Sunday, April 03, 2011

Working backwards through the catalogue of disasters that make up my life

Not blogged since last Monday! That must be a record for when I'm not on holiday. Where to begin? At the end and working back I think.

Mother's Day. Another record: I actually have three cards! And all on Mother's Day not two days later. Plus two phone calls, flowers and Maltesers, and Younger Son is cooking me dinner tonight. What a lucky mummy I am.

Husband, meanwhile, is in Derby visiting his mother and cooking dinner for her. She is getting weaker and has nurses in to help her get up and go to bed as well as in between sometimes too. I didn't go with him because I was in prison this morning taking the service.

The first thing the chaplain said when we got in there was, 'It's Mother's day; you will be tactful, won't you? Some of these men have bad experiences of mothers.'
The next thing he said was, 'One of the men who'll be in the service buried his mother on Friday.'
Oh goody. While we sang Morning has Broken I stressed over whether there was anything that could be upsetting. And then I stood up and talked about Homer Simpson's dead mother. Sometimes I just need a brain transplant.

I knew the man who'd lost his mother and I spoke to him at the end. He was remarkably good and while I was talking to him several of the younger men in the 'congregation' came over, shook my hand and said, 'Thank you, miss,' so I was touched by that and think it went okay.

Then I popped over to the library and, after choosing my book, spent five minutes wandering around the car park looking for a red mini before I remembered I was in the white porsche.

Saturday
It was a close thing but I could have ended up in prison myself this morning.

I was shopping in town and every time I walked out of a shop I set the alarms off. I even set them off going in one or two. Fortunately nobody paid any attention but I had this vision of walking out and suddenly feeling that heavy hand on my shoulder and hearing a deep voice saying, 'Excuse me, madam would you come with me, please?'

I'd have died! Or at very least wet myself.

It got to the point when I couldn't face going in any more shops and taking the risk so I went home.

Friday
Sometimes I do things so stupid they make my ordinary everyday stupidity look like sheer genius. You may recall that I am in a long-running - since last September - battle
with PayPal over some money that was donated to Linden church for Mutende Children's Home in Zambia. This week I've been accusing them of having not only the £200 odd in one account but £1,000 in another. Then they pointed out to me that I had transferred the £1,000 to my own account back in October. Oh plop, plop, plop, plop!

Thursday
We went singing in Tiverton library, GrandDaughter and me. That is to say GrandDaughter sat in the middle of the circle studying the other children while I threw myself into being a flippy floppy scarecrow with dingle dangle legs. The little boy sitting next to me was transfixed: he couldn't take his eyes off me.

Wednesday
We took a stroll down the Devon lanes and paid a call on Pinky and Perky (my names). They are very friendly and rush over to have their backs skritched when they see you. I must remember to take an apple or something nice for them next time.

4 comments:

Leslie: said...

A man in prison called you "Miss?" Wow! I'm going there! ;D

Busy week you had...

Liz Hinds said...

They always call me Miss, leslie!

Katney said...

Some of the kids at church call me "Miss". Some call me by my first name. Few of them can remember my last name for some reason. I tell them they can call me anything as long as they do it respectfully.

(I'm not equating church with prison--really.)

Rose said...

This sounds like a very busy week to me, Liz! By the way, I had the same problem going into a shop last winter, setting off the alarm even when I walked in--it turned out there was a security chip inside my new winter coat that the salesperson forgot to de-activate when I bought it. You might check the seams of whatever you were wearing that day.