One Advantage of Ageing in Scottish Meanderings

No-one wanted Mam’s telly from the flat and as I only have a very small one which was a spare Nikki used to have in her bedroom, I decided to take it. It’s not a huge one but is a good bit bigger than mine and when my sister visited recently she took it down with her but forgot to take the remote control with it. I couldn’t seem to get anywhere without it so we decided we’d just wait until I was either up there or someone from Inverness was down visiting and I’ve been making do with my iPad in the meantime. I’ve found loads of great programmes which I’d either missed on the TV or didn’t know about in the first place and at one point was seriously considering not bothering with the telly at all because I know you don’t have to pay the TV licence as long as you don’t watch stuff in ‘real time’ so for instance watching anything on BBC iplayer, 4oD, Demand 5 etc. is fine. However the telly can be handy for DVDs and also for when the kids are round and I need a break from all the strenuous activity!

But one of the things I was doing was watching a lot more films. I found some brilliant old black and white film noirs which kept me entertained for a while then started to watch more up to date ones, going by lists on the Internet Movie Database and on YouTube. Then I remembered I’d made my own list of films I’d watched several years ago, really just to keep track and so that I could watch some again. Trouble was, I had no indicator on them as to whether a film was half-decent or rubbish so a couple of years ago I began to list a one word comment beside them saying what the film was like. That worked well but as they were in alphabetical order, I had no idea what genre the film was if I didn’t remember it from the title. Which tended to be the case in 90% of the list! And of course I didn’t want to watch films I’d only seen 5-10 years ago because I thought they would be too familiar.

But I forgot I was getting ancient and the old memory is not what it was ......

So I’ve been enjoying many old favourites recently and have not found the fact I’ve already watched them a disadvantage at all - in some cases it’s actually a good thing. For instance, if you watch a film like The Sixth Sense, it holds up well to a second viewing so that you can watch it again with the knowledge of the twist at the end and see how cleverly it was all done. Similarly with Shutter Island, Jacob’s Ladder, Angel Heart and The Conversation - films like that are almost better second time round so that you can see them with the vantage point of knowing the real truth and can then pay more attention to the detail.

The only thing is I need to stop watching the horror ones last thing at night - the other night when trying to sleep after watching Klute, I was convinced there was someone coming up the stairs all set to murder me in my bed!

I love it when Lily plays with stuff that doesn’t come in a box from a shop costing a ridiculous amount of money. For a while she was into Peppa Pig and one episode called ‘Mysteries’ had Peppa and George becoming detectives using a magnifying glass to find out where something was which Daddy Pig had hidden in the house. They suss out teddy is what’s missing and Daddy Pig has left a trail of cake crumbs to where he’s hiding so, using the magnifying glass, they use it and the crumbs to lead to teddy.

Lily thought this was brilliant so the following day we got some change, a little money box I’d got for £1 somewhere and a teddy I’d won in a raffle. I hid teddy upstairs then left coins on each stair plus a trail to wherever teddy was hiding and, using the magnifying glass, she would examine each coin, pick it up and put it in the money box then find teddy.

That must be at least a year ago and she still loves to play that game endlessly!

And then I got a rocking horse out of a charity shop in town for about £10 one day and my niece gave this ladybug rocker below to Nikki when she was having a clearout but Nikki, having nowhere to store it, dumped it on me. They’ve both sat in my sitting room ever since and have been very well used.

At Christmas, having gone into present overload and tantrum mode, I was trying to cheer Lily up by dressing up with tinsel. She decided she was going to dress up the rocking horse and spent ages using tinsel, left over decorations and cleaning cloths to make a very pretty looking donkey!

And ever since, when she’s over she sometimes asks for the ‘decritions’ and spends hours prettying up the donkey while the ladybug looks on jealously!

She loves bubbles but I’ve never let her use the wand ones because the mixture goes everywhere and then there’s a very slidy kitchen floor just ripe for slipping on. So I bought her a bubble gun for about £3.99. She absolutely loves it and had a ‘bubble’ party’ for her dolls the other week making ‘bubble jelly’ and a bubble bath for a dolphin to swim in. Kept her going for a good hour and more.

They really don’t need loads of expensive toys a lot of the time. Although I never expected to hear myself say to my 3 year old granddaughter “Give me the gun Lily.”!! :¬)

I haven’t heard anything more about the job yet but I didn’t expect to as the manager has been away on holiday and just got back on Thursday. I pulled out of the surgery one when they phoned to arrange an interview because I just wasn’t certain I would have the stamina for it and really didn’t want to muck them around.

However I’ve been really disconcerted this week because for some reason I’ve been loads more tired than normal. I haven’t been doing a lot either and we’ve had an Easter break from the course so I haven’t even had that to blame - the only ‘extra’ thing I had to do was look after my niece’s cat, Tara. They were away for 8 days and live in Blackburn which is about 20 minutes’ drive from my house. It only involved going out once a day, feeding and changing her litter tray, letting her out occasionally and giving her lots of cuddles so not exactly onerous.

The only other thing I can think of is that I’ve picked up some sort of bug although I have no sniffles, sore throat, headache or any other sort of ache. Yesterday I went out to Nikki’s house late morning as my other niece, Marina, and her husband, Steven, were through to visit us, bringing their very cute little baby, Jessie.

I looked after the kids before they came to let Nikki tidy and hoover the house then they were there all afternoon leaving at teatime. By which time I was having a really hard time keeping my eyes open.

So much so that when I got home and had fed the cats, I instantly put on my jammies and the electric blanket and got into bed where I fell asleep minutes later. The cats landing on top of me woke me up at 8.30 (they have a variety of tricks to bring me out of a peaceful sleep - jumping on my boobs is only one) and I went downstairs, gave them a snack, shut them in, went back to bed and was out like a light again until 9 a.m. this morning! I hovered between consciousness and unconsciousness for a while, finally getting up to feed the boys then went back to bed and conked out again until 2.30 this afternoon! And to be honest I think it was only hunger which woke me up having had nothing to eat after having a scone out at Nikki’s yesterday afternoon.

That’s almost 20 hours sleep!!

Amazingly, I’ve still been sleepy all afternoon and found writing a birthday card, addressing it and running the car round to the Post Office to post it a marathon effort so goodness knows what’s going on. I’ve only had a banana and a couple of yoghurts today and don’t feel particularly hungry now so maybe it’s a bug of some kind right enough. I really really hope so because if not, I’m only left with the driving back and fore to Blackburn as the reason for the tiredness and that’s not good news for this possible job in Peterhead, a 2 hour commute.

Fingers crossed it’s just a blip of some kind.

Last updated February 05, 2018