A busy couple of days ahead.

Tomorrow the Husband and I are off to Cambridge to pick up the Stepson. It's not an easy journey from Cambridge to Chemsford by public transport: the only way of doing it is to take the train from Cambridge to central London and then another train from London to Chelmsford. However by car it's relatively easy (except dealing with the M11 when it goes down to 2 lanes just when it becomes hilly and lots of lorries are crawling along. So we thought we'd take the opportunity to look around Cambridge until he finishes all his lectures/tutorials/etc. Then we'll have a meal together and then come home.

On Friday the three of us plus the Stepdaughter and her boyfriend will set off to Kent for the funeral. We are go down toWhitstable and then set off for the crematorium, which I think is the other side of Canterbury. Afterwards there will be a family get together when we'll have the opportunity to meet some of the Husband's family again. It will be nice to meet them again even if on such a sad occasion.

Sometimes when you have a problem it helps to sit down and think about it.

Well, things are slowly settling down now. Most of the tasks necessary after a death have been completed, mainly by the Husband: all the legal things like death certificates, informing everyone, sorting out the no-longer-needed clothes and effects. I certainly do not envy him the hard work he has put into all this. The funeral is this coming Friday, the 2nd. After the cremation there will be a small family get together in a function room in one of the local hotels. I am looking forward to meeting the Husband’s side of the family again, although I regret the reason for the get-together.

Still, I hope in future to be around here a little more than has been possible lately.

Sad News

The Husband's mother Joan died in the early hours of this morning. We were expecting it, her health, which has never been good, had deteriorated badly over the last few weeks and the doctors had said some days ago that she had not long to go. Her immediate family had the chance to see her over the weekend - the Husband, his sister, his brother-in-law, the Stepson and I went to the hospital in Canterbury on Saturday and saw her. Although her mind was going she recognised us and was able to say a few small things. The thing was that although she hadn't been told the end was near she clearly knew: she always said "see you soon" at the end of a visit, but this time she said "goodbye" to each of us. The Stepdaughter went yesterday (having brought a bad throat under control) and told us later that her grandmother said little but clearly knew she was there. She'd always had a close relationship to all her grandchildren and we are so glad that they all had the opportunity to see her over the weekend.

Now our thoughts must not only be on all the arrangements but also on her widowed husband. He is 85 years old and they had been married for 58 years. We are all worried about him and so the Husband is going down to stay with him for the next couple of days- he just doesn't want him to be alone. I am not sure of the extent I shall be around over the next few days but I am sure you understand. .

Life's a little serious at the moment as the Husband's mother is so poorly but here is a picture to cheer us all up.

I haven't been around here much because for the last few days the Husband and I both have some sort of bug and neither of us has any energy at all. It's a bit like a cold, a bit like the flu and a bit like nothing on earth. So we haven't been doing much lately.

Having said that we both did things last Saturday - mainly because we'd both had them booked and it would have been next to impossible to have cancelled or to rearrange them. And we each managed what we were doing . But the next day, the Sunday, we were both worn out but have now recovered.

The Husband had made arrangements to get the car serviced and to have its MOT examination. His brother-in-law always does it (he is a car mechanic) and Saturday was the only day he could do it before the old MOT expired and, of course, it's illegal to drive a car over a certain age without an MOT. So he drove down there very early in the morning (it had to be ready to be worked on at 7.30 am) and spent the day there visiting all his family. His mother is not very well so he visited her in hospital and spent some time also with his father.

I, however, was doing something completely different. A few weeks ago I'd decided to try something different and booked a place on a "Drawing for Beginners" one day course at the Adult Education Institute in Brentwood. It was a one-off course and it was then or never. I hadn't done any drawing since I left school 40 years ago and I had been told then that I was no good at any sort of art. But I thought I'd try it, just to see. I really enjoyed it and it was the most fun I'd had for some time. I'm probably not a born artist but that's not the point. It was enjoyable. I shall definitely try to find another class in the subject.

And now we are both trying to recover from this virus thing. The sooner it goes the better.

Outside the window in our sitting room can be seen a big hardy fuscia currently in full flower and in a flower bed to the right of the window. It would be a lovely picture and well worth looking at if it was not for what is connecting it to a buddleia in a flower bed on the left side of the window. A fine thread, a very fine thread, and to some a very attractive picture - if it wasn’t for the fact that its maker and occupant likes to lurk in the middle of the thread and in full view of the window. I really don’t like spiders and I’m sure that this one knows it. So it sits there and sneers at me.

That I could cope with, if they stayed outside. But this time of year spiders are trying to find themselves shelter indoors and for the last month the Husband has had the job of getting rid of them before I come across them. Frequently over the last few weeks I’ve heard his say “Don’t come in the …hall/dining room/bathroom” and then I’d hear thumps as the creature meets its maker. (We have an unspoken deal in our house. The Husband deals with spiders, whilst I deal with the mice that Nimrod has brought in and let go.)

Then there was yesterday. The Husband had gone up to London for the day as he and other members of his music group first went to see a film at the Barbican (“The Lives of Others” – he said it was very good) and then on to the newly reopened Royal Festival Hall for the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the London Philharmonic Orchestra by Sir Thomas Beecham. I find it nice to spend some time alone sometimes and I enjoyed spending some “me” time yesterday afternoon. However, come the evening I made a quick trip to the bathroom and there It was. A huge great thing with long legs not just lurking in the washbasin but actively running around it and making it clear that it was alive and ready to kill anything in its path. All right, I know all the received wisdom about arachnids and how useful they are keeping flies under control. I also know that I’m bigger than they are. Nevertheless that thing knew who was boss and that It was in charge of the bathroom. It was only when the Husband returned that the balance of power in our household returned to normal and the 8-legged creature was evicted.

There are times when it’s very useful to have a man around.

Yesterday was Monday, 1st October and a good opportunity to stop and to think a bit about life.

We have lived through the first nine months of 2007 and have three months to go before 2008 is upon us.

Tesco has been selling chocolates for Christmas for the last month and Marks & Sparks is now stocking mince pies.

I went into a card shop yesterday and saw Christmas cards on sale.

Yesterday a stall opened in one of the local shopping centers (mall) to sell calendars and diaries for 2008.

Does anyone else think that Society generally is always looking to the future and never enjoying the moment?

Still yesterday I heard some wonderful news of a new life. My friend Buffy has a new granddaughter – a little girl, born on Saturday and weighing 6 lbs 11 oz. Welcome to the world little one.

Friday we had the first Red Hat dinner of this autumn. Ther hadn't been any dinners over the summer period as there wasn't enough members available on any one date to make an event practical. But Friday there was a dozen of us. I had difficulties taking a decent picture as I was on the outer side of a dog-legged table and I couldn't move eaily from where I was sitting. So I just aimed the camera to the other end of the table. Generally there was a lot of chatter and much laughter at the dinner. It may not be a good picture but it gives some impression of how much fun was being had.

Why is it that as soon as I can use the computer properly an IT item in our household decides to play up, requiring me to spend hours searching the internet for the way to put it right?

I decided to spend a small (ha!) amount of time this afternoon dealing with my iPod. I have an account with Audible.co.uk which by the payment of £14.99 each month enables me to download two audiobooks each month. As we both like unabridged books, which are of course, more expensive than the abridged ones, we save a fair bit. Anyway I bought and downloaded the two books for this month ("Monarchy" by David Starkey and "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves) and added them to my iPod with no problems at all. Then the Husband asked what versions of "Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier were available. He had heard some years ago a cassette audiobook of the unabridged book read by Anna Massey and he felt this was the definitive reading of the book. Well, it wasn't available on Audible.co.uk (although they had other versions of the book) but it was on iTunes. So I downloaded it and tried to add it to his iPod.

That was when the problems started. His iPod froze and wouldn't do anything. Neither would it appear on the iTunes on my computer. I have just spent all afternoon trying to sort it out. I've tried searching My Computer, restarted the p.c. several times, redownloaded the iTunes software - all without success. I've also spent a dishearening amount of time trying to find the answer on Apple's support pages - which are totally impenetrable if you aren't a techie.

The iPod is only 11 months old and I have a horrible feeling we are going to have to send it off for repair. The Husband is the ultimate Luddite and I even have to turn on the computer for him if he wants to look up something. Giving him the iPod last Christmas was a not very subtle attempt on my part to get him to feel more comfortable around technology. He will not be impressed though if his iPod has to go off for repair.

Oh well, as a last attempt to sort the thing out I've put it on charge overnight. If that doesn't help I've no idea what to do. It shows how helpless we can be when something technological goes wrong. Perhaps Ned Ludd was right.

UPDATE:
The next day, after it became clear that putting it on charge didn't help, I rang a technical help number I found on Apple's Support website. After double-checking that the iPod was still in warranty they did help me and finally we got it sorted so it's now working properly. What happens if it goes wrong again after it is out of warranty I do not know. Oh well, it's ok for now.

I'm back

I'm back and I can see. The cataract operation on my left eye was in August and all went well, Then I went through what was for me a really weird period when I had what could best be called "limited vision". The sight in my left eye is the same as that in my right eye now - I can see long distance very well but everything else is out of focus. While waiting for my left eye top settle down after the operation I bought a pair of "over the counter" reading glasses which helped with reading the newspaper, etc. However, I discovered that everything between the close and distance work was just a blur which made my life rather interesting for a while. Shopping was a nightmare, unless the Husband was with me as I could not read labels of anything and you just don't know how much you read labels of goods in shops unless you dig out the reading glasses every time you want to read something and then put them away until you get to the next label to read - a generally time-consuming and fiddly thing to do every time you go shopping.

I did try to use the computer after the second operation, using the magnifier which is part of the accessibility package provided by Windows but it gave just a "letterbox" slot of magnified text. This was both disconcerting and wasn't much help when trying to navigate the Internet. As it was, virtually the first time I tried it I managed to click on the wrong link and ended up with a Trojan on my computer that I've now finally managed to dispose of.

I got my new glasses yesterday that have finally given me back my freedom. Varifocals, of course, so I now have full vision both with close work, what I call "middle distance" and they even sharpen up my long distance vision slightly. But for the first time since I was about 5 years old I can go out without glasses at all, a pleasure I cannot describe.

I am not going to be around at this blog for a few weeks. Not that I am giving up blogging or anything but I am having my second cataract operation on my left eye tomorrow and I don't expect to be able to read anything on the computer for a while. I know this because I am writing this with the benefit of only my left eye at the moment. When I had the cataract operation on my right eye I discovered that I could not read what was on the computer screen with that eye unless it was in huge print. Obviously I need new glasses but it isn't worth all that effort and expense getting new ones until both my eyes have been done and so I've spent the last two months working at the computer wearing my old glasses and with their right lense covered up. Generally life hasn't been very easy since the first operation as I've now one eye with excellent long distance vision and the other eye incredibly weak and fuzzy. So my sight (and life) has been quite weird and tiresome for the last two months.

I have to wait a minimum of four weeks after the op before I can go to the opticians to have my eyes tested for new glasses. But the wonderful thing is that I will be able to wear them for reading and other close work only and not to wear all day long. I've had to wear glasses all the time since I was 5 years old and over the last few years or so I've had varifocals with very strong lenses so it's all going to be worth it.

I'll be back as soon as I can.

Red Hat Videos on YouTube

I had a really pleasant surprise yesterday. I was contacted via YouTube from one of my fellow Red Hatters. She said

"Hi Adele

I'm a great fan of your blog and found the YouTube link to the Women in Art brilliant.

I put Red Hat Society in search and there are loads there! thought you may want to link these on your blog.

Have fun ......

Love Linda (Witham)

It is nice to be contacted at times and to meet up with friends.

And the links themselves are great fun. As I mentioned before I've never been able to embed YouTube videos in this blog so I've just put the links here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7dCYfUZShQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obanyFbYFuQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1KszhXcS1s

Why?

Why is it that Pickle has changed where she likes to sleep? She’s a cat who hates to be loomed over, much preferring to associate with humans by sitting next to them on the sofa (and nagging when she thinks it time for dinner). But now for some reason she’s decided to sleep just where we have to step over her to get to and from the sitting room. And gets grumpy when we do so.

Why is it that although you’ve carefully warned the company that sends you two Midsummer Murder DVDs each month that your credit card has been hijacked and given them the new credit card number, that a week later they send you a letter saying that your (old) credit card doesn’t work?

Why is it that GoogleMail decides to put an e-mail from a couple of friends into the most unlikely of folders on my Gmail system and I don’t notice the fact for two days?

Why is it that men (or, more precisely, the Husband) thinks it sensible to go for a 18 mile long walk when he has a huge blister on the base of one foot and afterwards complains of the pain? (Not to mention his bloody socks.)

And why is it that every time I go into town I see lots and lots of Scouts? This at least is easy to work out as the 21st World Scout Jamboree is taking place here in Chelmsford, or to be more precise at Hylands Park. Hylands, which is situated only about a mile or two outside the center of the town is a house together with a huge park that is used for all sorts of events. For example the V festival takes place there every year and so the grounds are an ideal location for the 40,000 scouts currently over here and from all over the world. But clearly they are not confined to Hylands as we often see some in town, often shopping for food, etc.

I've just stumbled upon.. Stumbleupon. I installed the toolbar on my p.c. just 10 minutes ago and have only just started to look at some of the sites that come up but the third one was from here and it's absolutely fascinating. I especially like the second one with someone wearing a Tony Blair mask overseeing John Major falling into a well. Great fun and Stumbledupon looks an interesting way of finding some of the more fascinating sites on the web. Including lots of cats.

I've also found a fascinating site, part of wikiHow called "How to Fit in when visiting London" and I have to say it made me grin. There's a lot of good advice there but also comments that definitely made me lift an eyebrow - for example "Do not attempt to keep up with your average Londoner when it comes to alcohol consumption." I'm certainly not sure I agree with their comments about drinking being a huge part of our social culture.

Thank goodness I’ve got a good bank. Yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from them. They asked me whether I had just that day spent a sum of money on my credit card. As the sum was in excess of £1,400 I was able to state categorically that I had not. It turns out that my bank had just received such a claim using my credit card number but the associated information (I assume they meant the usual things like card expiry date, its security code and my home address) was wrong. So the bank had smelled a rat and had phoned me up to check.

I was more than a bit taken aback that such a thing could happen, as I try to take such care with the way I use my credit and debit cards. On the net I am always careful to use the credit card only on a few websites, and those are ones with secure payment facilities. At home whenever I no longer need credit card receipts then I shred them and add them to the compost heap.

Interestingly enough the attempted payment was on a website that I do look at occasionally. It sells electrical goods and it’s a good place to use when seeking comparison prices on certain electrical goods. I’ve never actually bought anything from there though, as I’ve always managed to find the same goods at better prices on other websites.

How someone got my credit card number I don’t know. But it’s a good thing my bank checks such things. And they were willing to go that extra mile and ring me at home to check the validity of a payment. When I said that it wasn’t my payment they immediately cancelled my credit card and have put a new one in the post. I should receive it in a couple of days. Hopefully the number of that one won’t leak out. But if it does it is comforting to know that my bank is on my side.

I haven't mentioned my knitting lately but I have still been doing some. I finished a Third Red Hat scarf in red and purple DK wool the day before the cataract operation and afterwards I bought a ball of dark green DK wool and made another scarf using the same pattern. But I'm going through a phase of wanting to knit with finer wool than DK and at the moment I have absolutely no wish to block or to photograph either of them. That shall probably happen some time in the future, I expect.

And so I've gone back to 4 ply yarn. I wanted something that was easy to make, even when I can't see the detail properly, and so I chose a Feather & Fan pattern which works. All you need is the ability to count up to 6. I haven't finished this one but it's a pattern that I can knit over and over again.

Here is the pattern.

Loosely CO 56 sts using 3.5mm knitting needles and 4 ply yarn.

Row 1: (RS) Knit.
Row 2: Purl.
Row 3: K1, *[K2tog] 3 times, [yo, k1] 6 times, [k2tog] 3 times; repeat from * to last stitch, k1.
Row 4: Knit.

Follow pattern until scarf is the desired length.

Let's face it, you can't get an easier pattern than this!

Rubbish and recycling

We have a small house and every room is lived in. However, in addition we have to house somewhere the various bags and receptacles provided by our borough council for their recycling schemes. So our hall, a small room, houses the following:

• a green box: for tins; glass bottles and jars (without their lids); clothing and fabrics not good enough to be given to a charity shop; and tin foil. Everything must be washed and clean before it is put in the box.
• a sack: for newspaper and general paper. But not for gift wrapping paper, envelopes with windows, brown paper or old telephone directories.
• another sack: for plastic bottles. Again these must be washed out and the lids removed. No other types of plastic can be put in this sack.
• yet another sack: for cardboard. All cardboard packaging must be flattened before it is put in the sack.

Outside in the front garden is a brown wheely-bin for garden waste of all types. Except for tree branches deemed not to be “very small”.

The council collect all of these containers on a regular basis. And if anything isn’t as they have deemed (i.e. if someone has left the lids on the plastic bottles, say), then it is just not collected. We also have a black bin, the dustbin, which, the council says, is only to be used for those items which do not fit into any of the recyclable categories I have listed above. (The bin-men check too. I have watched them look into our dustbin to make sure it contains nothing that shouldn’t be in one of the recyclable sacks or bins.)

I would like to think that I care about recycling. I certainly would want to make sure that whatever coming from our household that could be recycled was being so. In fact I now have a compost bin, started and kept going by myself, that takes lots of green matter from the garden as well as fruit and vegetable peelings and waste. I enjoy keeping an eye on it (and I’ve even turned it, as well.)

Despite this more and more I find myself resenting the fact that, with the exception of the compost bin, all the other recycling has been imposed on me and I have absolutely no choice in the matter. I look at the newspaper and it is full of articles telling me I must recycle. The television keeps on talking about how essential recycling is. And I understand the global implications, I really do. But as I get older I find myself getting…. well, I suppose I would say I am becoming a bit rebellious at constantly being told how to live my own life. I want to make up my own mind how I live and what I do, I want the decisions that I make to be mine only. And recycling is just one area of my life where my ability to make decisions on what to do and how, has been taken away from me by an outside authority. I have no choice in the matter. And I resent that.

Beautiful and from YouTube

I'm not a great fan of YouTube. There is a huge amount of dross on it and you can spend a vast amount of time searching through the rubbish to find the stuff worth watching. The fact that I've never managed to imbed any YouTube piece into this blog despite expending a great deal of blood, sweat and tears hasn't helped my attitude to YouTube either.

However every so often I come across something I really enjoy. Here is one, it's really lovely, and I just have to watch it again and again. Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUDIoN-_Hxs

The Graduation Ceremony

Last Thursday was quite a day. It was the day the Stepson became a graduate. Yes, he is now entitled to have the initials "B.A. Hons (Cantab)" after his name.

The day itself was very good. It was warm, sunny and, I think, the only dry day we've seen in the last month. The Husband and I arrived at the Pembroke College at about noon, in time for a few photographs.

Then we proceeded to the Stepson’s room where we met up with his mother and then the four of us went to one of the parlours in the library block for drinks. Then at 1.00 we all moved on to the College bowling green where, despite the fact that this is the oldest bowling green in the country, a marquee had been erected on the green. Lunch was excellent, a plate of various salads plus small portions of salmon, chicken, a quiche and vegetarian terrine, followed by fruit salad. Oh and a choice of wine or fruit juice. After this all the graduands (what they are called until they formally become graduates) headed off to have a photograph taken together. (I have a few from here but I wasn’t able to get into a good position.)

Afterwards we all headed off to the Senate House for Cambridge University. The Husband, his ex-wife and myself queued for some time while the graduands were given instructions on how to behave in the actual ceremony. The graduation ceremonies are in the same order as the date each college was originally created. As Pembroke was the sixth college to be formed as part of Cambridge university its graduation ceremony was the sixth that day (there were three ceremonies after Pembroke’s on the Thursday, a full day of graduation ceremonies on the Friday and on Saturday too, which gives one some idea of how many colleges form the university.)

The actual graduation ceremony was full of arcane moments and both interesting but baffling at the same time as the whole ceremony was in Latin, which I have never studied. There was a fair amount of university fellows doffing and then donning their mortar boards, a huge silver mace being carried and the statutes and regulations of Pembroke College being formally placed into position as the ceremony actually started. It was reasonably easy to work out what was generally going on though - the main part came when each graduate in turn knelt in front of the Arch-Chancellor of the University’s representative and was welcomed (again in Latin) as a member of the University. Then he/she stood, bowed to him and then left the hall, being given their degree certificate by the exit.

We stood outside the Senate building for a while as people queued to have formal photographs taken and to buy pictures of the actual ceremony (we weren't allowed to take photos or to film/video the ceremony). Then we all walked back to the college for tea and strawberries.

This ended the actual college programme for the day. I have to say the organisation of the day was incredible, but then one of the papers I saw said that Cambridge had been in existence for 798 years, so I think they've had enough practice to get it right (grin).

We stayed on and took the Stepson out for dinner in a local restaurant. Then we went back to the college and loaded up both cars with all the stuff the Stepson had amassed after a year in college. It was incredible how much stuff he carried out to be loaded into the cars, it just kept on coming (it reminded me of some of those daft comedy routines when the amount of stuff just seemed too much to fit into the room).

It was an excellent day. As the Stepson is staying on at Cambridge to do a 1 year Master of Philosophy course and then he wants to do a 3 year doctorate, both in his subject of History, presumably there will be two more graduation ceremonies to come.