38. Ding dong the bells are gonna chime…
Thirty years ago yesterday, I woke with the stone cold certainty that we were doing the wrong thing. It had become crystal clear to me overnight that we had made a mistake.
“We can’t do this,” I told ActorLaddie. “We’ll have to cancel.”
34. Turn and face the strain
When YoungLochinvar were nought but a nipper, our fridge stopped working. We ordered a replacement but the infant YL was distraught. “I liked the old fridge,” he wailed. In vain we explained that we also liked the old fridge in every respect apart from its inability to keep things cold. YL reproached us for our failure to keep faith with the white goods. He always did have an advanced vocabulary. Thus started Old Fridge Syndrome. More than a quarter of a century later it would be, of course, inappropriate and embarrassing of us to remind YoungLochinvar of O.F.S. every time he faces a major life change. So, naturally, we do. What else are parents for? Continue reading →
30. Riddikulus!
“I’m sorry to hear about your op,” I said to FriendlyColleague as we were hanging out by the Risograph last week. We don’t run to a water-cooler at our school, so gossip is accompanied by the sweet smell of duplicating ink.
29. You’ll have had your tea
In the summer, ActorLaddie would pile GrannieBorders into the car with her wheelchairs, the world’s tartan-blanket mountain and a bottle of lemonade.
28. And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make…
Grannie and Grandad Borders, ActorLaddie and OlderBrother
The post I started writing yesterday morning featured some rather jolly anecdotes about mobile phones. But those will have to wait for another day.
27. And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye…
“Tough as old boots,” texted back YoungLochinvar. “Must be the porridge.” And indeed, the Borders produces a pretty hardy kind of bairn, if his Gran is anything to go by.
26. To every thing there is a season
In March ’74 my best-mate-at-school took me along to the Youth Theatre. She’d joined a couple of months previously and had already given the world her Elderly Clerk. Later that summer, she and I would sweep the boards with our masterful First and Second Attendants to the Lady Olivia. But such delights were but pipe-dreams as I followed her into the rented school-hall that Friday evening.
24. Not even for ready money…
“So where is this market then?”
Pa’s enthusiasm for souvenir shopping has never been a patch on that of the girls – even less so under the blazing Spanish sun. I wasn’t actually there, you understand – this was all reported to me later, but I’m imagining an attractive little town: flamenco dancers on the corner, castanet players frolicking on the lawn, El Nombre and his mates having a kick-about; that sort of thing. The bus had left them in what might have passed for a market square had it not been worryingly uncluttered by markets.
23. Stately as a galleon
“I’ll get it.” ActorLaddie dons dressing gown and slippers and shimmers off in search of the phone. Bally handset’s gone missing again. Has anyone ever thought of attaching it to the base by an extendable cord? Could be a winner, I think. Must mention it to ActorLaddie when he comes back. Show him that it’s not just fish-eaters who have brains.
21. In the middle of our street, our house…
LittleSis and Bro-in-law had just moved into their new house when the phone went.
“I know you’re in,” said Ma. “I can see you moving.”
In case you’re thinking that I’m from a long line of mystics (I knew you were), perhaps I should explain that LittleSis’s new house backed onto Ma and Pa’s place. Ma could walk down her garden, across the alley, into LittleSis’s garden straight to the back door. She often did, in fact. As Bro-in-law said, having seen the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding “That is so my life.” We’re not actually Greek. But we do Family.
The Jelly Chronicles 