Fiona's Quiet Life

it never stops,
it was almost unbear­able, there they were four beau­ti­ful young women in their late thirties and early forties, with their faces crumpled with tears and unhap­pi­ness and it was to me, as if they were three years old and hurt­ing and i could not do any­thing to make it bet­ter.
my daugh­ters and their cous­ins accom­pa­ny­ing their grand­mother on her last jour­ney through requiem mass to the graveside.
i went into a sort of shock when i saw that one of the men lower­ing the coffin into its rest­ing place was my grand­son, i wanted to pull him back shout­ing he’s too young , he’s just a boy, but of course he is not. in Scot­land he is of mar­riage­able age at 16 so why would he be too young for a pall bearer.
i wondered if the priest would ever stop talk­ing and let them lower the coffin , peter was shiv­er­ing with cold apart from the strain of hold­ing on to the strap and wor­ry­ing about it slip­ping out of his hand.

but it was a beau­ti­ful ser­vice and the grand­chil­dren did their parts beau­ti­fully
and the party after­wards was a good one, she wanted us to wear bright colours.….…..not easy for a per­son who has beige hair beige skin and wears beige most of the time but i found some­thing after try­ing on lots of skirts.…..and the food and drink were great as was the company.

i cant bear the thought of my girls being upset like that when i die , maybe i shall start to be a hor­rid old woman now so they will be glad to see the back of me

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I think i am aller­gic to funer­als.
remem­ber, after Basil dying i had at least seven com­mon colds in quick suc­ces­sion, well,
first there was the funeral on the last day of last year, then there was my old­est friend dying a few hours after i saw her a couple of weeks ago…funeral was last Thursday.…then my ex-mother –in-law dies last Tues­day, she was a won­der­ful, if scary woman.….Scotland’s first lady provost.…she scared the hell out of teen­age me mar­ried to her son and first born, but in fact she was like a mother to me and i learned a lot from her.we are all dev­ast­ated, even though she was 92 and it was expec­ted. in fact the priest had been giv­ing her the last rites when she came to and asked him just what he thought he was doing. she would go when she was ready.
i have a stink­ing cold, i am sure it is funeral related.
yes­ter­day was the 3^rd anniversary of Basil’s death, i went up to the cemetery and took him some stones from my travels. the snow has melted so no more snow­balls for him just now.……it is amaz­ing just how many people i (A shiksa) know in glasgow’s Jew­ish cemetery .

there are two wed­dings in the off­ing this year though, my nephew is mar­ry­ing in a build­ing with no roof.….i have an umbrella/parasol and a cousin of basil is mar­ry­ing on beach in Israel …i have same parasol.

on home front.….…no workmen…hooray.
the rail­ings have been replaced after more than 60 years.….cant remem­ber if i have said this before.….……they were taken down to ‘help’ with the war effort, few were actu­ally used it was more to make people feel they were help­ing. cost a for­tune to put them back,but I con­sole myself with the thought that they would have rus­ted by now and these are guar­an­teed to least at least till i pop off.

cant remem­ber what else i was going to say.

so i shall go back to plant­ing things i bought in the local garden cen­ters . they look bedraggles so were cheap but the whole garden looks bedraggled after all that snow and ice so they fit in nicely.….…i look bedraggled too.

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http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/copyrightreform/

Which: We call on the Gov­ern­ment to aban­don plans, announced on 29
 Octo­ber 2009, to allow free and unhindered repro­duc­tion of pho­to­graphs
 without pay­ment or credit on non-commercial websites.

This is com­pletely at odds with the Government’s stance on file
 shar­ing of other forms of intel­lec­tual prop­erty (films and music) and
 raises the pro­spect of crip­pling thou­sands of small busi­nesses while
 pro­tect­ing large cor­por­ate interests.

The pro­posal uses phrases like “It must be seen to bene­fit all
 parties, not some at the expense of oth­ers” and yet the Government’s
 pro­posal does exactly that. It takes the work of pho­to­graph­ers who
 have inves­ted time and money in cre­at­ing work, and gives it to people
 who have no rela­tion­ship with that work, for free. Pho­to­graphic
 busi­nesses are already under severe strain and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of
digital cam­eras gives the impres­sion that cre­at­ing pro­fes­sional
 qual­ity imagery is easy. This will fur­ther devalue the work of
 pro­fes­sional pho­to­graph­ers and des­troy the pho­to­graphic industry.

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don’t travel unless you have to they said…well i had to and was up for an adven­ture. Nic­ola was due to go to Lon­don and to Birm­ing­ham so i went for my monthly trip to Chip­pen­ham, but i went pre­pared, tak­ing a duvet plus pil­low a flask full of boil­ing water and some sachets of tea and hot chocol­ate. and lots of ham and tomato rolls, a torch a book an ipod in fact everything but the kit­chen sink. kept the fuel tank topped up and sal­lied forth, it is the first time i have driven down the length of Bri­tain and it being all snow covered it was very dif­fer­ent and almost unre­cog­nis­able, as it happened the new snow didn’t start till i was within a few miles of her house.

next morn­ing was another mat­ter, snow every­where, and trains to Lon­don either off or very delayed, so Nic­ola didn’t go to Lon­don after all.and the school was closed so we all trudged off to the shops in search of treats.
she went off by train to Birm­ing­ham next morn­ing at 6 a.m. ish.
next day school was on so i was pel­ted with snow balls all the way there and back…little darlings. then we did some dood­ling with Lego because i couldn’t find the on switch on their new television.….….….….no it wasn’t only on the remote.
why are boys given to sud­den run­ning, they ran­domly zoom off at the speed of light.

hav­ing sur­vived them i drove up to Edin­burgh where Sheena and i hav­ing had one of her superb lunches met up with lots of other people at the Hilton hotel, atten­ded a lec­ture by three astro­nomers and then boarded a plane.
it was the best fun i have had in the dark for many a long year.

we flew north to lat­it­ude 63.5 then the pilot hav­ing received per­mis­sion, put all the cabin and nav­ig­a­tion lights off, we taped up any screens on our cam­eras and switched off the flashes,then tak­ing turns at the win­dow we gazed at the North­ern lights and the won­der­ful stars, the astro­nomers were as enthu­si­astic as sports com­ment­at­ors at a great race.….…here comes Orion on the right hand side …etc i have never seen any­thing so beau­ti­ful as that sky.…and we got food too before the light s were put off .

www.astrospace.co.uk/NLights.html

http://www.omega-holidays.reader.travel/ReaderNew/booking1.php?eid=71&Agent=ADW1

as it is in a 737 there are three seats in the row so you have to clam­ber over each other and take turns at the win­dow, for­tu­nately the other lady in our row was a decent per­son and we all had a good look…and giggle as we kept tread­ing on bits of each other.

after a nice day in Edin­burgh the next day i thought i would go and visit my old­est friend,” she is very poorly ” said the head of the care home“you might not want to see her like this”.….….…i am so glad i went in and told her all about the stars because she died that night.…perhaps i made heaven sound too good.

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we mem­bers of the queens park cam­era club decided that another wander would be good so we all donned our thermals, boots and gloves and 18 or so of us gathered in Pol­lok park this morning.…it was only –6 so seemed nice and warm com­pared to the nights, any­way the park rangers offered to feed the high­land cattle so that some of us could take close ups of the steam­ing beasts, i had plenty of pho­tos of them already so went with the oth­ers to the river.

The well named White cart River frozen over

we wandered about for an hour or so then feel­ing a bit tired some of us adjourned to Pol­lok house for cof­fee and scones.…soon to be joined by the rest of us.

then him upstairs and Katie and i went off to Glas­gow green , which should be called Glas­gow white  this month, and took lots of pho­tos of the frozen foun­tain.and then on to the Clyde at the BBC build­ing. and took many more pho­tos of the frozen river, it is tidal so the ice had been broken and re-frozen many times giv­ing it an inter­est­ing mosaic effect.

we are start­ing to the great project.….….…55 years ago a book of pho­to­graphs of Glas­gow was pub­lished, we are rep­lic­at­ing it with pho­tos taken from the same places this year illus­trat­ing the changes in 55 + 55.

So him upstairs said he had seen a bed at a good reduced price in a well known store could we pop in and see if he still liked it he would buy it. in we went, he still liked it, i liked it, we find a lady to sell it to us,

it is not the bed that is reduced said she, just the mat­tress, i read the notice and it seemed to me that it meant the bed but she was adam­ant ‚OK i don’t want it at the full price says he, ah says she let me check.….….…..an offer just star­ted this morn­ing , 30% off the bed.….….…..but that is £349 says him upstairs, yes says she. but that is what i thought it was going to cost in the first place says he, yes says she.

so he bought it…along with a lot of flirt­ing between him and her and con­ver­sa­tions about dogs. it is now mid­night and only –6 so i won­der if it is going to snow.

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