17. Jul, 2022

Memorable Moments

1.  In Manchester Town Hall, one of the afternoon tea dances is underway and two of the women, eighty odd, are in the ladies, freshening up.  They wear silver dancing shoes, jewel bright frocks and are generally done up to the nines.  One says,

" There aren't many men are there?  I used to dance with Fred last year, but he died."

" I know" replied the other.  " They don't last long, the men, do they?  That's why we're here" and they continue to concentrate on titivating their hair, as if there's still a chance of attracting a dancing partner who isn't quite dead.

 2.  The security guard is on his break outside Iceland in the afternoon, and is talking casually on his phone, quite openly.  As I pass I hear him say, as if talking about the weather,

" Are you in your knickers?"

The context remained a mystery.

3.  On a French holiday many years ago, we visited Mont Saint Michel.  As it appeared across the isthmus wreathed in a romantic mist, two middle aged American tourists hove brightly into view, and spotting something she could relate to, the woman yelled:

" Hey, Norm, you wanna waffle?"

It feels rather relevant right now, a Trump arrived early, to knock the magic out of the world.

4.  In Manchester Town Hall, they are filming the 'House of Cards' and I come out of the office to find myself suddenly on set.  There are faces I recognise, Uriah Heap (as I recall him being) is standing in a doorway waiting for his cue, while the actor playing the cold-hearted Francis Urquheart, is all of an emotional dither, crying out, distressed:

" Darling, I'm soooo sorry, I totally ruined your scene!  Let's go again, I will remember the line this time."

When I see him on screen it's a bit of a shock, remembering him like that, but then, he is an actor.

5.  We're in Great Budworth on a perfect blue sky summer day, a Cheshire village so picture postcard it's enchanting.  People sit outside the pub opposite the church, a green vintage open topped jag beside them, as if Midsummer Murders might happen any minute.  We buy a pot of jam left trustingly in a wicker basket on a step, leaving our money on a saucer and then progress to buy tomatoes from a man selling them direct from his sunny cottage garden.  He weighs them out carefully on his kitchen scales, while we are enthusiastic about how wonderful it must be to live there.

" It's all right," he says.  "Not much to it if you come from here."

He has a point, we suppose.

6.  My father told a story about a colleague of his, a notorious skinflint, a fellow teacher and pipe smoker, in the days when you could smoke your head off wherever you liked, who one day in the staffroom, took out a pouch of very expensive tobacco, way beyond my father's means, opened it invitingly and held it out to him.

"Smell that!" he said with relish, then took the tobacco back without offering it, to fill his own bowl. 

7.  For about 6 months I've been trying to sort out the problem with my mother's telephone line, which cuts out when it's windy.  BT Engineers and the BT Openworld infrastructure maintenance people have investigated things and pronounced all equipment sound and fit for purpose.  The problem is nature, the trees bordering the inside of the wall of the nearby graveyard, which the wires run through.  The last person I spoke to at BT Openworld, clearly a call centre in India, advised me, patiently:

" Mens can nothing about the weather, madams".  I imagined he thought I ought to try dealing with the weather he had to contend with out there.

The Council in Halifax, too, are unable to help, their responsiblity extending only to roadside trees, which these, being inside a boundary wall, thus making them at least six inches off the roadside, are not.  The land belongs to a local funeral parlour now, so I email them and then ring, leaving my phone numbers for contact.  When I get home from work I warn JB, my partner that they may ring, but though he seemed to have listened, when the call comes, an hour or so later, he gets to the phone first.  JB has his own way of dealing with what he thinks will be yet another cold caller, so he announces that this is the Australian Embassy, ignoring my urgent gesturings. 

He does then ask who's calling, though, and it is indeed the man who owns the funeral business.  The phone is finally passed to me.  A very well spoken elderly voice at the other end says, when I identify myself:

" Oh, it's not the Australian Embassy then?"

"No, it's not " I say, "sorry about that."

"What a pity," comes the reply.  " One of my sons is in Australia, I thought I might have asked to be put through for a nice chat with him."

After some more of this, we get on to the topic of the trees. 

"The Council," he says a little bitterly, "won't do anything unless they can get money out of it.  Do you know they asked permission to cut off a branch overhanging the road at that graveyard and they simply threw it back over the wall for me to deal with!  "

I commiserate, feeling that somehow this conversation isn't going entirely my way.  Eventually, he says that he wasn't able to speak to his gardeners today, but he has been out to look at the trees himself.  He will, he says speak to them the next day.  He adds, somewhat woundedly, that he has already spent thousands on work to restore the old Victorian graveyard, and we sign off, with me wondering if I have finally got anywhere given that the huge old trees will probably need cutting down altogether to deal with the issue. 

I visit my mother the next weekend but so far, the trees are as was and the wires still run through the middle of them, the telegraph poles right alongside.  I was assured that I would be contacted again about it, most courteously, so somehow, one way and another, I don't quite feel it would be right to get straight back on to him again about it and will wait, perhaps for a short but decent interval, before having another go.

8.  We drive down to Cromer in Norfolk for a few days in September.  It is a long drive and while passing through the flat farmlands of Linconshire, without feature for miles, we see, on the left, a small line of four concrete oblong buildings, flat roofed and about as decorative as a piggery.  But the signs announce, incongruously, 'The Happy Cafe', 'Indian Restaurant',  and 'Chalets to Let', with an open yard alongside claiming to be a car wash.  Intrigued, we stop for a break and some refreshment.    

When we go into the not quite aptly named Happy Cafe, the scene is reminiscent of an American road movie, where in the middle of nowhere, a small mote of civilization has a slightly sinister ambiance.   In keeping with this, the only customer is a vastly fat middle aged man, eating his way through a mound of food alone.  He doesn't look up at our intrusion.  The owners, bizzarely, are heavy set black haired Romanian women, clearly mother and daughter, one elderly, seated at a table, the other standing behind the counter, both waiting for something to happen.  It doesn't look as if very much does, although we are interested, not only by how the Eastern European owners came to be there in this deserted spot, but also by the menu board on which, below the day's offerings, is chalked in large capitals:

"NO SHARING".

What kind of trouble do they have with that, we wonder.  A crowd of lorry drivers coming in and meanly ordering one meal between them?  A gleeful free for all when the locals (if there are any) pile in and everyone creates chaos by eating off each other's plates?  Or is the chef particularly highly strung and expects each individual dish to be reverenced as he or she intended, separately, by the discerning palate? From the chill cabinet contents this doesn't seem likely.  When we order custard with our apple pie, the woman picks up a carton of ambrosia and disappears for about twenty minutes.  When she returns with it in a jug, she warns us unsmilingly,  with dark Russian sounding 'rs' and  'l's in her words, to be "very careful" as it is now " extreme hot".

What has she been doing, heating it over a brazier out the back while muttering imprecations at our demanding ways and brooding about the past?  It's hard to guess.  We leave after our small repast, wondering how much holiday business the chalets generate, just who does come to eat in the "Indian Restaurant" and what on earth these people serve there.

10.  In the middle of the evening last night (Saturday) I answer the door to a small, dainty long haired man clutching a clipboard in one hand and a lit joss stick in the other, which he wafts at me elvishly, announcing brightly, in a damp, hippyish kind of way:

" Hello, it's incense!  Do you like incense?"

I say no thank you, thinking he'll have a hard time flogging that round here, it's 50p a bundle down the pound shop if you want it.  Still, it's a novel door to door sell in Levenshulme, perhaps another sign, as people keep hopefully claiming, that we're the new Didsbury and Chorlton.  He goes off down the street to knock on other doors, leaving a smudge of sandalwood in the air, while  I wonder how many buyers he has notched up on his clipboard, if any.

11.  I've watched a documentary about mushrooms, which proves unexpectedly fascinating.  Who would have thought that the humble mushroom is in fact an entirely separate species, neither animal nor plant, having gone on its own evolutionary tributary in the very earliest of days?  Perhaps this is why mushrooms and toadstools have always fascinated mankind as having magical and mysterious properties, spreading their filaments through our folklore along with faerie rings.  They can be food or poison to us, their names and infinite varieties warning us that while we can eat chicken of the woods, we should avoid the deathcap.  It brings to mind a memorable simile once used by a colleague when I asked if he had any idea about a rumoured restructure in the organisation.

" What do we know up here?" he said crossly.  "We're like mushrooms.  They feed us shit and keep us in the dark."

He put it, I thought, rather well. 

12.  There are dangers in translation when trying to find the right name for a business on the High Street.  Some years back, an idea for an upmarket ice cream parlour, to be owned locally by a Chinese man looking for a high tone in his shop title, combined the idea of people assuming superior airs being "a bit snotty" and an aristocratic sounding title.  At the time, Lord Snooty and Mr Whippy were probably the inspiration.  He came up with 'Mr Snotties', which fortunately his friends prevented him from registering as a business title.  Although, you can completely see why he thought it would work for him.   

13.  There is an update on the telephone line situation.  The trees have been dealt with as promised and the telephone lines pass freely through the middle of them unimpeded.  The telephone line no longer cuts off thankfully but this has been replaced by a new mystery.  An elusive electronic chirp sounds at intervals of a few minutes somewhere and has driven me into a slightly demented search and listen operation of all smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, doorbell wires and which room exactly the noise is coming from.  Wherever I stand, it seems to be coming from outside that room, but never, Alice in Wonderland like, where I actually am.  I conclude that it must be something to do with the telephone system talking to itself until I try the internet which goes off each time the 'pip' sounds (still when it's windy, which up here, is pretty much every day......).  Outside the wires swing derisively from the telephone pole which the first telephone engineer who came out said he couldn't go up, as it was marked with a red 'D' for dangerous and would require a cherry picker.  Unfortunately it looks as if I will have to return to BT Openworld for another round of infrastructure problem solving, for which I simply can't wait.

14.  Today being the 19th April, it's my birthday, so we head for a day out to Matlock Bath, which I've never visited.  It's a quite spectacularly set and unusual beauty spot, a little village in Derbyshire with the river Derwent running alongside a promenade purpose built for Queen Victoria's Jubilee in the already popular little spa town.  Landlocked though it is, this gives it the air of a seaside stranded unexpectedly inland, where fish and chips are on hand along the said promenade at almost every cafe, pub and open air eatery.   The picturesque Georgian and Victorian houses and hotels on the parade are painted in seaside colours of clotted cream yellow, blues and pale pinks. 

There is a cable car ride from valley to the steep top of the Heights of Abraham, where three cable cars fly past in view unexpectedly from the road and the place seems to be a haven for elderly bikers, of whom there are many.  There are touristy gift shops, a museum in the old spa building (with a petrified well inside by way of a special attraction).  I was particularly struck by the inventive use of the one time spa pool as a koi carp pond, where you can feed them pellets for 50p.  They gather to hoover them up in a kind of gulping feeding frenzy.  There's a hologram exhibition which is a quite strange, already dated wonder and most fascinatingly of all, in the aquariums, tiny albino dragon like creatures, axelotls, who never developed beyond the tadpole stage in evolutionary terms.  If they lose one of their miniature alligator limbs, they can grow new ones.  Feathery gills branch out like delicate antlers on their broad, white salamander heads as they potter about in the weedy depths of their tank.   

Last week we went to the real seaside, to Morecombe, again a place I had not been to before.  The bay was beautiful, with the Lake District mountains visible around it.  On a morning walk down the sea front and long stone jetty after breakfast, the tide was coming in fast across the mudflats and according to a local fisherman at the end of it, this being the highest tide of the year, it would reach nine feet. 

It was a very blustery day, though the sun was emerging, so there were not many walkers.  I stopped, intrigued by a well wrapped up couple with a telescope viewer pointed across the estuary and a clipboard.  They told me they were doing a survey for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds,  as this was a breeding ground for all sorts of rare birds.  They listed a lot of them for me but I can only remember redwings of that now though.  I asked what I would see if I looked through the telescope.

"Well," the man told me.  "There's a duck." 

Possibly sensing my disappointment, he said the thing was, most of the breeding pairs were elsewhere at present doing that very thing.  He tried to buck me up by pointing out a juvenile curlew, but somehow, the moment of excitement had passed and it failed to pique my interest. 

15. For years we've enjoyed a striking view from our garden of a particularly lovely architectural feature in the garden that backs on to ours, a breeze block shed with clear plastic sheet roofing falling into being a less than beautiful ruin.    Some much needed tree cutting has brought it sharply back into focus so we hide it with a heather brush screen tied onto our wrought iron fencing topping the wall and chinese willow expandable screen over the gate and the small bit on the right of that.  This is far more open weave, though, so we find we can still see the exceptional brickwork.  I come up with a quick fix from the pound shop - artificial leaves and two sprays of artificial flowers we tie in.  We decide the apples may be a step too far and take them off the leaves.  Result - pretty realistic.   I can even still prop back in the bit of the wooden Howell Jones memorial back gate (as we name it in honour of the man who made it for us long ago ) that falls off now every time you open it, so that even that looks all right.  The spirit of Ground Force and Changing Rooms lives on! 

16.  The bus experience has descended again into psychiatric territory.  I have to go on the top deck and immediately it's flooded by angry rap blasting us, violent lyrics.  We passengers look furtively around without making eye contact with anyone in case it's them.   Is it him?  Him?  No it's him, white guy, baseball cap, agressive posture, swinging round in his seat, madly trying to eyeball someone, anyone.  We all look away.  But then.... salvation.  Another madman with headphones on is grinning round the bus seeking a victim.  Fatally, someone is caught in the headlights .  He makes his way to them, bellowing, "Look into my eyes, don't you know the eyes are the window of your soul?  Look into my eyes.  Jesus lives there and he's at home.  It's Jesus! " 

Jesus.....

17.  By some miracle I have picked the only two sunny days of the week, Wednesday and Thursday in mid July (12th and 13th) for a planned summer return to Matlock Bath and an overnight B&B stay to make the most of it.  Jack and I drive through the Derbyshire hills once more, following the path of the Derwent and turn up a road so steep to our destined overnight stay at the Duke of Wellington Inn, that we decide half way up it can't be the right way, so come back down again with caution round hairpin bends at impossible degrees of declivity.  We realise, having descended, that it was indeed the right road and have to clamber up again in first gear, emerging at the crest of the bowl of hills before it goes down again into Chesterfield.  The inn is wonderful, a former drover's inn, we're told and we are in a converted stable block with a little private terrace and table outside.  We feel privileged to have the best room, with french windows opening onto the terrace, where pretty  bird boxes on the walls make the sheltered garden area a haven for the wildlife and comandeer the patio immediately with tea and coffee to admire the view.  Having admired it and made ourselves at home we drive on in to Matlock Bath, but have missed the time to go up the Heights of Abraham in the cable car and tour the caves, so we decide we weren't bothered anyway and go to look round the Museum of Lead Mining instead, which was fascinating and had little treasure chests of fools gold and pearls to buy as souvenirs.  It is as charmingly old fashioned as ever there,  in Matlock Bath, and just as well furnished with elderly bikers noshing fish and chips in front of their expensive modern day Harleys and Triumphs, which we duly admire, as on our first trip out there in April.  We also enjoy watching a couple try to catch the flow of the river to row downstream, as they eddy about in circles trying to look coolly as if they haven't noticed their amused audience sitting on a bench above.  A small flotilla of ducks keeps them company, heads bobbing back and forth as they paddle along, like clockwork wind up ones in a child's bath.  We come away with a puzzle.  Where did the lead miners live?  All the houses are big expensive Georgian or late Victorian buildings and there is no sign of workers' cottages.  We figure that since this parade was purpose built for Victoria's Jubilee, they were probably tidily hidden away up the steep hillsides, so as not to impede the view of wealthy trippers.  I buy a couple of gifts for our daughter, who is catsitting for us overnight, and decide, correctly, that a solar powered waving Jesus, who bops about disco style, will be the perfect addition to her naff collection of religious artefacts, (holographic Jesus and luminous Virgin Mary statuette to date).  I present it to her on our return in the antiques hypermarket yard, where she has been titivating up the Shedshop she and Jack run and she explains to bemused fellow traders that, no, she isn't religious, she just thinks these cheesy holy bits and bobs are hilarious.  I privately hope that none of them are religious either, or at least, not offended.  As Kenny Everett once used to say....it's all in the best possible taste!

18.  If in search of an interesting culinary experience (rather than a delight), try blind tasting what you think is an innocuous jar of green pesto sauce accompanying your tamely boiled gnocci, to discover it is in fact a blistering green chilli curry paste in all its concentrated glory.  The unsuspecting tastebuds will be aglow for hours, no matter how much ice cream you eat afterwards...........

19.  Visiting Liverpool for, strangely, the first time since going for a University interview decades ago, the Adelphi hotel is magnificent.  We have a long time to admire the reception area's beauty while waiting to register, for in front of us are two men, one small and fussingly self important, the other a tall and lankily oppressed individual.  The small fussing one notices there are people behind them and enjoys keeping us waiting with a litany of questions about what is where and car parking and the fact that he is a southerner is being made very prominent in his assumptions of superiority.   They are old enough to be retired but the tall one is given his instructions to take both sets of bags up, as Captain Mainwearing is having to park the car himself.  He only just stops short of asking for a porter to deal with that as, although the reception staff are unfailingly patient and polite, they are also very clear on where responsibility towards guests starts and stops.

On the first evening we explore the many function rooms, which in the ones not lit up tonight, give a fairytale glimpse of ornate ceilings, crystals of chandeliers and guilded glories reflected in darkened mirror doors.  We go for a drink to the American Bar, which on asking, turns out to be so named as all the American sailors drank in it when docking there during the second world war years.  The barmaid is friendly and loves the Adelphi, so enjoys an appreciative audience for her stories. I particularly enjoyed her tale of taking the real Ringo Starr down a peg or two during one of their annual Beatle celebration weeks.  He was standing in the way as she came through with a mountain of glasses for the bar, with a large minder alongside.  She said excuse me a number of times and when she continued to be ignored, kicked Ringo (whom she took for one of the look alike tribute folk) on the ankle to alert him.  The minder sternly rebuked her for a personal onslaught on Ringo Starr. She studied him and said,

"You're not a bad look alike though, are you?  Not quite the same but not bad.  Anyway shift out I need to get these glasses in."

She remained unimpressed that he turned out to be the real Ringo, whom, she stated, scousers didn't like.  

"Paul, now, he puts back into the city.  Ringo, nothing.  Arrogant and rude.   Sure, he wasn't even the proper original drummer you know!" and with that, she had to turn to serve other customers. 

20.  I bought a second hand revamped computer third hand with an old Windows Explorer programme on it from a kind acquaintance when my old desk top had died.  After my free trial for anti-virus expired, I duly downloaded and purchased the protecting system.   Several weeks in notices kept popping up advising  the free trial had ended.  Puzzled as I had paid the subscription, I rang the helpline where, for an extra fee, remote access discovered part of the programme was unsuitable for the aged Explorer and was removed.  For two hours the machine was then debugged also by remote access and I was telephoned when the internet cut off so we could reconnect.  A most courteous service was delivered, from whence I was initially unsure, I thought America but there was a kind of accent I couldn't determine.  When I asked, I discovered that "Sam" my technician, was in fact working from the Phillipines.  Amazing!  The global village is just that internet wise, it seems.

21.  The perils of a pet in a house can have unexpected consequences, even after years of relatively trouble free ownership.  The cat, now 18, after a happy outdoor toilet existence in the garden, popping through the catflap at will, now goes out for a gander, comes back in and always uses the litter tray.  If I don't have one in situ, the floor will do, so I have to.   Resigning ourselves to the needs of the elderly, we provide this in the hall, as that's the only place she respects using it, and while we don't find it particularly conducive to inviting people round, it not being  the most appealing welcome mat, we can at least be hygenic and keep it well cleaned out.  Not, however, on the day the meter man called, where she had, unobserved, just before, missed the edge of the tray, enabling him to step right into a fresh pile of noisesome poop and tread it all through the living room on the rugs.  His shoes were ruined. For shame, twenty pounds was handed over to support the purchase of a new pair. As if this were not enough, further humiliation was heaped on our heads when he announced that company health and safety policy meant they were not to enter houses with insanitary conditions, so they'd probably have to fit a meter outside for future readings.  Oh, how we laughed as our cheeks burned in front of the neighbours, as he delivered this information on the front step, putting the soiled shoes in a bag for us to dispose of later.  The cat, happily ignorant of this dreadful solecism, was next discovered on the kitchen table, whiskers awash with butter, as we had made the fatal error of leaving the lurpak unattended in our confusion.  That's animal magic for you....   

22.  Overheard conversations which amused:

A) In Levenshulme, two freshly permed old ladies, staunchly striding along in full flow after a good session in the hairdressers discussing some other friend, proving that respectability rivalry is far from dead.

Old lady 1, clearly the acknowledged arbiter of taste: "I'd never go in a pub on my own."

Old lady 2, spotting a rarely glimpsed one upmanship opportunity: "I'd never go in a pub."

Old lady 1, silently fuming, strides on, I can only hope, to a consolatory and private glass of sherry in the privacy of her doilies and her dining room...

23.  Remembering holidays of yore, I recall the proud moment in approximately 1973, when we set off as a family with great ceremony, for the first time, in our Alpine Sprite caravan on holiday, after much fussing with the jockey wheel overseen by our interested neighbours, who came to wave us off on the doorstep.  We didn't get very far, as after much engine revving, it was realised that my parents had left the legs down.  Oh well...........

24. The Big Freeze has been doing its work up north.  I receive a call at work.  There is consternation, as the boiler's gone off and the house is a fridge.  Not to worry, I say, I'm paying monthly boiler insurance, I'll ring the Baxi Help Line.  I do, but am put on hold forever as, in common with all companies, there is only one number for everything and only one call centre, I assume.  Meanwhile, I browse their internet page FAQ sheets and share with colleagues a slide show demonstrating the highly technical way to deal with a frozen condenser pipe (the most common cause, it tells us, of boiler failure in cold weather).  It consists of putting  the kettle on, not to ponder over a cuppa but to pour the boiling water on the pipe.  Not having got through to Baxi headquarters, I call home to offer this advice.  It works!  This, we agree, had never happened before.    However, in rapid succession, one colleague reports the same thing has done the trick at his house when he woke up to sub zero temperatures and on Friday night about eleven pm my mother phones. She has no hot water but  the radiators are mad hot.  This seems different on the face of it, although, following further internet research on gravity feed systems, I ring back to advise that it may be due to the ballcock in the hot water cistern failing to work, an airlock and.....a frozen condenser pipe.  Her trusty heating engineer arrives the following morning and it is indeed, the condenser pipe and the ballcock in the cistern.  Who needs a plumber?  Well, I probably still would, as apart from the kettle of boiling water, all subsequent instruction slides on dealing with airlocks and ballcocks lost me immediately. Still, maybe I can moonlight as a consultant diagnostician?  

25.  This year's nature invasion of the house is the return of Mothra, a mythically indestructible type of clothes moth in the living room, which has devoured the best part of a Chinese  hand woven rug now, in addition to further attacks on the piano's felts.  We have been doing battle for some years and while they have retreated from the upper storey tweeds, they are still flitting about downstairs with an almost roguish mockery.  Only last week, I subjected the place to a 'moth bomb' aerosol, wall to wall insecticide, a honey trap which lures the male of the species to a sticky end by pheromone, and killer boxes to hang up inside the piano and wardrobes etcetera.  The floor, furniture and surviving rugs were subjected to so much treatment that you had to steer clear of the place like Anthrax Island to avoid contamination.  Yet still they come........numbers depleted, certainly, as evidenced by the moth trap but still invincible, these papery motes of dust, so delicately transient when you catch them.  It's the thread like caterpillars you have to watch for, apparently but they're so minute I never see the little blighters.  Ah, well, on with the death spray!  

26.  It is coming up to a significant birthday for me next week, you know the kind.  A decade here, a decade there, who'd know my real age?  Wandering through Boots, maquillage in hand, going to the paypoint, I'm accosted by two young ladies promoting a certain in-house product.  

"This," says the one with the serum dispenser, gun-like at the ready like a S.W.A.T. team, grabbing my hand to squirt a life saving facelift on to the back of it, " is the most effective anti skin-aging product on the market, being given the best reviews at the moment.  It's been in the Daily Express and everything.  You just squirt it directly, like a syringe, like, into the most wrinkle affected areas and it smoothes you all out."

"Ah!" I say, jocularly, "I see what's happened here.  You've spotted me as someone in serious need of targeted moisturising !" (while thinking, so those laughter lines really are frowny face deep then)? 

They look politely aghast and mumble,

"Oh, no, we're showing everyone.  And think of it like this.  You've got that at 3 quid, that at another 3 quid, and with this at a discounted special offer, it's almost, well, not more than 30 quid."

"True ," I say, but, "with this at 3 quid and that at another 3 quid, that's still only 6 quid.  And whatever about the rest of it, I'm still having a birthday next week!   Probably past helping. Thanks, though!"

The two girls smile absently and go back to the main issue of their conversation,

"So I said, I'm not having that."

"I'd have said that as well."

"But - you like him."

"Yeah.  Well, maybe I wouldn't have said it, like, just like that, then."

"No.  I'm still going out with him though."

"Yeah."

27.  Whilst waiting for inspiration to strike on a present buying front, I wander into Kendal's and stray too close to a high end holistic beauty brand.  Instantly pounced on by the member of staff who wanted to share with me her passion for the products (which was clearly raging, so enthusiastic was she), I tried, after some time, to extricate myself while being shown a bell jar style set up of chakra realigning plant mists, thinking, surely she has realised my attire (Primark jacket, top from Peacocks and at best a  pair of M&S trousers, do not suggest I'm in the right financial bracket for this)?  The security guard, watching us in a slack moment , wore the kind of expression that suggested he certainly had, at least.  

28.  This week was one for a cat pedicure trip to the vets.  Elderly cats' claws don't retract the same and no longer shed naturally.  So an additional bi-monthly trip is scheduled in for a retread, an MOT weigh in and general checkover.  I'm told she weighs the same as she did two years ago and wish I could say the same.  Time to get the bike out now the weather's picked up, I chastise myself inwardly, and again. Waiting to pick up more flea treatment (for the cat, that is) a mum and little girl come in with their new kitten, Tricky, eight weeks old.  Mum says she really must stop acquiring more pets for the existing menagerie of cat and rabbit.  Her daughter, one of those trenchantly to the point small children, peers into my cat basket and says,

"What's that on her face?"  I explain its a cyst related to old age but the vet says she's fine, it's not a problem for her.  "How old is your cat then?  My cat's eight weeks old," she asks next.

"She's nineteen," I tell her.

"Why don't you look on the chart over there," suggests mum to the little girl, "and find out how old that is in human years."

With interest, her daughter does.

"She's ninety two," she tells us.  After weighing this up and the implications for her own kitty's future longevity, she adds, with offhand practicality, "Mum, when you're dead, can I have Tricky?"

Her mother, a slim and bloomingly healthy young woman, looks understandably taken aback momentarily but rallying says,

"I suppose so.  Someone will have to, won't they?"

You never know with youngsters what dark turn your conversation may take, do you?  

29.  Extraordinary crittur story again at my house.  A strange thing began to be noticeable perhaps a few weeks ago.  Having left the breadbin open due to early onset mould issues, we found our thick crust wholemeal had been comprehensively nibbled overnight.  Mice, we thought instantly, based on past invasions.  However the electronic anti mouse plug in sonic bleepers were all in situ and there were no droppings at all, anywhere.  Besides which, it had been rather more than a mouse's mouthful that had been scoffed, which was a bit worrying rodent wise.  We decided to keep an eye on things and keep the breadbin closed, then forgot.  We have a catflap and this occasionally goes when the resident doorkeeper is snoozing in the house, the odd marauder coming in for an exploratory view of whether there are any leavings from her breakfast dish to be got at by a visiting puss.  Last week, tidying up in the kitchen,  I was puzzled by a a vine tomato on the worktop side, which had a piece out of it as if raggedly cut for a sandwich but was otherwise fine, so I left it on a saucer to be finished off.  The following evening the catflap went again when our mog was asleep in the room with us.  Aha!  Now we'll find out which cat it is, we thought.  However, on the worktop, nonchalantly noshing its way through a further section of the tomato it had clearly come back to finish, was a grey squirrel, a big fat one, who had obviously mastered the art of cat burgling via said catflap to perfection.  It looked over unconcernedly and shot off out again the way it had come in.  I have to say, we were very impressed by its absolute cheek and ingenuity.  I haven't seen it since, though.

30.   I'm finding things a bit Biblical.  We've had flood (another central heating glitch, this time my side of the Pennines), leaving me with - two years on from last time's sisyphean task to repaint the downstairs ceiling white again whilst, indelible as original sin, the damp stain leached back through of a morning from last night's pristine finish whatever I did - it all to do again. We have fire.  The moors of Saddleworth have been ablaze all week due to the dry weather and the prevailing winds have brought their hellish smoke across Manchester and through the air we breathe.  Now there's going to be famine.  What are we to do for a crumpet when there's no CO2 to package them in, or for all the other eatables we didn't know were dependent on the substance for freshness?  What, I am bound to say when the next news item pops up, fresh hell is this?  I can be sure of one thing, though.  It will either rain or go dark before morning, and with rain out of the question, there's only one certainty in life as it stands.      

31. Beware being beguiled by Groupon deals when looking at travel offers on your smartphone, or, like me, you may find, not having read the minute typeface you are swiping through in carefree fashion, you have unwittingly gone straight to checkout and bought a voucher for a four day trip to Rome and Florence, a fantastic deal but, since it fell in the first or second week of December, unseasonal timing accounted for its bargain basement offer and anyway, I didn't want to go then, or even, necessarily, there.  Currently awaiting a refund which, while it went straight off my credit card, will inevitably take longer to return....

32.  I'm wondering if First Aid training for bus drivers has taken a more invasive turn.  Going by one with its hazard lights on to indicate trouble, with another parked nearby as if to assist, I saw one driver jumping and stamping  up and down by the doors and imagined the other, looking on, shouting:

"He's not responding to CPR!  There's no defibrillator!  Jump on his chest for God's sakes, man!"

I suppose the wheelchair ramp had probably just stuck but I quite liked my idea!

33. Still on the subject of transport workers, I'm wondering if the joined up  staffing of both the newsagent shop and ticket office in the Southport station has led to disgruntlement.

"Can I ask about train times here?" I asked of a uniformed member of staff behind the sweets and crisps counter, lounging on a chair with folded arms next to an electronic screen showing departure and arrival times.

"You can if you want," he said indifferently, as if to say he couldn't care less and what would he know about it?

I do.

"Are you going back tonight?" he asked next, in disparaging disbelief, clearly implying, what was the point of coming in the first place?

I am.

Barely glancing at me he intoned, surly and with obvious reluctance,

"Platform 4, platform 5, platform 6, every hour."

I asked until when, which he clearly thought I ought to know anyway.

"Eleven," he said ungraciously, not needing to add, obviously.

Thanking him, I left him to brood on about his resentments, which I imagined as an internal dialogue going something like: 

"Trains?  Why ask me?  I'm just here to sell crisps and chocolate, aren't I?  A shelf stacker, that's all I am.  A fully trained professional and look how they treat me.  Bastards.  They don't pay me enough to do two jobs, you know.  Why don't you just fuck off? "

34.  I've found out, having been intrigued by the deeds stating that my street was built quite separately from the surrounding others, the reason why.  It, along with other areas in Levenshulme, including, presumably, the park, were built by the owners of Errwood Hall near Buxton in the Peak District.  Once a magnificent mansion filled with art treasures, sourrounded by beautiful gardens and grandly built by rich, widely travelled and seemingly generous owners, by 1930 there were no heirs and it fell to the corporation for building a new reservoir.  They demolished the hall and surrounding buildings to prevent contamination of water, and all that remains are ruins and a rampant springtime display of the azalias and rhododendrons once brought back from their voyages on the family's yacht.  The family names live on, however, in the names of roads and in the original place's beauty spot ruins.  There's an article written by a Victorian journalist in 1833 describing its splendours and opulent interior, with a chapel, old master paintings and exterior terraced grounds, stream and pond, where 'fish disported themselves, or lay basking on the sand in the pellucid waters'.  Wonderful!

35.  Happening upon a history documentary of the Wild West featuring Bear Grylls crossing the same three mountain ranges that daunted settlers, fur trappers and gold rush opportunists, I come across him with a modern day muleteer, complete with pack mules, still a tracker and mountain man.  He looked the part and certainly sounded it.  Round the camp fire, they pondered over hazards still extant today, and then they harked back.

"So," began Bear Grylls, "what kind of risks going through these mountains were they facing, these first timers, coming here after beaver pelts?"

"I'd say dyin' was the main one," came the laconic reply.

I imagine it was.  There were a number of reasons; bears, dystentry, injuns, winter, starvation, murder, to name but a few.  Still, the point of their venture being to get the pelts to make the felt for the tall stovepipe hats men wore back then, I suppose it did show people were just dying to wear it...

36.  I've been enjoying people's names lately via the news and weather.  Who could be even more of a send up name than Donald Trump himself, you might think, until along came Heidi Heitkamp to challenge him?  All you can hear mentally is 'Hi de Hi!!".  Then there are those people who are in the only job they could possibly have given the relevance of their name - the weather presenter predicting the first snowfalls was delightfully called 'Sarah Blizzard' and on radio 4 a 'Dr Kneecap' was propounding on NHS operations on hip and knee replacements (I'll swear blind that's who they announced him as).

37.  There's an admirable doggedness to women and shopping opportunities this time of year.  A promotional pre Christmas V.I.P. evening shopping event at Debenhams offered a fashion show, sale prices, a facial and makeup tutorial and a raffle to make it all the more fun.  Taking a breather by the door from the heat inside, I overheard a determined raffle winner trying to claim her prize, the member of staff overseeing the giving out of these equally determined she had to show her ticket to have it.  She had given it to the woman who was on before, she said, and she had set the prize aside for her to collect.  He said number 200 hadn't been given out.  She said it had and it was her winning ticket.  Clutching her prize (some toiletry goodies) she declared that she would not leave without them.  He declared she couldn't take them.  Tempers were fraying.  Could she tell him the name of the woman who had served her?  Unlikely, and no she couldn't although, she said, she had dark hair.  He suggested a couple of names.  She pointed out that since she didn't work there, she didn't know anybody's names.  He went to consult, came back and again said number 200 hadn't been given out.  Well, it had, she said, because that was her ticket.  The impasse was still continuing some time later as the razzamatazz of the occasion festively continued.  I never did find out if she got it but I suspect that she did.

Today I was in a supermarket food queue some customers behind a devil may care old lady who tossed aside her out of date discount voucher as carelessly as the food packages she was chucking behind her with boyant elan into the trolley, and mainly missing.  A box of teabags and an aubergine shot across to the floor.

"I'm doing it blind, you see, " she explained blithely to the woman on the till, not because she couldn't see but because she was large and stooped and found turning to the trolley difficult. 

A big glass jar of sauerkraut next came dangerously into her grip, but luckily, the equally elderly friend with her fielded this successfully.

"Oh, there you are!" exlaimed the shopper, still bagging her goods like a basket ball player hoping to get the odd shot through the hoop.  

"You told me to sit over there," said the friend, aggrieved.

"Well it was too far away!" said the first, as if pointing out the obvious.

"Have you got any of those tiny mince pies?" the second asked the woman on the till.

"I don't want any of them!" pronounced the cavilier friend.

"No, but I do..." said her friend plaintively.

Naturally, they didn't have any.  If it had been the first woman who asked, I bet they wouldn't have dared not to stock them.

38.  It was an interesting start to the day.  I fed the daughter's cat and made a cuppa (still in dressing gown and slippers) and fondly watch Margot mog looking out of her cat flap window, assessing, as I thought, whether it was nice enough to go out or not.  Then her tail started twitching and she assumed 'the stare' but didn't go out.  Hello, I thought, another kitty looking back in passing through the garden maybe?  She keeps this up so I stoop to have a look.  There on the doorstep, unbelieveably, is a pigeon, misguidedly standing there eyeing the cat back in a friendly and curious fashion.  Oh, no, I have time to think, as the cat blasts out to get it.  Fine, I think, it will fly off.  It doesn't and hops about flapping while she goes after it.  Fortunately, she's a bit baffled by all the wing activity and it makes it into the back corner of the path behind an old bike and a bin with gardening stuff in it. 

"Fly, you fool!"  I say, coming out into the rain in my dressing gown and slippers, thinking, don't bring that back in through the cat flap or God help us all!  The cat watches, the pigeon fluffs up and just sits there.  Damn, it can't fly, I think. 

I shoot off to get dressed and run the bath taps in the hope the water going down the drainpipe by them will put one or both of them off.  I come back to find it hasn't.  Fortunately, the cat has not yet got at the nitwit pigeon.  Calls of, "drop it", "no", and "leave it", since she isn't a dog, have no effect on Margot.  I risk grabbing her.  She's a bit baffled by the entire business.  She's an excellent mouser but this bird clearly doesn't get the whole run, chase be caught, be terrorised thing.  Remarkably, she doesn't savage me, so I shut her in a room and get a towel to put over the bird.  My only plan is to take it out down the side alley and put it somewhere she can't see it.  It's a bit thick, so I manage to grab it gently in the towel and carry it ceremonially out into the back alley, where seeing it's chance it gets away but simply strolls about looking fine.  I decide to leave it an hour and check.  The bird has cleared off somewhere, unless it had maybe decided to play with another cat.   I let ours out and she prowls broodingly in and out of her door, sure there was something she was dealing with out there, if she could only just put her paw on it.

39.  I'm indoctrinated in the exigencies of being 'right on'.  I was brought up to it.  Since all bans on buying from or visiting countries under apartheid, fascist or repressive regimes were strictly observed by my parents, most citrus fruits and even some grapes were an absolute rarity,  South African Outspan grapefruits and oranges never crossing our threshold.   When the new package holidays were cheap and available in the seventies, we didn't go, due to the juntas and generals in charge in Spain,  Greece and so on.  So as I say, I am trained up.  But now, what with carbon foot prints and recycling it's really getting difficult. I feel no allowance is made for our street of small kitchened and small gardened houses by the massed phalanxes of recycling bins standing outside either front windows (not a good look) or in the alley (prey to less conscientious neighbours bunging any old stuff in yours when theirs are full). It's as if Dr Who never existed and the daleks have won, crudely standing sentinel outside all our homes.  It's not nice, people; green bags of food stuff, bottle bags and cardboard ones having to be maintained apart in the confines of a small space prior to the ceremonial binning off. Apart from that, there is the conundrum of dealing with mixed material packaging and food remains, a lovely job, scooping out the leftovers, then ripping the packaging into carboard and plastic bits.  Due to my family being on different post Christmas diets nobody's eating together, which kind of doubles the load.  So, I ask, is it really worth it, does it remain seperately recycled after collection or is the rumoured urban myth correct that it still all goes to landfill?  No, I was brought up to be idealistic and I'm doing my best to remain so.  I believe!  

40.  Such is my pathological fear of getting lost that on any lengthy journey to somewhere new, I am armed with physical roadmaps, a written list of directions, a print off from the AA Classic destination roads guide from start to finish and if all else fails, turn to the google maps sat nav facility on my phone.  Despite all this, things can still go wrong.  On a recent trip to Wales, the journey down was faultless, even given an unexpected storm when driving through Snowdonia at the end.  The return was not so straightforward.  The little country roads, A roads down there but B roads by anyone's estimation, wandered through villages and woodland and by river and lakesides.  So far so good until we shot up a hillside turn which I realised was wrong but retreating took us further afield.  We drove on for some time then went down what I thought was the right road.  Eventually realising we had now passed the same shopfronts on two occasions, we turned to the maps and  the satnav.  This too was unpredictable.  By the time we had gone by the same two traffic policeman in a farm gateway by the road three times, each time appearing from a different direction, much to their clear amusement as we tootled nonchalantly by yet again, we just went for what the phone told us.  It took three hours to be taken through the barren wastes of what appeared to be old packhorse roads in the isolation of the mountains, to finally regain a main road and signs we recognised.  I wish I could say I had taken this in the spirit of adventure, but on several occasions went into panic meltdown over petrol limitations, tyres, potential breakdowns and other unforseen disasters.  I had to be reminded that we were not likely to be eaten by passing wildlife if we really had got lost and that we were after all on roads where on the odd occasion, a tractor might go by as a sign of rural civilisation.  Even if we didn't speak Welsh as most were doing there, they might, at a pinch understand our predicament and assist us, which they did.  The moral of the story being, you're never really lost, you've just found somewhere you've never been before and please try to resist a nervous breakdown should you ever venture elsewhere again.  I will do my best to meet such future challenges in that spirit.  

41.  The gods of Yorkshire central heating are once more having the last laugh, or are seriously displeased, whichever way you choose to look at it.  Two further burst radiators have left all comers dumfounded and a whole heap of trouble to sort out.  Consternation reigns and the saga continues with the kind of repairs that just go on, and on and on, as the gods of central heating have this time made a literal interpretaton of  ' apres moi, la deluge'.  Meanwhile, in Lancashire, a further mystery is what kind of creature it is that some foolhardy neighbour has put in an aviery in a small garden somewhere out the back, an area patrolled by incessant cats.  I assume this is why bloodchilling and alien  screechings kick off in full cry throughout the night as it warns of danger.  What is it, though?  I have utubed the calls of sundry varieties of cockerel, of oriental  and red pheasants, anything I could think of.  Nothing resembles the piercingly metallic sound of this unholy racket.  It's as if a psycho peacock is in the midst of a manic episode.  Perhaps someone has gone rogue, Jurassic Park style, and is secretly breeding genetically interfered with pterodactyls in the heart of Lev's terraces.  I have not even located the damn thing, as every time I am ready to listen out from the alleyway for its whereabouts under the cover of bin duties, it remains as silent as the grave which I would be happy to put it in by five o'clock in the morning... 

42.  I recently returned from a weekend visit to a friend in Beverley, an old East Yorkshire market town of great beauty and home to the kind of serene Englishness that dwells in the countryside.  There was a fringe folk festival,  friendly and informal in the pubs and squares, where you could drop in to hear some cheerful glee singing.  This wasn't fanciful bucolic stuff, oh, no, it was 'The Herring Song' (Beverley being near Hull's fishing industry).  Verse one:

  'What’ll we do with a herrin’s head?
What’ll we do with a herrin’s head?
We’ll mak’ it into loaves of bread
Herrin’s head, loaves of bread
And all manner of things:
And of all the fish that swim in the sea
The herrin’ is the one for me'

You made its eyes into puddings and pies.  A versatile little number, the herring.  From Beverley's quiet streets (abed by half ten), where, in one garden the little front lawn is subdued into stripes of such regularity that, if sullied by so much as a fallen leaf, the proud home owner rushes out to remove it and asks you if it's all up to standard when you go by, I returned by train to Manchester.

Modernity reasserted itself from the train journey onwards.  The girl opposite me nodded off briefly leaning on her handbag and awoke looking alarmed and bewildered.  She unzipped her bag, from which a Vesuvial foam fountain erupted unstoppably all over her from a hair mousse can she had in it.  We were just outside the station, so having lent her a carrier bag to put the whole mess in, I directed her to the washrooms before she continued on her way.  I thought, I've got a lot of stuff, I'll get a taxi home.  I approached the first one in the rank outside Piccadilly, who said sternly,

"Is queue, love."

The queue I had failed to notice were not impressed with me, to judge by their antagonistic expressions.  Not to worry, I'll get the bus, I thought, it's only round the corner.  The street stank of weed, not unusually for the city centre.  The bus came and I struggled on to be met on the lower deck by a set of sullen faces, determinedly hogging whole seats by sitting on the outside ones with their bags firmly occupying the window seats, none of them being about to make way for the likes of me.  So I carried myself and my burdens up to the top deck - which stank of weed.  There are things about city life now that are seriously starting to rankle with me, although, I'm not sure I'm yet up to the quiet respectability which might be required of me as the permanent resident of a nice, small place.  Time will tell, I suppose!

43.  I have just come back from a short trip to Amsterdam, where amongst the various groups of people waiting for coaches to return to the ferry was an elderly woman in wildly florid make up who kept asking 'Friesland?' of me, each time one came came in, with increasingly urgent demand.  The Friesland theme, oddly, has continued on my return,  dealing with a request from somebody who belongs to the 'Frisian Alliance' .  Intrigued, I googled the group, an organisation also titled 'Diggers and Dreamers', which says it is dedicated to reconstructing the ancestral heritage of the Frisian-descended peoples, an  ancient matriarchal society with co-operative, if pagan, ways.  How nice, you might think.  Not so.   A short read of a translated text from what appeared to be titled 'The Linda' for rules and regs of those days, recommended that if a person should try to enslave another, you should regard him as your vilest enemy, burn his body and that of his mother, then bury them fifty feet deep so the grass can't grow over them and poison your cattle.  Well, you wouldn't want that, would you?   Various other exhortations warn that failure to comply will have 'the maidens' after you.  No wonder that woman and her equally made up friends waiting for the Friesland coach looked so fierce.  Maybe it was warpaint.  I dread to think now what may have transpired if their coach didn't come in the end but ours arrived first, if tardily, so I never found out.

44.  It's 'Christmas Do' time, so we've been out on one, trying out the Cosy Club restaurant.  We began with cocktails at their bar, where the girl serving tiredly asked us to speak more clearly so she could understand what we wanted.  As it was our first drink, it wasn't alcohol that was affecting our enunciation.  Rather satisfied to do so, she told us that the one we had chosen, 'Cosy Club Cosmo' was off the list tonight.  The ones we had were delicious, though.  The meal was good and there was an offer of a mince pie shot to finish, which I declined.  Judging by the reactions of those who partook, I definitely made the right decision there.  It was all enjoyably followed by more cocktails in a different bar and for once, I managed to leave when I intended for a reasonably sober and early enough bus. It was the next day when time got out of hand, as I chose to watch 'The Irishman' as a pre tea late afternoon film.  I was initially struck by the decades too old ages of the previously gangster film distinguished cast, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci but as they wrinkled their way onwards, the film seeming to take as many years to evolve as the actual time line back in the day, when it finished aeons later (by which time we'd given in to ordering a takeaway as it was too late to bother cooking) I felt I had aged with them. However, by now I was committed to seeing it through.  It turns out, though, when I read up on it, that the film is only a possible ending to what happened to the disappeared Jimmy Hoffa but really, by the time Frank did him in, I couldn't have cared less.  Still, there was a sense of achievement at having stayed the course.  I will find out on Monday how those who did the same at the Christmas do fared as Friday night wore on.

45.  What are we to make of it all, caught up in this medieval seeming pestilence?  It's no longer far away, this one is right here, only, where?  In other countries people are walled up already.  In my mother's care home, residents are in lock down, no visitors allowed.  Here, it's a sunny day and feels almost like business as usual if you look around the streets.  Except it isn't.  Shopping is only a consumer paradise for children, for if we could all live by eating Easter eggs, we could stuff our faces to our hearts' content.  There are plenty of them but that's about all.  Our modern personas are unfitted for waiting our turn, or facing panic buying with phlegmatic patience that there will be jam tomorrow, as empty shelves and enforced rationing in my local Tesco of only one go at milk per shopper testify.  Who would have thought the humble toilet roll likely to assume such epic proportions as a priceless commodity, or pricey one should there be any in the locality at all?  As a Guardian reader, I have prudently hung on to last Saturday's weekend multipaged newspaper edition.  I am old enough to recall toilet squares in a grandparent's outdoor facility being torn up newspaper, so it won't entirely be a novelty if we have to turn to it.  Hopefully not soon, as I have managed to get some in.  I'm also hoping the cheery old chap in Iceland pretending to wrestle with me for a bag of potatoes got only half of what he said right, the first half:

"It's all bollocks this, in't it?  I'll be shooting you for them buggers next week, won't I?" 

46.  In these unusual times, I'm surprised to find how much, for a lot of folk, it's situation normal.  When observing social distancing, there's a chauvinistic competition for the primary space going on in the supermarket, where I find, in particular, that youngish men stride towards me with a challenging stare, or simply barge straight in in front of me while I tamely wait in the gridded off areas for the person who was in front of me to move on from their bit of it.  I ventured out for what I like to call a walk/jog (probably more resembling a child playing trotting pony, I suspect) down to the bridle path yesterday, having stuck to the less favoured route by the school railings previously as being quieter, and found myself being charged past at close quarters by men on bikes. Built like quarterbacks, they were overtaking all on foot and one another with the usual bullish aggression speed shown by that type of cyclist and with no attempt made by them to move aside.  More sporting joggers than myself, I find, are rather the same, never being the ones to take a detour into the grass verge.   No doubt they are all out righteously clapping for the NHS on Thursday nights as a bit of virtue signalling, having puffed, panted and sweated right by the rest of us like virus breathing dragons laying virtual waste to their surroundings.  I can only hope they are as alpha male tip top in themselves as they seem to think they are, for the sake of all the rest of us they are treating so high handedly. So much for gentlemanly forbearance.  Back to the Jane Austen isolation reading for that I guess!

47.  Like many another person, I have just read 'The Mirror and the Light' by Hilary Mantel, her third in the Wolf Hall trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII, with sundry royal wives betwixt and between the rise and fall of the great man to and from power.  In a way, I'm very familiar with all the people concerned, having begun at about fourteen with Jean Plaidy's series on each wife and read most related historical novel fiction, interspersed with real historical texts, ever since. Simultaneously, I''ve been watching a recorded series by David Starkey on the monarch and the making of the monster and have seen all television and film dramas about those times, I think. And yet, how tantalising it still is to wonder, whatever interpretations are made, however possibly accurate, what the individuals were really like.   In a way, the court was such a small world.  The difference in time and manners, ways of speaking and thinking, how much or how little the women, even those from such rich and powerful families, could influence their lives, makes it so much more remote.  The book is a remarkably vivid read, as much emphasis placed on the detail of meals dined on as the dreadfulness of the executions and the way religion plays, as always, into the manipulative hands of the powerful.  One of the things the author comments on in her interviews is how quiet everything would have been in Tudor times, what an assault on the ears modern traffic and noise would be to them, the sheer numbers of people about bewildering.  On evening walks now, the traffic stilled by lockdown and all of us indoors in fear of our own time's  'Sweating Sickness', as much of an incalculable threat to our lives as that was to theirs, if there were still monks in Gorton monastery, I'd be able to hear the plainsong being chanted in the distance.  Coming out for the NHS clap on a Thursday is beginning to feel like that kind of an observance, so I think I'm beginning to dislike it.  It feels more for show than being about the NHS staff, somehow.  I could, of course, be quite wrong about that. 

48.  The glorious weather during my week off, not spent in Whitby as planned but in the lockdown bubble, encouraged a garden furniture painting project.  The once dull grey metal table and chairs beginning to rust (a bargain from B&Q back in the day, let me tell you) are now a high gloss lipstick red.  It was a painstaking business of sanding, primer coats, and then the torment of doing over the bits of curly stuff I'd missed.  The day I'd just done the second coat on the table and chair seats, the first coat having dried perfectly,  two hours later, unforcast squall winds and rain blasted bits on to it all and blotched the finish.  Undeterred I waited for the next excellent day's sunshine and did them all over again.  It looked amazing!  Surely this would be fine now, I thought, heading out for a well earned stroll.  I have never before heard of greenfly infesting a garden table.  I can personally bear witness that they do.  I have no idea what the neighbours made of me bending over it for some time, surgically, with a pair of tweezers.  I rescued it, all bar one of the little blighters which had not got its teensy weensy feet stuck in my glorious goo but had sunk on its back right in, so had to be painted over in place the next morning.  I am justly proud.  The only downside is that I won't allow anyone to sit on the chairs or place anything on the table in case it chips or marks it before the gloss paint has hardened off.  Which takes about a week, I think.  By which time the weather may have broken and the long suffering family will have to look out of the kitchen window to admire it instead of, as I currently invite them to do, stand round it appreciatively and then go and perch on the patio wall. I'm thinking coasters, when I do allow them to use the table at all.

49.  Lockdown has provided some homeworking challenges due to intermittent network signal when working upstairs in my newly acquired desk and office space area (in other words, my daughter's bedroom since she has recently found a flat again).  Whereas when on the kitchen table in happy proximity to cakes and biscuits, I didn't have an issue but was in the way, upstairs I did (which was odd, as my daughter hadn't).  However, this promped an overdue review of packages etc and a call to the provider customer service centre.  I always find them very chatty and helpful and this was no exception.  What I needed was a new modem.  They sent me a new one last year?  Yes but out of date, also you need superfast fibre optic broadband.  I thought I had supfast fiber optic broadband already?  Don't worry you've been with us so long you're a VIP customer.  This will be better. 

Put through to another person, they assured me that they themselves had been with other providers, equally useless in the signal round the house department until she too had got this super new modem, which solved things, especially between her and her boyfriend, as lack of signal was using up all his smartphone data.  I do find these chats can get quite cosy with the customer service centre.  The new modem duly arrived and after a few days of havering over instructions to install it, I did it.  Brilliant, I now had a signal upstairs but it wouldn't accept the password for installing smartphone, Kindle, or Tvs for wireless connection.  Back to the call centre and while waiting to see if that unfailing bit of expert technical advice, switch the modem off and on again, worked when it reloaded, another confiding chat.

"I am Bulgarian.  I didn't want to do this, you know.  When I grew up I wanted to be a vet or a soldier.  Now I am here.  In this country, it is very different from Bulgraria. Everybody seems to work in a business,"  she stated but I couldn't ask her more about this intriguing difference, as at this point the modem rebooted but no dice with the password.  "The modem is faulty and I must send you a new one.  How can I explain it?  It is as if somebody is knocking on your door but you cannot allow them over the threshold".  

I thought she said Bulgaria, not Transylvania?

The new one has now arrived and is fine in the password and reception upstairs requirements.  However, apparently in our shared team google meet, I am still mouthing at people as pointlessly as a goldfish for most of the time while they chat away.  That's what you get for being with Sky instead of BTperhaps  The first Sky person I got to when I had called initially (the repairs coverage I pay for) said one theory was that BT strangled the line for users of other providers to get them to switch, another that your provider gradually does it to force you to upgrade. 

"Take your pick", he said indifferently.  "Could be true."

Well it could, I suppose.  

50. Lovely moment today when viewing a local beauty spot, Daisy Nook, complete with lakeside walks, a swan and her  adult sized but still grey cignets.

"Ahh,  look," a woman nearby exclaimed, waxing poetic,  "giraffes of the sea.."

Priceless!

51.  I realise that my exercise with Youtube videos at short intervals during the day of aerobics, pilates and qigong, may leave me open to accusations of wild exhibitionism.  There I am, apparently performing for the public in leggings and vest right in the middle of the front room picture window.  The television I am watching my video on  would be below the eyeline of passersby, of whom there are a surprising number at any given time in my cul-de-sac street, as the hedge that goes a third of the way up the front of the window screens that off.  If I'm going to keep fit, I have to keep up my pretence that I can't see people, often the neighbouring kids, gawking in.  It probably gives them all a good laugh at the same time but I don't seem to mind the embarrassment of that these days.  After all, if I go running, I have to weather the open hilarity of the woman across the road as I wave hello going by, who is about my age but unlike me, petitely neat and clearly wouldn't be seen dead etc.  Well, she doesn't need to, does she?

52.  Fancy a trip out of increased restrictions in semi lockdown Levenshulme?  Within permitted bounds?  Just a drive up to the hills between Manchester and Yorkshire, little tour just in the car, no getting out?  Not a chance, mate!  Oh, you might get teasingly within range, on the run up to the Oldham roundabout on Manchester Road, just far enough to feel you're on your way, but guess what, you're not.  Nope the police have the road entirely closed off so that you can enjoy a little reverse tour of the back streets of Chadderton trying to go back, which of course, can't be the same way you came, but keeps you within the Greater Manchester boundaries for what's left of a decentish afternoon.  Well, there is a pandemic on, you know...the sights of Manchester districts are all you're entitled to, sunshine.  Off you pop home now, like good folk.

53.  I have always been interested in where people came from in the family history and finally invested in the Ancestry DNA test to find out likely ethnicities.  I find that half of my DNA belongs in North Kerry, Ireland, where my father came from and evidently so did everybody else forever and a day, 49% of my DNA haling from there, 34% is Scottish, 10% English and North European, 5% Sephardic Jewish from Prussia regions, and 2% from Norway.  So pretty much Celtic overall with a bit of other migrants thrown in along the way.  The mix is from my mother's side, where my daughter having done some previous ferreting about, we found a Rebecca Orenstein from Prussia who came to Glasgow, where 4 generations of Levensons turning into Levesons resided, then coming to Hull, where they continued to be bespoke tailors but nobody knew anything about any Jewish origins by my grandmother's day (although, interestingly, people used to say because of the surname that she must be).  It just goes to show that if you are of ordinary folk then the ordinary things apply, that is, they were rural for ages, then some of them moved to cities, or had to move economically or politically and if you were near the coast, then there's a bit of Scandi in there from the Vikingesque times, or, more likely, just sailors!  Everyone seemed to live a long time barring accidents but since they were not of rich stock, I guess to survive until adulthood and through childbirth for the women, they were pretty strongly built.  Somehow I thought there would be something more interestingly foreign in there but....no....not really.  No wonder I can never get a decent tan with all that Celt going on!

54.  I must say all the social restrictions and time spent in the nearest locality due to Covid 19 give plenty of time for watching the world go by.  There's the lady round the corner sweeping the pavement tree leaves up assiduously every day and why wouldn't you, when you get a chance for a wave at somebody?  I've christened her 'Our Lady of the Leaves'.  Then there's the tiny lady round another corner, who has a pinkly excited face under a fluff of escapee grey hair, who rushes everywhere in breathless fashion.  The other morning, leaning back as if in a high wind and struggling with the apparently straining leashes of two miniature pompom sized dogs tiptoing along, she called out to the postman (a tall and hardy chap who wears shorts with his walking boots in most seasons),

"Don't worry about these two, I've got them under control!"

"Oh, right.  Thanks for that, then, love" he answered ,with kindly irony.

55.  It's getting mighty rural around here, not to mention all of us neighbours being wild for entertainment in our little locked down cul-de-sac.  So much so that a small, very small flock of hens who potter freely in a little tribe up and down the alley and now boldly round the front of the houses have been celebrated as excitedly as if they were at least peacocks on patrol.  I must say it's quite a strange sight on a terraced red brick street.  The local cats are baffled, also fortunately intimidated, so fur and feathers are not flying!

 56.  A culinary tip or an accidental scientific experiment?  When hard boiling some eggs to go with a salad so as not to waste the a bit out of date ones, pay heed when a strange smell spreads throught the house about an hour later.  It's not next door doing something weird with a stew.  It is the blackened exploded heap in your boiled dry saucepan 'becoming' an entirely different entity, quite what I don't know.  Most of the egg had blasted out of the pan and the shell was an interesting sooty black, part melded into the non stick lining of the pan.  Fortunately the plastic handle wasn't over the gas flame.  I now know the meaning of the saying, 'can't even boil an egg'.  Well it was interesting!

57.  Still on cooking, the final of this year's Bake Off was a near draw, it seems.  I had visions of a play off between the two contestants, French sticks at dawn possibly.  With Paul and Prue saying things like 'No your breadstick didn't break, underproved and stale.'  'Yours shattered perfectly.  An excellent baton, I declare you the winner.'

They came to a decision though and it was Peter Perfect, a likeable child, as indeed his whole family still seemed to be at all ages.  I wonder how super competetive and eager to please David really felt, having stormed up the ranks from wants to win badly but not doing as well as some others to, wants to win badly, nearly cracked it?  I am looking foward to the sardonic remarks of 'An extra Slice' on Friday with Jo Brand and Tom Allen.  After that, it'll soon be Christmas...

58.  It's twelfth night, the decorations are down, the Christmas plonk is kerplunk and it's a new lock down to kick us off with.  I fear for our mental health, as do others, about theirs as well as ours.  I'm sure we never used to say things over tea like,

"You know how people name children after places, Kerry, India, and things?  It's a good job it never took off in Yorkshire isn't it?  Imagine what you'd have to live down? 'Blubberhouses, fasten that coat up!' "

"Scarbottom get in for your tea!"

"By Heckmondwyke!"

"That's different."

"I know but..."  

I fear it's too late for us, I really do and it's not even near Candlemass yet (in February according to Classic FM, who were saying some were keeping their Christmas decs up until then, which seems a bit sad to me and smacks of desparation but then, these are desparate times).

59.  Today, I became a statistic.  I'm no good with numbers so I can't tell you what it is precisely but I'm one of those now who has had their first Covid vaccination today, 8th March.  Oxford Zenica in my case.  It was all choreographed at the Etihad Sports stadium like synchronised swimming.  At every staging post of the two metre distanced queues through the process, you had to sanitise your hands again.  They gave you a new throwaway mask on entry, so no old germs came in on yours.  It was quite a remarkable thing and extremely well organised.  So far I have had no problems, not even with heavy arm, although I'm saddened to read it's recommended that you can't have a drink for two weeks afterwards.  A stiff gin might have been quite nice after tea!  They don't know though, it's just a recommendation.  Normally it wouldn't bother me but now they've said I can't...

60  It seems that it is not just the mindset of human beings at home during lockdown which is being affected.  My daughter's cat Margot currently resides with us and has become obsessed of late with pairs of trainers, batting them round the room or lying on them.  Anybody's will do.  Does she have attachment issues or is she just plain bonkers?  Well, she is a two tone tortoiseshell, half black face, half ginger and prone to dual personality behaviour, so it's hard to tell.

61.  Although nothing much has happened as far as visiting the outside world has been concerned for the last year and a half, I have achieved a lifetime ambition to have my writing published!  This week, publisher Blossom Spring accepted my novel Seahaven which will be out in several months time, around 2021 if not before!  I am absolutely thrilled and could not be more delighted!  I can't wait to see it in paperback and e-book!  'Yours Fiction' special quarterly short story magazine has now published three of my short stories too, November 2020 (The Pusher), January 2021 (Sea Monster) and May 2021 (Whispers in the Wind).  A fourth, (Brenda's Wedding Day) will come out on 15th July.  The crowning glory of anything in my various careers, though, is to have my novel accepted.  I have others languishing in folders from typewriter days which once did the rounds many years back.  These, though, are all new literary adventures with new work.  Exciting stuff!

62. I am managing, finally, to begin selling some of the furniture and household stuff which travelled over from Halifax when my mother went into her care home, and which has languished since lockdown and afterwards in the Shed Shop, taking over all former furnishings and smalls for sale in there as the province of my partner and daughter. A very nice lady came to look at the music centre but as the deck was running a bit slow, decided against it. Not to worry, I Watsapped her back, no doubt baffling her, thanks to the wonders of autospell, as to why I would probably donate it to Barbados and doubtless even more greatly puzzled by my certainty that an entire Caribbean country would be interested in my mother's music centre. I meant, of course, Barnados. But in fact, autospell proved prophetic. I posted it for free on buy, swap and sell due to the malfunctioning deck and it was snapped up by a gent who told me it would go straight to a shop in Africa! Different country, but still on a far wider scale of demand than I had imagined!

63. A return to work is waiting in the wings. After so long at home, this has come to seem the norm. Which is liberating to the spirit I am wondering? Perhaps then, the discovery of a budgerigar in my house (a reluctant visitor dragged in through the catflap but which had eluded Margot by hiding behind a cupboard) is symbolic. It had pecked through its aviary cage wire from the street behind and found an elusive liberty in the wrong country, fortunately in summer, then was pounced on by an invisible predator and finally, after efforts to retrieve it safely (and it had not looked injured or died of fright) it was returned to its captive setting. Will Covid still be lurking invisibly in the air? Of course it will. Let's hope we can avoid it and our double jabs are as effective as they possibly could be.

64. The rates are rising steadily before return to school and return to work have an impact on infection. There is talk of removing the triple lock on pensions, of the BBC licence fee rising, of needful tax increases due to the heavy cost of social care for the aged. And yet, as far as I know, no talk of any further locking down. Those of us double jabbed earlier in the year have a couple of months of protection left but of course can still become infected and transmit it back to those at home who are retired. I cannot help feeling that somebody somewhere is saying,

"If they are like to die, then let them do it, and decrease the surplus population."

65. It's so unfair! I only have to look at a biscuit that's not basically made of papier mâché  and hey presto, I've gained half a stone...

66. It's Halloween, and I've just watched a video about the origins of the festival. Among them I learned that the druids passed a law that all people's fires must be extinguished, while their own burnt through the night, from which people might 'purchase' a new fire for their hearths for the winter.  So - fuel prices were unfairly rigged by the monopoly in control way back when then too, were they?

67. A Dickensian moment struck this week. JB is due a pension increase this year due to the wisdom of his years. An internet check confirmed this would be automatic and lo, a letter arrived announcing this impending cost of living increase - 25 pence a week. What? That's not right, we clucked, and checked the internet again. No, definitely not right. JB phoned the DWP and eventually got through to have a person confirm nobody got any more than that. No, I said, let me ring. I had three false starts on the automatic choice system, which rather like a mirror maze, directs you down blind alleys and then triumphantly says, go to the website, end of call. I passed the first test and got on hold. Half an hour later I got a different adviser. She explained that everybody gets that letter, yes, that part was true but...and it's quite a big but...the system generates that letter from text so many years out of date that the reason everbody gets 25pence mentioned is that this was, back then, the price of a bag of coal. Yep! This rise relates to the coal fired era when pensioners over 80, like Bob Cratchit, were allowed another lump of coal on their meagre grate.  The DWP is that up to date. How reassuring that is given what's about to come chugging down the line cost of living wise thanks to whatever reasons are not Brexit, Covid and Partygate. I asked the obvious question. Why? She didn't know, and yes, everybody did call about it and yes, staff did keep raising it as an issue. I pointed out what the first adviser had said. 'We have some new staff' she told me. Perhaps a training issue then, I suggested. Apparently, after the significant birthday, a form is sent out, yes, by the DWP, which has to be completed to get this 'automatic' rise. Let's hope we don't accidentally consign ourself to a workhouse by mistake if it's the wrong form. No, that couldn't happen. It's bound to be the right form - isn't it?

68. In the summer of 1995, temperatures soared into the red and our weathermaps were covered in smiley faces. Now, a planned four days' holiday is potentially scuppered, as apparently travelling by train to Whitby is the equivalent of going through Death Valley without a hat. And that's if there are any trains which are a) running at all b) not broken down c) not subject to catastrophic accidents due to melted rails and d) haven't been re-routed via destinations unknown.  Such are the dire predictions of Trans Pennine, already bedevilled by cancellations due to sickness, strikes and whatever it is that happens in a strange, Bermuda Triangle part of the railway network outside Leeds. Here 'issues on the line' have often  featured  as I waited at platforms, watching the announcement board saying my train is on time go mysteriously blank, without explanation, during many of my previous journeys to somewhere northwards, or not, as the case may be.....