F4813

Female in early 40s In full-time employment, residing with partner in Catterick Village, North Yorkshire Saturday 2 June Dry, but cool and overcast. Awake around 6.30am as usual and enjoy a leisurely half hour in bed with a cup of tea, reading Jeanette Winterson’s excellent memoir Why be happy when you could be normal? Then throw on some clothes, brush my teeth and rub a flannel over my face before driving to the Royal Mail sorting office on the trading estate in Richmond to collect some parcels. En route I come across a cycle race in progress and the traffic lights set up at Catterick Bridge in preparation for the day’s horse racing. With a cynic’s satisfaction I cheerfully note that only a handful of houses in the local vicinity are “flying the flag”. On return I sit in front of the TV news with my breakfast, but turn off after only a few moments because of relentless broadcasting about preparations for the Jubilee celebrations - it seems that arrangements for just about any event have taken 3 years. I vaguely recall the Silver Jubilee celebrations of 1977, when I was 6 years old. Somewhere in the loft I still have a piece of school work I completed at that time; it includes pencil drawings of soldiers in red uniforms and bearskins and predictions about what I will be doing in 25 years time - these include being married to my friend D and being the proud owner of some Venetian blinds. The dalliance in my 20s, with the blinds but never D, was brief. My partner (C) prepares and cooks homemade beef burgers for lunch, after which we watch a quietly amiable film, El Baño del Papa, which I recorded earlier in the week. The story is based around the actual visit of Pope John Paul II to a poor rural community in Uruguay and the preparations and hopes of the people for the visit and their ensuing disappointments - in light of the Jubilee celebrations, clearly a TV scheduler with a sense of humour! C then disappears to the garage to service and clean our tandem whilst I make a gluten-free apple crumble and then relax with a bit more Jeanette Winterson. After tea C and I watch another film I have recently recorded, The Belles of St. Trinian’s. Mid-film we pause as my family phone – my sister, her husband and their 2 daughters are at my parents’ house in Surrey so I speak to all 5 of them, although it is so noisy at their end of the phone that conversation is difficult. My 10 year old niece tells me that tomorrow she and her sister will be going with my parents to a village Jubilee Party on Warlingham Green. My sister and her husband are off to the bright lights of Las Vegas. Later I play the piano to test out a new clip-on piano lamp I have just purchased since the eco-bulbs with which we light the house are so dim. Half an hour of playing folk songs – Salley Gardens, Rowan Tree, The Ash Grove, Greensleeves and a rousing Land of my Fathers – then C goes off to find a CD of Paul Robeson singing the latter accompanied by a Welsh male voice choir. This leads to an hour or so of C playing CDs – more deep and sonorous Paul Robeson followed by the contrasting counter-tenor of Andreas Scholl– whilst I gently doze on the sofa. Sunday 3 June Dry, gloomy and cool. Again awake around 6.30am and sit in bed with a cup of tea, C and Jeanette Winterson – I am rattling through her as I am enjoying her writing so much. The TV news is again swiftly turned off at breakfast as it is dominated by news of the preparations for today’s Jubilee pageant on the Thames. C and I sort our cluttered garage and load the car for items to go to the tip up the road. The Sunday market is on as usual and the first shoppers are already arriving at the racecourse – it draws people from far and wide, a pull I find (having once surveyed the goods on offer) somewhat inexplicable. We have a mid-morning cuppa and watch part of a documentary about Georges Méliès, a French early cinematographer. I then keep an eye on the ladder whilst C goes into the loft to put some inhibitor in the heating system and to check the mousetraps (empty) and then C goes out to hoover his car whilst I finish the Winterson memoir. Before he goes out, C puts on another audio cassette to transfer to digital file – he is working his way through our collection by a tape a day now cassette players are becoming all but obsolete. Bank holiday weekends offer an ideal opportunity to combine outstanding household chores with relaxation, on the basis that likely traffic jams mean there is no point in travelling anywhere far afield. Today we have an easy lunch – quick-cook rice with a lamb stew ready-meal and cold leftover crumble. We listen to an audio recording of George Eliot’s Silas Marner read by Andrew Sachs– a fine combination of one of my favourite novels with one of my favourite audio book readers. After lunch I hoover my car (a job long overdue), do some more tidying in the garage and run the hoover around the house. After tea, we watch more of the Méliès DVD and then I settle down on the sofa with The Observer, which is mercifully light on Jubilee news. C makes his weekly phone call to his mum in Lincoln – she is also avoiding the Jubilee and instead of her usual daytime TV viewing has watched back-to-back 4 episodes of Borgen, a Danish political drama which we have lent her on DVD. Clearly she is hooked. Later C and I start to watch District 9, an action-filled yet thoughtful Sci-Fi film, before my eyes start to droop and we go up to bed; the recorder catches the end for us. We are watching far more television this weekend than is good for anyone. Monday 4 June Sunny spells and a gentle breeze – lovely. Catterick Village Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations scheduled for today. The day starts with a cup of tea in bed with yesterday’s Observer and then C and I watch the end of District 9 over breakfast. After showering we do some gardening – weeding and hedge trimming – and then have a cup of tea, sitting on the bench to enjoy the garden in a more passive way. Washing up after lunch I spot a small blue butterfly in the garden, circling a potted potentilla. C and I go out for a closer look – it is a Holly Blue, a first for our garden. The fragile blue of its wings, the delicate stripes on its antennae and the soft yellow of the flowers paint a more entrancing picture than any Jubilee pageant. Once lunch has digested, C and I go out on the tandem – it is several months since its and our last outing so I am a little apprehensive but we manage 17 miles and on return I can still just about sit down. The weather is perfect for cycling – sunny (but not too hot) and calm; we pass curious red deer on the Hornby estate, a cricket match and game of quoits at Crakehall and the farmers’ market in Bedale. Crakehall is awash with Union flags, but somehow the bright weather and bucolic surroundings temper my default detractor setting and I find myself thinking it all looks rather jolly. On our return the Catterick Village Jubilee celebrations have moved from the relatively safe distance of Low Green (open air service, tree planting, family picnic, fancy dress competition) to the sports field closer to our home. The afternoon promises children’s races, bouncy castle and assault course, fast food and bar and a children’s disco followed by an adults’ disco. Pessimists by nature, C and I are apprehensive about the potential for noise and littering, but our fears are completely unfounded; the numbers attending are only middling, the disco music played at a very reasonable level and by the following morning all is cleared up and if anything more litter-free than usual. Tea in the garden and then a phone call from my sister who is in Las Vegas – please will I record for her the Jubilee concert organised by Gary Barlow; I hide my possibly unjustified contempt and acquiesce. The evening is cool so we resort to putting the heating on for half an hour –most unusual for June. I prepare dinner of lamb leg steaks, potatoes, carrots and broccoli, flavouring the lamb with sprigs of rosemary from the garden. I listen to the Ultimate Dirty Dancing CD I have just purchased to replace one of our old cassettes – for a brief moment jiggling around the kitchen, I feel like a teenager again: energised and confused all at the same time. After pottering around to do a few chores, we sit down to listen to a Radio 4 play we recorded some time ago, starring the comedian Jonny Vegas; it is ostensibly about a man showing some potential house buyers around his property, but as with most dramas explores deeper issues than those on the surface. And so to bed in my fleece dressing gown, burrowing under the lightweight duvet we decided to change to several weeks ago when the weather prematurely proclaimed summer had arrived. Tuesday 5 June Cloudy and cool, but still dry. After tea in bed then breakfast, C and I decide to take advantage of what forecasters suggest may be the last of any dry weather for several days and get the tandem out of the garage. After yesterday’s excursion I am feeling the pain in various parts of my nether regions and am not sure I will make it far – in such circumstances, however, there is no option but to try and ride through it with as much grimacing and ouching as I (if not C sitting immediately in front of me) feel is required. Each rumble strip and pot hole (and these are multiplying in austerity Britain) is punishing and after 5 miles I ask nicely if we might turn round and go home – C obliges. After lunch, we watch The Edge of the World, a short black and white film about the demise of communities on remote Scottish islands over the last 60 or so years. Then C and I check diaries to confirm our work movements with each other and to work out when we might try and fit in some family visits – it is difficult when working full-time to find adequate time to visit relatives who live some distance away. I then phone my parents to try and arrange a date for a visit in August, but my mother sounds unenthusiastic – “don’t worry about coming down if it’s difficult”. As often when I have spoken to my parents I feel as if I have let them down in some way (by not getting married, by not having children, by not living in Surrey, although not necessarily in that order). I make some gluten-free almond tarts and prepare dinner of chicken breasts filled with cheddar cheese and wrapped in bacon, potato gratin (ready-made for the oven) and petit-pois. Whilst C and I eat we listen to the final chapters of Silas Marner – where all (unlike so much of real life) ends well. After clearing up and sorting out piles of washing, we settle down to watch This is England, a film which resonates for both of us with memories of the 1980s (politics, music, fashions). Tomorrow work beckons……………