WOMEN AGES 50+ FOR DECEMBER 2021

Another round robin…more of a ragged robin really…2021 as seen from Hove
As a result of the runaway success (at least one person ran away on opening it!) of last year’s effort I’m trying another. Keep a bin handy if it’s not your thing!

January…the year begins with a scammer wanting £2 to deliver something I haven’t ordered. Our local supermarket says stock cubes are out of stock! By mid-month the icing on my Christmas cake needs an ice axe to break it. One of our grandchildren has received a fart pot as a Christmas present. We didn’t have them in my day! We end the month by getting jabbed.
February…The instructions for the Covid test I agreed to take as part of trial have been written by the IKEA wardrobe department. Our first Zoom singing session is interrupted by a participant saying “I’ve got someone drilling upstairs.” The dentist gives me a temporary filling…the same status as all the rest of them then. We watch several episodes of Pointless and learn that Sao Tome and Principe is a country and Bismarck had an American state capital named after him…both pieces of information which are bound to come in useful one day, if only when the same Pointless episodes are repeated.
March…A man on the seafront announces he has gone from van driver to evangeliser. I hope he had more success with the van! Listening to the news without paying attention makes me think briefly that a small farmer, rather than small pharma, has set up a new drug trial. A guest on ‘Desert Island Discs’ takes the Complete Works of Jane Austen as their single permitted book of choice. If I’m ever invited to take part I shall choose The British Library as my one luxury item.
April…I go for a walk around the Long Man of Wilmington. No-one knows who he was…someone called Chalky is my guess. I suffer a few sleepless nights and try reading a biography of Sir Robert Peel as a sleep inducer. It works less well than apparently many of his speeches did. Later in the month Godfrey and I enjoy a walk around the Arun and Wey Canal followed by lunch at the Sir Roger Tichbourne…a strange name for a pub unless Sir Roger was perhaps especially fond of beer.
May…My architectural skills are put to the test in constructing Mr Cuddles Castle out of old cardboard boxes. The software manual for our new printer is about as long as ‘War and Peace’. We hope it will provide more of the latter than the former. Our first days of live cricket watching coincide with regular rain showers, except on the one day I decide not to go. The weather forecasters clearly didn’t look out of the window again. I buy some new black masks which Heather says look like Joe Biden’s…preferable to looking like his predecessor I say.
June…The latest pavement hazard here in Hove is men carrying 8-foot inflatable paddle boards towards you, sideways on…tempted to carry a very sharp needle. The dentist replaces my temporary filling with a “permanent” one which falls out 3 hours later. I spend an afternoon watching Euro football, club rugby and championship cricket simultaneously, courtesy of 2 laptops and a television. Who said men can’t multi-task?
July…We go for a pizza with Jack, Jess and grandchildren and end up sticking the names of animals and insects to our foreheads. Apparently some people just go there to eat. I manage to answer a question on Only Connect relating to ‘Albert and the Lion’ (the wonderful Stanley Holloway monologues for the young among you!). It’s just the sort of question I like and prompts me to think a panel game called Only Recollect would be a great hit with those of us who are getting on a bit.
August…We have a leaking gutter. While a potential gutter-fixer goes to stare up at it I do a quick google and impress him with my knowledge of sarking felt. I rescue the step ladder from the back of the shed and attempt to trim our overgrown bay tree. Once the ladder is safely stowed away a couple of rebellious branches spring up again giving the top a slight Mohican cut. I briefly consider claiming it’s topiary. Our grandchildren make snow globes from old jam jars, water, paint and glitter. Most of the contents end up on the table or the floor. We now have a pink hall…subtly pink rather than full on Peppa Pig.
September…I wake up to find seagulls have bombed my car. What they drop would make an adhesive powerful enough to hold the Titanic together. It certainly doesn’t easily come unstuck. Now that I know many of the episodes of Midsomer Murders off by heart I’ve paid more attention to the adverts that divide them. They all appear to be for stair lifts or care homes. Mind you, a couple of hours watching Midsomer Murders can make a chair lift appear more desirable. I publish another Winfrith novel, ‘The Incoming Tide’, and immediately start on another. Now there’s an idea for a TV series…Meryl Streep or Sarah Lancashire for Winfrith?
October…My new walking shoes have two-metre long laces allowing frequent opportunities for triple bows to become during the course of a walk complex knots which require considerable effort and strong nails to unravel. I celebrate being 76 with Heather’s delicious pancake breakfast and football against the grandchildren in the garden. My pace is not what it used to be, but the positional sense…that’s unmatched in any garden in the street. Checks before going to a post-lockdown dental appointment include asking ‘Are you pregnant?’ The form doesn’t leave enough space for “What…at my age?”
November…Apparently kiwis are not often seen in New Zealand. Here they seem to have disappeared altogether…kiwi fruit that is. The colour palette of our morning fruit salad is not what it was. I have walks at Ditchling Beacon and Devils *kitten*, the parking paying for perhaps 3% of our annual National Trust subscription. Our youngest grandchild thinks spraying bubbles on my bald patch will make my hair grow…speaking of which I pay my first visit to a barber for nearly two years. Vinny spends 25 minutes chatting and trimming my eyebrows! Heather is interviewed on Sussex radio and sounds both composed and impressive. We celebrate our 17th anniversary with a delicious meal out during which I eat beetroot for the first time in about 60 years. Fortunately it tastes of tarragon. The restaurant was called Petit Pois though if I was naming a restaurant after a pea variety I might go for Mangetout! On a very chilly seafront walk I follow a man wearing sandals, a red straw hat and one trouser leg rolled up…more Eeyore than Dior I conclude.
December…Has only just begun so nothing has happened yet. Christmas Eve will be a pigs-in-blankets followed by a chocolate fruit dip lunch with grandchildren. There are cotton wool snowballs to look forward to as well. Christmas Day will be just Heather and I so the plan is for Lancashire Hotpot with black pudding and kidneys to be on the menu with a home-made chocolate roulade to follow. If the weather is good the seafront and watching the determined and the foolhardy swim will beckon so I’m sure we’ll have a good day as, I hope, will all of you who have had the grace or determination to read this far…not forgetting those who just had nothing better to do for five minutes!

Happy Christmas!