A funny old day

I'm absolutely certain that the weather girl on the television late last night promised us a sunny day but so far - it's just coming up to 10.00 - there's no sign of that golden orb.  Just grungy low cloud with a hint of dampness.  And I have a nasty feeling that weather thingy over on the right has changed as well.  Oh well.

I thought when I got up that this seemed like a better day on the arthritis front.  I was moving around rather more easily and I even managed to open a new bottle of milk with my bare hands.  That might sound odd but over the last few weeks my hands have not been doing quite what they are meant to do and I have resorted to using a mole wrench to unscrew the top of new bottles.  But after I had collected the Old Bat from the garage where she had taken her car for servicing and the keep-your-fingers-crossed annual test, things had gone downhill quite drastically and I am now only just mobile.  Which is a bit of a bugger as I particularly wanted to be able to get about today.

It is now almost two months since I was last down the garden.  By the way, our garden slopes downhill quite steeply and also slopes downhill from right to left just to make things more interesting.  There is a steep bank about a third of the way down which I turned into a rockery many years ago.  Above and below the bank are lawns and flower borders.  I say "lawns" but the grass is now a foot high or more.  The bottom lawn is also covered with the dog's calling cards which I have been unable to clear up.  I have finally given way to a fellow Lion who has been badgering me to let him come and clear up the lawn and he is due to arrive at any time.  I hate the thought of me sitting indoors while he is doing such an unpleasant job in my garden, which is why I wanted to be more active today.  But beggars can't be choosers so I shall just have to put up with it.

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Staying in France just a little longer, this bridge is where my car broke down earlier this year.  I had often wanted to take a picture of the view but would have preferred to go without!  And now I can't for the life of me remember the name of the viaduct.  It's on the A28 near Bernay, in case anyone is remotely interested, and the view is quite spectacular.

Peaches and cream

Do you remember that old song in which Mr Sandman was implored to bring the singer a dream and to "make her complexion like peaches and cream"?  We had peaches and cream for dessert the other evening and, frankly, a girl with a complexion like that would be a nightmare rather than a dream.  The peaches and cream of my childhood would be no better.  Nowadays the only peaches eaten in our house are fresh ones and the cream is real cream but in the wayback things were different.  OK, I'm talking 60 years ago and things certainly were different then.

We - that is me, my brother and my mother; my father was probably at sea - would sometimes be invited to tea by my grandmother.  The table was always laid with a special cloth and the best tea plates were in evidence.  There would be a plate of bread and butter slices and we would be expected to eat at least two, spread with home-made jam, before the special treat.  Those teas always ended with peaches and cream being served.  Of course, being 60 years ago my grandmother had special fruit dishes and special fruit spoons.  I suppose they can still be found but I don't know of anybody who has them, let alone uses them.  The peaches were tinned peach slices and tasted completely different from the fresh fruit to which we have become accustomed.  Maybe fresh peaches just could not be bought?  Or were too expensive?  I don't know why but tinned fruit was much more popular back then than it is now.  And the cream wasn't cream; it was evaporated milk out of a tin - Carnation brand probably.  Still, we thought it was a treat and that's all that counts.

I mentioned a special tablecloth.  This had been embroidered by my favourite aunt, Grace, Gran's daughter.  Grace was an expert embroiderer and this tablecloth was a fine example of the art.  It was, I think, hexagonal in shape and just in from the edge there was a garden scene running right round the cloth, flowers of all descriptions together with the occasional lady in a poke bonnet.  Outside that were embroidered the words of a poem:

A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot —
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not —
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign Tis very sure God walks in mine.

My grandmother still had that tablecloth when she died  - rather surprisingly in view of what happened - and it passed to my mother.  On her death, I acquired it as a memento of those long-gone days and my favourite aunt.

I don't even remember now why Grace was my favourite aunt.  She worked in Athens for one of the agencies which was to become part od the United Nations - or maybe already was a UN agency - and would send us exotic presents such as my first pistachio nuts or minature Greek soldiers in their skirts and pompom shoes.  When on leave she would sometimes take us to lunch in department store restaurants where elderly ladies dressed in black and with white aprons and headdresses served brown Windsor soup.

Nobody now knows what caused the rift but Grace cut herself off completely from the rest of the family.  She had married in Athens with none of the family at the wedding - too expensive - and we knew she had a daughter, Hilary.  It was only three years ago, after Grace's death, that Hilary discovered anything about her mother's family and that she had cousins.  The Old Bat and I meet up with her once a year and I have tried to give her some idea of what her maternal grandparents were like.

Just before our last meeting I rediscovered that tablecloth which I had quite forgotten.  I gave it to Hilary and I just hope it means something to her.  It felt almost as though I was taking it back to its home.

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Before we leave southern France I can't resist another look at that magnificent piece of engineering, the Millau viaduct.

White rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits

Nobody seems to know just how the superstition (for it is superstition rather than tradition) started - nor, even, just what should be said or when.  Some say the words should be "black rabbits", others that white rabbits are for March only with just rabbits for other months.  But the concensus seems to be that the words must be the first words one utters on the first day of the month to ward off bad luck.  Me, I'm never sufficiently conscious on any day to know what the date is or to think of uttering a strange incantation.

I wonder if schoolboys still say, like we did in my younger days, "A pinch and a punch for the first of the month and no returns of any kind".  It was important to remember the embargo on returns or one was likely to receive "a punch and a kick for being so quick".

So here we are on 1st September - two-thirds of the way through the year.  Already!  Being the first Saturday of the month, Brighton Lions are holding their book fair at Lions Dene.  I was on the duty rota for setting up and clearing away but cried off as we had planned to be travelling south today, through Picardy and Normandy to the Pays de la Loire and our getaway cottage.  That was the plan until a week or so ago when I accepted what the Old Bat had already decided: the journey would be too uncomfortable.  All plans went on hold for a few weeks in the hope that this bout of arthritis will have cleared by then.  So I cn go to the book fair after all and try to find some suitable reading material for when we do manage to cross the Channel.

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Somewhat newer than yesterday's bridge, this railway viaduct is also in the Ardeche.  I knew we had to cross this valley and when I first saw the bridge my heart sank.  I don't much like heights of that nature.  Then I realised it was a now disused railway, presumably built in the mid- to late-nineteenth century.  We drove underneath it and that was bad enough!

After the Lord Mayor's Show...

...comes the dust cart.  An old saw often countered with another: dirt goes before the broom.  But this post is concerned with neither the Lord Mayor's Show, the dust cart, dirt, nor the broom.  So what the heckythump am I going on about?

I should think just about everybody - certainly everybody in England - knows that the Olympic Games ended a couple of weeks back.  But now we have the Paralympics.  In the past these have frequently been treated rather as a poor relation but I am pleased to note that is not quite the case this time round.  Admittedly, the television coverage on one of the lesser channels is not so extensive but there seem to be just as many spectators as were at the Olympics.

Yesterday I watched a little cycling and swimming - and the men's wheelchair basketball between Great Britain and Germany.  My, that's one viscious sport and I am full of amazement at the way those guys control both wheelchair and ball.  And to see a one-legged person cycling...

Admiration just isn't a strong enough word to express my feelings at the way these guys and girls have put aside their disabilities.

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For today's bridge picture we head back south to the Ardeche region of France where we found this grass-grown crossing over the stream into a field.

Cheer up for Chatham

Sheerness is in sight!

Well, perhaps.  When I saw my GP for the results of the blood tests he very kindly confirmed that I have a dose of rheumatoid arthritis, something I already knew.  He went on to tell me that there are newer drugs than the anti-inflammatories I am taking now and that these are more effective in controlling the stiffness and the pain.  But there are side effects.  Of course.  And he wanted a specialist to talk me through those side effects before prescribing so he would refer me to the rheumatological department at the hospital.

A few days later, after nagging from the Old Bat, I asked the doctor to short circuit the system by referring me to a specialist as a private patient.  Yesterday I received a telephone call and I now have an appointment for next Thursday.  Could it be that within a couple of weeks or so I will be back to normal, able to walk the dog, dry myself properly after a shower, put on a pair of socks?

I have to admit to a certain ambivalence about "going private".  Yes, I can afford to pay for a consultation and if anything else is found to be necessary I can always switch back to treatment under the NHS.  And it's not my socialist leanings (which I don't think I have) that cause me to hesitate.  But it does bother me slightly that other people have to wait weeks and weeks for a consultation whereas I, who have a little money, can jump the queue.  I suppose, though, by going private I am leaving consultation slots for others.

My main reason for doing this, however, is the Old Bat.  She is partially disabled and I am her carer.  She is unable to walk more than a few paces without assistance so you can imagine the sight we have been with both of us hobbling along arm in arm.  But I hope that will soon be a thing of the past.

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Hey - I managed to avoid all those cliches like light at the end of the tunnel!

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I had hoped to bring you another picture of the South Downs today.  When I got out of bed the sun was bright and the sky was blue with a few puffy clouds - perfect.  After my shower the scene was the same with the Portland stone of the Chattri gleaming.  My camera was downstair.  By the time I had dressed the sun had gone a grey clouds covered the sky.  By the time I was downstairs it was raining.  So it's another bridge.  Today we are travelling to Colmar, Alsace, in the north-eastern corner of France.  The architecture here is different from anywhere else in the country with something of a Bavarian influence.

Botheration! I missed it

and there won't be another coming along until Christmas.  That, of course, is one of the downsides of retirement - one day is very much like the one before and the one after.  Unless one of those days is a special red-letter day like Christmas or the day of the chiropodist's visit.  All this means that bank holidays come and bank holidays go without any way of marking them as special except noting that the builder's van down the street hasn't moved this morning and my word the post is late today but of course there is no post today as it's a bank holiday.

Monday was one such - and it was Tuesday evening before I realised.  The August bank holiday used to be on the first Monday of August but for some reason I've forgotten (if I ever knew in the first place) it was moved years and years ago to the last Monday.  And I don't think it's called the August bank holiday any more.  I think it might be the Late Summer Holiday or some such.

But whatever it's called, it's the last bank holiday in England (and Wales and Scotland and - I think - Northern Ireland) until Christmas.  It's not like that in other countries.  Spain, in common with many other countries, marks All Saints' Day on 1 November by making it a holiday.  In Belgium, France and Poland Remembrance Day - 11 November - is a holiday.  In fact, as far as I can see the only other European countries that go longer than us without a bank or public holiday are Denmark and the Netherlands.

I find it interesting, too, to see the number of days marked as public holidays in the various countries:

Australia - 10
Belgium - 10
France - 9
Germany - 14
Japan - 17
South Africa - 12
USA - 12
England - 8

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I have not managed to get out to take any new photos for some time so am foisting these repeats on you.  Today I continue with the bridge series and here is perhaps the world's most famous broken bridge, Pont Saint-Bénezet in Avignon.  Broken by floods in 1668, it has become known as the bridge where all the world dances (according to the song).

Rejoice with me

That which was lost has come back home.  My navbar quite mysteriously reappeared.