For those of you have been wondering since her last blog post, yes Samba is still missing, but presumably quite happy!
Someone thought they had found her in their kitchen, but it turned out to just be a gruffalo.
Tiny Tidalscribe – New in chatgpt – just ask to regain your younger self, but be careful to specify how far back you want to go.
Worried about AI and Chatbots taking over the world? Just ask if they are human…
How has your week been?
A nacation is when your neighbour, friend or relative goes off on an exotic holiday leaving you to put the bins out, feed the cat, take in parcels, water the garden and have the dog to stay. If you are lucky they might bring you back a holiday present, such as a packet of the local biscuits which taste even worse than the unknown makes from Better Bargains.
For the next three weeks I am watering next door’s garden while the family are on the other side of the Atlantic. A simple task with their designer minimalist garden, very different from mine, which I’m happy to do as Mr. Immaculate Gardener is always fixing things for me, painting my fences etc. But there was a security routine to go through since various incidents have been picked up by their multiple far reaching CCTVs . To save tramping through the house and switching the burglar alarm on and off, I just had to remember the number for the new combination lock on the side gates… and be shown burglar alarm procedure in the very unlikely event the alarm goes off accidentally.
I am used to visitors checking their phones and watching what is going on in their driveway and back garden. The days are gone when you did not know if your home was still in one piece till you came home again. My old school friend who lived in the same quiet road as me recalls her father notifying their local police station if they were going on holiday. Now you can phone your neighbour and ask them to take in the big parcel that is sitting in the rain on your doorstep.
Even as I was writing this blog an urgent WhatsApp message came from across the Atlantic. Was my virgin WI Fi working, because their CCTVs were not. Yes it was. I now had a new task so difficult he suggested I wait till after 4pm British Summer Time so they would be awake if there were any problems. I had to unlock the front door with 30 seconds to disarm the burglar alarm with the code. ‘I’m in’ I texted back. Now for the high tech part. Go to the utility room and fetch the broom. The Wi-Fi switch is behind the television set and inaccessible so lean over and switch it off with the end of the broom handle, then switch it on again, about as easy as switching switches with a bunch of bananas. But I did it and it just remained to switch the burglar alarm on again and get out of the house in 30 seconds and wait to hear if the CCTV came on again – it did.
We have had various traumatic nacation experiences in the past, like the time the hamster escaped from his rota stack cage while the patio doors were open. We had over two miserable weeks to wait till they got back from France to give them the news. I discovered years later that their son accused my son of being a hamster murderer!
Five houses ago next door had a white rabbit and what a happy bunny he was.- in summer when he romped freely in the back garden. Alas in winter he was confined to his small hutch and I was volunteered to feed him one Xmas holiday. Access involved trekking to the bottom of our garden, into the back lane and down their garden to the patio. He soon ran out of straw and his dry food looked boring so I brought him carrots and rabbit treats from the pet shop. In the middle of this spell of biting winds a fox or cat got to their council rubbish bag before the dustmen did. Their front garden was strewn with nappies and all sorts of revolting rubbish ( for people interested in the world of council rubbish collections we did not have wheelie bins there or food waste bins ) and I had to do a clean up operation. We didn’t even notice their return home as they never came and thanked us and never knew the stressful Xmas I had had!
More recently new neighbours were flying off to Greece in the school summer holidays. A dog sitter they had never met was coming down from Birmingham. As they were leaving in the early hours I was asked if I could just let the dogs out at 7am and give them their breakfast as the dog sitter was not expected till later in the morning. The dogs would be shut safely in the kitchen.
Sounded simple enough, but when I went round all the doors inside were open, the dogs were cowering on the sofa and in the large kitchen one or both of the dogs had had a serious stomach upset! I went home to get rubber gloves and serious cleaning stuff leaving the back door open. On my return the dogs refused to go in the garden… I enticed them out of the front room with their breakfasts. One dog went in the garden and the other dog ate two breakfasts… When I finally got them back indoors I had forgotten to shut the kitchen door so they raced upstairs.
Back home I relaxed with my breakfast, thinking all would be in the hands of the dog sitter soon, but I got a WhatsApp from Greece. The dog sitter had called to say she would be late, she and her little boy were stuck in holiday traffic. Could I let the dogs out again later. When I returned the dogs were hiding in the bedroom and refused to come out…. in the kitchen there was more cleaning up to do.
When I got a message to ask if the dog sitter had arrived yet I relayed the events and she soon messaged back to say her friends who had been enjoying a pub lunch by the river were now marching up the hill to come and take the dogs for a walk. When they arrived at my door so I could give them the key they thought I could come with them to the house as they had never met the dogs. The dogs still refused to come downstairs so they decided to sit downstairs and wait till the dogs calmed down. I went home and after a while they were back at my house having given up.
As we stood chatting out the front with a couple of other neighbours joining in, the dog sitter pulled up, surprised to see a welcome party. She must have been a dog whisperer as five minutes later she emerged with a happy boy and two happy dogs going off to the park.
I haven’t done any doggy tasks again, but have been messaged from Devon to check if one of the teenage daughters had left her hair straighteners on in the bedroom and to excuse the mess. Yes she had, when I eventually found them, but to be fair to the hair straighteners they were cold, so they must have had the initiative to turn themselves off.
Have you had any nacations this year?
A Traication is when you go on holiday by train so you cannot take everything but the kitchen sink. Packing has to be undertaken with great planning. I cheat by having a huge bag of stuff at the headquarters of Team H, so I only have to stuff clothes, Kindle, sandwiches and water in my rucksack, though it’s still heavy. People do get on the train with suitcases big enough for a kitchen sink and I have seen women with rucksacks big enough for a commando training exercise. My main aim is to be able to get on and off the train and negotiate the underground.
You could spend hours on line getting the best bargains by booking a specific train or a journey split into several stages on the same route. A friend naturally assumed you had to get off the train and catch a different one so she was surprised to hear on the last stage she could have stayed on the same train all the way. Goodness knows who thinks up these ideas. My off peak cardboard ticket, bought well ahead at our friendly ticket office, is an off peak return, leave on a specific date and return within a month, worrying for your hosts in case you stay with them for a whole month! If they ask what time train I want I explain I just want to turn up and get on the next train going to Waterloo and I especially want the trains to be running. The day I sauntered into the station to buy my ticket it seemed very quiet, it turned out there were no trains running due to a trackside fire further up the line. On the news that evening was film of passengers evacuated off the train and walking up the track.
Fortunately the day of my journey all was going well. The current government pledged to bring the railways back under state ownership and South West Trains were one of the first to be reclaimed last year and sport new livery as South Western Railway. If you had a Brio wooden railway when you were a child you will recall the carriages linked on by magnet. Our trains work just like that… I was waiting for the 11.22am and at 11.10 am four carriages arrived. At this point passengers either rush to get on or stand in confusion in case a different train has slipped in. A few minutes later another four carriages roll in behind and click on. So there is plenty of time to get on the train and no worry which carriage if you are going to Waterloo. But all may not be well if you have a specific ticket. There were regular/annoyingly frequent announcements…
‘If you have an evening out return or a summer special extra cheap off peak and it does Not say 11.22am, you are on the WRONG train and liable to pay another £40.
On the final stage of my journey, London Victoria to Margate, it was my turn to make sure I was on the right carriage, the rear four carriages. The advantage of a London terminus is trains end up at the buffers so what was the first carriage is the last carriage so I should be okay. After every single station would be a reminder that the train was going to split and the stations recited. After our carriage had disgorged quite a few passengers and with the moment of the great split fast approaching, a couple now had room to spread out their picnic and sat back and relaxed. Then one of them thought to lean over the aisle and ask another passenger where the train was going. When she said Margate there was panic and a gathering up of the picnic. They were right at the back of the train when they should have been at the front. The young woman said to them ‘Don’t stop, just keep going till you get to the driver’s cabin .’
My return journey from Waterloo was simple. The train arrived at the buffers with fifteen minutes to spare so we could get on and relax. All trains stop at Bournemouth and this train was going to unclick in half and carry on to two different directions. You really needed to pay attention to the announcements because even before the chopping in half there were some stations with short platforms so you had to make sure you were on the right carriage.
‘If you are getting off at Remote Halt you will need to be in the front three carriages, if you are going to Forest Dene you must be in carriages two, three and four. Passengers wishing to alight at Littledene should be in odd number carriages except one and seven. Passengers for Old Milton please make sure you are in the even number carriages except for two and six.
Have you had any interesting train journeys lately?
While others were in Norwegian fjords or on African safaris, I ventured ten minutes walk away from home for my staycation. Back at Chez Tidalscribe Cyberson Two and DIL Two were ripping out the bathroom. Not as scary as it sounds as Interiors are their business and this was their 49th bathroom.
My holiday home was a seaside let, a top floor flat with a balcony – not alas that yellow house of character with the turrets. A search revealed plenty of Air B&Bs near my house, including next door ( a converted garage ), but I thought I should enjoy a cliff top experience. I wanted a cliff top house when we moved to Bournemouth, but few were available, let alone in our price range.
I know other female bloggers go solo round the world on motorbikes or yachts so it is not very adventurous to go home for Cyberson’s home cooked meals and to collect anything you have forgotten… and to water my plants… and the garden as the heat wave had continued unabated.
What made it different from home? I was nearer my beach hut and the open top bus stopped almost outside. I could have my breakfast on the balcony and watch the world go by. At any moment, however early, there was always a dog walker on the cliff or a jogger on the pavement or a cyclist on the road. There was also traffic on the coast road, it was much noisier than my quiet little road.
There are clifftop views such as lighthouses looking over wild waves crashing on rocks and houses with back gardens on the edge of cliffs. There are still houses right on the edge in Southbourne, but lots more have long since crumbled down with the sandy cliffs, leaving only the roses and shrubs that once grew in their garden clinging to the cliffside.
However, I still had a view and at night there was the black sea straight ahead and to the west the lights of Bournemouth and Swanage and early in the morning sunrise from the bathroom window.
Inside it was clean and tidy with everything you could want if you were actually living and cooking there. The décor was white, literally, from the paint work to the bedding and towels. The only items not white were the artificial lawn on the balcony and the impossible to lift dark blue pottery mugs the size of hefty jugs. Lucky I could pop home and get my bone china tea mug. The bed was very comfortable, the sofa not so. I managed to work the television and get the WiFi so overall a good experience and I still miss the patter of tiny feet – the slip slap of the early morning joggers before the traffic got busy.
Have you been on a Staycation or had any holiday let experiences, good or bad?
If you are reading this I must have crawled out of the blog hole and my new computer has extended the digital hand of friendship to WordPress. Read about my Staycation soon.
In between what? Flowers don’t care what is going on in the blogging world as long as someone waters them in our ongoing heatwave.
In the meantime I’m between homes and computers so who knows what might happen!
Will I get out of the bloghole?
Will this unblog get posted? See you on the other side ….hopefully…..
It seems lots of us have a stationery addiction, we can’t resist buying notebooks and journals, then can’t bear to spoil them by writing in them, or start a journal which only lasts a few pages. Judging by the cover design, how old do you think this notebook might be? At writers’ group we wondered how many of us had written long ago and if we still had our words of wisdom. I thought I had written ‘a few bits’ but found three full notebooks. This one was started in 1972 in Perth, Western Australia when I was nineteen and the handwriting neater than I remember. On the back it says Made in Japan – how long since you saw those words on humble everyday objects? How has it survived crossing the world and moving numerous times? I’m not going to start reading it all to you, but here are two pertinent snippets.
‘Our literature lecturer commented this morning that most writers of renown started their career by keeping a personal record. As I have aspirations to be an authoress of some sort I thought this to be a good idea.’
What took those aspirations so long?
My first entry for September, 1972 turned out to be very relevant.
‘Today was one of those pleasant spring days. The sun is still friendly and hasn’t yet become that hot enemy of summer.’
In the midst of our third heatwave in England, proof indeed that I never liked very hot weather. Too hot is too hot wherever you are, though in Australia we had the advantage of latitude with the sun dropping promptly down below the horizon. We have long warm evenings. The grass on the cliff will recover, grass always does and I am thankful for our sea breezes. The sky was hazy and the sea calm yesterday so come along and cool off. No pictures of being in the sea as my phone would get wet, but I think you should come in the water.
That is a person swimming in the middle of the picture, not a shark.
Have you words of wisdom preserved from long ago?
Yes it really is that blue…
But sometimes smart phones don’t capture the moment – What I saw as I arrived at the cliff top – a snowy white yacht gleaming on a sparkling sea… I had to zoom in to my picture to see if I had imagined a boat…
We have our own Mount Rushmore – who would you like to see carved into our cliffs?
Be glad you are not a cactus…
Two days of glory and attention…
Then it’s all over for another year or two.
When you fall down a blog hole...
In the unlikely event you notice some absences on my part in July it will be due to summer projects or some projects. Forty one years ago people said ‘Pregnant?! What do you want another baby for, you have a boy and a girl?’ The answer was ‘So when he grows up he can do every home improvement imaginable, sort out all my technical problems, install a new computer and cook dinners.’ When he brought home his now wife and said she was a lighting technician and pyrotechnic expert, we knew life was going to be fun and he would have someone to help him with every project imaginable.
As we pass the the halfway mark of the year have you any summer or winter projects planned?
Everyone can reminisce, unless they have total amnesia or do we need someone we can reminisce with? Often the other person does not remember the event or recalls it totally differently, but shared memories are fun. Shared memories also have an expiry date unless they have been written down. As the eldest sibling I am now the only one who remembers The Twickenham Years. My brother and sister were toddler and a six month old baby when our parents bought their first house.
My six and a half years in the rented top of the Victorian terrace where I was born were happy, but then I was blissfully unaware of what else was going on. By the time my brother was born my mother had lost three babies and both her parents. When my sister was born Mum nearly died and all I remember was the Black Magic chocolate orange cream. When she came out of hospital after the ‘eight pints of blood’ that were to become family legend, her best friend brought round a box of chocolates and I had the orange cream. I had told my teacher that Mummy was in hospital with a bad back.
An internet search reveals the row of houses looks much the same as I remember, snapping pictures from the computer screen gives the pictures a suitably nostalgic hazy appearance. Now turned back into the elegant large homes they were originally I was surprised how easy it was to pinpoint information about our old home via ‘Mouseprice’. In a surreal moment back in 1990 we took the children to look at my place of birth and the night before I had a psychic feeling there would be a For Sale board up – and there was. I took the number of the estate agents and rang them up to ask the price, which was a quarter of a million, astonishing at the time. No chance of us buying it! When I say my parents moved out to buy their own home it was not in this area, there was nothing they could afford. How much might it be worth now?
Welcome to 295 St Margarets Road, Twickenham, a charming and spacious terraced type home with 4 bed in the TW1 1PN area. This lovely residence, which comes with the freedom and stability of a freehold ownership, and sits comfortably in tax band .
This classic property was built before 1900 and has a reported internal area of 178.0 internal square metres in a neighborhood known for its allure and prestige. This home stands out for its value and character – with a market valuation of £1,042,000 and a rental potential of £3,209 per month, and a 5 year CAGR of 12%, it represents not just a residence but a worthwhile investment in a sought-after area.
You can discover more about this property by reading the Mouseprice attributes tables in the next section, or if you are the owner and would like to update this property, for example if you’ve built an extension, you can do so at the top of this page.
Meanwhile, back to the past.
A dreadful old lady ( Mum’s words ) lived on the ground floor with a kitchen a scullery and no bathroom. The rental agreement was that she could come upstairs once a week to use our bath. She used to come up with a pack of Omo, a brand of washing powder claimed to make clothes whiter than white. Our bathroom was scary with the hot water provided by a monstrous noisy boiler looming over the end of the bath. It was called a geyser. It would be many years before I realised geysers were real geothermal features hotter, more dangerous and even older than ours.
In the kitchen a more modern and elegant Ascot heater over the sink provided the hot water. After hand washing clothes and boiling nappies Mum would lean out of the kitchen window to hang them on a pulley washing line attached to a post at the end of the back garden far below. The garden was part of the old lady’s rental and we never set foot in it.
I have a vivid memory of staring out of the living room window on a sunny day desperate to be outside, but in fairness to my parents they were constantly taking me out for fresh air and exercise, down by the River Thames and to various nice parks nearby. Later Mum would look back and wonder how she managed to push the pram with two children and me on my tricycle and get across the main road to Marble Hill Park. Indoors there was fun to be had as Dad made me a rocking horse which sat in the bay window. It did not look like a horse, but was a smaller version of park rocking horses with a proper rocking mechanism and I really felt like the Lone Ranger.
At some stage my parents acquired an old ‘jalopy’ which I thought was its make, not its nickname. Small and black it needed to be cranked up with the metal handle inserted in the front of the engine. In this we were able to go on outings to Kew Gardens and Richmond Park. One time I was convinced I had stroked the nose of a deer with huge antlers. When I told my parents and aunt and uncle they did not believe me and I am beginning to wonder myself…
The jalopy lived in a garage in someone’s garden in a house across the main road we lived on. Dad drove it into London to his office and on summer evenings when he came home Mum would see me across the road to run and meet him. As The Woodentops were my favourite puppets on Watch With Mother, one time I ran to him calling ‘Hello Daddy Woodentop’. This caused amusement as Dad, like all the men in his family was bald.
It was at Penn Ponds in Richmond Park that I did not learn to swim, but did love wading around. I have always thought hot weather means you should be immersed in water of some sort. One time I found floating in the pond a brightly coloured feathery creature and picked it up, only to look up and see an angry man trying to fish and telling me off.
As my brother got mobile and Mum had a baby to deal with, I would sometimes be locked in the front room with him. This might sound bad, but the alternative was presumably him falling down the steep staircase and fracturing his skull on the tiled floor below. On one occasion I credit myself with saving his life, though at the time I thought I would get told off for making him vomit. He was choking on a plastic rose from his toy watering can. As I did not know the Heinrich manoeuvre, I stuck my hand down his throat to pull it out.
By this time I was at school. I had begged to go to school and Mum got me in to The Blue School in Isleworth at four and a half years. I started just after my baby brother had arrived so probably thought I was being ousted. It was a long walk and I had to be dragged crying with the promise of Robin comic at the weekend, or threats of no Robin comic at the weekend. Thanks to the internet we know this Church of England School is still flourishing after nearly 400 years. It looked pretty old when I went there, but they were building a new school building right next to it as we left the area.
It was Mum’s friend Pam at the bank where she worked who had led to my parents finding somewhere to live and being able to get married in the post war shortage of homes. Her parents rented a downstairs flat in the same row of terraced houses and knew the landlord who had a vacant upstairs flat for rent. Pam lived with her parents and as there was only one bedroom she slept on a ‘put me down’ settee in the front room. As far as I know she never left.
After we moved away we did go back to visit the old couple, Pam’s parents. In their garden was a fish pond and enough room for us to run around and play while the grown ups were having boring conversations. I did get told off for getting the poodle excited and risking him having a heart attack. But worse was to follow. Nobody had told me I was acting as life guard. While I was playing round the corner my sister fell in the fish pond, luckily seen by the grown ups through the window. I was soon alerted to the drama, wondering why all the adults had rushed outside. The old lady said I would get a black spot in heaven.
Mum and Dad were glad to get their own house with a garden, but missed the lovely area we had lived in which is still highly sought after. In Farnborough, Hampshire Dad joined the other fathers on the new estate who commuted up to Waterloo on the steam train.
Have you vivid memories of your early homes or been back to visit?
Quentin Quick was looking forward to the meeting of the Puddleminster Pens. Working their way through the alphabet they had reached the letter Q, his nickname. At his suggestion they did not pick a single word for this week, but searched for as many words beginning with Q as possible. Quentin had an ulterior motive, he was addicted to playing Words With Friends on his phone and Q was worth ten points, but hard to place. The group had discussed whether any English word could feature Q without a U. Words With Friends accepted QI, but Puddleminster Pens did not.
Quentin actually had a love hate relationship with Q as he could not escape it. As the fifth to be born and the only boy in a set of quins, life was always going to be challenging. His mother quipped that only sextuplets got serious publicity and quillions of quids. His querulous father Mr Quincy Quick queried if the quins were even his; after all, no quins had ever been born on his side of the family.
As they all grew, his hopes of having an amazing family, like that lot on television, were quashed. His favourite quote was ‘We landed quantity over quality.’ The junior Quicks were unlikely to turn into a musical quintet or quest for fame of any sort. Rather than musical harmony or team sport the quins would constantly quibble.
As Quentin scribbled, wondering if his piece would be an autobiography, he was in a quandary. Should it be entertaining or an honest account of their lives… Five Alive, what was that film called with the robot called Number Five? His parents had splashed out on a rare trip to the cinema and bought them popcorn, well one large tub to share… His mind was wandering, but he could not resist looking it up. Short Circuit, that led to his sisters and friends calling him Number Five for a good while and asking him if he had been struck by lightning.
The family had attracted quite a bit of attention in the cinema foyer. Looking back, he realised his mother’s obsession with the Sound of Music had not only led to her praying for a large family, but had influenced her dressmaking. She was an excellent seamstress and without her skills it would have been a hardship buying all their clothes, but it was an understatement to say the children all looked rather quaint. She did try to make their only son look different from his sisters, but young Quentin begged to also have a frilly dress. Mrs Quick had to warn her husband to be politically correct and let Quentin be himself.
‘I have one son and he turns out to be q…’
‘Quincy… try to be more sensitive, what if he grows up artistic and writes a tv series about us?’
But Quincy found it hard dealing with five adolescents. Queenie did her brother’s make up for him, while Quintessa announced she was trying out for the junior women’s football team and Quilla was the only one who took school work seriously as she wanted to do quantum physics.
Quentin sighed. Quilla was now well known in scientific fields, but the rest of the family had remained unknown and poor. Quentin still liked dressing up, but did not have the personality or bone structure to become a class drag act. So the only thing left to do was try and write a book. Hence his joining the Puddleminster Pens.
Thursday arrived and the group seemed to enjoy his ramblings and tentative scribbles, encouraging him to keep writing, get it all down on paper, then polish it. Only Captain Pedantic, as they called him, had a quibble.
‘There is no such word, no such number as Quillions.’
