Yellow!

     Many, many moons ago (about 1994/95!) I went to a church ladies’ meeting in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. I’m not a fan of ladies meetings, so the ones I do go to tend to be memorable for some reason or other!  At this one they had someone from the Colour Me Beautiful camp and we heard all about the Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn colours and according to our skin tone, which colour category we fall into, to help us choose the right colours to wear, both in clothes and make-up, to look and feel our best.  I think they’ve changed their own image a bit since then and the Winter, Summer, Spring & Autumn categories seem to have changed to soft, warm, light, deep, etc.

     After that meeting I decided that I was perhaps a Winter person; I could wear pure white and pure black and the pinky palette, but the yellow palette didn’t suit me an so I stuck to that over the years. I don't remember ever wearing anything bright yellow! However as we get older, we may change!

     Today I went to another church ladies’ meeting – the 2013 Women’s World Day of Prayer – and I was asked to take part.  My part was highlighted in yellow in the programme as “Woman 6 – wearing a lemon yellow scarf.” The scarves were provided by the local organisers and my scarf was a bright yellow! But a beautiful bright Yellow!

     The Women’s World Day of Prayer is put together by a different country each year, and this year was France’s turn. The French organisers asked that six women wear different coloured scarves, symbolically representing the diversity of backgrounds of those taking part in the service.  The other colours were garnet red, vermillion red, orange, apricot, and yellow-ochre. Most of the scarves our ladies wore were a very muted red and orange palette. And then there was yellow!!  

     At tea after the meeting everyone commented on the beautiful yellow and I most certainly had warmed to ‘my’ scarf and was dreading having to give it back, even though it was yellow, and bright yellow at that!  Fortunately we were given the opportunity of paying a very nominal amount to keep it and I walked home feeling very sunshiney, on a cold winter’s day!  The ladies suggested it represented the sunflowers which had formed part of the French display!

     That Yellow Scarf made me smile. It made me feel light and happy! It joins my grey silvery scarf, my deep pinky-red patterned scarf, my white woollen scarf, my pink woolly scarf and my black and grey scarf. It probably feels quite conspicuous! But I like my Yellow Scarf! Who knows what colour my next clothes purchase will be!!

 (Err, no, I don't consciously collect scarves, but it is nice to have a choice!)

I don't like London!

       It’s about six months since I last set foot in London, and that was in the middle of a Saturday morning chanting, singing football crowd on a tightly packed underground tube station platform, with an overlarge suitcase, heading westward! I don't like London!

     This sunny, cold, drizzly February trip was to join with a North London church for a special celebratory service. Traveling by car.

 Step 1 – Preparation: Take one afternoon to carefully scrutinise Google Earth to find a parking space near church building. Take one evening on Google Earth Street View to find how to get in to that particular parking area.

Step 2 – Set up sat-nav in friend’s car and assure them that the frequent ‘hoot’ sound is simply a warning that there are speed cameras in the vicinity, not that they are speeding! Explain that when the numbers in the bottom right hand corner of the sat-nav screen turn red, they are speeding! Explain that the right turn should be taken in 800yards, not 5 yards ahead! As the sat-nav lady says!

Step 3 – In the milieu that’s North London on a Saturday afternoon, turn left where it says ‘Parking’ even if it’s not the Parking area you’d spent an afternoon and evening plotting.

Step 4 – Having found an empty parking bay, carefully note, mentally, which level (Level 3 overflow parking), and name of parking area, as it’s not the one you found on Google Earth!

Step 5 – Set up ‘carfinder’ app on smartphone.

Step 6 – Find way out of Shopping Mall below Car Parking area, through narrow passage and heavy industrial type door.

Step 7 – After walking 5 minutes through jostling, noisy shoppers, decide we’re going the wrong way. Turn around.

Step 8 – Rush a little as we’re now going to be late for the 3pm meeting we thought we’d left forty minutes spare to get to. Blame it on London traffic!

Step 9 – Be duly alarmed and concerned as kind driver-friend trips over uneven pavement surface and falls flat on face – (All OK, no bones broken and no blood!)

Step 10 – Ask three people what street we’re in and get a blank stare from all three and a foreign sounding “I don’t know” from one of them, shrugs from the others.

Step 11 – Suggest to male companion that we ask a ‘copper’ (policeman) walking past at that moment, for directions. Response from said male companion, “Nah!”

Step 12 – Decide 2^nd road right must be Alexander Road. Get halfway down and check with red-haired English looking lady wearing a sleeveless T-shirt – it’s 2°C, but she is English speaking and we’re on the right road!

Step 13 – Find church venue but from outside it looks deserted, with 3 minutes before 3pm – Did it start at 2.30pm? or 2pm?!!

Step 14 – Church meeting running to ‘African Time’ so plenty of time to find a loo, greet friends and breathe, before heartily joining in singing praises to God!

Step 15 – Feel safe inside church building and forget that London is outside!! Just for a couple of hours!!

Step 16 – Home-time – Retrace steps to Main Road. Ask English looking man standing outside West Mall Entrance where East Car Park Entrance is. Forget to use carfinder app on smartphone. (Male Alternative: Don’t need to use carfinder app on smartphone!)

Step 17 – Discover Parking Pay Point in the Mall won’t accept perfectly legitimate £5 note. Scrabble in wallets & purses for coins. (£3 for 3-5 hours parking – that’s pretty good for London isn’t it?!)

Step 18 – While looking for coins, put the Apple Pie kindly given by church people ‘for the road’ (padkos, for South Africans!) on top of Pay Point.

Step 19 – Get three-quarter way to car after squashing in crowded lift and nearly walking wrong way towards car, then discover said Apple Pie has been left behind on Pay Station! (Sorry Alastair!)

Step 20 – Keep head down in back seat of car texting daughter, trying not to see big red London bus nearly take front fender off car, and trying not to hear hooting or see cars attemptin to make star shapes across traffic light intersection. Other cars, of course, ignoring traffic lights and hooting because other Other Cars are ignoring traffic lights!

Step 21 – Close eyes.  Let driver, sat-nav and front passenger get us safely out of London. Sleep. Anything to avoid seeing chaos on London roads!

Step 22 – A12. Yay! Familiar ground! Relatively quiet motorway - well, not quiet, but by London standards.....

Step 23 – Home. Sorry about the Apple Pie. Again!

Whew! London is not my favourite place to get to. 

Or be walking in. 

Or driving in.

 
Next time the wind sends me that country piggy smell, I promise not to complain!

Sorry about the Apple Pie! Again!

Are empty High Streets the future?!!

    As more High Street shops and chains close down, due, as they claim, to online shopping habits, what does the future really look like?

     Experiments were done many years back where someone was moved into an empty house and had to survive without moving out of the door. It's possible of course. We buy our groceries online and have them delivered. Furniture is bought online and delivered, either flatpack or otherwise! Clothes and shoes are bought online. Technology - computers, phones, TV's, etc are carefully researched and then bought online. In fact everything can be bought online - except maybe a cup of coffee!

    So will the High Streets be devoid of shops? We won't need a physical M&S for either food or clothes. We won't need the supermarkets. We send e-cards so don't need Hallmark, Paperchase, Clintons, Cardies etc. We do still want to go out to have a coffee & carrot cake or light lunch, but usually while out 'shopping', not a special trip. What about Charity Shops? They're the kind of place we pop into while 'in town', how would they be able to survive without other shops around?

    For about three years I worked in South West London and lunch times were spent walking up and down Putney High Street - rather quickly I must admit, it wasn't my favourite past-time! So I have just gone down that street again, via Google maps - see, don't even have to go there! - to refresh my memory of those High Street shops:
   > Estate Agents - with Primelocation.co.uk or Zoopla.co.uk or Rightmove.co.uk, one doesn't even need a High Street office. See the property online, book a viewing, meet at the house!
   > Banks - when was the last time you went into a bank!? 
   > Hairdresser - ah, now there's one you can't do online!!
   > Paddy Power / Ladbrookes - online, even the Lottery can be played online.
   > Currys/PC World - all online.
   > Specsavers/Vision Express - they would probably be relocated to medical centres or hospitals, as would dentists.
   > Poundland - Ebay, Amazon, Freecycle, Gumtree, all just as cheap!
   > Even bicycles can be researched online and delivered to your door!
   > Blockbuster videos - with HMV just having gone under (CD's etc), I wonder if DVD shops will be next? 
   > Jessops, the camera shop, are also a recent casualty. 
   > Robert Dyas - although hardware and builders' merchants will probably last longer than most High Street shops, again one can buy all these things online and anyway the huge warehouse type places for builders are not usually on the High Street.
   > Employment Agencies like Brook Street, Reeds - we have Monster Jobs and the suchlike.
   > Flight Centre - book flights online and utilise the freely distributed airmiles!

    Is the future society going to be an isolated one with everyone huddled in front of their computers - in whatever form they may take? Are the streets going to be empty?!

I think it's time to support all those lone voices pleading for us to support the local traders! But perhaps the local traders should try and entice us by giving us as good a deal price-wise as we get online! Which means perhaps buying online should not be so attractive? And business taxes, rents and other overheads not be so exorbitant!?

It's not as simple as it sounds after all!  But we should all be at least a little more concerned and make a little more effort not to shop online, if at all possible, don't you think so?!!!

Tea!

 

     On Monday I invited a few ladies around for tea. The drinking kind not the English eating kind! Tea in a cup not something that isn’t tea, on a plate!!  I’m not an avid tea drinker. I think I prefer coffee but nowhere near anything resembling a connoisseur of either. Monday evening was to be a TasTEA evening! Sorry about the pun, bit cheesy – so maybe it was English tea after all!!

     As I said I don’t drink much tea and I find ‘normal’ tea, i.e. not herbal or fruity teas, quite strong and they leave a really ugly stain in some cups and mugs. But I have got into a habit of having a cup of Rooibos tea with breakfast in the mornings. Rooibos, pronounced Roy, as in the man’s name, and Boss, the guy you make coffee for, with the accent on Roy, is a South African tea which when directly translated means Red Bush. And just in case you think you can pronounce it any which way you want because you don’t care, please just have some respect for a different culture, country, language and spelling – sorry that was a reactionary comment to a totally different situation that cropped up this week! It’s Rooibos – Royboss!

     Anyway as I was saying, again, I have a cup of Rooibos with breakfast in the morning, no milk, no sugar. It’s caffeine free, a low tannin content, rich in polyphenol antioxidants, contains no colourants, additives or preservatives and no calories!! My father used to think it smelt awful, but it didn’t take long before it was the only tea he would drink and he too preferred it without milk. It’s quite acceptable to drink it with milk and sugar of course!

     But to get back to the TasTEA evening! The idea was to taste teas! And in particular a tea perhaps the ladies hadn’t tasted before. The evening was also billed as being on a shoestring so I didn’t go and buy up every un-tea sounding tea on the supermarket shelf, but settled on a few herbal, a few fruity and then found the Twinings Selection boxes.  I think most of the ladies tried something reasonably new but I don’t think they went all out! Most of them knew of, and had at some time had Chamomile – the ‘sleepy’ tea, and some of them tried Camomile & Spiced Apple “a moment of calm”. I don’t think anyone touched the Peppermint tea, which is apparently good for muscle & joint pains, soothes indigestion, helps cure hiccups, helps stop diarrhoea, eases IBS, relieves morning sickness, and is an anti-spasmodic for constipation – but please see your doctor etc. etc. In fact Chamomile (or camomile, apparently the spelling with the ‘h’ “more accurately corresponds to the ultimate Latin and Greek source”- Wikipedia) and Peppermint seemed to be the panaceas for most ailments, as we ladies discovered while doing a Tea Quiz! And I think the red box of Pomegranate Tea was quite understandably ignored!

     It was nice to have the Twinings Selection boxes with Blackberry & Nettle, Cranberry Raspberry &  Elderflower, Pomegranate & Raspberry, Blackcurrant Ginseng & Vanilla (surprisingly very nice!) and Cranberry & Sanguinello Orange in the Fruit & Herbal Selection. The Green Tea selection had Apple & Pear (not that enthralling at all!), Cranberry (I don’t like anything with Cranberry!), Mango & Lychee, Pineapple & Grapefruit, and Orange & Lotus Flower.

    

 Anyway we had a nice time together, some of us with our dainty cups of pure tea, no milk and some of us with our comforting mugs and the teabag string hanging out!

     We ended the evening quite relaxed – tea does that to you – and with a challenge. Did you mother ever tell you, or have you ever said to your children, “How do you know you don’t like it if you haven’t even tasted it!” Some people do that with Christianity. They say they don’t think ‘church’ is for them, but they haven’t ‘tried’ it! There’s a verse in Psalm 34 verse 8 that reads: “Taste and see that God is good!” It’s not going to cost you anything, taste!

     And now I can either save these teas for another ladies’ get together, or taste some more flavours myself!  I think I might, maybe try a Blackberry & Nettle………???

P.S. Twinings offer free samples! 

P.P.S. Nah! the Blackberry & Nettle is a little too fruity for me!! :)

Family History treasure for Christmas 2012!

When she was 20!

When he was 3!

     Well Christmas 2012 was definitely different! It was the first Christmas we, as parents had woken up on Christmas morning with no children!  For many years our children woke us up, as most kids do, at some ridiculous time in the morning wanting to open presents, (although they’ll say that for more years Daddy was the one who woke them up on Christmas morning!!)  But with children all grown up and living far away, it was just the two of us - for a while!

     Apart from the Cereal-Bar-Christmas Lunch, my family history hobby brought a few gifts as well! 

There is a ‘French Lady’ in the Kelland family’s past (1824-1886) and other researchers also appear to have struggled to find out her past; all we knew was what was recorded on her marriage certificate - that her father was ‘a French Army officer’. 

     When I by chance found a forum message mentioning the French surname, I was given a most surprising gift as a fellow researcher shared his information on our common ancestor. 

     It revealed a story of fleeing from the French Revolution, then abandoning children in Devon and returning across the channel; 

orphaned children under five years old put in a workhouse; and cross-continental family feuds. Someone was remembered in a letter for their music & painting lessons. I heard of a great great uncle, a sea captain, who sailed emigrants to Australia and decided to stayed there; and another great great uncle who was shipwrecked, when no-one survived and no evidence of the ship was ever found. I discovered a 2^nd wife for great great grandfather when he remarried at 70 years old! Relatives of a great uncle, living in South Africa with information on grandfather Kelland shared the stories that had been passed down to them. On the Crossley family side via another forum message, another far-back cousin’s story came my way with some of his trials and tribulations when he settled in America and helped some of his family settle too.

     All in all, some surprising and interesting treasures which add colour to names and dates!

(Pics 3,4,5 from google!)