Here's a theme you're bound to like. If not, I offer a full refund guarantee. Of course, as it didn't cost you anything, your refund will comprise of nothing, but it's the thought that counts.
Wednesday, 13 July 2016
RUEFUL REPOST: THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE?
There's a time in every young person's life when they assume, without ever really thinking about it, that they're not only invincible but also immortal. Usually it's around the teenage years and early 20s when we labour under this delusion, and I have to confess that I was no exception. When we're young, we think we're going to be young forever, and old age and death seem so distant as to be unimaginable. Then one day we wake up and realise that, not only are we 'over the hill', we're also actually halfway down the other side and somebody has cut the brakes. What's more, we don't even recall getting to the top of that hill to begin with. Shouldn't we at least remember the view?
When we're young the world is ours for the taking, and everything seems geared towards us and runs in perfect synchronicity with the pace of our lives. Then, one day, it dawns on us that we're no longer participants in life's race, but merely observers, sitting on the sidelines, watching younger people revelling in a world that appears to have been created exclusively for them. How one can be relegated to the benches without being aware of when it happened is a bit of a mystery, but trust me, that's the way things go.
Now, believe me when I say that I'm not the kind of person who revels in anyone's death, but I sometimes wonder if younger people's untimely expiration is Nature's way of reassuring us 'oldies' that being young isn't necessarily an indication of being accorded favoured status, and that, young or old, we're all equally subject to termination at short (or even no) notice. If being 20 is no guarantee we'll reach 50, then perhaps 50-year-olds shouldn't feel so threatened by the passage of time as they do. Life's a lottery and our numbers can come up at any moment. Not quite a 'lucky dip' - but you get the point, I'm sure.
I feel that I should somehow find the above notion reassuring, but for some reason I remain unconvinced. How about you?
******
Harvest Gate
I lingered by a gate a little while
and watched some children play in fields of green.
Their joyous voices gave me cause to smile
and filled my troubled soul with thoughts serene.
If only I could once again be young
and join them in their happy escapades,
then all my years would be a song well-sung
and I could claim I've lived my life in spades.
But as I leave the gate, my mood turns low,
the chills of age envelop my frail frame.
I know I haven't very long to go
'til he who wields the sickle calls my name.
But I have lived and loved, both lost and won
and now the course of my life's race is run.
BABE Of The DAY - BARBARA MULLEN...
Who remembers BARBARA
MULLEN who played housekeeper
JANET in Dr. FINLAY's CASEBOOK
back in the 1960s? "But Janet was an old
woman!" I hear you all cry. True, but she
wasn't always old, and was quite a 'Babe'
in your father's day. (No, Crivvies - it
definitely isn't April 1st.)
BITCHIN' 'BOUT THE KITCHEN...
When I was a kid, kitchens had their own sort of 'feel' to them. What's more, all of the kitchens in all (well, almost all) of the houses I lived in had exactly the same ambience. There were two porcelain sinks side-by-side, one bigger and deeper than the other, in order to accommodate washing. Not washing dishes - washing as in laundry. I'm ancient, remember, and most of the houses I've lived in were built before washing machines were a common appliance in most domiciles.
There was also often a larder or pantry for storing food, as well as cupboards and drawers and all the usual trappings of a kitchen. Every house I ever inhabited but one (built in the early 1980s) also had a clothes-airer attached to the kitchen ceiling for hanging laundry to dry, which was lowered and raised by a cord and pulley system. When I flitted from one house to another, the kitchen always had the same 'feel' about it; the same 'mood', the same ambience.
The first kitchen of ours to have a stainless steel sink was in a new-built house we moved into in 1983. This was also the first kitchen to have a slightly different feel to it than previous ones, on account of having up-to-date (for the time) cupboards and work-tops, instead of the 1950s and '60s style ones we were accustomed to. It also had a dining area within the kitchen rather than in the living-room. It was also the first one without a clothes-airer on the ceiling.
Today, in my present house, the kitchen is relatively modern and doesn't have that same feeling as of old, on account of not having the same fittings it did when I and my family first lived here in the '70s. (We lived in the same house twice, with a gap of just over four years in between.) I don't know about anyone else, but I really miss that old atmosphere that kitchens had when I was younger. Everything nowadays is too spick-and-span and high-tech, and looks like the sort of kitchen JAMES BOND would have.
Tell you one thing for sure: the first time I see one of those overhead clothes-airers anywhere, I'm nabbing it for my kitchen, just to try and restore part of that familiar feeling of old which I miss so much. What about the rest of you? Any other Criv-ites feel the same?
******
Update: Managed to get a clothes airer in HOME BARGAINS a little while ago, but haven't found time to fit it yet. Won't be too much longer hopefully.
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