Fasting...

Last August, Ted and I watched

a very interesting Horizon programme.

The doctor Michael Mosley

was expounding the virtues on the body

to following a two day fast.

Sitting on the sofa like Tweedle Dee

and Tweedle Dum.

We looked at each other and decided there and then

 from that day on, that is exactly what we would do.

Pretty much for a year we have followed it.

Pretty much?

Let me explain...

Over the course of the year,

it caught on.

We founder members felt smug when

folk started talking about it.

'Oh yes, well we've been on it since last 

summer!'

Ted was doing it more for the health

reasons, his last two blood tests have 

proved it's worked.

However Butterball here

has slowly gained weight.

Personally I blame it pretty much

on my palazzo pants.

'Argh?'

You say entering stage right, scratching your head.

The image I realise of a sixty + in

Bollywood floppy trousers isn't perhaps 

a good look...

however, elasticated waists are the way forward

in my world.

Shifts slashed to the muff and beyond,

when worn with the aforesaid flowing breeks,

are decorous for a daft tart of declining years.

The problem lay, under the output of

one whole Lancashire cotton mill...

Okay call them baggy.

The bod was growing; the elastic like the train

was taking the strain.

The lass in this sad tale i.e. me,

was dutifully fasting two days, and yes 

you've guessed it, filling her boots

on the others.

Ted, a man, was doing what men do.

Routine is a bloke's comfort blanket.

Marmite on one slice of dry toast

Monday to Friday.

Wait for it...

two slices with butter and jam 

at the weekend.

By now sylph-like,

the job for him was a goodun.
Naturally, I hated him with
a passion.

Me?

Once a week, in the early light

I creep down,

do as many of the necessaries

as is humanly possible.

Cross to the studio,

strip off and as gently as a mouse,

lightly step onto the scales.

The truth is, I'm slowly

podging.

I've decided to call it the

Dorian Grey Diet.

I'm the one in the attic,
Ted meanwhile, is 
youthful and looking 
 good for his advancing years.

Can you help...

I urgently need to locate some traces.

Along with burning my bra I desperately 

need some to kick over.

I don't know whether it's the weather,

but I'm all of a doodah.

Can't settle,

too lazy to do anything,

'Anything?'

'Oh alright... Eat!'

I've suddenly had a brain-wave...

Before my passport photo needs replacing with

the phizog of the old crone that is now me.

I will take to the open road, rail-track and sky.

Aaron, a long time ago told me of a book he'd read

about a postman who on the cusp of retiring,

had a cunning plan.

He decided that the letters in the box he had just 

emptied for the final time,

he would deliver personally.

With that in mind...

Today, I think I'll iron my red spotty handkerchief,

locate a sturdy stick from the hedge and be off.

My itinerary will be as follows...

Derbyshire to walk and talk with Mr. YP,

he's in need of an old gal's wisdom.

I will then go to Trelawnyd, sneak into the

hen house and give Mr John Grey a 'lovely

surprise' on gathering his morning eggs.

Up to Stafford to see Viv; with the sturdy stick,

I will whack her.  I'll show her the meaning of

raw talent.  My only-child jealousy rides again!

From there off up to Jayne, who I think

is near the wild Northumberland coast.

Over the dye bath we can sit

comparing spells.

Weeing into a pot will fix our friendship,

 and act as a mordant for her latest batch

of loveliness.

Travelling down-country I will

call on Nilly and Mr N.

who knowing my luck will be at Ardingly.

Linc's next...  Afternoon tea, with home-made

dog biscuits, jam and cream. 

Made by a fragrant woman who resembles

Mary Archer with grey hair.

I will survey her garden and much against my better

judgement, advise on my newly emerging take on

 Roughty-Toughty Picturesque gardening. 

Elaine, will quickly get on the phone

to her bro, who on hearing I'm hoving to,

will instruct Gunnera, his valet to inform

Gladys, his wife, the housekeeper, to air the West wing.

By this time in need of a complete change of scene,

 a charabanc to City Airport,

where a private jet will fly me down to

see Cro in France.

From there, I will fly business class to

Angola and with Marcia's help, kick Tom into touch.

She will get her kitchen.

A short hop to Cairns,

the birthplace of those yappy dastardly dogs.

Where I will chill with the lovely Carol.  

Back home with plans for my next foray

into blogland.  If you haven't been

mentioned this time...

be afraid, very afraid...

Doris is dreaming...

of writing a play.

The title...

Two Weddings, A Funeral

and lots of Births.

Scene 1

The Highlands of Scotland

The camera pans in from the sea,

across the barren land.

Where on a peat bank we see

a woman laid exhausted by her labours.

Getting her breath back from the toil of

peat digging, she thinks of the difference

in the two women's lives.

One a young girl just married sailing off

on her honeymoon.

And her, in the prime of life, scratching

a living out of the soil.

Envy, she acknowledges is

the feeling bubbling up inside.

The following year a baby is born.

The woman has taken a rasp to her rough hands

in order to spin silk.

From the finely spun thread a baby cardigan

is made and sent.
A boy! Two boys in fact.

Scene 2

A farm in Yorkshire
5 years later

Work on the farm stops to watch
the wedding on the television.
She is five years older.
Envy has no place here,
just gratitude at an excuse to escape
the unending toil.

Sitting watching, little does she realise,
 fast forward seven years and she will
know all of these people and they will know her.

Scene 3
Kent

That Sunday as she is
due to go in to work,
the news breaks that there has been 
a terrible accident.
All through that strange time in history,
she is in the thick of the family.
She thinks back to the time on the hilltop.
Feeling this time, nothing but sadness.

Scene 4
Now

The boy she used to call William
is now a man
and has just had a son
of his own.

A happy ending.

Things in my life that somehow fall...

short of my expectations.

The word coffee on the page, gets me strangely excited.

Opening the pack, the aroma has the same effect.

Even my daily, one cup of the real thing,

never really hits the mark.

The smell of fresh coffee,

somehow is so much better than the taste.

We have a fish and chip wagon that

parks every Wednesday evening by the village pond.

The fish is so fresh, the chips are crispy.

Every few weeks we treat ourselves.

Ted has cod and chips,

I have cod and nick five of his chips;

only the best looking ones naturally.

I open a tin of Farrows peas and the job's a goodun.

This chefette has a night off.

And of course you know what's coming...

the idea is so much better than the

partaking thereof.

Gardening I love,

particularly poring over the seed catalogues.

I choose the wackiest, the wildest, 
the plants with attitude.

I till, I scheme, I clear, I enjoy.

Every morning with the merest wisp of fabric covering my more than ample bits,

I promenade up to my potager.  Shrinking violet I aint!

Mug of tea in hand, I proceed in the manner of a great and noble queen,

distributing alms to the poor.

All is good in my little world, well,

 all the while I'm in control. 

At vast personal expense I plunder my personal fortune

to employ the best pest controllers in the world.

They must always remember I am

the fat controller, what I say goes.

All frogs at my approach dive for cover, for fear of

a whiskery wet kiss being planted on their

slug-slimed face.

But wait, there is a power greater than mine, and

she goes under the name of...

Mother Nature.

And this is where my interest wanes.

She's a thug in female form.

All my winter plans go to pot; everything peeks,

looks spectacular, then at the speed of a rat up

 a drainpipe, goes over.

The wild flower meadow is not to put too

fine a point on it, looking pale and wan.

Not at all like the wildflower meadow

Lady Constance lay in with the the gamekeeper.

The poppies, even with my dead-heading are

getting more frail by the minute.

Err... I beg to differ Mr Kipling,
best you stick to baking cakes.

Meanwhile back to my hammock, for a little light shadow gardening,

it's like shadow boxing only gentler.

  

It won't surprise you to know...

the NW coast of Scotland gets a lot of rain.

This is a tale of a cotton-tail

called Rabs who was a victim

of a very sustained period of rain.

Walking up to the phone box,

 I saw a dead baby rabbit in the water swollen ditch,

beside which a tiny shivering

baby bro/sis was huddling.

I gently lifted the little mite up 

and scuttled home.

This is Rabs in a half pint 

Coronation mug

How to raise him was the next question?

I guessed he wasn't even weaned,

so I started the long process of

gently dribbling from my hand, tiny 

amounts of goats milk into his hungry mouth.

He against all odds survived,

better than that, he thrived.

A house rabbit who strangely

thought he was human.

Katie, the Westie, took to him; 

they were great pals playing hide and seek

around the sofa.

Rabs was potty trained in an evening.

I lined a cut down plastic container 

with newspaper, every time Rabs looked as

if he was about to produce poo of the currant kind,

I plonked him in the rabbit commode.

By the end of the night, he knew what was expected of him.

The next day I put the container under the sofa to

give him a degree of privacy,

even a rabbit needs a modicum of decorum.

He had the newspaper, so the job was a goodun.

He could take so long as he liked.

He quickly became part of the family,

even to the extent of jumping up onto the

arm of the chair and helping himself to

salad on the side of my plate.

On one occasion sitting writing a

letter in the armchair, he jumped up

and pinched the top off my pen.

The word flew off the page...

'You'll never believe why this has 

happened!' I wrote to my coz!'

Visitors who came to call,

would stop mid-sentence as they 

caught a fleeting glimpse of a grey

furry creature disappearing behind the chair.

'Was that a rat?' writ large in their eyes!

He would sit in the tiled surround of

the old thirties fireplace, stretched out

basking in the heat.

We made an ark for Rabs 

so that he could enjoy the garden.

Once a month I would drive the 110 miles

to Inverness for building supplies etc.

On one occasion I returned to

find him very badly injured quivering in the

covered area of his run.

His front leg looked as if it had been

broken and the skin on his tummy had been peeled back.

I can only think a weasel had attempted to get at him.

With careful nursing he survived.

He would sometimes be reluctant to come in,

who could blame him?

He would escape my clutches and run off.

Always allowing me to catch him.

Well that is until the last time...

Time to go!

The sad thing is, he didn't make it going alone,

he was found, dead under the bee hive.

The question this begs is,

 did I do the right thing?

Us humans think we know best...

I'm not so sure!

This was Minty, one of the pet lambs.

Life is tough being truly self-sufficient and yes 

we did eat him.  

On a happier note,

this is the croft in Achnacarnin

overlooking the bay of 

Culkein

 Rowan, the goat is sat on her favourite

rock watching the world go by.

Aaron, Katie and me

Aaron is wearing a hand spun jumper

made by me from beautifully soft 

Shetland wool.

These memories were deep 

in the old grey matter, long forgotten.

Until the lovely John Grey told us 

about Roland.

Thanks John.

Down and out in...

Royal Tunbridge Wells.

I should have been a bag lady.

Time enough I suppose.

This morning, at sparrow fart

I was up.

Always one to jump on a band wagon

I thought I'll do what others bloggers do...

I'll make a video of the early morning garden.

Off I trot, mug of tea in one hand,

camera in t'other.

Mindful of turning off the

water canon (Scarcrow) I proceeded

up the garden.

As it's early I stop myself from crying

'Camera, ACTION!'

My voice drops to a husky whisper

in order not to wake the slumbering dead.

You always feel so blooming self-righteous

when you're the only person up.

Bit like I suppose, how it must feel 

when you're sober and every one else is ratted.

Nothing is missed, every boring detail is recorded.

Steven Spielberg I slip

smugly back into the slumbering cottage.

I attach my equipment to the laptop and wait for the

film clip to download.

The photo's of Lettice in the grass

are done.

I wait...

I wait...

I wait a bit more,

it's tummy's still rumbling so

it must be working...

mustn't it?

I hit the movie icon,

fiddled with a few things...

Aaaagh... 

what is that?

Have I made a horror movie?

Who exactly is this old tart sitting here in front of the laptop...

Me!
Double...
Aaaaagh!

The mirror in the bathroom has obviously been lying.

The only way forward as I see it,
 and if push comes to shove, I'd rather not 
is... to 
Celebrate the wrinkles, stuff my belongings
into a bag and take to the open road.
I must confess I've always had yen for
tramps, added to which,
at least I'll look the part.

What happened about the video?
You may well ask!
Haven't got a clue...

sunk without trace!
It's in there somewhere,
Am I bothered?

After the shock of the old crone
in the early morning light, I sort of lost interest
in my artisticals.

☹✌☹

You just feel it in your water when...

the ghastly signs of ageing 

are there for all to see.

1.   Pottering in the garden wearing mauve

gardening gloves and pink sunhat, looking all the world like

Barbara Cartland

'The right diet directs sexual
energy into the parts that matter'


2.   Falling madly in love with gay men;
no need to wear a hard hat and
high vis vest.

3.   Laughing so hard you give yourself a problem,
well two actually...
You start wheezing, 
Lettice's Tena pads become strangely appealing!

4.  Reading other peoples' blogs
remind you of things that have happened
to you i.e. John Grey's blog today
about the baby rabbit.
Must remember to tell you of the bunnikins 
I reared in the Highlands.
This neatly leads me to No 5.

5.   Always having so many funny things
to tell; folk begin to think you're a
Walter Mitty character
or an flash monkey,
(not sure which is worse?)

6.   Men not looking at you twice,
well in my case they still do...
'What is she wearing?'
writ large in their eyes.

7.   Saying outrageous things, 
which I've done all my life.
Problem now is, strangers think...
'Has the old girl lost the plot?'
What they don't know is, I never had the 
frigging thing in the first place!

8.   A glass of Madeira before dinner*

9.   When your chin needs more attention
than the old man's.

10.   Having a regular date with the
chiropractor; before you know it,
monthly sessions will be diarised (awful word) for the
flaming chiropodist

11.   Deep inside you can feel your hatred
of dahlias, dying.

(Husband No 6* used to buy me roadside-sold maroon dahlias
{a more miserable colour for 
a flower you couldn't wish to have!} 
How I stopped myself from sticking them up his compost heap
I'll never know!
  Next , you'll be eyeing up chrysanthemums.

12.   Lusting after men for their brains
instead of their bodies.

13.   Unlucky for some...
Your bosoms growing
exponentially larger than
the rest of you.

14.   Reading the travel sections
and knowing you've been to more places,
seen more things than is good for a girl.

Happy and content is the
best destination...
I've arrived!  
  

♥☃☀☺☀✈♥

* Same old porkies!