Tag Archives: life

50 not out, and Biblical hit jobs

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If either of us makes it to our 50th wedding anniversary we will be in our nineties. My parents are a little younger but then they started earlier. Still, 50 years, eh? The oldest friends I am still in touch with, I will have known for 31 years this September – I met them upon starting at a new school in September 1978. That’s still not 50.

So, a weekend given over to due celebration of the Big Gold, and quite right too, in far better weather than we had any right to hope for. Mostly shirtsleeve order, with just the occasional sprinkling of a few molecules of water to remind us we were having the weather by special dispensation of grace only.

Saturday saw two dozen friends and family converging on the parental home, the criterion for non-family being that they (or at least a spousal partner) had to have been at the wedding itself. I asked one of the former bridesmaids if she was retired now.

“Yes, thanks. Fifty years, remember?!”

Well, okay, point taken but she was quite a young bridesmaid.

The one of my father’s close army pals who isn’t one of my godfathers, i.e. the one who became a multi-millionaire, remarked that he had been married for a total of 45 years. “To four different women, of course …”

As well as hundredth birthdays, the Queen will apparently send congratulations to long-lasting couples … but only starting at the 60th anniversary, so the Aged Ps will have to stick with each other for a while longer.

For Sunday we (family only) gatecrashed what used to be my grandmother’s local church and was the one where the ceremony had taken place, 50 years and 24 hours earlier. I’m delighted to see it now has a lady vicar and what looks like a really thriving all-age congregation, and all that without going all ghastly and modern. Good on them.

It’s a very pictureskew little village south of Salisbury but I had always thought of it as a rather staid retirement community. In my thirties, to my surprise, I met a retired Spitfire pilot who during the War had been shot down by Adolf Galland. Blimey, someone interesting! Where had he been all my life?

And yesterday I had someone pointed out to me: “He designed part of the Eurofighter …”

And in my grandmother’s former local, where we had lunch, there was a poster with photo in support of the village’s team entry into the Spire FM Naked Gardener competition. (Apparently they won, too.)

Eurofighter gent also drew my attention to the legend inscribed around the pulpit: “I have a message from God unto thee.” Even though I spent probably about half my Sunday mornings between the ages of 8-13 in that church, and many more before and after, I had never really noticed it and it would certainly never have occurred to me to look it up. Now I was gleefully told it is from Judges 3:

“… And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat.
21And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly:
22And the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly; and the dirt came out.”

There’s lovely. I hope that’s the kind of Bible reading they still do in their Sunday School.

Requiem in Pisces

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Jimmy, the fish who brought love and laughter into the hearts of literally some, passed away quietly during the night. He (we presume he was a he) was thought to be about 5 but his precise date of birth was never known. His owner, Bonusbarn, was described as “consolable”.

Jimmy is known originally to have been part of a pair, but the other half died very soon after moving into Bonusbarn’s bedroom at his old house, under circumstances that were never fully explained. When asked for his reaction, Jimmy’s mouth was seen to open and close a few times but no words came out, so overcome was he with emotion.

Soon after moving in with his owner’s stepfather, Jimmy moved into enlarged premises of his own, which themselves were placed in the main living room so that all his new family could enjoy his wit and wisdom, though they soon got bored waiting and went away. He spent the rest of his days quietly swimming around his bowl, being constantly amazed whenever he swam past the toy sign saying “no swimming” and composing his memoirs.

A telling tribute to his character was paid by the friends who looked after him while his adopted family went to Sweden earlier this year. At the same time his hosts were also looking after another friend’s hamster, which they discovered to have a habit of horizontal projectile urination, such that they had to surround the entire cage with newspapers. “Jimmy was a much better house guest,” they were heard to say.

He will lie in state until this evening, his bowl covered with clingfilm to stop him smelling preserve the scene for forensic analysis, and then be buried in a private ceremony. Donations to Tesco Garden Centre.

Why does “weedy” imply puny?

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Anyone know what one of these is? We have several …

I do know they propagate like anything, they have a propensity for growing in stonework, and they grow out of massive woody clusters of roots – so much so that I was very wary of pulling them out in case I brought the walls down. Seriously. So I had to make do with breaking the stems.

“On Saturday,” I said carelessly to Best Beloved, “let’s blitz the garden.”

“Okay,” she said with a confident and knowing smile. I was thinking: pull up the tall weeds, cut the grass, rake it all up. Easy.

You know our garden needs work when I, of all people, feel moved to do some, even in this kind of weather. That’s the problem with shared gardens, especially ones in properties that only have 50% owner-occupance and 50% of them are probably moving soon.

I started on the taller weeds and moved down. Our garden only currently rates about 4 or 5 deciHeligans so I’m sure it could have been much worse. It also became clear it needs more than an afternoon. It’s been mowed before but rarely raked. So it needs raking. Then it needs the weeds I didn’t do today being pulled up. Then and only then can it be mowed, and raked again. It’s going to look scrappy, but it will be short and honour will be satisfied.

I also came across this little chap nestling beneath a leaf. Not the glove, that’s for scale, but what’s on the glove. Perfect and untouched.

I’m not aware of any ground-nesting birds in the area, so it probably fell from a tree or got carried there. I’m reasonably sure it won’t be hatching, anyway. I’m guess pigeon. Again, anyone?