Golden Moments

We will be celebrating another Golden Wedding at the weekend. (You might remember that Harry and I celebrated ours early last December, when he narrowly missed it through collapsing and being taken to hospital). He was sent home the day before but was too ill to attend any kind of *do*.

This time it will be his twin brother and wife who will be celebrating. They got married three months after we did and I can still remember at their wedding, overhearing my newly acquired mother in law telling everyone that she had lost two sons within three months.

Not a brilliant way to start off a relationship.

Still it's all water under the bridge now.

The four of us are hoping to have a quiet meal together in a restaurant in town. We won't risk going too far because neither of the twins is particularly well and we will be relying on public transport to get there and back. So nothing too complicated was arranged and we are hoping that there'll be no snags this time.

Harry is not walking very well at all right now but I do go out with him once a day for him to get some exercise and to give him something outside the home environment to think about afterwards. However, it is very slow progress and we manage to do very short walks and allow plenty of time to complete them with the aid of a stick, which he hates to use.

He was such an active man and very strong and it does make me sad to see the way he is being so limited by ill health. However we still have much to be thankful for.

The weather has gone very cold again but it is officially Spring now and all the bulbs have been flowering away in the tubs in my garden and in the parks that I visit and now there are trees  blossoming too........ cherry, magnolia, forsythia to name a few. The clocks will go forward one hour at the weekend and the evenings will get lighter. Definitely my favourite time of the year.

Bungee Jumping In The Sun

We've had a week of warmer, Springlike weather and that certainly makes me feel more cheerful

I've been dusting and gardening quite happily.

I've been walking when I can. There is a lovely place of natural beauty in Bristol that is called The Downs and stretches for a long way and everyone can walk there. It's a very popular place to go. I'm not sure that the word, Downs is a good name to call this place as there are certainly many hills to climb to get there. However, The Ups doesn't sound right, does it?

To walk to The Downs from our house would be about a mile and a half each way and then there could easily be a couple of miles of walking once there.

One Saturday quite recently, I walked to The Downs and sat on a little bench in the sun watching people walking by, families playing ball, while mentally noting which buses came by on the busy road nearby and how often. Well, none of them go in my home direction. So after I had finished sitting in the sun, I decided to get a bus to the city centre and stop off by the harbour waterfront. It was still sunny and I noticed that a lady near to me suddenly gasped and everyone was looking in a certain direction. I noticed a huge pole with a lift going up to it, some distance away and a bungee jumper had just leapt off the pole and was swinging away over the water, upside down.

Well, I was far enough away for the jumper not to look like a human being at all, with feelings and personality, but rather like a slender sack swinging about till it was drawn up by the lift and taken slowly down to safety.

I stopped to watch several others jump off the very high pole from the lift but they all looked alike, swinging and indistinguishable as humans though my imagination was making me wonder what it must be like to be make that jump.  I couldn't see whether the jumpers were men or women because I was too far away but they seemed to be very brave to me.

I doubt whether I'd ever have had the nerve to do that at any stage of my life. Now, I think it would finish my poor old back off for good. I suppose there must be an upper age limit for this kind of sport/activity.

I wonder if any of my readers has ever bungee jumped in their lifetime?

Guilty Or Not Guilty?

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

Last Tuesday, Harry had to attend the local Oncology hospital for his 6 weekly check up and as he had caught the bus and walked the short distance at the other end many times by himself and had assured me that he didn't want me to go with him, I decided to go to my Silver Screen film of the week, *One Chance.* It was about a man, Paul Potts, who wanted to be an opera singer since he was a young lad and the film portrayed all the difficulties that he faced because of his background and circumstances holding him back. It was based on a true story and I like that kind of film. As the story transported me to another plane, was a bit funny in places and had a happy ending, I came home in a happy frame of mind, ready to tell Harry all about it. That is until I got home and found he had been brought back in a Police car because he had collapsed on his way home from his check up. Thankfully there are many kind people about and three different individuals stopped to help him and called a paramedic, who gave him the once over and it was decided that his legs just gave out and that he hadn't lost consciousness. As Harry refused to go to A and E, the Police decided to give him a lift home, much to his indignation. The hospital had told him he has Shingles in a band round one side of his chest and prescribed some medication for this. He had no idea that he had it and I wonder if that had made him feel unwell. 

Now why didn't I have any idea that he had Shingles let alone a rash? Do I have to examine him all over every night? And........ does this mean that I'm a horrible, neglectful wife to leave him to his own devices? Even had I been with him, I'd  have been unable to do much more than the people who helped him while he was on his own as I have no car. If I'm not, then why do I feel so guilty and feel now that I shouldn't go out and leave him?

Unexpected Pleasures

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

I've just spent a pleasant weekend with my daughter and two grandsons and the weather behaved itself while they were staying with me.

15 yr old Dean drew this sketch from a picture which I thought was very good. Apart from his older brother Rick, who is on the autistic spectrum and doesn't like socialising or going out very much, we had a walk on Saturday all around Clifton Suspension Bridge and The Downs (beauty spots of Bristol) and found ourselves laughing a lot and we all enjoyed the fresh air and exercise very much. We then came home and enjoyed a game of Scrabble and then sent out for a Chinese Take away just to round everything off. 

The visit was over too quickly and now they are home again but the sunny spell is still with us and I've noticed the daffodils quite suddenly are now in flower. That seemed to happen almost overnight without me noticing.

Maybe Spring is Springing!

Getting Out The Sun Glasses?

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

What a lot of things happen in a week.

Trees have come down all over the place.

Strange how a whole row of identical trees can be standing in what appears to be identical conditions, but one succumbs to the wind and falls.

The floods spread to the Thames Valley and now Parliament seems to be panicking and help is coming in faster than it did.

The Dutch have sent in massive pumps in order to help get rid of the water and there are now appeals for money to help The Somerset Level victims, in major supermarkets.

I've just come home after going out for a walk in glorious sunshine. I was over dressed and therefore too hot and I should have taken my sunglasses. It made a welcome change from the rain though.

Shouldn't we be taking Global Change more seriously with so many unusual weather patterns going on throughout the world? Is there anything really that we can do anyway?

A friend's nine year old boy said to her the other day, "Am I going to have to pay for the mistakes others have made in the past?" She answered that "Yes, it seems like his generation will have to." A bit of a sobering thought.

While the storms raged around us, I managed to finish this 1000 piece jigsaw that took a whole month to do and nearly drove me crazy! All those faces! I was seeing them everywhere!

No End In Sight

Since I last posted, it has rained and rained and rained. One solitary day was sunny when I managed to dry all the washing out on the line in the garden.... a very rare happening indeed. However, it never stays dry long enough to make any difference to the sodden ground.

I expect most people over here have been watching with horror, the pictures of the flooded Somerset Levels, from the various media. This is all within about 40 miles from where I live and is a beautiful but flat area of English countryside We've seen the struggle to try to prevent the unrelenting water from creeping into houses and the rescuing of domestic animals from farms and houses that are flooding. The ruination of crops and farmland that will probably take years to recover. Not to mention all the wild life that must have drowned. 60 square miles of flooding is more than any person or creature could cope with.

I want to know why there has been such a delay in helping these people? Why something wasn't done to prevent this from happening in the first place? The Dutch have a better system of keeping back the sea as much of their country is below sea level. They apparently spend more than we do..... much more,  defending their vulnerable areas. So is it all to do with money, then? 

There doesn't seem to be any fund to help the affected people, either.

Everyone I talk to is really empathetic towards all the victims and wish they could help in some way, while other nastier individuals are racing to the area to ogle and take pictures.  Some have stolen goods from stricken homes and farms. Isn't that just about the most despicable thing that human beings could do to each other? Words really aren't enough.

However, I am impressed by the way the people from the levels have all rallied round to help each other and to share what they do have with others.

Did anyone apart from Ladyfi (my blogging mate) spot the deliberate mistake last week when I said that the film *Way, Way Back* is about time travel? Well I did go to see a film about time travel last week but the title was *About Time*. It was very good and I did enjoy it and recommend the film. I will be seeing the *Way, Way Back* film this week if the weather permits me to do the walk, that is. Maybe I should just go in a wet suit and brave whatever the weather throws at me.

Time Travelling, Anyone?

For the last week it has rained almost nonstop so I haven't had much time to view the garden.

However, today was drier and more springlike for a short while and I noticed the snowdrops were flowering though not as prolifically as the ones in this picture. Maybe they don't like the wet conditions any more than I do.

Gives me fresh hope to see them pushing their way through into this unpredictable climate though, poor things. I suppose they have a fighting chance.

I have started going to my local cinema, where they have a special Silver Screen offer each week, intended I suppose for people with silver hair! It is held on Tuesdays at 10.30 in the morning and I can watch a set film for £3.50. They are all chosen from among the best of last years films. Some times I  don't like their choice so I don't go.

It is a half hours walk to get there and the same coming home so it turns out a healthy and interesting morning when I do go. Lets hope I don't trek in the rain this week as I'm going to see "The Way, Way Back". I think its about time travel. Has anyone seen it?