Frozen

 

The lane this morning 

Thanks to a local farrier who gave me a push to work

Sir Basil

 When I was 18, I embarked on a very short and exceedingly unsuccessful career as a bank clerk.

Banks in 1980 were still staffed by dozens of clerks, all beavering away behind counters and in machine rooms and in the hierarchy, so evident in those old beige offices, I was the lowest of the low .

Now one of my daily jobs was to fold individual statements and seal them into envelopes before franking and posting . Now Certain statements of the most special customers had to be pulled out separately and their envelopes had to be hand typed by the junior clerk and the one I always remember was Sir Basil Rathbone * 

Now Sir Rathbone had no less than twelve letters after his name and every month I somehow managed to get one of those letters wrong. The B in OBE would be in lowercase, or the K and B in KBE would be reversed: I’d forget a comma between award letters and one time I actually had the audacity to forget a full stop.

I was forever being dragged to Mr William’s, the deputy manager’s booth, stationed behind and above the counter clerks to be bollocked for getting the envelope wrong and after a year I grew to hate Sir Basil and his difficult twelve letters, even though I was the one that had done the wrong thing and he was “petty enough” to shout down the phone to complain .

I eventually started my nurse training a short while later but on my very last day, I spied Sir Basil’s statement waiting patiently for it’s typed envelope and couldn’t resist completing it myself.

Before franking and posting the letter, I read out the top line of the addressed envelope to myself

It read

Sir Basil Rathbone SOD, BUM, ARSE, HOLE, TIT

POSTSCRIPT: a few years ago I remembered Sir Basil and looked him up online 

His obituary was written in 2015 when he was in his nineties and chronicled a war hero of some renown and note a fact that made me feel almost guilty for  the typed letter.

.......almost....... 

 

* not his real name

I Rather Than We

Rachel Phillips said this in her blog of today


“ All you people who wake up in the morning and write about "we this" and "we that", spare a thought for those who it is "I this" and "I that" when they wake up and for the rest of the day“


I heard and understood her loneliness so well this morning. The loneliness of lockdown and the loneliness of living on your own is sometimes a difficult one to deal with and although I think I can speak for Rachel too when I say we are not banging on about all things singleton it’s nice to acknowledge that life is sometimes just a bit tougher when it’s only you at home when the doors are shut and the curtains are drawn.


Last night my friend Ruth popped around for a night in. We have been in each other’s bubbles since the start of lockdown and so it was her turn to organise dinner.
I was online completing my Hitchcock - The spy films lecture when she turned up laden down with food , and so, for a change she pottered around the kitchen preparing a delicious salad to have with Waitrose pizzas, wine and garlic bread as I worked away online.


Seeing someone else in the cottage, albeit in the background of my zoom box made me feel part of something a little bigger from what I have.......and to eat in companionable silence with someone after conversations of interest and light was a treat much more savoured that it ever used to be , because of its rarity .

We watched a film together and someone else but me cried “ oh no” when Dora left Josuè at the end I walked the dogs, whilst Ruth had a cigarette in the garden and this morning I made coffee and breakfast and loved the fact that two plates were on the table rather than just one.


I’m not banging on, I’m not saying poor me..I’m really not ...and nor is Rachel , or Libby, or Sue in Suffolk or Weaver or any of us singletons at home on this cold Friday in February ..but today I understood Rachel so well when she said what she did without self pity but with a certain sadness,


“spare a thought for those that have to say I rather than we”

Central Station

Fernanda Montenegro

Central Station is a film I have always adored

I’ve loved it for twenty years 

Brazilian Dora is a retired  teacher who writes letters for the illiterate at the central Station in Rio 

By chance she meets up with a young orphan Josué and the meeting allows her to find some redemption from a life of cynicism as she finds herself responsible for his future happiness 

Me and Ruth watched it last night and cried buckets at it 

It’s message about redemption and reinvention is universal and recently so pertinent 

It’s a pivotal film in my cinematic history 

I adore it

A Lie-in

I’m doing something I have not done since I was a teenager 

Something indulgent, something certainly selfish, something just a bit wicked.

As a grown man it has taken me 38 years to revisit it again

It’s a lockdown phenomenon

It’s naughty 

And as one antipodean artist used to say

Can you tell what it is yet? 

I’m talking about the lie in.

Well if I was being totally honest it is a return to bed after a brief early morning dog walk

But you will understand the gist.  

My lie-ins are somewhat loud affairs

They are filled with bulldog snores and the unexpected purring from a cat well know for his silence. 

Occasionally Mary from the window seat will raise a sleepy eye to a passing dog walker and will let out a muffled Woof ! which will in turn illicit a brief hiatus in the purring and the snoring but it is not long before airways are compromised and feline confidence returns and the background noises of the cottage return to normal .

It’s 9.45 am 

Hummmmm.........another half hour is in order.

The Impossible

 I have just re watched the film The Impossible 

A story of the Boxing Day Tsunami 

This scene broke my heart just a little 

Tomorrow my bubble friend Ruth and I will be watching Central Station more sobs xxx

What Day Is it?

 

The view down from the Gop to the coastal plain was magnificent this morning. The snow covered peaks of Snowdon are clear as a bell

It’s cold in Llandudno too and the Goats are down in the town again

I’ve been busy on line shopping

New chew proof leads for Dorothy   

Underpants x 6 

Some zombie dvds

A footstool 

A hand blender 

I paid my speeding fines on line too

Spoke to an old friend who is poorly

Read some more of my book

And realised I have absolutely nothing to talk about 

Snowdrops

 It’s a soup day, butter bean and chicken with paprika .

After three consecutive twelve hour shifts, I had a lie in with a book this morning, then walked the dogs, shopped and photographed the churchyard snowdrops before the cold ushered me back to the cottage in order to light the fire.