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Dangers old and new

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“Her mother did not come and collect her.” I was at a stall selling the books I have written at a makers’ market. A person was going to buy a book for her mother. She chose a book about a mother and daughter relationship. She explained that her mother had been an evacuee in the war time and as a little girl she had been sent to live with a family in the countryside for safety. Her hometown was being bombed and she was in danger there. But when the war ended no one came to collect the daughter. I did not hear the rest of the story or why the little girl was abandoned but even after nearly eighty years she hasn’t forgotten the hurt. No one could forget, could they? We had an evacuee staying with my family in the second World War before I was born. She was from Hull where there was a lot of bombing because of the docks. But her mother came to take her home because, as it turned out, our house was just as dangerous. You see, although we lived in the countryside, we had a BBC transmit
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Even though you can't see it

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  Just because you cannot see it, it doesn’t mean it is not there. I met my friend in the street and he was wearing a lanyard. The lanyard was covered with sunflowers, startling yellow on a bright green background. I admired it. “II like your sunflower lanyard, what is it for?” I asked. “Oh, it’s to show I have a hidden disability,” he said. He has the beginnings of dementia and you cannot tell as he walks down the street. I will look out for the sunflowers because things are not always what they seem. There are lots of hidden illnesses and perhaps the person I saw parking in a space for the disabled and walking away had a disability we could not see. I wonder if he was wearing the sunflower lanyard. The road was very busy and it is a good job my friend was with a group of people as he could not have crossed the road safely. The traffic in town is non-stop and seems to be increasing. I remember when I was a young girl one of our games was to go to our lane end and write down ca
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Autumnal happenings

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    It is time for our short-sleeved shirts again. Not because of Covid jabs or flu jabs but because we have had texts saying ‘From 1 st September 75- to 79-year-olds will be eligible for a free vaccine to protect against RSV…’ If you are like me, you have never heard of RSV, I have never been worried about it because I did not know of its existence. Respiratory Syncytial Virus is apparently quite common in children and older people and is like the common cold but worse. So here we are getting ready to go to the surgery to be injected against a disease we have never heard of. The Government website tells us that it can be a serious disease for our age group, so we are guarding against it. And how do you guard against smells in your kitchen? Mr T has been making damson chutney and the tangy smell wafts up to my study. It will soon disappear and it is worth it because we have five jars waiting for the winter months when we will be glad of the chutneys delicious taste with cold mea
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Out of sync

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  ‘You are out of sync’, it said on my package. Well, these days I have often thought that I am. Things move so fast it is difficult to keep up with the modern world. But my message was not about that. I had been to the pharmacist to pick up a prescription that the doctor had ordered for me. I normally get my prescriptions delivered, which many of us do when we are older. But this one did not arrive, so I rang up. “We cannot deliver individual items,” I understand this as they could not afford to be coming backwards and forwards to our houses. Once a month is enough. So, I went to pick my tablets up feeling out of step with the season which is rapidly turning to autumn and I was in my summer dress. The air is decidedly nippy and I admit to putting the central heating on occasionally at night, the tomatoes have stopped ripening and we have picked all our soft fruit. Even our café is changing its menu to soup instead of salads. Surely, it’s too soon. But it is September now and i
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Gaps and a precious moment

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  ‘Try to avoid eating or drinking for two hours.’   This instruction is followed by nine other orders including ‘no alcohol’. You have probably guessed, it is to do with the dentist, I have had a tooth extraction. I have not had a tooth out for about forty years and it was a very painful experience then, but this time it was easier. All I have now is a gap which I must not probe with my tongue – it is all I want to do, of course. Isn’t it strange that when we go to the dentist, we clean our teeth extra carefully the night before we set off. It is like cleaning up before the cleaner comes or washing my hair before I go to the hairdressers. The potholes in our road looked like the huge gap in my row of teeth. Big and black and painful if you go into them. Last week a Highways lorry came and I thought ‘Oh good, here it is at last’. We were promised a new road by the end of August (I still have the letter), they were just in time. Traffic was stopped, men were out there with shovels
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Things are changing

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  ‘Important power cut information at 2.38am…’ As it was the middle of the night and I was asleep, I would not have known, but our electricity provider kindly sent me the text message at 2.45am in case I was worrying! Of course, by the morning it was all fixed and I had another text to tell me that the engineers had isolated the problem and restored our service. Not that we use too much electricity in a warm summer, but I have noticed that we need our lighting on earlier. Not so long ago you could watch the 10 o’clock evening news and it was light outside but now our sun is setting before nine and our daylight today is three minutes shorter than yesterday. I was sitting in a café the other day and a woman on the next table said, “We have a Shropshire saying that after the flower show in Shrewsbury it is autumn.” I am still not ready to think about that yet, but I must think about the fact that I often put my mobile on the café table then pick it up to read whilst I am waiting. Ap
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Strange things

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    There was nothing there, nothing to count. The Big Butterfly count came and went very quickly for me because our butterfly bushes are still bare. The flowers should be covered with insects but today there is nothing. According to Butterfly Conservation Group such low numbers were last seen in 2010. I thought that more would be here by now, but we are no better off than a week ago. “It’s a combination of factors...” says the Butterfly Conservation. The reasons are complex and there is nothing we can do except do all the right things then wait and hope. Which I suppose is also true of a lot of things that have happened this last week. The big red balloon I bought last week has continued its life of fun. At my book stall I thought it would be a good attraction and had it filled with helium A big red heart of a balloon would surely get me noticed. The trouble was it was very windy and the big balloon got in the way of customers and I had to keep an eye out in case it broke lo
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