Category Archives: Humour

Could it be Magic?

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Almost exactly two years ago something magical happened, but, of course, it happened overnight while Chris and I were asleep… One day, whilst we were out walking in the countryside, I had picked some pretty wild flowers and later popped them into a vase on the little bookcase in the passage. They looked beautiful, especially the magenta foxgloves. Now underneath the vase of wild flowers was a tiny flower-fairy ornament that my sister, Mary, had given me. In the morning Chris was walking by the bookcase when he noticed something rather enchanting. The flowers, unaccustomed to being indoors and perhaps missing the sunshine and fresh air, had shed some petals and sprinkled yellow pollen dust on the top of the bookcase; and, quite amazingly, one of the foxglove blooms had dropped and fallen onto the head of the flower-fairy thus providing her with a pretty hat that fitted perfectly (or, as they say, like a glove i.e. a foxglove).

Two years on, the foxglove hat, though faded a good deal and now shrunken to fit the contours of the little head within even more precisely, still adorns the fairy face and gives her a certain je ne sais pas, as you can see from the photographs.

Talking of fairies, this afternoon a beautiful present arrived at the front door as if by magic (unless postmen come at strange hours these days) from a good fairy who wanted to cheer me up (I have a virus and chest infection). What you know? I feel a lot better.

The Royal Duchy Train Passes Through Dawlish

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The Royal Duchy steam train passed through Dawlish at eleven-thirty yesterday morning. Mary and Stuart were still with us at that point and our terrace was quite occupied; therefore, I decided to take my shots from our garden on the sea-side, which is just above the the sea wall and railway line. No problem – I heard the whistle and ran downstairs; I had my Canon SRL at the ready on multiple shot mode (a bit quicker than my aged little mobile phone camera, which needs time to think and process).

Later on we thought we’d take some shots of the train returning in the evening.

“The timetable says that the train is due at Dawlish Warren at seven-thirty,” began Chris, “so it should pass by our house five minutes earlier.”

That was at about ten past seven. Chris and I had plenty of time to get out our cameras, change lenses, have a cup of tea, chat, go to the loo… At twenty past seven we were in position, waiting, just in case the train was to come early. Down by the sea wall and on the railway bridge below other folk were also prepared; we all waited patiently; a man and his grandson fishing from the breakwater were the only people who seemed to be oblivious of the impending excitement.

“The steam trains can also be late,” said Chris very astutely at half-past seven.

“But not too late,” I suggested, hoping for a positive response.

“Well, not necessarily,” Chris answered, “It might have to wait for other trains to pass through first.”

“I’m getting hungry,” I said five minutes or so later, “And it’s getting chilly out here”. I rubbed my arms.

Chris and Roland perked up at the thought of my making dinner – they, too, were tiring of waiting and they rubbed their arms too.

“If we were inside, wouldn’t we hear the whistle as it comes through, Chris?” asked Roland hopefully.

“What do you think, Chris?” I asked, equally as hopefully as Roland.

“Yes,” Chris pondered, “I think we would.” (Which was very hopeful indeed on Chris’s part because he is a tad deaf, as you may remember.)

So we three departed the cold terrace for the warm inside; the men went into the lounge room and I went into the kitchen; the men had left the French doors open so that we could hear the whistle. I was just getting the chicken breasts out of the fridge when the men called:

“It’s here Sally!”

And then I heard it too…as it whistled past our house!

 

 

Choices

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On such a beautiful hot sunny day as this wouldn’t it be lovely to sit amongst the flowers with Harry the heron or lounge on the terrace and look out over the blue sea? Well, I know it would but unfortunately, I have to mow the grass, clean the windows, hoover the floors, run up some curtains on the sewing machine and hang out three loads of washing. As for cycling? Let’s see if the day is long enough…

The Wow Factor

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The trouble with these long days of the English summer is that we often don’t finish working until gone nine-thirty at night (and it’s still light); Chris and I might play a few games of Backgammon or Chinese Chequers (are we dull?) and then there isn’t much time left for a film before bedtime. However, we don’t want to go straight to bed so we usually opt for a shorter programme, like the property programmes:- “A Place in the Sun – Home or Away”, “A Place in the Sun – Winter Sun” and “Location, Location, Location”. Chris has set our television to record all those Channel 4 property programmes and now there are hundreds of them on our hard-drive. Methinks perhaps we have been watching too many of them, after this morning’s strange conversation…

I was in still in bed at the time. Chris had brought in our cups of tea but I had been dreaming about mansions in Orlando and wasn’t quite awake enough to drink tea yet; so I stayed there, sleepy and dishevelled, with the duvet in disarray and covering my lower half. My little white vest had ridden up exposing my tummy. Now if you’re a regular to my blog you will know that I have put on weight since my return home to England, and the new, more confident me (much vaunted for two days or so upon my return) has all but disappeared; hence, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Chris was obviously taken by the sight of my bare stomach. He stroked it and kissed it.

“Spectaculario!” he said enthusiastically in a more understandable (for us) version of the Italian “spettacolare”, the superlative used by an amorous designer Mary and I met in Bellagio years ago (our menfolk, bored with shopping, had stayed outside and missed the action).

“Really? Even though I’m so fat?” I asked (the old me, definitely).

“You’ve really got ‘the wow factor'”, Chris said rapidly in falsetto with an accent from the North of England (quite different to his public-schoolboy accent). He continued, “I noticed it as soon as I walked in. Wow! I always wondered what ‘the wow factor’ is and now I know!”

My eyes opened wide and I burst out laughing.

“And you tick all the right boxes,” he continued in his funny voice, “you see, you could have had ‘the wow factor’ but not enough bedrooms, then you would have ticked some of the boxes but not all the boxes…”

I can’t remember what else he said because I was laughing so much. Spectaculario!

 

 

Found

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It had to be done; it was a job a long time in the making and an age in the waiting. At length, when there was no more room for clothing in either the wardrobe, pigeon-hole compartments, or the chest of drawers (two drawers of which needed to be glued back together again), and the fresh piles of clean washing and ironing had to sit patiently on top of the chest, I knew the time had come. No more procrastination, excuses, prevarication or hopes for the visitation of a benevolent angel or good fairy; and no more interim, half-hearted, ten-minute efforts in order to close one dodgy, over-filled drawer.

Last Saturday was slave day (as we used to call it when I was a child in Australia). Chuck-out operations began with the upending of the bottom three drawers (three “cheers” or “Bottoms up!”) and categorising each newly freed item, some of which had become institutionalised and unfit for modern society after their long incarceration; at the ready were various receptacles – the rubbish sack, the charity shop bag, the bag for never worn garments bearing labels (purchased with over-optimism during the sales – you know, “One day I’ll get into that!”), the bag to pass around the family and, not forgetting, the drawer itself. A few items did the rounds from one bag to another and ended up back in the drawers they had come from but, for the most part, the decision-making became less arduous after exercising my new mantra, “If you haven’t worn it for two years… you won’t wear it again” (my old mantra – “if you haven’t worn it for one year…” – had to be amended due to the amount of garments finding their way back from sacks to drawers!).

To save me from bending, the contents of the two upper drawers were piled, one drawer’s worth at a time, on top of the chest of drawers. First came the night-wear and socks from the second drawer. Three sexy, baby-doll outfits went back in (well, they are so flimsy); now they never seem to wear out – probably because they don’t stay on long enough (when they are worn at all) and you’d never choose to sleep in them; but they were pleased to see the light of day. On the basis of aesthetics, the grey and white polka dot fluffy pyjama pants had to go, as did the the psychedelic nightie that once used to be a short summer dress; and two faded and jaded pyjama bottoms with almost matching camisoles. Thirty-two pairs of socks, several in varying degrees of decrepitude, vied for the bin bag; the six without partners went in immediately and twenty pairs had a stay of execution on account of their suitability for use with different shoes.

The underwear drawer proved to be the most challenging. How many bras does a woman need? Of course, the real question is –  how many bras actually fit? On the basis that most of the bras might have their day one day, only two of the assembled fourteen were thrown into the rubbish sack, and another two, still with labels, went into the charity bag. Of the numerous pairs of panties (many retained purely for their prettiness), six cotton ones went into a new receptacle – the paint-rag bag.

It took nearly all day to go through everything. Now every part of furniture that was intended to slide slides and all doors open and shut without force. The clothing in the wardrobe is colour-coded and easily accessible; shoes, in neat matching pairs, adorn the immaculately clean lower shelf and the dust and dead spiders have disappeared from the dark recesses under the shelf. Now is the time for someone to ask, “May I look in your wardrobe?” (not that anyone has ever asked such a thing, though I lived in dread).

Another little unexpected bonus from my labours was the unearthing of lost treasures. Amongst the found items were two pairs of castanets (for romantic Spanish evenings), two gold rings (“four calling birds…”) and a silver turtle ring with a nodding head (you have to see it to love it!), four gold pendants, one authentic boomerang (small-sized for English folk), four purses (one filled with Australian dollars, another with Euros – no notes, unfortunately), two promises from Chris, signed and dated 4.10.06, two pairs of brass finger cymbals (for belly dancing), a thirty-foot blue ribbon on a stick for Olympic ribbon dancing (soon to be available on E-bay), one authentic small-sized didgeridoo (nicely painted for tourists), two packs of safety pins, three reels of cotton, five oestrogen patches, allergy tablets and a plaster cast of my bottom set of teeth complete with original plastic mouth-guard (for a moment I thought I had found part of a skull!). Well, they are my idea of lost treasures, if not yours.

A Rare Species

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Please excuse me for writing in whispers but we naturalists (not to be confused with naturists – perish the thought) have to whisper, not only because the object of our attention may get spooked and run off, but also for dramatic effect.

This afternoon I was lucky enough to come across a prepubescent homo sapiens Anglorum – Kingsley variety – who I spotted on the steps outside my studio hide. Blue-eyed and dressed in two shades of blue, this particular variety was well camouflaged against the blue railings. Quiet and watchful, and evidently listening to the adult conversation beside the hide door, this fine example of Kingsley specimen sat on the steps for some minutes without wreaking havoc on any plants, gnomes or other beautiful garden ornaments. Luck was with me and I managed to get two shots of this very rare species.

Coincidentally, the 1995 film called “Species” starred the English actor Ben Kingsley.

Head in the Clouds

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I was particularly happy as we drove back from shopping at Newton Abbot this afternoon, not simply because it was a hot sunny day, or because everything looked so picturesque under the sun and the sky of blue and white, although it has to be said that these things put a smile on everybody’s face; but no, the main reason for my jubilance was because my mum had just bought me two fishing rods and tackle. Well, they weren’t solely for my use (I can use only one at a time) but it was my desire to get them as I intend to go fishing. A good friend is coming over from Australia and he loves fishing, and I’m hoping that Chris will develop a liking for the sport (or pastime, in my case because when I go fishing I don’t usually get much sport). I already have a fishing rod but, truthfully, it cost only £7 and I have my suspicions that it’s a children’s rod because it’s quite short and reedy. Our new rods cost £15.99 and are much bigger so I have higher hopes for some sport.

So that’s mainly why I was happy, plus the fact that, when I asked Chris if we could drive off the busy road to the lookout point in order to look at the river and take a few photographs on my mobile, after a little grumble, and against his better judgement (because we would “never get back onto the main road again”) he actually turned off and we spent a lovely twenty minutes or so enjoying the view. Chris even offered me a piggy back off the wall that I was standing on, though I preferred to take a gigantic step down (luckily I can nearly do the splits) with him to steady me.

We made it back onto the busy main road alright but the traffic made our progress home quite slow, but even that couldn’t spoil my happiness; on the contrary, it was quite handy for my purposes….

“What are you taking photo’s of?” asked my mother as she could see me holding my mobile up, and to the sides, this way and that, and she could hear me clicking away.

“The clouds,” I answered.

“Clouds?”

“Yes, you know how you can see faces and animals in the shapes of the clouds? Well, one day I’m going to produce a book with illustrations of faces in the clouds and it will be called ‘Head in the Clouds’ – I’m collecting heads.”

“No-one could say that you aren’t an unusual girl,” said my mum dryly.

She may have meant it as a compliment; I certainly took it that way – I was so happy!

Here are some shots of the river and the heads in the clouds, just to show I’m not mad.

 

 

The “A” is for Agnetha Faltskog, From ABBA

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“I really love that new CD you gave me,” I said and paused (knowing that what was about to come out of my mouth would cause a reaction from Chris), “you know, the ‘A’ for Ag-netha one.”

“I’m so glad you like Ang-netta,” my husband made a big point of stressing the correct way to say that difficult to pronounce Swedish name.

“I can’t see it as anything but another form of Agatha, with an ‘n’ in it – Ag-netha! But I grant you that it sounds a lot better when you say it,” I laughed.

“You’re just like my grandmother…” Chris began,

We were having a cup of tea in bed at the time and I put my cup down on the bedside cabinet lest I should spill my tea over the sheets. You see, I rather anticipated the humourous gist of the conversation to follow.

Which one?” I teased, “Your father’s mother or the farming wife of the sea-captain?”

“My maternal grandmother, as well you know.”

“Tell me the story again, I can’t remember.”

“Well, my grandmother, like other Victorians, was of the view that if a foreign word was hard to pronounce you call it by its closest English equivalent.”

“Like Peking?” I interjected.

“Exactly, I mean, Peking is so similar to Beijing – isn’t it?”

“And Leghorn. Where is Leghorn again?” I asked.

“Why, of course, it’s Livorno near Pisa. Isn’t it obvious?”

“And your granny called it Leghorn?”

“Naturally, what else? When she was in her eighties, my grandmother did the Grand Tour of Europe – she was a game old bird. Anyway, when she returned she was full of Italy. In particular, she loved the lakes, her favourite of which, as she told Jerry and me, was Lake Maguire, that famous Italian Lake with the Scottish name.”

“And what is it really called?” I asked.

“Lago Maggiore!” Chris said in his best Italian accent.

 

At breakfast, a short while later, Chris got up from the table and came back with two letters, still in their original envelope. He gave it to me.

“It’s funny,” said Chris, “but I came across this in my ‘Man-drawer’ just the other day.”

His Uncle Philip had written a covering letter to his sister (Chris’s mum), enclosing a letter written by their aged, and nearly blind, mother in nineteen sixty nine. There was an old photograph also – of Chris’s grandparents and his mother at the age of about fourteen.

“They are all gone now,” said Chris, not to inform me but to register the sadness.

“You are just like your granddad,” I observed.