April Fools

I remember when the press played April fools jokes on the population.

Where we once lived in Africa the press reported that a UFO had landed outside the town. They could not divulge the location for security reasons. April 1st that year was very exciting as folk streamed out into the country to find it.

There must still be some children, now grown, who believe that spaghetti grows on bushes on spaghetti farms after the BBC showed a very believable film on harvesting spaghetti in Italy.

Grownups and children played April Fools pranks on each other. I played them on my classes at school and they played them on me.

It was fun.

It was annoying.

Nowadays it seems that everyday is April fools day. It’s hard to believe that anything is really true anymore.

That makes today, April Fools Day, not very special at all.

Ambition again

In the night I mulled over my ambitionless life. The Joy of being ambitionless was my recent post.

My school life was unremarkable. But I excelled in Art. I had ‘talent’ both in painting and drawing but, most importantly, could spin an excellent criticism of works of art and sum up the life and works of great artists that pleased the art history teachers and lecturers and convinced them to give me high marks. All blab really.

So I won an art scholarship.

But when I discovered I had to paint mainly taps, plumbing, couches and cars, I dumped it.

And so, being pretty much ambitionless, I eventually got to supporting myself in other ways, a job here, a job there. I must have actually done a bit of work that satisfied my boss/bosses because I was only fired once. And that was NOT my fault.

I was employed to ‘clean up’ computer graphics for CD labels for a very famous British Composer who was then, recently, deceased. His manager spent a lot of time hitting on me, sitting really close, stroking my leg and breathing on me.

I could possibly have had shares in the famous deceased composer’s recording label company had I had ambition. Or even been a CEO. But, no, I ignored my opportunity for promotion as I was already perfectly satisfied at being Mr Furlong’s wife; so I discouraged the lusting lover at every opportunity and he became very disappointed in me and embarrassed. I presume the next employed ‘clean up’ assistant got the job of CEO after I was fired.

In my ambitionless life in which I avoided doing anything I absolutely hated or resented, or entailed too much effort, I met and worked for some very interesting people – rich and famous. I enjoyed every job I had.

And, just reminding myself, I only got fired once!

The joy of being ambitionless

Being born with no ambition is a deep blessing.

I have only realised how lucky people are who are without ambition lately.

When my friend and neighbour died a short while back, it dawned on me that she was an ambitionless person. That is what made her so nice. You never had to vie with her for top place in the relationship. She’d never been famous, had written no books, knew nothing about Bitcoin, stocks or bonds, literature, art, had no university degrees, owned no wealth, had never travelled and she practiced no one upmanship in anything at all. She was just happy.

Having never been anything remarkable in an way, she never had to undergo the pain of releasing herself from once being important in the lives of society, the town, or in culture in her old age. She had no ‘status’ to relinquish. How lucky is that?

It disturbs me that children nowadays are told they can be anything they want. They must aim for their dreams. And they must achieve.

There is an adventure in floating through life, not driving your boat. But being focused on finding your simple happinesses in every eddy, pool, or waterfall that you encounter on your way.

Margaret had that kind of life, and it turns out she encountered many fascinating adventures en route. She never mentioned them. I only found out after she died.

Margaret always seemed happy and grateful and it was catchy.

Meek, satisfied, grateful and happy. Well that’s how she seemed to me.

It reminded me of the verse from the bible that I could never understand.

The meek shall inherit the earth.

Oh dang, not again!

Tomorrow is my birthday-again.

Maybe when you are old, it seems like time is speeding up so that at the end of your life your old age is easier to endure. Maybe the speeded up version of time is a kind of perverted compassion to all creatures by Mother Nature.

When I was a child, it took years to get to my birthday and now, they seem like just the other day.

I cannot see why we celebrate birthdays after the age of sixty. In fact, they should be banned.

Have you ever thought that a birthday’s opposite is a death day. And the older you get, the closer it gets. Are old aged persons celebrating that? Or are they celebrating their longevity? Either way,  I don’t like birthdays.

They remind me of loss after a certain age. Another year gone, another bit dropped off, another slow down, another wrinkle, another hair thinning, skin thinning, arthritic knuckle, bruise, blemish, entropy, atrophy, decay celebrating day.

Are we daft? I think birthdays are a day other people make you the excuse to celebrate for themselves.

Is there aught we can do?

No, there isn’t. Just bring the damn thing on Father Time, I’ll grin and bear another birthday. And remember with gratitude that I live in modern times. I have not been devoured by a sabre toothed tiger because I’m slow, nor stamped on by a woolly mammoth because I’m small and weak.

That’s a blessing I suppose.

Counting friends

Occasionally I send an ecard to old friends and acquaintances that we know. It simply asks them how they are and tells them briefly how we are. I ask for an update from them.

This last year, some loving partners, unknown relatives or strangers to us, have replied with the news that whoever it was, has died. In fact, this last year was a bad year for deaths. I have had to delete old friends from my ecard address book. But I’ve left them in my email contacts, so that sometime, I can browse through it, and be reminded of their friendship again.

No one died of Covid.

But how they died was admirable. Most, simply snuffed it. They just pushed off. Quick. Easy. Efficiently, with no fuss. Sensible people.

One was found dead in his chair with the TV on by relatives. He wasn’t old.

Another noticed her hubby was dead during a conversation with him as they sat in the lounge, in the sunshine.

My fit walking friend died on the operating table during a not very serious op.

Your heart beats. And then it doesn’t. My rotund, huggy friend died as the ambulance reached the hospital. No hospital resuscitation  ordeal for her. She must have been pleased. She dreaded that.

On the whole, our friends have shown extreme wisdom. They just went.

Now we are waiting for another death. Our lovely considerate neighbour is dying. She is ninety. She has been absent from chats over the fence, jam and pickle, flowers, plants, and gossip swaps for two months now. Alone, in an end of life care ward, not being able to see her family, she needs to get on now and DO it.

“Best get on with it.” That’s what you would have said to me over the fence, Margaret.

Very sensible.

Unintended insult

Twenty years ago in the UK, the putsch by the anti smokers began in real ernest. I remember it well. Smokers were abused without any consideration, being treated like some kind of vermin to be exterminated at all costs.

We had arrived from Africa where no such ideology existed, still to be imported from the First World. So it was a shock to find such a natural habit as smoking a cigarette was inscribed in the minds of people in the UK by the book of dogma and hate of Tobacco Control.

Being an alcoholic whose last drink was on November 20th 1981, I noticed how very reliant on booze the Brits were. Booze ok, smoking not ok.

So one day, during the last tranquil days before the anti smoking armageddon, I was sitting at my desk in our shop feeling happy, doing the books, with a cigarette in the ashtray, the plume of its silver smoke rising peacefully towards the ceiling.

A woman came in. She marched up to my desk and said aggressively,

“You shouldn’t do that!” indicating my cigarette in the ashtray.

Remembering my own past, and my release from the demon booze, and without actually looking up, I flashed back,

“Well at least I don’t drink.”

There was a gasp. I looked up at the woman. She had blushed a deep red. Flumoxed is not the right word. She swung around and marched out of our shop, never to be seen again.

Under the hosepipe

It’s been so hot here in the UK. People ask us if we miss the heat. No, we bloody dont!

I have told the story here about how my respected author and lecturer mother used to don her antique bathing costume and sit in the shade of her orange tree under the hosepipe to get cool on a hot African day.

Did I warn you that dogs ‘catching’ water from the hose as they play about on a hot day can drown? People don’t know that.  Vets do.

But I don’t think I told you the story of how we once had a real traditional English Christmas under a hosepipe.

English people, then, did English things in Africa. Like wearing serge gym tunics with neck ties for girls and shirts, ties and long trousers for boys at school, in the heat. I once taught at a very posh school where the headmistress tannoyed the girls that they would be allowed to unbutton the top shirt button and loosten their ties because the day was hot.

Christmas was very British for us. Roast turkey, and roast potatoes, all the sauces and trimmings, and, of course Brussel sprouts and a glazed Ham. The final flourish was a blazing pudding.

All this in the middle of an African summer.

One particularly hot summer, when we lived in the only single story house we ever had, we trained hosepipes over the roof and the front walls on Christmas day.

We celebrated Christmas under hosepipes until we could afford airconditioning.

We never walked alone

Today is our Wedding anniversary.

Mr Furlong and I have been married forty five years.

Mr Furlong has made a most excellent companion.

He took on a women already having three children and treated them as his own.

He stood by me as I struggled with alcoholism.

He nursed me through a post partum stroke that handicapped me. He brushed my hair, put on my earrings, helped me dress, walk, bath, eat.

He stuck to me loyally as five children grew up and we dealt with all the problems of having little money, and large expenses.

We never once played away, or suspected each other of it.

We fought. We sulked. We got hurt. We annoyed each other. We stuck it out.

Mr Furlong is my best friend, and I am his.

Thank you Mr Furlong, we never had to walk it alone.

Love,

Mrs Furlong

New fashion sheet

Mr Furlong has not been well. He had a tooth out. It has bled at night and ‘lost the clot’ since last week. We have now discovered why. Mr Furlong is on anti coagulants. He takes a pill in the evening and sure as anything, within an hour or so, the clot which he is carefully trying to preserve has gone! He bleeds instead. We know his anti coagulants work. They do not ‘allow’ clots.

So on one of the bad nights for Mr Furlong , I woke up terribly hot. I was cooking as they say. I knew a sheet would be nicer than my summer duvet. But the linen is stored in Mr Furlong’s room. I did not want to disturb him.

I lay and thought of possible alternatives. What was large enough, thin enough, and light enough to use as a sheet that was stored in a place I could get to without waking Mr Furlong (or the dog).

Ah! The English Flag! It was stored in a drawer in the lounge (‘living room’ as they strangely say here in the UK). But when I examined it, it felt polyestery and hot. God knows where we got an English Flag the size of a bed sheet, but we have one.

And then the solution came to me. We downsized from a large house with a large dining room table in the dining room. We owned table cloths stored in a chest of drawers next to the kitchen.

I found the perfect twenty year old many times laundered pink cotton damask table cloth in the drawer there where it has lain since we moved here.

I slept well under it and dreamed of many very happy times.

Katie Fluxman in Palestine. What happened to you after 1938?

In 1938 my mother was in England, in London, at university. She shared lodgings with her friend Katie Fluxman. She wrote a lot about her adventures with Katie when, later, my mother became a writer.

But in 1938 there were rumblings and rumours of war. My mother decided to return home, to Africa. But Katie and Katie’s partner were completely over the moon because they had decided to settle in Palestine (as it then was). They were Jewish. Palestine was their ultimate dream. They would be building a new country, for the Jewish people and make a nation.

So the two friends separated, one, agnostic to return ‘home’ and the other, to make a new ‘home’ for her people.

I know the story of my mother, but I have always wondered how Katie Fluxman fared. She married her man and they arrived in Palestine to build a new country in about 1938.

They are all dead now, but, once, the fire of youth burned bright; young people setting out to change the world.

Where are the children of Katie Fluxman? You will be about my age. What happened to Katie?

It would be nice to know.

PS. I have accidently ‘found’ two sets of people through this blog in the past. Maybe it could happen again.