Harrumph.

Posted on 3rd November 2024 by admin

Dickens had elderly characters saying harrumph.

There is a possibility that I may be turning into an elderly Dickensian.

I don’t say ‘harrumph’ as much as I say ‘huh!’  I say ‘Huh!’ a lot, also ‘Oh Dear!’.

I am unable to get up in the morning without several ‘Oh dears’ or, should that be several ‘ohs dear.’?  Difficult to say.  I don’t ‘Oh dear,’ as I rise unless it’s a really bad day.  I start ‘Oh dearing’ in the bathroom usually.  Not about the state of the bathroom, which, as it is mine alone usually, is clean and shiny.  Neither is it about the state of my body, although I am viewing it in a huge mirror, with lighting right round it, which seemed like a good idea when I was a whole six years younger.  Neither is it about the twenty times magnifying mirror attached to the big mirror which gives a splendid view of everything not splendid at all on the face.  My face started lacking any kind of splendour as it collected scars.  The first was the gardening scar which occurred just missing my left eye when I pulled a tree into my face.  It wouldn’t come up and it wouldn’t come up and it wouldn’t come up

and then it did.

The nurse at A&E was overly gently to the point of being lily livered, I think he was envisioning the scar on his own face, right under his earring.  ‘Never mind’ he murmured slightly patting on a plaster over the Steri-strips nearly pulling the edges together, ‘You’ll be able to have plastic surgery.’ which should give you a clue as to how long ago this was.  The wound went bad and multi-coloured and wept pus, never good on your face.  So I returned and it was cleaned and stuck together much more thoroughly by a young nurse who could have moonlighted as an all-in wrestler.  It finally healed as a zig zag scar so prominent under my eye, if I racked up at any black arts festival, I’d be right in, no questions asked.

The second scar you already know about (hello reader!) It’s the one on my chin caused by tripping over the handle of the library on the drive, trying to save a pot of flowers.  The pot broke, which probably saved my jaw.  A lady motoring down the hill stopped to see what was causing the actual fountains of blood and the OH, interrupted after his shower, got dressed quite quickly for him, to take me to A&E.

There is a useful rule of thumb to be garnered for the accident-prone – never live further than ten minutes away from the nearest hospital.  We did in Nottingham, but as the OH was working there, we were always rushed through as family anyway.

The scar on my chin is an inch and a half long and a fingernail deep, but I can’t be vain, obviously, if I were, I’d have done something about my thighs years ago.  I even wear tight trousers, so I clearly don’t give a stuff.

No the ‘oh dears’ or ‘ohs dear’ are about the inside of my head.

A few columns ago I related a whole string of losses that happened all at once.  Portraiture, Al-Anon, Create and Craft shopping channel and Lynne.

The demise of Create and Craft was very sudden, although the owners had been going to retire and wind it up for months, as a visit to Companies House made very apparent.  Their stated intention to cease to exist on November 5th is there for all to see.  What they didn’t do was tell the customers, the stock providers or any of the employees.  I know about the customers, because I was one, for twenty years.  I know about the stock providers because I have been in contact with many of these small businesses.  The reaction of the employees to the treatment of the employees you can find online on various platforms.

I did enjoy the demonstrations of many hobbies, I did enjoy the prices that can be achieved by throwing a massive budget at suppliers, I did enjoy new ideas for hobbies and I loved some of the presenters.  I do love live television, when it goes well it’s great, when it goes wrong it’s better.

What I loved most was my ability to email in and get the email read out live, on air, by a presenter with no chance to practise.  On a good day I managed to get three emails read out, on a very good day I could make a couple of presenters laugh and on a great day I could make someone corpse so much they couldn’t speak for laughing.

I think that really was my hobby.

It began years ago when I was a columnist for Dolls House World.  I loved to make readers laugh.  In the day of actual letters through the post a reader took the trouble to write a letter, and post it, to say she’d been reading the magazine in bed but her husband was cross with her, she laughed so much she wet the bed and they had to get out and change it.

Lynne laughed a lot when we were talking on the phone, therefore so did I.  There is something so special about people whose awful back ground story you know, who choose to laugh.  Some of the worst things, such as the difficulty of helping a husband made unpredictable and dangerous by a brain tumour, she mentioned once just in passing. I only know of her problems helping her demented neighbour, going in, cleaning, taking a meal in, looking after the cat, because I asked.  There were so many others, bound to affect a woman left alone with children and little income and aggressive parents, but she never dwelt on any of them, instead she focussed on the brighter side of life and laughed all the time.

So quite a bit of the Oh Dearing was at that loss.

I also hmm a lot.  Not like an overripe cheese, which is a relief, nor like someone trying to recall the words to Beethoven’s Ninth, more like someone who should not be surprised, being surprised, mostly at the state of the world.  I am also still surprised that, having left sweets outside in a bucket next to the pavement, some people will run by and grab handfuls, or handsful.  Trying to steal something which is free is not so much an Oh Dear, (or an Ohs dear dear dear, if they take the lot, which has happened) as a hmm, verging on a tut tut. I feel these are people who have not yet realised that you’re responsible for the condition of your own soul, if you don’t keep yours well-watered with kindness and gratitude but let it go all black and crispy, that’s your look out.

On Halloween evening, one little witch, aged about seven, refused a second dip in the top hat of sweets, ‘Oh no,’  she opined, ‘one is quite enough, thank you.’  Very heartening, I thought, though it isn’t the children with the crispy-edged souls round here, it’s a couple of the adults.

Hmmm.

However the Huh!s are entirely at what I am allowing to pass through my mind and, worse, my reactions to what is passing through my mind, and it’s always worse in the morning.

One of the things that would be so helpful in life is to have an understanding of the noises made by babies and what they signify.  It would cut out a lot of doubt.  It is discomfort, no doubt, but of which sort?

A revelation of maturity (I am mature.  See?  Kindness in action.) is that the seriously mature haven’t got a clue what they are on about, either.

My Victorian grandmother, who knew a thing or two, soothed my crying with teaspoonfuls of tea.

Amazingly, it still works.  It’s a pint mug now but that’s progress for you.

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Behaving like a bus.

Posted on 19th October 2024 by admin

I am.  Nothing for ages, then three at once.

After my last post, I went round the corner to the garage, because we were out of chocolate biscuits and sometimes you just need chocolate biscuits.  Ahead of me in the queue was an elderly gentleman who had tried to buy the meal deal but picked up the wrong items and thought the remedy would be to shout repeatedly at the lady behind the till.

I still don’t know what is going on, currently the evil in the world seems to be outweighing the good.  Walking to the garage I spotted a clump of toadstools in the grass on the front lawn.

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These are growing on the remnants of the old tree that used to be so lovely in the spring but died in a welter of sawdust.

So I got my gardening boots on and got myself out armed with the long handled small fork, a very useful tool.

Then I spotted the huge bunch in the flower bed.

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My goodness, is this revolting or lovely?

Let’s have a close up.

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Revolting, I think.  Actually, who would enjoy something as burgeoningly wet and fruity?

I found the answer round in the back garden, cutting down the ends of the peony.  Peonies are huge blowsy flowers that do their thing for a fortnight and then spend the next three months looking as if they are recovering from a major bender with no coffee.

I have known people like that, happily in the past, mostly.

But when I chopped down the mouldy, hollow peony stalks, guess who I found enjoying the damp and a bit of mould?

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This big fat frog, who has been living at the bottom of the peony support frame.  He had the company of a couple of slugs and a snail.

It’s a balanced thing, nature.  It starts off under ground in the dark, in the fallow and wet time of year when it looks as if all the good stuff has gone and just the slugs and frogs are left.   But you need that sort of thing to get this sort of thing, in time.

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Let’s hope it’s a metaphor for the general state of the world currently.

I am off to do some easy arty stuff, I’ll show you later.

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Not finished yet.

Posted on 19th October 2024 by admin

Apparently I was wrong about the twos.

Remember this?

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It’s the lockdown library on the end of the drive.  Books on the cart, jigsaws in the wheeled box, sweets in the wire basket.

Today I was putting the cart out, after the rain, before lunch, when a very dirty man, on a bicycle, wheeled up and stopped too close.  The cart is chained to the metal loop embedded in the drive, as I was putting the chain through the loop I know he bent down and grabbed most of the  sweets, I’d just spent fifteen minutes bagging up.

I said ‘You took some sweets, those are for the children.’

‘No, love,’ he said, ‘I haven’t.’ and patted his pockets. ‘So,’ he asked, ‘can I take a book?  For my child?’  He took a book.  ‘And some sweets?’  He took a packet of sweets. 

I looked him right in the eyes.  ‘You,’ I said, ‘will go to hell.  Liars and thieves go to hell.’

He cycled off quite fast.

You would think if he was going to steal handfuls of sweets he would at least wait until I’d gone back in the house.

But the hellbent get where they are going.

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What is going on at the moment?  Wars everywhere, gangs shoplifting, people crossing the channel on inflatables and a new government we had such high hopes of, just as corrupt as the last lot?

I welcome any theories.  Click on Leave a comment below.

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In twos.

Posted on 19th October 2024 by admin

It took a long time for me to realise, even though I am quite bright, that stuff in my life happens in twos.  I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and relieved when it does.  I put pots of flowers  by the front door in the prescribed threes and fives but I fiddle around with them until there are two, and that looks right to me.  It works with health for me, I couldn’t just have cancer (twice) I had to have adhesions too.

Once the second thing has appeared, blinking from the mists of the future, I feel better.

Usually.

Last night the S&H rang to say his job is in jeopardy because the firm he works for is being taken over by the firm he left previously, backed by a middle Eastern bank.

I had a horrible feeling when I worried about all the people losing their jobs at Create and Craft that that wasn’t it. I knew there was something else and in a phone call while the OH was out carousing, I found out what it was.

I told you this column would not be here without Lynne, it wouldn’t be here without the S&H either, who designed it for his mum for a lark because he could.

He’s very good with computery things.  He is currently a Cloud Platform manager, who designed his own video game aged eleven and has got better since.  He went to America to help Microsoft with something for another lark when he’d just finished being a student.

So, if you want the S&H to work for you, email me and I’ll pass you on, if you want to watch Leonie, or buy pretty glue or some cracking stamps, click on this www.artinspirations.co.uk   If you are missing AALL and Create from the telly click on this www.aallandcreate.com

Anything else head down to Leave a comment and well, you know, leave a comment.

I will try very hard to post about something positive next time.

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Everything, everywhere, stopping at once.

Posted on 18th October 2024 by admin

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As well as making dolls, I do people, flat, as it were.

For about twelve years or more, I’ve been going to portraiture, run by a local art shop, the owners of which, paid someone to sit still for a couple of hours so I, and some others, can get busy drawing.  Here are a few of the latest and, sadly, the last because portraiture has closed.  The owner went off to India for a year, during which it sort of fell over.

When new dolls come out of the kiln, I used to think ‘Well, no one actually looks like that,’ until, of course I saw them.  Portraiture was intended to help with the representation of people.  It never fails to amaze me that, given the standard arrangement of faces, you know, two eyes at the top, nose in the middle, mouth underneath, people can be so different.

But that’s the end of that.

To help with all the arty stuff and keep my mojo going, as it were, I’ve watched Create and Craft shopping TV which has been going, under various names, for twenty years.  I loved it all and especially the presenters, some of whom were obviously nuts, some of whom you had to watch for a good five minutes to detect the kind of insanity that can be engendered by being forced to talk about a tube of glue for ten long unscripted minutes.  I particularly loved emailing in to respond to a comment as fast as my fingers could fly and have it read out, unrehearsed, on air, two minutes after I’d pressed send.  My aim was, occasionally to make a sensible comment, but, much more often, to make the presenter laugh.  If I could make them crease up so much they couldn’t speak, it cheered me up for the rest of the day and I hope it did the same for them.

But that’s the end of that.  For a few weeks, although the channel is still broadcasting recordings, a banner across the screen declares it is unable to take payment.  A visit online to companies house unearths a declaration of pending receivership.

One of the greatest joys of the channel was presenter, Northerner and all round arty person, Leonie Pujol.  Always 100% authentically herself and nicer than the nicest thing you can think of with added ice cream, Leonie demonstrated, presented and sold me more arty stuff than any shop could ever have done, even if it had stayed open all night and was situated next door.

Down the tubes with everyone else and an enormous warehouse which had featured in adverts, full of stuff I want, which now, presumably, has a big bar across the door until the contents go to landfill or get sold off in church halls across the land next to Mrs. Somebody’s kibble and custard traybakes to support Snail Awareness Week in Bratislava.

I used to go to Al-Anon family groups once a week but stopped that last week, at variance with the idea of some, that you can cure a disease by prayer and you can’t talk about the science.  I want to talk about the science.  If you’re a regular reader (hello!  How are you?)  you know of my interest in the human brain, easily the most interesting thing on the planet.  How can you not talk about it with it?  As for curing disease by prayer, doesn’t work, I tried.

So that was the end of that.

And then there was my friend Lynne, who I talked to every week for thirty years.  A writer and miniaturist admiring of all artists and coming from a similar ghastly childhood, blinking into the light and ended too, too soon, missed every day.

And that’s the end of that.

Adrift on an ocean of nothing, as deserted as the Marie Celeste by all the things and people that anchored me, I feel the pull and sink of nothingness more than Richard Dawkins must do when he opens his eyes every morning.

I have, however spotted a couple of little life rafts.

If you put Leonie Pujol Art Inspirations into a search engine, scroll down and sign up she will email you when she is going to broadcast a video from her kitchen.  You could find this out on Facebook, which I tried to join and failed (perhaps my face didn’t fit, they sent me a button which turned out to be circular).  Sensibly Leonie is also videocasting on You Tube which you don’t have to join, find a password for, or put your mugshot into, you can just watch it.  On Sunday Leonie was demonstrating how to spread coloured glitter glue through a stencil, disliking some of the results but doing it anyway.  If this isn’t proof that art is for everyone, then there is no proof.

The other little life raft is Tim Holtz, general genius, who does lengthy live videos whenever new products from various companies, which he has designed, are released into the wild.  He is rare for an artist being both left and right brained, he has the words and the pictures.  Clever lad, that lad.

I am trying in a desultory manner to remind myself of assorted clever clogs sayings about doors shutting and windows opening but so far have failed to convince myself.

I’ve got out doll stuff and put it away again.

I’ve got out paper crafting and looked at it.

I did a bit of gardening, but only because I had to.

I am not sure when tomorrow will commence.  I’m guessing not for a while.

Meanwhile you could go and watch Leonie or Tim, I will.

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Friends in miniatures.

Posted on 13th October 2024 by admin

One of the reasons I love Miniatura is that I go there to meet friends.

I am not a person who makes friends easily.  It may be because of being an only child.  If you are one, and only one, you do not learn the rough and tumble of relationships.  The only relatives you have every day are your parents.  Children learn as babies that they are dependant on their parents for survival,  rarely does the sibling relationship carry the same overtones or undertones.  You can be rude to your sister and she’s not going to stop your dinner or lock you out.

At this point, I realise as I write it that some sisters may very well have done exactly that, in which case all you have to do is click on Leave a comment below and do so.

I have a cousin who said, once, ‘Well you know what it’s like, it’s you and your sister against your parents.’

I did not know what that was like and still don’t but the nearest I have got to that is miniaturists.

When interviewing artists at Miniatura, I used to call the show the ‘I had a nasty Mummy club.’  In fifteen years of saying it, no miniaturist ever said they didn’t know what I meant or asked what on earth I was on about.  Anyone I said it to always laughed.

Life is rarely perfect, if it was there would be no learning, but the lessons involving abuse from the people you depend on for survival, are of a high level of difficulty, unsurprisingly.  You can learn at a young age not to trust people.

In all the years I taught children I only met one who I considered to be intrinsically unpleasant.  There are not many people who are born nasty and then work on it, but damaged people damage other people.

This was certainly the case with my mother, though I only suffered the effect, I did not learn the cause until I became my mother’s carer when she had dementia.  I only knew my grandfather briefly, he died when I was a toddler.  From my mother, belatedly, I learned what a very difficult alcoholic he was, though to be fair, there are no easy alcoholics, no one who allows a volatile fluid to do their thinking for them is going to be of an even-tempered disposition.

It is also the case that it is not what happens to us that solely determines our future but rather how we react to it.  There is a strong possibility that Hitler’s grandmother was impregnated out of wedlock when she was a worker in a household by the Jewish son of the householder.  History is a bit murky on the subject but enough historians have come to the conclusion that this was the case to give the subject consideration.

How he reacted we all know, but why is a different question.  Did he love his grandmother very much and feel she was wronged?  Did she tell him stories of her bad treatment when she became pregnant?  Did the household make it her fault (which would have been consistent with attitudes of the time)?  If she had taken it stoically and been glad that after all, the outcome had been a grandson, would history have been written differently?  History repeated itself when Hitler’s mother, Klara, who had been a maid, was impregnated by the father of the family.  He was a difficult and aggressive man, given to corporal punishment of his son, who was impatient, not academic and keen to hold a grudge, apparently.

Could the whole of World War Two have been about the unjust treatment of women?

Life is unfair.  We don’t even all start off as wanted children, me for example.  I began in a children’s home, left after six weeks.  The story of how I was adopted changed each time my adopted mother told it.  She knew the power of stories and wanted the power of power.  Sometimes, in a very Dickensian twist, my natural mother staggered forward holding the baby out and begging the young couple to take the burden.  Sometimes the young couple wandered along a row of babies trying to pick a good one (given that the babies were all illegitimate and therefore intrinsically bad.)  I don’t think I ever heard the more likely story which would be about paperwork thrown at a problem to relieve the state of a difficult boom in babies following a war which had taken all the resources.  I was aware from an early age that some of the other babies had been sent to Australia, which is the furthest they could be sent round the globe without being on the way back again, as slave labour.  This left me in the interesting position of having to be grateful for abuse, as the alternative would have been worse.

Whilst I was the only adopted person of my age at school, I did make friends more easily with girls with an alcoholic parent.  My adopted mother you might classify as a dry drunk, someone with the attitudes and controlling personality of her alcoholic father, but without the drink until much later in life.  I visited households where everyone except one adult was skilled at dancing on eggshells, hypervigilant to changes in atmosphere and excellent at withstanding sudden in-house hurricanes of one sort or another and great at pretending nothing was happening even as they were whisked up emotionally, only to be crashed and crushed a moment later.  I fitted right in.  A couple of the girls with whom I made friends had fathers who were GPs, relieving insane workloads in the days before group practices, with a drink or twenty at the end of the day.

I found some semblance with people who had been very powerless as children, among teachers, though mainly they were people who wanted to get their own back by wielding power like a baseball bat, which I never wanted to do.

Then I fell into miniatures and at last I was home.  Everyone had difficulties.  Some you could see, they had actual wheels on.  Some I only learned of in conversation while interviewing.

One, who was Lynne Medhurst, I set out to help and then found as time progressed, to be a mirror image of myself in many ways.  She it was taught me the chilling phrase ‘colluding parent.’  She was an only one and an abused only one with one parent the abuser and the other urging the abused child to go along with it in order to save their own skin.  She too had married into health difficulties, and had her own health problems, arising from her treatment. Her abusing parent continued to be controlling and unexpected throughout his life.

And yet we rarely spoke of these things, we didn’t have to, we just knew.

And, very amazingly, no one in Lynne’s professional life was aware of her difficulties.  They only ever heard her laugh and be cheerful and admire the miniatures.

That is the wonderful thing about miniaturists.  They nearly all come from a place of extreme difficulty, but none of them invade Poland.

Instead all the control goes into the miniatures.  Out of misery comes perfection and laughter and art.  Reducing a stifling life to absurdity diffuses it in a safe and happy way.  People who have been shrivelled with scorn and abuse all their lives turn it around by shrinking the damage and growing their self esteem. Unlike life you have all the choice in miniatures.  Are you going to make it the perfect little life, or the very imperfect little life?

Lynne had absolutely no self regard.  She was a cracking writer, a great encourager,  a selfless volunteer and a person who turned all her disappointments either inward or into her dolls’ house.  When I rang her answer phone said, ‘This is Lynne,’ then there was a pause as she explained herself,  ‘Lynne Medhurst,’ which is easily the most self effacing recording on an answer phone I’ve heard.

I  miss hearing it.

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Rationalising the wheeled cases.

Posted on 8th October 2024 by admin

Sounds like something that might be written sideways on a file box in a solicitor’s office, doesn’t it?

It’s much less glamorous than that and not half as exciting.  It’s still just me, trying to get ready for the next show ahead of time in order to have time for writing.

As usual when I have use of time carefully planned from the minute I open my eyes, it all went pear shaped.  Wonky pear at that, the kind that gets left in the box at the supermarket as it has a bent end, a thumb print in the middle and a soft bit at the base.

Do you recall the OH saturating the kitchen with soup a few postings ago?  It took some days to spot all the places where the soup had run down from the ceiling.  The latest, which was into the twin socket beside the hob only became apparent when the OH decided to blend the latest lot of soup and got a little coil of smoke coming from the socket but no electricity.

After a couple of days of ringing electricians who do not answer their phone, despite their advertisements assuring the reader of prompt attention, the OH decided to go it alone.  I had by then remembered the phone number of the regular electrician.  I do this thing because I do not outsource my thinking to a smart phone. I prefer to do it myself.  I know this is quaint and leads to behaviour such as waking in the night to shout out a telephone number.  Providing I have a little notebook by the bed, all is well.

The OH had sent for a new twin socket and turned off all the electricity just as I was on the computer banking app.  I therefore, having briefly discovered that we are solvent, this month, providing there are no crises, descended to witness the virtuoso electrical competence but was, alas, disappointed.  After the fetching of three different sets of screwdrivers and a good deal of hammering and swearing from the OH.  For lo!  The new socket didn’t work either.  Annoyed and flailing like an eel on a sofa, he knocked off an empty glass jar which had previously contained passata, now incorporated into soup.  The glass jar shattered into  more fragments than a millefiori stained glass window. Half an hour later we were still finding bits.  To cries of ‘Why are you sweeping with that broom? You don’t need that!  I’ve got a dustpan!’  and fresh crunching, I swept the floor and found most of it.  You never think of glass as being well-travelled, but it is.

So that was the afternoon when I was going to rationalise the cases.

I’ll have another go tomorrow, after I have rung some proper electricians, remembering that the most important tool for the usual householder to possess, is not three screwdriver sets but a fat wallet.  I would make the electrician a cup of tea in the hope of a smaller bill, if I only had a working socket.

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Getting ready.

Posted on 29th September 2024 by admin

The OH is off on a singles holiday in Spain, though as he’s doing a video call or two every day, it’s not as much of a holiday for me as I envisaged.  My block of stone I have not sculpted much this cold, rainy so-called summer was sinking into the lawn at a perilous angle.  Two strong men from next door came round and moved it a bit to firmer ground, for which I was grateful.  The OH, however, opined that it was in the wrong place and should have been round the other side of the shed.  Trying to control something that happened two hours ago from another country seems like an excellent definition of futility to me.

I have been watching television in my own lounge.  Normally what gets watched in there is dramas about people killing each other, submarines and cowboy films, so I don’t go in there often.  Now I am watching quite a bit of what I like with my feet up.

In between I am getting ready for the next show.  I want to do it all and put it away.  Right now I’m designing a new stand.  I almost had it ready for the last show but it was all stuck together with Blu-tak.  I have done a redesign in which the boxes (the garage and Slight Versailles,) stack on top of each other, on a shoe box.  The pile of boxes is backed by a stand which is an adapted picture frame.  I wanted them to have a cardboard slice at the back of each box that would slip over the picture frame card and eliminate the use of anything sticky at the show.  It took three goes to perfect it (given that it’s all bits of cardboard.)  I have an unshakeable belief in the use of old shoe boxes.  Beefed up with bits of card, covered glamorously, I can make almost any display I want to with old shoe boxes.

Having a wardrobe full of old shoe boxes is the only downside.  The upside is that with a bit of card, paper and glue I have a new display for next to nothing.

I have also rationalised my sock drawer, cooked from scratch twice, caught up with the gardening, been food shopping to the nice out of town M&S and put four wheeled cases, ready to go, for the next show, replete with lots of new, made, product boxes in the cupboard.

It’s amazing what you can do with an OH in a different country completely.  Who knows what I will do tomorrow?

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Loss of a friend.

Posted on 23rd September 2024 by admin

My goodness this is difficult.

I rang my friend every week, or, more, often, she rang me.  We both have landlines, though she was up to date and had a smart phone too.  She actually budgeted to be able to ring me.  I think that’s amazing.

I didn’t ring her the weekend before Miniatura weekend because I was busy and she didn’t ring me, I thought because she knew I’d be busy.  What she was actually doing was suffering from a burst appendix, which developed into peritonitis.  A condition which can be rescued by surgery and antibiotics but only if you get hold of a doctor soon enough.

I keep thinking of things to tell Lynne next phone call.

I should be still tidying up from Miniatura and putting all the wheeled cases back in the cupboard ready for next time.

All I want to do is sleep, it’s very strange.

I’m also in the middle of swapping summer clothes for winter clothes, which I have to do because once the summer clothes are put away I have room to put the cases away.

Which all seems pointless.

I am so glad my friend got up the courage to come to the show eighteen months ago, on a coach, and stay for a week.

The OH is off on his singles holiday tomorrow.  I shall be interested to see how I am alone.  Perhaps it is practice for years to come.

I don’t usually watch breakfast television but I did a bit today while I was on my exercise bike.  They were worrying about processed foods and how they could damage your health.  No one was worrying about getting run over by a bus, or a burst appendix.  The OH started stammering as a three year old when both his grandparents were run over by a bus at once.  I was saved from a bad appendix aged eight, when, delivering Christmas gifts, and poorly as usual, my uncle knew to press mcburney’s point.  I was taken home and put to bed and knew than if I just turned over I could be through the wallpaper and somewhere else.  Surgery in a rush on Christmas Eve saved my life, then, but the adhesions from it imperilled my life two years ago.

Does all of this mean that when your number is up, your number is up?  Should you live a wild and carefree life?  Do you remember that the longest lived French lady gave up smoking cigarettes in her nineties but took it up again at a hundred and five and then lived another fourteen years?  Should you try to enjoy every day, even the post-surgical ones, of which I have had plenty lately.

If we are all here to learn, which I do believe, what is the loss of a friend teaching me?  If it is to value your friends, I already did.  Should I have made time to ring her instead of putting my head in my work?  Would I have been able to save her if I did?  When she had Covid she just coped on her own, maybe she thought she had that again.  Should you become hyper-vigilant about every health issue?

Right now all I have are questions.

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Same hall.

Posted on 13th September 2024 by admin

Whatever I said about a different hall in the last post, please ignore.  I have just set up in the usual hall and so has everyone else but the layout is sideways to accommodate the restaurant facilities.

What I did learn this evening is that there is a special table which has got all the 100th show offers on it, including mine (but only if I remember to put something there in the morning).  You can go and see who is doing special things and what they are and make a beeline before they run out.

I have had a quick look round the hall.  It is amazing.  Go and see the fab book nook that John Dowsett has made for me, on his table, you could even have a play with my house before I do.

I am giving away a huge box already subdivided and with a closure that just needs a miniaturist with a craft knife and ambition.

And I am giving away 100 slices of birthday cake and 100 plates, just buy something.  I have put out glazed, china painted perfume bottles on the ornaments display, they cost £1 and will last hundreds of years like everything else porcelain.

See you there!  (In the hall the signs are pointing to.  It’ll say: Miniatura this way.  Or something similar.  If it says: Launderette, you’re in the wrong place completely.)

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