This photograph just came in from Brisbane, Australia. Inspired by my photo yesterday, the sender entitled his post, “My own resident magpies”. I hope they bring him JOY.
Monthly Archives: December 2013
Cyber Monday Magic and Two for Joy
Yesterday was Cyber Monday. Chris had told me that it was going to be a special day on the Internet but I did not think it would have any relevance to anything I do on the Internet, after all, I just write my daily blog, and I am so lackadaisical about selling my paintings and prints that I haven’t yet even set up a Paypal account or given any details about sizes, media or prices! (I must put that to rights soon! I will, honestly, as soon as I can rope someone in to help me fathom out how to do it!) Well, I did not notice anything particularly unusual yesterday, perhaps just a few more visitors to my site but nothing to grab my attention.
This morning, over breakfast, Chris (who is so much more up with things than I am) announced that Cyber Monday was going to continue today and possibly carry on until Christmas. I must admit that I wasn’t quite as interested or excited as he was and I did not commit his explanations to memory. When I sat down to write my blog a little while ago I could hardly believe my eyes for something quite magical had happened, and was still happening, and continues to happen… All I can say is WELCOME! A big welcome to all the many visitors who have suddenly discovered my site! I hope you will enJOY my site, come back regularly and make comments. If you have any snippets of interest to share, so much the better.
If you wondered why I capitalized the last three letters of enJOY, I shall tell you… One of my dearest friends in Australia has the surname, Joy (I know, what a lovely name – almost worth marrying someone for – but I didn’t – that was all a long time ago, before Chris). So, as you might imagine, Chris is quite hot on anything to do with those three joyful letters; he is also very observant, and a great wit.
Whilst we were out walking on the bridle path earlier today Chris stopped suddenly and said:
“Oh look, Darling, two for joy!”
He was, of course, referring to the two magpies perched on the roof of a house not far from the path. I expect you know the saying about magpies – “One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told…” and so on (I can’t remember any more). For some reason Chris never fails to quote the rhyme when he sees two magpies. There is no point in me ignoring an allusion to the word joy, rather, I revel in it; therefore I took a photo of the magpies on my mobile phone camera, with the intention of sending it to my old friend. Just as I was aiming the camera a postman came down the garden path belonging to the house and he put a letter in the letterbox. We were stood behind the hedge and the phone camera was still poised in the air above my head when the postman glanced our way and scurried off.
“He must have thought we were secret agents hired by the Post Office to check up on him,” suggested Chris.
Chris held out his arm and looked at an imaginary watch on his wrist.
“Reached number ten at eleven-thirty, walked too slowly…”
We laughed JOYfully as we continued on our way. There was no-one about, perhaps because we were later than usual, or maybe nobody but us was prepared to brave the cold on such a day. As we rounded the corner and saw a small grey rabbit about halfway down the track; with no humans about, he had opted to walk up the hill on the tarmac rather than the cold damp grass. Upon seeing us the bunny got into a bit of panic and did not know which way to turn. He started to cross the path, thought better of it and came back; he went onwards and realised that wasn’t a good move either. At length, after many false starts, he decided to run for cover into the hedge.
“Maybe he’s a hedge-fund manager,” said Chris.
Well, I thought it was funny at the time, especially as earlier we had been discussing our niece’s banker boyfriend. You had to be there!
-
- “Why is there a camera on me?”
The Question is…
Was it really only just over a week ago?
The Village Hall Experience
“You know how to get to Stokeinteignhead Village Hall, don’t you Chris?” Robert asked in a soft voice.
In fact, I could barely hear my brother (and my hearing is way better than Chris’s), therefore I wondered if Chris had heard Robert properly; but Chris nodded, smiled and answered in the affirmative, not that that necessarily means he heard everything (or anything).
For those of you who don’t know our area, Stokeinteignhead is a small country village, inland from the coastal road leading from Shaldon to Torquay, and it is about twenty minutes drive from our home town of Dawlish, where my niece’s wedding took place. We were about to depart for “the wedding breakfast” (although it wasn’t a breakfast at all, it being about four o’clock in the afternoon!); my mum, “Granny Porch” (not to be confused with the granny in Giles cartoons), went along with Chris and me in our car. As we neared Shaldon Chris admitted that he wasn’t quite sure where the village hall was situated.
“We can always ask someone,” I suggested.
Chris surprised me with a nod of agreement, which was rather unusual as he normally refuses to stop and ask for directions, and I wondered if he had heard me.
At Shaldon he took a sharp right turn onto the Coombeinteignhead road and I asked:
“Oh, are you going this way?”
“Why not? This is the way to Stokeinteignhead, it’s right next to Coombeinteignhead. Which way would you go?”
“I would have taken the coast road and turned right at Labrador to avoid the country lanes,” I answered.
“That’s the long way,” he said quite rightly, (but it does avoid the narrow lanes).
We passed through Coombeinteignhead village and soon we saw a villager walking along the road, and Chris, of his own accord, wound down his window and called to the man:
“Excuse me, but I wonder if you could tell me where the village hall is?”
“Follow this road for another two hundred yards or so and you’ll see it on your right – there will be a lot of cars parked there. I’m on my way there myself,” the man answered cheerily.
I noted that the man was not wearing his finery and didn’t look anything like a wedding guest; in truth, he looked more like a farmer out for a walk, and it crossed my mind that if he was not a guest then he must be a warden or a lonely chap who enjoys to see a bit of life going on in the village hall.
The village hall was exactly where the man said it would be and there were many cars in the car park. I looked around to see if I could recognise my son’s car, which was rather a long shot as I’m not good at recognising people’s cars – modern cars all look so similar these days – but, not surprisingly, I couldn’t see it.
“Is Jim’s car here?” I enquired of Chris.
“No, he’s not here yet. Listen, you and your mum can get out here and go on in ahead of me while I park – there’s no need for her to walk over the grass.”
As Mum and I walked across the tarmac running along the side of the hall a pleasant-looking couple, in Barbour jackets and tweeds, came down some steps. They were on their way back to their car. They looked at us and smiled and nodded their hellos.
“It’s a lovely day for it!” said the husband.
“Oh yes, isn’t it just?” we answered, as you do.
They were as fascinated in us as we were with them; I turned around for a backwards glance and found they were doing the same.
“Perhaps they’re just using the village hall car park,” I suggested to Mum.
We approached the open front doors, from where we could see down the entrance passage and through the glass panels of the inner door leading into the hall. There inside, where we expected to see our beautiful bride and the party from the church, was a Father Christmas!
Mum slipped into the bathroom and some ladies came out of the hall.
“Are you coming in to our Christmas Fair?” asked one of the ladies.
“Sorry,” I replied, “but we have to join our wedding party at Stokeinteignhead Village Hall. We have come to the wrong hall!”
“It’s not far – why not come in to our fair first?” she asked laughing.
Whilst my mother and I chatted to the ladies, we were joined by the villager who had told us the way to the hall.
“I had a feeling you weren’t wanting our village hall, not in your wedding outfits…” he grinned and chuckled, as farmers do.
Other charming inhabitants of Coombeinteignhead came out of the hall to see what was going on and they made sure that we had the right directions for the right village hall, only a mile and a half away. We had a feeling that the whole of the small community would soon be laughing about the smartly dressed ladies who visited their Christmas fair whilst looking for their rather late wedding breakfast. Who needs Sat Nav?
Daniel’s Tie
There has been a wedding in our family, which is why I haven’t had time to sit down and write my blog until now. Sometimes it is hard to think what to write about (that’s usually when you get photographs or a joke) but there are other times when there is so much to write about that I hardly know where to begin; on such occasions I find it best to go back and start in a chronological order, and that is why I shall begin by telling you about Daniel’s tie.
I was stood in the second from last aisle at the back of St. Gregory’s church in Dawlish; no, I wasn’t the only member of the whole congregation who was standing during the service for at least some of the time – everyone stood for the hymns, the vows and the prayers. Chris stood next to me on my left, and my son, James, was to my right; directly in front of me was my young nephew, Daniel, flanked by his elder brothers, Christopher and John. Daniel is eleven years old so I could see right over Daniel’s head… to the backs of the people in the row standing in front of him. Being shorter than those ahead of us, Daniel and I had not a chance of seeing the ceremony taking place but we could hear everything over the loud speakers. John is not that tall either so he was another who couldn’t see – I can’t vouch for all the six-footers present but I think Chris’s view was slightly obscured by the pillar in front of him.
So there I was looking at the back of Daniel’s head. His hair had been cut short and smart for the wedding. A few stray strands of hair stood up by his crown, like the feathers on Robin Hood’s cap, and I was reminded of James when he was a little chap (he always used to wake up with a few feathers sticking up). I was thinking how thinking how cute Daniel looked when I had the sudden urge to pull at his feathers, just hard enough to make him turn around, first to his left, then to his right; although I was looking very innocently into the air at the time, Daniel seemed to have an inkling as to who the perpetrator was; he looked me in the eyes for any give away signs but said nothing. His sweet little ears, now open to the world after his haircut, were calling out to be pulled… so I obliged willingly. Likewise, I found that his side, just above his belt, warranted a tickle.
“It’s you, Aunty Sally,” Daniel accused with good humour.
“I can’t help it,” I said, “I’ve always been a bit naughty”.
He forgave me – we are kindred spirits – and we continued the game until at last we tired of it.
After a while there was a great fussing and commotion amongst the boys in front of me. First John pulled at Daniel’s tie, and it appeared that John was trying to do a Charles Satchi and throttle his younger brother, then it became apparent that he was helping him with a wardrobe malfunction for he re-tied the tie. But not well enough, obviously, because his eldest brother took over the task, first tugging (the throttling action) to align the two ends, then re-tying. Not good enough… Christopher tried again, and again, at which point I turned Daniel around to face me and I had a go.
“I can tie a tie,” I thought, after all, I used to wear ties when I was a schoolgirl.
After much mental effort I worked out how to tie a tie for another person and after three tries I came up with a reasonable knot; the only trouble was that the tie was for an adult and was therefore incredibly long, far too long for an eleven year old, and the tie dangled down over Daniel’s shirt, past his groin and beyond! At last I could see why the older lads were determined to help their brother. James came to rescue by taking over from me and tying some special knot (perhaps a Winchester? Or is that a rifle?), anyway it was different, and no doubt popular with all short schoolboys. Daniel’s modesty was saved in time for the vicar to pronounce the happy couple “Man and wife” and no-one was the wiser a little later when the photographs were taken.
We headed off for Stokeinteignhead Village Hall for the wedding breakfast but, I’m afraid, that is another funny story and it’s too late to relate it now. I will have to tell you about the village hall experience in the morning.
-
- “Are you at it again Aunty Sally?”