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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