After Christmas

January 12 2012

12th of January already……….and it’s taken me this long to feel ‘back to normal’.  I’ve had my daughter and her son staying, I’ve stayed with my other daughter and her children, I’ve had my grandchildren (plus dog) staying with me AND I’ve managed to find the time to catch up with a couple of good friends.

The grandchildren helped pack away the decorations, we walked along the beach and they spent a while painting on some of my spare canvas. By the time my daughter came to stay I had my newly decorated bedroom ready for her, she was most impressed with my decorating achievements and quite proud to be the first one to sleep in the new room.

I even managed to stay with a friend for a couple of days. We spend one damp and stormy afternoon driving around the glens. It was actually very pleasant in the glens, and beautiful. The colour and light up there at this time of year is quite different to those pleasant sunny scenes you find on calendars. I never find the Christmas holidays much of a ‘holiday’ as such, it’s always a busy time, it tends to be hectic but very enjoyable.

Now every one has gone back to their own homes, I’ve no one staying here and I’m not staying with any one else, so here I am, back to normal, just me, on my own, in my own little flat. Now my house guests have all left I’ve moved myself and my furniture into my new bedroom. My daughters were very practical this Christmas, they bought me vouchers which were used to buy all the finishing touches for my new bedroom, new curtains, a new lamp and a little heater for when the wind is howling and it’s a bit chilly.

I’m back at work, in fact it feels as if I were never away from the place and on my wall at work there is a chart. I made the chart last term but I’ve only just got around to pinning it to the wall. It’s a countdown to retirement chart. I’ve worked out that I have another 14 paydays before retirement and this chart has each payday in a square ready to be crossed off as soon as the pay slip lands on my desk. 14 paydays doesn’t sound very long.

I’m preparing to start decorating again. It’s time to tackle the other bigger room, the one that I was using as a bedroom. That room is my biggest room and will be somewhat of a challenge. Now that my living room is decorated and I’ve moved into the ‘new’ smaller bedroom, the plan is to strip the big room back to plaster, decorate from scratch and use it as a studio. A place where I can store all my painting, drawing and craft equipment and where I can paint without having to clean up and put every thing away after every session. It will also double up as a guest room but that’s ok because most of the time it will just be my studio.
I look forward to retirement but at the same time have become acutely aware of the value of each day.

Every night I realise that one more day of my life is over, it’s a scary thought. Time is something you can’t get back and so even thought I look forward to retirement I want to find a way to value every day between now and then. Some days I wake up, get ready, make the ten minute walk to work, spend the day doing things for other people and then make the ten minute walk home, by which time the day is done and the light is fading. On these days I feel cheated, a bit like when you buy something you can’t really afford only to get it home and realise you wasted your money and have no way of getting that money back. Time is more precious than money and I’m really getting to hate it when I reach the end of the day and feel as if the day is wasted. One more day of my life has passed, a day I will never get back, and if I can’t remember any thing special about that day, I feel cheated. Which is why, even if I only walk from my house to my work and back again, and even if I’m only out of my house for less than half an hour, I’m going to look for something that I can think of at the end of the day that will make me think the day wasn’t wasted. Maybe I will even take my camera with me and make sure I take at least one picture a day. One picture of something good every day could be a balance to the inevitability of life being one day shorter. Because my life is shorter at the end of every day it must also be richer in some way. Otherwise what’s the point??

Christmas done and dusted. Happy New Year

Christmas done and dusted,

off to visit my Mother now.

One  downside of Christmas was that my pipes all froze again. But there were so many positives I didn’t really mind about the pipes.

The 23rd was spent with a friend of mine who sadly lost her husband exactly one year earlier. Last your we planned our Christmas meal out together on the 23rd because her husband was dying and she was going to be indoors on her own nursing him over Christmas, sadly he deteriorated at the start of Christmas week and actually died on the 23rd. We have had to wait a whole year for our Christmas meal but this year we had a great time out together. The restaurant overlooks the sea and we had wonderful views of the snow, the sea and the harbour while eating our Christmas meal. We are a whole year on and my friend is doing fine.

Christmas eve was spent with my grandchildren, they don’t worry about frozen pipes, the dangers of falling on ice or the biting cold. They just love to play in the snow.

They were so funny, we walked through the park, they played in the snow, we did a few bits of last minute Christmas shopping and then I took them to a café where they had the most delicious hot chocolate I have ever seen. It came in a huge cup, was piled high with whipped cream, had loads of marshmallow thrown over the top and was finished off with a thick chocolate flake bar balanced in the middle. I’m not sure how they managed to eat/ drink it all but they did.

Christmas day was spent with my eldest daughter in her country cottage sitting by her wood burning stoves ( yes.. plural she has two of then one at either end of the cottage). You do get the most amazing sunsets where she lives and the view out over the farmlands is wonderful, especially when covered in snow and ice. I spend the afternoon watching Avatar on her very large, wall mounted TV screen. WOW………….now I know what all the fuss has been about, I was so bowled over by that film, its more like a religious experience than an animated film. I’m going to get the DVD and watch it over and over again.

Boxing day was the day the entire family came to see me. I had three daughters plus partners, four grandchildren, and one young friend and her three young sons……………great family celebration. We ran out of wine twice and had to send reconnaissance teams out into the blizzard to buy more supplies. There was more food lying around than could possibly be eaten and I ended up packing two grocery bags full of unopened food for my daughter to take back to her family. I also saved a few boxes of chocolates, shortbread and mince pies to take to my mother. By Boxing day my pipes had been frozen solid for over a week and every one of those visitors had to remember not to empty waste water down the sinks for fear of flooding my downstairs neighbour, somehow we all managed and it didn’t detract from the pleasure of the day. My youngest daughter who lives away on the west coast came and stayed overnight on Boxing day.

Yesterday, Monday 27th came and went in a bit of a haze, my youngest daughters ever so obliging partner fixed all my leaking taps before they left and ….’we woke up to the thaw’ !! The ice in the pipes was gone and drainage worked perfectly. Maybe some of you remember the pictures of her dog in my garden back in the summer that I posted? I wrote at the time that her dog had died shortly after that photo was taken and my daughter was heartbroken. This is her new puppy. Her name is daisy and she will never replace Cody, (the dog who died) but this little one, is perfect. She is a bearded collie and was on best behaviour all day.

And here we are on the 28th, I’m feeling a little fragile, have defiantly over indulged and am now preparing for my journey tomorrow to visit my mother. My mother is 80, she lives 600 miles away and I don’t get to see her very often. She recently had a nasty fall and now needs a bed downstairs and nurses in twice a day. We think this is a temporary arrangement she should eventually recover well enough to manage without the nurses and use her upstairs bed again. But I’m very glad I’ve been able to organise tickets down to see her and very grateful that the snow is almost gone and the trains should be running without cancellations or delays.

And so………………..wishing you all the best new Year, enjoy the celebrations and hopefully in the new year I will be posting a whole heap of snow pictures I’ve not had time to post yet.

Happy New Year every one. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010

New Year 2010

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERY ONE

It’s been so long I hardly know where to start. I signed off here for what I intended to be a couple of weeks  back in the middle of November, now here we are already into the New year. This is a pair of small portraits I had for sale in the craft fair.

The Art exhibition I entered returned both of my works, without hanging either of them, with a short explanatory note saying that this year the exhibition was open to the whole of Scotland for both professional and amateur artists. Apparently the criteria for entry changed this year which led to the exhibition being vastly over subscribed, seems for the first time they rejected virtually one out of every three entries. So guess I’ll just chalk that one up to experience and try again next year. The exhibition itself was interesting though and showed me the standard expected so it wasn’t entirely a wasted effort, it was very valuable experience.

Afraid I didn’t do that much better on my craft fair stall either, not a lot was selling that day.  I often go to these craft fairs, they are held in the local community centre, usually in the run up to Christmas, and usually the stalls are hired in aid of different charities. It’s a good place to buy home-made and original Christmas presents. This year was a bit of an eye opener. I have to say; the recession had gone largely unnoticed by me. My job is pretty low paid but I do have a permanent contract AND job security. This, for me, meant life continued to be as difficult, but manageable as it always was. BUT…………..The craft fair was an eye opener, whereas in other years these places have been throbbing with Christmas shoppers and people left laden with bags bulging with goodies, this year there were far fewer people and many of the stalls (including mine) struggled to sell any thing at all. Another one to chalk up to experience, the recession is real and it’s affecting ordinary people in ordinary situations. This is just one of the bags that remained unsold at the end of the day.

And then there was the ‘’Green Flag’’ experience, I’ve already written about that so I’ll not bore you with the details again. I’ll just say that since then our eco group with in the school has been more high profile and more appreciated than ever before. More people want to join our group and more people are willing to recycle more stuff and generally be more aware of environmental issues. (Altogether is moorish experience) We seemed to get quite a lot of press coverage too which was nice.

Once all that was out of the way, work became very, very hectic with all the normal ‘end of term’ demands PLUS the kids did a Christmas Pantomime for the first time. That was great fun; they did so well I think a Pantomime will be expected every Christmas. Any one who has ever worked in a school will understand how hectic end of term is.

And of course there is the ‘’big freeze’’ to contend with. I have lived in Scotland for twenty years and can honestly say I have never known a winter like this. I can’t remember the last time the temperature rose above freezing.
I have been out side on a daily basis checking my fish pond. I think I have lost most of the fish I put in last summer. I know the guy in the pet shop said they would be OK outside, even OK if the pond froze, but no one expected a freeze like this. At one point I could see the fish swimming sluggishly under the ice, they looked as if they were trying to get to the surface but there was no where left for them to get through. I was taking the ice off the top every day and then the ice became so thick it was very difficult. In the end I had to force the huge sheet of ice away from the top because the ice had taken hold of all the plants, the plants froze and the ice seemed to travel through the water, through the plants, into the baskets of earth and extend all the way down to the bottom of the pond. The pond was in real danger of freezing solid. When I finally forced the ice sheet away from the water it was eight inched deep in places had covered all the plants and the baskets they were planted in.
The ice came away with the plants which left the pond half empty, this meant I had to spend more time in the freezing weather carrying buckets of water out to re-fill the pond. Think next year I’ll go for frogs not fish, at least frogs have the good sense to leave the water and live in the ground over winter.  

The shops all sold out of salt because so many people used it on the ice. The bins full of gravel that are provided by the council were always running out.
My driveway was like a skating rink and very dangerous. Fortunately I remembered I had some builders sand left from last year. It took me a while to get the shed door open because the locks had frozen solid but once I managed to unlock the door I had plenty of sand and the grandchildren seemed to enjoy throwing sand all over the place.
Funny how kids have the capacity to actually enjoy what to adults is just another chore to get through. I think most of my lavender will be dead next year, this is just to cold for it to survive outside.
But for some weird reason the parsley is thriving!!! I wonder..........is this some rare form of Arctic parsley??

We did manage to get out a couple of times over Christmas to walk the dogs but even that became difficult because the ground was frozen. We have not had nearly as much snow as other places have but we have had very low tempratures and freezing conditions for what seems like months. 

The dogs ( and kids) were skating  around a field of ice. It was cold, quite dangerous in places but oh was it pretty??...........yes ....very, very pretty.

Christmas itself was good, I had one daughter and her two children here on Christmas day for their Christmas dinner.

On Boxing Day I had all three daughters, and their partners, and their children, and their dogs……………all in my rather small apartment………….great fun though.

New Year was spent over on the West coast in Ayr (I live on the East coast) with my youngest daughter and her family. It was a quiet but very nice family  New Year. From the coast of Ayr you can look out onto the islands of Bute and the Mull of Kintyre which is hopefully where I’ll be heading in better weather next summer.

And that kinda brings me up to now, I came back from Ayr yesterday and intend to spend what is left of today and tomorrow packing away the Christmas decorations, throwing out all the rubbish, having a bit of a spring clean and preparing for work again on Wednesday. Yep…………….Wednesday is the first day of term, time to start all over again.

New Year resolutions?? I have a few …………..the obligatory ‘’ I must lose weight and take more exercise’’, but also things like try to stop collecting rubbish, live a more minimalist life ‘cos all this stuff that seems to accumulate from no where just clutters up my house and my life. I find it very difficult to throw things away, partly because I’m so aware of the land fill problem so If I can’t recycle or reuse or re-home……….it tends to clutter up my house which isn’t really a good thing. In which case; I am going to try to accumulate less in the first place.

Also of course, over the next couple of days, in between packing away the tree, throwing out the clutter, de-icing the pond, spring cleaning the house and preparing for work on Wednesday, I’ll get round to as many of you; my much missed and sadly neglected friends as possible.
For those of you who who I haven’t visited in a while
I SEND ………………… VERY, VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR WISHES AND MANY THANKS FOR ALL YOUR GOOD WISHES OVER THE HOLIDAY PERIOD.