My week

Caddie, May 2022

A couple of portraits of the lovely Caddie in this post, to keep you going because I'm just about to head off on another retreat, this time for two whole weeks. A fortnight offline, no phone or Internet, and I'm ready for it. There's been altogether too much going on (entirely my own fault) so the opportunity of a break is very welcome.

The Queen is dead, long live the King. I found out on the way to badminton, where we didn't cancel the session out of respect - I'm sure the Queen wouldn't have minded badminton, or football, or any of the other events that didn't happen. The England National Bowling championship, however, must have felt a lot of respect because they cancelled their final weekend of competition. In previous years the security level at the end of the road felt a little intrusive, but the bored security man (who couldn't quite be bothered to get up to move the cones but reached out from his chair) felt very low key indeed after the armed police at the Commonwealth Games. I'm glad to be on retreat when the funeral happens, and hope that everything will be very much back to normal when I get back, not that normal is particularly satisfactory in the current UK society and politics.

Lola II and Martin are about to take off for a big adventure in the Far East, and I went to stay with them for the weekend before they went. We were mostly doing things outside because they want to minimise the chances of catching Covid, but we did lots of lovely walking, some of it with Lola II's new dogfriend Reggie. On Saturday while Lola II went swimming I had the opportunity to visit the site of the Grenfell Tower fire. We ate at the Portobello market, visited the passport office in Victoria, walked from Kew to Richmond and back, and watched one of the films on my list.

Lola II and Mr M are very accommodating when it comes to films on my list.  I compile the list from reading and listening to reviews, particularly by Kermode and Mayo, but it's often difficult to tell exactly what you're going to get. There have been some wonderful ones, but more than once they have sat through some very 'interesting' offerings - 'Tale of Tales', 'The Worst Person in the World' and 'The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Quiet' spring to mind immediately. Memorable, but not in a good way. This time it was 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' and we're still not sure what was going on half of the time. A world where humans have evolved with frankfurters for fingers, the need to swap right and left shoes, and why did he have to give himself paper cuts? All very strange.

Anyway, that was the weekend, then all three of us went over to see mum and dad on Monday and did various jobs including swapping tables in kitchen and dining room, more research into mobility scooters and garage doors, introducing mum to the website where she'll be able to track Lola II's and Mr M's progress around the world, gardening, and photographing mum playing her button accordion because I'd met someone at Shrewsbury Folk Festival who was interested in buying it. I met him on Wednesday and handed it over, but he says "Unfortunately the accordion is, as I suspected, an Eb/Bb model which was apparently popular in the 50s/60s. A good key for singers but no good for folk sessions." So I'll be getting it back next time I pass that way.

My optician appointment this week confirms what I already knew about my near vision getting worse, but at least it's five years since the last new pair of incredibly expensive specs. Due to my complex prescription I get a voucher with a discount, welcome of course but contributing only a fraction of the cost. Luckily the children's range of frames fits me so I can choose a frame for only £40 rather than the other ranges which start at about £150...

And that's it for now. Normal service should resume in October.

Scoot

Taraloka, November 2021

I sit surrounded by junk. If only I could just throw it all out, but some of it is important and some of it is useful and I need to go through what has been accumulating for many months and make sense of it all. It has been delightful to unearth a replacement phone charger for the one I lost, and to find the lights I was going to use for my tent over the summer, but all the pension administration is much less attractive and no less necessary.

In the meantime, mum and I have been having adventures with mobility scooters. We went together to try out a second hand one at someone's house, and then to the local shop to have a go on a new one. Mum was slightly nervous but I whizzed about on the pavement. We have learned much - the top speed of different models, how they can be dismantled, the insurance and servicing requirements - but the main barrier to immediate acquisition is storage. The garage would be perfect but the door isn't all that easy to open and close and there is a half-brick lip which is too high for the scooter to drive over. Mum is thinking about a motorised door and a ramp or knocking out the brick lip, and further thinking about making this the accessible route into the house that is needed.

Apart from this I have been enjoying the freedom from volunteering and other responsibilities, meeting Buddhists for walks and meals and films, and badminton is back on the agenda at last. But now I must knuckle down and try to make some impact on the junk that surrounds me.

October 2021

More volunteering

Pat, August 2022

Straight after the Games ended, I went north to celebrate Sister D's birthday. It was a lovely break, and we visited some National Trust gardens while I was there, as well as lots of other enjoyable activities with the family. Immediately after that I took charge for a few days of another trainee Guide Dog named Pat, who was quite early in her training but much more well behaved than many of the other dogs I've looked after. The weather was too hot to go out much during the day, but we spent some  quality time in the garden. I also arranged to visit a friend's cat while she was away in Edinburgh, and there was a walk and a meal out with the Buddhists, and the boiler got serviced, and the car needed a bit of work done, and I tidied up the garden, and altogether there was lots to do.

I also spent some time with Radio Man - remember him, from Warwick Folk Festival? We had lunch in a cafe, we went for a walk, we watched some badminton at the Games, we played with Pat in the garden, and we visited Bletchley Park. Then I put a stop to it, as kindly as I could. I found that it was very difficult spending exclusive time with someone else, which means that welcoming UJ is going to be a challenge. Yes, she's supposed to be coming over again, but without the cat which is staying with her parents. She keeps postponing her arrival date - at the moment it looks like it will be early October.

Then it was time for my next stint at volunteering, at Shrewsbury Folk Festival. This event is similar to Warwick's festival but much bigger, and I was assigned to something called the Task Force with no further information other than how to report for duty. It turns out that the Task Force's job is to do whatever is asked for by other teams - for example, to move a piano, to take up the striped plastic tape that delineates camping, parking and other designated areas, or to patrol the site making sure everyone is happy and trying to fix it when they are not.

Fourteen hours on duty divided into seven two-hour shifts is requested in exchange for the price of a weekend camping ticket, with the option to arrive before the masses so as to have the pick of the camping locations. I had a look at the programme and tentatively circled a couple of acts each day that I'd like to see, and when I got my shifts nearly all of them coincided with something I would have liked to see. I got one changed, and for one shift I patrolled the stage where the performance was happening, but I missed a few acts that I would have liked to see. And nearly all the shifts seemed to coincide with mealtimes so I ended up eating at strange times of day.

It was hard work - much harder than for Warwick, and more tiring than for volunteer stewards in other teams whose job might be sitting at the side of a marquee watching a performance for four hours. But at least it was more interesting than sitting at the top of a tower watching out for fires and more pleasant than picking up litter. After patrolling the site for four hours, or spending an hour hammering in pegs to secure metal barriers, I wasn't fit for as much dancing as in previous years. On one shift I had to deal with unhappy campers who had been directed to places where there didn't seem to be any space and so had been driving round for quite a long time. They all appreciated that I was trying to help them but it didn't make the job any easier.

I met quite a few of the volunteers who had been at Warwick, and some new volunteers who were unexpectedly connected to my family - two musicians who live round the corner from H+B, and a shop manager who knows Cousin Y as they work for the same organisation. But missing acts that I wanted to see because of shifts or fatigue probably outweighs the benefit of the free ticket, so I may not volunteer for this one next year. And the event itself isn't as good as it used to be pre-Covid, so there's even a chance I'll try a different festival next year - I've got my eye on a couple of them.