Quick hello....

I've got the painters in.  Literally.  For both meanings of the word.  I won't bore you with the miniutiae of my pre-menopausal innards other than to say that, at my age - thirty-eighteen, since you were wondering - changes are seemingly occurring.  I can't wait for it all to stop altogether.  The ability to reproduce seemed to bypass me entirely and babies failed to appear despite bucket loads of money being thrown at my uterus so now I'd just rather it stopped entirely.

I have a weird relationship with children - no, not like that.  When I was little and growing up and, indeed, all through my first marriage, I never, never, ever wanted children.  Ever.  I was more than happy to be, what the Americans term, 'childfree', a term that implies there's a choice involved. My first husband ('the Artist') was of a similar mind.  We were busy creating art and making music, and there was no room for anyone else and it was good.

Then I met The Lovely Husband.  And all my friends started spawning, and I contracted 'baby-rabies'.  I wanted to join the club (literally).  I wanted to know what our children would look like. Unlike the Artist, I knew that TLH would make a fantastic father.  I wanted his babies desperately.  And they failed to arrive, month after month after month after month.  From 1996 to 2001, doctors were consulted, surgery was undertaken, money spent - a great deal of money.  I did manage to get pregnant twice but the first was ectopic which had to be removed in an emergency operation, and the second was miscarried at 6 weeks.  All I ended up with were scars on my belly, a smaller bank balance and a massive sense of loss.

We decided to stop treatment as the emotional toll was getting too great, and I'm sensible enough to realise there's no point throwing good money after bad.  I had, I think it was, 3 embryos still in the freezer after my last round of IVF and I just couldn't face trying one last time with them so I decided to donate them to research, then I knew it would be over.  I could have left them where they were for a few more years until I'd decided to have another go but I'd had enough by then.  The weird thing is that it was never entirely discovered why I couldn't keep a pregnancy, there was nothing particularly obvious.  We found out I do have fairly mild polycystic ovarian syndrome but that was the only thing.

I had friends who didn't understand.  One of my closest friends who, ironically, had much greater gynae problems than me but still had children easily, told me that she thought I'd given up too quickly.  Funny - I don't remember how much money it had cost her to get pregnant or how many painful injections she'd had to give herself or vaginal ultrasounds she'd had to undergo, or how many of her parents were dropping hints about how lovely it was to have a 'big' family (actually I do, it was NONE AT ALL).  And adoption was never going to be an option for us - we'd considered it and decided against it.

Yes, it still bothers me.  But the loss of your future family is not exactly something you just 'get over'.  Most of the time I'm absolutely fine and, frankly - seeing the problems my friends are now having with their teenage children - thanking my lucky stars that we didn't manage to have kids.  But I can't help wondering what it would have been like, to have a house bustling with activity, with your kids' friends coming and going, the potential for making new friends for myself at the school gates, all that sort of thing.  I've never had that.  So I've filled in my time with doing lots of other stuff, things I wouldn't have been able to do if there had been ankle-biters around.  I went to university and got a BSc and an MA.  I started teaching.  I took up horse-riding (for a while).  I taught myself to make jewellery and started a business.  I took on an allotment.  I spent time with my camera.  I paint (occasionally).  I taught myself to crochet.  And now I'm playing in a band again, at nearly 50 years old.

I have another friend who, I suspected, was envious of all the things I did until I explained to her a couple of weeks ago that I did these things to fill the void that my children should have filled.  She was surprised that I still felt like that, but, then, she's had her kids in her life for the last 16 years and can't imagine life without them.

So I think I probably now class myself (if I have to class myself as anything at all) as 'childless' rather than 'childfree'.  Because I've had no choice.

And now I'm approaching the 'crone' phase of my life and, if I'm not going to be a mother, then it can't come too soon, to be honest.

Blimey, that was unexpected.  I was going to mention the house being painted but I shot off at a tangent there, huh?  Still, this is my blog and I'll say what I want - it's still cheaper than therapy.

So, the house is being painted!  Yay!  We've been here for 16 years now and, apart from having new double glazing put in several years ago, and TLH redoing the bridge recently, we've not done a damn thing to the outside.  Yes, we're slackers.  But our neighbours had theirs done last summer so I got them to give me a quote to do ours, just like a proper grownup.  And they've been here all week and doing a fab job, and they're lovely boys too.  They're the politest painters/decorators I've ever met - and The Artist's 'proper' job was a painter/decorator so I've met (and worked with) a great deal of them - effusively grateful for a cup of tea, they don't swear (which is extraordinary), they don't have a radio on and because there's no radio, there's also no out-of-key singing at the top of their voice!  I know!  Amazing!

So I'll give them a plug - if you're anywhere near Godalming in Surrey and you need the outside of your house decorating or maintaining, then you will definitely do a lot worse than get a quote from Adam at www.a-w-cleaning.co.uk.

This has been a Public Service Announcement.

The Joneses have a conversation - Algonquin Round Table or Old Peoples' Home? You decide

So, it's snowed a bit then.  Again.  We had a small amount on Friday and then it stopped overnight, and then the next morning (i.e., yesterday), between 8.15am and about lunchtime at least 5 inches of it got dumped on us.  The organiser of my final craft fair of the year rang to cancel it - hooray!  I don't relish having to get up at 6am at the best of times but in the depths of freezing wintery temperatures with the added frisson of the chance of an impromptu sliding car crash with additional visit to A&E thrown in it was not appealing at all!

Mid morning I went out to feed the birds and was quite surprised at how, well, 'warm' is not the right word really so 'not as cold as I was expecting' will have to suffice.  It was so still, like the world was holding its breath, and the snow was loose and powdery, truly like giant drifts of icing sugar.  It was utterly delightful. I got my camera and took some photos of the garden:

As always, there was a robin, waiting for its breakfast of dried mealworms.  Their breasts seem extraordinarily red at this time of year - I've no idea if that's deliberate or just the perceived contrast with the black and white of nature's winter colour scheme.  Anyway, it had a feed and flew off just as I pressed the button in the second picture - an action shot!

I cleared a path up the steps and into the garden in the vain hope that Sylvester could find his way out there to 'use the facilities' rather than leaving stinky great deposits in the litter tray as he currently is.  Stupid human - of course he's not going to freeze his ring off outside when we've provided a convenient and warm alternative.  And as soon as my back was turned, little Bruno from next door appeared, off to hang around the feeding station to hassle the birds (click on the pictures to embiggen):

(I took the following quite interesting self-portrait as I was heading back in - it's me reflected in the double glazed door that leads onto the bridge.  You can see the garden behind but also into the sitting room, with our Christmas Tree on the left, Sylvester on the rug and the snowy hill in the distance between the two houses opposite):

I came back in and suggested to TLH that I rather fancied actually going out for a walk in it, perhaps to make a snowman, but definitely with my camera, maybe to the nearby favoured sledging hillside to photograph suicidal teenagers hurtling down the slope on plastic trays.  "I have a better idea", he said, "Let's walk into town and go to the pub!"  A much better idea!

There were plenty of people walking around, all wrapped up and - shock! horror! - actually acknowledging each other as they passed.  Complete strangers talking to each other!  Cats and dogs sleeping together!

There were no cars so we walked down the middle of the road.  In fact, we sort of live on the side of a hill and the road that goes up it behind our house had been closed by the police.  Presumably it's easier to do that than actually get the gritter lorries out....

Anyway, we walked along this road - view looking towards the town:

And looking back, 180 degrees, along the same road in the direction we'd just come from:

We rounded the corner at the end of this road and went along another, really quite posh street - big houses on one side with panoramic views over the town and hills in the distance:

This road takes you down to another that runs above the railway line and has tank traps beside it, with a lovely view towards the church if you stand in just the right place:

It probably took us about 45 minutes to walk into town, possibly longer, as you can't race along on such a snowy surface.  We wondered if the pub would be open but of course it was - they even had a wedding reception going on in the big back room.  Pints were drunk, lunch was consumed and a most convivial time was had by all.

Now, I may have referred to this in the past but I can't be arsed to go back and check so if I'm repeating myself then you'll just have to suck it up and deal with it.  TLH's hearing is not top-notch and I swear it's getting worse.  He says I speak too quietly these days but, as far as I'm concerned, I'm the same volume I've always been.  Admittedly I don't exactly whisper but I'm not exactly foghorn class either.  But neither is he, I think he talks quite quietly and occasionally we have conversations where we mishear each other.  These conversations always and without fail turn out to be more interesting than the one we were trying to have.  I never, ever remember what we say but I shall endeavour henceforth to write down the most noteworthy ones because, honestly?, to those who overhear us, we must sound like we really need to be in the care of the community.  This is the one in the pub:


     TLH: Let me take a photo of you in the pub, to prove that we were here.

     Me: Ooh, no.  I'm far too self-conscious, there's too many people around.

     TLH: "As self-conscious as someone reading Kerrangg!"?

     Me: There's someone reading the Koran?  In the pub?

You see?  FAR more interesting.  We'd decided we'd probably drunk enough by then and headed off into town where we rather surprisingly managed to finish our Christmas shopping and wandered off towards home through the park close to the church in the picture above and that runs beside the River Wey and through the Lammas Lands:

It was a fab walk and I'm really glad we got out of the house.  Anyway, I hope it's not too horrendous where you are, and if I don't manage to post again before next weekend, I really hope you all have a lovely Christmas and no-one gets too drunk and shouty.

Pictures from the Poppy Field

"We usually think of the poppy as a coarse flower; but it is the most transparent and delicate of all the blossoms of the field ... the poppy is painted glass; it never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it.  Wherever it is seen - against the light or with the light - always, it is a flame, and warms the wind like a blown ruby".  (Ruskin, "Proserpina - studies of wayside flowers", 1874).

Local Hero

You may recall that I did a post in March about the town of Godalming, which I live close to.  There were lots of pictures of architecture, because I think it's quite a pretty place to live, but after I got home I realised that I'd forgotten to take some pictures of the stuff dedicated to our 'local hero'.

John George 'Jack' Phillips was born in Farncombe on 11 April 1887 and died on 15 April 1912, having just celebrated his 25th birthday.  His claim to fame is that he was the wireless operator on board the Titanic who stayed at his post until 3 minutes before it sank and, effectively, went down with the ship.  Apparently he did actually make it off the ship but died of hypothermia in the water close to Collapsible Lifeboat B.  His body was never recovered.

There is a small cenotaph to him in the shape of an iceberg in the local cemetery.  All the pictures on this page were taken using my iPhone so, sadly, you can't click on them to make them bigger, but the inscription reads: "In memory of John George Phillips, aged 25 years.  Senior wireless operator on RMS Titanic, sank April 15th 1912":

The Titanic and its fate has become quite iconic these days, and, to be honest, probably always has been.  The ship had, after all, been trumpeted as being 'unsinkable' and, it being its maiden voyage, was crammed with the wealthy and famous. It truly must have been a remarkable ship to board at Southampton.

I didn't want this post to end up being about the sinking of the Titanic but I did find some interesting pages on the intertubes while doing a brief spot of research.  For instance, this page has a great deal of information about the radio aspects of the disaster, including a time line and detailed list of all the telegraphic messages sent out up to the moment the radio went dead.  You can sense the panic as you read them.

And this page has more on the biography of Jack Phillips, including photos showing where he was born and went to school.  Probably only of interest to those with a detailed knowledge of Godalming and Farncombe, to be fair.

Godalming was very proud of Jack Phillips, so a collection was made and a memorial to him was built in the park beside the Lammas Lands. It was decided to make it cloister-shaped.  As it was sunny today (12 April), I thought I'd wander down there to take some photos and post them up on 15 April, the 98th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

The information board at the entrance reads: "The Phillips Memorial Ground is so named after John George (Jack) Phillips, who came from nearby Farncombe.  He was the Chief Wireless Telegraphist on the Titanic which sank on 15th April 1912.  The Cloister was designed by Thackeray Turner, a local architect, and the garden it contains by Gertrude Jekyll.  It was built in 1913 at a cost of £700 following the purchase of this land for £300.  The Cloister was opened on 15th April 1914.  In 1965 one wall was removed and the timber pergola put in its place.  In 1914 the ground was laid out with paths, seats and fences.  Planting was carried out over the years.... [other stuff about the rest of the park]".

Apparently it's the largest Titanic memorial in the world.  This aerial shot gives some idea of the size:

So here, then, are my photos, in no particular order:

The inscription reads: "This cloister is built in memory of John George Phillips, a native of this town, Chief Wireless Telegraphist of the ill-fated SS Titanic.  He died at his post when the vessel foundered in mid-Atlantic on the 15th day of April 1912" and underneath it "The Postal Telegraph Clerks' Association provided this fountain and contributed towards the erection of the memorial".