canny granny

I get so confused with my modern appliances. I had a hairy few hours a week or so back when we had to adjust the time. I can change my bedside clock, that’s just winding a few knobs at the back, but I don’t even know how to open my kitchen clock.

Next switchover to summertime or whatever it is, I will get my son to come over and change the blasted things.

And I have just noticed that everything has a little clock in it! If I dusted more I would have seen it earlier. Clocks everywhere.

The DVD player, the burglar alarm, the stove, the TV, even the hose in the garden - and if I ever want them to tell the same time all at once, I’ll get an electrician to come over.

Time was never so confusing when I was young. It was just there. We invoked it in glib phrases when we wanted to sound intelligent. We said that it flew, particularly when you were having fun, that it healed all wounds and waits for no man. We also said it was money.

But what did we mean by ‘time will tell’? Is it all of my appliances reminding me constantly that time is of the essence because mine is running out? Is that what they’re telling me?

I must take this opportunity to thank Designs by Vhiel for the new header on my blog up there.

She has some lovely ideas,  and makes buttons and little things for your blog as well as the headers.

I was looking for an inspirational quote to get me down on my knees in my ‘garden’. Hoping for something to make me leap up, trowel in hand and gleam in eye.

Instead I found, in the maze of my hard drive, this snippet that I can’t remember collecting, much less who said it.

We create agility in our minds by stretching mentally. . . try taking a different way home from work ..

Well I’m always on the qui vive for anything that slows down my inevitable slide into the hellish pit of mindless old age, so I thought I’d give it a try.

This morning saw me walking a different way to the butcher shop, and I found a whole new supermarket had sprung up overnight. My Goodness!

What a lot of bamboo bowls. Bolts of coloured cloth on the footpath, windows full of ducks and aisles and aisles of strange exotic vegetables. Not that I look at vegetables much, nor should you, they’re very over-rated.

For a moment I thought I had inhaled some secondary smoke from my colourful Next-Doors, a happy young couple who are prone to kaftans, beads and chronic bronchitis.

Just when I’ve learned to distinguish between cappuchino, capocollo and a kreatopita, I have to grapple with a congee and a chua. Quite enough mental stretching for one day.

I had to have a little sherry to recover

I should be putting in my bulbs for Spring. You know what a bulb is? It’s a potential flower buried in Autumn, never to be seen again.

I’ve got these daffodils to go in, on the packet they’re described as “Carefree” and “Grandma’s Favourite”. Carefree usually refers more to the plant’s attitude than to my workload, and Grandma’s Favourite were the bulbs she planted until she discovered the free-flowering, disease-resistant hybrids.

Ah well, this is the time of year I remember that I have knees.

(Knee: a device for finding rocks in your garden)