Teeth breaking

Unlike Pam Ayres who wishes she´d looked after her teeth, I have looked after mine with brushing and flossing and regular check-ups despite an irrational but very real fear of dentists. Whenever I have an appointment I start getting the heebie-jeebies days beforehand.

Apart from a couple of crowns and caps I still have all my teeth which I believe is not bad for someone of 76. So it is most unfair that I´m suddenly having loads of trouble. In February I broke a bit off a tooth and had to go to the dentist. In April the same thing happened to another tooth. A couple of weeks ago, bingo, another one - and before I had even got around to booking an appointment to get that seen to, yet another one. I have not started chewing rocks so I assume it is part of getting old, but it is still not fair...apart from the stress levels my bank balance is taking a bashing. Coincidentally one of Toby´s teeth dropped out the other day, I found it by his cushion. Old age sucks!

Cyclamen

My cyclamen continues to amaze me. I have had it for nearly a year now and it has never stopped flowering. I bought it very cheaply at the supermarket when they were discounting old stock. It had loads of leaves, four flowers and a couple of buds so I reckoned it would last for a few weeks, as they usually do. 

As the flowers died off more buds kept appearing so it always had three or flowers at a time. After a few months about half of the leaves started yellowing, so I imagined the flowering was over and it was going dormant. I cut of the yellow leaves and expected the rest to follow. Instead it kept flowering! The number of buds slowly increased until now there are about sixteen flowers at any one time!

I am delighted, of course, but somewhat mystified. I have never fed it or done anything other than keep it out of direct sunlight and sit the pot in a bowl of water for twenty minutes every four days. Maybe the current mass of flowers is it´s last hurrah...

Veiled skyscrapers

View from my kitchen window. It is a little difficult to see but the three skyscrapers are covered from top to bottom in some sort of netting, which appeared overnight. I´m sure it is not an artwork but probably something to do with cleaning or building work. Since the buildings are 30 or more stories high I can only imagine the length of the fabric and the difficulty of hanging it in place, especially if it were windy. I wish I´d seen it and had my binoculars to hand!

Dead giveaway

 

There appears to be a current trend for American authors to write books set in the UK, such as Agatha Christie-style mysteries or Regency novels. Some of these books have glaring mistakes which are a dead giveaway of the lack of even basic research into English customs, language and places etc., but some of them are very well written and it is hard to tell the writer is not from the UK.

There is one word, however, which always gives the game away. In England when you are eating you take a mouthful, spoonful or forkful of food whereas in America it is a bite of food, even when no actual biting is involved, such as in the case of scrambled eggs etc. It is only a minor difference and I guess most people wouldn´t notice it, but that is how my mind works (lol). Maybe I should have been a detective?

Photo by James Giddins on Unsplash

Childhood sounds

Today I heard a trilling sound from the street below which I recognized instantly and which took me right back to my childhood - shades of Proust´s madelaine!

The sound is made on some sort of whistle and is the call sign of a knife grinder. It must be over 60 years since I last heard it and I was amazed when I rushed to the the window to see that it was indeed a knife sharpener down on the street touting his services.

They use a disc-shaped whetstone attached to a modified bicycle contraption which they wheel from place to place. When they spin the pedals the whetstone turns. I remember standing in the street gazing in awe at the sparks which flew everywhere.

He didn´t seem to be getting any business today but I had a nostalgic trip down memory lane as his trilling faded away into the distance.

Matchmaking

I´m not really a fan of reality shows but I must admit there have been a couple of series on matchmaking on Netflix that I have found quite watchable. One is set in the Indian community and the other in the Jewish community.

What I find interesting are the insights the programmes give into different cultures and attitudes. We may think we are pretty well informed regarding other cultures but these shows have given me a new perspective.

 I know people are monitoring their behaviour and conversation when on camera, so there is a certain artificiality about it all, but even so they are worth watching. One thing that amuses me, though, is the excessive amount of make-up worn by the prospective brides, especially in America. False eyelashes, some really long, appear to be 'de rigueur' for any and all appearances. It amuses me to think what a chap makes of the clean natural face he will wake up to in the morning!

Photo by Lashes Vendor on Unsplash
 

Tempus fugit...as I´ve said before

I don´t know where the time goes, as they say! Last week was exceptionally busy and complicated what with one thing and another, including my computer crashing for a day, and the weekend was no better.

Of course, I watched the coronation, waking up at 6am to do so, and thoroughly enjoyed it, then I went to a granddaughter´s first communion, followed by a family dinner. Sunday there was a family lunch to celebrate FOUR birthdays this month - my daughter and three grandchildren. There must have been nearly twenty of us in the restaurant sat at a very long table while the waiting staff dashed about.

Thank goodness things are a bit quieter this week although it is Mothers Day here this coming Sunday.

With regard to the coronation it was admirable how smoothly and beautifully everything went and I must say that I found aspects of it quite moving. Thank goodness for the internet which enabled me to watch the entire ceremony live from so many miles away on another continent. And well done Penny Mordaunt!

Income tax

I spent Labour Day doing my income tax, which I think was rather approporiate. I have been putting off doing it for a couple of months but with the deadline approaching I thought I´d better bite the bullet.

My declaration is pretty straightforward yet I always get very anxious about doing it, mainly because I don´t want to make any mistakes. Years ago my father in error paid a few hundred pound more in tax than he should have and it took nineteen years to get a refund - he´d actually died before the payment was made - hence my concern.

The difficulty as far as I´m concerned is trying to understand the financial jargon so that I enter the right figures in the correct place. Anyway, it is done now and sent off, so fingers crossed!