Grannymar

Ramana Rajgopaul from Ramana’s Musings, has recently taken to reading and commenting on my blog posts.  I had tip-toed through his musings on many an occasion since I discovered him at Paddy Bloggit’s.  Ramana lives in Pune, India, with his wife, son and father. A multi-generational family.

In a recent post: The Empty Nest Syndrome. Ramana spoke about how he and his wife Urmeela went through the empty nest syndrome on three separate occasions. I found this surprising since they like me, he has only one child.  I realise that in India, adult children living with parents and grand parents is still quite prevalent and family ties are very strong.

No matter where you live or how many children you have; love, energy, time, heart ache, pride, and worry all go into the caring and nurturing of each individual child. The best gift we can hope to give any child is to raise them with love and self worth, teach them to have respect both for themselves and for their fellow man, while also teaching them to stand on their own two feet independently of their parents.  If we achieve that then all the time invested is worthwhile.

It is a nice feeling to have my daughter home when she WANTS to be here and wants to spend time with me rather than because she NEEDS to be, or worse still because I NEED her to be here with me.

I commented on Ramana’s post thus:

I try not to think about empty nests.
My mother died in 1996 at the age of 82, it was ten weeks after a stroke. Since she lived over 100 miles away from me I had problems spending time with her. My husband was ill with cancer at the time. Six weeks after my mother’s death my daughter (one and only) left home for University in Scotland and her dad died a year and a half later.
My home has been quiet since then; it feels like the heart has gone out of it. My daughter visits when ever she can but she has a husband of her own now, a job and home to run. I have been known to say ‘I gave her life and not a life sentence of caring for me!’
I am not a lonely person and make the best of whatever life throws my way. With the internet and blogging the outside world comes in to me. I am so fortunate.

Ramana replied:

@Grannymar, That is a very poignant comment. I wonder if you could consider expanding your last paragraph in one of your posts. I too differentiate between loneliness and solitude. I look forward to every possible occasion when I can have some solitude. I too use the internet and blogging to connect with the outside world.

‘I am not a lonely person and make the best of whatever life throws my way. With the internet and blogging the outside world comes in to me. I am so fortunate.‘

There were four people already living in the house when I first showed my face to the world.  My father, mother and two older brothers, within two years we were six and numbers increased until we were eight in total.  Added to this was a multitude of relations that covered several generations from both sides of the family who came for rest or recuperation.  My mother was a Master Caregiver.  This care she gave to everyone without stinting or the help of my father.  He saw his role in life as the breadwinner, and once he produced the money to pay for food, clothing and household bills then he was free to rest and read.

We children provided help and there was always plenty to do.  Reading and resting were not in my lexicon back then.  With so many people in the house and visitors coming and going, it was difficult to find a quiet spot for reflection.  I often longed to have a place of my own with no interruption.

My move to Germany in the early 70’s gave me that space and I loved coming home to a quiet apartment where I could hear myself think and not fall over half a dozen pair’s of feet every time I entered a room.  I really grew during that time.  I learned to really budget with nobody to borrow from when funds were low.  We had no mobile phones or PCs then and a letter took nearly five days to reach home.  If I had a problem I had to find my own way to deal with it.  I worked with and learned from people of many different cultures, creeds and languages.

When I returned home to live in Ireland, three of my brothers were married and living in homes of their own.  The house was a little quieter and I had time to rebuild a social life and travel.  After a few years I met Jack and we married within the year.  My move to Co Antrim was not easy.  It was the height of the troubles and I was a ‘stranger’ moving into this town!  The natives were very wary of me and my southern accent. It was more difficult to make friends.  I way young and in love and made the best of my life.  I have outlived the people who were horrible to me and eventually make some friends.

My health issues of the past six years prevent me from working. There are times when I am unable to go out or feel at risk both to myself and to others driving my car, on such days the Internet and blogging are my salvation.  The world comes in to me! Blogging has allowed me to meet virtually and personally the most amazing group of diverse people of all ages & persuasions stretched across the globe.

Did you know you were good for my health?

The following leaflet came through my door a couple of weeks ago and it has troubled me ever since. When something causes me concern I leave it handy so that I can think through whatever it is that disturbs me. The flyer sat on my desk waiting for me to find a few minutes to think about and deal with it.

Now don’t get me wrong, Ruth (and I don’t know her) sounds like a very enterprising young lady, fair dues to her for setting up and running a business from her home. I am sure she will do very well. The other side of the leaflet gives information of the waxing, eye enhancing, manicures, pedicures and facials and the prices seem very reasonable. I have no problem with that.

This is the third such leaflet to pop through my letterbox in recent months. One young lady will carryout the treatments in your own home, while the third carries on her business above a hairdressing salon.

The part that causes me concern is in the centre column - second paragraph;

Pampered Princess Package (Up to ten children 15 years and under)

The little princesses will receive a file and polish of fingers. A Little Piggy mini pedicure including nail stickers, and a mini makeover of eyes and lips. Each child will receive a goody bag. £10 per child

Where did this idea take off? Was it from Television? Are we trying to turn our little-ones into mini Victoria Beckham’s - making them old before their time?

OR

Are we unwittingly grooming them for paedophiles?

If you visit my blog on a regular basis the name Darlene will be familiar as a regular commenter. She lives in Tucson, Arizona and joined the world of blogging last July. So what is so unusual about that? I hear you ask. Nothing really unusual I agree, until you read her bio:

I am an 83 year old widow living alone.

How many other folk at 83 years of age do you know that set up and run a blog? Why am I telling you about Darlene? Think about it… with all those years of living behind her, what wonderful stories and experiences she has to tell us.

One post in particular is very well worth reading in these days of world recession. I realise, that to many young people the idea of scrimping and going without may seem a little like science fiction. I remember life in the fifties, a time of make do and mend. A time when ‘Credit’ and ‘Debt’ were considered as deadly as cancer and aids, we scrimped and saved for weeks, months and sometimes years before buying luxuries.

Now go and visit Darlene and read her piece about the Great Depression and the years that followed. I hope we don’t ever have to go back to that way of living, but can continue on as normal.

My good friend Rowan asked a question earlier in the week: What is normal? His quotation from Ellen Goodman voiced my thoughts more eloquently than I ever could.

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

Does Ellen have it in the bag?

*~*~*~*

So my final attempt at creating spot colour in my photos for p4oi stays with the bag theme. I have to admit this spot colour idea proved much more difficult than I first imagined and I doubt that it will become a favourite pastime. Worth a try though.

Torrential rain has caused widespread flooding across Northern Ireland this weekend. In Belfast, the newly-constructed Broadway Underpass between the M1 & M2 Motorways was flooded to a level of 15 feet yesterday and a section of the central barrier of the Westlink in west Belfast was cut with angle-grinders to allow traffic to be turned away from deep flood water.

The picture above is not a swimming pool It is the entrance to the new Broadway underpass courtesy of the BBC.

The underpass, recently opened, is part of a major contract to upgrade the roadways in Belfast. This work no doubt carried out at enormous expense, with all the expertise, knowledge and modern technology available to deal with drainage etc yet it is unable to take the rains. I wrote the other day about my escapades during the flooding in Dublin last Saturday. Again modern roads with inadequate drainage. Why? How can it happen?

The Fire Service was inundated with calls to help people from their homes in Belfast, Counties Down, Armagh and Antrim. NI Water Dept had 2,700 calls in the afternoon.

It is at times like these that I am glad to live on a hill. Looking out the windows at the back of my bungalow, the fields way below were submerged in water giving the impression I had moved to Venice.

My thoughts turned to building an Ark! Being so high I might actually have it finished before the flood reached me.

Now for the dilemma……

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I need your help….

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What to take two by two into the ark?

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Suggestions on a postcard please!

UPDATE:  Can the problem be solved?  Reading Alan’s Blog post I am beginning to wonder!

I hear the birds in the South of Ireland are chattering Post Codes once more. Let their music not fade into oblivion like a one hit wonder, but rise with a great crescendo to completion of the task. Postcodes are very handy. I know because I have one. Way up here in the cold and often forgotten part of the UK, are many towns and villages with a prefix of ‘Bally’. I live in one of them. Back in the days before we had post codes our mail took the tourist and scenic route via Ballycastle. Now with a Post code such detours are avoided.

Nowadays all my outgoing mail has a return address of my last name, house number and post code. I have in fact received Christmas Cards from the United States of America addressed to that return address. If for any reason I need to phone my bank or any utility company they ask first for my postcode and then the house number and finally ask me to verify my name. When travelling my luggage tags have only this return address.

Northern Ireland was the last part of the UK to be postcoded with all postcodes here beginning BT, a mnemonic of the capital city’s name. While Belfast was already divided into postal districts, rural areas known as townlands posed an additional problem, as (at the time) many roads were not named, and houses were not numbered. Consequently, many people living in such areas shared the same postal address, which is still the custom in the Republic of Ireland. Today the majority of roads in Northern Ireland are named with the odd exceptions in Co Fermanagh and most houses (even in rural areas) are allocated a number. Those that are not allocated numbers can be uniquely identified by a house name. An example is Bushmills, which begins with BT57.

The format of UK postcodes is generally:

A9 9AA

A99 9AA

A9A 9AA

AA9 9AA

AA99 9AA

AA9A 9AA

where A signifies a letter and 9 a digit. It is a hierarchical system, working from left to right — the first letter or pair of letters represents the area, the following digit or digits represent the district within that area, and so on. Each postcode generally represents a street, part of a street, or a single premises. This feature makes the postcode useful to route planning software.

The part of the code before the space is the outward code or out code used to direct mail from one sorting office to the destination sorting office, while the part after the space is the inward code or in code used to sort the mail into individual delivery rounds. The outward code can be split further into the area part (letters identifying one of 124 postal areas) and the district part (usually numbers); similarly, the inward code is split into the sector part (number) and the unit part (letters). Each postcode identifies the address to within 100 properties (with an average of 15 properties per postcode), although a large business may have a single code

wikipedia.org.

The population in the Republic of Ireland are well prepared for this type of system since vehicle registration has worked on a similar vein for several years. Surely incorporating the latter system would make the providing of Postal areas and districts an easier task.

What do you think?

I know I have some weird neighbours, but then maybe they see me as someone with two heads. Who knows! And would you blame them? That second head is hard to camouflage and my eyes are very far apart!

I have lived here in my little palace since I married 30 years ago. It is in a small estate of 20 similar style bungalows. The buildings may have looked similar but the gardens were all different. The fact that the ground was on a slope and every two bungalows were on a different level helped to change the look.

In the past ten years several changes have taken place. A sun room here, a conservatory there and the odd roof space conversion to add to the mix. The latest is that two Houses sprouted in one garden. Well that should be in half a garden as the original bungalow is still there with lawns to the front and rear.

The neighbours, like the houses have changed as well. Some of us have stayed put, but aged. While others have moved to be closer to family; yet more have flown to pastures new, and a few have gone to the great big garden of eternity.

We now have a mix of age groups, from over ninety down to late twenties. For the most part you could call them ‘street friends’, you know the type, address you by first name and shout a friendly ‘hello’ or ‘that’s a lovely day’ if you were in the garden or if you meet them down the town. Yet they would never think to knock on the door to check if you were alright. There was one gentleman who would blatantly ask how much you paid for a new car or the latest fill of heating oil! Mind you, if HE got a bargain he became very tight lipped!

At least you saw the neighbours coming and going, cleaning the windows, cutting the grass or washing their cars. Naturally in winter time we all rushed indoor to the warmth and comfort of our firesides. Living in a Cul-de-Sac I quickly learned to tell without looking, the time of day by the sound of the motor cars. Each one had its own distinctive engine noise.

There are a few children about again, and I look forward to the stretch in the evenings so that I will hear and see them on their bicycles, go-carts or roller boots, endlessly plodding their way up the hill and racing back down again.

I was reading a post at The Other Side of Sixty the other day. Wisewebwoman is in the city of Toronto house-sitting, far away from her little village in Newfoundland. This temporary home has a fairytale look to it. I thought what a wonderful idea, live a different life, in a different place and indeed almost become another person for the duration. Now that should provide a wealth of blogging ideas!

Then she posted Transition a totally different angle on the area of her house-sit. She wrote:

My family came for dinner tonight.
They drove up to this suburban haven of large houses, double garages, and vast swathes of lawns from the city.
They remarked on the silence - quiet wealth makes no sound.
The trees are carefully landscaped and calibrated to enhance the neighbourhood. White birch, low slung colourful shrubbery and precise flowerbeds carved out of eye-hurting emerald green lawns.
There are no sidewalks.
Every house has got security and has picturesque ye olde outdoor lighting.
The front windows are all in darkness.
There is never any life on this street.
I assume any life takes place in the back of the house….

The photo she posted brought to mind my idea of a post- nuclear attack.

How can anyone live, never mind exist, in such soulless isolation? Maybe their lives are spent blogging!

So what is your neighbourhood like?

BBC Radio 4 is devoting the month of January to Care in the community. Discussions this week dealt with Dementia and Alzheimer’s. ‘Women’s Hour’ and ‘You and Yours’ approach the problems from different angles. Each day a Podcast of the programme is available, and if you have an aging parent, or are at the butt end of the nursing home jokes, they are worth a listen. There is something to learn for everybody.

One horrendous fact I learned on Wednesday was that for 2008-09 if someone foster’s a young child the allowances are about £121.68 per week. Yet if you are a full time carer for the elderly the allowances are £48.00 per week and that is means tested! If the carer earns over £100 per week the allowance is reduced. If the same patient is admitted to a Nursing Home or Home for the Elderly, the fees range from £500-£600 per week. Very often when someone ill remains within their home it falls to one person to provide the care 24/7 (£48.00), while in a Nursing home the staff change at least every eight hours providing fresh energy to look after the patient.

There is a lot to be said for a fatal heart attack!

Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, and wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.

Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.

All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

Yet another story of Elly’s life in Northern Ireland in the early 80’s.

Do we know what our children are up these days? Do we care?