It’s going to be awfully quiet round here in the blogosphere for a few days, with Dave away visiting his mother. He suggested we all take a week off from posting, but let’s face it – if we did that, we’d find again what we used to do with our lives before we ever started blogging and we’d never have time to come back.

It’s all a bit dampening to the spirits round here though. As soon as I’ve written this (I’m all dressed and ready and tidy, which is why the best thing to do is sit quietly like a good girl and not get muddy and disheveled) I’m going to a funeral – not my friend Felicité’s whose funeral is tomorrow, but Bob’s, who used to be a pillar of the high school governors for many years. I didn’t know him outside the governors’ meetings actually, but I’m doing the very grown-up thing of being a representative: though I don’t expect I’ll be the only one of us, most of the governors have joined since he left.

And yesterday, Sybil came and asked me if I knew how Mike was – he’s organist at another church and helps out once a month here for me. He was due to have a hip replacement and I had it in mind to phone in the next week or two and enquire how things were going. But Sybil had heard that he’s just had a stroke. I’ve phoned his wife this morning; he’s starting to rally in that he can now move his arm and leg, but he can’t speak yet although he can make sounds and laugh at his son-in-law’s jokes. He had his hip op a couple of weeks ago – not the side that’s affected by the stroke.

My mum had a stroke when she was young – late 30s. It’s one of the reasons I am careful to not let things bother me. I keep as unstressed as possible and, without bottling things up, don’t mind about minor annoyances. I relax a lot.

I went shopping yesterday. The usual weekend stuff, and I also went to the discount place, where the old Co-op used to be before the new one was built. I was looking for plastic shoes to wear in the swimming pool – this is not so odd. I’m short, wobbly and one leg is slightly shorter than the other, which doesn’t make for good balance in an aquacise class. I couldn’t find what I thought would suit, so ambled round a bit and ended up with a small assortment of items. It gave me great pleasure to buy a set of screwdrivers, a retractable tape measure, five retractable ballpoint pens, thirty-five pencils with rubbers on the ends and a pack of five tubes of extra-strong mints. All the pens work and I have sharpened one fifth of the pencils so far. I have eaten some of the peppermints and measured various bits of me.

Today was supposed to be spent in the greenhouse – this afternoon, rather; I was busy in the morning. But a friend invited me out for lunch. Seeds will be sown another day.

Of course, it’s a waning moon and there is a school of thought which declares that seeds germinate better when sown with a waxing moon (whoops, I typed ‘moob’ first, which gives a strange mental picture). I’ve never found any particular difference myself; it has always seemed to me that the temperature and other physical conditions matter more, but I’ve never done a careful trial and there are always other things that could get in the way. I think one would have to test it over several years with a wide range of seeds. I suppose the obvious way to start is with weekly sowings of mung beans or mustard and cress, but I somehow don’t think I’d ever bother to record the results carefully.

In fact, I spent a couple of hours drifting in and out of sleep. I read for a bit, slept, woke, listened to the music I’d left on, slept again and finally surfaced properly a few minutes before 4 o’clock. I have no idea why I was so tired.

A couple of nights ago, there was a meeting at my house. It’s an offshoot of the PCC (which is the committee that runs the church) and its purpose is to get things done. In the PCC meetings, held every couple of months, things get talked about but it’s not unusual for a decision to be held over and this can take months while research is done, reports are made or sometimes forgotten – you can imagine the frustration for more decisive people. So, a few of us thought an Action Group, not a committee, would be useful – anyone would be welcome, it would be quite fluid, those who were interested in a particular subject – such as, some of our fabrics are getting perished because of 100 years of exposure to light and need to be replaced and the originals conserved, we need some more tables and chairs, what can we do about draughts?, how shall a legacy be spent? – can come to a meeting or do the research and put in a report. Apart from the Rector starting by saying that people with axes to grind should not be starting up a power base *sigh and explain carefully* (she’s lovely but worries) it went well for a bit, but then didn’t make any progress as Christmas approached because we were all busy. So, as we got near March, I sent out emails with suggested dates and a consensus was reached.

One person turned up.

Several sent apologies, several didn’t, but there were only two of us. Still, it was nice to see him, we went solemnly through all the matters to discuss and we have a report for the PCC.

Since, I’ve sent out notes from the meeting with a choice of 13 evenings I can manage between Easter and the next PCC meeting in late May. I’ve had replies to say the notes have been received, but no one has mentioned any dates. I’m not sure that, in practice, people want to be consulted. I suspect that really they want *someone else* to do the work and just tell them in time for them to raise objections.

But if a couple of us just do that, will be be told we’re setting up a ‘power base’? And does it matter? Not to me, frankly, I have neither ego nor prestige set into this and I’ll equally happily do the work or let it go. I’d rather people say simply if they haven’t time to take it on and what they’d like to happen instead.

One more year. Then I won’t be churchwarden any more and it’ll be someone else’s responsibility. I don’t think anyone knows how much I look forward to handing it on.

I’m tired today. I suspect that the afternoon will not be complete without a little cuddle on the sofa with Tilly – something bound to send me to sleep. I’ve been out on my bike today, so need have no guilt about it. Not that I would anyway of course. I only feel guilty, normally, if I’ve got a reason to be and if laziness doesn’t worry me then there’s no reason for tiredness to.

I’ve just realised that I’m playing the organ, being sidesman and doing coffee tomorrow. That’ll be interesting. It wasn’t planned that way of course, I’m helping out friends. Fortunately, I took several packets of biscuits down last week so all I’ll need is a pint of milk.

I went to the physiotherapist this morning and we agreed that I probably don’t need to go again. He’s given me some tips on how to relieve sciatica if it occurs again, which I suspect it will. Mind you, I’ve forgotten one of the exercises already. I can probably look it up on the internet. I learn by reading or doing, not by hearing or seeing.

“I wonder if hearses have a special gear for driving very slowly?” mused Ro. “Hm, I don’t know if I’ll get an opportunity to ask”. “Well, I don’t know anyone who drives a hearse.” “I do.” “Do you?…yes, I suppose you would.”

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

I wanted to tell you about my friend Felicité, whose death I saw in the local paper today. She was a member of the arty society I belong to, and she usually came on visits with us. She arrived by taxi, usually at the last minute, and she was generally the last back on the coach at the end of the day too. She was a small, rather dumpy woman in her 80s. About three years ago, she sat next to me on the coach and we passed the time of day politely, but I was tired – it was an early start – and slept a bit and read the paper, so we didn’t have much to say. On the way home, we fell into a long conversation during our three hour trip back to Norwich and by the end of the day we were firm friends. We kissed each other goodbye, and sat together several times after that (though we didn’t lunch together).

She had been an only daughter and her parents were approaching middle age when she was born. She lived with them, latterly looking after them until the end of their lives. She was well in her forties by then and never expected to marry, but several years later fell in love with a man and he asked her to marry him. She told me that her father would not have approved as he was not from the same social class as she and did a manual, if skilled, job – he was a landscape gardener – but of course that didn’t matter at all to her or to him. His health was poor and he told her that he didn’t expect to live long. They married and were very happy, and he lived a lot longer than he’d thought he would.

Eventually, he did die, and since then she had carried on with life, as one does. What I loved about her was her appreciation of her life, which might have been thought to be one of missed potential. Yes, she’d have liked to have had children, but she’d had the great privilege of caring for her beloved parents, and then been lucky enough to marry a man who had made her immensely happy, and who had grown-up children who had been friendly to her. He had lived far longer than he thought he would, so she was lucky to have been a wife so long, rather than unlucky to now be a widow. Her health wasn’t good, but she could do the things she enjoyed if she took care.

I can’t at all remember all we spoke of, but I found myself admiring this unpretentious, brave, stoical little woman who counted her blessings and accepted her hardships without complaint or grudge.

I hadn’t seen her for a while – we never met outside our lectures or visits – and she hadn”t been on a coach trip for a year or so. I can’t go to her funeral, as I’ll be looking after the children that day, and there will be no one there whom I’d know. But I miss her.

I know several people who have ended their marriages, to the complete shock and bewilderment of their spouses. In several of these cases, the ender turned on the endee, blaming him for it all (not all the enders were women, but the blamers happened to be). Marriages do end of course, and sometimes that’s for the best, and I’m not going into all that – and, before I go further, this is a judgment-free zone as far as I’m concerned and I’m meaning no more than I’m actually saying. It’s just sad, that’s all.

A few years ago, I changed hairdressers. The previous one was a nice girl, married young, with two children, and she used to chatter about family life. One visit, she did nothing but grumble about her husband. ‘Hm,’ I thought. ‘She’s having an affair or she reckons he is.’ The next visit, she said she had turned him out of the house. The next visit, she told me the whole story. A bloke had stopped to let her across the road, with her pushchair and little boys and later saw her again and gave her his phone number. She was flattered and sent a text and it followed from there in the usual pattern. I heard the latest edition every few weeks and it got more cringeworthy every time.

I didn’t stop going to the hairdresser from moral indignation, but because the whole thing was such a car-crash. It was obvious that the bloke had targeted her because she was obviously in a relationship, with little children and he thought she might be a. up for it and b. committed, in the long run, to her family – that is, he was safe from any demand for a long-term monogamous relationship. He then spent the next six months trying to get her to chuck him by being generally unreliable. It was embarrassing to listen to, because she didn’t realise how much she was giving away in what she insisted on telling me, and her hair-cutting skills went right out of the window. It was half an hour’s drive away, so in the end I found a local hairdresser, whom I like very much and who isn’t nearly so chatty.

Other family break-ups seemed to follow much the same pattern. Either one of the pair started seeing someone else or, for whatever reason, decreed that the marriage was at an end, without any real explanation, and within a short time started seeing someone else (usually known to them already).

I came to the conclusion that their pattern of thought went something like this

1 I fancy someone else!
2 Goodness, I’m having an affair! (this may come later, in which case all the other numbers shuffle up and this turns into 5)
3 But bad people have affairs. But I am not a bad person. I have high moral standards and I always vowed I would be faithful within marriage.
4 Therefore, for me to do a bad thing, not being a bad person, there must be something seriously wrong with my marriage, or otherwise I would not even be tempted.
5 It’s my spouse’s fault, because I have already reasoned that I am not a bad person, and yet it appears that I have been made unhappy and discontented. The marriage is at an end, but I am entitled to make demands that might seem quite unreasonable were anyone else to make them, because it is all my spouse’s fault that I have been driven to this.

Maybe a little more self-knowlege and cynicism might not come amiss. Perhaps for the sake of the children, at least? In every recent situation I’m referring to, the children were between 6 months and 7 years old.

In case there is any doubt I am not having, and am not planning to have, an affair. Indeed, I haven’t even been propositioned recently. I mention the subject only because of a conversation I had with a friend this morning.

If you’ve come in search of Mozart, my sincere apologies, there’s nothing for you here. But isn’t soave sia il vento the most sublime aria ever written?

Cheers, Ally.

The best news of the day is that my tenant has paid up for March too, and I haven’t even finished spending January’s rent yet – I was making it last in case I needed to. So I insisted – positively insisted, darlings – on paying the Sage’s car insurance when the credit card bill came in.

I should add that whenever my bank account looks a bit lean I tell him and he bungs money my way. Such is the life of a kept woman.

With the bill was a brochure (couldn’t think of the word for a minute, nearly wrote brochet – I’m the woman who thinks of little but food) with new terms and conditions. You know that the interest rate has been brought down by the Bank of England to 0.5%? Of course, it’s entirely logical for Nashunwide to raise their interest rate on credit cards by 2% to 19.9%. Don’t we love that .9? Not quite 20, you see. So it’s hardly anything at all.

It doesn’t affect me. I live within my means, whatever they are. Even when I was still at school, my father had died and my mother had very little to live on and all I had for spending money was a Saturday job, I never ran out of money. When I received my monthly pay cheque (I worked at the local library and got 3 weeks paid holiday a year, how lucky was I?) I first bought a contribution to the housekeeping, a small treat, usually steak or grapes, and then only spent money according to my self-imposed rules. 1 – only buy what you need, not what you want. 2 – only buy it if it takes no more than half your money. If it takes over half, wait until next month.

Usually, by the next month, I didn’t really need it any more, as if I’d managed without for a month the moment of neediness had passed. Of course, there were real necessities, so I never actually saved money, but that didn’t matter at that stage of my life. Not that I went to university because I got married pretty well straight out of school, but if I had I’d have had a grant which was enough to live on. That’s what made the difference to my generation – no access to credit. If you couldn’t borrow money you lived on what you had.

I’m not exactly G0rd0n B’s dream girl. I don’t borrow money. I’d live on bread and potatoes in an unheated house first. Mind you, I can’t see him as a borrower either.

A windy day. Someone remarked this afternoon that it hasn’t been a very windy winter, and I think that’s been so. It was sunny today though, and I thought I’d cycle into town until I went outside. I changed my mind. I know, very wimpish.

Al was going to do a Health & Safety check round the village school, so I went into the shop for a couple of hours or so. The price of bananas has rocketed since I was last serving there. I suppose it’s the dollar/pound rate. Cucumbers and cauliflowers have come well down though and are back to the price they cost at the beginning of the year.

The Sage gave me a lift in, and this was the first time I’d been in his new van. I asked more about it – I knew that he’d taken it on to help Mike out, as he’d got it for his wife to take the dogs out in, but she hadn’t liked it. There is slightly more to it than that though as I discovered today – Mike took the Sage’s old car in exchange, and no money changed hands. Both were extremely satisfied with the deal – indeed, the Sage insisted on giving Dilly, whose car his had originally been, an extra £100 as he felt that, three or four years ago, he hadn’t really given her enough. She didn’t want to take it but the Sage wouldn’t take a refusal, so she and Al bought a lot of plants for their garden. So everybody was happy.

Oh, and Al found a fire door that had been painted over. So that was useful. Mind you, the school has loads of doors and if one painted over hadn’t been noticed for a while, it just showed it wasn’t ever used. But he has displayed Keen Observation. A new school is being built at present, which will be ready by the end of the year, so it’s not worth spending any money on the present building, unless for anything absolutely vital, but I suspect that unsticking doors comes in that category. Maybe a school governor with a Stanley knife?