Builders Old and New

The mysteries of Ancient Egypt were not part of the conversation over the last two days, but the mysteries of life and death certainly were. While pharaohs built pyramids to ensure the preservation of their physical remains, Mum’s had a ground-floor bathroom and bedroom built to ensure that she will be able to remain in her own house should ill-health strike. She’s 81 and increasingly frail, and worried about any challenges which her future may hold.

During the building process, the entire house had swiftly disappeared under a thick veil of gritty grey dust. Mum had already cleaned some of it but was nervous of lifting things off high shelves as she has vertigo. So yesterday my sister Evelyn and I shoed her off to her beloved Ladies Club (so she couldn’t keep “helping”!!) while we blitzed the kitchen.

Every single item of kitchenware - plates, cups, casserole dishes, pans, glassware etc. - needed lifting off shelves and out of cupboards, washing, drying - and also the shelf or cupboard they had come from needed cleaning - and then putting back again. We must have gone through a dozen tea-towels and at least half a bottle of detergent. We lifted the sideboard from the garage, where it had been temporarily stored, cleaned that and put that in the bedroom. Then we unwrapped two large boxes containing Mum’s teapot collection, washed and dried all those and displayed them on the top shelf.

And, of course, meanwhile we had three tea breaks, including one with an elderly neighbour who’s known the family for close on forty years, and who called in to say hello.

Evelyn and I had time to share our mutual experiences of Dad popping back to visit. (He died three years ago, but we’ve both seen him since. In fact I’ve seen him three times now.)

No dish or ornamental kitchen item is in its original place, and I’m sure Mum would have put some things back differently, but that can’t be helped. When she returned home, her face lit up. She couldn’t stop walking around looking at everything.

Evelyn kindly took us out to dinner at the Toby Carvery at Lane Head, and that was very good - traditional roast dinner with vegetables and a dessert. Evelyn and I were ready for a rest (and a re-fuel) by then anyway!

Comments

A Cure for Aging?

"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time. This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood. In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body. But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself. Folklore and myt...

Remembering Richie Tattoo Artist's Studio

Richard in the street entrance to his tattoo studio in Liverpool. The vertical sign next to Richard is now in the Liverpool Tattoo Museum. Yesterday, my sister Evelyn, Richard and myself stood outside Richard's old tattoo studio and looked up at the few remaining signs, whose paint has now mostly flacked away to reveal bare wood. On the studio's window are stick-on letters which read, "Art", where once it boldly announced his presence as the city's only "Tattoo Artist". I can remember him buying that simple plastic lettering from an old-fashioned printer's shop. This was in 1993, not long after he'd opened the studio and before he could afford better signs. After he'd patiently stuck them onto the glass we realised that from the outside the sign read "Artist Tattoo", so we had to carefully peel the letters off the window and have another go, laughing over having made such an obvious error yet worried in case we spoiled the letteri...

Falling Trees and Blue Portraits

Birkenhead Park Visitor Centre, 7th April 2019, by Adele Cosgrove-Bray. My ongoing series of sketches in the park continues unabated, as is evident. On a few recent sketches I've added some simple washes of watercolour to bring another dimension to the scenes. I've long grown accustomed to sketching in public, and the few people who've passed any comment have always been encouraging. I've even unintentionally captured a tiny bit of park history:- I drew this lovely arching tree in February this year, and since then its own weight has pulled its roots out from the ground. Probably due to safety concerns, it has been brutally cut back so it's now little more than a stump, and the horizontal section, with all its vertical branches, has been removed. Hopefully the tree will survive this harsh treatment. "How can walkies please, when every step's a wheeze?" by Adele Cosgrove-Bray. Portrait by Adele Cosgrove-Bray; chalk and charcoal...

Search This Blog