Heatwave - Staying Cool!

 

We spend the chilly, dreary, dark days of winter hoping we get a decent summer, and then when it comes it can be too much. Luckily, here in the North West, the temperature touched about 32 degrees centigrade, which I think is slightly more comfortable than the hotter southern areas. Small mercies. Is it safe to say the heatwave has gone yet? I’m fine with the warm 22 degrees today offers, along with a fresh, gentle breeze. I’d had enough of feeling sticky and having streams of perspiration running down my back. Anyone wearing glasses may relate to the annoyance of them sliding down their nose, frames sticking to their cheeks and being a thorough nuisance. I would take mine off except that I can’t see a thing without them.

The garden has had it for this season. Vibrant colour of vital blooms looks parched and neglected for all my efforts of conserving water from the kitchen to use outside. Being away for two separate holidays with only one week at home in between is the cause of ruin. Normally we might expect two days of sunshine to be counter-balanced with three days of constant rain. Not this time, no rain for ages and what came wasn’t enough to stop the damage. Within the next few days I will attempt to tidy out the dead stuff and make an effort for autumn and spring. I can live with whatever happens in my small garden. I feel sad for the farmers who are trying to make a living. Some counties have declared a drought. Not us, though, yet.

I think I was the only person carrying a cardigan into Bloomfield Road football stadium at the last home match. It was an incredibly hot day and I was in shorts, sandals and my team shirt, but we sit in the shady and cool west stand so I anticipated shivering. Shady it was, as always, but cool, certainly not. It was roasting, not a breath of air. Away fans in the sunny rows of the east stand must have been melting.

The heatwave of 1976 was widely mentioned in the media as a comparison. I remember the warm sunshine day after day, seemingly forever and walking up and down Blackpool promenade in platform sandals, flared jeans and cheesecloth shirt knotted at the midriff. Oh I was at the height of fashion in those halcyon times.

With global warming, summer heatwaves are to be expected. It is up to all of us to do what we can to lessen the effect, and to look after ourselves and each other when the temperature rises beyond comfortable.

I found this on PoemHunter.com,

A Wail of the Heat Wave

The usual thing it used to be
Our summers to decry,
Because they were too wet, you see,—
We longed to have them dry.
But now for months, from morn till night,
We've basked in Sol's bright rays ;
Yet few you'll find who show delight,
Or speak in terms of praise
Of these aggravating, irritating,
Half-cremating, wrath-creating,
Mercury-raising, semi-blazing, scorching summer days.

One feels much like a jelly-fish,
Or limpet washed ashore ;
If this is getting what we wish,
We'll crave for it no more.
Each man you meet reviles the heat
In none-too-classic phrase ;
To be polite, one cannot write
Exactly what he says
Of these hot, oppressive, fierce, aggressive,
Sweat-producing, fat-reducing,
Liquid-yearning, throttle-burning, parching summer days.

O, for a trip to either pole,
With Peary, or with Scott!
Where icebergs rear their white forms tall,
And heat waves trouble not.
A month or so 'mid Arctic snow
Our drooping hearts would raise ;
And soften down the angry frown
Which everyone displays
These roasting, boiling, toasting, broiling,
Record-breaking, sweltering, baking,
Ultra-torrid, beastly horrid, melting summer days.

William Baron,   October, 2010

Thanks for reading. Stay cool. Pam,x

Read More

Oops! Damage

 

The whole of my adult life seems to have revolved around damage limitation. When you’re married to a man who doesn't know one end of a hammer from the other then damage limitation is always lurking in the back of your mind.  

These days, I refuse to let the husband near any of his rusty old tools. He can’t be trusted, that’s the top and bottom of it - although he doesn’t take much persuading to steer clear of them, to be honest. There are two big boxes under our stairs. One contains assorted bent and rusting screwdrivers. The cross thread ones are worn smooth and blunt at the end, rendering them useless.  The other box seems to a be a receptacle for more bent and rusting tools, many of them totally unidentifiable, at least to the husband.

I’ve written before about the damage done by the husband’s early attempts at DIY. Coming from a family of pretty practical men (and women), who could change plugs, put up a shelf or wallpaper a room it took a while for me to decide whether the husband was playing the avoidance card or was actually totally and utterly incompetent. In fact, when I say it took me a while it probably didn’t take me that long. It soon became clear that it was the latter - I had just lived in desperate hope. We were young marrieds, three children under three, very little money. The only way we’d get anything done was to do it ourselves. 

I made allowances for the blowtorch incident where the husband was let loose with a borrowed tool and a lot of old paint to remove.  There wasn’t too much damage done, just a little scorching between floors, a few puddles and a frightened four year old, muttering ‘daddy needed water.’  

The attic incident was rather more traumatic, involving, as it did, a shocked passerby, a husband stranded on the flat roof below the attic window and his wife with a severely strained back from leaning out of said window and pulling the husband back in. The main casualty was the paintwork which never did get patched up.

By the time it got to the curtain rail incident I knew I had to admit defeat. Having successfully attached five curtain rails without assistance, I decided help was needed with number six, which was above a particularly awkward square bay. The husband was reluctantly employed with hammer, screwdriver, and very bendy curtain rail. I stood by with the screws, knuckles white against the windowsill, nerves in tatters. Carefully, the husband climbed onto the table, pulled the unwieldy rail as high as possible...... and promptly achieved the treble: straight through the window, still clutching the rusty screwdriver, as the table buckled on its flimsy legs and the curtain rail pinged back into my face. 

It was at this point that my future life flashed before my eyes. If we were to remain married - and this was looking highly unlikely right now, as we hurled swear words back and forth through the smashed glass and the children huddled together in a corner of the room, unsure whether to laugh or cry - IF we were to remain married then all future DIY was going to be down to me - and I was no expert. The husband would remain at least 10 metres away at all times, preferably doing something useful, like looking up the number for the local plumber/decorator/builder. 

Of course, as time passed, I sometimes forgot the extent of the incompetence and casually put in a request for a touch of paint on a scuffed skirting board or a drop of paste on some flapping wallpaper. Each request only happened once. The whole skirting board had to be repainted after the ‘This’ll Do’ tin from the garage deposited a thick skin (in the wrong colour) across the small section that needed doing.  And the attic wallpaper that I was told triumphantly ‘was sorted,’ was found, on inspection, to have been sealed down each join with unevenly spaced two inch masonry nails. 

As for the incident of the seriously  spurting radiator, the lost end key, the washer that had dropped down between two floorboards and the pair of us (one of us naked - don’t ask) desperately holding soggy towels to the leak whilst simultaneously trying to phone a plumber - the least said about that the better. 

One day I’ll write a book.  

But for now, just a haiku. I think it says enough. 

The Husband

Grabs a screwdriver

Moves towards positioned screw 

Damage is looming 

Thanks for reading - Jill 

Read More

Flower-Pot - Things We Love

There is a special flower-pot in my garden. It hasn’t always been a flower-pot and it is a fairly recent addition to my green-fingered efforts. It’s a huge, heavy ceramic bowl that my late mother-in-law marinated dried fruit in ready for homemade Christmas puddings, Christmas cakes and mince pies. The results were always delicious and we looked forward to being given our share. There would be lots to go round. I don’t know how she managed to lift it, even when empty. When it came into our possession, I struggled to move it, wanted to keep it and there was only one practical thing to do. It would make a fabulous flower-pot, if my husband could drill drainage holes in the base of it without it breaking. Success.

I never knew my father’s sister, my Auntie Peggy. She died years before I was born, but I have stood by her grave in Southern Cemetery, Manchester and wept, a grave now shared with her parents. The tears were not for a relative I didn’t know, they were for the shattered, vandalised flower-pot that my father had discovered on his visit and lovingly piled the pieces in front of the headstone which had escaped serious damage. It was leaning back, but still in situ, unlike many others that had recently been attacked. This was in the early 1980s. Peggy had died around 1946/7 aged 21. They were not a rich family; they were ordinary people making ends meet. Dad had told me how his mother, my Nanna Hetty, saved a few pennies each week to enable her to buy a special flower-pot and have Peggy’s name inscribed on it. He was saddened by the mindless violence which destroyed so much and caused upset to the bereaved.

I’m currently looking after two special flower-pots. These are really disposable cups being recycled to nurture sunflower seeds on the kitchen window-sill until they start to grow and get strong enough to plant outside. They are the work of my two elder grandchildren, with my limited assistance, of course, though I came in handy for the cleaning up afterwards. We had such a fun time together. There was a moment of disappointment when I explained that the seeds wouldn’t start to show immediately, so no need to watch over them. Distraction tactics usually work, or failing that, chocolate buttons. ‘Nanna Time’ is the best.

 

 

I found this poem,

 

The Flower by Barbara Miles Jackson

All spring and summer,
One thing after another.
No time for gardening,
And summer's ending.

Checked the mail everyday,
That much needed letter,
Drowned out by bills,
Junk mail and books.

Family out of tune,
Other plans and people.
Holding their interest,
No easy as before.

Looking out my window,
At four flower pots.
Dirt dried and cracked,
For lack of water.

There in a big pot,
Green leaves sprouting.
New wonder to see,
A lone flower growing.

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

 









Read More