Q is for quietness

One of the great rebellions of my retirement is claiming the right to do nothing.  I had a busy working life, was carer for both my mother and my sister, ran a house and garden which were much too big for me and now I enjoy the pleasure of quietness.

I’d hate you to feel that idleness is easy.  I have only to look around and I can see so many things which I should be doing but I struggle and say “nah”. 

The bins ought to be emptied.  The laundry is breeding.  I have lots of cupboards which need to be sorted.  But I'm ignoring all of it.

Even the birds are quieter.  The springtime avian urge for romance is a distant memory and now there is abundant food and they feel little urge to squabble. 

But it isn’t really quiet.  The freezer motor hums.  The occasional car passes.  Even my tummy gives the odd rumble.  Two of those are easy to ignore. 

But mostly there is quietness.

The leaves can fall without my assistance.

The rain can rain.

The washing can wait.

I am content.

 

P is for porridge

 

Porridge never appears on the breakfast table here at Frugal Follies during the summer.  It is strictly an autumn/winter dish.  In the summer I might have overnight oats but the winter calls for something warm and comforting. 

I think breakfast is probably my favourite meal of the day.  I’ve tried ‘em all.

When I was a little girl breakfast was always bacon and . . .    The “and” could be tomatoes, egg, kidneys, liver, mushrooms, fried bread.  Just one of those, not the “full English” of today’s menus.  We never had porridge as my Father reckoned he’d eaten enough porridge as a child and during the war to last a lifetime. Now I eat bacon only when Jack comes. 

I like a variety of breakfasts.  I may have Greek yoghurt but add blueberries, mango, raspberries.  There’s always a mixed collection of seeds and nuts as well. 

Or I might have avocado toast.  Occasionally marmalade on toast.  Or spinach with scrambled eggs.  Or boiled eggs with asparagus spears to dip in, but only if I’ve found yellow sticker asparagus.  I sometimes have baked beans – no toast, just beans eaten like soup.  There’s even a kipper in the freezer waiting for the right day. 

But porridge is an old faithful.  I like to measure out tomorrow’s porridge after today’s breakfast so the oats can soak in milk or water for a day before cooking.  And I have it topped with the same sort of things which I have on yoghurt in the summer

There is something wonderfully reassuring about a breakfast that has been around for generations and has never once felt the need to reinvent itself.

 

O is for overcast

After a summer in which few people felt that we didn’t have enough sunshine, we’re now getting a little bit (but not whole days) of overcast weather.  The sky is grey, the garden looks slightly sulky and the sun has clearly decided that today is not a working day. 

Instead, the sky says: Stay in. Indoors will be best today.  And I just don’t argue.

Great artists look at gloom and see colours the rest of us would otherwise miss.  Mostly we see flat grey but look closer, there is colour in that murk.

Look at the garden.  Colours seem deeper, maybe richer, the greens change their tone and, if the spiders have been busy, there’s dew on their webs.   The leaves have changed colour but for the most part, they are still on the trees. 

And look around in the house.  That’s better now that the sun isn’t telling the world how long it is since I dusted. 

Clouds are not necessarily a bad thing. They soften the light, slow us down and remind us that life doesn't have to be sunshine and blue skies every day.

Hurrah!  Blogger has updated my reading list! Life is looking up!

 

N is for nostalgia

 L P Hartley said “The past is a foreign country” but I can’t agree.  The past is so familiar.  Old friends, old faces, old voices.  There are so many in my memory.  All it takes is a smell, a song, an old photograph or even a phrase not heard since my youth.  

So many things from my youth would be strange to youngsters.  Telephones with curly cables.  Televisions with knobs.  But they are not foreign to me. 

I remember childhood summers that seemed to last forever. By the time September came I was well ready to go back to school.  But during those long weeks there were picnics, bike rides, visits, family gatherings. 

Nostalgia wears rose coloured spectacles or rather she takes the ordinary bits of our past and gives them a gentle golden glow.

I sometimes miss things I didn't even appreciate at the time. Waiting for two ounces of sweets to be weighed out from a big jar.   School milk drunk from a bottle with a straw.  Trotting to the letter box to post mother’s endless letters

But I think nostalgia is less about wanting to go back and more about remembering who we were.  In retirement life is no longer quite so full of rushing from one responsibility to another. There is space to remember.

Sometimes those memories make me smile. Sometimes they make me sad. Sometimes they remind me of people who are no longer here.

And that's all right.  We don't have to push the past away just because we're living in the present.  Maybe we can invite those memories in and share a cuppa with them . 

Then, when the reminiscing is over, we can get back to the present.  Nostalgia is a lovely place to visit.  But I wouldn't want to live there.

M is for mums

 No, not mothers:- chrysanthemums.  Gardeners often call them mums.   And I forgot to get some this year!

They are one of those plants which give a wonderful autumn burst of colour, along with sedums, Michaelmas daisies, dahlias and rudbeckias.  Summer doesn’t have it all her own way.  These flowers are the garden’s final burst of colour before winter takes over.

Many gardeners grow wonderful specimens to enter the local horticultural shows but mums aren’t necessarily demanding.   They simply get on with flowering while the rest of the garden is collapsing around them.

As the years go by, I find myself increasingly sympathetic to plants that bloom a little later in life. There is something rather appealing about having your best moment when everyone else has gone indoors.

Chrysanthemums come in all sorts of colours — yellow, bronze, red, pink, white and rather alarming shades that seem to have been invented by someone with a fluorescent paint box. They are wonderfully cheerful.

When the evenings are drawing in and summer already feels like something that happened somewhere else, mums provide a little reminder that there is still plenty of life and colour left in the year.

L is for larder

 

My Mother’s pantry always looked wonderful at this time of the year.  She was a great jam-and-pickle maker and there would be regimented rows of jars on the pantry shelf.  Raspberries, apples and pears from the garden would have been bottled and each Kilner jar held the promise of a fruit pie or crumble.  She’d have made a start on Christmas preparations so there would be jars of homemade mincemeat.  

I sometimes feel I’d like to be like that but I don’t even have a pantry, never mind rows of Kilner jars making me feel like the cook at Downton Abbey!

What I do have is a freezer and a large cupboard.  I’ve been making gallons of soup as well as portions of stewed fruit to have with my porridge or yoghurt.  And I’m building up my supplies of tins in case we have power cuts and the freezer has to stay very firmly shut.

In retirement I have more time for cooking and my supplies of dried pulses and nuts are much larger – many a squirrel would envy me!

There is something very satisfying about putting food by for winter. It feels wonderfully old-fashioned and sensible.

My “larder” doesn’t have shelves that look beautiful on Instagram.  Rather it reflects my lifestyle choice that if the weather is horrid I do not want to have to go shopping. 

 

For the fruits of his creation, thanks be to God

 

  For the fruits of his creation,

thanks be to God.

For his gifts to every nation,

thanks be to God.

For the ploughing, sowing reaping,

silent growth while we are sleeping,

future needs in earth's safe keeping,

thanks be to God.

 

   In the just reward of labour

God's will is done.

In the help we give our neighbour

God's will is done.

In our world wide task of caring

for the hungry and despairing,

in the harvest we are sharing,

God's will is done.

 

 For the harvests of his Spirit,

thanks be to God.

For the good we all inherit,

thanks be to God.

For the wonders that astound us,

for the truths that still confound us,

most of all, that love has found us,

thanks be to God.

Tune: Ar Hyd y Nos (All through the night)

K is for Kettle and Knitting

There is something deeply comforting about putting the kettle on.  It’s the answer to so many of life’s problems, especially when autumn starts to take hold.   I’ve never been a more-tea-vicar as I don’t drink tea, but a hot drink often hits the spot.

As soon as friends arrive, they are offered a cuppa.  I offer tea (builders variety) green tea (preferred by Jack), coffee (my first choice), decaff coffee (that’s mostly for Annie-The-Home-Enhancer aka the cleaner), fruit tea (I don’t drink coffee after about 3pm) or even instant soup.  There’s something very basic to friendship about offering some sort of hot drink. 

If I’m bored, I’ll have a hot drink.  If I’m upset, I’ll have a hot drink.  If I’m cold, I’ll have a hot drink.  Even when I have my regular zooms with various friends most of us make a cuppa before settling down in front of the screen.

scarves

Then I settle down and take pleasure in drinking it.  And often I’ll pick up my knitting.  I’m getting quite a stack of scarves ready to go to The Salvation Army to be given to homeless people.  There’s even one there commissioned by Santa for a little girl of my acquaintance (I’m a supply elf for when the regulars have a panic on). There’s real pleasure in knitting: the cosy chair, the wool, the clickety-click of needles and the satisfying feeling that I am making something useful.

Retirement is rather good for both kettle and knitting. There is no need to rush. You can make a cup of tea, sit down, pick up the needles and spend a perfectly respectable morning doing very little.

Sometimes the knitting goes wrong.  (I am so "good" at knitting that I can make mistakes on a plain scarf.  But there's no rush.  I can put the kettle on.  A cuppa is the answer to everything.