All square

one

two

four

many*

Here's the first of my stash busting knitting projects completed in the internetless weeks of February. (or the broadbean wilderness as we are now calling it, thanks to Jayne's comment on my last post!)

You may remember if you've been visiting here for a while that I knitted a lot of baby clothes last year, and I also inherited  all my late sister's stash.  This left me with lots of single balls and part balls and insufficient quantity to make any garment - lots of different creams for a start and a lot of mauve which my sister loved.  When I saw this log cabin pattern it was immediately familiar - my mother used to knit similar squares when I was a child, and it seemed ideal as the centre square is only 15 stitches and 30 rows, so you can use up   quite small quantities of yarn  It's very easy to knit (all in garter stitch) so a good thing to take to hospital appointments as you can't lose track of the pattern and even on the last rectangle you only have 90 stitches to deal with.

The photos don't really do it justice as the light wasn't brilliant.  The turquoise - a bamboo wool mix with a lovely sheen, lifts it.  There are sixteen squares and each took a couple of evenings knitting - the whole thing took two evenings to sew in the ends and another to piece together.  It's double knit on size 4 needles but would work just as well in thinner or thicker yarn.  It's very heavy and as nearly all the yarns are part wool with cashmere, microfibre or bamboo, it's very warm.  The finished size is roughly 5ft square.

I've got three other things to sew up, so more to come.   Hope it's warmer where you are, it's bitterly cold here. Another hospital trip tomorrow ......

*in deference to Terry Pratchett - the way trolls count, apparently.

Back from broadband wilderness

Where have you been, I hear you ask.   Nowhere, unfortunately - unless you count trips to the eye department.  Our broadband has been unreliable to non-existant for about three weeks and we had no phone either for part of that, so communication has been limited to mobiles and the odd trip to daughter's to use online banking (and post a few comments on other people's blogs).  But mostly we've all been stuck at home.

I've been knitting madly - especially when stuck in the carpark or waitingroom, though it can be a bit too hot to knit in the hospital, so stand by for some knitting posts when I can get things committed to digital.  I've got lots of sewing planned but not started and I've read quite a lot too (and the house has received a bit more attention than usual), so there have been certain advantages.

Thank you for the lovely comments on the previous post about my Mother.  She would have been amazed at your interest and your kindness. I'm glad that I managed to convey how lovely she was.

Fingers crossed I'm now back online but I've a backlog of emails to deal with, so I'm sorry if you're waiting for a reply. 

Telephone Conversation circa 1985

My Mother:  You'd better go, Jane, I can hear your phone ringing..

J: (pausing to work this out):   Mum, I'm speaking to you on my phone, it can't be ringing.

MM:  Oh, it must be mine then, bye.

I stand bemused holding the phone which clicks then makes the noise which says the line has disconnected.  I put the phone down and start to go off to tell H, grinning to myself.  The phone rings.  Gales of laughter ring down the line as my mother tries to excuse her own daftness echoed by throaty guffaws in the background from my father which translates as she's done it again.



I was reminded of this conversation whilst watching Lost for Words, a play by Deric Longdon about his mother's last months when she struggles through a succession of increasingly debilitating strokes affecting her mental health and speech.  It is a warm, tender portrait full of humour as well as sadness - a loving portrait of a kind, loving strong woman who had already battled through a difficult marriage and caring in her home for four older sisters in succession.  If you haven't seen it, I recommend it - it is very funny and uplifting, too.

My Mother, mercifully, did not have to suffer any of the indignity of stroke and confusion.  She did however face old age with the same good humour that she had shown throughout her life.   Despite a childhood spent in real poverty (youngest but one of a family of twelve, with a father who took increasingly to drink, living in a tiny house in what could only be described as a slum), my Mother took life with both hands and found amusement in every situation. She loved children of all ages, but especially babies, and was tolerant of teenagers; proposing herself as nanny and housekeeper without pay to the local butcher whose wife had died suddenly, when no-one else seemed to know what to do was typical of her acts of kindness.  She worked hard and had a horror of being seen to be getting above herself, but never felt herself inferior.  In unfamiliar settings she was diffident, not one to speak out of turn, but amongst family and friends it was different - she loved to laugh and didn't mind if she was the butt of the joke, but she rarely said anything that could be taken as unkind, even in jest.   Life with my Mother was full of fun, we never knew what (or who) she might bring home from her weekly trips to the neighbouring town. Who else would have gone out to buy new sheets and come home with a live rabbit because no-one else wanted him?  She seemed a magnet for funny situations and she often did silly things.  Many family meals ended in uproar, as trying to describe her latest exploit she would laugh until tears ran down her face and we all laughed until our sides ached as we tried to work out what she was talking about.  Many of her adventures have become the stuff of family legend, their catchwords - the toasted doughnut and the pan scourer, the woman in Woolworths, the trip to the Turkish Baths, immediately raise a grin between me and my brother, and have been passed on to the younger generation..

Her old age was not a bed of roses, she lost a toe (and nearly a leg) after a fall and she nursed my father through various illnesses only to have him die after a routine and allegedly risk free minor operation.  Never at any time did she fail to be thankful to the people who helped her and to find joy in the silly everyday routines.
Her greatest admonishment through our childhoods was always 'You'll miss me when I'm gone', and we do, even after 22 years.

The following is just a little taster of the amusement she gave us: it was frequently like living in an Alan Bennet play.

Having had a few problems with her leg, she had asked for a Dr's visit and the surgery had said they would send a locum.  Standing up to go to the kitchen, she looked out of the sittingroom window and saw a vehicle draw up and a man get out carrying a largish bag.  'Quick,' she said to my father, who, by that time, had lost a lot of his sight to glaucoma, ' you answer the door, while I take my tights off.'   Dad shuffled off to the door and let the man in. He flashed an identity card, which Dad couldn't read, and preceeded Dad into the sittingroom to find Mum arrayed on the sofa, bad leg and foot at the ready.  'Thank you for coming,' she said graciously, 'I'm afraid my leg's been a bit of a problem.'
'Oh, dear,' the man said, glancing at her foot, 'I'm sure it has - but I'm afraid I'm the chap your son asked to come and look at the TV connection!'   As she said, 'After I'd taken my tights off, too'

I haven't bothered to edit this photo, she would have preferred to be out of focus

Here is the news

First the bad news.  M has now been back again to the hospital, and it has been confirmed that she will never regain sight in her right eye, and the race is on to preserve her left.  We have registered a complaint that we were told we were being a nuisance when we phoned the day after her cataract op to say that she couldn't see, and that wasted a fortnight when she could have been receiving treatment for the raised pressure.  We shan't take it any further - it wouldn't have helped with the right eye anyway, but it caused a lot of upset.  She now has eye drops several times a day for life, another item to add to the schedule that keeps us firmly chained to the house.

The upside to this is that they will now remove the cataract in the left eye which may make a slight improvement and will allow them to see the true state of the nerve.  Whether they are feeling under pressure I'm not sure, but she will be kept at the eye hospital until the strapping can be removed, so we will know the worse before we take her home (and incidently get three or four hours of freedom).   We hope she will find she has rather more than the dot of light which is all that is left in the right eye.

And the good news?  Well not much really, the weather's improved and the blue sky lifts our spirits, though it's very cold.  An elderly friend has come out of hospital when it was feared he never would.  I have fabric cut waiting to make a quilt, and I've just finished knitting a lap rug (but I'm not happy with it, so it may well be unpicked at least in part).  An old school friend has written to say she's to be a granny so the knitting needles will be in play for that event and probably the sewing machine as well.  H's dizziness had resurfaced but seems to be in retreat again now.  All small things but we take what we can get these days. Definitely a time to live one day at a time and keep hoping.

Conversation

M:  Can you do my mid-morning drink early, I want to sit in the bathroom between 11.00 and 11.30 this morning.

H: I can, but why do you want to sit in the bathroom?

M: I want to listen to a radio programme on Radio4, about the Rotary Club.

H: But why can't you listen to it on the radio by your chair?

M: Oh, that's no good, I shan't be able to hear the President of Rotary on a DAB radio - I shall use that good old-fashioned one in the bathroom.

H (baffled): Okay..

Nothing new under the sun.

æt ic bi me sylfumsecgan wille,
þæt ic hwile wæsHeodeninga scop,
dryhtne dyre.Me wæs Deor noma.
Ahte ic fela wintrafolgað tilne,
holdne hlaford,oþþæt Heorrenda nu,
leoðcræftig monnlondryht geþah,
þæt me eorla hleoær gesealde.
Þæs ofereode,þisses swa mæg! 

This of myself I wish to say that for a time I was the bard of the Heodenings, dear to my lord.  Deor was my name; I had for many winters a good employment, a gracious lord: until now Heorrenda, a song-skilled man, received the landrights that to me the protector earls had given before. That passed - so may this.

  Though most people are more or less aware of Beowulf, especially since Seamus Heaney's recent translation and an animated film, it is not all that remains of Anglo-Saxon (or Old English if you prefer) poetry.  Amongst the rest are riddles, and some longer poems, often with a religious theme, including The Dream of the Rood where the cross of the crucifixtion tells its story.  The extract above comes from a poem called Deor.  Proof if we ever needed it that people then were much as we are now.  This is the last stanza - the previous ones detail earlier historic episodes and makes the point, in the repeated last line, that everything passes with time.
I find our early language beautiful to look at as well as to read (in translation, though I do have a resident expert who can do it in the original - when it sounds strangly familiar, like something you might have known in early childhood and forgotten).  I love the characters we no longer use and the transposition of wh to hw.  

The readings on BBC Radio4 in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible has given the opportunity to listen to words long familiar - especially to those who went through school before the arrival of the Good News Bible and its sometimes puzzling modernisations, who heard readings from the KJB every school assembly and carol service of our childhood even if we weren't from church going families, and so many well worn phrases are still in everyday use though possibly their origins are not always known.   

Our language and the way we speak it is in constant flux.  M was brought up by a mother with a broad Gloucestershire accent in a small Hampshire village.  On arrival at grammar school she happily embraced a 1930's middle class accent.  She decries loudly anyone now whom in her opinion speaks 'badly'.  I had a Bristolian accent as a child which I lost after moving to Essex, not at the behest of my grammar school teachers but to avoid the derision of my Essex school mates, who were, of course, oblivious to their own regional accents!  Estuary English seems to be taking over everywhere now (and bears no relation to the old Essex accent even if it purports to be the language of Essex Girl).   Even the Queen now sounds roughly like someone who lives round the corner instead of on a another planet where they lived in hices and spoke as if they breathed hydrogen.

We are now many centuries away from the language of Deor, Chaucer, Shakespeare and the KJB.  Even Trollope and Dickens are foreign to our younger generation.  What will our language look and sound like in another 13-15 centuries I wonder, or even in 20 years?  W8 & C.




(the slightly odd P (Thorn) and d (eth) shaped letters are pronounced as 'th'.  There are others (not in the passage shown) which are described  here.

EDIT
Here's the link to the Youtube reading of the Lord's Prayer in Anglo-Saxon which I mentioned in the comment below, as that link didn't work:  

Another year

Browsing through a box I find a set of slides, taken by me around the time I left home to go to my first job - residential, working for a charity for my keep and a small amount of pocket money.  There are photos of my niece and nephew as small children, before they went to Australia later that year, and some views of Keffolds where I worked - a large house with Arts and Crafts features, long since converted into flats or houses.  I met my husband there.  And this one photo of some of the children in my charge.
I wonder where the children in the photo are now. I was eighteen and they were between 4 and 9years old - the youngest at the house.  The eldest there were only a year younger than I was - a baptism of fire to deal with: teenagers with fiery Polish tempers and difficult backgrounds.  The housemother, a devout Christian lady, could neverless be scathing and demanding, and I still fold all my towels according to her strict requirements 40 years later - she was right, they do fit into piles better as all sizes of towel finish up the same dimension!
I've also been doing my end of year sift through the correspondence and filing to start the New Year - amazing what turns up.

So here we go into another year - I'm not making resolutions but I'm hoping I can make some changes and achieve a few secret ambitions.  I'll let you know.
Meanwhile - a very Happy New Year to all of you. (And to Anwar, Akrim, Freda and Augustine, wherever you might be, too).