Where on Earth Have They Put Everything?

My Kia Niro aka The Empress

My old car and I understood each other perfectly. Now I I feel as though I need to learn to drive all over again. 

My first problem was the handbrake – it’s just a button to press!  I drove an automatic around thirty years ago but this is so different!

I had my old car nearly nine years and we had come to an understanding with each other.    For years, I knew exactly where everything was. Now I can't tell whether I'm indicating or washing the windscreen. There is something deeply undignified about spraying water everywhere when all you wanted to do was turn a corner.

And the wretched thing keeps beeping at me!  Am I too close to something? Have I crossed an invisible boundary? Is it trying to tell me I've forgotten my handbag?

Still, I'm making progress. Each journey brings a little more confidence, and I'm beginning to recognise which buttons matter and which can safely be ignored.  I’m taking things slowly, sticking to familiar routes and resisting the temptation to press buttons simply to see what happens.

Give it time. Before long, it will feel like an old friend. I'll know where everything is and the strange noises will become familiar.  Give me time.

 

The Freezer in Autumn

 

I am the sort of person who freezes things.  All sorts of things.  My vegetable garden is very small but it still provides gluts to be frozen.   Friends with larger gardens give me figs, apples, rhubarb so I freeze those in individual portions ready to eat with porridge or yoghurt.  So many vegetables are sold prepackaged but the packages are rather large so I freeze the excess.  And I buy frozen vegetables as well.

It seems silly to make just one portion of soup so I make a batch of eight portions and freeze seven.  It’s the same with stews and casseroles, vegetable side dishes and puddings. 

I’m quite good with labelling and I stock check my freezer every few weeks, but there’s such a lot in there.  And at this time of year it feels that not one more thing can go in there.  The door barely closes. Bags are wedged into corners.

And yet, beneath the chaos, there is something rather wonderful going on.  I am saving autumn.  Jack pulled up the tomato plants for me and I have roasted the tomatoes and pureed them before freezing (that takes least space) but there must be a couple of dozen small boxes in there.  Those single portions of stewed fruit seem too many to count but there won’t be too many to be eaten. 

There is something deeply satisfying about it.  Autumn may be the season of things dying back, but my freezer is quietly saying, Not so fast.

Soon my hibernaculum time will be here.  I know I will have very little energy in the depths of winter.  Those portions of tomato puree will be made into pasta sauces or delicious soup with very little effort.

The freezer may be chaotic, overstuffed and occasionally mysterious, but it is also my little time capsule.  Autumn is putting the garden to bed but I am making sure its bounty won’t be wasted.

How's your freezer looking?

 

Decisions! Decisions! Decisions!

 There are so many decisions to be made in retirement.  So many.

Do I need to get dressed yet?

What shall I have for breakfast?

Do I really need to empty the dishwasher?

Should I phone Anne? or Laura? or Jill?

Would coffee be better indoors or in the garden?

Which shoes would be best today?

Yesterday Ang wrote about procrastiknitting (having too many things to do so you knit instead).  I offer procaffeinating (needing innumerable cups of coffee before any decisions can be made).  

Maulifuff season is on the way!

(Maulifuff is an old Scottish word for a woman devoid of energy, who would happily do nothing for hours on end.  Clicking on Maulifuff on the side bar will give you more examples.)

Cousins

I was born richly blessed with cousins.  I had twenty seven of them.  Some we rarely saw, some were part of our regular social set-up.

Cousins are less close than siblings (I had one sister) but they were still family.  They knew which aunt always had a full cake tin and didn’t mind if it was empty once we had been.  They sympathised about the uncle who told dreadful jokes.  I spent many a glorious afternoon with one or another of my cousins getting up to things our parents wouldn’t have approved of and then going home.  Bliss

Then we grew up.  Cousins scattered across the country. Some married.  Years passed.  To be honest, I saw them very little during my working life.  Just the occasional funeral. 

But retirement is different.  I suspect that as a single woman with no siblings, my cousins are more important to me than they are to many people.  Several have died, with some it's just Christmas cards, but I still see about eight of them fairly often.  And they are the people I rely on most.

One cousin had four daughters and between them they can usually respond to emergencies.  Two cousins live here in Caistor.  One now lives in France but we still have long, hilarious phone calls.  One was widowed and appreciates my help in creating a new life for herself.  Another keeps an eye on me for DIY needs and he’s recently helped me change my car. 

But no matter what the spoken reason is for meeting up, we always have a wonderful “do you remember?” time.  We remember the people who have gone.  We remember the picnics, the Christmases, the family rows and the family jokes.

So here's to cousins.  They may not be the people we see most often.  But when we do meet, the years seem to fall away.  And for a little while, we're children again.

 

The Day That Didn't Exist

Imagine waking up on the morning of 5 October 1582, putting the kettle on, and discovering that the day had been cancelled. Not postponed or moved.  Cancelled.  Because in parts of Europe, 5 October 1582 simply didn't exist.

By the sixteenth century, the old Julian calendar had drifted out of step with the seasons. It was only a tiny error each year, but after 1,500 years, tiny errors become rather less tiny.  So Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new calendar.  He simply removed ten days.  In countries adopting the change, Thursday 4 October was followed immediately by Friday 15 October.

Gone were the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th.  Ten days had vanished from the calendar.

But not here in Britain.  We Brits didn’t accept the Pope’s authority to cancel ten days.  In 1582 it was just Spain, Portugal and parts of Italy.   When Britain finally changed by Act of Parliament  in 1752, we had fallen even further behind. Eleven days had to be removed, so Wednesday 2 September was followed by Thursday 14 September.

But back to 1582.  The people affected hadn't actually lost ten days of their lives. Time carried on perfectly normally. It was the number printed on the calendar that changed.  (Now I’ve written that I’m thinking they probably didn’t have printed calendars.)

So spare a thought for 5 October.  A perfectly respectable date.  And yet, in some countries, it never got its turn.

 

Today is St Francis Day

Banner in South Kelsey Church

 I think Saint Francis of Assisi has always been a popular saint.  We’re all familiar with rather sentimental pictures of him talking to birds and animals.  It’s reckoned he’s responsible for nativity sets when he created a nativity tableau with real people and real animals.  He gave himself wholly to God and saw God everywhere.

Francis seemed to understand something that we sometimes forget: the world is full of small things worth noticing.  A bird singing.  The sun coming through the window.  A tree moving in the wind.

Francis also embraced a life of simplicity. This is where I feel rather challenged.  He managed to live simply without accumulating cupboards full of things that might come in useful one day.

For me, and maybe you too, simplicity is a work in progress.

Francis didn’t want to possess “things”.  He could look at a bird, a flower, the moon or a humble patch of earth and simply be glad that it was there.

Perhaps growing older is partly about learning to notice more and chase less.  To enjoy things without the need to possess them.  To watch the birds without knowing their names.  To sit quietly without feeling that you ought to be doing something.  And perhaps, if we are lucky, we learn to become a little more like Francis — not by doing anything extraordinary, but simply by noticing the ordinary with a little more wonder and thanking God for it.

That seems to me a rather lovely way to spend a life.  

 

Onward to October

 

October promises to be a very doggy month.  I have two stints of looking after Holly Dog.

I've booked a day at Eden Hall with my friend E.  This is our present to each other for Christmas LAST year.

I'm booked to lead worship every Sunday. 

It's a month which is stuffed with routine medical appointments.

I've arranged several meals out with friends and relations.

I shall start my hibernaculum project on my birthday which is later this month.  

And I need to get my Christmas preparations much further on than they are now!

So long, September

 

Writing my Autumn Alphabet has meant that I haven’t written about day to day things on this blog but plenty has been going on.

I’ll start with the thing which worried me most: glaucoma.  My late sister had glaucoma so I get tested every year.  When I had a test in August the optician referred me to a consultant for further investigation.  The consultant told me that everything was OK which was a huge relief. 

A local vicar retired at the end of July so I’ve been busy most Sundays.  It’s a group of churches which I’ve been involved with before and we like each other.  They are very good and help me as much as possible.  I’m hoping not to do funerals etc unless it is someone I have known.  Funerals are very tiring. 

I’ve had lots of meals with various friends and relations.  (I feel like Pooh’s friend, Rabbit!)  I cooked for one friend but had several meals at the local pub.  No complaints there.  I also went to a 90^th birthday party.  The birthday boy’s family had arranged for a magician to come and he was brilliant!

The house had its annual electrical safety check and it needs some work done but the big news is that solar panels are to be fitted.  Yay!

Jack and I cleared the tomato patch and I reckon we harvested at least a couple of stone of tomatoes.  I’ve already made gallons of soups and sauces but the rest of the tomatoes still need to ripen before I can cook them.  I’m trying to “eat down” the freezer but I just can’t keep up!

 I’ve been working on my Christmas preparations.  As you know, I am a Supply Elf and I am knitting scarves for various children.  I’ve made a small start on Christmas cards.  Next month should see quite a lot of progress. 

And the biggest thing of all is that I have bought a new (to me) car and a new Trundle Truck.  The TT is smaller than the old one so I have called her Mini-haha