Compensations of Old Age

We’ve got a bit of snow, now. The cleaner is here for her second session and reports that the streets are ungritted and seriously treacherous. How satisfactory it is to be at home and warm with no need to go anywhere else. I’ll probably slip and break a femur when I go to get some sausages for lunch.

Yesterday was rather exciting.

a)      I got a Christmas card – no, let’s be strictly accurate, a Seasonal Greetings card – from the Obamas. And I didn’t even send them one.

I don’t know how this could have happened. I strongly suspect that my nephew Theo, currently fully engaged in stage-managing the Inauguration, must have inserted my name onto some list. Or maybe his wife Jenni did it, who is an Undersecretary of State at the Treasury.

I’m sure the card is printed. The most powerful man in the world – let alone his daughters and his wonderful wife -- could hardly take a week off work to sign ten thousand cards. But the Great Seal is really embossed.

For the moment, it is on the mantelpiece. My problem is, where to put it next, where our children will be sure to find it when I’m dead.

b)      I set out for the supermarket, and the car wouldn’t start. The battery was flat.

It’s an old car, and we’ve never had battery trouble before. I can’t really complain. I rang up the garage and a nice man came and put in a new battery and I gave him a cheque. In the old days in Glasgow in the ‘60’s, I can remember putting the battery in the pram – surely, with a baby there as well – and taking it down to the Byres Road to be charged.

Knitting

I recalculated the length of Ed’s sweater, based on the reflections I mentioned yesterday, and, sure enough! an extra inch turned up. Ed is not tall, and I don’t want this thing to be down around his knees. So I ripped out what I had done, right back to the point where sleeves and body were joined, and started again.

It looked alarmingly big, when it was off the needles. But that would be the biggest point for total circumference, at the underarms, so I shall try not to worry.

Comments

No, Judith, I didn't know about Edinburgh's Secret Wild West. Fantastic! That must be over on what I think of as the "other side", where my husband's sister lived. I'd better go see it before they take it down.

I shall now put in an honest hour on the Income tax., while the cleaner toils on.