Happy days

Shopping for Christmas presents for grandchildren made me consider not only my relationship with them but also my relationship with my grandparents. And - quite obviously - by relationship I don't mean kinship: I'm talking about how we reacted with each other.

When I was but a weeny-bopper we lived next door to my maternal grandparents. Someone, probably my grandfather as my father had no DIY abilities and - like me - couldn't even knock a nail in straight, had made a gate between the two back gardens close up to the back-to-back coal sheds. That grandfather died when I was 9 and my memories of him are very limited. So limited indeed that I really have but one or two memories. Back in those days there was a paddle steamer called the Medway Queen (a Dunkirk veteran, I believe) which plied from the Sun Pier, Chatham, down the Medway and across the Thames estuary to Southend and back. One day, my grandfather (I don't even remember what we (my brother and I) called him: Grandad, Grandpa or whatever) took me on that trip. We must have caught a bus to Chatham High Street to reach the pier but I have no recollection of that. I do remember that my brother was not included on that trip, possibly considered too young.

[I have just been looking at a Google map pf Chatham. Grief, how it's changed! Mind you, it's probably 30 years or more since I even drive through the town and definitely over 50 years since I was actually in the town so it's not surprising that the roads I remember are not there any longer.]

The road I was looking for was where the old livestock market used to be held: The Brook. Our grandfather did take my brother and me there on several occasions and I can still remember the squealing of the pigs as their ears were nicked or pierced, presumably for identification purposes.

Having written that I'm having second thoughts about the location of the market. Was it in Chatham or Rochester? Not that it matters for the sake of this post.

And that, sadly, is all I remember about my paternal grandfather. His wife, Gran, is far easier to recall. She was a small lady (though not as short as my other grandmother) and wore a pinafore over her dress. She seemed always to be baking - rock cakes or buns - and many a warm delicacy was consumed in her kitchen. Every day she would wash the glass in the front door and polish the letter box, knocker and door step. She would spend hours playing board games with my brother and me - usually ludo but sometimes snakes and ladders. One corner of the living room contained a built-in cabinet. This has a cupboard at the bottom with two drawers side by side above. The cupboard above that was set back a bit to provide a narrow shelf. It was one drawer in particular that I found fascinating and would spend, it seemed to me, hours happily turning it out and rummaging through the contents. This was Gran's "bits" drawer where she kept bits of string, paper clips, the adhesive paper from the sides of stamps - anything which might come in useful one day and was small enough to be stowed away in this mini Aladdin's cave.

My maternal grandparents lived not far from the school my brother and I attended until we were 11. I have no doubt that in those years my grandfather, who was a shipwright, was still working in what was then His Majesty's Dockyard - this was a naval town. I know Pop was there at least sometimes when we visited because as we went out of the back gate (we never used the front door), he would surreptitiously slip a half-crown into my hand and another to my brother. My brother and I thought this was a secret on a par with state secrets, although we always told Mum later, but, of course, both Mum and Nan both knew very well what was going on.

Well, they were happy enough, those days, but I don't think I would really want to go back in time and live through them again. Life in the upper 60s isn't too bad.

It's six months today.

Lucky me

Wowee! What an exciting day! Breakfast, wash up, walk the dog, coffee, check email, take the Old Bat to the butcher, the supermarket and two other shops for Christmas shopping (that involved fighting through the roadworks which seem to be paralysing Brighton at the moment), lunch, take the Old Bat to the surgery for the nurse to do the vampire act and take blood, walk the dog, coffee and - at last - I get a few minutes to read other blogs (and maybe write a few words on mine) before my meeting with the Housing Society general manager, after which I'd better iron those shirts that went through the wash this morning... Who says a woman's work is never done?

And there was no Bovril in the supermarket, but the whole world and his wife was!

I wonder if I will have any deep, philosphical thoughts tomorrow?

Nature notes

Our next-door neighbour has a bird feeder hanging from the plum tree not far from either house and I take great pleasure in watching the various birds that come to visit. There are house sparrows, chaffinches, goldfinches, greenfinches and blue tits regularly on the feeder while robins, wrens, great tits, blackbirds and song thrushes hang around close by. A little farther away are the wood pigeons, magpies, jackdaws, rooks and herring gulls.

Most of the birds that use the feeder sit there on the perch and take what food they want before flying into the plum tree. The house sparrows, in particular, are messy eaters, always dropping crumbs. The blue tits act differently. They never try to get on the feeder while other birds are there, sitting in the tree patiently waiting their turn. When they do get on the feeder, they take a piece of food and carry it onto a branch of the tree. There they hold down the food with a claw while they eat it before going back for more. There's one in the plum tree as seen from my bedroom window.

A couple of days ago I mentioned a series of television programmes, Frozen Planet. I should have realised that there would be clips on Youtube and indeed there are, like this one:

Shopping list

It seems ages since I last enjoyed Bovril on toast. Heck, it doesn't just seem ages - it is ages! It's probably even longer since I last enjoyed a hot Bovril drink.

Perhaps I'll buy a jar when I do the shopping this week.

Odd man out

There are times when I feel a bit like that black sheep on one of my favourite ties. I'm most certainly not a black sheep in the usual sense of the term, the reprobate member of the family. Nor would I describe myself as a maverick. Not even particularly unconventional. On the other hand, I'm not exactly the spitting image of what many people from other countries would regard as the typical conventional Englishman. Let's just say that there are times when I like to stand out from the crowd.

It really only started when I was about 17. Back in those days it was the accepted thing for a boy to dress reasonably smartly to take a girl out, even if it was just for a coffee followed by the pictures. I had a Harris Tweed sports coat in a palish greenish colour and I would wear this with grey trousers and a white shirt. And a tie, always a tie. I had a range of woollen ties in plain colours - yellow, pale blue, light green, brown. These ties were, in those days, a little avant garde and wearing them was my way of expressing my individuality, of standing out from the crowd.

All through my working life I have tended to wear ties just a little brighter than most. Not gaudy, just different. Like the one in the picture.

That was part of the reasoning behind my growing a beard. I was working in a bank in those days and a bearded bank official (we were encouraged to describe ourselves as bank officials rather than bank clerks) was a distinct novelty, definitely "not quite the done thing". It was several years before I met another banker willing to look different.

I still have the beard but nowadays I rarely wear a tie. There must be 30 or more in the wardrobe and I really should chuck some of them out or send them to a charity shop - although many of them are unlikely to find buyers at a charity shop or even a jumble sale. Those ties are symptomatic of so much of my life. It really needs a good clearing out but somehow I just never seem to have to time. There's always something more important or urgent clamouring for my attention. One of these days...

But this is the first Saturday of the month and I must get myself off to the Lions book fair.

Some recent pleasures

A documentary shown on one of our television channels the other evening proved fascinating. It covered a team of archeologists as they searched the remains of Stalag Luft III for the tunnels dug by POWs. Remember The Great Escape? This was where it took place and tunnels Dick and George were what the archeologists were hoping to find. Dick was the tunnel used in the escape and George was dug later but never completed. The team found George and the remains of some of the escape equipment but, sadly, Harry eluded them.

Good old Auntie Beeb comes in for a fair bit of stick but, to give her her due, she does make superb natural history programmes. David Attenborough's Frozen Plant has been running for several weeks - there is just one more episode next week - and has not disappointed. Magnificent scenic photography and wonderful close-ups, the penguin who turned to crime being especially memorable. The series is likely to be sold around the world so do watch it if you get the chance.

I seem to have taken less pleasure of late in my reading. Somehow the majority of the books I have borrowed from the library have not proved un-put-downable and it has been taking me over a week to read just one. Some have stretched out over a fortnight. However, there have been exceptions. Months ago I bought, with vouchers given as birthday presents, secondhand copies of John Master's trilogy, Loss of Eden. This is an epic work which, in my opinion, deserved much greater recognition than it received. It covers the lives of families of different classes caught up in the madness that was the First World War, the action being in both England and France. I have re-read the first of the volumes with much pleasure and am looking forward to enjoying the second and third, perhaps when we are in France ourselves in a couple of week's time.

More recently I have read books by two authors new to me. Andrea Badenoch's Loving Geordie is set in Newcastle in 1960. It describes the demolition of the slums and brings to vivid life some of the occupants of those slums: the Jew who escaped from Vienna, the war widow who turns to drugs and is an inadequate mother to her two sons, one of whom (Geordie) is autistic and loved and cared for by his elder brother.

I have not yet finished The First Casualty by Ben Elton. I had always thought of Elton as a stand-up comedian and had not realised he has written several books. If this one is typical, I shall be looking for more.

A word miscellany

I usually enter the title of the post first and then try to keep to the point. OK, I know I sometimes - even frequently - drift off but I do try to get back again. Usually. Oh heck! I'm doing it again!

So I had thought to use the word "wordplay" as the subject of today's ramblings. I was just about to type it in the title space - indeed, I had got as far as "Wor" - when I had second thoughts. Now I'm beginning to wonder if I was right in the first place as what I think I'm going to write is a miscellany of thoughts about words. There are a couple of things that prompted these thoughts. And there's another thought just popped into my head. I typed "there are a couple". That sounds correct, but as "couple" is singular (even though it refers to more than one!) should I have typed "there is a couple"?

I told you this would be a miscellany, so don't expect anything like a smooth transition from one thought (paragraph) to another. The only thing that links any of this is that it is all about words. Or most of it is about words.

One of my pet irritations is people who should know better, such as television news reporters, using the word "less" when they mean "fewer".

Damn! The word I want has gone right out of my head! I'm sure it starts with a "p" - "para"-something or some such. It means a word that is spelt the same backwards as forwards, like "refer" or "tenet". They have long amused me (little things etc) but my favourite has always been the one some wag attributed to Napoleon: able was I ere I saw Elba.

Plurals provide us with some confusing oddities. Given that the general rule is to add an "s" to the singular, except when the singular ends in "y" when the "y" is knocked off and "ies" is added, why is the plural of sheep, sheep? And why does (do) fish sometimes becomes fishes and other times stay as fish? If the plural of house is houses, why are more than one mouse, mice? And the bird grouse stays as grouse when there are several, but when it mean a complaint, it becomes grouses. It's all just too confusing to explain in anything like a logical or reasoned way.

Talking of confusion,

"Palindrome". That's the word!

Back to confusion. I especially like those mnemonics we use to remind us of things. You know - "Richard of York gave battle in vain" for the colours of the rainbow. I tend to make them up myself to remember car numbers, and in that case, the whackier the better. For example, Climbing Mountains, 54 foolish men tumbled equates to CM54 FTM. That's not the number of a car I or anyone I know has ever owned but just something I made up as an example. It may exist - it's in the correct form - or it may not. Another I remember from way back is cows much straw: many cows abstain. This is a reminder of how to deal with magnetic variation when dealing with compass bearings and maps. When transferring a bearing from Compass to Map, Subtract the variation. From Map to Compass, Add the variation.

Now I suppose I had better try to think of a title.