I guess it's being born in the 1950s, but when I was little I loved the Queen, the Pope, Winston Churchill and Bobby Moore. I used to send the Queen poems, and a rope horse I made at primary school, and I always received a crisp white envelope back from Buckingham Palace with a thank you letter sent and signed by one of Her Majesty's Ladies in Waiting. It wore off a bit in the 1960s and 1970s, when I could be seen at school clutching my dead cool copy of the Little Red Schoolbook, but now the Queen once again evokes fond feelings in my Anglo-Saxon heart, like a Mum who you appreciate once you're over your teen years. So this window says A Health unto Her Majesty!
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As a child I much enjoyed rides in my Dad's bubble car, and I have spent my entire adult driving career poodling around in modest small cars. Whenever my own Micra is in for repairs, our local mechanic usually lends me an even older edition to run round in. A few weeks back, with the Micra due to be out of use for 3 or 4 days, I'd been promised the usual 'courtesy car'. However, home from work at the end of the day, my husband greeted me with the exciting news that as the Stinky Car (don't ask) had run out of tax, the garage was very kindly lending me an old Alfa Romeo 156. Oooooooooh! I rushed out of the house with beating heart to look upon it! Once behind the wheel, I was almost immediately transformed into Toad of Toad Hall, beaming with joy as I roared along the little lanes of the High Weald (within the speed limit of course!). On the long straight stretches, I had to vigorously resist the temptation to put my foot down. I wondered how I might find an excuse to take it round the M25 for a little detour. Many a time and oft have I glowered at the owner of a silver Porsche that has hurtled past me most mornings for the past four years. Now I was getting an insight into what it felt like to be behind the wheel of a powerful motor. I began to think alien thoughts like "I wonder how much the Beast can do?" and "Perhaps I'll start watching Top Gear?" and I noticed with a certain guilty satisfaction how other drivers, normally quite contemptuous of my small car, were drawing in to the side of the road as they saw my approaching Big Red One. Ah well, luckily for my dark side, it was back to the garage by the weekend! Some people may lust after Chelsea Tractors - not I! I love to whizz round the lanes of the High Weald in my trusty Citroen AX, which on Friday reached the venerable age of 99,999 miles. I recall about 5 years ago thinking I should start looking around for a new car soon, but I can't bear to part with it while it's still going. The father of a French friend of mine uses his AX to transport sheep around his farm. What smashing little work-horses (or should I say work-ponies) they are! After the bright warm weather we were blessed with last week, I'm finding the autumn days quite soothing, with their soft grey pearly skies and muted temperature. Feeling quite wrapped up in thought this morning, I was diverted by the sight of beech and oak leaves falling in the wind from the long avenue of trees near Bore Place. Comforting to be reminded that whatever our small daily worries, the world carries on turning in its seasons, regardless. It recalled to me a favourite quote which I always find quite grounding, from An Autobiography and Other Essays by the historian GM Trevelyan: Once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cockcrow.
A great healing day at Westminster Abbey for the family of Princess Diana, who so sadly followed her funeral carriage on that day so many of us remember. What a beautiful wedding! Lovely music, sincere sermon, heartfelt prayers, wonderful trees, gorgeous wedding dress, and best of all, the bride and groom! Here's wishing William and Kate a long and happy life together, and blessings in all they do. On my way home from work, I turn out of a long straight country road into the B road leading to Chiddingstone Causeway. Coming to a T-junction, it's necessary to turn left and then pick up speed. About 100 yards to your right is a bend, and a great number of cars come hurtling down there at very high speeds. Bearing in mind we're not talking wide fast roads here, but fairly narrow country roads with hedges either side, and the odd deer jumping out at you, you could regard that as just a tad arrogant and less than considerate of others. This evening I got quite a fright on my way home as a massive maroon 4 wheel drive came rushing up behind me, so close up that it filled my rear window, and continued to drive less than a yard behind me until it had the chance to sweep imperiously past. To the owner of YF02 XEM, I sincerely hope that something may bring to your attention what such murderous impatience may one day cause. I drive a small car, for various reasons, and simply cannot accelerate from 0 to 60mph in very few yards, however inconvenient that may be for someone who sees another car in their way as wilfully deliberate!!! I'd call that an extremely self-centred point of view. I offer my grateful thanks to all the patient drivers out there!
I use these tongs on a regular basis, for grilling, turning things etc. I remember my grandmother using them when she was frying bacon for breakfast some 50 years ago. Built to last! I wonder how many other people regularly use things in their home, such as these, inherited from family? It's quite difficult to find things today that are made in England, but if you want to find something beautiful, look no further than Glover & Smith, who make exquisite things from pewter and silver at their workshop in Wiltshire. We have several lovely things which were given to us. See their website: http://www.gloverandsmith.co.uk One of my favourite childhood TV commercials was the Smash ad featuring Martians falling about laughing as they watched earthlings peeling potatoes and boiling them to make mash. I've often imagined the Martians tittering as I spent back-breaking hours weeding a vegetable patch -"Why on earth are they pulling out all the green things, then putting other ones back in their place?"
It crossed my mind today, as I peered at my vanishing eyebrows in the mirror, how in my youth I'd spent a lot of time painfully plucking them. These days, although I'm not yet at that time of life when I might draw them in with a pencil, ironically, I'd quite like some of them to grow back! Have you experienced bad drivers who cut you up, overtake at dangerous places, or just sit on your tail before turning their headlights up full before they overtake? And so on? I was driving to work last week on the first day of the thaw, still slightly apprehensive on roads that were turning from snow and ice to slush. I was leaving Penshurst at 30 mph (the limit in built-up areas as we all know, hopefully, and put there for a very good reason), when an electric blue mini, impatient at my speed, overtook literally just before a bend in the road. Incredibly dangerous, and it narrowly missed an oncoming car whose driver must have had a terrible fright. The mini then drove off at high speed towards Tonbridge. Not much any of us can do about bad driving, but I just hope that the driver of GJ55 EUM might one day, sooner rather than later, come to realise how near manslaughter that kind of driving could potentially be. The roads are not a computer game, and real flesh is soft and incredibly vulnerable to real cars!
I remember when I was a child how amazed I was by my father's stories of the cost of things in his younger life - a penny ha'penny for fish and chips, £400 for a house and so on (I was his 7th child, Dad was born in 1907) and in the 1980s I remember calculating, using Fruit Salad chews as a measure, that things cost roughly 20 times as much than they were in the mid 1960s. They say that the Mars Bar is used by some economists as a similar way of measuring the increase in the cost of living. Today, a lot things are relatively proportionally cheaper- I recall, for instance, that my mother bought me Lord of the Rings in paperback when I was 11 for 30 shillings (£1.50 in decimal), and you can get that on Amazon for £12.47. Colour TVs were massively expensive when they first appeared.
However, we went to the Odeon last night to see Robert Zemeckis' new 3D version of A Christmas Carol, which was great fun, but at a whopping £11.30 a ticket (3D specs thrown in), that is ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN AND A HALF times as expensive as a ticket (two bob) for the Regal, Cranbrook, in the late 1960s. Yep, forty years ago, okeydokey, but blimey charley - I must be getting old! |
AuthorLifelong bookworm, love writing too. Have been a theatrical agent and reflexologist among other things, attitude to life summed up by Walt Whitman's MIRACLES. Categories
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November 2021
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