"Hearing aids at Play"

A few years ago I was given a most splendid hearing aid by the NHS. About time too. I was starting to become a recluse. Dinner parties, talks,workshops, cocktail parties were all impossible because I couldn't hear. I loved my hearing aid, but unfortunately I got drunk one day and when I went to put it in the next day there was no sign of it. Misery. Shame. I couldn't bring myself to admit to the NHS that I'd gone and got drunk and lost the wonderful thing.
I went on line and found splendid hearing aids, but they were all hugely expensive. I decided my pride wasn't worth £3,000 or more, so I phoned the NHS and owned up. The darlings made me a new one that was even more splendid than the one I'd lost and what's more it seemed to have a face on it. It has an amiable expression. I'd always felt that the bit that goes into my ear looks a bit indecent, like an alligators foetus. (Not that I've seen such a thing, but you know what I mean.)
One day I went into my studio after a long lay off (due to being invaded by a miserable virus) and the studio was cold and dusty and I couldn't think what to paint. So I swept the floor. Then, suddenly, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I removed my hearing aid and looked at it carefully. YES, it would make an excellent model. I drew it and I drew it and I drew it. When I knew it really well I started to place it on the paper. Long story short. I hardly had to change it at all. About six of them dance across the paper. The alligator bit looks rather like a Barbara Hepworth sculpture because it's got a hole in it. I named it "Hearing aids at Play". I used water colour and a bit of gouache and in due course it came back from the framer and was hung on the wall. It may be my masterpiece. I shall never sell it. I shall try to post it on my Facebook wall, but I may not manage to do that because I'm really STUPID with putting things on Facebook.

My Ma died three times

When she was eighty seven my Ma was mowing her bumpy, steep lawn with an old, blunt hand mower. She fell, but managed to drag herself to the house to phone for help. That same evening she was on the operating table of a big hospital in Bristol. The surgeon opened her up to pin her broken thigh but there was nothing much to pin it to, so he decided to give her a new hip.

For an woman of eighty seven who had been in shock for some time it was a bit much, so she died. The theater team flung its self on her and managed to bring her back to life. They got on with the operation but she died again and the team got her going again. Heroic stuff.

The ward sister told me about the magnificent job that the theater staff and the surgeon had done for my Ma and, when I was looking after her and she was back home I asked her. "What was it like, my Ma, to die? do tell me." " Well" she said, "it was very agreeable. I was traveling into an area that was very familiar but, strangely, I can't describe it. I knew that if I could get away from words I could get deeper into it, but words reached out for me and pulled me back.
The same thing happened a second time. I was cross about it and when I was recovering in hospital I asked to see my surgeon."

My Ma had a certain authority and after a while the surgeon arrived smiling at her bedside, ready to be congratulated. My Ma said "Sit down young man". He sat. "Now, please tell me by what authority you had me brought back to life." Fortunately, like her daughter, my Ma liked charming young men and they were soon on the best of terms. She lived for another ten years and I think she found it hard, but she became much kinder and more gentle. I said to her once "My Ma , you should have died much earlier, you are so much nicer now" But seriously, isn't it a strange story? I've asked to be allowed to die without heroic interventions. What would you do?

Winter Wonderland or A Pain In The Neck?

I woke this morning at five and there it was! All eight inches of it with a moving curtain of goose feather flakes. (Don't try to describe it, Rhoda, that's been done before by better writers than you). I hurried from one window to another, giving little cries of admiration. My yard light and the street light showed its glories.

So, when is one enchanted and when is one made miserable by snow? Childhood delight at the sight of normally sober adults capering strangely and eager to play. Wooshing, out of control down steep slopes. Under attack from young males who are line bred from antiquity to throw things accurately. Pain, wet mouthed howling, dead fingers and toes. The glory of making a snowman. Back in the house with dead fingers cradling a mug of hot chocolate. NO SCHOOL!

I still made snowmen when I was living alone in my fifties. By then I was allowed to delight in the snow again after the years as a farmers wife when husband was made miserable by having to throw his good milk away because the milk lorry couldn't get through. He was losing lambs and pregnant sheep to marauding foxes. Frozen pipes in the old cowshed. Getting to distant cwms to feed outlying stock. Hay running out.

My masterpiece snowman was made at Dartington Hall near Totnes when I was staying the weekend there on a visit to my daughters who were at school there. In the grounds was a huge statue of a reclining woman by Henry Moore. She was rudely called Big Bottomed Bertha and a group of excited, creative girls helped me to re-create her, full size, in snow. She thawed slightly during the afternoon, and then, in the evening, she froze, iron hard. Unwittingly we had placed her on a path where cars traveled and They (the authorities) had to put a red lantern each side of her at night in case a car got into trouble with her iron form. She stayed like that throughout the cold spell, but I had returned to the farm and none of my team of creative girls sneaked on me.

So now? At ninety? Past gambolling in it. Too unsteady to build a snowman. Mewed up in my delicious warm house, scared to go out in case I fall and a bone breaks. Is it a Winter Wonderland or a Pain in the Neck? Today it's a Winter Wonderland. but it mustn't go on for too long. 18.12.20

I am the very model of a modern old age pensioner ?

Something very odd has happened to Old Age. Have you noticed? It has become a competition. Friends stop me in the street, full of smiles and bright eyed. They know I will be delighted to talk about the competition. "Rhoda, did you read in yesterday's paper about that amazing old woman who did a freefall parachute jump with an instructor strapped to her back on her 97th birthday?" It made me feel rather sour. Mind you the idea of having a hunky instructor strapped to my back had a certain appeal. Hum. Yes! But in public? And for such a short time?
I'm unsure about how to behave as an ancient. I remember my mother gave me an excellent bit of advice. "Rhoda when you are old you must never show any skin. Be specially careful not to show cleavage. Ancient and withered bosoms are not for the flaunting" so I only show my face and my hands and I'm a bit shy about them.
All in all I'm afraid I don't qualify as the very model of a modern old age pensioner. I haven't invented a new super food that brings in a couple of million profit a year. No way will I fling myself off a bridge with elastic tied to my ankle. I don't compete in this new competition. I'm only ninety and I'm having a ball.

Love/hate and my laptop

The wonderful younger generation grew up with them. They seem to know by instinct exactly what their laptop wants and their elegant little fingers run about like mice on the keyboard. How I admire and envy them.
My antique fingers move slowly and laboriously and my laptop knows that it is in the hands of an idiot and reacts accordingly. It won't let me get at things I need, it greys out things I want to use. It has me running round and round the same page unable to find my way out, it disappears things, sometimes it gulps something down when I've almost finished typing it and am, as a result, exhausted.
But Oh! what a wonderful toy it is! The things it will show me! recently I wanted to know what a cat's footprints look like. (I liked the idea of drawing them on a picture I'd just finished so that it looked as if a cat had walked all over it) Cat owning friends couldn't help because their cats refused to allow owners to look under their paws. When I finally googled the question the most perfect outline of cat tracks appeared. how's that for a good trick? I don't have to tell you about the joys of email and Itunes and Face book and news and weather and banking and on and on

This blog was brought on by a miserable half hour trying to get pictures and photos shrunk so they hadn't too many MBs (whatever they may be) and would be accepted on my beautiful new website. I went through all the miseries listed above and suddenly my darling laptop capitulated and I sprang up and ran round my office making excited noises. Then I sat triumphantly down and found that I had not the faintest idea how I'd done it.

season of mists and adult education

How I love the autumn! Not only for Keats and his swooningly sensual Ode. (I think he should have put in some smells. Bonfires? Blackberries cooking?). I also, as a wild enthusiast for learning more of what I already know and things of which I know nothing, love the way courses start again in the autumn.
A few days ago Moya Davern returned to the Bleddfa Center and, with her customary amazing energy, poured a mass of information over her eager group. Then she gave us a brilliant demonstration while we scribbled hasty, illegible notes.
Homework for next week? A vase of flowers with background, behind a pane of glass with a stained glass surround. To look misty. A flower painting in the manner of Elizabeth Blackadder and a colour swatch. Whew! Now I long to get back into my studio. I'm filled with excitement and wild creativity.
(I had to write this blog, it's only my third and I was afraid I'd forgotten how to do it.)

Hugs

Stiff upper lip. No touchy feely. I can't remember sitting on parent's knees. BUT between 1940 and 1950 three daughters and two sons were born and they taught me about the importance of warmth and hugs and sitting on knees and ever since I've made sure that I get a great many hugs. Hugs in the street. Hugs on arrival. Hugs on departure. Hugs of compassion. Hugs to exchange affection. Delighted "how lovely to see you" hugs. (Isn't it funny how a word repeatedly said or written starts to to be just a sound or just a pattern of letters).

My son Marco said "everyone has their own special sort of hug and the first time you hug someone you can be really surprised. Some people have the most gorgeous hugs and some people feel like an ironing board."

I've been getting a lot of delicious hugs over the last few weeks because the family has been miserably bereaved and my friends have come and knocked on my door and said "I've come to give you a hug" and then enfolded me so that I can boo-hoo all over them. Lovely! I think old people need a lot of hugging to remind them who they are.

My saddest hug story was a few years ago when my darling husband had to go into a home because of Alzheimers. I was offering round a box of chocolates to people sitting in chairs on the lawn in the sun and I knocked the foot of an old man. "Oh! I'm so sorry! I hope I didn't hurt your foot" " Not at all. It was just so nice to be touched."