The bells, the bells!

"My grandfather's clock was too tall for the shelf...."

Actually, it's my great-grandfather's clock, and it fits very well on the windowsill of my spare room.  I like to think that Alexandr the meerkat appreciates its rather ornate style, which is why he's sitting next to it rather than poor Vassily, who seemed rather disturbed when I put him there.

Being of a somewhat rockerish persuasion myself I can understand his distress; during my teenage years I couldn't be doing with it at all.

It was fine when the clock lived with my grandmother; it was part of my childhood and symbolized dependability and continuity.  Then mum and I went to live with my grandmother too, and I realized that it chimed every 15 minutes, day and night.  As I recall, it played a little tune at a quarter past, which got progressively longer at half past and quarter to.  On the hour it was the full tune, followed by the appropriate number of chimes.  Sleeping was impossible; as soon as you dropped off, the damn thing would chime again, so mum and I decided to sabotage it.  First, we stopped winding the bit that played the tune.  That was a bit better, but the hourly chimes were still too loud, so we tried stuffing the bell with cotton wool.  That didn't do much good, so next we covered the bell with as many layers of fabric as we could.  Now, when the little hammer hit the bell, it just made a gentle thud.  Peace at last!  Except that then we started getting worried that we might have damaged the mechanism, because the little hammer would want to go further than it could.  We pulled all the fabric out, and stopped winding the clock altogether.

That would have been fine, except my grandmother noticed at this point that the clock wasn't going.  We wound it up, and re-set the time.  On reflection, it would have been better to re-set the hands and then wind it up, because as we changed the time from 5:15 to 2:25 we had to wait at each hour for the chimes to finish.  Or at least, we should have done.  It did its best to keep up as we whizzed the hands through the hours, but we discovered that it had saved up all the un-bonged chimes when, at 3 o'clock, it struck 17.  After that it never knew what time it was.  It always chimed something on the hour, but the number of bongs rarely related to the actual time.  It made life interesting, if rather unpredictable.

In the interests of getting a good night's sleep, I haven't wound the clock in years.  Now, however, I have the Minster bells to contend with.  They too play a tune every 15 minutes, but at least that's turned off overnight, and the number of chimes is generally consistent with the hour.  It's actually rather nice, and you can hear it all over the town.  The trouble is, the silences between the bongs often aren't the same length.  At, say, 11 o'clock, the first few chimes are evenly spaced.  There's an extra fraction of a second between the next two or three, then the final chimes are more (or possibly less) spaced out.  It's only a tiny amount of difference, but very noticeable if you happen to be counting, and hoping that it isn't time to get up yet.  The suspense of waiting to see if there will actually be any more chimes tends to leave you wide awake anyway.  In a way, I hope they don't fix it; I rather like quirky and unpredictable.

Don't label me!

My co-workers and I have decided that we should call our typist Father Jack.  She sits in the corner of the office facing the window, headphones on in a world of her own, completely oblivious to the rest of us - until she catches a fragment of conversation.  "What?  What's that?"  she demands, eyes suddenly alight with consciousness.  The resemblance is uncanny, but I should, in fairness, point out that her likeness to the elderly reprobate priest stops there; she's clean and tidy, rarely swears, and the only drink she ever demands is tea {at work, anyway}.  Apparently, I'm Father Ted - harassed all the time and somewhat paranoid.  I'd rather be Father Dougal; he seems to enjoy life a bit more, but my co-workers were adamant; Father Ted it is.  It was the same when we thought about characters from 'Friends'.  I so want to be Phoebe, but it seems that I'm Monica the control freak.  Must try harder.  Or perhaps less.

For the benefit of those readers who so often write to me but appear to be from Foreign Parts and may not be real people anyway, I'm referring to characters from TV sitcoms.  And, by the way, please stop offering me cheap sunglasses and trainers.  Do I look like the sort of person who wears designer rip-offs?  Or even designer originals?  I'm just happy if my clothes are clean; if they fit, it's a bonus.  I don't wear my own name since I lost my badge; I'm certainly not going to go around with someone else's name emblazoned across my clothing.  I cut all the labels off the inside of my clothes anyway, whenever possible.  Especially knickers, when the labels tend to be itchy and are often bigger than the garment.  There are few things sartorially worse than a label showing through flimsy fabric or protruding from one's apparel.  {Since you ask: socks with sandals, trousers that are too short and visible bra straps.}

'What about washing instructions?' I hear you ask.  I read them before purchasing anything and if I can't just shove it in the machine with everything else that's roughly the same colour, then I don't buy it.  Simples.

Signs of summer

'Spring is sprung, the grass is riz... I wonder where the moo-cows iz?'

This field is usually full of cows by now but, so far, they haven't turned up to do their regular summer job of keeping the grass down. No-one I know has ever seen them arrive or leave, which is a bit of a mystery, as the field is adjacent to a very busy road and surrounded by houses. There is a theory that the cows are beamed in from outer space, but I favour the idea that they come up from underground, like pantomime demons on a trapdoor. I have reached this conclusion because sometimes they disappear for a few hours in the middle of the day. I wonder if they sneak off down tunnels to the seaside? They'd certainly find everything they could possibly need at this shop.

Note the woolly hats and gloves on the left. This is Yorkshire, after all. But why, in the name of all that's plastic, would you need a table mat on the beach? Or perhaps the rather handsome gorillas are the equivalent of naughty postcards for the cows to send to their friends. Maybe they'd buy one of the alarmingly coloured toy sheep {which I initially thought were balls of wool to knit more gloves} from the basket in the centre of the picture.

I too usually like to purchase a small souvenir whenever I visit some interesting venue on a summer outing. I managed to resist this one though!

Now you see me....

They say that when women reach a certain age, they become invisible.  How much fun would that be?  You could sneak into the cinema without paying, and pinch policemen's bums!  Probably best not to try both at the same time though, as it might raise suspicions.  Actually, I'm not seriously suggesting that middle-aged ladies should go round assaulting officers of the law; getting a piece of the breeches is almost certainly going to be a breach of the peace.  But talking of breeches, you'd never have to worry about what to wear, or whether, having chosen an outfit, you could still fit into it.

I think I'm at an age now when I can choose my level of visibility.  Faced with a raucous gang of teenagers, I fade into the background.  I can pass a building site with impunity, provided I concentrate and get the walk right.  But, when the occasion arises, I can confidently command attention with the best of them.  At the moment.

My grandmother used to say she had eyes in the back of her head; something else to look forward to, perhaps?... but maybe it was just that she could choose to be invisible, and then run very fast.  {Yes, I have just been watching Dr Who.} Just as well, I suppose; I have enough problems keeping my hair out of one pair of eyes.  Oooh, another advantage of invisibility - no more bad hair days!  Bring it on!

Tea for two

Eee, that were a grand summer we had this year.  Nearly three whole, consecutive days of sunshine!  It were that pleasant yesterday evening, we had our tea in the garden.  I only had to wear two cardigans, and just the very tips of my fingers went blue.  {I am not exaggerating; this really happened.}

When I say 'tea', I do, of course, mean 'dinner'.  I'm getting more used to that way of referring to the evening meal but, even after seven years living here, it still sounds strange to me.  My co-workers say they're going out for tea and I picture china cups, doilies and cucumber sandwiches.  What they mean is pizza and a couple of bottles of wine.  Dinner is tea and lunch is dinner - unless, of course, it's Sunday.

To add to the confusion, at weekends we tend to just eat when we're hungry.  I potter around drinking cups of tea and eating yoghurt as soon as I get up, so that's breakfast.  My beloved, however, can't face eating before 10 am, and then it's a 'full English' for both of us - so that probably counts as 'brunch'.  We often don't eat again until about 4 or 5 pm - Aha, tea!  Well, you'd think so, except it's our main meal and usually involves meat and gravy which, in my opinion, makes it dinner.  We'll maybe have cheese and biscuits late in the evening; I guess many people would call that 'supper'.  I just call it cheese and biscuits (or, 'a wicked temptation', depending on how fat I'm feeling).  I swear he called it Eva Peron the other night, but he was asleep, dreaming and mumbling at the time.  Worryingly, I knew exactly what he meant!

Perhaps that's the answer, though.  Maybe it would avoid confusion if we called our meals by people's names.

"Let's go out for some Henry VIII after work today."

"Would you like to come round for Miss Marple on Sunday?"

"I always have a bit of Miss Muffet in the morning, a large Bertie Wooster later on, and then I'm alright until Desperate Dan."