In loving memory

This week I received the call informing me that my Grandad had passed away, after a long illness. I'm told that, contrary to the last, he died on the stroke of midnight, leading to confusion over which date should go on the certificate.

He was......well, I suppose he was a pretty ordinary man really. The history books won't be writing about him. He was, however, everything you could possibly want from a grandfather, and I adored him.

He kept bees on his allotment, and let me turn the handle on the big spinning drum thing he used to get the honey out of the combs. He held back the world's most vicious cat so that I could put food in her bowl without losing an arm. He fixed up a bike from a car-boot sale for me and timed races, always encouraging me to go faster, because why shouldn't I do anything the boys did and beat them at it? He taught me to patch a punctured tyre. He opened the cupboard in the room I slept in at their house, to prove there wasn't a monster living in there.

Once I reached adulthood, he was always the one who told me to take no notice when people were getting at me. He was the reason I stuck out my degree studies when they felt like more than I could handle, because he wanted so badly to put up my graduation photo with the others, and disappointing him was somehow worse than disappointing everybody else. He was the first person in my recollection to ever tell me they were proud of me.

He was a man who worked hard all his life to care for his family, and to give them the opportunities he didn't have, and he meant so much to all of us. I'm going to miss him - probably even more than I realise right now, when it hasn't fully sunk in yet - but I'm glad he's not in pain any more. He deserves a rest.

Rest in peace, Grandad. I love you.

Happy Birthday to me

Being woken on my birthday by a 7am call from my brother = bad.
Being woken on my birthday by a 7am call from my brother, so my 3 year old nieces can sing Happy Birthday to me down the phone = totally worth waking up for!

Things my mother was right about

I scheduled this to appear on Mothers Day, but for some reason it didn't, and I've only just noticed. Better late than never......

• Ironed sheets are really nice. I still can't be bothered to actually iron my sheets, but I do enjoy getting into a bed whose sheets somebody else has ironed.
• I should stand up straight. The combination of appalling posture and the weight of two bowling balls suspended from little straps over my shoulders means that I frequently have a bad back. This leads onto the next point........
• .........Spend money on decent bras that fit properly. See above comment re: bowling balls.
• "If you're that bored, tidy your room". In fact, never mind being bored. Rooms need tidying more often than once a decade. I have accepted this as fact, and will hopefully learn to implement it before I end up one of those crazy old people living in a house full of old newspapers and broken toasters.
• I do need to wear suncream. I went through several years of denial and sunburn before acknowledging that skin as pale as mine just will not tan like my friends' does. Embrace the pallor!
• "It'll give you nightmares". And whatever it was, it did. Every time. In fact it generally still does.
• The sexiest part of a man is the bit between his ears. My mum told me this when I came home from a teenage date with a boy who was very pretty but had no conversation whatsoever. I think she was a little relieved to discover I wasn't shallow enough to think this was ok.

And one thing she was wrong about.....

• "There's no such thing as a free lunch". Actually, sometimes people are generous enough of spirit that they will give you their time, lend you their laptop or buy you a blinky squirrel badge just for the joy of making your world a happier place!

That's why I brought a shawl

It was my cousin's wedding at the weekend so, in honour of the occasion, I bought a frock. As I waited in the hotel corridor for my mother to finish dithering about in her room, I was approached by an old lady. "Oh!" she said as she passed, "You look very beautiful!". Feeling, as I did, a little awkward in my blowsy dress, I was greatly cheered by this comment. Rather more bouyed, I made my way down to the lobby and went to join my grandmother. Her remark on the dress? "You'll freeze".

A gradual gradient of graduands

I graduated yesterday. Well, technically I graduated a few months ago when my results were published, but the ceremony was yesterday. The journey there was made unecessarily stressful by a combination of the tube strike and of an idiot woman pulling the passenger alarm in protest at the train being diverted from the Charing Cross branch to the Bank branch. Potential time taken changing branches at Camden = two minutes. Time spent half in and half out of Kentish Town station waiting for a supervisor to come and investigate the alarm = twenty-five minutes. Where's the logic?

Once I got to the Royal Festival Hall, where the ceremony was being held, everything went fairly smoothly. Parents found, gown sorted, photo taken. The photo was potentially the most important part of the proceedings. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be the one to tell my Grandma she wasn't getting one! After a bit we heard the PA system vaguely in the distance and split up to go and take our seats. At some point I became aware that everyone was moving in the same direction. Away from the hall. Toward the exits in fact. And at that point I started to actually listen to the PA system, and realised that we were being evacuated from the building. Hundreds of gowned, mortar-boarded students and their familes were summarily turfed out onto the Southbank in the freezing November wind. Several of the more determinedly entrepeneurial stall-holders from the nearby Christmas fair seized the opportunity by opening up early and starting a brisk trade in hot chocolate and mulled wine, while the ubiquitous tourists looked on in confusion, probably wondering if this was some kind of quaint English tradition. Eventually we were allowed back into the building, although none the wiser as to what the security alert had been due to, and took our seats. Thirty seconds walking across a stage willing myself not to trip up, and one hour, fifty-nine minutes and thirty seconds of mind-numbing tedium later, we emerged, filled ourselves with free prosecco and escaped.

In the evening my parents took me for an amazing dinner at the Cinnamon Club in Westminster. I'm not a food blogger, and strongly suspect that I'll sound like a bit of a twerp if I start talking about the food in any detail, so I'll limit myself to saying that it was absolutely delicious, beautifully presented and very much enjoyed. My parents amused themselves thoroughly by laughing at me blushing at the sommelier, who evidently considered it part of his job to flirt with any remotely eligible female who crossed the threshold. I can't say I minded too much, since he was very obliging in finding me white wines to match every course (my red wine allergy is one of the great tragedies of my life), and his decorativeness was second only to his skill at his job.

All in all it was a fun day. It didn't exactly run smoothly, but then the things that I'm involved in rarely do. Still.....at least the chaos that follows me everywhere gives me something to write about.

Update

Apologies, oh beloved blog readers (all three of you). It's been a busy couple of weeks, starting with performance week of the play I was in. It went fairly well on the whole, despite such minor hitches as the failure of my gun to actually make a gun-like noise at the appropriate time (I'm told by the director that I should have shouted 'bang!'. Really? How naff would that be? Besides, I was too busy laughing to shout anything) and the five minute long blackout that turned the show into a radio play. Funnily enough I was laughing through most of that too, but I like to think that the audience attributed the quaver in my voice to the psychopathic rage of a gun-toting madwoman. Anyway, I'm assured I was mahvellous dahling, mwah! mwah! As if anybody at an amateur dramatics group would say anything else to your face. Your reputation is safe, so long as you never leave the pub while there are still others there to talk about you. The highlight of the performance week was the lovely kitty who came and joined us in the dressing room; coming up the back stairs and then curling up under the dressing tables. Sweeeeet! I bet the tale of a theatre cat would make a lovely children's book.

After the run of the play ended, I took a trip up to Derbyshire to visit my parents. During this trip I was taken still further North to see my grandparents, who took us out for lunch. We drove for miles, past endless lovely looking country pubs, with pretty views over the fields, in order to reach...a Toby Carvery on a busy roundabout. Yum. The rest of my time up there was spent in turning into an old lady. I helped make chutney, started learning to knit socks, and spent an afternoon pottering around the gardens at Chatsworth. It was all very lovely and restful. Less restful, I found, is driving anywhere with my mother. As soon as she folds herself into her little convertible Toyota rollerskate she gets a terrifying gleam in her eye, and any long stretch of straight road seemingly irresistibly draws her foot to the floor of the car. She becomes the veriest picture of a midlife crisis, zipping along narrow country roads, laughing at my strangled entreaties that she please keep at least one hand on the wheel.

On my return to London I was accosted by a charming man, who told me I was the most beautiful woman in the world, before walking into a bench and falling over in a drunken heap. Classy.