autobiography

Mellow Monday

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Mellow yellow? You would be far from mellow if you suffered from Xanthophobia, fear of the colour yellow. Xanthophobia from Greek xanthos, yellow .

If you could prove your condition you could opt out of work and many life situations. If we are to be an inclusive society we would need to take drastic action to help sufferers.

There may be a good reason for fearing yellow; which came first, the yellow warning signs or the danger?

In the work place even a cleaning job would be out of the question with those yellow plastic boards warning of wet floors. The police are no longer the Boys in Blue, but the Girls and Boys in yellow. High Viz jackets are standard wear for many jobs now and yellow tabards are worn by everyone from stewards at events ‘Look at me, I’m important and I’m not afraid of yellow’ down to school outings.

Even if you have obtained exemption from work, yellow lurks everywhere. Roadworks going on outside your house? All the council vehicles will be bright yellow. Going on holiday or a day trip? You are sure to come across a yellow bus or even an amphibious vehicle.

You will certainly not be safe in the garden, the Xanthophobic will pray for a cloudy day so the gazanias don’t open up and mow the lawn every day before the dandelions get a chance to pop up and attract those awful bees with their furry yellow stripes. Turning our lawns to meadows must be a nightmare for the Xanthophobic community.

Check before you visit your friends who have been decorating, what colour schemes have they chosen? It seems there is more to choosing paint than we imagined.

‘For all its decorating potential, yellow should be used with due consideration and care. Yellow primary action is to trigger emotional responses,’ says Karen Haller, colour psychology specialist. It has an impact on the nervous system. As a result, yellow is the strongest colour in psychological terms. 

While yellow is a colour to use with caution, decorating with yellow has a relatively long wavelength and is emotionally stimulating, making us feel confident, positive and optimistic. but the wrong tone of yellow can lead to feelings of irritation, nervousness and depression.’

If you are Xanthophobic better not come round my house. But Xanthophobics would not be reading this as my website is yellow. I don’t know when it became my favourite colour. In the late seventies it was orange and brown, later it was pink. I’m not sure how I settled on yellow.

How does such a phobia start? Perhaps early exposure to Mr. Men books, the constant company of Mr. Happy and Mr. Tickle…

Do you have a favourite colour or a colour you cannot abide?

Monday Mumblings

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Happy Birthday – according to Facebook it is your birthday today, or at least lots of people seem to be having birthdays so it could be yours. I have already sent birthday greetings to three people, one an old school friend, two quite new Facebook friends who I have never met in real life.

At least twice I have received a birthday message from someone who wrote ‘Facebook keeps telling me to wish you a happy birthday so I suppose I had better.’  This led me to ponder what comments we might put on the Facebook birthday line…

‘I don’t know who the hell you are, but Happy Birthday.’

‘I have absolutely no recollection of becoming your Facebook friend, but what the heck, happy birthday and have a wonderful day and year and life….’

‘If you keep stalking me on Facebook I shall be contacting my solicitor.’

There is still hope for our government and the country itself as long as citizens like Count Binface are putting themselves forward as candidates for parliament.

Do you ever get that déjà vu feeling when watching the news? I’m sure most of us do. When hearing a holiday maker in Greece recounting her escape experience from the terrible fires it sounded very familiar. After a boat trip they were landed on a beach to make their way back to the hotel and wait for information to see if they needed to be evacuated, but as the boat left they looked up to see people fleeing from the hotel as it was engulfed in flames. The sea was the only means of escape. Hmm, that’s the story I wrote two years ago…

Sunday Short Story – 1200 – Sunshine Break

Do you ever get the wrong image when listening to the news on the radio…

‘Flights are still landing on roads’ .. what? OH  Rhodes!

Handy hints for prospective holiday makers on the news

‘Contact your holiday company to check if you will still be able go ahead with your holiday plans to the wild fire area. Some holiday companies are sending empty flights to evacuate holiday makers…’

How was your day today. Have you any holiday plans?

Free Range

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You don’t have to be a chicken to go free range. Like chickens, outdoor reared pigs and hill sheep, free range humans are well adapted to life outside and wandering free. They don’t need to be shut in or put in a vehicle if it rains or snows.

Like us with the Covid pandemic, free range chickens recently had their life style cramped with outbreaks of bird ‘flu, but unlike other animals, free range humans don’t usually get eaten.

I have been wandering around by myself since I was seven and set off for the first day at junior school. Freedom was at my disposal, well as long as I didn’t take the short cut through the large park, which was like a rhododendron plantation with lots of hiding places. I was allowed to play there with my friends and had no idea why solo walks were forbidden.

Plenty of drivers enjoy walking and leaving their car at home, but for the dedicated non driver there is the added excitement of knowing you have to walk to get to places and buy your shopping.

Perhaps the three big ‘C’s, Covid, Cancer and Chemotherapy have enhanced the delights of being allowed or able to get out whenever I like. I am also only too aware that plenty of people my age or younger are not so lucky, whether struck down with strokes or waiting for new knees and hips. I don’t take being able to walk far and fast for granted.

During covid we were allowed out for a walk and many people discovered walking for the first time, but we weren’t allowed to go anywhere, just back home. The joy of our regained freedom is destinations, meeting your friends for coffee and cake, going to your favourite groups or just going anywhere with people interest.

Whatever the destination the free range human just goes there, no worrying about finding a parking place or nervously looking at the time in case their parking runs out. We just nip down footpaths or cross the river on a ferry. The free ranger is not always on foot, we can jump on a bus if it’s raining or we have shopping to carry. We could jump on any bus and see where we end up. The free range human sees life. The writer certainly sees real life on the bus, but that’s for another blog. The photographer can pause and snap whenever they spot something interesting, which is why I have so many photos in my WordPress gallery.

For our health we don’t need a running machine and step counter, though now I have a smart phone I can’t resist seeing how many kilometres and flights I have done. You can enjoy fresh air, nature and the four seasons or human life and the camaraderie of others ‘on the road.’

Do you like walking or jogging. If so, do you wander locally and walk your dog or are you very adventurous going up mountains and doing marathons?

Ten Pound Poms

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Many of us have been watching a new BBC Sunday evening drama, Ten Pound Poms, prompting friends to ask how it compared with my family’s experience. The brief answer is completely different and I have found myself being irritated by some aspects of the series, not enough to stop me watching it though! In the drama it is the 1950s and the characters sail out to arrive in Sydney six weeks later, six seconds later for viewers. They are taken on a bus to a migrant camp, winding through bushland till some Nissan huts hove into view. My first annoyance was we had no idea how far away from Sydney they were, all it takes is for a character to say ‘blimey, a hundred miles from the city…’

Anyway, there they were with Nissan huts, dreadful looking outside ‘dunnies’ ( toilets ) and shower blocks. My running irritation is that one of the main characters, Kate the nurse, has make up more suited to modern reality shows or a girls night out. Her eyebrows are ridiculous and in the Australian heat her makeup would be running down her face, not that matron at the hospital would have allowed her to wear such makeup!

The Australians they meet are mostly awful, but so are some of the migrant characters; there are a lot of running stories packed in to this series. They seem to be in the middle of nowhere, but also near a country town, a hospital, the sea and some very swanky houses. What themes do ring true in this drama are the treatment of the Aborigines, who were not counted as humans in the census till the 1960’s and the fact that English children were sent out to Australia as orphans, but many had parents who didn’t know where they had gone.

Perth, Western Australia in the 1960’s

My family’s story is not as dramatic, for any of you who are watching the television series. It took Mum and Dad only six months from the time of applying to us all getting on a chartered migrant flight at Heathrow in October 1964. They chose Perth, Western Australia and we had a ‘sponsor’ who was a chap Dad knew ‘from the office’, the two families had never met. He met us at Perth airport at 1am and took us to the caravan he had booked for us. A week later my parents had found a house to rent. If we had needed to go to a migrant camp I’m sure my mother would not have stepped on the plane! By Christmas they had bought a house on a quarter acre block in a new suburb. Migrants were told that all houses were built on a quarter acre block, that idea didn’t last, but our house had natural bushland.

My novel Quarter Acre Block is inspired and informed by our family’s experience, but not autobiographical. It is told from the point of view of the daughter, who may have some similarities to me… and of the mother. Mum helped me with the adult experience point of view. In the rented house in an older suburb Mum said the only neighbour who talked to her was Dutch, but at our new house we quickly became friends with our new neighbours, who were dinky di Aussies from the goldfields of Kalgoorlie.

The lifestyle migrants looked forward to..

We knew little about Aborigines, I guess we assumed they were enjoying their lifestyle out in ‘the bush.’ We knew nothing about migrant children and stolen Aboriginal children being abused in orphanages.

‘In the nineteen sixties many ‘ten pound pommies’ had never left England before and most expected never to return or see loved ones again. George Palmer saw Australia as a land of opportunities for his four children, his wife longed for warmth and space and their daughter’s ambition was to swim in the sea and own a dog. For migrant children it was a big adventure, for fathers the daunting challenge of finding work and providing for their family, but for the wives the loneliness of settling in a strange place.’

Only 99 pence to download to Kindle or buy the paperback for ten pounds.

Have you been watching Ten Pound Poms, or have you or your family had experience of migrating to another country?

In The Purple Zone

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Far from people not talking about cancer, I have found people are happy to talk about it if they know you have joined the club.

Someone I don’t know very well asked me to stay behind after a club Zoom meeting, personal not club business. I was puzzled and everyone else felt obliged to leave. I have noticed at paid for Zoom meetings, not the free sort where you get timed out after forty minutes, there are people who just disappear, others who wave goodbye the moment it officially ends and then there are  ‘only the sad and lonely’ left, reluctant to leave, keen to squeeze out a last bit of conversation or gossip about those who have already left…

Anyway, it turned out her husband had been diagnosed with prostate caner and was due to have radiotherapy. The fact that he was having it in a totally different place, body and hospital, did not put her off asking about my experiences.

In the middle of our busy local little Sainsbury on a Saturday morning I bumped into one of my neighbours who had an update. It was only falling off his bike and breaking his pelvis, that resulted in hospital blood tests revealing a rare blood cancer. We had a long chat about chemotherapy between the chocolate biscuits and the food bank.

Apart from the daily tiny anastrozole tablet and the twice daily huge adcal tablets, fortunately chewable, I have to have six infusions at six monthly intervals of Zoledronic acid. A week before is the blood test and booking that is wonderfully efficient at my hospital. Phone up oncology outpatients blood test line. They answer straight away and book you an appointment with no fuss.

The same nurse does blood tests all day long and soon calls you in. I feel like I know her and assume she knows why I’m there…

‘Have you got a blood form.’

’ No, I thought it was all on the computer.’

‘Who’s your consultant?’

My mind goes completely blank.

‘What are your ailments?’

‘Ailments? I haven’t got any ailments.’

‘Where was your cancer?’

‘Oh.. that..  breast.’

She narrowed the choice of consultant down to two and I recognised the name. A quick phone call and she knew what was being tested. We lay people think ‘a blood test’ will miraculously reveal all possible medical problems and presume there are at most three different kinds of tests, because they usually take three phials of blood.

The following week I headed confidently to Yellow Zone A, where I had the previous two infusions, only to find the waiting room in darkness and the desk deserted. There was a note pinned to the window. TIU unit moved to Purple Zone Level Two Cardiology Department. I don’t know what TIU actually stands for or why it would be in cardiology. Back down the corridor, back past Costa coffee, WH Smith and the toilets, down another corridor, up two flights of stairs. There were signs along the way, but once you leave stairwells and main corridors you are confronted with a series of swinging double doors and are not sure how far to go without ending up in an operating theatre or resuscitation room. I found a waiting area that said ‘wait here till called’, but how would they know I was here and what I was here for? I pushed some more doors and found a large room with an island in the middle and a person.

I was in the right place and had a nice young male nurse, who unfortunately couldn’t get the needle in. That always happens and I feel guilty for putting them under stress, you can’t go away and leave them in peace to concentrate. If you have had all your lymph nodes taken out, you are not allowed to use that arm ever again for anything, needles, even blood pressure band. So I only have one arm for them to use and my hand is the only part they can get into. Eventually he had to ask one of the other nurses who took a few tries. I wonder if it’s universal among the medical profession that patients are always told we will just ‘feel a little prick’ whatever is going in or coming out of our veins. I asked her if they are ever defeated and she said ‘No, well hardly ever…’ I suggested a scenario where the desperate nurse can’t find anywhere to put the needle except… ‘I’m just going to pop the needle into your jugular, just a tiny prick…’

No Mow May

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Excitement is building as gardeners everywhere measure their grass to see the results of No Mow May.

How tall is a blade of grass?

Will leaving nature alone see the arrival of new species of insects?

Will your regular flowers make a bid for freedom?

No garden is too small to turn into a jungle.

…or a wildflower meadow

There is no reason why you can’t still play with your pot plants and plant pots and dream of entering Chelsea Flower Show. Bespoke bin store with rainwater saving feature created by Strobe Interiors .

( Christmas Trees are not just for Christmas… )

And of course you can never have too many flowers for the bees.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-chelsea-flower-show

Eurovision Eve

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May Madness continues… after the excitement of the coronation I realised I did not need to take down my bunting, but just add to it and celebrate Eurovision 2023. Some ribbon from HaberDasherDo and a few safety pins..

...then I discovered Amazon would deliver a flag by 10pm… which turned out to be a bit bigger than I expected.

Teddy has been carrying the Ukrainian flag since Ukraine was invaded last year.

The Eurovision Song Contest was started in 1956 and I doubt those who participated in those early black and white days would recognise the colourful stage productions and strange outfits in the twenty first century. There are many more countries participating now, some newly created borders and a few countries not in Europe… Some countries have always loved it, while in the United Kingdom many of us may have been indifferent or embarrassed by our song entries. Sweden famously produced Abba whose songs have been a background to so many lives and when Ireland hosted the contest in 1994 the interval entertainment of Riverdance took on a life of its own and millions have been thrilled by the many live Riverdance shows.

Last year everything changed when the UK actually had a song people were talking about and seemed to have a chance of getting good scores, Sam Ryder with ‘Space Man’. More importantly Ukraine was was going to enter and despite the awful suffering of their country send a positive message to the world. Their Kalush Orchestra won with ‘Stefania’ and the UK came second. Ukraine should have been the host this year, but sadly that would be impossible so as second place holders the UK was chosen and are jointly hosting with Ukraine in Liverpool.

It is the first time for 25 years we have hosted the contest and for those who have always loved Eurovision and Liverpudlians, there is great excitement … and it’s catching. Whatever you think of the various songs a lot of people are having fun, both locals and Ukrainians in exile here. On the news you can have a break from what is going on in the rest of the world and see happy people gathering in Liverpool. There have been two semi finals and tomorrow is the Big Night...

Will you be watching tomorrow night?

Coronation Eve

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Most of us have never witnessed a coronation before and anticipation varies from excited crowds camping out for days to catch a glimpse, to those who are ignoring the whole thing. Whatever your views it is guaranteed to be a colourful spectacular, with lots of lovely horses, beautiful music and human interest. Not guaranteed is the weather. It rained for the Queen’s coronation, you wait 70 years for another coronation and it will probably rain again! We have never gone to events involving crowds and camping on pavements; I admire people who do, but like many will take the easy way and watch on television.

On my walk home this morning I endeavoured to catch some coronation atmosphere…

A reminder that we have had three royal events in less than a year.

If you want to be sociable and take in some ambience without going to London many councils are putting up big screens and you can bring a picnic. I think I may favour my sofa to damp grass…

Some shops and houses are flying the flag, boasting some bunting…

One of these may or may not be my house…

Whatever your views on royalty, King Charles III has a lifetime of knowledge and more intelligence than most / all of our political leaders! Whatever your religious views, he acknowledges a higher power; unlike politicians who often think they are God. He was telling us to look after the planet long before other leaders recognised there was a serious problem and his interests cover everything from farming to music and of course people…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince%27s_Trust

Mr. Tickle will be honoured to take the salute tomorrow and will be greeting important international guests such as Ernie and Bert.

Will you be watching the coronation tomorrow?

Monday Meanderings

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It’s never a good idea to wander through a writer’s mind, especially on a Monday.

Do you rush round cleaning and tidying when the in laws are coming, are you nervous when important visitors are expected? Spare a thought for President Macron who had to cancel the visit of King Charles III as the place was in too much of a mess…

Most of us worry about the cost of running our homes. This is nothing new. We are reading Jude the Obscure for our book club. Jude and Sue are going for a very long walk on the wild heathlands of Wessex and with no coffee shops in sight and poor Sue getting weary, they call at the only cottage for miles around. They end up sharing the mother and son’s dinner and staying the night. In conversation the cottager complained she will never get her roof fixed because the price of thatch has gone up so much.

Yes, I’ve been to the Giant gallery again.

I’ll leave readers to comment… while I take a wander down to the beach.