Consideration

Readers of the Fox's blog will already know what a thoroughly enjoyable evening we had yesterday to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. What could be better than an excellent meal, a good bottle of bubbly, mellow sounds & good, loving, company?

When PD rang yesterday to congratulate us, I told him about all the noise we'd had to endure on the night before.

" But it was Sunday,"" he spluttered.

" That doesn't make any difference these days," I commented. " We live in irreligious days."

I have to confess I don't entirely regret the passing of the deadly quiet Sundays of my youth, so wonderfully captured in an episode of " Hancock's Half Hour". Then there was literally nothing to do, apart that is, from church. No shops, no TV, nothing. My usual Sunday was church in the morning, then doing the school homework I should have done before. (I always tended to leave homework to the last minute. There were more enjoyable distractions to do over a weekend.) Even when TV started to happen on a Sunday afternoon, there was usually a sport option & my father's passion for that took priority.

No, I don't regret that there are more things to do these Sundays. And I don't want to force my religious views on other people. But I do think they should have shown more consideration whatever the day, and especially night, may be, the more so when it was a Sunday when they could have been insulting someone else's religious views.

Sound assault

I do wish people could be more considerate. By the yesterday afternoon the wind had blown itself out & the sun came a-visiting. We contemplated eating out in the garden but the cacophony of noise put us off. On one side of our garden there was a huge bouncy castle (we assume the balloon we found tethered to our potato plants had wafted in from here) accompanied by loud beating music. In another direction another party was clearly going on with a different taste in music but equally loud. Underlying this was the dull thud of the beat from the live band at our local pub. We decided to eat in, in comparative peace.

As the evening went on, the volume of noise grew. For part of the evening, we covered over the sound with some Louis Armstrong while we sipped some wine. At last music we could appreciate & to our taste. Eventually, after 11pm I had to yield & go to bed. Through the open window the beat from neighbours' parties invaded. In the end I had to give in & have a sleeping pill. Otherwise I would have just tossed & tossed, getting more & more worked up & agitated.

All this noise would have been more acceptable if we could just have been forewarned. Then we would have had the choice of going away to avoid it. At least we might have had some idea when it would stop, maybe even have had a bit of a nap earlier on to have kept me going until a later hour. I don't want to be a total spoil-sport & ban people from having parties. I want them to enjoy themselves. I just wish they could do it more quietly. Some people want some sleep. If nothing else I would have thought their own young children would want some peace to sleep!

Today, so far, all is blessedly quiet. Long may it continue.

A wild day

I was listening to the radio early this morning. They were talking about St Kilda. At one point they commented that the weird sound you could hear was the wind blowing. What weird sound, I thought. I couldn't hear anything for the howls & screeches from the wind outside the window, occasionally interrupted by the the slashing of the rain on the glass.

It's a wild day. It struck me the moment I saw the trees dancing in all directions. Most of the time I'm not aware that many of the trees in the back garden have a silvery underside. Today there's no denying it. Needless to say I've not ventured out to church in this mayhem.

A symbol of liberation

The Fox came back from his Carers' course yesterday. Apparently, at one point, he was asked whether I was permanently confined to a wheelchair. Now this is a phrasing that really gets to me, as he well knows. I am not, & never have been "confined" be a wheelchair. For me, a wheelchair is a source of liberation. Without it, I would never go out. I would never have visited so much of the world - no trips to France, Australia, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, not even to London, Harrogate or Edinburgh in Britain. I would never get to church, the Pub, the shops, the surgery, the dentist, optician etc. I would never have met so many people who have become my friends & given me so much love & support.

I remember well the visit which decided me a wheelchair was now a necessity. We visited the gardens at Grayrigg, in Cumbria. The garden is well laid out with loads of benches scattered around. I must have sat gratefully on every one of the seats. It became an endurance test as I hobbled from one seat to the next. On the way home, we stopped at a nearby pub for a bit of refreshment. By then I was in so much pain it had spoilt the whole visit. What is more, the pain continued at that high pitch for a couple of weeks after. Never again I thought. Next time I saw the GP I asked about a wheelchair, & have never regretted it.

When the Social Worker came the other week to assess us for some respite vouchers, she was surprised, & pleased, to hear that I not only have a wheelchair, but I regularly go out in it. So many of her clients are so ashamed of the wheelchair, feel so horribly embarrassed, that they won't go out in it & use it except for essential medical trips. Maybe it's just that I was still in my late 30s/early 40s when I first got a wheelchair, too young to spend the rest of my life shut up inside or in such intense pain.

The Fox pointed all this out to the assembled group.

So here's to the wheelchair, a symbol of liberation.

A useful day

Yesterday turned out to be a day for getting a few admin things sorted out.

First we went along to the library to organise my disabled parking Blue Badge. They've changed the system. You used to drop off the form, with photos, to the local Social Services office. Now it's done centrally, county-wide, in Preston. However, you do have the option of going to various libraries in the county. There you apply at a screen. You have a telephone to speak to the person you see on screen. There is a camera perched on top of the screen to take your photo at the appropriate time. There is a scanner on one side for you to scan your evidence of your entitlement. It is operated from their end. And there is a pressure pad where you sign & an image of your signature is recorded & transmitted to them. All very clever. Now we just have to wait for it to arrive in the post.

Having successfully made that application, we went on to Morecambe town hall. Here I applied for my new bus pass. And, for the first time, I was allowed to apply there for the special parking ticket for disabled council tax payers which is necessary to park in the pedestrianised area of Lancaster. Usually we've had to go into Lancaster town hall for this, which is a bit awkward as they use your Blue Badge as evidence of you entitlement & you need that to park while you pop into the town hall. (Traffic wardens in Lancaster are notoriously efficient at writing up parking tickets!) This extra parking ticket is useful as often the pedestrianised area is the only place you can park near the shops.

All done we set off to the Pub. It seemed strange being there without PD, but he was busy with grandfatherly duties. For a while we were the only two in the bar. Then came along Al, our gardener. We offered him our congratulations. It was the village horticultural show at the weekend and he did well. Indeed he won in 15 out of the 18 categories he entered. He also won a cup for the highest number of points scored by any single person in the show this year & the massive sum of £7.50. Well, we told him, that will at least buy you some seeds for next year. "Not likely," he replied, "The missus took it straight off me!"

All in all, a useful day rather than exciting one.

Changes

I've decided on a simple omelette for dinner today. Well, maybe not so simple as I'm intending to add some cooked gammon & rice to it.

I thought I'd start by unearthing some of the Fox's wonderful home grown potatoes. I'd just located a couple of small ones & one big one when the skies began to open. I hastily put the potatoes back in the soil & covered them over. I wasn't about to get soaked unnecessarily. I could always peel our last remaining shop-bought old potatoes for chips.

Just as well I did. Since then it's poured down. The room became so dark I was tempted to put the lights on. A roll of thunder could be heard from the heavens.

It all seems so different from Sunday, when we were able to sit out in the garden to eat our dinner, enjoying the sun & warmth. Still that's England for you - rarely two days the same.

Sunflowers

In the pot of sweet peas near the back door, a huge sunflower has appeared, self-seeded of course. It has been a source of great frustration to me. I've often fancied growing some sunflowers. They're big, bold and cheery. They also would provide plenty of free seeds for the birds. But, and this is a big but, whenever I've planted some seeds, the birds have as quickly dug them out & eaten them then & there. So it is with great amazement I view this specimen. It stands several feet tall. The flower is just opening up. It will be several inches across, cheery indeed.

Sunflowers I associate with two places above all. The first time I really appreciated them was when we were staying in the Loire valley. We drove up a hill to gain a view of the river below & of Chinon. Up there there were fields of sunflowers. It was autumn so they were starting to turn brown & dry, ready for harvesting for their oil. This was clearly a farmed field. The lines of flowers were just too regular for anything else. In French, we learnt, sunflowers are called "tournesol", because they turn (tourne) to the sun (le sol) throughout the day.

My next memory of them was at Gouda in the Netherlands. They have regular colourful markets there. One of the most spectacular stalls sold flowers. The sunflowers were splendid. Everyone seemed to be buying them. Homes throughout the area must have been decorated with them.