Mamalade

This would be a pleasant time of the year if it weren’t for all the nasty viruses around. I’ve had flu this week and my grandson Miles has been quite ill with a high fever and a rash. Frances took him to the doctor and was told he had Scarlet Fever.

Scarlet Fever! That’s what Beth had in “Little Women.” I hadn’t heard of it since, and I thought it had died out with the era.

At least we have antibiotics now, so it’s not the dreaded disease it used to be. Miles responded quickly to the treatment and is much better. I could hear him laughing and playing with Hayley when I phoned Frances today.

Hidden memories

It’s amazing how a simple incident can bring back a flood of memories.

Like the tea I made last week…

“Ugh!” Mum grimaced when she took a sip from her cup. “That’s shamrock tea!”

“What’s shamrock tea?” I had heard her use the term before, but hadn’t bothered to ask.

“You know, when the tea is so weak you can see the bottom of the cup. Remember, we used to have cups with a shamrock printed on the bottom. If we could see the shamrock through the tea, we called it shamrock tea.

All of a sudden, the memory came flashing back. Yes, I could see those cups in my mind - white, with a silver-grey stripe around the rim and a shamrock printed on the inside bottom! I must have been very small when my mother had those cups and I had forgotten all about them - or thought I had.

Whenever I think back over my life, most of the same old memories replay through my mind. I get such a thrill when someone unearths a hidden memory for me. It’s like adding another dimension to my life.

The same thing happened a couple of weeks ago, when someone showed my sister Relle and me a long slender emerald.

“It’s like the beads on Granma’s lightshade!” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” Relle sounded surprised at the sudden revelation. “I remember that light shade.”

The light shade was made of fine milky white porcelain - or was it parchment?- I’m not sure- with a wide band of pinkish grey containing a scene all around it. It was fringed all around with long thin emerald-green beads.

I was surprised that Relle remembered it, because she would have been very young when Granma replaced the old light in the dining room with a fluorescent tube. They were the new fashion. It was one of the first of its kind and had an eerie bluish tint.

It added beautiful lavender shades to my favourite blue dress. Other things didn’t look so good in the blue light. Butter, for instance, looked anaemic - but I still remember how it tasted. None of this modern margarine or canola modified butter for my grandparents.

I remember how Pop, my grandfather used to sit at one end of the table and Granma at the other.

Pop would point to the bread and clap his hands. Granma would pick up a slice and throw it to him. (It was probably for our entertainment when we were visiting.)

In Summer, Granma would sit at the table with a fly swatter, shooing away any flies that hovered over our meal. One day, she swatted a fly as it flew over dad’s tea-cup and it fell into his cup of tea!

“I was just about to drink that,” said Dad.

Granma always fussed around at mealtimes. One day, just as we were about to start dinner one day, Dad stood up.

“Sit down Harold,” said Granma. “I’ll get it!”

She bustled into the kitchen and started opening and slamming cupboard doors as she searched.

“You don’t even know what you are looking for,” called Pop.

“I only stood up to pull my chair in closer,” said Dad.

Granma had a gas stove and the kitchen always had a faint smell of gas. The stove always “popped” when it was lit.

“Granma’s gas stove goes pop!” I would chant when I was very small.

“No it doesn’t!” Pop would tease me. “It doesn’t “go” poor old Pop!”

They also used to have a wood stove. One day the chimney caught on fire. Granma rang the fire brigade and they arrived just as Pop was returning home from somewhere.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“We came to put out the fire,” he was told.

“There’s no fire here!” said Pop.

The firemen were about to leave when Granma rushed out and informed them there certainly was a fire and they’d better hurry up!

It was soon put out and the cleaning up began. Dad stood on a kitchen chair to pull down the remains of the sooty chimney. As he tried to step back down, he put his foot on the back of the chair by mistake and it tipped over. There was black water and soot all over the kitchen!

I suppose it after this incident that the wood stove was removed and the kitchen was repainted a pale blue. It was cream before that.

Pop got carried away when painting He used a sprayer and didn’t bother to cover anything first. Granma’s saucepans had blue spots forever after.

Bit of drama this week. On Tuesday, I heard some kind of truck pull up out the front when I was having breakfast. “Sounds like it’s next door,” I thought, and didn’t bother to look out.

A little while later, I happened to glance out of the window, and saw my young neighbour and her little boy waving goodbye to three firemen in a fire engine!

Drat! Whatever happened, I had missed it!

Later, my neighbour told me she had been doing the washing and her washing machine had caught on fire. Luckily, they are insured and will soon get another one.

“In the meantime, you can use mine,” I told her.

This morning, I went down to the local Post Office to pay my phone bill. There were three police cars at the other end of the shopping centre! I wasn’t sure if it was safe to go in, but everyone seemed to be carrying on as usual.

“What’s going on?” I asked the Postmaster.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m stuck here. I don’t know anything unless someone comes and tells me!”

“I was hoping I’d glean some intelligence,” I told him. “I could use some. If I find out anything, I’ll come back and tell you.”

I met several people I knew, but none of them could enlighten me.

“One of the shops was robbed,” the girl in the grocery shop told me.

“Which one?” Not that I’m nosey, mind you, but I had promised to let the Postmaster know.

“The one across the street.”

The mild mannered reporter crossed the street and sauntered casually past the shop in question. A sign on the door said, “Closed due to unseen circumstances.”

“I just got off the bus,” said a woman at the bus stop nearby. “The police asked me if I saw anyone jump out of one car into another.”

Aha! That must be why the police were now busy cordoning off a car across the road parked with it’s doors wide open.

I returned to the Post Office with my report.

“What’s happened?” asked a woman as I left the Post Office. I repeated what I knew.

“So the criminals must still be at large,” she said.

“Yikes!” I said. “I think I’ll get out of here!”

My friend Pat phoned me last month. She mentioned that she was having a mammogram the next day.

“Oh, is the van in the neighbourhood?” I asked. “I’ve been waiting for it to come.”

The big breast-screen van comes to our area every second year. It makes it so much easier. It used to take up half the day catching two buses to the clinic at the hospital.

I made an appointment for the next day.

You hear all kinds of stories about mammograms and how uncomfortable they are. Someone had recently sent me an email suggesting exercises to prepare you for your first mammogram.

“Place one boob in the door of the fridge,” it said, “and get a friend to slam the door shut!”

Another one was, “Go out to your garage at 3 a.m when the temperature is just right. Lie on the cement floor with one boob behind the car wheel and get a friend to reverse the car over!”

I don’t find it that uncomfortable. Maybe it’s worse for more well-endowed women, but it never really bothers me. But I did think the operator of the machine was expecting a bit much this time.

“We’ll do the right one first…” she said. “Now the left one… Now the two on the side…”

“Hang on!” I protested. “I’ve only got two!”

It was all over in 10 minutes. And it’s free! There’s been a lot of complaining about our health system, but we have a lot to be thankful for. I received my “All clear” letter the following week

Last week I phoned Pat to see if she’d like to come to our World Vision “Fun Morning.”

“I’ve just come out of hospital,” she told me. “I had cancer. I’ve just had a breast removed!”

I called in to see her on the way home from our Fun Morning. She was very bright and had a positive outlook. I think she’ll be OK.

We’ve had some cold weather this week. My three cats have all elected to stay inside most of the time. One night, all three slept on my bed - which didn’t leave much room for me.

I thought my cats were spoilt, but a friend told me that when she goes to bed, she places a glass of water on the bedside table on her side of the bed for herself, and a glass of water on the table on the other side of the bed for her cat. The cat always has a drink out of his glass before he settles down for the night. Her cat also eats from one side of his dish, then sits and waits for her to turn his dish around so that he can eat from the other side.

No, I’m not quite that crazy!

Well,…maybe…

It was after midnight when I went to bed the other night. Ingrid demanded a late snack. I gave in, because she’s an old cat with digestive problems. She does better on frequent small meals. I was getting undressed when Ingrid started to heave. I rushed out and flung open the front door to put her out, but the stupid cat ran back into the hall and threw up on the carpet.

I was furious!

“Oh, you creep!” I shouted. “You absolute creep!!”

Then I realised, I was standing in the open doorway…with the light on…in my knickers and singlet!!

I think all the neighbours had gone to bed. Oh, I do hope so!