Ah! Peace… It’s the tail end of the day, now, and the Summerhouse beckoned me the moment Ann and I got home from the celebrations.
But first things first! Kettle on (for a cuppa) and shorts on / shirt off – it’s been a very muggy day and I need to cool off!
So, for the second time… ah!... peace…
With my cup of tea in hand, I sit in the summerhouse and reflect on this day – Sunday the 8th of August 2010. You know, it still amazes me how quickly the hours fly by. It seems only an hour or two ago that Ann and I were having breakfast and I was setting my ‘SatNav’ to ensure we arrived without a hitch and on time: and now we’re home again, it’s early evening, and the day has gone.
To mis-quote the Sergeant Pepper lyrics, “It was 40 years ago today…” that was Val and Keith’s Wedding Day…
Ann and I had received our invitation to attend my long-time friends, Val and Keith’s, Ruby Wedding Anniversary celebration first at their church for the morning service, and afterwards in the church hall for a buffet lunch celebration.
Naturally, having known them for well over forty years, and been at their wedding – on this day, forty years ago – I was not going to miss this “knees-up”, uh-hum, sorry, “bless-up”! So we set the ‘sat-nav’ to make sure we found the way to their church in time for the start, and left with plenty of time to get there.
A fine morning, and we made it in good time. A simple, family service, with plenty of fun, an “interview” of the celebrating couple – how had they survived 40 years? What were the worst times and what the best? And then a buffet lunch where the amount of food – and all splendidly displayed – could have fed their village for a week!
Lots of folks to chat to, many new people to meet, and several whom we had not seen for many long years, and then it was home time, and we’d hardly had time to chat to Val and Keith – even if we could have got to them in the melee of their many friends who equally wanted to chat.
So now here I am, sitting in my summerhouse, quietly reflecting on this day, and on the forty years since I stood watching Val and Keith get married. Yes, that’s a long time to reflect on! And age has destroyed many of the memories from those intervening years, but seeing the wedding photos, shown to us as a slide show after lunch, and now remembering back to “the Sixties”, and to their wedding day (this day) in 1970… oh dear, I seem to be getting all maudlin!
But it’s strange, a few black and white photos can trigger more memories than just asking “what do you remember about…?” There was the time when I first met Val: must have been summer 1965, when we were both on college vacation, and working at Whipsnade Zoo, in the Hall Farm Restaurant. And then that same year, at Christmas vacation, working for the Post Office, as it still was then; the Royal Mail, as it became. We worked together doing the Christmas parcel post, which was delivered using a big old ‘pantechnicon’ lorry (a furniture removal lorry), where all us college students would be standing inside the van-body, sorting the parcels as we were driven along, and a couple of us would run behind the lorry’s tailboard, which was lowered on chains so the lads and lassies inside could throw out a parcel to the “runners”, who would run to the address and deliver the parcel, then run back to the moving lorry to collect another! Can you imagine what Health and Safety Officers would say to that today! They’d have an apoplectic fit! And it was icy on the roads, some days, and we worked until well after dark to get the parcels in the lorry all delivered before we all went back to the sorting office. Fun times. 
And now Val and Keith have celebrated forty years of married life, raised two strapping-great sons, and have grandchildren and grey hair, but also many, many, memories. Not just of the Sixties and Seventies, but four (plus) decades of memories!
Happy Ruby Wedding Anniversary, Val and Keith! And may you have many more!
One of my pet ‘hates’ is when you buy something that appears to be “more than”, (to utilise one of the advertising catch-phrases that I like so much), only to discover that it’s “no better than” a cheaper – "less-than" – product!
Like the words “less fat”, “only natural ingredients”, “organic”, “farm produced”, “natural goodness”, and all the other marketing phrases, the word “Stoneground”, (as in bread), seems to conjure up all the natural goodness of a country loaf, but it’s no more than a marketeer’s bait to catch the “Au natural” brigade!
Last week, on our customary Friday afternoon foray to one of the grocery supermarkets here in Milton Keynes, I found I was too late to get my usual sliced, wholemeal loaf as they'd sold out of the one I usually buy. So, after spending far too long debating whether to buy a different variety, one I hadn't tried before, I saw a bargain! It was the supermarket’s own-brand 'Stoneground Wholemeal' sliced loaf at a 'special' price, and the same price as I normally pay for their ‘ordinary’ wholemeal sliced! So, no contest!“Stoneground” equals “more than”, doesn't it? Well, the health-food adverts are always playing up the ‘goodness’ of stoneground flour over ‘normal’ flour… so into my trolley went that loaf!
Now, I've eaten home-made sandwiches, (henceforth called “sarnies”, because that’s the colloquialism I always use), for the past 40+ years for my work-a-day pack-up. They're always hand-made by yours truly, and fresh-made every evening, 5 days a week – bar holidays – and for the past several years using wholemeal bread. So I rather think I know sliced bread - especially wholemeal.
As I took this loaf out of the fridge on Sunday evening to make my sarnies, I was really looking forward to a delicious new taste at the start of the new working week. Having been “forced” into the purchase of this stoneground loaf, I was anticipating all the goodness from the wheatfield, milled by hand in a little country windmill... oh how the adverts can suspend reality, eh?!
But, like a wine connoisseur, I opened the plastic bag and smelled the aroma of this “more than” loaf! “Wow, this is going to be good”, I thought as I took out four slices. But as they lay on the kitchen worktop, those slices didn't look any different at all to my usual 'ordinary' wholemeal loaf!What? I looked at the bag again to satisfy myself that it definitely said “Stoneground” – and it did! What's more, equally 'as usual', as I spread my cholesterol-busting, (and grotty tasting), margarine ever so thinly onto the slices, they also tore just as easily as the butter knife slid across the slice and the margarine snagged the soft bread slice. Just as my usual brand of ordinary wholemeal does! “I've been had!” I said aloud. "It ain't no better at all!"
When Ann and I visited an ancient, but working, watermill, one holiday in Devon, and saw the differences between the types of flour, one of things which stood out was the ‘grit’ in stoneground flour. I understand that ‘normal’ flour is milled with steel rollers, not with huge, stone, millstones, as our forefathers did. Therefore, your ‘ordinary’ bakers loaf, (whether a local baker, supermarket baked, or produced by the million by Kingsmill or Warburtons, etc.), won’t have that grit in it that naturally comes off the stone millstones when they turn against each other. So I was expecting ‘grit’, as well as more of the chaff from the wheat, in this supermarket own-brand ‘stoneground’ loaf… not a bit of it! No grit, no chaff, nothing at all which said "stoneground", and it was as tasteless as the cheapo brands sold as "value" loaves. What a con! It was just as well I only paid the same money as for my usual bread. Stoneground… Ha! So be warned, “more than” might not be anything “more than” a fancy wrapper!As it says on many advertising boards “Buyer Beware!”
Well, when you reach a 'certain age', you're entitled to start growing old DISgracefully! So for my 64th birthday (today!) Ann and I, and a couple of good friends, went to MK Centre to see the "IF Festival" - which had all kinds of 'artistic' displays going on across the centre of Milton Keynes. And one of those exhibits is called the Magical Menagerie - a 'square' roundabout where all the rides are fantastical animal or insect creatures... and yours truly had a birthday treat bought him, and took a ride on the praying mantis! It was a bit of sillyness, and magical fun, that was as much fun for the dozens of mums-and-dads spectators watching their children going round and then seeing me! "Wave to the fat-bearded one!" I heard one of the dads saying as I went by... so I turned the head of the mantis toward him and laughed.And to think, I was just going to sit in the summerhouse and chill-out today, and now I've enjoyed being a big kid riding a roundabout again! Wonder what I'll do for my 65th!?
Oh dear, that first post of mine really was a bit of a ramble, wasn't it? You might say, and I wouldn't blame you, that it was a disaster! Ah well, I suppose I'll get better at this blogging... But DO tell, dear Reader, though be gently in the telling, please!Rain: I've been limping all day today because my 'Plantar Fasciitis' (that's Plant -er Fass-ee-itis), has been playing me up something rotten. [What ever is Plantar Fasciitis? Well, it's basically a nasty case of a very sore heel, caused by inflammation of the Plantar Fascia ligament along the sole of the foot: usually manifesting itself in a very sore heel]So a walking stick and swaying along like an old-time sailor has caused plenty of mirth at my place of work today! "He's cracking up", "Poor old soak, look at him - drunk as a skunk before midday!", "Just come off the Cutty Sark, have we?", "He'll never make it in that state to next July when he retires..." And much similar ribbing each time I had to get up from my desk and walk down through the office to the printer or the kitchen area...Shine: But this limping, swaying, poor old boy also generated considerable generosity of spirit from these same colleagues as the day wore on, and several acts of kindness were freely given. "I'll get that print-off for you", said one; and at afternoon tea-break, "I'm going down to the kitchen to make the tea for our lot, can I bring you one back?"And so there was that "silver lining" that is spoken about "behind every cloud", and it was a real joy to be blessed by them, and see their kind nature shine past their waggish teasing! Perhaps it was also good for them... giving is good for the soul, they say..."Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, so it will be measured to you." (St Luke chapter 6 verse 38)Of course, Jesus was talking to his disciples about very much more than fetching my print-offs, or a 'cuppa' for my tea-break because my colleagues could see it pained me to walk! But I trust in the Lord that he will bless my fellow workers for their kindnesses to me today... but will it last all week! LoL!
A View From The Summerhouse
This is my first ever blog, so, dear Reader, do, please, bear with me, as I’m bound to get something wrong!
Why have I called my blog “A View From The Summerhouse”? Well, because I’m sitting in our summerhouse as I write, watching the evening sky darken as sunset approaches, and having heard on the weather forecast that rain is finally on its way for us, tonight, and this may well be the last day of this - very long - summer’s warm, dry, spell… or at least until later next week.
We got this summerhouse last Autumn, and since late Springtime this year have made good use of it on fine days. Soon, it will have electricity laid on, so I can use my laptop on mains, and have a table lamp on for when the evenings draw in but it’s still warm enough to sit out.
The view from the summerhouse is rather pleasant, we think, in a “townie” kind of way. We live on the north of what, for the past forty years, has been optimistically called “The New City of Milton Keynes”; firstly by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, who planned and built most of MK, then by MK Borough Council, and latterly, since becoming a ‘Unitary Authority’, autonomous, rather than part of Buckinghamshire, (which, of course, we are still in!) by Milton Keynes Council.
So… back to the view…
Once I’ve got the drop on this blogging lark, I shall post a photo of our tiny garden, and its summerhouse, but for now, a brief description. About thirty feet square, with a wild-life pond in the centre, currently lush with rosebay willow herb, purple loosestrife, and watermint.
Our home is a terraced bungalow, with the back garden south facing, so we get the sunshine most of the day; and the summerhouse is in the far left corner, facing west, and so it is that here I am, with the sun just set, this July evening. But the sky is greying as the rain clouds approach from the south on a gentle breeze. A blackbird has been singing all evening. A gorgeously velvet song, he’s been with us all year, appearing first when the snow lay thick during the coldest winter in MK for many years, and we had two bird tables and many hanging bird feeders, stocked up with all sorts of goodies for our lovely feathered friends. Robins, Wrens, Chaffinches, Dunnocks, Blackbirds, Great Tits, Blue Tits, Wood Pigeons, Collared Doves, even a Spotted Woodpecker and a Goldfinch made an appearance before that long cold spell was out! And we were rewarded for all our feeding with blue tits nesting in our boxes, and the blackbird bringing his fledglings “in to see us”, this spring, as the pair raised first one, and now a second brood, in the trees which stand behind our garden.
What was left of the last of the sunset has now disappeared, and the sky is a dull grey, with a ‘mackerel’ cloud effect in darker grey - the portent of rain approaching. But still I’m kept company by “our” blackbird singing happily and now echoed by another farther down the tree line behind our garden.
Oh happy days! Warm and tranquil, hardly but a touch of breeze, but oh so much cooler than the past few nights when temperatures stayed at the dizzy heights of 15, or 16 degrees Celsius even in the coolest of the night!
Next door’s cat has just jumped onto the top of the fence: he hasn’t seen that I’m sat in the summerhouse, or he’d have thought twice before dropping down into our garden. It’s not that I don’t like him, or pussy-cats in general; on the contrary, but next door’s cat is a true hunter, and had the very first blue tit fledgling from our nest box this spring. Aha! He’s spotted me now I’ve moved in my chair… and off he goes, back over the fence.
It’s the World Cup Final this evening on television, and our next door neighbours are watching it. I can tell because with this hot weather, we’ve all had our back doors and living-room doors open to our gardens, so I can hear their shouts as the football match progresses. And their cat has took flight to home and is being welcomed in by his “mummy”. I have no interest in football. Indeed, I think it has become grossly over rated, over paid, and over bearing. There never seems to be a moment’s respite from it on the TV and radio news, or in the newspapers… footballers, footballers wives, who’s playing who, and why it’s SO important… Ugh! Here we are, at the height of the cricket season in England, yet hardly a mention of it – just the blasted World Cup… and in a few weeks time, the next football season starts in Britain and all we’ll hear for the next 10 months will be football, football, football… aaaaggghhh!!!
And that was the view from the summerhouse today.
