Letitia Cropley lives on …

In the spirit of Letitia Cropley one of the eccentrics in the village of Dibley, I set to baking a loaf of bread this morning without buttermilk. Buttermilk is a commodity that’s nigh impossible to source on the Piccadilly line. A few days ago I attempted to manufacture buttermilk myself by adding vinegar to the milk. Alex thought the end result was not great as the taste of the vinegar was felt in the bread.
So today’s effort saw me adding much less vinegar and including a dash of balsamic vinegar in the mix. I then mixed flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, salt, honey, an egg, mixed spice and nutmeg and baked for forty minutes. We waited with baited breath for the loaf to cool down to taste. Alex loved it.

The cost of Love

Alex and me were just getting out of the car after our Friday night curry, when Anni, smart and sassy appeared next to us in the orange glow of the street lights, fizzing with excitement about the Forum she had spent the day at. She was carried away with her own enthusiasm and clearly needed to talk to someone about her wonderful experience. It’s hard enough to concentrate at times, I find. But even harder as the wind is biting into to you, when you have the dogs on your mind and you are just looking forward to going to bed. Anni was not to be diverted and when Alex invited her in for a coffee I thought well at least two of my three issues will be resolved.

I brought in some coffee having calmed the dogs. Anni was in full flow in our front room and we were compelled to listen. The story unraveled bit by bit. What we were dealing with was a broken heart, a woman let down, someone looking for answers. Anni runs the coffee outlet and little shop at our local train station and in the course of her work she meets lots of city types on their way to work. They open up to her and tell her about problems they are having with their wives, their bosses, their mothers, their children. Anni is a sociable gregarious type, a real people person and she takes an interest in all the people she meets and can greet them by name every morning and get their coffee just the way they like it.

That was how she met Andrew two years ago. They got talking over coffee and slowly got to know each other and one coffee led to dinner and eventually breakfast, I presume. But Anni felt that there was a lot she didn’t know about Andrew. He had two phones and she was NEVER allowed to call one of them. Often, when she called, his phone was switched off and she might not hear from him for a day or two. Anni and Andrew seldom went out for dinner. Never to a concert nor a walk in the park at the weekends. In fact the only times she would see him was late at night with about 30 minutes notice. She would get a call and he would ask if he could come over and bring a bottle of wine and she would say yes. Because she loved him. He touched her heart like no other.

Anni is a bright, worldly, articulate woman who has been left disconsolate. She has just paid out £350 to spend three days with 149 other people in a hotel function room near Euston station to listen to a motivational speaker. Can this speaker tell her what kind of person Andrew is? Can he help her understand that sometimes in life, we are foolish. Sometimes we end up with really unsuitable people. We are driven perhaps by desire, mistaking it for love. We are at a point in our lives … and then, wham, someone unavailable like Andrew appears. This adds to the urgency and to the intensity, high emotion. And the frailty of the human is that we sometimes want the unattainable. My wise friend, Suman says – People think the grass is greener on the other side. When what they should be doing, is watering the grass on their own side. Kernels of wisdom come from experience and learning from that experience.

Anni will be all right. She will wake up one day and eventually realize that who she fell for would have been a disaster. Andrew, like so many, is a selfish man who would never put her first. She deserves to be put first. The other person who will be all right is that motivational speaker at the Forum. He stands to make £52,500 for 3 days work. Hmmm. Troubled people are big business!

Remembrance Sunday

We left the Piccadilly Line to visit Pobol Y Cwm. It was Alex’s grandmother’s birthday at the weekend. Mam, as she is called in the family was born one year after Armistice Day – on 11th November 1919 making her 92 years young. The weekend was a chance for Mam to draw on her childhood memories of South Wales. She was one of eight girls and two boys. The girls were Gwyneth, Lillian, Marion, Olwen, Tegweth, Gwynira Mavis & Linda and the boys were Sidney and Stanley.

Mam grew up before the Welfare State came into being and large families such as hers had to rely on their wits and the community. She remembers the harshness of the General Strike in 1926 and vows that she would rather die than vote Tory because they put a stop to the Coal Board’s habit of dropping off coal to mining families. That winter children were left cold with no fire in the hearth. Her father, and one of her brothers went up to the Patches – places where the coal was near the surface - and they hacked at these and got coal out from the earth and delivered it to the impoverished families.

There was another poignant story of her much loved father. He was David John Williams, born on 17th October 1884. One of their neighbours was a young woman whose husband was killed in the Great War which finished one year before Mam was born. Her father wrote a poem about the heroes of the war who made the ultimate sacrifice. He brought the poem round to all the houses in the village and sold it. The money raised, he gave to this young woman and her baby son, who also paid a part in the sacrifice of war. I read the poem and thought it a highly fitting account of loss on this Remembrance Weekend.

We got Married!

Alex and me did it. We got married. It was the happiest day of my life. From start to finish, and I wish we could live through it all again. We made our vows in front of our nearest and dearest and went off to lunch and were both praised and roasted by the fine and witty speeches from our Best Women and Master of Ceremonies. Everyone there made us feel really special. If only every day could be like that…

Later in the evening, after a sing song on the bus, we cut the cake and danced jigs and reels til it was time to call it a day. We were delighted that Pobol Y Cwm were there as well as dear friends from the old country. There were even some from the Village, all holed up near the Piccadilly Line.

Weddings are all different and I guess people get the wedding that they plan for and want and certainly ours could not have been any better. We have loads of memories from the day to treasure.

Do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man

Thus spoke a former leader of the Conservatives, Ian Duncan Smith (IDS) who was widely derided in this role. Yet, he is now the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and depending on your view he is working to redress the burden on the state and the tax payer and objectively, by some critics, is considered to be doing a good job. Across the water in the Emerald Isle there is another quiet man who like IDS spent years as leader of the opposition. Enda Kenny bided his time and unlike IDS clung on to the leadership role despite being derided near and far and wide. A skit on You Tube of his seeming audition on the X factor with clips of Simon Cowell interpersed with a performance of Enda at the podium is a case in point.

But Enda sat quietly on the opposition benches and to be honest, that was about all he had to do to ensure that his party wiped the floor with a Government in free fall in the last election in Ireland. Since then, this quiet man hosted the Queen of England and the President of America to the small country in the space of a week. He sought and got concessions on the EU handout to Ireland. But this week he surpassed himself with his pronunciation on the institution of the Vatican. Nice one, Enda.

The Social Network

Watching TV last night on our huge screen attached to cinema surround sound I said to Alex – I’ve seen this Come Dine With Me. At least three times, I added. This led me to moan about the fact that with that Sky record thingy all we seem to watch is Come Dine With Me. What’s going on? Are we crucifying ourselves by watching people cook and eat meals which sometimes look mouth watering but which we both know we should be avoiding. After all, our nuptials are looming in the Fall. Why don’t we ever watch a movie I asked and our eyes drifted to the shelf full of unwatched DVDs and Blue Ray discs. You see neither of us is supremely confident about hitting the right buttons on the three remote devices needed for our home entertainment system. How about The Social Network I suggested. If you can get the thing to work, fine, Alex replied.

So we unwrapped the disc and I inserted in the drawer and lo and behold – cinema surround sound or what! We wondered what our 70 year old neighbour made of the thumping deep bass sound. We had the sound, but no picture. After much fiddling on the three aforementioned devices we eventually had success. And we sat back to watch the movie.

It was indeed very good if it did take some time to adjust to the fast pace of the dialogue and the plot. But it turned out to be a very well told story of an autistic genius who, ironies of ironies, created FACEBOOK as forum for social interaction.; he who was so poor at this. It also contained the story of friendship and ultimate betrayal which is a sad one. In real life, objectively, the creator has achieved enormous success but we do not know how connected he really is. It brings to mind a recent edition of the Women’s Hour where the topic of adult children who emigrate was being discussed. One wistful mother declared that Skype was all very well but you can’t hug it.

Reading of the Banns

Well, ok, it wasn’t quite that but Alex and me did go to register our intent at the town hall this morning. Tom, the registrar could not have been nicer. He told us all about his gay sister and then there was his uncle – the only gay in a small village in Lincolnshire. I couldn’t help thinking how unfortunate the poor man was. What could be worse than being gay and having no-one to play with no matter how protective and understanding the village.

After a few words of explanation of the procedure, Tom asked Alex to leave the room while I was interviewed alone. OMG. I racked my brains to try and think what her favourite colour is this week. I quickly decided to opt for green if asked, but dithered whether it was red. I was asked details about myself such as my name and date of birth. I resisted the urge to indicate that as he had my passport in his possession he could check for himself. I answered his questions without hesitation. My mother’s name, my father’s name. Alex’s full name. Her date of birth and so on. But the question of her favourite colour was not an issue. He then printed a page and I had to check it very carefully for accuracy and sign it.

Then it was my turn to leave the room and Alex went in for her interrogation. How nerve racking. One wrong answer and our whole plans are in disarray. I waited anxiously in the ante room considering the plasterwork. Eventually Tom came in for me and I was back at his desk beside Alex and it was smiles all round. As soon as we handed over the £67 in used bank notes the job was done. He then referred to Alex as my fiancé, so we are now officially engaged.

We went on for a celebratory lunch in the sun to mark our new status and while waiting for the salads to arrive I asked Alex what her favourite colour was. I was right. It is green.