You can stick your ticket .

Following on from yesterdays rant / opinions aired ...... (thanks for your encouraging comments - what follows is your own fault ) :

What do you think about waiting rooms and queues ?

Yes ! I thought so .

A long wait expected or otherwise is a regular occurrence .Also of course those waiting in the queue will have amongst them people who are an oppression to the spirit .

( How I love those people who bring a paperback and a patient attitude . Those who sit silent apart from the very occasional gentle sigh betokening fellow feeling on your mutual wait . )

Can we also agree on the new mother who apparently is the only person in the world ever to have given birth , breast fed , had the absolute God given right to a 100% attention of every member of the public health profession breathing .
Likewise accompanying grandmother who is hot wired to say loudly that the baby is named for a royal and is therefore regal or named for a long dead antecedent and therefore has gravitas .
Said great grandfather may have been a farm labourer ( and good for him and all others of his ilk ) but the passage of time has allowed grandmother , she thinks , to add a rich , rural , crust to said labourer . Said labourer is now the backbone of Britain , purveyor of sustenance and good rumbustious bucolic joy to the masses . He is the sanitised superior to anything on your family tree or mine . He is "ye olde merry England ".

Ok .... rant over .

Cause ?
The last few health checks for the saxophonist and the saxophonists wife who has been coerced into well women / responsible citizen checks when caught with her guard down waiting for the saxophonist .

Remedy ?
Get through the bloody things and then use common sense and intelligence to swerve all pointless nonsense and thence exercise autonomy . Meaning practice nurses who say you should eat this or exercise that whilst being the size of a barrel . ( I am size 10 to 12 ) .Resist the urge to say " I am fully cognitive of your expertise and agenda and cordially invite you to fuck off " .

So gentle reader thank you for taking a number and sitting it out on a hard seat with the mother/baby/grandmother combo on one side and a man with nasty trousers and a twitch on the other .

Your reward is the writers solemn oath that the next post will be informed by the writer having a good meal in China town and  time in the national gallery .

Options and Fornication .

Adventures by train and country bus have begun . I like very much the freedom of it . I love the improvisation and spontaneity of such journeys . The transience and the unexpected .

Home pleasures satisfy . Reading  , drawing , making things  , walking .

However , somewhat out of character , I have contemplated joining something . To save you the bother of doing the same I'll explain .

Option one : community choir .

"friendship and fun "

Well , they could have had them under the trades description act on that one .

Men with comb overs and women gone prematurely blond caterwauling whilst wearing novelty wigs and hats . Bad enough I know but their rendition of classic soul songs ...

Its quite hard , I imagine , to sing about loss , desire and raunchy sex as if it should be banned .
 They managed it .

I gather they intend to have a " summer buffet " and a glass of wine will be " available to purchase ".
I will either have to drink two litres of rough cider and wear my knickers as an improvised fascinator or stay away .
Stay away I think and of course I advise you to do the same .

Option two : charity shop volunteer .

"community spirit and commitment "

The hearty and the sanctimonious convene ( in this case at least ) to encourage you to form an enclave where men are not needed .

Quiz's , book groups and fun for the ladies .

Now , I have never drunk a bottle of scotch straight down or road tested a selection of sex toys but I wouldn't half like to suggest it to the ladies .

Best I stay away and probably you too ?
Yes I think so .


I said to the saxophonist was I being overly critical or displaying rather telling character traits with my reaction to options one and two ?

He said , firstly , that he would not pay fifteen quid to sit through two hours of the choir giving it what for .
He said , secondly , that my comments on the "options" were a bit naughty .

I said that I thought the "naughty " was what he married me for , along with the great cooking and an enthusiastic aptitude for  explicit detail deleted .

He thought about this for a while and did a slow grin .

Advice then : if you are a person who likes joining things , fill your boots , and if you are not then I'm sure you , like me ,  you will find your own amusements .

The seductive sprout .

It had been a nostalgic conversation  and an exasperated one too .

Why do people eat ready meals ? I had half a one to try and threw the rest in the bin , hungry as I was . It bore no resemblance to proper food . It was frankly nasty .

People will tell you they have no time to cook but they do seem to have time to watch endless television every night . Life style and choice of course .
Which brings me back to nostalgia . It was my cousin I was having the conversation with . We thought fondly of all meals cooked at home and were glad we still did the same .
Then we talked about the first new potatoes , small as marbles coming off the allotment and given a crown of a knob of butter or two and a pinch of salt .

This then led into how peas and runners you harvest yourself taste completely different to any other .

He then sang a hymn of praise to tiny early broad beans and I waxed lyrical about muffling up on Christmas eve to pick small nutty tasting sprouts to roast with bacon or chestnuts .

Our grandfather and father's all had extensive allotments and my cousin still has one . I gave mine up when time got short . I told him how I missed it and that now would be a good time to begin again .

Last Sunday the cousin , the saxophonist and I sat in convivial conversation over a pint . The conversation drifted here and there and in a quiet gap the cousin said he'd spoken to the site manager and it looked like I could have a plot soon . I told him " yes " but I wanted time to mull it over ( I thought this to myself  ).

Yesterday I walked out along the river and thought of my exasperation with people who wanted good food but would not cook it .

I sat in my sequestered nook - a hidden branch of a willow way out along the river . Just me and a few nearby water birds .
Then I grinned to myself and the ducks and coots . I had known it all along , I guess , deep down . You make time for whats important to you .
I knew then I had never really left the allotments of my childhood and later my own . I remembered that I sort of knew anyway it wasn't goodbye - just time out .

There is time now for me to dig and weed and plant . There will be that good tiredness of heavy limbs from productive labour .

And then , and then  there will be baskets of radishes and beetroot , buckets of potatoes and onions , trugs of lettuces and spring onions . I will be weary , muddy and in yet another sense home again .

Surprising myself .

So a new life is beginning to unfold . A stroll to the town to buy ingredients . New books to read . Enticing creative projects . The prospect of adventures by train , coach and country bus .

The ills that beset us have been dealt with pills . More or less pills may or may not follow but that does not matter . What matters is the baking of rock buns ,violets and bluebells in the garden . The thought that the gosgog bush may yield us a crop and the black currant too . Putting on an outfit with a bit of sass .

Springtime you see ( or whatever season is there to be relished ) . A daily round of meals cooked , walks taken , books read . Looking at world class art , Radio Three and Radio Four . A good nib and some nice paper .

A life that is  civilised and largely autonomous . Little treats and happy habits every day .

Constance Gray writes in her famous cookery book " Honey from a weed " : " there was a time when the satisfaction of performing practical tasks was valued as one of the ways to give meaning to our lives ."
She says further " without work the vessel of human life lacks ballast ."

She is not talking about dull drudgery , she means putting real heart into your life . The means at the forefront of her comments is cooking . Of course though there is walking and appreciating each season as it comes . Being creative and enjoying intellectual stimulus of one sort and another are essential too I think .

Mark Boyle talking in his book the " Moneyless Manifesto " says " each of us knows there is a story more sublime , more dignified , more glorious than numbers "

He means values that do not include money .

I am beginning slowly to join the dots in our new life . It's already there in small ways . When somebody does me a good turn I bake them a cake .If I make chutney , marmalade or jam I do it in big quantities . A jar goes to each person who supplied me with jars . I enjoy it and the rest is for swaps or  a thank you of a different sort .

The car was sold yesterday and oddly there is a serenity in that . Now we know where we are ( for six months or a year at least ) . There are different ways of doing things now .