Things are happening round the world this week, that's for sure!
Tünde, my Hungarian penpal, tells me that the Hungarian Government has sacked the head of the country's weather bureau, after predictions of a storm caused the authorities to cancel a firework display in Budapest celebrating Hungary's national day. The storm did not happen, however, and in fact missed the capital by several miles.
What madness !!!!
To be fair to Fish, however, it was the first hurricane to hit the UK since 1961, when Hurricane Debbie just managed to clip the north-west corner of Scotland - the vast majority of the population weren't even aware of it, which was nice.
What a crazy world we live in!
I also find some documents, including financial ones, which our daughter Sarah left with us when she and Francis and the twins left for Australia in 2015. Some of these will have to be shredded, I guess.
Today, by coincidence, Lois and I, who are both doing decluttering, suddenly realise that the process is a bit like the bitter-sweet experience that people always have when they're clearing out their parents' home after they have passed on. Only with us, in a funny way it's the opposite experience, but still bitter-sweet - we are clearing out things that once belonged to, and were loved by, our two children: things they don't want any more.
Tünde also notes also that the Russians actually executed an awkward meteorologist in 1937, at the height of the Stalin era.
To my knowledge, such an execution has never happened in the UK, although everybody here knows that the previously highly-respected weather-man Michael Fish had his reputation shot to pieces for good in 1987, after he went on TV to assure viewers that there wasn't going to be a hurricane.
a typical scene that followed a few hours after Fish's disastrous forecast
Things are also happening in Australia, according to Steve, our American brother-in-law. Apparently the country which gave the world avocado toast is now overflowing with the little buggers - and people are scratching their heads to try and find a solution to the problem.
Lois and I run the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, and at the moment we're reading a book of short stories about Danish vegetable-growers. It's a bit of an obvious subject, isn't it, really, almost a cliché perhaps! But it turns out that even this familiar situation still has the power to provide plenty of surprises, which is nice!
Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord with her book of short-stories
about the tempestuous lives of some passionate Danish vegetable-growers
In our current story, two female growers have set their sights on the same male grower, and one of the women bakes him an avocado cake to try and seduce him.
When all three of them meet up for a coffee-and-cake session one afternoon, the woman offers a slice of her avocado cake to both the man and to her female love-rival. Predictably, perhaps, the female love-rival declines a slice, saying that she can't stand avocados, but Lois and I think that this session is merely a precursor to a series of cake-themed battles between the two women, the ultimate prize being the man's affections.
Well, we'll see ! I'll let you know what happens !!!! [Don't bother! - Ed]
10:00 For Lois and me today is bringing another round of decluttering as preparation for moving from our current house in Cheltenham to a much smaller home in Malvern.
I'm afraid that over the years, Lois and I have plumped for the "easy option" of hiding lots of unwanted stuff under one or other of the 5 beds in our house. Today my project has been to deal with all this detritus under our 3 single beds, allocating some items for disposal and others for charity donations.
And I can't believe how successful I am in this this morning. At one point I look under the beds, and I can see the carpet, the whole carpet and nothing but the carpet, which is total madness! It just shows what you can achieve if you set your mind to it!
at one point I look under one of the beds, and
see that there's no "rubbish" under it any more -
what are the chances of that happening, eh? haha!!!!
...and the area under this bed is clear apart from a suitcase!
these white boxes contain all my mementos of my late parents
and late younger brother, which is a bit sad, but at least now
they're guaranteed to be preserved.
foreground: some of our daughter Sarah's financial documents
from prior to December 2015, which I will now need to shred
Sob sob!
But the feeling is actually quite similar. Lois and I vividly remember clearing out my mother's house in 2011 after she had died in March of that year, aged 91.
my mother's dining-room
her kitchen
her sitting-room
her bedroom
flashback to June 2011: we clear out my mother's house
after she had died in March of that year
16:00 I get on the computer, and design and print out my anniversary card for Lois - it's tomorrow we celebrate. And although it's a "big one" - our 50th, we've decided to postpone having a big do till next year, when hopefully our younger daughter Sarah and her family will have moved back to the UK from Australia. We'll just have a quiet one tomorrow, with a celebration lunch for two at Buckland Manor Hotel just outside Broadway, where we've celebrated our anniversary many times in the past.
flashback to August 1972, and our wedding reception
in Cutteslowe Park, Oxford
20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom. I settle down on the couch and watch an interesting documentary on the photography of poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985).
Larkin, however, was a real photography enthusiast with a professional camera, so taking photographs was a bit more than an incidental activity to him. And he took a huge number of selfies, at a time when it wasn't as easy to do as it is now, with mobile phones. And over 5,000 of his photos are stored in Hull's History Centre, which programme presenter and poet John Wedgwood Clarke visits for this documentary tonight.
programme presenter John Wedgwood Clarke,
arriving at Hull History Centre on his little bike
Famously Larkin was known for his fear of, and obsession with, his own death, and Clarke thinks that Larkin's photography was linked to this - and to a similar fear of forgetting and of being forgotten.
Larkin particularly liked to record unusual events that he witnessed, with a photo or with a poem, like his famous work "The Whitsun Weddings". This poem records a train journey Larkin took from Hull to London, where at almost every station a newly-married couple boarded en route to their long honeymoon weekends in the capital.
We see a lot of photos of Larkin himself tonight, usually looking distant and enigmatic - so the promise of intimacy that selfies hold out, tends not always to be fulfilled in his case, which is a pity.
one of Larkin's selfies - as often, he's looking distant and enigmatic
There are also pictures galore of Larkin's various women: principally Monica Jones, Maeve Brennan, and Betty Mackereth - and Betty, the last of these women, now elderly, Clarke takes with him into the Hull History Centre to help him sift through the enormous picture archive.
You and I like to take pictures with people smiling in them, but again Larkin is different - and the pictures of his women have a odd air of intimacy: Larkin and the woman are in a small room together usually, with Larkin behind the lens, but there's little sense of joy, and the faces are normally unsmiling. Oh dear!
one of the photos Larkin took of his lover, Monica Jones
How intimate were Larkin's relationships? In this programme, presenter Clarke likes to point out links between Larkin's photos and his poems - and the poem "Talking in Bed" (1960) comes up a lot.
A pity, because according to Betty Mackereth, one of the last things Larkin said to her when he was dying, in 1985, was that he wished Monica would come and see him, so that he could tell her that he loved her. Oh dear - a bit late for that, Philip!
Poor Philip!!!! And poor Monica !!!!!
One surprising, and factually intimate photograph of Larkin's that comes up tonight is a page of the measurements he took of himself, when ordering a new pair of pyjamas.
21:15 Lois emerges from her zoom session, and we see an old episode of the 1990's sitcom "Third Rock from the Sun", about four aliens from a distant planet - with cover-names Dick, Sally, Harry and Tommy - who land on earth on a mission to study its society, while masquerading as a "normal family".
A the start of the episode, we see Mrs Dubcek coming up the stairs with a cardboard box full of old junk, which she manages to palm off onto Harry.
Mrs Dubcek then invites Dick to come downstairs some time so he can rummage through her "tchotchkes", but Dick isn't keen, we can tell.
But the question remains - what exactly are "tchotchkes" ? Well, it turns out it's a Yiddish word ultimately deriving from the Slav languages.
Who knew that? [I expect a lot of people did! - Ed] Well, Lois and I still have more "tchotchkes" than we can cope with, that's for sure! Does anybody want to come and rummage through them haha!!!
[No! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment