sign entreating “Recycler ses lampes”

He was thrilled.

 “Ah,” said Pascoe, “The perfect student night out – having  a drink and returning home with a bit of street signage.  Only thing missing is a traffic cone.”

Next day, Pascoe and I got told off in the Louvre.  We had spotted a niche from which the statue had been removed.  Pascoe got into it and I photographed him, complete with label.  The custodian scolded us then turned around only to witness the large Japanese party who had been watching us scrambling into the same niche for selfies one by one.

However, last night, back in my motherland, I finally found Sensible when I was the designated driver for Perran and my old friend Jennie on a trip to the pub in Perranporth.  At the end of the evening, we had just returned to the car when they spotted a nice pint glass left on the wall.  Jennie felt Perran should have it for his student flat.

“It’s fair game if it’s not in the pub.”

As Jennie started to leap from the car, you can tell that I was under the control of Sensible, because I said,

“Be careful not to bang the car door against the wall.”

And I’m afraid that’s about as sensible as I got.  The glass went home to Bristol today.

The Selfie Project Continues

Recent attempts at self improvement have led to me attempting to master the selfie.2012 - my very first selfie.  Frankly blurred.

2012 - my second selfie - poorly lit.

2016 - at last, somebody worth taking a selfie with - the goddess Athena.

But actually, that was only a practice for the main event - another selfie with Carenza.

Ski Adventure

Never learned to ski and am now too scaredy.

Nigel, however did learn to ski, although he hasn’t had the opportunity for 30 years.

Pascoe didn’t learn to ski – his school’s ski trip was to the USA and was too expensive. (Clearly the only reason they didn’t book Mars or Venus is because there’s no snow.)

But then Pascoe moved to Edinburgh.

When there’s snow in the Cairngorms (and it’s not too fierce), intrepid skiers leap into a car and head for Glenshee.

When we visited Pascoe he was itching to go back there.  

It wasn't something we'd planned on, but when would Nigel and Pascoe ever get another chance to ski together?

Nigel hired a car.  Pascoe divided up his outdoor clothes between the two of them.  I bought them some thick gloves. 

I thought wistfully of staying in Edinburgh and going shopping, but if there were any injuries, I would be needed to drive back.

Never mind, I would take my book of Greek myths and sit sipping a hot chocolate  in the elegant ski café watching the scene.  It would be glamorous.

However, when we arrived the café was a complete zoo.  It was a brilliant mass of tired kids and patient Mums, all jostling on the hard benches while snow melted all over the floor.  People were chatty.  But the queue for tea was out the door and looping back through the blizzard. I didn’t manage much reading and even less hot chocolate.

The boys had a great day.  Nigel had easily recalled his technique.  Despite a fall or two, nobody got hurt.

And my reward? 

Up there in the Cairngorms I saw a pair of golden eagles and a small flock of snow buntings a good outcome for a bird lover.

Easter Mystery

Now that my children are 21, 21 and 24 I thought the time for Easter egg hunts had perhaps passed. 

When I picked Carenza up from Uni, she said

“I told my friends about our annual Easter egg hunt and they thought it was sweet.”

Later that afternoon, I bought around two dozen little fair-trade Easter eggs, each wrapped in gold foil.

On Easter morning I hid them round the garden.  There were so many that I ran out of hiding places.

However, due to the clocks going back, it was a scramble to get out to church, so there was no time to hunt the eggs.

Never mind, they were safely wrapped in gold foil.

They would wait.

After church, some friends came back with us for lunch. 

The egg hunt was postponed again.

Finally, about five hours after I had hidden them, Pascoe, Perran and Carenza went out to look for the eggs. 

They found only seven.

We have two theories:  one is that the vicar who lives next door vaulted the fence and stole our chocolate.  If this proves to be true, we shall certainly be converting to Methodism.

The alternative is that the magpie, lured by the winking gold foil, has taken the eggs and that somewhere they are glimmering inside its nest.

Later, we spotted a magpie seeming to have trouble taking off and flying heavily across the field. 

Looks like the vicar’s in the clear.

Impatience

To accompany the recent bleak weather, I have had a long period of head cold and at work, assessment. Thursday was to be my first day off for some time. 

The forecast was for soft sunshine.

I had arranged to get my hair cut at last, to have coffee with Graham, a walk with Rosie.

But at 7.30am, before I had even achieved my planned lie-in, the doorbell awakened me from sleep.

A paramedic had brought Nigel home after a cycling accident on his way to work.

He had banged his head and cut his face, and suffered some concussion but, thanks to the helmet, was otherwise unharmed.

I cancelled my hair appointment and coffee with Graham and spent the morning in A & E.  At least I caught up on some marking.

The doctor was reassuring, but I should keep an eye on Nigel for twenty-four hours following a head injury.

I cancelled the walk with Rosie.

Nigel wanted taking into town in order to replace his broken glasses. 

But the “quick trip to get a quote for the insurance” turned into an hour and a quarter of buying new glasses. 

I hadn’t brought my marking with me this time.

I became grumpy.

Later, when it was time for Pilates, I went anyway.

I whinged to the others about my disappointing day. 

“Oh,” said James, “Lots of people seem to have been having bike accidents recently – one of my friends smashed his pelvis.  Another shattered his knee.”

And that was when I realised it was time to make the gear-shift from “resentful” to “grateful that God was watching over us.”

Bike Helmet

Nigel and I have always been sticklers for bike helmets. 

Because how could we insist that our children wear them if we didn’t ourselves.

Sometimes, my helmet has been joggling around on the top of my up-do, but I still wore it so I could be self-righteous with the offspring.

On Thursday, when a nice paramedic delivered Nigel home, we were very glad he had been wearing one.

He has a memory blank for the actual incident, but his last recollection is of a car trying to overtake him on a mini-roundabout.

He came to with a circle of faces above him.  Always a sign that something has gone badly wrong for you.

From the bits of him that hurt, we think he skidded on the corner and hit his head on the curb.

If he hadn’t been wearing the helmet….

So, in this blog, no jokes or special thoughts.  Just one message – wear the helmet.