iRamble.co.uk

Whilst sorting out some of my Mothers things after moving her into a nursing home I came across an old tape recorder complete with two spools of tape. My mind immediately lurched backwards to my fifties childhood when my Father had purchased this item to record our voices for posterity.

Oh what fun, winter evenings were no longer boring as we gathered round the tiny microphone, singing songs, reciting poetry or in my Father’s case reading from our encyclopaedias or the bible. I vividly remember his rich Irish accent as he read and how, when he sang Irish folk songs with us children, his accent broadened with words from his homeland.

When the rest of the family joined us for Christmas the tape recorder was brought out again and my Father would secretly tape the parties when my Mum’s five brothers brought their families over to our house. They were such noisy events and I remember some of the recordings were ruined by the shouting and laughing of children and adults alike as we played our Christmas games.

On summer evenings we would hold the microphone to the open window and record the birdsong in our garden and sometimes when she had gotten up early, Mum would record the dawn chorus.

We would sit very quietly listening to our favourite radio programmes, holding the microphone close to the gold mesh speaker on our large Bakelite radio. Programmes like ‘The Clitheroe Kid or ‘The Navy Lark’ were always punctuated with my brother’s and my stifled giggles in the background. Then, when I was older, there was ‘Pick of the Pops’ with Alan Freeman, I always managed to keep quiet whilst taping that, and afterwards my friends and I would dance around the house to our favourite songs.

All these things would still be there on those spools of tape, I could only hope that the tape recorder would still be working.

But first, the plug. At the end of the lead was a round pin plug; at least it had three pins although the flex had only two wires. Thankfully I wired the replacement plug correctly and switched the machine on. I then put one of the spools of tape on the machine and threaded the end of the tape to the empty spool on the other side. I cleaned the tape heads with a cotton bud, crossed my fingers and switched the machine to the ‘play’ position.

I seemed to be waiting forever as the clear end tape ran through the machine followed by the brown recording tape, and all the time the machine just made a loud humming noise. I really thought the words on the tape were lost.

Then suddenly, although the humming continued, I could hear my Dad singing! The tears sprang to my eyes as the years fell away and I was a child again, six years old and singing ‘Katy Daly’ with him, and later were the party games and the voices of my uncles, aunties and cousins, all young again, lovely carefree times. The birdsong and favourite radio programmes of that time, they were all there as I painstakingly went through the tapes – snatches of conversations between Dad and his brother Andy, when he visited from Ireland. My Mum chatting away and our Siamese cat, Simba, howling dramatically in the background.

Voices of people long gone from my life, my father died when I was 19 years old. He was not there to give me away as I married and he never met my two wonderful children. All of my uncles except for one have died; even some of the cousins have left this world. I stood, an emotional 52 year old, listening to them all – it was like a miracle! A world away from today where all sound and movement is recorded in one place – onto a DVD!

I will find a company who can get these voices onto a compact disc and bring the past to the present without the humming noise. Where my children can hear their Grandfather laugh, joke and sing together with his daughter, their mother. Hopefully some young entrepreneur has already designed the means to find the voices on these tapes and load them onto CD.

photo credit: dan taylor

My parents moved into their brand new council house in 1954. At the top of the stairs was a tall built in cupboard, Mum called it her bottling cupboard and as a child it fascinated me. I used to open the door and gaze at the big kilner jars filled with all manner of good things. Gooseberries, like pale green shiny globes hovered an inch or two from the bottom of their jars, suspended in syrup. More jars containing stripy layers of green sliced runner beans and white rock salt. Numerous varieties of crystal clear jams and jellies with their small white labels describing the contents: - apple and rhubarb, blackcurrant, gooseberry. We always had enough for baking days and sandwiches throughout the winter months, and as the stocks in the bottling cupboard began to dwindle, the blossom in the garden was starting to form.

The house had a large garden and by the time I was old enough to remember Mum and Dad had stocked one side of the garden with an abundance of fruit trees and bushes. There were three apple trees, blackcurrant bushes, gooseberry bushes and a large rhubarb plot. When summer came we would enjoy apple pies, gooseberry crumbles, and rhubarb drop (baked in Yorkshire pudding batter and sprinkled with sugar). One of the apple trees produced a cooking apple, which, if kept until later in the year, became an eating apple. We used to store these special fruits carefully in apple trays on top of the wardrobes in our bedrooms. The other two trees produced a cooking apple and an eating apple so we had a plentiful supply while they were in season. The other side of the garden was given over to the growing of vegetables: - runner beans, potatoes and garden peas in particular. I remember learning how to shell peas into a colander when I was very small. Of course one or two crept into my mouth as I opened the pods, it was only natural! As I got a little older I was given the Sunday job of picking the mint leaves, chopping them finely with scissors and mixing them with sugar and vinegar for the best mint sauce ever!

The preserving time was always special for me. I learnt so much about jam making and fruit bottling although the picking and preparation of the fruit was not a favourite part of the task. Gooseberry and Blackcurrant bushes have sharp thorns, and having braved this part the fruits then required delicate handling before bottling. The gooseberries each needed their stalks ‘topping and tailing’ with a small pair of scissors then wiping over before the best of them were put into waiting Kilner jars. The blackcurrants needed removing from their clusters by either pulling the berries off separately or running a fork through the stalk to remove them.

The best of the fruits were bottled and the rest were made into jam. The big preserving pan was brought out and the wonderful aroma of boiling fruit and sugar filled the air. I used to love the part where the jam was tested to see if it was at setting point, Mum would drop a small amount of the boiling mixture onto a saucer and allow it to cool then she would check to see if the surface of the jam wrinkled when moved, if it did it was ready to be poured into the hot jars and left to cool before covering and labelling. And guess who got to try the taste test with the sample on the saucer?

There was no thought of freezing the vegetables to preserve them (we had not even got a fridge at that time) and by far the best way of preserving our runner beans was to slice them as normal and pack them between layers of block salt in preserving jars. Later in the year when they had been well rinsed and were being cooked it was just as if the smell of summer had been locked in that jar and preserved with them. The bottled fruits tasted good too, nothing like the fresh fruit which I always found to be sour, when they came out of those jars they were mouth wateringly sweet, and I got to drink any of the juice that wasn’t needed for the pie!

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I have always loved the smell of beans cooking and even though I now only have a paved area of garden I always grow one large tub of runner beans every summer – though now of course it is easier just to slice and freeze them. Mint grows in another container, and yes I still make my own mint sauce too but now I boil the vinegar and sugar and pour it over the jars full of chopped leaves, it keeps beautifully as does the mint liqueur I made last year.

One day last summer my daughter came home with a basketful of raspberries from a self pick farm. When I asked her if she wanted to freeze them she said no, she would like to learn how to make jam.

The big preserving pan from my childhood was in the garage and after a good wash it stood gleaming on the hob waiting to perform again. Together, my daughter and I made 8 pounds of raspberry jam and, just like her mother she liked testing the jam for a setting point on a saucer.

This year I may buy a couple of preserving jars, and try bottling some fruit just to see if the wonderful memory that lingers on my taste buds is playing tricks on me. And where to store these jars? Well, I don’t have a cupboard at the top of the stairs, I don’t have stairs! But – in my kitchen there is a built in cupboard, it houses the central heating boiler and there is a shelf below the boiler that looks quite good with jars of raspberry jam and mint sauce on it. I now have my own bottling cupboard!

photo credit: Trishhhh

Whilst spending time with family this weekend we were discussing who people look like, and Malcolm in the Middle. I first watched Malcolm in the Middle after watching Linward Boomer’s Biography on TV.

Malcolm in the Middle is based on Linward Boomer’s childhood, and all the characters he selected for the parts were specifically chosen to be like the people in his life.

Here’s my question to you, if you had to select celebrities/actors to play the parts in the story of your life today (including yourself!), who would it be and why - this can be based on looks or personality!

Me: Anne Robinson
Everyone said a poster of her reminded them of me! Not because of her temperament!!!

My Partner: Dennis Locorriere
He looks like him! Could have picked George Best, but he’s dead!

My Son: Donny Osmond
He looks like him, and hates it! The trouble is he can’t sing, otherwise he’d have a whole new career!

My Daughter: A Katie Holmes lookalike, with the temperament of the Incredible Hulk
She looks like her, but when pushed she could quite easily get nasty!

The Rules!

1. List the people who would play you, and the key people in your life.
2. Give credit to the person who tagged you.
3. Link your answers to the original blog, that’s here (http://www.iRamble.co.uk)!
4. Tag four new people to participate.

So, who is wise enough to play your life, or who is so downright annoying you want to stitch up publicly?

I’m tagging:

Grandad, English Mum, Kerryview, Keiron

photo credit: eerkmans

When I was a teenager people used to talk about ‘the millenium’ and I remember thinking - that’s ages away and I’ll be in my mid forties by then - really old……

Then, old people were cared for by their families at home or moved into a retirement home. these homes were nice places, I know because I used to volunteer my Saturdays to visit and talk to the residents.

But time passes and our government see all things differently now…..

My lovely Mum lived with me quite happily for more than 20 years, she looked after my children while I went out to work and pottered about in the garden on good days - she enjoyed it. She ate properly and had no vices - a nice healthy old age.

But then she suffered a major stroke and against all odds pulled through. It left her wheelchair bound and paralysed down her left side. Three months after that the doctors agreed she could leave hospital but to go where?

My house was not suitable for a wheelchair, hoists and all the other equipment needed - social services said I must find a care home for her. Very reluctantly my daughter and I started to search for a suitable one, and all the while Mum, marbles intact - kept saying she wanted to go home.

Racked with guilt because I could no longer care for her I approached the very home where I had volunteered all those years before. They had a suitable room which we decorated and moved some of Mums furniture and ornaments into, and an ambulance brought her to her new home.

My daughter and I visited every day and every day Mum needed something doing - something the ‘carers’ should have done - like cleaning her teeth or brushing her hair. She didn’t want to mix with the other residents although she did have her meals in the restaurant, she said there were mad people in there. She told me they took ages to answer the bell when she needed the loo and they were some carers that were nice but she felt bullied by others. It was not a happy time for her but I was there every day to pick up the pieces.

Financially, it was difficult - I had power of attorney for her but her money was soon used up and she needed government support.

I sold the house and moved to a bungalow where at least I could get her over in a wheelchair cab and she could advise on decor, plants etc - she loved that.

This all went on for five years and last June she passed away. There is not a day when I don’t think about her and our amazing friendship.

Today, the government think that people should stay in their homes and they will pay to have the home modified - a ‘care’ plan is put into place and ‘carers’ visit up to four times a day.

I was speaking to a ‘carer’ the other day - her clients are fortunate - if she only has 15 minutes to carry out her allocated tasks and they are lonely or upset she will make time for a chat or arrange to go back. This is against the rules though. And Some ‘carers’ don’t bother or worse can’t speak English so they can’t even understand the client!

Also for all we are told to eat properly daily for our health. These ‘care’ plans only advocate microwaveable meals, most of which the clients just refuse to eat, and why not? This is the generation that cooked hearty food for families daily.

These clients are lonely, have no stimulation on a daily basis and when they have no family left are just waiting to die.

Our government should think seriously about reopening the mental hospitals for the needy and making government run retirement homes just what they used to be a place where you could sit with your peers and enjoy a conversation.

I visited my uncle yesterday,  mum’s last surviving brother, he is adorable and at 90 still has his marbles intact. He lives in a bungalow with his child bride of seventy something and SHE is the one who has to have a ‘carer’ visit. so far he is doing incredibly well, talks a lot about the war but then he would wouldn’t he? Still goes down the pub and enjoys holiday in Skegness. He is one of the lucky ones and he knows it.

The moral of this rant if there is one is:

I am in my mid fifties and can see things getting worse for the elderly daily - its just five minutes away for me now. Maybe the healthy lifestyle that everyone preaches is not the best way. We should all do what we want while we are able - the future dos not look promising.

Somebody get me a pint - I know its only 11.00 am but hey I’m alive and I just want one!!!

Work related stress causes two things in my case - so far one of them has been almost ten weeks off work and this causes the other problem…. more stress worrying about whether I will have a job at the end of this and whether I can survive the time off financially.

In either case it has been a difficult time so far. My family have been amazingly supportive, contacting me daily and arranging visits. My daughter’s greyhound Hippie has given me a great deal of love, company and pleasure, and, I have met many new friends on the way, some virtual and some amazingly real!!

The obvious thing a lot of people do when on long term sick leave is watch an awful lot of TV. I have never watched TV much and he thought of watching some of the daytime rubbish filled me with more dread. Added to the fact that because of the aforementioned anxiety I couldn’t sit down for long without panicking that I should be doing something.

I decided to devise a routine of sorts to keep me sane.

Every morning I get up early, shower and dress - Okay I’m not going anywhere but why become a slob because of it?

Then I make a list of things to do today - at the beginning this was just basic housework and cupboard sorting but they needed doing. then as each task is completed I strike through it. I also try to drive a little every day as that’s where the panic hits me the most - and guess what? I can go quite a distance now. Nothing like I used to but its getting better.

Some days I have to go shopping - I don’t like supermarkets much because the milling throng get in my way - but I do it!

Then there’s my laptop and broadband - thank you God!!!!!

I have my own websites - four of them, much the same as this one, and I hadn’t been keeping up with them at the beginning because it seemed that my creative spirit had disappeared. But then my son showed me how to get to other peoples sites and just read some of their posts. It was great, there are some funny, crazy, wonderful people out there and it made me laugh just reading what they had to say.

There is one special site where an elderly pipe smoking gentleman posts his daily thoughts. Sounds quite gentle eh? Sometimes it is, but sometimes he is controversial, or serious, and sometimes so funny the tears stream down my face. But his persona of being Grandad makes me forgive the swearing etc just thinking he is cantankerous and cannot help it. I have been brave enough to comment on some of his posts and have been pleasantly surprised that he doesn’t ‘give out’ to me like he does with others.

See, if I had a persona I could play act and be ……. what? A cranky old woman? No - I’m not far off that already. A young teenager? God no I remember what that was like. A bloke? I’d never get away with it…

Maybe I’ll just have to be me. I was never any good at pretending.

Anyway I’ll post this as a big thank you to my family and friends both on and offline - you are helping me to get through this! Oh and the house is clean, paintings done, slabs have been pressure washed - its all coming together. Just need to get back to work now!!!!!

My son and daughter-in-law took me to the Piri Piri Restaurant last Tuesday evening. This is a Portuguese tapas bar/ restaurant in Swindon and an absolute delight to visit.

The menu is long and varied and we decided to order tapas dishes plus bread rather than just one main course each. The waiter was wonderful and explained the menu to us - I speak some Spanish and although Portuguese is a very different thing they’re are some similarities which the waiter was happy to discuss with me - for instance ‘obligado’ is Portuguese for thank you!!!

But to get back to the food.

We ordered Tortilha de Ovo which is a traditional omelette with bacon,onion and Portuguese chourico, Feijão Com Bacon (red beans with bacon bites) and Ensopado De Borrego, a delicious roasted lamb dish made with coriander,garlic and white wine,Batatas Bravas (or fierce potatoes), Enchidos, which is a plate of different cold meats topped with olives, a salad (be warned it carries a spicy dressing), Calamares Fritos - fried squid rings, Almondegas com Salsa (meatballs in sauce).

The bread came out first accompanied by virgin olive oil mmm home made batons - wonderful!

We ordered a bottle of house white wine and soon the familiar small tapas dishes came out and we started to eat. The food was all delicious, I really enjoyed the lamb dish.

A word of warning for the uninitiated the batatas bravas look quite innocuous just nicely cooked potatoes with a sprinkling of spice - but wait…. they are extremely spicy and I could only eat one piece, my daughter-in-law put quite a few pieces on her plate and discovered they were too hot for her. Even my son who loves hot spicy food found them a little too fierce and could not finish them. I asked our waiter what was on the potatoes and he said it was piri piri which is a small fierce chilli and also the name of this restaurant.

All in all it was a lovely evening, not a ‘posh’ restaurant by any standard but it definitely gives a feeling of being in a different country and sampling a new culture. Well worth a visit!!

Obligado senor!!!

What is with supermarkets and the way they package cheese? My newly purchased slab of Red Leicester was plastic wrapped so tightly the corners were rounded. And, could I open it without hacking into the cheese? No!

Why can’t supermarkets come up with an easy way to open and close cheese so that it doesn’t go dry or sweat so much that it forms mould?

They should take a leaf out the Cathedral City manufacturers book and provide a resealable packet so that consumers can enjoy it all without forever having to chop the edges off.

It really cheeses me off!!!!!

My telephone rang a total of 24 times today and only one of those calls was worth having!

I have been registered with the Telephone Preference Service for a very long time and my home telephone number is also ex-directory.

So can someone please tell me why I have had so many calls offering me goods and services from companies I have never heard of?

A new mortgage? Why? I don’t even have an old one. New windows and doors - I don’t need them. A special offer on orthopaedic pillows, new blinds, a loan… the list is endless and some of them hung up when I answered.

Why me? Do they know I’m off work? Is it a plot hatched by the people who stressed me out in the first place, trying to make it worse?

I have been a database administrator for more years than I care to mention and at work I check my data every month for customers registered with the Telephone Preference Service to make quite sure that nobody calls them on an ad hoc basis - only when necessary.

It is ridiculous and a waste of money to make these calls in the vain hope that someone will buy a product. Surely the art of marketing is to reach somebody who is interested in buying the company product.

AND the biggest irritation and the reason for this post is - when I explained to one caller that I was registered with the TPS - she said “TPS? What does that mean?

I rest my case and before anyone tells me that its not just happening because I’m off work - it probably happens every day. I need to say that I realise that and I am now going to train the dog to answer the phone and growl down it.

That should stop them!!!

I only wanted to park my car for ten minutes while I picked up the flowers for my daughters floristry course this evening.

There was an available space next to  a small red vehicle with an elderly lady sitting in the passenger seat with a mug of tea and some biscuits on the dashboard. I smiled at her as I checked my purse for the 30p ticket fee - murphy’s law was with me yet again as I realised I had no change.

I rushed to the nearest shop, got the right change for the machine and was just about to collect my ticket when I noticed the car park attendant standing next to my car. I legged it over to him in an attempt to stop him writing me a ticket, foolishly thinking I could explain….. but, he was having none of it:

"You parked without getting a ticket, are you disabled? where is your badge?"

I found my self stammering:

"I only went to get some change for the machine, I have it here look!"

"But you haven’t bought a ticket with it have you?"

"I was just going to when I noticed you standing beside my car. I can go and get it now."

"Its a bit too late now isn’t it" he sneered "I’ll give you one of my tickets, next time you’ll remember to bring the right change."

I was just about to lose it with him, after all I am off work suffering from stress, when the door of the little red car opened and the elderly lady started to speak:

"Young man?"

Young? Well I suppose he appeared that way to her.

The man turned as she spoke.

"Leave the girl alone, she went to get change, she’s got change now let her buy a ticket. Stop bullying her - surely you’re not employed to do that?"

Girl? mmmmm well in the scheme of things I must fit the category, chronologically at least.

The attendant started to bluster:

"Well actually, it is my job to fine payment evaders."

The lady looked at me:

"Go and get your ticket my dear and let me speak to this young man while you do."

I did as I was told and went over to the machine and got a ticket, but when I turned to go back to my car I noticed the attendant was walking away, in the opposite direction to me.

I got back to my car and put the ticket on the screen. I turned and looked at the lady who had shut the door again and was sipping her tea. She looked at me and winked. I asked her what had happened.

"Nothing much my dear - I just told him what I thought of him and he left."

I thanked her for her help and she just smiled and went back to her tea.

So I have decided to look around for my Fairy Godmother the next time I meet a bullying Jobsworth. She is magnificent!!!!

It is indeed a sad day marking the passing to a higher place of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.

I have never been a dedicated follower of fashion, as the song says and anyone that knows me will testify but the haunting scent of Rive Gauche has been more than a passing fancy with me for many years.

This perfume has been on every one of my Christmas and Birthday lists and fortunately my partner is aware of my obsession and I am never left without.

May your God go with you Yves, you will never be forgotten in this house!!!