Menu

February 2012

One for the birds

0

This week seems to have been one for the birds. On Saturday Harry and I went for our regular rugby stroll down to Polridmouth beach and along the cliffs, half way down I began to hear a shooting party coming from the Menabilly estate area. I wasn’t that bothered as Harry is unaffected by loud bangs, fireworks don’t faze him, two screaming boys don’t faze him so why should some distant guns. As we got closer to the beach he hared off into the undergrowth and came back proud as punch carrying a dead pheasant.  Nothing for it now but to head towards the guns and return one of their birds, it was so funny watching Harry trot past the Labs and proudly drop his find at the feet of the shooters.  It’s a strange way to see birds up close when they’ve just been shot but I’m afraid I’m not sentimental about it, I eat them and they taste great.

Which is just as well because on Monday, Dave dropped in a brace of pheasants and partridges to the shop. Oh good I thought as I eyed their splendid plumage, how the hell do I prepare a whole bird. In the end I chickened out and just removed the breasts. I know it was a bit wasteful and I had some great casserole and roast recipes in front of me, but one of the birds still had grain in its gullet and it was all a bit too much. When I was younger I couldn’t enter a butchers because the smell of blood would make me very queasy but like most things you just learn to suck it up. Not the blood, that would just be gross, in fact I’m making myself queasy again so I’ll move on.

 Having dealt with the birds I had to dash off to get the boys so I wrapped the 4 birds in newspaper, popped them in a bag and dashed off.  It would be hard to describe the slaughter house scene that greeted me and the boys on my return.  In a rare show of co-operation the cats and Harry had got the bag off the table onto the floor and then opened it up.  Blood, feathers and body parts lay all over the floor, table and chairs, three living animals looked very pleased with themselves and four dead ones looked even deader.  My boys just stood there looking on in shock! Harry tried to look nonchalant but was unable to pull the look off properly as he had feathers sticking out of his ear, the cats just looked at me as if to say “and?”

Moving away from game triumphs and disasters I’ve also had a great week bird spotting. This is a great time for it as there are no leaves on the trees and branches and so the birds can’t hide so easily. Obviously bird spotting isn’t so easy with Harry, I usually just see the backs of birds as they fly away in alarm but sometimes I get lucky.  On Tuesday morning a walker told me to keep an eye out for a kingfisher, the man had seen it every day for the last week at this spot.  I have to say I haven’t seen it once! I have seen lots of others though, chaffinches, goldfinches, curlews, chiffchaffs, pipits, turnstones, stonechats and maybe a cirl bunting – this last one is unlikely as they’re not supposed to be around here but it really didn’t look like a yellow hammer which is the next closest thing it could have been. So there we go, if I haven’t been massacring or inventing them I’ve been spotting or eating them.  Hope you enjoy our feathered friends as much as I do.

Hands up, how many of you became astronauts?

0

What did I want to be when I grew up?  Being a barrister seemed to be on the cards for a while, it turned out that people would pay me a lot of money to be an argumentative, smart arse and my grandfather was a judge so it seemed like a logical choice.  However, a marine archaeologist seemed more glamorous, it would be really cool to discover Atlantis and lots of sunken gold. I then moved on to travel and figured foreign correspondent / photographer was where my calling was. Just so long as I had regular running water and room service.  So it came as a shock to me when I had my interview with my career’s advisor to discover that I was apparently best suited to being a hairdresser on a cruise liner. Anyone who has ever met me knows I don’t care too much for my own appearance let alone anyone else’s and as for making small talk with strangers that’s a no no, an even bigger no no is being stuck with a bunch of strangers that I can’t get away from so the cruise liner idea is my idea of hell.

Now, the same ridiculous questions are being posed to my eldest,  the best I can say to him are that his GCSEs will not set him up for life, they will not shape the rest of his existence and that he is not to freak out if he chooses the wrong options. There’s  just so much more pressure for him than there was for me, nowadays he has to get at least 30 A levels, they must all be A stars and he must then go to University and accrue more debt that he can contemplate, if his life is to mean anything. And he’s only 12.

Of course a good education is important but it’s not essential that you know what you are going to do when you grow up.  I mean which of us is actually doing the job we wanted when we were 12? I’ll bet it’s only a tiny handful. There just aren’t enough train driver jobs to go around anyway.  Then of course these days no one is in a job for life, unless he goes into one of the professions, so he’s bound to jump around a bit. 


Last year he was going to be an outdoors instructor. He’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie so I can see the appeal but he got it into his head that he can earn £40K a year doing that and I’m not so sure.  Then he decided that being an architect was the way to go, however he thinks the Royal Albert Hall would look better with a smooth white render finish to “bring it up to date” so I hope for the sake of this country’s heritage that he doesn’t pursue this career path.  His most recent decision has brought me out in a cold sweat.  He wants to join the army, maybe the paras, maybe an officer. I am very calmly nodding and saying the right things whilst inwardly swearing that if I ever lay my hands on Bear Grylls it may be an encounter that he fails to survive.

For what it’s worth I became a librarian and I didn’t see that coming, then I became a mother, really didn’t see that coming and then I started my own business.  Being in charge and bossy, surrounded by books? I think my family saw that coming from a very early age.  Whatever children grow up to be, the important thing is that they have the opportunities to experiment, change their minds, jump tracks and never ever listen to their careers advisor!

Burn’s Night! Black tie and wallpaper paste.

0

Oh dear God. So there I was, it was 5pm and I had almost finished a very challenging day of wallpapering when my phone rang. “Hi, tonight’s do, turns out it’s going to be black tie and we’re picking you up at 6.30. Sorry. See you in a bit. Bye.”  So now I had 90 minutes to finish the walls, wash and find a suitable outfit. Right now I know what you’re thinking, if you’re a lady you’re wondering if I had my party frocks back from the dry cleaners, how was I going to style my hair with wallpaper paste in it and that 90 minutes was going to be cutting it fine. If you’re a gentleman you’re wondering if I hung the paper with a plumb line.  Gentlemen, I will address your concerns in a minute but more important things were afoot.  Even if my frocks were back from the imaginary cleaners (oh how I would love to have that many dresses) they still wouldn’t fit after a wonderfully indulgent Christmas.

Panicking, I finished the walls (a wee bit slap dash) ran for the bathroom and then attacked my wardrobe.  The joy of having no clothes is that it doesn’t take you long to realise that you truly have nothing to wear. Finally, I went for a full length skirt in brown silk and a matching top. Top was a wraparound and skirt had a drawstring waist; gentleman you may be all at sea with these descriptions but the ladies will appreciate the expandable natures of these garment.  I wasn’t hugely confident of the outfit though because the last time I wore it Steve said I looked like a Tudor milkmaid. And not the Benny Hill sort but the pestilence and poverty sort.  Hey ho.  I had just enough time to get a face on, look at the wallpaper, wince a bit at some of the edgings , kiss Steve and children goodnight before my ride whisked me away to a Burns Night party held at Pentewan Sands.
I relaxed back into the car thinking all my problems were solved when one of the girls in the car asked “Do you reel?” Seemed a bit of a personal question and quite frankly I only start reeling after the third bottle’s been open and I wasn’t going to tell her that but then the horror dawned on me, she meant highland dancing, that sort of reel.  Maybe my choice of 3 inch heels was not such a good wardrobe call after all.
I’ve got to say though I had a fabulous time, my friend’s husband hates dancing whilst she is fabulous at it so we spent lot of time dashing off to the loos or bar at the start of each dance.  He was clearly more practiced at avoidance than I was as I kept being encouraged to join in. Impressively, the men on our table were exceptional dancers and I have never spent an evening apologising so much.  I can dance, but I don’t quite get left, right and clockwise so once I’ve learnt a thing I’m fine but for the first few movements of every piece I was joining wrong sets, going backwards when I should have gone forward and stripping the willow with the wrong partner, I have to say it was a far more sedate Strip the Willow than I remember.  At school it seemed to be a contest to see who could swing the girls the furthest or make them fall over or show their knickers.  And on the subject of knicker showing, some of the gentlemen last night needed to wear their sporrans a bit lower. We didn’t know where to look when those kilts started flying!
All in all I met a lovely group of people, made a fool of myself in public, ate great food, I do like haggis and raised many a happy dram to the man himself.  As for the wallpaper, well I’m tidying that up today.

Does it make sense to ignore the old?

0

I’ve been thinking about people who are a generation or two older than me. I can’t call them the elderly because I may get a clip around the ear and also because, as time is a one way conveyor belt, I too, will one day become old and I don’t wish to be described as elderly.  Age of course is all relative, my sons already think I’m ancient and see little distinction between someone in their 40s and someone in their  70s, even 30 year olds are looking a bit over the hill to them but from my point of view, I see old as being retired, to keep this clear I also view middle aged as retired.
The reason for my ponderings is because I’ve been watching how older people get spoken to. I know dementia is an issue for some but it’s not something that gets handed out with the bus pass, so why do I keep hearing younger people speaking to older people as though they are dim foreigners. Slowly, loudly and in words of few syllables. People in their seventies grew up with rationing still in place, they saw society structures fall apart and reshape themself through the 50s. In the 60s they exploded. They decided that liberation was something that everyone should benefit from. They do owe us an apology for the awful fashions of the seventies. They have lived through lots of wars, strikes and recessions, massive technological breakthroughs, they witnessed man first leaving the planet, so if they don’t know who Cheryl Cole is and don’t consider Robbie Williams as a tortured individual let’s not assume that they are senile old duffers eh?
On one occasion I accompanied my mother whilst she was house hunting, the agent kept talking to me, saying “your mother will find it’s nice and close to the shops.” In front of her! When we left I asked mum if that was normal. Apparently it’s completely run of the mill.  Now what I don’t get is that as you retire and become “invisible”, it must really hack a person off. So why don’t they do something about it?  They are the baby boomers after all and we know there’s a lot of them about and they were pretty militant in their time. As they look forward to tiny pensions, and extortionate fuel bills why don’t they get together and rise up? Imagine if a political party was formed solely to address the needs of the retiring population, I bet they’d do well in the elections.  Even the concept of retiring is undergoing a massive shift. It used to mean stop working and live for another 10 or 20 years. Now we seem to go on for another 40. Forty years of retirement?  That’s bonkers.  We have a burgeoning post 60 population who really need to be addressed head on. As a society we just can’t afford it but we’re going to have to do something.  My bet is that if politicians stopped ignoring them and starting talking to them we might be able to shake things up a bit.
In this culture we seem to venerate the young and the money-makers. I see nothing wrong with that in moderation but it seems daft to ignore the experience gained from knocking about over the decades. It also seems massively disrespectful to assume that because someone can’t open their e-mail that they must have lost their IQ along with their last haircut. But what do I know I’m just a whipper snapper. Honest.