February ends

The last week or so of February has been cold and windy, so the garden has not had the attention I’d been hoping to give it.  Though the bush roses are pruned, the climbers need pruning and tying back, and it won’t be long before the cornus needs hacking down.  Still, the tomatoes have germinated nicely in the heated propagator, and I’ll have a poke through the seed box one of these days to see what else we can get started.  The bulbs are starting to provide some colour at last, and we have replanted the basket at the front door with bright coloured primulas.

It’s early days, but there are one or two encouraging glimpses of sense in the world of politics.  Don’t quote me.

Meanwhile, Claire’s legacy has still not found its way to my bank account, over six weeks since I presented it.  The Bank of America says it has been cashed, so either Barclays or the Metro Bank are sitting on it.  Another beneficiary has received her legacy, but I think hers was with her bank about ten days before mine.  I’ll be patient for a little longer…. [LATER: The Metro Bank must have been reading my blog: within hours, the amount was showing in my account.  Long-promised transfers have now been made, so I’m hoping Claire’s kind gift will soon be put to good use.]

February

We tend to dread February, but it isn’t all bad, as I said yesterday.  It has been another of those fine, mild February days (after overnight frost) when we could probably have sat outside for lunch.  As it was, we sat and had our soup in the sitooterie while the cleaners beavered away elsewhere in the house.

As planned, the tomatoes are sown in the hot bot propagator.  Six Sweet Olive seeds as usual, and twenty San Marzanos, so we have a couple of spare seeds of the latter, having used one 24-cell tray.  I’ve pruned another five roses, and Martyn has taken a few more bits off the apple tree, both of us working in shirtsleeves.  I’ve also pulled out a lot of bittercress and grass from the rose border.  It’s early days, but as you can see below, it’s not only the weeds that are getting their ass in gear.

It ain’t all bad

It’s a bit sad to acknowledge what brings a degree of satisfaction these days.  Yesterday, it was a couple of loads of washing dried by the sun and breeze.  Today it was a bit of pruning out there in the sun: four roses are, I think, definitively pruned for the season, and the apple tree is no longer encroaching on the raised bed quite so much.  I’ll press on with the roses as weather permits.  Meanwhile I’ve brought the propagator in and am warming some compost ready for tomato seeds: Sweet Olive as usual, and San Marzano.

A couple of bits of good service lately.  On Saturday, the postie (not our usual Marcin) rang to deliver a packet for Martyn.  I asked whether there were any letters, since I had a hospital appointment the following evening, and hadn’t had the instructions.  Bless his cotton socks, he said he’d check at the sorting office (some miles away) and bring anything he found.  A bit later, there he was with the letter, and couldn’t be persuaded to accept a can of beer.  

Today, on instruction from the cleaners, I went in search of window-cleaning glop.  Nothing in Fortnums, so I had to try Sainsburys next door.  Not finding anything, I asked a chap who was busily replenishing the tea bag shelves, and between us, we still didn’t find anything.  Just as I went to leave, he rushed out with a bottle of the necessary.  I suppose people are keen to help the elderly and fragile…

New Year’s Resolution fulfilled

We have been saying for ages that it was time to get a cleaner.  Annie next door had recommended the mother and daughter team who clean for her.  Having had to stand down a cleaner introduced by a friend, we were reluctant to risk a similar embarrassment again.  But time marches on, and right at the moment I’m not up to a lot of housework.  Anyway, they went right round the house today in an hour and a half, and we look pretty respectable again.

How good to see the days lengthening!  It’ll be a while before the garden’s up to much, but the crocuses are showing colour, and the snowdrops and daffodils are in bud.  We have a few pansies and primroses in flower, so things are getting started.

Fifty-one years on…

 ….from my first day at Post Office Telecommunications HQ.  I still remember the rudeness of the woman who did my joining admin.   “Mrs Dredge?  My name’s David Smith: I was told to report to you.”  “Oh yeah?  Siddown.”  As we went through the admin, she asked me my National Insurance number, which I gave her.  Turns to her colleague: “We got a right one here: knows his NI number by heart!”.  Charm-free zone doesn’t come close.  Glad to say our paths never crossed again.  

I went for a stroll round the village yesterday with the u3a Amblers group, which Celia organises.  The weather was cold and dull, but dry, and took in our local millionnaires’ row.  It is liberally populated by pretentious houses and flash motors: Bentleys, Astons, Range Rovers and Benzes (and the occasional GTI Golf, presumably for the nanny).  One feels a need to check that the poor folks are managing to cope. The return walk followed some probably ancient footpaths (‘twittens’ in local parlance).  

Friendly bunch of interesting people d’un certain âge, and the knees coped well enough.  I was a shade alarmed that I quickly got puffed: I’ve obviously been too inactive for too long.  It didn’t help that the zip of my warm jacket had got crushed in the cloakroom door.  As it turned out, the second-best anorak plus a thick, lined pullover, and a scarf that Annie knitted for me a few years ago, were just too warm.  I worked up a good sweat.  Anyway N°1 anorak, which has years left in it, is now at the retoucherie for a new zip - expensive, but a quarter the cost of a replacement coat. 

More U3a activity today.  We hosted the German conversation group, and read through a piece I’d found on line about the utterances of the Russian orthodox patriarch about the Ukraine invasion.  We had some doubts about the objectivity of the interviewee, an academic theologian of a different persuasion.  Said patriarch describes the war as a holy one against satanism inspired by sinful western influences such as secularism and pluralism, the work of the devil.  The article went on to describe the developing schism in the Orthodox Church.  Funny how these followers of Jesus apply such fervour to hate for one another.  

The conversation group was rather select: just three of us.  Having spent some time finding and editing the text, I feel tempted to set homework for the absentees: Compare and contrast the utterances of Patriarch Kyrill and those of His Majesty’s Government’s front bench.

Can anyone recommend a competent bank?

My old friend Claire, who died a couple of years ago some days short of her 99th birthday, kindly remembered me in her will.  A cheque from her lawyers reached me in the new year’s first post.  I’d already enquired of my bank what the drill was for paying in a cheque expressed in US dollars.  Since my nearest branch is a good 45 minutes’ drive away, they told me to pay it in at the nearest Post Office branch, which I duly did.  I kept a watch on my account balance, and when the amount hadn’t appeared after over a week, I asked them to investigate.  Yesterday’s email said they had received it, but couldn’t pay it in because of the account number being eight zeros.  The bounced cheque came back today, and the eight-zeros story is utter nonsense.  Oh, and the covering letter said they couldn’t process it because it was in foreign currency, if you please!  I have an account with another bank that has a local branch, and have paid in a foreign cheque before (at vast expense) so will visit on Monday.

I haven’t been lucky with banks of late.  I sacked RBS because of the bank’s irresponsible behaviour.  I moved to the Co-op bank, and sacked them when they came perilously close to going bust.  They had closed their local branch by then.  Next, a stroll down the road to TSB, which appeared to have decent ethical credentials.  I only discovered that their branch was closing from a notice on their door.  The nearest branch, I was told, is in the next but one county.  Oh no it isn’t: a poke around t’internet shows that they have a ‘pop-up’ branch in a local community centre.  After I sold up in France, the Banque Postale took forever to close my account and transfer the balance, and only did so when I wrote to Monsieur le Directeur Général.

So it’s time  to change yet again.  Martyn’s bank seems to do the routine stuff pretty well, even if they did keep sending replacement cards to our old address for some years.  And that bank is closing dozens of branches, though ours isn’t currently on the list.  It’s tempting to keep the money under the mattress.

Here comes another one

As usual, we saw the New Year in unconsciously.  The pandemic put paid to our usual Hogmanay in Gillingham with Marion and John, and now that we’re free - and ready - to get out and about again, John is now very poorly, and in a care home.  

We did manage to socialise a little: Annie and her brother Terry came to lunch the following Tuesday: former had been staying with latter over New Year, her rail travel south having gone flawlessly.  Lunch of shepherd’s pie, using lamb left over from Boxing Day, cooked with stacks of veggies and frozen in readiness.  And that rarety in this house: pudding.  Apple and blackberry crumble, using some fruit from neighbour Annie’s tree, plus some Bramleys and blackberries from Fortnums.  Latter originating in Guatemala, no less.  Then tea and Mary Berry mince pies, which use less pastry than most, topped with grated marzipan rather than more pastry, and cutting the sweetness of the mincemeat with chopped dried apricots.  And the pastry incorporates orange zest, so they are rather luxurious.

Given the uncertainty over return train services, Terry had nobly volunteered to drive Annie home to E Yorks, and after she had spent a day or two with us, we did a pass-the-parcel routine near the M25, to save Terry an extra hour’s driving.  We met in a pub car park at Bessells Green on the outskirts of Sevenoaks, taking a route I’d probably have used more often had I bothered to study the map: it includes the spectacular view across the Weald from Ide Hill.  Annie and I went for a brief but really interesting walk while we waited for Terry to arrive.  One garden boasted a huge bay tree; one house had its chimney buttressed to the apex of the roof of the house next door!  I wonder what the story is.

Sad news last month: the deaths of friends, and the follow-up is somewhat chaotic.  The funeral of my late colleague is tomorrow, but the wish is expressed that it should be for family and close friends.  The croque-morts couldn’t enlighten me as to arrangements for a memorial service, so I’ve redisorganised tomorrow’s diary to accommodate a lunch for beaks emeritus instead.  Perhaps marginally less funereal.

First in-person meeting today of the U3A German conversation group.  Nice to see members again, and in one case, for the first time in person.  Rotten drive to Wadhurst, however, though I managed to avoid the worst of the potholes.  

I'm refraining from political commentary for the moment: I  could hardly improve on the news coverage.