Easter Monday

Easter Sunday was the usual gathering.  Almost all had washed and shaved, almost all wore their Sunday best, almost all were gagging for Easter chocolate!  

I deposited around 50 Cadbury's wee eggs for handout at the end, which went down very well apparently, not that I got one!  I trudged wearily down the road and trudged wearily back up again, ready for some spiritual Rangers v Celtic Scottish Cup football.  After eating what was left in the fridge I settled back to watch the game.

Now, my niece was coming to me on Monday, so having nothing in the house I was going to fill up Monday morning and prepare a suitable feast.  Imagine my panic when ten minutes into the game she emailed me to say she was half way to me (from Burnley) and would soon arrive!

Panic!  I trudged out again, unwillingly, to Sainsburys, as I got there a young man said "It's closed mate," as he passed.  So it was, as was Tesco!  I remain convinced these shops are always open at Easter, maybe I got this wrong, I never checked this year.  No other shop is within my walking distance, my knees would go no further, so I contacted them and they found some foodstuffs at the nearby petrol station when filling up.  

So, once the car was parked, the kid carried upstairs, and me also, we ate what we could and spent the rest of the day sharing the seven month old from one to another.  The boy was at his most contented when chewing a box that once held coffee sachets.  The expensive goods lying around were not as good.  

It is of course no surprise he took to me, his favourite Great Uncle, didn't they all when young?  There again, after a few minutes getting his bearings when he arrived I think he would take to anyone.  

The three of them have been travelling around the country visiting the family and friends unseen for years.  This child has travelled further in 13 days than I have in three years!  He has been manhandled in Aberdeen, York and Edinburgh, plus elswhere.  Passed from one to another, and often stolen back again.  I get the idea he is enjoying himself.  The parents are clever, now he has been seen by all the women their minds everywhere are contemplating what to give him at Christmas.  This will save the parents much money!  Mind you it cost them coming here.    

Even though they were only here a few hours I really enjoyed it.  It is around 20 years since we have had a wee one in the family, now we have one to spoil.  I suspect however, his clever parents will not allow this.  They are both bright, indeed I spent much of the time ensuring dad did not steal my books, (he is a Uni librarian) and she a musician.  I think this kid will be too bright for the rest of the family up north!  Throughout the day the football was on in the background, though following it was impossible.  It distracted the kid, and distracted the father from pocketing my books, I had to pat him down police style when they left.  As to the football I have little idea what happened in most games.

Bright this boy clearly is, when I carried him about telling him of my exciting life here in the wilderness of Essex he soon fell asleep.  Just as well as my arm by then was beginning to feel the weight.  

After they left, I cleaned up and found I was exhausted. 

The cleaning week was good exercise but tiring, the walking also.  I was knackered last night.  This morning there was little difference to that.  Eat yesterdays leftovers, sleep, make lentil soup, eat and soon sleep once again.  Though I did find Sainsburys open this morning to stock up I was so tired I just grabbed what was in front of me, sorry madam, and came home quick.  I ache everywhere.  

Still, all in, a good Easter Morning, a good Easter family evening, and a good cheap Chianti to keep me going today.  

 

Easter Monday Sleet

 

 

 

'Lost' sums up much of the day.

Freezing this morning, snow flakes flying about for a while, then later sun shining and fooling me into thinking it was warm.  It was not.  

The stale bread made me lurch up to the shop for goodies to feed my face.  With the usual Easter Monday Holiday weather keeping most inside there is little to tempt anyone out, bar the dogs of course.  So, manfully I ate and slept and watched feeble football, so uninteresting that I answered many emails instead.

Each email appeared to be concerned with Easter eggs for some reason.  Many desired to know if I had one, none suggested sending me any!  Luckily it fell to me three 'Creme Eggs' that happened to be lying about.  As I damage what teeth are left I will ponder on the spelling of 'Cream'  Why 'Creme?'   

Even 'Cadbury's' in the days when they were a proper business could not spell properly.  Either that or their marketing people were English educated.  I don't know.

These eggs, like much of their now American owned produce, were being made in Poland for a while. This in spite of the US woman in charge insisting they would not move production elsewhere.  She has been called to testify before the Parliament committee but remains out of the country for some reason.  I did read they changed the taste and are changing it back to the original again.  I also read somewhere production was returning to the UK.  Whether these things are true I know not but it is something to cogitate upon while stuffing the face.

 

Easter Monday

Being the Easter Monday holiday almost everything was shut.  Thankfully Tesco still opened to feed those who almost starved over the past few days.  I had to go there as I found a sink was blocked and while I managed to clear it last night found my bank holiday beginning with pouring smelly stuff down the plughole.  It seems to work but it does annoy when that happens, especially late in the day.  
For the rest of the day I sat at this laptop trying to finish updating the WW2 memorial that collapsed. The problem is that while I have basic info on all the men I have not got the links to hand for further information so I have to trawl through the sites to find that again.  That takes time and working at the speed to which I have become accustomed it took lots of time.  It is getting there but slowly and what slows me down is finding interesting bits of info which I must read and then forget what I was looking for in the first place.  Bah!      

On the other hand as there was nothing on the TV and I found less on the radio I suppose this kept  me out of mischief.  The question is why are TV programmes on holiday periods so poor?  Do they save up the rubbish to fill space or is it the programmes they have are all poor and they show them hour after hour?  For instance 'Who do you think you are,' the series where famous people I have never heard of seek their ancestors, has been running for four days now.  While the idea of this programme is good the outworking is poor.  The whole point is less about finding the empty headed starlets great granny it is about finding a story about great granny in a workhouse so they can add sentimental music and force tears from said starlet.  That is not seeking ancestors that is a reflection of the small minded TV we have dumped on us by the Islington set today.  Certainly finding granddad in a lunatic asylum might produce a reaction but why force tears about someone born a hundred years before you were born?  My granddad's first wife ended in such a place but ought I to be weeping?   He might have done, the children might but really this is just a reflection of the loss of the 'stiff upper lip.'  Whatever it is it is not history.

Possibly I misjudge the attitudes.  I am constantly finding poignant information when researching people.  For instance this lass here, a member of the ATS who died far from home in Coventry during the war.  Her little band were supporting heavy anti-aircraft guns, either firing the things or working searchlights alongside possibly, either way from action or disease she died aged 19 only.  That is  tear jerking especially if there were no more children in the family.  I can find no other information on this lassie, who knows the situation, but can we weep for people we never met?

While I sat in here in the gloom with only the starlings banging away at the feeders for company I know you lot were still stuffing chocolate eggs down your throat.  I am not jealous, just as I am not the one running to the dentist asking why there are no teeth left.  
No I enjoyed the gruel which was all I could afford, the bit of stale bread left in the wooden box, and washed this down with stale water to avoid using electricity and spending cash.  No don't feel sorry for me, you enjoy being overweight....

It Was 20 Years Ago Today...

It was twenty years ago today that I entered this domicile, as I remember at the Easter weekend that year.  Twenty years, almost as long as the time I spent in London, longer than most murderers serve these days in this country, longer than many folks marriages last.  
That Easter weekend I turned up to discover there are many differences from living in a bustling city, as I always had done, and existing in a small market town out in the sticks!  One such was the electric meter, this was at that time paid weekly by a card system to stop folks running away and leaving the lights on for the landlord to pay.  I had no card.  My limited memory tells me I had two £1 cards which didn't get much electric in an all electric house and somehow I discovered the Post Office was the place to go.  The long weekend was on us and electric was useful at this time so cheerfully I waited for ever in the queue to be told things had changed and none could be given out till Tuesday next week, I forget the reason why.  That somewhat chilly Easter Weekend, it is usually chilly at Easter, I spent an enormous amount of time trying to conserve the limited power I had.  
For reasons which I forget I discovered and emergency button which allowed me a free  £5 of power to be paid later, I grabbed this with both hands, the same hands I wrapped around a candle in a vain effort to keep warm in the dark at night. 
A long weekend that was, eventually Tuesday arrived and I managed to obtain the new cards for the meter.  How lovely to switch the wall heaters on!  How lovely to eat hot food without watching the clock!  Ah well things settled down and twenty years on the meter is paid monthly, the gas fired central heating while expensive works well, life is settled in some ways and this boring little town which at first I thought had closed down has become home.  The day I walked down 'The Avenue' listening to the birds singing and watching the blue sky above I realised it was not such a bad place after all.  Getting old and no longer interested in the false flashiness of city life, the bright lights here I admire are the ones that stop the traffic so I can cross, may have had something to do with it but in the end this town had all I wished for.  Local doctors, supermarkets, rail & bus, all that was missing was a church and a woman to do the laundry.  The last two have still not arrived.  

So today I arose feeling considerably better than I have done for weeks, I slept until nine, I arose and coughed my way through to the east wing to contemplate cleaning up some of the mess I have left behind me.  It was time to celebrate the twenty years, time to remind the Landlords lassie how long I had been here, time to remind his workmen how many cups of tea they had drunk!  Twenty long years, I wondered how I could commemorate this event?  What would be suitable, what would ease my pain and give me a day to remember...?
The electric was off!
What?  The kettle would not start.  It was one of Tesco's best (£5) and it was bust.  Then I noticed the laptop, always the first thing switched on, was not going online.  After fussing for a bit I realised the WI-FI was dead, so was the phone, so was everything else bar the lights.  After about three hours it struck me the laptop has a battery that is why it came on but this fooled me into thinking that was one plug that worked.  I fussed but the deadened mind was thinking slowly, oh so slowly, and I called the Landlord to speak to my friend Lisa.
"Hello, this is Lorna."
Lisa has followed Chris, the one who ran the place for around 15 years, out the door in an attempt to make some money.  Lorna was the new lass and she sounded about 19!  I explained the situation and she called John the workman and later he called to say he would be round.  
No tea in a dead all electric house.  No hot food with a dead oven, dead microwave and dead head.  
Having eaten only rarely in the past week and living on my abundance of fat I was not too keen to do without something warming.  Add to my desire to return to bed, eat something hot and stay far from the world came the noise of men repairing the road outside while others hammered away at one of the other flats somewhere round the back.  My joy was complete.
John arrived claiming to be unwell and looking sickeningly well while he said so.  Quickly we traced the various fuses, I had tried earlier, and we soon knew it was the kettle itself that had blown.  It probably blew as I switched it one but no spark, noise or explosion occurred at that time, not that I noticed anyway, and having proved the point John left grinning.
Still this meant I could heat things and later would obtain a new kettle.

Having managed to rise, decided life could be good and then had it smashed in my face I returned to the real world and switched on the laptop which connected with the real world of the Internet!  At last I could get on with the important work of reading email, facebook, Twitter, and the various gutter press editions that lay about.
What's this?  "You connect via WI-FI.  Log on here BT Fon?"  There follows a list of things to select
What?
A bloody virus!
The whole morning wasted already and now a virus! 
There was in the end nothing to do but run a Boot Time Scan which takes hours!  This I did and while I pretended to eat, my insides were not fooled, the scan ran and ran.  Later, much later, I was able to make use of the laptop thankful the brute had gone.
It had not gone!  
Oh no he was still hanging around and the thing had to be done again.  
It was not till near five o'clock that I finally satisfied myself he was beaten, I hope I am right!

There were times today I wondered where my guardian angels had disappeared to.  I realise this is not an easy option, they could on the other hand have Donald Trump,  I understand the difficulties involved but all I wanted was to rise feeling considerably better than I have done for the past ten days, I wished to make and eat a nourishing breakfast, clean the mess of the last week and hopefully return to work tomorrow.
Instead the electric goes, my friends go and some sort of JS virus arrives.  To my mind this is not what I wished for this morning.  Luckily the other day I discovered just how many people are suffering this bug in similar fashion to myself.  Thousands are being beaten down by the latest flu,cold, man flu bug.  An item in the paper drew many to comment on their long lasting problem, three months in some cases and mine goes back to February yet nothing can be done about it but suffering.  
Onwards and upwards, 'per adva ad astra' as they say in the RAF, in Edinburgh we say "Haul awa lads, I'm no deid yet."

OK Everybody, Back to Work!

Right, that's it, holidays are over, the kids are back to school tomorrow, you return to work, unless you are in Australasia where you are already sitting on a bus heading for the destination longing to be back enjoying the high life. Others will emote that depression later in the next 24 hours.  I also look to struggling out in the morning as being Tuesday I will be attending the folks at the museum.  Now the school hols are over we will not have a thousand bairns wandering around leaving glitter all over the floor, drawing rude pictures on the old school blackboard, nor putting sticky fingers on glass cases.  We will have adults doing that instead!  Of course soon after lunch I will be back home full of ideas to forget in the following days, and probably asleep and dreaming of delights unknown for a wee while.

You are I am aware sick to the teeth of my preoccupation with dead soldiers, so let me shake your molars once again.  Having succeeded in finding Private French, the last man in that cemetery, I today soldiered on in my quest to find the last Great War grave in the main cemetery.  For the umpteenth time I wandered around the dew covered grass, in what was becoming a very warm sun, searching diligently for a man who would not acknowledge my calls. Then today, while wandering fruitlessly in a corner I found him, right under my nose! Several other men are buried nearby and somehow Sergeant Smoothy had hid himself.  Still I found him now and all the local men buried here are identified at last.  

A sad tale indeed lay in front of me.  I suspect Smoothy had been a regular soldier at the outbreak of war and fought his way through some of the bitterest fighting at Ypres, Loos and probably the Somme also.  His Division was demobilised early in 1919 and on a 'first in first out' basis he returned home to his wife and almost two year old son.  However within a few months he developed an appendix problem and died in hospital leaving his widow with the son to look after.  A year later this poor lass suffered again as her three year old only child died and joined her husband in the grave.  The effect must have been traumatic but she herself lived on until 1963 when at 80 years she rejoined her husband at last. Love is a strange thing, she never remarried, possibly because of love, possibly because she was in her thirties also, possibly because the trauma did not allow her to.  How very sad.

Also quite sad is the name on the foot of the fallen crucifix to the side of our man.  I had a quick look but the name is not found on Google.  This couple lived their lives and passed on leaving so little trace even Google cannot find their name anywhere! 

Easter Monday Holiday

Yes indeed it is a holiday.
You can tell by the mist and the occasional rain.