Cold and Tired in Scotland

I think it’s going to be a more relaxed Christmas than usual for us, because of the bad weather. I just think “hey ho, if I don’t have all the gifts, they’ll arrive later.” We all have our excuses ready; we keep being told by various sites and couriers that we might not get our presents in Scotland before Christmas Day, but I’m inclined to think a lot of it is bluster…. just like us when on Christmas Day we are telling our loved ones “sorry, you would have had three extra parcels but they’re still stuck on the motorway. Snow and ice, you know. Not my fault.”

But it was dreadful today… I mean the weather wasn’t snowy but it’s very cold.The local temperature stands at -4 degrees C, and might drop to -6. I’m so glad we got that heating fixed (it broke down, and we were three freeeeeezing days and nights without it! Though the heat is on again, I can feel the ice still tiptoeing up my spine and trying to give me a sly hug… the opposite of that warm furry Cup-a-Soup hug that would leap on you from nowhere when you had a mug of Cup-a-Soup (according to the commercials)). Anyway, we got the bus out to town in the morning, and met my sister for coffee, then drifted round the shops, and I felt awful. It seemed to me we were just going to the same shops and fingering the same goods we did for the past couple of days, and I was very bored and ‘down’. All I wanted to do was go home again. I was looking forward to going home before we even left!

It wasn’t till we DID get back home that I remembered I got up early this morning, and had already been up about 5 hours before we took the morning bus to town! I’m still very sleepy. But I felt fed up anyway, as we were spending ages in shops I didn’t want to be in (lots of waiting near the door looking at the same nasty cardigans and overpriced Christmas baubles for the umpteenth time, trying not to fall asleep on my feet), and then I was being rushed impatiently round those shops that I DID want to be in… At least I managed to get a couple of things which went off (“bleep bleep bleep”) when we were leaving the shop, and we had to have their alarms deactivated as they hadn’t been removed at the till. I don’t know why that always happens to me at least once every Christmas…

Then we went home and sat watching the same old programs we’ve seen millions of times before (Antique Roadshow, Eggheads, Pointless etc) and it was made worse by the Antique Roadshow doing “the ten best…” (pot boiler). If I had control of that remote control, the TV would either be off or I’d be watching something with more meat in it, like a film or a drama… or a DVD if I was desperate. I was looking at a family in the Antique Roadshow having a doll or a bear or something valued, and I was wondering how they could stand there looking so bright-eyed and interested. Surely the ennui of everyday life had got to them too? If they felt it, they didn’t show it, though the mother looked a little further along that road than the child.

My tiredness has turned to headache… I think that means I should have slept but didn’t really. Was dozing off on the sofa then getting up for coffee.

Sorry, I sound very grumbly! I suppose I should try and finish this Christmassy picture… will be back when I have more energy. (Probably 4 a.m. tomorrow morning…)

Snore

Snow and ice still stuck fast. It’s not showing signs of leaving in a hurry.

It seems the days I get up and do a workout are the days I’m the most hungry and sleepy… I don’t feel like preparing for Christmas; I’d rather lie wrapped in a rug, snoring.

Going to try and break out tomorrow, though. Stupid snow…

Snow Views

View of the snow from my computer room window this morning. At least one photo is pixellated because I saved it as a low quality JPEG. And the camera was fighting me… it didn’t want to take it because the light was too low!

I’ve begun reading ‘Master and Commander’ by Patrick O’Brian. Mum says she is rereading the entire series for the second time. “It’s better than Hornblower,” she said.
“What?! How can anything be better than Hornblower?”
“Well, I thought nothing could be better, but if anything is, THIS is. It has a lot more detail.”
“I was looking for something vaguely Christmassy to read, like Ellis Peters. Does the Master and Commander have Christmases, or is he too busy pursuing his own personal vendettas?”
“Oh, he has Christmas on board with extra food. And he doesn’t pursue vendettas really; he’s too naive.”
“Well, if you happen to be looking for something Christmassy to read, you should re-read the Moomins… they’re just right for this time of year.”
“I was thinking about doing that.”

We like our cold snowy books.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

 

Still Reaching for the Moon

“I’m reaching out towards the moon and it’s just out of reach of my searching fingertips. The ugly black shadow of Microsoft falls between me and it.”

It was an email I sent my sister 4 years ago. When searching old email archives to ascertain when I bought my digital SLR, I didn’t expect the first email I opened to say that. I almost felt sorry for my sister, but perhaps she was in the know!

I’ve been reorganizing my photos and graphics to include whatever older files I can dredge out of the past, and only a couple of days ago came across this:

It is not pretty or interesting, but illustrates a key moment in the story touched on by the email above. I’d bought my new camera and was struggling to get my PC to recognize it — it needed specific drivers, and they were hanging instead of installing. I finally pulled my PC into some sort of shape (including a reinstall of the OS) and tried again to install the camera drivers.

I took the shot with my Canon when I realized we’d succeeded! I was so happy that I could have kissed the monitor — kiss ‘n’ tell, if you like.

“Our whole lives are on the computer,” said Sandra Bullock’s character in The Net, and she’s right — though I’m thinking more about the minutiae of our home lives preserved in eye-boggling detail — with enough gaps to leave us wondering if we really know ourselves.

I don’t know if it’s a full moon tonight, but I couldn’t sleep. I had to sit up and write for my blog. I was thinking about all of you — how I feel some of you are friends, even though I’m not all that clear what you look like! When you’re trying to pull together the scattered pieces and bits and bytes of your life, and when four years ago seems like a lifetime, you do think about things like that. I may not always be around, and I’ll skip away and reorganize my past life when I could be talking to you more, but that’s part of the elusiveness that’s woven through everything…

I was playing Dido’s Life for Rent again — I associate it with leaving my house, of which there are many photographs. After wading (with difficulty) through the cats’ mug shots, I started on our Christmas photos… and Dido’s singing got all plaintive. Fear overtook me at the sight of how time has already trickled away. Xmas 2002 seems like yesterday, though it’s now viewable through the ancient pixellated lens of a 1.3 megapixel Olympus Camedia.

When my attack of collywobbles was over, I felt relieved but weak…. but I also blame EA Sports Active for that. It makes me do eternal laps, and I’ve been shaky all day! Not enough to want to sleep, unfortunately.

Life burns, simply by passing… but I can’t leave my older files to moulder on yellowing CDs. That would be betrayal, and I can’t help feeling that if I bring them back into some kind of accessible order, everything will make more sense.

After all the battles and the wars
The scars and loss
I’m still the queen of my domain.

[From 'This Land is Mine' by Dido]

Home is Where the Heart Is

On Geo’s post What If, I was trying to sound deep by saying that we can always go home, even if we think we can’t, because we carry home with us. That idea comes and goes, because sometimes you feel that you can never go home (if you think of home as being a particular place at a particular time, surrounded by specific people). But at other times you realize that you have certain memories and resources inside yourself which do just as well, probably because they stem directly from the experiences and people you are thinking of.

Having written my comment, I realized that I was wearing a perfume my mother gave me… Summer Hill by Crabtree and Evelyn. It is a lovely, sweet, summery scent, and strangely familiar. It’s very like one I was given as a little girl, and I wonder if maybe it’s the same. I had a shower tonight and put the perfume on, and it took me right back to that ‘home’ I spoke of — where we had Christmas carols on the old record player, and my grandmother would stand on our icy doorstep saying “it’s chilly for June”… Along with that memory came warmth, and a sense of peace and belief in the future.

A Quiet Room

My computers are gathering dust. I’m hardly ever in this room this month, and it’s in the same pristine condition it was just before Christmas. I know that will change later… I’ve just got new things on my mind to think about and work with. Nothing of blogworthy note. Well, OK…. Mum asked Santa Claus for a Nintendo. It’s usually parents having to get those for their children, but it worked the other way in this family! Yesterday I was watching her have a snowball fight without going outdoors, while I got on with a jigsaw puzzle. But I’ve had a good go on the Nintendo as well, so it was a Christmas present for both of us, really.

Went to the supermarket today and got a bottle of Beet-It juice. It’s wonderful. I used to love carrot juice but they changed the brand and the new one is a let-down. I used to dislike beetroot; I tried it several times from the jar, but could never get used to it. Then one of Mum’s friends gave us homemade creamed beet… and that converted me. I’m pleased, as I always had a feeling I might like beet if I just had it in the right format!

A neighbour’s husband and son went off to sledge down the hill behind our houses. Unfortunately the husband shot straight into the burn at the bottom (lots of rocks and trees) and wound up with blood trickling down his face. The ambulance men wanted to know what a 55-year-old man was doing sledging. I don’t know… the same urge that drives a snipe into a suburban garden, perhaps? Snow changes everything.

Today it’s 1 C, but it’s been colder than that — there were days when you opened the door in broad sunny daylight, and the cold was outside like a hard wall. You put one hand out and it froze. I opened the back door one perishing night because Delilah was standing pensively besides it. She looked at the ice stretching away into darkness, and then looked pitifully at me, as though to say “you’re not throwing me out in that, are you?” Today the ice has mostly melted away, but it was ‘snailing’ yesterday when Mum went to town. We got some strange bobbly ice in buckets and things, where hailstones had frozen fast.

I finally snapped a shot of one of the cats drinking from the water fountain…. this one is Delilah. I had to turn the camera to get all of her in!

Going back to the jigsaw and the Nintendo now….

Happy 2010!

I was going to post a Happy Christmas picture, thinking I was well on target for a change… but ran out of time! Still, I hope everyone had wonderful experiences this festive season, snow or no snow. On Christmas Eve, I saw Santa Claus driving a double decker bus. Nobody seemed to be on it, but maybe people worried they would end up at the North Pole?

Here’s wishing all of you a wonderful 2010… may everything work out right for you, in all things great and small.

No Thaw Yet

It’s hard to concentrate when one is cold. We saw a snipe standing on our lawn in the snow today. It was just standing there, its long thin beak pointed towards the kitchen window. Mum telephoned the neighbours, who rushed to their windows and gawked at it, and eventually it went away. We lead an exciting life around here.

Latest crop of shredded notes:

Figured out I’m getting less per month than I got from the office ten years ago. Except when the tenants have their beaks open… then it’s a good bit less.

I wonder if the tenants hear judderings in the night. But pink bedroom cold unless they have heater in there.

Mum: How much do you remember of African landscapes?
Me: Funny stunted trees, dusty roads, banana plantations, sand and grass mixed at beach. Sword grass in towns.
Mum: Acacia. Do you remember a poinsettia tree outside the Fort Hall house?
Me: No — I remember a sandpit.

Me: Sun’s out — it might thaw a bit.
Mum: There was a car skidding about outside.

Me (while we watched Merlin): Arthur is always out cold at the interesting bits. Dragon mustn’t attack Camelot, but may go and harry Ealdor etc?

Christmas… I’ve never known it to be so slow in coming.

Twilight Christmas

I ordered a gift voucher for someone. Was practically sitting beside the letterbox, waiting for the envelope to pop through… and it was delivered in a big 16″ x 10″ x 5″ cardboard box, stuffed with four metres of packing paper.

Sometimes I think I fell through a hole into the twilight zone without noticing. Are you in here with me? Or maybe you were always here.

Christmas Hikes

One thing I do dislike about Christmas is how the prices go up and stay as inflated as possible. My mother was looking everywhere for the Susan Boyle CD but couldn’t find it. So she asked me to get her a copy from the internet. I ordered it a few days ago, then thought I would get another as a Christmas gift for someone, so I went back to the same site to get it, and it had gone up by a pound!!

Maybe it’s only a pound, but I find that completely off-putting, and won’t buy it now.

I read a recent newspaper article about how things in high street stores cost more here and there, depending on how much the locals can afford to shop elsewhere for it. They said it was some sort of Christmas scandal, but I said I bet it’s like that all the time, not just at Christmas. I know that it happens, as I was in the local branch of a department store one January, looking at a set of cheap frying pans. They were still at full price… but I had just bought that same set of pans in a bigger town nearby (same chain of stores) at half price. I doubt if these price differences are purely to do with Christmas.

They tell us we should support our high street shops, but it’s hardly fair if some are having to pay more, and have more trouble finding things (like Mum couldn’t get her CD).

Whether online or in the high street, wouldn’t it be nice if Christmas got the reputation as a month for real bargains and not just fake ones? Still shopping around for gifts, I found The Colour of Magic DVD. It claimed to have been reduced from £20 to £12. And I’m thinking “£12 is the full price for the CD, isn’t it?” I don’t believe it’s been reduced at all. Surely DVDs aren’t £20 now? Have I fallen behind the times?

Perhaps I’m just a cheapskate.