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Moving into autumn

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‘Come and join us after your Saturday shopping. Our autumn concert is at the civilised hour of 3.30pm.’ That is a good idea, I thought, because although I would not be shopping on Saturday, mid-afternoon is a good time for a concert for me. All too often shows are late evening and these days of darker nights I do not want to turn out on a cold evening, so I give it a miss. Luckily, we arrived near the door just in time but there was a long queue and we shuffled along, hoping to get out of the wind. But once at the pay desk our luck ran out. Payment was by cash only. I usually pay with my mobile and neither of us had cash. We were not alone and Mr T joined several others making a dash for the town’s cashpoints. These days you usually advertise ‘cash only’. I have seen some shops do it, but not so long ago cash was the usual way to pay. Now cards and mobiles have taken over. And the mobile is not just used for paying, I noticed one or two people reading their screens when the choir
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The Man in a Van

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  He was suddenly there at the end of our country lane. As I was driving onto the main road, I noticed his wooden caravan pulled onto the grass verge almost under the trees. It is a wide verge and he did not have to worry about yellow lines like the Lady in the Van because he was well away from the traffic. On my journey home I noticed his car also pulled onto the verge. Gradually things began to develop. Several rustic poles were hammered into the ground and then plinths appeared on the top. On these plinths he positioned carved wooden animals. They were almost life sized. There were owls, rabbits and what looked like weasels, but it was hard to tell as I drove past. Sometimes I saw him at work carving animals out of the wooden logs stored near his caravan. At our junction there is a little pull-in, and I often saw cars parked there and the occupants going to have a look, and perhaps buy his carved country-side creatures. Eventually a notice went up saying that he could take card
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Unexpected consequences

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      ‘Preparing for a power cut’ that is the title of the leaflet that has just come in through our letter box. I know we must think about these things, but it is surely a bit early. Mind you it is quite useful in that it tells you to call 105 in case of a power cut and the web page powercut105.com will tell us if our area is affected in a national emergency. All this supposes that you have a mobile phone and it is charged up. In 1972 there were planned blackouts and I remember electricity in 1974 electricity was rationed because of the miners’ strike and an oil crisis. There was a three-day working week in this emergency. We had no mobile phones, but our landlines worked because they did not rely on electricity as they do now. We lived on the side of a hill and I can remember watching the town down in the valley, when one half of the people lost their lights as their power was cut and the other half were suddenly lit up as it was their turn to have electricity. Our hedges have
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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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