On my own again? 17 6 9 (16) 25 1 29

Began 17 6 8...

Well not quite...Take yesterday afternoon for example when I poured boiling water over a teabag in the relatively new beaker which I had my wife buy during last year's long vacation, around this time so I could drink my coffee or tea from a porcelain vessel in our hire car over in UK, to discover most of the water ran through a crack in its side: a casualty of someone other than me, meaning of course the only other person who resides in our house, that is my wife A-E. Earlier in the day I had noted how all "my crockery" throughout our spacious cupboards in our kitchen had been taken over in my absence by this same person stacking my crockery higgledy piggledy with no thought to which beakers would best fit other smaller cups or beakers sitting comfortably in them, etc., and just the sort of occupation which suits my orderly scientific mind, to ensure a minimum of breakages ensued...

But instead of wholeheartedly blaming this other person I reflected for a few moments about all her virtues such as those associated with having the Window Cleaner arrive the same day to give our widows throughout the house and bedrooms their once in a year clean, something I would never do. Or how our garden was approaching its best with lots of new blooms planted, some I learned like the Forget-me-knots around the patio on the east facing garden, re-planted from others growing wild in other parts of the garden, and in regard to such matters she is ultra-efficient in sharp contrast to myself.

How, thanks to her we have a beautiful home a home people can safely be invited into whilst if i were to be the one in charge as sometimes appeared the case in the dim and distant past our home could in no way be deemed serviceable as a place to entertain honoured guests, a lack of suitable carpeting perhaps displaying an apathy on the part of one of the owners regarding such “trivial details”..?

In the next generation our first son rather takes after me in this regard so that with their family income he and his wife are having to cope with a new situation in which one of their 2 children now aged 18 and almost 17 may soon decide it is time for him to get his own place and whether they will wish to help him financially because they understand he needs more space for himself now he has become a young man both to study for his final year at school with upcoming matriculation examinations and otherwise needs more space to be able to entertain his friends etc., etc.

Whilst our younger son whom we visited together with his wife and two twin daughters during our recent visit to UK I would have to say takes these traits rather from his mother than from his father: their kitchen which is a part of his domain as the family’s head chef, if not also bottle-washer, is fitted with the kinds of fittings you could only imagine existed because when you saw them in their kitchen at the same time you learned of their existence: like the boiling water-tap to brew tea or coffee in a cup or pot straight from their cold water supply tap by lifting a ring in its stem and twisting it in a certain way so that a heating element jumps into action to bring the water issuing forth to 100 degrees C or 212 degrees F..!

Yeah returning from vacation the first 3 weeks accompanied by one’s wife and then a further 2 weeks travelling mostly alone it is really great to be re-united with one’s wife of nearly 50 years standing and to understand that people’s strengths and weaknesses have in many couples a way of balancing out deficits and complementing one another in a multitude of different ways. Have a good day everyone and remember the life is more than just doom and gloom..? hahahah!!!   

PS "Falling back on old ways" was the original title of this particular blog back in 2017 9th June evidently arriving home after some days away: now the shoe is on the other foot as A-E takes a winter's break first visiting our son and his wife and twin daughters in UK, together with the eldest daughter's new arrival her first son with partner. Before taking another sojourn in Cape Town, S.Africa: while i hold the fort here in Scandinavia...