Who flipped the calendar?

It cannot be March since I last came here! Judging by the dust and mustiness it has been!! Sooo what’s been going on… *scrolls through calendar*…. meetings ….. crocheted a baby blanket…. meetings….. singalong…. meetings…. quiz night at neighbours….. meetings…. argue with hospital….. meetings…. crochet cat blanket…. nominated for an award…. more meetings….. said bye to staff leaving…. Easter raffle, won two Easter eggs ….. meetings ….. argue with hospital again ….. meetings…. shortlisted for a National award ….. meetings ….. meetings ….. got my hair cut and coloured. Yeap, that’s about it.

Back in early February, after BFF’s visit I made a brief little to-do list, okay let’s see……ohhh-errrr

• Book an at home eye test – done, ended up having to go to the opticians in-person anyway, which ended up with eye clinic referral, which ended up…..well that’s another story of broken system incompetence.
• Call for a Dentist appointment – done, booked the taxi, dentist cancelled appointment, made another that was not do-able, so cancelled that, rebooked another and the taxi.
• Start stitching the baby blanket – done and done (for a dog) and done (for a cats outdoor house) and another in slow slow progress
• Spend some time at the desk – done, but will need to do more when new Mac arrives
• Bravely ask for help with some sorting of my junk jobs – can we skip this one, wish my Mary Poppins style click of the fingers worked.

What’s that? Oh, the nomination and shortlisting, you saw that. Well, quite unexpectedly I was approached by the Housing Association who wanted to put my name forward for the annual national “Women In Housing” awards. Flattered and surprised sprung to mind, I’m relatively new to all this and didn’t feel I’d done anything exceptional that warranted such reward but hey ho, who am I to question the wonders of the world. Earlier this month the shortlist was published and bugger me, I’m on it, as Board/Committee Member of the Year. There’s a swanky do in June when the winners will be announced.

May is a month of meetings, there’s a spotlight project drilling down into the nitty gritty of an area to weed out issues and suggest improvements. A few strategic governance meetings so make the bigwigs and contractors squirm a little. A couple of hospital appointments, each will take up the day and result in nothing or something tediously unhelpful.

Still my reward will be a new Mac. My current one is over ten years old, slower than a politician answering a yes/no question and as I get reward points from the Housing Association for meetings and reading, I’ve saved up a years worth to redeem against a new shinny speedy machine.

Curious how life changes, once upon a couple of decades ago I’d be blogging most weeks, now things have shrunk considerably.

I did write a couple of clerihews for April 23rd which I was rather pleased with.

Remarked St George
"I strived to forge,
But those buggers instead
Cut off me head!"

Scribbled The Bard
"All this rhyming is hard
I know what I'll do
Finish Taming Of The Shrew"

Simple pleasures!

 

It Started With The …

On a Facebook group our talented leader often posts a “Sunday Prompt”, it might be a word, usually a picture, something to get our poetic juices flowing. This week she posted this

Go for a walk around your flat, or wherever you are. Pick things up and look in nooks and crannies. Find something that sparks a memory. Write about that memory. Have the first sentence be:

“It started with the…’

Hmm… interesting, intriguing and inviting. It started the musing and cogitating – I glanced around me and wondered what item would spark an interesting anecdote. So much of my trinketry and souvenirs of my life adventures had to be let go, donated, sold or ditched. Then I remembered by box of bits and wondered what curios of my past it was hiding.

---

It started with the day trip, for the fun of it we’d go to Felixstowe, walk onboard the ‘roll on roll off’ ferry and sail the seas to Zeebrugge., then catch the next one back (6 hour sail, each way). At the time I was learning navigation at the Maritime College, so I would set myself up at the table with the sea chart (the size of a small table cloth), compass, dividers, parallel ruler, pencil, paper, and calculator, and would plot our progress.

After seeing me doing this my Dad got a bit of balsa wood about inch long, shaped it, glued a couple of cocktail sticks, painted it (complete with green and red navigation lights) and found a little Perspex box to put it in. Then he found a tiny piece of blue paper for the ship to sit on, and created a background complete with lighthouse and birds in flight. He presented it to me when we were getting ready for the next trip.

I set myself up once more and every few minutes I would recalculate our position and move the ship along. Often we would see the same person walk past and take a glance, maybe make a comment. Sometimes a gent would stop and ask a question or start a chat. Then one day, after the Purser had been back and forth, he returned with a piece of paper and passed it to me. Word of my plotting had reached the Bridge and the Navigation Officer sent down an exact position Latitude and Longitude. Guess what folks, lil old amateur learner was less the a few millimetres out!

I have a vague visual remembrance of a line of bums peering out the windows into the darkness, counting the flashes of buoys, so I could find them on the chart.

It made the journey more interesting than just reading or doing homework.

 

Sigh, humph,

::sigh:: I’m struggling to shake off my winter lethargy and general clouded funk that cloaks me every year. It was certainly not helped my the sinusitis and blocked ears across Christmas and New Year, both events passed me completely unrecognised.

The good thing about January was my BFF visiting, and as she was finally well enough after her three months of chest infections, she was pleased to get here too.

We surpassed our level of activities by doing absolutely nothing. We watched films and tv series, we ate tasty comforting food and we did little else. Our viewing list (not including the quiz shows) consisted of –

1. Man of the year
2. St Trinians
3. Heat of the night
4. Chicken run dawn of the nugget
5. The trust (Netflix series)
6. I am a stalker (Netflix series)
7. Maestro (Leonard Bernstein)
8. Nyad 
9. The Mercy 
10. The electric life of Louie wain 
11. The reverend & Mrs Simpson
12. It snows in Benidorm 
13. Pamela with love - her words
14. Murdaugh Murders (both series)
15. Inside the mind of cats
16. I used to be famous
17. King of thieves
18. Failure to launch
19. Morning Glory
20. Murdered
21. Man vs Bee (series)
22. Filthy Rich, Jeffrey Epstein
23. Our Father
24. Hard times
25. 23 Walks
26. Belonging
27. May contain nuts
28. Walking the Grand Canyon
29. H is for Happiness
30. Archie (becoming Cary Grant)

All too soon she was on her bumpy way home 😢 but will be back in June 😁

What else – I think I mentioned I’d become an ‘engaged customer’ with the Housing Association, while I enjoy the sessions and the putting forward of opinions and suggestions, questioning some issues etc, the involvement in governance and recruitment at higher levels, with much more intelligent experienced people than me, I do have a bubbling bout of imposter syndrome. Have I over egged my past experience and abilities or just lost a level of confidence that comes with increasing age and decreasing health.

Anyway, maybe I need a list 😆

• Book an at home eye test
• Call for a Dentist appointment
• Start stitching the baby blanket
• Spend some time at the desk
• Bravely ask for help with some sorting of my junk jobs

Onwards and upwards as the year brightens……

 

Bunged Up & Fuming!

This really sums up my experience of this year.

On Monday 11th I was persuaded (read a guilt coerced) into attending a bit of a do in the lounge. A very entertaining couple were singing Christmas songs and jollying things up. It was immediately obvious that the room was roasting, the heat here is always on ‘hell’ setting. I was glad to get back to my cooler corner.

Lo and behold Wednesday morning, I’m sniffing and swollen and trying not to choke, gag, heave or hurl – great, I’ve caught the grubby bug. Out come the cold/flu potions, throat sweets, and a couple of ibuprofen for the headache. Please, please bugger offeth

It didn’t, it settled in, brought friends (aching teeth, throbbing ears, throat clearing, energy sapping, steals voice). By Monday this week I’m fed up of the constant sniffing, managing to have a nasal drip while also blocked. Feeling utterly crappy groggy and ugg (technical medical term), along with looking an unpleasant shade of grey death.

The team called my GP for assistance – the response 8 hours later, only have antibiotics if gunk is proper thick green otherwise go to Pharmacy. Gee wizz, sure *rolleyes* My gunk wasn’t green, either the consistency of tears or wallpaper paste glue.

So Tuesday 19th I peruse jolly old Boots meds choices and select one, answer a dozen questions as it’s a behind counter job, select next day delivery and click to buy.

Wednesday morning there’s a text from Royal Mail with a link – Sorry your parcel has been delayed, sent to wrong sorting office.

Thursday I wait and wait and wait. Ping. Another text, your parcel has been delivered. Yippee, I look at the photo and it shows a parcel poking out a mailbox, except it’s not my mail box. No worries it’s likely in the main building box. Hang on, the one in the picture has a wreath hanging from it, ours doesn’t (I can see it from my window). Yeap, you guessed it – they’ve delivered it to the wrong address!

Onto the Royal Mail site to see if I can make contact with anyone and there are two choices, telephone (yeah except I’ve no voice for more than a few words) or I can write a letter. Really! Are you having a laugh!! By the time RM deliver the posted letter it will be 2025!

I’m done, M living in a world of incompetent idiots, I want to check out and head back to the proper days of service.

EDIT :: The very nice people who live at the wrong address kindly dropped the parcel off at our main office. I have my meds 🤪

 

The Interpreter Of Silence

Recently on Disney+ I watched this five part series. It was dubbed into English, not altogether smoothly and I felt that some of the translation and inflections were muddled, but getting past that the premise of the film was intriguing.

A young woman in her twenties, a proficient translator (German/Polish), is called upon to translate for people called as witnesses in a trial. It’s 1963, decades have passed, but the weight of war is still very heavy within the German communities.

It was intriguing from the perspective of, how did the German people explain the horrors of war and living in Europe during the war, to their children. Just take a moment, the fragility of your personal safety, the fragility of your associations, the vehemence of the power of indoctrination and dictatorship of the Reich forcing intelligent people into utterly horrific situations. The cold fingers of suspicion and mistrust everywhere.

The Frankfurt Trials were beginning to uncover and bring into the light the actions of those in charge at Auschwitz and Birkenau, the mass executions, the mass gassing, the branding and the unethical torturous ‘medical research’ callously inflicted upon those interred there.

Apart from hearing the testimonies of the survivors, and visiting the concentration camp, there is the defensive attitude of the defendants. Away from the trial, the stench and stain of the past is far reaching, her parents run a successful restaurant but from time to time a customer appears who her parents refuse to serve, without explanation. She is being courted by a successful young man whose father has secrets too. Sins of the past follow their future.

The hardest bitterest truth to discover is her own. As a small child (she became 24 in 1963, so born at the start of World War II) these snap shot memories slowly fit into place, changing her core truths and trusts.

It was well scripted and acted, if a little bumpy at times, not too too many subtle nuances that were crucial to catch. It was thought provoking and informative without being gory or showy.

This was one of those shows, as with many based on true story dramas, that you cannot say was entertaining or suspenseful but it was a very good watch.

 

December poem

Well here we are, month twelve of my personal poetic challenge and I’mma gonna spoil ya! Now in the past I’ve scribed Festive Stress and Festive Peace but there are thirty other days in this closing month than that one.

So let’s begin with something jolly. Remember the Clerihue? The whimsical ditty style, I wrote some apocryphal ones for May.

Said Santa Claus
"I need some new draws
I'll look a buffoon 
Mooning the Moon"

Right then, next a haiku, the style that runs on syllables, the strict three lines 5-7-5 pattern

December arrives
Another year draws to close
we made it, almost

Finally (for now) a Tanaga, another syllable poem, but this time the pattern is four lines each of seven syllables that also rhyme.

Dickens made December white
In his tales of woe and plight
Many a dark night frighted
and cherub face delighted

You know what, as I was searching for the links to those festive poems, scrolling through the tag I’ve penned quite a few poems and some of them ain’t too horrid. According to Wiki a Bard is “In Celtic cultures, a bard is a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron’s ancestors and to praise the patron’s own activities.” But I think I’ve a ways to go yet, lol.

 

The Poppy Bows It’s Head

The Poppy bows it's head
As we thank the generation who
With unselfish fear, sacrificed and suffered
And did all that they could do

They were not career fighters
They were fathers and sons
Transported across our globe
Firing life ending guns

They were not career fighters
They were daughters and wives
Digging land, turning lathes,
Manning factories, nursing lives

Never knowing how it would end 
As bombs and bullets rained.
Buy your poppy, bow your head
And be thankful they sustained

©️AMGroves 2023

 

November – poem

Have we all braced ourselves for the coming storms, are we dried out from last time. In reality where I am has not suffered much, just a few bits of tree debris and sodden fields. Fingers crossed we stay that lucky, lol, even Mother Nature can’t find us on the furthest eastern coast, lol

Another first of another month and another poem.

November November
The month to remember
Of plot and treason
Or remembrance season.

A wood pile of briar 
A night of bonfire
Sparkles wheel and flare 
Crackle and fill the air.

When the horrors of war
Banged at our door
Til guns fell silent
On fields so violent.

The clocks turned back
Sending evenings black
Curtains tightly drawn
Snuggled inside keeping warm

Thirty Days towards winter
When frosts tend to linger
Wrapped in scarves we persevere
This penultimate month of the year.

Hard to believe there’s just one month left to go on my personal challenge of a monthly poem. What trickery and wizardry can I conjure up for December – off to Google I scurry.

 

An Extra Hour To…?

…..sleep, or doze, or lay there trying to sleep or doze, or lay there planning what to do when I get up.

That said. I do want a gold star, shiny medal and suitable praise because I have, after over twelve months of procrastination, ordered my wall mounted tv and a man to put it up! Double star, it might even be erected before I get round to finishing this blog post and publishing it. *gasp*

Now, if I could juuuust get motivated about the pictures to go up on my walls. Steady on gal, hold you hard (as the old natives round these parts say), don’t get over excited.

So, what are my plans for the winter whilst hibernating in my toasty abode.

Crochet some new little Christmas Stockings. Whether for the food bank to pop a choc in for the festive season or a little something for my team of carers or another garland to add to all the decorations.

Some back up and updates on the computer.

Sort the pictures for the walls, as mentioned above.

The best bit ….. BFF is coming to play I mean stay for two weeks, lots of lovely scrumpy comfort foods and chatter and tv watching to be done.

Happy extra hour, full moon, Halloween night to you all!

 

The Reckoning

I’m going to premise this review with a disclaimer. No matter what is written or said on this particular subject matter, it in no way excuses, mitigates or concedes any of the absolute deplorable behaviour of this man nor those around him.

Right then. It was with some intrigue and curiosity that I wanted to watch this drama series. I only ever came across him via my very limited exposure to radio and television across the seventies and eighties, namely Top Of The Pops and Jim’ll Fix It. Even from the hue of a black and white television screen there was something that cringed my child like intuition senses as ‘creepy’, ‘weird’ and ‘odd’. His speech delivery, his clothing, his unkempt look, his language when we upgraded to a colour television only heightened those things. How I’d have felt in his presence, is another matter, quite repulsed I imagine.

The mini series begins with his early dj days at various dance halls of Manchester and Leeds, cultivating a strong following of teens, all eager to hear the new music styles of the fifties and sixties, to kick loose the conformity of post war restrictions and that of their parents generation. The notoriety of his position made him influential , at least gave him an aura of power and status, which in turn meant he could coerce any giggly star struck female his eye took.

As his fame grew, so did his exposure to even bigger stages, namely the BBC with prestigious prime time radio and tv programmes. All the while, being reported upon as a charitable gentleman, who took good care of his Mother. He had the front of someone willing to do altruistic deeds to bring cheer and fun to the downcast and young, such as the Leeds Childrens Hospital and Stoke Mandeville Hospital (leading spinal injuries specialists). He was the Mr Goodguy that parents, politicians, prestigious organisations and the press trusted – but with a slight edge.

As he grew older, remember that by the mid seventies he was fifty, his proclivities grew younger, and following the death of his Mother (a relationship never really explained or detailed) more bizarre and odd.

Maybe the lack of understanding, or the lack of knowledge of the depraved behaviour possible by some men meant that, although there were those who were suspicious, it was quickly glossed over by an authority saying “Oh that’s just his way” or “He’s nothing like that”.

As he grew older and those around him in authority younger, the power of his celebrity status diminished, articles questioning him were starting to appear in the newspapers, he became a figure to be investigated and he could no longer keep the control. Following his death, the true vastness of his behaviours and the decades of activity, along with the numbers of children and dead bodies he violated came to light. Utterly deplorable and shameful.

Watching it from a 2023 perspective it is cringingly uncomfortable. The outlandish acts of what we now know as grooming, the obvious manipulation of people (not just victims, but friends, colleagues, bosses, audiences) that enabled his horrendous acts of abuse, the disgusting sexual gratification that this man acted upon, would be unrepeatable today – thank progress for that.

We are more outspoken, quicker to speak out, children are able to shout up. Whilst undoubtedly there is still those who abuse and molest and use fear as a weapon, it is getting harder for them to hide.

I cannot use the phrase that it is a good watch, an excellent piece of entertainment, but it is gripping, thought provoking, eye opening viewing. With the acting interspersed with real life footage it carefully crafts the eras well.