My Lucky Day

 Dear Marmite

I have been very lucky indeed. Yesterday I went to my first music gig since returning to old Blighty. It was outdoors and I took my picnic blanket so that I could naturally distance myself from the hordes. The music was brilliant The only thing I lacked was a cocktail to sip while the local trio played Bosso nova. I could imagine listening to this in the atrium at the Shangri La, Singapore. Ah, those were the days.

I needn't have worried about being suitably distanced as I was the only one at the gig in the Community Orchard apart from the muscians themselves. There was a lady who was watching from behind her garden fence and a few people paused at the gate to see what was happening. To me it was clear that the band lacked someone on the tom-toms who could have spread the word. Danielle and Richard almost tripled the numbers but turned up just after the finale - at least I had tried to do my bit and let others know. Even the weather was favourable. Was this the fault of COVID or just new habits of not getting out and about? 

I have also had a very lucky email from HMRC. It said I was due a rebate. Having extra dosh can't be bad. I read the email carefully and even looked up the word, "nedded" on google. I thought this must be a financial term. The HMRC couldn't possibly be bad at spelling! Also the logo at the top was UPS. Maybe that will be the organisation that will send me my rebate. Who knows? I am just happy that I have struck lucky once more.

As you know Marms, I go swimming quite regularly now. It is very popular as people have been denied the pleasure for such a long time. One lady told me she was going into the adjacent lane as there were less people swimming in it. I so very nearly corrected her grammar, "fewer". I only just managed to stop the word tumbling out. O.M.G. this woman is British with an Estuary accent. I must remember to take off my English teacher's hat. Note to self - keep your head down and just swim... It is the best way to keep your heart rate steady. There is no need for English Teaching in the pool!

So Marms, you have missed much fun... 

Love You

XXX

Silent and Deadly

 Dear Marmite

My now, not-so-new car, called Katy has proved herself a menace on the roads. I live on a small road to nowhere where people tend to walk up the middle. This is fine unless there is the occasional car needing to get past. The other afternoon the occasional car at that moment -  Katy, wanted to get to her garage spot and I actually want to get home before nightfall too. 

We were in no particular hurry but she wasn't prepared to edge forward at a pace no faster than a snail. In front of her was a man sauntering up the road obviously in no hurry to get anywhere at all. Patient as I am, I peeped; he jumped out of his skin and then I realised that he hadn't heard us before that moment.

My car is deadly silent. It creeps up on people and they don't hear a thing. I have come to realise this from how people react when then suddenly see a white CHR closer than they expected to see any car at all. I have often witnessed the odd thrill-seeker stepping off the curb into the path of dear Katy. They look aghast. Terrorised even. They get their dose of adrenaline from a humdrum activity. They should thank me for bringing a bit of excitment to their lives.

This death wish extends to people stepping in front of me when I am cycling on the roads too. Today on my little jaunt through the sunny Buckinghamshire countryside I needed to swerve to avoid an oblivious pedestrian. Perhaps I need to puff harder and grunt a little to make myself heard. One blessing is that I don't encounter as many people surgically attached to their screens when out and about like in Singapore - that was a hazard to be sure. Over here the bigger peril is potholes of which there are far too many. I often say, "OUCH" when I hit one. Everyone hears me then, I'm sure.

Not so much deadly but dopey is my energy provider, E-On. Not only have I overpaid my energy bills which they seem reluctant to sort, I also get really stupid communication from them. I rang a customer service operator up about my bill for which I have set up a direct debit and the generic answer service tells me I need to get a direct debit. When I eventually reached the customer service operator, she couldn't sort out my £400 overcharge or the misinformation on the webpage which I took a screenshot of. It says my bill is estimated and right below it says they take smart readings inferring that my bill can't be estimated. Errrrrrrr. 

Besides these frustrations, Mr Elusive, my solicitor seems to be MIA and I was hoping to move to my new house in two weeks. If I find do him, I won't hesitate to run him over. He might not even notice. 

At least I have found a quiet time at the pool and don't run too many people over lane swimming. I am doing over 2km four or five days a week. I am bad at keeping count and my watch say I have done more than I thought. It feels good after such a long break to be back in a routine. It was good to see you swimming, Marms... You lucky old dog.

Love you as always. 

XXX

Child Rearing Practices

 Dear Marmite

As you well know, the main reason for having a dog is so you can kick them occasionally. I have now come to realise that there are similar benefits to having children. I only realised this when Danielle and I went off on a jolly to visit a friend to have a nippy, damp al fresco lunch in the garden - English style! 

Danielle explained  to our friends how she gets Ezra-Mae to sleep. She said she swaddles her tightly and then bungs her down. Later, while burping her, she admitted that the most effective way is to bash her on the back - this she demonstrated with enthusiasm. My friends asked if they were my techniques for child rearing. I honestly can't remember - but my three have survived it. 

The language that Danielle uses sounds a bit savage but this little three-month old treasure thrives on it. She even survived a visit from her cousins. So bunging and bashing are to be recommended along with occasionally kicking the dog! After all Marms - it never did you any harm, did it?

As you have probably heard, we are one more step away from lockdown. The shops are open and so are gyms and swimming pools. I have already started my regular dips and I have to say it is so nice to be back. I am seeing the old familiar faces again in the pool. I feel in some small way I belong to this town.

I am also looking forward to a haircut. I want to be pampered, really pampered. This cut has got to be perfect. My hair must instantly flop into place and sit neatly despite my having three crowns which cause it to grow out at all angles. I even think that wish for a haircut comes higher in my list than a pint of beer in a pub garden. 

The recent weather has been encouraging. Easter was accompanied by snow storms and negative temperatures, then as if a switch had been flicked, the sun came out and the temperatures rose to double figures. It has to be the climate crisis - there is no other explanation. My rhubard has not liked the temperature swings and now we seem to be heading for a drought. The ground is so dry already - great for tennis but bad for gardens.

I am hoping to move in a couple of weeks. Things seem to be going so slowly. I understand there are backlogs for searches and the like. You would think after 15 months of "new" work practices, businesses and organisations would have found better ways of doing things.

One lives and hopes.. love you, you old dog... still miss you loads.

Love

XXX

Happy Easter

 Dear Marmite,

It has been all joy and sparkles for the past few days. We are celebrating Easter here where the pagan traditions of celebrating fertility take centre stage commercially. The Easter Bunny has been especially busy around my home. Even before Easter he came and dropped a few mini eggs in obscure places for Richard and Danielle to discover. Then Yesterday he went overboard and put them all over the house - AMAZING! There might even be a few more dropped around the place in the days to come, who knows!

What is even more amazing was that a big chocolate Easter Bunny was sitting at my place at breakfast yesterday morning. Despite being wrapped in celophane he looked at me as if he was high on dope. His white chocolate eyes have that crazed look about them. Currently he is resting on my bedroom window sill. I am tempted to nibble his ears off one at a time. He has been warned. 

Sammi, went one better than the Easter Bunny and drew a treasure map for his nephews to find hidden eggs around his home; while in Nasser's home nothing at all happened.  Nasser forgot to set up an egg hunt all together. I took him a basket of eggs which he hid in the new shed and completely forgot about. 

As is very traditional, I planned an April Fool prank - this time on Richard and Danielle. I positioned myself at the bottom of the stairs early in the monring - a place of heavy traffic - and said I couldn't move. Richard just stepped over me and got on with breakfast and tea making. I am sad to say that I considered the response to my plight pretty callous all considering.

What if it hadn't been an April Fool? Of course, they tried to fool me too. The trouble is that Danielle spent most of the previous week talking about past April Fool pranks. So I knew there would be something heading my way. The plastic cockroach was one of the funniest and well worth the $1 for entertainment value. We still talk about it.

The Guardian did its part in joking and wrote about making a parallel canal to the Suez so ships like the Ever Green won't block traffic in the future  - when our government puts half-arsed ideas about evolving UK's transport into something suitable for the twenty-first century, the idea of increasing a busy shipping lane doesn't seem too far off the mark. I read it with derision but only later found out I had been taken in.

Even the weather is playing the fool. Yesterday I sat in Nasser's garden and had lunch in warm sunshine. Today I am huddled up indoors while it is snowing outside. The plan was to play tennis this morning and it wasn't the snow that put pay to that. It was my partner. He had overdone it and needed to rest his weary limbs. I resigned myself to rolling around the bedroom floor doing the exercises given to me by the NHS physio to relieve my sciatica. This, I have to say, is a real pain in the backside. 

I put music on while rolling and today it was Dave Gilmour who accompanied my groans. I got to thinking about inappropriate songs for funerals while doing this. There are the obvious ones like; " Highway to Hell", and "I will survive" but I thought Laughing Lenny's "Repent" might make it into my top ten. I really should focus on the stretching more and not letting my mind wander. Remember Marms when you used to plonk yourself on my yoga mat underneath me when I was doing my stretches... Well I am still doing them and I can get distracted even ehen you are not with me. Perhaps my next stretches could be accompanied by; "Living in the Past"... good old Jethro.

Sending my hugs over the airwaves..

Love you as always

XXX

Tennis!!! Yay

 Dear Marmite

For many of my friends and myself of course, Monday was a significant day in my calendar. Big Bad Boris foretold of that day as being THE DAY that we could at last swing a racquet here in the UK. It came at last and I have to say how lovely it was to be back on court chasing fluffy, yellow balls once more. Two sessions so far this week and another planned for Friday, Yay!!

For the past few months I have been scanning FB with envy as WITS has been well under way in Singapore and my old tennis friends posted pictures of the British Club teams enjoying themselves playing matches. This was something I found particularly frustrating. Up til now, I have had so much time on my hands and NO TENNIS. Now my world is opening up,  I can't wait to get back to my early morning swimming as well... 

All this is dependent, of course, on the R rate of infections and the whim of Boris. The vaccine might be helping bring this down but I have come to having so little faith in both the government and the general public that I fear that come the summer we will be in Lockdown 4 judging by the way some people behave over here - particularly when we have a bit of sunshine.

My garden has responded well to the warmer days, longer days! For starters, my purple broccoli sprouted a day or so ago and that is currently being digested in my tummy. I have a "before" picture but the finished, roasted dish tasted far better than it looked - so no photo! I cooked it with chilli flakes, garlic and olive oil in the oven for 15 minutes and topped it with lemon juice and feta before serving. There really is nothing better than eating something you have grown yourself... perhaps I should get a sheep or a few hens when I move - now there's a thought!

Meanwhile, I fill my days emptying cupboards of the things I had jammed into them back in February 2020, when my container arrived. I have stuff that hasn't seen the light of day for over a year despite me thinking it was important enough to bring back home when I planned my return to the UK. 

I am hopeful that the house purchase will go through and there will be a place for everything I am sorting through so I am spring cleaning and packing at the same time. I remember packing my whole world into the back of a mini-traveller ( a small car with a wooden backside) when I left Liverpool. How did I acquire so much?

One really positive bit of news is that I saw a physio last week. Apparently I have sciatica and apart from being a pain in the backside, I could go on at length about all the other bits it hurts as well. The NHS texted the appointment with the name of the place for the appointment. I looked it up and it referred to the surgery address. I felt sure this wasn't right so I cycled to the appointment extra early - over here you can't phone anyone up at all and it wasn't a 111 sort of conversation - the only way to speak to someone in the NHS. So almost knowing I was heading to the wrong place I set off with 30 minutes to spare. 

I was right. I was in the wrong place. I left the surgery, put the revised address into google and cycled off at speed. Google wanted to take me over a field which may in due course become a road but it certainly didn't have any of the road attributes at the time of writing that one has come to expect in the UK. I had to do two sides of a triangle and put up with a very angry google assistant telling me to do a U-turn to get to the PCN (Primary Care Network Hub) - all these abbreviations are just like Singapore. 

I arrived rather sweaty and just a little late for a very brief - socially distanced, appointment where I touched my toes and had a chat. I now have "rolling around the bedroom floor" exercises to help me get better. Although not what I have come to expect a physio appointment to be, it was a big step up from the online physio the NHS put me in contact with last year. That physio was probably Pre-Int in English with severe L1 interference with basic pron - all made more difficult when conversing over the phone.

All I can say is that I am sure that your English, Marms is far more advanced. Your pronunciation of "hello" is perfect. I loved to see your swimming video, you lucky old dog, you!

Love

XXX