On The Kindness of Strangers

I am not the kind of person who feels the need for the latest phone but, several years ago, a young friend who does feel a need for the most up-to-the-moment gadget, sold me his old iPhone. This phone came complete with something called a Griffin All-Terrain Survivor Case. It wasn't elegant. It looked like it ought to belong to a macho building site worker or maybe a mountaineer. I kept the case despite its ugly appearance because you'd never know when something bad might happen. Since then that phone has survived several falls on to hard surfaces and even a winter's night lying in the yard outside our house. It rained that on night but not heavily.

Not like the downpour that Evie and I were caught out in this afternoon. That was one of those sudden heavy showers that soak you to the skin after a few minutes. We were crossing the road, only yards from the van when it started and by the time we reached it we were both drenched. I could barely pull the car key from my saturated pockets in my haste to get Evie into the dry. We drove home singing 'silly songs' about rain and getting wet and when we arrived on our yard there were Caitlin, Cara and Maria over to play while their Mummy and Hannah went out for coffee.

First Evie and I had to get into dry clothes while Caitlin, Cara and Maria rang brass bells, banged Fisher Price pianos and blew harmonicas. Then the phone rang. British Telecom wanting to speak to Bert. I told them he was on holiday and wouldn't be back for a week. Next week I'll tell them he's in hospital, the week after I'll say he's in prison. I'd only put the phone down when it rang again. I'm still wet and the girls are still ringing bells, bashing pianos and blowing harps. It's a young woman, foreign accent, talking about a phone. I could barely hear her. Then I realised she's talking about my phone and she's on my phone! I'd dropped it. I was able to tell her that my daughter lived around the corner from where she'd found it and I'd be very grateful if she left it there.

Evie's dad brought it round later that evening. He said the finders were a young couple, very pleasant. I wish I could have thanked them myself. The phone looked OK. But it had been dropped in a downpour and there was water inside the casing. For the first time ever I took all the casing off and that six-year-old phone looked like it just came out of the box. It's elegant now but I'd be better to put all that rufty-tufty casing back on. You'd never know when I might be half way up a mountain on a very rainy day.

Getting Stuff Done

One of my plans for September was to write a daily post to Nelly's Garden and it seemed to be going fine until the 17th of the month. On that particular evening I was feeling extra tired and the very idea of dragging myself into my private, secret sitting room to write was wearisome indeed. Instead I posted this to Facebook.

Was going to write a blog post every day in September but then I got this nice bottle of red and the craic was good and I realised the internet is not the boss of me! Well, maybe Facebook is - a little bit.

Of course I thought I'd just miss the one day...

Then I read Oliver Burkeman's column in yesterday's Guardian. This paragraph resonated with me for I am always making complicated lists and plans that never succeed in the way that I'd hoped. They actually make me feel like a failure most days.

When attempts at unbending discipline fail, I turn to a post the Buddhist teacher Susan Piver wrote in 2010, entitled Getting Stuff Done By Not Being Mean To Yourself. It relates her own frustrating attempts at rigid scheduling, and the approach she chose instead: asking what she felt like doing. 

So today I did keep asking myself what I felt like doing and at one point in the mid afternoon I realised that what I really wanted to do was go to bed and nap. Which I did, and then when I got up about an hour later felt really refreshed and did lots of things without once consulting a list. And I even updated my blog.

Earlier today...

Sister and daughter 

We all went to Waterfoot for a walk on the beach.

Dogs and daughter

An Early Start and an Anniversary

Today started rather well. I got up just before 5:30 am and drank the cup of coffee my daughter made for me, then into the van, Ziggy on board for company and for our viewing pleasure a huge, nearly full moon setting in the south-west. Hannah was dropped off at work about a quarter to six and we spotted Daniel the Tesco cat approaching the staff entrance for his breakfast. Then Ziggy and I headed for Antrim to search for the exact pair of pale pink slipper boots that Miss Martha wants for her birthday. Approaching Asda, Ziggy alerted me to the Asda cat (name unknown) heading for the staff entrance for his morning meal. In the door at 6:00 am and slippers and croissants purchased by ten past. By 6:30 am we were outside my daughter's house posting Evie's forgotten homework book through the door. Met the next door neighbour, Hannah's colleague departing his house and wished him good morning. Like my conscientious daughter he too is expected to be on duty at six but apparently this does not trouble him.

Off home for more coffee, croissants and apricot jam. Hens out. The other bantie is sitting on eggs but I'll deal with that tomorrow. Bert is still in bed and will remain there for a further two hours.

It was my father's birthday today, his exactly a week after my own. I found myself thinking about him throughout the day, trying to remember specific things, early memories. I remember the feel of his large hand enclosing my tiny one as he walked me down the kesh beside our first home in Cannionstown. Going out in the green AEC lorry, me and my sister, both of us sitting on a thick rug in the middle where the heat of the engine beneath warmed our legs and bums. No call for seatbelts back in those days. There are other memories that aren't mine, ones my mother told me. She said he carried me down the stairs on the 9th of March  wishing me a happy half-birthday and she said that I'd stand in my wooden cot rattling the sides with excitement when I heard his lorry arrive in the yard.

I don't know if my younger siblings would agree with but sometimes I think that we older ones knew the best of him when he was in his thirties and had less to worry about. For there were four more children in his forties, he bought the farm, worked two jobs and sometimes times were hard for both my mother and father. And as if that wasn't tough enough they found themselves the parents of teenagers. Oh dear. Daddy just didn't get teenagers. But that is quite another story. Today on the 97th anniversary of my father's birth I'll only be thinking about those early years.

Wild Life

This little creature is a Goldcrest. Earlier today it flew into a window and stunned itself. Bert saw it happen and picked the wee bird up before either of our two cats came upon it.

Hold on, 'til I get my camera, although I really hope it's flown off before I get it.

It didn't fly off, still too stunned. I asked Bert,

Is there something wrong with its feet?

No. It's not used to standing on flat surfaces. It needs to be holding on to twigs.

We took it over to the clematis montana and set it on a tendril. It fell for a moment, then found its wings and flew away over the hedge and into the meadow. Relief.

Now this fellow is a vine weevil. I've no idea how it found its way into the kitchen but that day that Bert got injured by the bullock there was one in the cab of the van. I was going to tell him all about it but forgot when I saw how he was hurt. Vine weevils are the enemy of horticulturists for their larvae love to eat the roots of plants such as clematis, primula and strawberries. I let the little brute wander around the kitchen and hope it dies before it finds one of my plants. They make a horrible, crunchy noise when they are killed and I'm just not in the mood.

Isn't it funny how one of God's creatures is a complete darling and another an utter bastard. Makes one think.

Looking Back: This Day Five Years Ago

When Pearlie was still around, before I burned my diaries....

The Diary of Nelly Dismal

My 25^th year found me living alone in Drumtara, pregnant, poor and lonely. I was also very bored so, to pass the time, I kept a journal. It ran to two volumes and I have to admit it was one of the most tedious, self-obsessed and whiney journals ever written. It didn't contain an ounce of humour or interest and every time I've looked at those two notebooks since I have cringed.

So why did it take me more than three decades to rid myself of these woeful books ?

Today, during an epic attic clearance, I decided the time had come to burn the dreary things and the only place in the house with a burning fire is in Pearlie's room.

What's that ye have there?

Just some old diaries.

What! Reach them to me!

They're not yours Pearlie. They're mine. Just some old diaries I kept when I was in my 20s.

Setting them carefully on the fire.

I'd love to read those!

You would not.

Piling the coal around them.

I'd have been very interested in those.

I bet you would.

I felt a tiny bit guilty depriving Pearlie of the pleasure of finding out what a shallow twat I was when I was 24 but very, very happy to be rid of the reminder. Thanks be for the cleansing power of flames.

Getting Comfy

Why Paddy pictures two days running? Two reasons. One - I'm very tired and haven't the mental energy to come up with anything more challenging. And two - I'm sorting out my photo folders and have started on the Ps in the critter folder.

The Dogs In Our Lives, Paddy

Paddy

That is a photograph of Paddy taken in 2004 when he was full of vim and vigour. That would be Hector's cattle he is running at, the bad article - running the beef off them. He might have been around Judy's age, five or six - we never knew for certain how old he was. We'd had him for six months then and eight years later he was dying of old age.

Dogs -  they're not with us for that long at all. Only the memories last.