Moodscopers who have been here for years, like me, and actually read what I write will realise that ideas and words resemble a flood tide and need extreme self-control to make some sense in 500 words. I had been to two Christmas ‘Fairs’ and was going to write about all the useless and expensive ‘stuff’ one is bullied into buying. Then I thought many people may already be sick of Christmas. I did the gym class, one woman, notorious, disrupted everything, thinks she is funny.  Then my potential murder victim was horribly rude at supper treating a poor guy she knows like a naughty child. He was in a wheel-chair, and feeling hurt pride. Only thing on TV state of chaos in Israel, seem to have been watching stuff on Holocaust or Gaza for weeks. Then I noticed all my scrap books of 40 years, and amused myself with 1987 – dramatic for me and the world. So, new title ‘High spots of 1987’.

It was finals year of my degree, I was 53. Stuck on front of scrap book a notice ‘Your car has been impounded, go to security to get it back’. What did it cost? Then I am scornful about Horoscopes – thinking one twelfth of the world, from Easter Island to Ecuador, will have a money windfall on Monday and a tiff with their loved one on Thursday. The French will suffer with their liver, of course. Then I kept this, from a ‘Glossy’. “Push  yourself to the limit at the new moon on 4th.  It will send you on to even greater heights of achievement. Throughout the coming year and obstacles are placed in your path you are remarkably resilient when the necessity arises”. I got a 2:1, then got a grant to do an MA, in between found a French course in St Malo run by Rennes University and rushed off there.

There were endless newspaper cuttings, 4 countries, menus for 4 parties. Harold Macmillan (You never had it so good) died. We were in Seville, super. And in Paris, programme of night club Alcazar, best looking girls in Paris (and figures of course). Note on kitchen table from Mr G ‘Gone to hospital with Mum’ (suspected heart attack). Extreme weather conditions (feeble, then except for October 27th storm, still one of the worst). And, still high on awful disaster lists, the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise off Zeebrugge. Lester Piggott, famous jockey, jailed for fraud. A conference at the Royal Agricultural college, Princess Anne speaking, that tiny waist! 15 metres of the Eurotunnel had been dug, An article ‘Eating back to happiness’. Ha! ‘Food scare‘ diets cause health risk. A ‘sprightly’ 73 year old doctor said ‘Age need not wither’ (Botox not invented). From a tear-off calendar ‘Obesity is a mental state, a disease brought on by boredom and disappointment’.

All that, and we had not even started going to India and Indonesia, and only had two grand-children (and two mothers). What stuff do you keep? 

The Gardener

A Moodscope member