Mamalade

We receive some strange requests at our World Vision jumble sales. This week a woman asked for a “regular sized bible.” I found a bible for her, but she didn’t want to buy it – she just wanted to check the size.

“I need it to make an octopus,” she explained. When I looked mystified, she rummaged in her handbag and pulled out a plastic bag filled with pieces of wool plaited together. Now I understood. Years ago, we used to make little golliwogs using much the same method. We wound the wool around something (we used cardboard, but a bible would do the same job) and tied off sections for the arms and legs.

“Any book that size would do,” I told her.

“Well I have a book at home,” she said, and went off happily with the measurements.

Another woman was looking for “donkey doillies.”

“You know,” she explained, “they have a donkey and a cactus embroidered on them. I collect them.”

“Oh yes, I remember them!” I exclaimed. I had forgotten all about them till now, but they were popular in the fifties. I think the old lady who had lived next to us had donkey doillies. She used to do a lot of embroiderery, as well as gardening. When I was small, I spent a lot of time with her in her garden. Years later when she died, she left me some of her beautiful embroidery and crochet doillies. I still have them, but none of them are donkey doillies.

Every so often we pass on things we’ve had a while to some other charity. A few weeks ago I retrieved a drinking tumbler with ferns painted on it that someone was throwing out. “That’s an antique,” I said. “My grandmother had some like that!”

“But we’ve had it for ages!” someone said.

The next week a woman pounced on it with a delighted shriek. “I’ve been looking everywhere for one of these!” she said. “My mother had a set of them and I broke one.”

Another happy customer!

Computers are temperamental things.A few weeks ago, mine suddenly refused to connect to the internet. None of my own efforts brought any results, and my ISP gave me different instructions everytime I phoned, all to no avail.

My son Joel finally emerged from his big back shed and came round. “It will only take 5 minutes,” he said confidently, “It’s not rocket science!”

Three hours later, he shook his head and announced the only thing to do was to reinstall everything. So last weekend, he reinstalled my ME programme, and I was able to send & receive email. But he didn’t have time until this weekend to install the rest of my programmes, including FTP, which allows me to upload my website.

So I’m back, at last.

Joel thinks I should get XP – and probably a new computer, but now that things are working again, I’m quite happy to leave it for a while.

Meanwhile, I’ve bought a new fridge.

I was telling my grandchildren, Miles and Hayley about it when I minded them last night. I can get Hayley to keep eating her dinner if I say “Have another mouthful while I tell you what happened next!” I’d already told her about the big bluetongue lizard in my garden, and about my cat Oscar getting on the roof and howling because he forgot how to get down. (And guess what happened next – have another mouthful- I opened the window in the back room and he jumped in from the laundry roof!)

I was running out of stories, so I told them how I went to the shop, bought a new fridge and it was delivered that afternoon…

“But Meemar,” said Miles, “that’s not a funny story!”

“Well, let’s make it funny,” I said. “When I opened the door of the fridge, there was a little mouse sleeping inside it. I woke him up and I asked him what he was doing in there. He opened one eye and said, ‘I’m westing!’” I said, “You can’t rest in there!” He said, “Why not, isn’t it a Westinghouse?”

“Can you make up more stories like that?” asked Miles.

“I didn’t really make that one up,” I said. “Someone told me that story a long time ago, when I was about your age.”

I think it was my cousin who told me that one, when Dad bought our very first fridge. It was an exciting event, because nearly everyone else still had an ice chest. The iceman used to deliver a big block of ice and Mum would carry it inside and put it in the top of the ice chest. But when we moved out to a farm outside town, we had to get a fridge, because it was too far for the iceman to come.

What a different world we live in now!