Sensible

The picture bears no relevance to what I am about to post. It is here because I like it. The post is about people I know. I've changed all their names.

Bert had a haircut today, his first in a very long time. The little trim I gave him a while back doesn't really count as he was still able to put his hair in a ponytail. He looked very sensible afterwards which makes sense as his hairdresser, a fan of long tresses in men, asked him if he was sure. He said he was. And how did he want it? And he said,

Good sensible oul boy hair.

We were chatting afterwards and he told me the hairdresser is an anti-vaxxer,

Why?

She said it hasn't been properly tested. She doesn't trust it.

What about Hubby?

He's against it too. As is their son. We do seem to know a lot of people who haven't had the jab.

Do we? I suppose there's Ford. He's a bit of a libertarian.

Stan and his lad are refuseniks.And Eric is dead against it.

Paul hasn't had it but then he can't organise anything for himself. Even when his ma arranges appointments for him, he forgets or sleeps in.

Young Lothario says he doesn't trust it but I think it's because he's afraid to go out of the house.

And Robby says they are injecting tracking devices into us. 

The Super Marios aren't having it. Giovanni has done his research, says it's dangerous.

His arse! Thirty minutes on his smartphone is all the research he'll have carried out!

So, how many is that? 

About twelve. What are the stats on unvaccinated adults in Northern Ireland?

Slightly over sixty per cent fully vaccinated. Lower than the rest of the UK.

So, if that lot represent forty percent of all the people we know then we only know thirty people. Looks like our friends and acquaintances are mostly sensible folks.

Did anyone notice that all but one of the aforementioned doubtful are male?

Granny Fuzzbomb

 One of the things that worried me (slightly) about going to Norfolk was that after two long years James and Emily might have forgotten me. I needn't have worried. There was no shyness, no hesitancy. They slipped straight into beloved grandchildren mode right from the start. 

On a walk with Granny

Eating KitKats

New sunnies

Now, if I might be excused I'm going to cut myself a fringe. 

Every Picture: Hair Cut

This picture shall serve as an aide memoire for I really must get my hair cut. It is becoming so unruly. I don't have a fringe (which Americans call bangs) but when the front bit of my hair grows long it falls over my brow in two corkscrew ringlets which would be cute on a two-year-old but less so on the holder of an over-sixties travel pass.

We have the young ladies here tonight and they were very hard to settle. I blame Bert for indulging them with far too much horseplay, swinging them by the ankles, which they love, but which causes the blood to rush to their heads and the over-stimulation of their young brains.

One reading of Charlie and Lola was not enough. I also had to tell them the story of Aunt Jean's three imaginary friends Dogie, Simplit and Doodle, then the one when I went to Portrush on the Parish Excursion, felt it was far beneath my dignity to go on the helter-skelter and ended up wetting myself laughing at Jean when she did.

It still wasn't enough. Martha needed to hear the one where Tricia spent so long in hospital after her appendix burst that her hair started to grow and afterwards she was allowed to have it long. That led to a discussion about great-aunts' current hair colours and do they dye their hair? I said I never really noticed these things and she could ask them herself. Evie was dozing off but Martha still wasn't satisfied. I finished off with a long story about my great-grandmother, their great-great-great grandmother.

Granny: More than a hundred years ago!

Martha: A hundred years...

She could barely fathom it. The story was about widowhood, clever sons, Spanish Flu and the perils of amateur tree surgery. Moral of the tale - never stand below a tree when it is being pruned.

Looking Back

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Miss Hannah from ten years ago, a photograph taken to celebrate a snazzy new haircut.

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I put this one up not so long ago to mark Mother's Day. Matty is on my mind a lot right now as it is coming up to the fourth anniversary of her death. What a lot has happened since then. How delighted she would have been to know that Katy, the child in her embrace, is expecting her first child this summer. It makes me a little sad to think that Matty only got to meet her first great-grandchild, her namesake Martha, who she adored.

This is my blog from four years ago posted on the 21st April, the last one written while she still lived.

I woke just before 7am and decided not to get up. Immediately I fell into dreams. I dreamed that my mother was dying and that I held her in my arms and would not let her go. We lived in a succession of damp, dilapidated and tumbledown sheds and still I would not let her go. She got frailer and smaller and eventually she was as small as a baby. She was my baby, she was also another person called Shirley and still she was my mother. She was dying and I had to get her a coffin. She was small enough to fit in an infant's casket but I knew that because she had been a woman I needed to get her a woman-sized coffin.

These are the dreams I have without opiates. God only knows what Matty dreams. She told my sister, in one of her lucid moments, that it was like 'being in two places at once.'

Today was my Miss Martha day. We went to Matty's then out for a run with Great Aunt Ganching (with whom Miss Martha has become most enamoured). Next home to see Bert, a picnic on the lawn and a very relaxing afternoon with toys and pigs and dogs.

When Martha went home I spent a while watering the vegetables (this will be my role and it is a very important one) and then gathering sticks, a proper outdoor barbecue (no charcoal) and pork chops, spinach and baked potatoes for supper.

Another normal day. Tomorrow I go shopping for funeral clothes.