Monday April 28th.
Back to work and the usual routines today.
Dog walking, swimming, chatting with Sarah about our
vacation and Arran. Doing the Times crossword in 15 minutes!
When we got back yesterday I hadn’t spotted a statement from
bank telling me the yearly interest and tax paid on my savings accounts. In all
my accounts have made £16000+ over the year after tax has been paid. Rah rah
rah. That has put my share of the price of the caravan on Arran back into my
account (almost).
Richard’s parents also sent me a card on the anniversary of
his death. I try to keep my remembrance low key as I find it very distressing.
The trust fund has made over £50k this year. They enquired after my health and
mental condition and the state of my relationships. I have told them about
dumping Alan but not really about what I meant by Laura had moved in. I suppose
they look on her as a lodger I have taken. I really ought to put them straight on
the matter.
At work Feli and I met our supervisor and she is very
pleased with progress we have been making, especially with the material which
turned out to be palimpsests. We have been able to recover a lot of information
from the underlying script with the help of the Science bods. {And, of course
Feli has been underlying one of the Science bods too!}
Feli and I have collated all our casket notes and
photographs. We have rather a lot. This makes me wonder if we ought to inform
our supervisor of our side project. Felice is dead against it, though. We have
contacted a woman from the Royal School of Needlework and are meeting with her
on the day we go down to see the Sampler Exhibition later this month. I am
looking forward to that no end.
I have e-mailed all my tutees to offer support and
encouragement for their end of year assessments and to invite those who want to
meet up, to arrange a time at the end of the week or early next week. Ms
Scothern replied almost instantly, so I have invited her to join us for lunch
at the Cottage on Thursday. (Well, she has become special over the year.)
Laura was at Dominic’s tonight so we had a swift bite and I
dropped her off and then went to do a mega food shop at Morrisons – we were
getting rather like Mother Hubbard at home! I can’t believe I spent over £120
on groceries and the like!
I was busy all evening with my new sewing project, a
bonboniere. It is fab. I almost lost track of time and could have left the
Lollster to walk up the hill. I decided to take Callie down to meet her and we
walked back together. Dom gave Callie a pile of pasta. Not good really but I
didn’t like to refuse. This meant we could shower together before bedtime and
enjoy each other’s special little places!
Tuesday 29th April.
Kaybers went into hospital last night but hadn’t produced
the baby! We went down straight from work to see her and she looked hot,
sweaty, and exhausted. She has told Jan he is never ever going to come near her
again! It seems every mother in labour tells their husband/partner
that… Mmm…
Two part day went as usual. In fact apart from the
production of an Anglo Norwegan baby in the early hours it was a Radio Stars’
Song Day. Hanne Ingrid Orr was delivered to the world at about 3am. Mum,
Charlotte, and baby Ingrid are doing fine.
Laura and I sneaked another visit to the hospital this lunchtime
and were told by Charlotte she’d be home by tea time! I think the baby looked
just like her, she wasn’t so sure. Jan’s plans of having his child born in
Norway came to nothing after all but they are going to take her to see the
family as soon as they can. Ferry and car from Newcastle is their plan. It’ll
be strange to have Kaybers as a mother. It probably means she’ll tone down her
mad behaviour. I suppose we have grown apart a little over the years,
especially since Richard’s death and my flight to Australia. I think she took
that as a snub – which it wasn’t.
She was disappointed the baby won’t be a Gemini like her, I
told her it was all hokum as I was nothing like a Pisces. I don’t think that
was the right thing to say, looking back!
The other two girls in ARR (not Mrs B) joked about how I’d
be next, when I explained where we’d been at lunchtime. I just smiled and
didn’t rise to the bait. Kaybers is the last of my close friends to have a
baby. That is a very scary thought.
Wednesday 30th April.
Sarah at the pool also told me I’d be next, when we
explained about the new baby. Once more I bit my tongue on the subject. All
these babies in the last couple of months have thrown me into a bit of a
tailspin. Yes, they are gorgeous and they obviously have made each set of
parents very happy but, why do I feel nothing but fear and dread at the
prospect of me doing the same? Maybe I am a freak?
I tried to explain this to Laura as we drove into the city.
She said that she knew. She thought they were lovely but why couldn’t you get
one that was already weaned and potty trained and sleeping through the night?
That would be ideal, wouldn’t it? I decided we needed a time machine so we
could be 17th Century Aristocratic mothers. Their babies were
whisked off to a wet nurse and all the tedium of the early years was dealt with
by someone else. All you had to do, as a mother, was to enjoy the good bits of
the infancy without the mess! The snag is, even with a time machine we wouldn’t
be aristocrats when we went back in time, just peasant women. Plus, mortality
rates were pretty dreadful back then too, not only for the babies but the
mothers too!
I told Mrs Briggs all this and she thought it was possible to
employ a wet nurse type person these days if you had the money. Now… there’s a
thought! Maybe some research is required into the subject. Would the child
become too attached to the wet nurse and not recognise you as its mother?
Thinking about babies, far from giving me a warm cuddly
glow, has begun to do my head in!
Work was another Radio Stars’ Song as well. It does seem to
be a bit of an anti-climax after the two weeks of being in Scotland. That’s the
problem with travelling, the more you do the more you want to do. Still, in two
months’ time (and a bit) we will be winging our way round the globe to the
antipodes and I’ll be playing at tour guide for Laura’s personal benefit. We
are going to do in reverse what the girls and I did last summer in Suze & Pete’s
camper. We will start at Kalgoorlie and finish at Bunbury which should make it
fresh for me too. I am not sure if the girls will be joining us this time, if
they aren’t it means we can avoid the Aussie school’s two weeks holidays in
July and get cheaper rates for things like site fees etc. I would like to take
them again but maybe they would feel embarrassed with Laura being present too.
It is one thing knowing your Aunt has a girlfriend, if that GF is half way
round the world. Having the said GF present all the time might be a different
matter. Both girls are a year older, of course, and hopefully a bit wiser and
more grown up and so should be fine with it. Plus, we are obviously going to
restrain our sexual desires if they come with us, so there will be no chance of
them catching us “at it”!
Thursday May 1st.
Felice had a surprise for me this morning. We are zooming
down to London to go to the National Gallery. She has persuaded someone in the
bursar’s department to stump up a sum to buy train tickets as it is part of our
research (she has barefaced cheek at times). It is not part of our research at
all! We will get reimbursed after the trip. Laura is going to come to.
Apparently this Gallic crook had booked the train tickets about six weeks ago
and got a mega deal on a return fare to London and back. We leave at around
7.45am and catch the 5.30ish train back. I asked her what we were going to see
and she said “Veronese!”
It just goes to show that you talk about wanting more travel
and, hey presto, in Victoria Maia Elizabeth’s world the fairy godmother grants
your wishes! I have read about Veronese and seen several of his works in books
but never at an exhibition. The gallery has about 50 works on show. I hope they
have the Feast at the House of Levi on display as this is what first attracted
me to the artist. He originally called this piece the Last Supper but the
Inquisition heard about it and when they came to see the piece they objected
strongly to some of Veronese’s little quirky touches. They ordered him to
remove these quirks or face the consequences. Paulo refused and simply renamed
the work Feast at the House of Levi instead. Thus avoiding trouble with the
Inquisition and avoiding having to alter his work too. It was this bloody
mindedness in the face of religion which naturally made me want to find out
more about him.
We were full of our jaunt to London at lunchtime and may
have made poor Mandy feel pushed out a bit. She is doing fine and thinks she is
on course for another 2.1 so that can’t be bad. It is down to her, of course, I
can only offer and suggest things to her. If she decided to take the advice or
not, that’s up to her. It is hard to reconcile this confident and determined
young woman with the homesick waif I met way back in October. For that change I
may take a little of the praise I feel.
I called Mum from work and she is going to look after Callie
for the day as we will be leaving very early and getting back quite late. To
that end, I snuck out early this afternoon and fetched the puppy; then when
Laura had finished we drove down to Holmesfield so we could have tea with Mum
and leave the dog. She is quite happy to be left with Mum (or Dad or Julie for
that matter) she was abandoned by me at about 3 years old when I fled to
Australia for a year. She quite happily lived with Dad and his three all that
time. I just didn’t want to leave her for over 12 hours by herself; she may end
up getting distressed by that.
I have promised to take us all to a brilliant eaterie in
London which is quite close to Trafalgar Square but which isn’t used much by
tourists!
I drove Laura to Dominic’s straight from Mum’s and had a
spookily quiet night at home without the pup. It is amazing how much you miss
her when she isn’t there! We had a shared shower when Laura got back and a
night straight into bed without a dog walk, which felt very strange!
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