She called him Daddy or Poppa, she wouldn't have dreamt of calling her father by his christian name even when she was a grown up. So St. Valentine's Day is 'pretty strange' around here. If you think about it, there aren't many dates that are BIG around the world, are there?
Easter falls on a different date each year, so does Thanksgiving, countries Saint's day are always on a certain day, St. Patrick's being on March 17th. St. George is our patron Saint here in England and it is on April 23rd, so too, of course, are Christmas and Valentine's day that are always on the same day.
She is now five years older than he was when he died.. oi vey.
She was up with those mad wild birdies today and left the house to go to see her GP about the x-ray results. "Hmmmm, well both of them have taken a battering poor things, haven't they? I am sending you off for physio and because I don't want you gardening which is how you get your exercise, I am also sending you off to the gym for both yoga and pilates and I want you in the pool as well, how do you feel about that?"
"Dumbstruck" she replied.. "is this to do with the polio" and her lovely GP explained how the polio virus never actually leaves the body, it goes and hides somewhere, usually in the spinal column but it can also hide elsewhere in the body and sometimes in organs as well".
Then she went way back in time and looked at the medical notes of November 1st, 1956 and she said "you were confirmed as having it on November 1st, 1956, do you remember anything about it?"
She sat and went back in time and replied "yes, I do, I woke up early feeling sick and hot with a tingly sensation in one arm, I didn't get dressed and go downstairs for breakfast and that was what alarmed my mother, for I loved school and was always dressed and ready for breakfast, she came up to find me, asked me what was wrong and when I said how I felt, she knew it was for real, she went to telephone our local GP, whose response was "Don't let her get out of bed or move a muscle, we have three confirmed polio victims at her school and I've got four other mothers saying the same as you, I will see you later" so I stayed in bed, not allowed to go to the loo or walk about".
Doctor Lucy shook her head and said "Thank God for a really switched on doctor, do you remember anything else?"
Mum smiled and said " Quite a lot, I got it in the middle of the Hungarian Uprising which started in the latter part of October and which lasted for just over two weeks, mummy used to listen to the world service on the BBC. She was desperately worried about friends of hers in Prague and another thing was food!"
"She made food into funny things for me, she would use small baking trays, the mince was ploughed earth, the hedges were made out of masked up greens and mashed potato was wheat or corn, she'd bake them in the oven and tell me to eat a bit of this or that, as I was tired and didn't want to eat much.. oh, and that's when I became scared of snakes!"
"Smakes! How did you get scared of snakes in bed?" said her GP, "well, a friend of my father's knew that he had been offered a job in South Africa and sent him a bundle of Life magazines from Cape Town, my father tossed two of them onto my bed and one of them fell open at the centre page which showed a terrifying photograph of a full sized Cape Cobra, with his hood up and spitting - they spit their venom in defence, I screamed, threw the magazine off the bed and have been scared of snakes from that day, despite the fact I saw snakes in Malaya as a little child and they never bothered me."
They smiled at each other., then she waited for this kind woman to print out some papers and was told to email the gym in a few days time to make an appointment to go to see the manager and get slotted in to pilates, yoga classes and pool exercise classes. Then she and WW went off to catch a 14 to go to Fulham in order to plunder the street market for fruit and vegetables.
Yumyum! Eight persimmon for a pound, all the bowls are a pound, so she picked up seven lemons, five avocados, lots of carrots and beetroots, three big heads of broccoli, a huge bunch of dark kale, twelve sweet and juicy clementines and fifteen dark purply-red plums which were also a pound.
A kilo of dried chickpeas, a new tub of tahini paste and two packets of barberries also plopped into WW, together with a new tin opener, she was distinctly offended when hers died last week.. aren't they, like bottle openers, supposed to live forever? Why, it was only 42 years old for goodness sake!
And then she came home again, home again, jiggedy jig! Only, after having given me a mini snacket, for her to disappear again with WW and her library books plus things that she had collected to give to New Horizons, the lovely place on Cadogan Street on the Guiness Trust Estate that is run by a team of volunteers but was set up and is managed by Age UK.
And came home with lots more books.. how she loves the written word, certainly it was something that she reallyreally appreciated all those years ago when she was confined to bed and not allowed to put a toe to the floor.. oh, thank goodness for that clever GP and for her mother not pooh-poohing how she felt.
So she can't tap dance or run down stairs and has no reflexes in either of her knee which are both decidedly dodgy and creak more than a little bit but she reckons that she got away VERY lightly.
It is time to rattle those pots and pans.. we're having steamed kale and carrots with garlic and ginger sauce for supper, slurp, but I do hope she remembers that I'm crazy-daisy about kale stalks and doesn't plan on eating them herself..
GeeGee Parrot.
February 14th, 2017.
Easter falls on a different date each year, so does Thanksgiving, countries Saint's day are always on a certain day, St. Patrick's being on March 17th. St. George is our patron Saint here in England and it is on April 23rd, so too, of course, are Christmas and Valentine's day that are always on the same day.
She is now five years older than he was when he died.. oi vey.
She was up with those mad wild birdies today and left the house to go to see her GP about the x-ray results. "Hmmmm, well both of them have taken a battering poor things, haven't they? I am sending you off for physio and because I don't want you gardening which is how you get your exercise, I am also sending you off to the gym for both yoga and pilates and I want you in the pool as well, how do you feel about that?"
"Dumbstruck" she replied.. "is this to do with the polio" and her lovely GP explained how the polio virus never actually leaves the body, it goes and hides somewhere, usually in the spinal column but it can also hide elsewhere in the body and sometimes in organs as well".
Then she went way back in time and looked at the medical notes of November 1st, 1956 and she said "you were confirmed as having it on November 1st, 1956, do you remember anything about it?"
She sat and went back in time and replied "yes, I do, I woke up early feeling sick and hot with a tingly sensation in one arm, I didn't get dressed and go downstairs for breakfast and that was what alarmed my mother, for I loved school and was always dressed and ready for breakfast, she came up to find me, asked me what was wrong and when I said how I felt, she knew it was for real, she went to telephone our local GP, whose response was "Don't let her get out of bed or move a muscle, we have three confirmed polio victims at her school and I've got four other mothers saying the same as you, I will see you later" so I stayed in bed, not allowed to go to the loo or walk about".
Doctor Lucy shook her head and said "Thank God for a really switched on doctor, do you remember anything else?"
Mum smiled and said " Quite a lot, I got it in the middle of the Hungarian Uprising which started in the latter part of October and which lasted for just over two weeks, mummy used to listen to the world service on the BBC. She was desperately worried about friends of hers in Prague and another thing was food!"
"She made food into funny things for me, she would use small baking trays, the mince was ploughed earth, the hedges were made out of masked up greens and mashed potato was wheat or corn, she'd bake them in the oven and tell me to eat a bit of this or that, as I was tired and didn't want to eat much.. oh, and that's when I became scared of snakes!"
"Smakes! How did you get scared of snakes in bed?" said her GP, "well, a friend of my father's knew that he had been offered a job in South Africa and sent him a bundle of Life magazines from Cape Town, my father tossed two of them onto my bed and one of them fell open at the centre page which showed a terrifying photograph of a full sized Cape Cobra, with his hood up and spitting - they spit their venom in defence, I screamed, threw the magazine off the bed and have been scared of snakes from that day, despite the fact I saw snakes in Malaya as a little child and they never bothered me."
They smiled at each other., then she waited for this kind woman to print out some papers and was told to email the gym in a few days time to make an appointment to go to see the manager and get slotted in to pilates, yoga classes and pool exercise classes. Then she and WW went off to catch a 14 to go to Fulham in order to plunder the street market for fruit and vegetables.
Yumyum! Eight persimmon for a pound, all the bowls are a pound, so she picked up seven lemons, five avocados, lots of carrots and beetroots, three big heads of broccoli, a huge bunch of dark kale, twelve sweet and juicy clementines and fifteen dark purply-red plums which were also a pound.
A kilo of dried chickpeas, a new tub of tahini paste and two packets of barberries also plopped into WW, together with a new tin opener, she was distinctly offended when hers died last week.. aren't they, like bottle openers, supposed to live forever? Why, it was only 42 years old for goodness sake!
And then she came home again, home again, jiggedy jig! Only, after having given me a mini snacket, for her to disappear again with WW and her library books plus things that she had collected to give to New Horizons, the lovely place on Cadogan Street on the Guiness Trust Estate that is run by a team of volunteers but was set up and is managed by Age UK.
And came home with lots more books.. how she loves the written word, certainly it was something that she reallyreally appreciated all those years ago when she was confined to bed and not allowed to put a toe to the floor.. oh, thank goodness for that clever GP and for her mother not pooh-poohing how she felt.
So she can't tap dance or run down stairs and has no reflexes in either of her knee which are both decidedly dodgy and creak more than a little bit but she reckons that she got away VERY lightly.
It is time to rattle those pots and pans.. we're having steamed kale and carrots with garlic and ginger sauce for supper, slurp, but I do hope she remembers that I'm crazy-daisy about kale stalks and doesn't plan on eating them herself..
GeeGee Parrot.
February 14th, 2017.
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