Dancing Feet

My friend Darlene treated me to wonderful gift today: she drove me into Bellevue for a pedicure. 

My feet were washed, pumiced, massaged and lotioned, my nails given a short, back and sides, emery-boarded, polished and buffed. 

As feet go, they looked amazing, and felt fantastic. 

As I was being primped and pampered, I thought about the places where these very serviceable and extremely reliable feet had walked:

The green hills of the Cotswolds, under the skirts of which I was born: the Welsh and Scottish uplands, the Swiss Alps, the Carpathian Mountsina, African Velt, Hawaiian rainforest, and Sinai Desert.

They have trudged, heavily through rain, and deep snow, plunged into streams, paddled in oceans, slipped down the banks of rivers, and tip-toed in and out of children’s bedrooms. They’ve been there for me, and apart from a spell in orthopaedic boot following a snapped tendon in my right ankle, they’ve never let me down. 

Above all, they have danced! The Lancers at speech days with school friends, The Dashing White Sergeant with sixth formers at the local public school, out-paced boyfriends at discos, accopanisd family members at parties and weddings, including my own, swayed and turned with Xhosa women in South Africa and with pulsed into sand woth Bedouin in Egypt. 

They once featured in a poem, about that experience:

Here am I, in the Sinai desert, with my dance troupe, at dawn, performing to the music of oud and drums. It is my fifty-first birthday. As I recall the magic of this day, I am reminded of my strength and my resilience and am full of laughter. I hope this comes through in the writing

A Work of Heart

To write this poem, I planted my feet, Strong, bare feet, 

Firmly, in the sand.

I raised my arms, then,

 Dropped them, as I was taught, 

To my shoulders.

Aligning my palms to the strengthening sun, I waited,

Alert, for the words

To drift, or bounce or slide Down,

Down

With the music.

I lifted my head and 

Listened, listening, For the deluge.

Quietly at first...

Trilling over my fingertips 

Snaking down my arms 

Shivering across my shoulders 

Thrumming through my breast 

Shimmying with my hips

Turning Turning Turning

Clapping with my hands 

Stamping with my feet -

The poem came! And

I DANCED. 

Getting Mislaid …

Diary of an Elderly Englishwoman

October 3rd 2023

I’m airborne, en route to Seattle and a month with friends Darlene and Steve. 

One would never buy wine from a can, not THIS one, anyway, but it’s actually quite … um, Nice. I get as drunk as is sociable on long haul flights, because my intention is to sleep between lunch and .. lunch. It being served now, and around the same time, Pacific, at the other end of the flight. 

There are always adventures. My lounge provider at Terminal Three had switched companies, and finding Lounge No1 when every other lounge was discoverable by a letter, proved a challenge, but I overcame it. 

The lounge passes come as a job lot with the premier bank account Ray insists is good value, but only, I reckon, if you exercise every ounce of ingenuity to find the lost lounge and have a full English Breakfast and a complimentary gin and tonic. 

Yes, I’m getting squiffy on notionally free booze, which is the way to go. 👍🏼

I was the last on. I always dawdle, and noticing my boarding group was #9, I foresaw no problem. I was savouring that g&t. I wasn’t last in the boarding queue, but I was near the end. Handing over my boarding card, I discovered I had been randomly selected for the full security search. Taken out of line and moved to one side like a drug mule,  was a little disconcerting, but a quick examination of conscience flagged up just a lipstick that hadn’t gone with the liquids, and that doesn’t count.

I may have smiled too much and my joke about having won the lottery (“random selection”) didn’t get a laugh, but I recalled from the DHS warnings in the US that jokes are not welcome, so I forgave it. 

I did feel rather special. I’ve never been “randomly selected”, before, unless you count the time when a scammer was allegedly giving me an iPad, 

It was the full works with an electronic wand. The security lady was efficient and as friendly as allowed. Suddenly there was a kerfuffle at the desk, One, “Mary Francis,” had checked in at the desk but not arrived in the cabin, so there was a panic on … “I’m here!” I squeaked, like an excited puppy, relieved that,  for once, being mislaid was not actually my fault. 

Saving The Planet

Diary of An Elderly English Woman:Day Two

“Apothecary”. What an evocative word! I was  mulling over  it awaiting my flu jab in the pharmacy in Ledbury yesterday. 

Imagine a wizened fellow of indeterminate age, distilling belladonna for the beautiful ladies, and extracting mercury for the gentlemen with the pox that had succumbed to more than their charms. I picture Merlin, only crazy, as a consequence of the mercury fumes. 

I came close to flirting with the handsome Nigerian pharmacist:: Twenty-third of October, 1950,” I purred as he inquired of my birthdate to fill in (out) the obligatory form.

“Yes! I know!I don’t look a day over thirty!” 

This was so ridiculous we both laughed. 

I enjoy making people laugh. 

In, jabbed, out. Walk up the hill to the Sue Ryder Shop ( Thrift Store) for an item I’d spotted on the way down.

“I’ll take this off your hands, “ I said, handing over a gaudy insulated picnic tote, on wheels,  to the volunteer womanning the till.

“£3 please,” she replies, handing over one of those second-generation cash machines that require a pin. Deja-vu kicked in with a moment of panic, but fortunately, this time, I remembered. 

I am now the triumphant owner of a vital piece of kit that is an essential tool in my new regime. 

Confused? I’ll explain. I am Doing My Bit ( as my grandparents would say during the Second World War) to Save the Planet. I am Walking To The Shops. 

This is no great sacrifice, per se, as the Co-op is less than half a mile away, but my Noble Purpose on arrival, is to collect a pre-ordered bag full of discounted food that had reached its use-by and was headed for the bin. It’s now headed for my newly acquired picnic tote on wheels for the drag up the Hartpury Rd and supper. 

Him Indoors and I are hooked. You don’t know what’s IN the bag until you open it, so every day it’s like winning the lottery! OK, so you might not, as a rule,  buy a plant-based Cornish Pasty, but it tasted good, as did the apple pie, and the parsnips, so no complaints. 

I got my steps in, fed us both for £3.39p AND according to the App, saved 1.7kg of CO2 :more if you count the walk. 

Win-win-win.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/too-good-to-go-end-food-waste/id1060683933

No Room At The Inn

UPDATE: Funding was withdrawn from this centre some time ago. The building is now integrated into an expensive facility for rich old people. The homeless are back on the streets.

Looks empty doesn't it? The New Pilot Inn closed some time ago. I used to frequent it, and I still do, though these days in it's new incarnation as a refuge centre for the homeless and street people. They call it 'The Vaughn Centre ' now, and it does good work as the centre for the BRILLIANT Homeless Healthcare Team and GEAR, the Homeless charity that offers facilities for aforementioned fellow-citizens down on their luck.

My mum and dad used to play darts here. In my (very) late teens, I used to accompany them on match days, and marvel at how my father could hit the bullseye and calculate any combination of the number 301 in seconds. Mum, not so good at either, but a worthy member of the team anyway. I was never good enough to play in the team, but could occasionally hit the board ...

Two weeks ago, I learned from my friend Tony Hipkins, who majors in holding Gloucestershire County Council to account for its provision for vulnerable people, emailed to say that GEAR had no funding to open the Vaughn Centre at Christmas this year. I shall find out why, in due course, to see if a fuss needs to be made about it, but in the meantime there is some cash to raise. £200, in fact.

Abigail and I went to church this morning. Not together, because she goes with with her mum and dad. When I arrived she was crying becauss she'd lobbed her pet dinosaur across the aisle and hit somebody. When mummy had requested she desist from such behaviour, Abigail took offence and started to howl. She's my granddaughter, and I love her to bits, but I know mummy is right, so Abs just has to get over it without sympathy from grandma.

Father Aidan gave me permission to make an appeal for a second collection for GEAR and Christmas, and I was preoccupied throughout Mass as I wondered what I was going to say: the "Feed The World" angle having already been taken.

Abigail returns from Little Church with an activity book all about Advent. "Look grandma!" She announces, loudly, because that's her volume setting, "There 's no room in the inn!"

A light goes on in my brain.

"I'm not sure of what I'm going to say, because this is so close to my heart, (and here I tear up) but Abigail has just reminded me of when I was a teenager and used to go with my mum and dad to play darts at The New Pilot Inn in Gloucester, which is now a refuge for the homeless, and which can't open at Christmas this year because it has no money. Honestly, if the church can't open the inn door to the lonely and the lost at Christmas, we might just as well pack up and go home... " 

Not sure how I ended up, but the result was a collection that raised far more than £200

That's Christmas sorted, now let's see what can be done for the new year ...