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fjmThe best bit of Christmas was Chanukah. On 20 December I had friends round for latkes (lj/dw names momentarily forgotten), and lots of fried potato was eaten.
Then there was the attempt to get all the shopping done which with Chilperic still feeling rotten rather fell on me. Doable but tiring.
Thendesperance arrived at the same time as my mother and there were more latkes, lots of wine, and after Chilperic went to bed there was the power cut. Oh joy. We spent half an hour trying to sort it out, went to bed and desperance went off in the morning without so much as a coffee. During breakfast I called the electricity board and they promised us heat and light by lunch time but it went off again the next day when most of the street would have been cooking lunch. I served the herring I'd picked up from Ikea (in case) and we had a nice if cold lunch. Dinner went smoothly at 8pm.
On Christmas Eve I took mom to see The Lion King. She has wanted to see it forever, and I have held off because nothing I heard sounded exciting, but Mom loves puppets.
Advice: sit towards the back, because I booked for our hearing, we were too close to the (amazing) puppets for the best illusion.
Excellent: the puppets and the dancing.
Good: the singing (mostly) and the staging, the pleasure of a non-white cast and the shift in demographic of the audience.
The bloody awful: two thirds of the speaking parts (only the narrator could really act), the story, and the script, which I would say was cliched but it wasn't even that good, it was more that every so often someone thought, "oh, we'd better explain this bit" and then proceeded to do it.
The rest of the holiday: mother was on her best behaviour and it was exhausting. If I tried to read she interrupted me for conversation (once it was to tell me how annoying it was that her mother regarded reading as anti-social); and her conversation tended to be either very naive and forceful lectures on politics (she is left wing but reads nothing The Guardian) or to be stories about her dog which would be fine but I've heard them all before (and yes, I know we all have cat tales we repeat endlessly). The biggest problem was simply her lack of self-awareness: with a perfectly straight face she told E about my auntie Blanche who was notorious for never asking anyone else how they were or showing any interest. A low point was when my mother asked me how I was on Boxing day (white faced, exhausted from being woken by her slamming of the bedroom door every hour) and when I told her, she told me off for lecturing her after Edward had already mentioned it. I'd have been fine if she hadn't bothered asking, but why not simply not ask but say sorry? (The day was made worse because I'm teething, and when I don't get enough sleep my hands flare up and even touching things hurt. I finally just went to bed.)
Other comments on the lack of self-awareness: she is diabetic with high blood pressure. She complained about the lack of salt on my cooking which is fair enough because I don't use much salt--too many friends are on low salt diets and if you have celiac you don't get much processed food and lose the taste. But then she started talking about how she checked the salt content on everything, while --as she talked--putting about five twists of salt onto her scrambled eggs. Similarly her voluble discussion of how much her diabetes is under control (mostly I think because she now exercises and no longer drinks five cups of coffee each with three teaspoonfuls of sugar a day) was accompanied yesterday with three large chocolate chip cookies. My mother's diabetes is better because she started from such a shockingly bad diet and non-existent exercise (think Texas style attitudes to walking) that really, any change was going to help.
But despite all of the above I did get one thing right: Mom wanted to go down to Occupy at St Paul and then to the demo at the Israeli embassy. I decided to do the bit in between by bus to save my knees (i find the underground a strain). Mom loved the bus ride. She really does love architecture and as I do know my way around London these days we managed a proper guided tour from the front seats of the Number 11 bus.
Once we got to South Kensington I handed over Mom to three women who swore they knew her (she was a bit of an activist in her time and memories seem to have lingered) and I went shopping. When I got back it was to see the Police had segregated pro-Israelis on one side of the road and Pro-Palestinians on the other. Unless one is facing down fascists I dislike this kind of demo because it enhances hostility so I hauled Mom out and we headed to the Wellcome where Mom sneered at the amulet exhibit without even looking at it (I didn't get my generic interest in pretty much everything from my mother, it's Dad who has the classic geeky curiosity, my Mother believes in "relevance") but I had a quick look around and can recommend it.
Then we had a reprise of last year's conversation about learning to use a mobile phone, this time without the row. My mother has talked herself into enormous stress over tech. This time she complained that I was making her work it out herself when her old colleague used to help her every morning. I said that was because I was a better teacher than he was. That raised a laugh, which helped.
Chilperic and I got mom onto a train, heaved a sigh of relief, I twisted my knee on Euston concourse badly enough to need my cane for the rest of the evening, and we went down to Knightsbridge to pick up my impulse purchase of the day. I'd seen the carpet in a shop from the other side of the road, and then noticed the 80% off sale. It was closer to 66% but I'm not complaining. Chilperic retires on Jan 1st and I very much wanted to get him something special. The carpet below will eventually go into his study-the other half of the room you can see--but that is still a temporary kitchen. The carpet in real life is a dusky pink, what my great grandma called Old Rose but you'll have to go over to LJ as it won't let me post a pic here (I suspect I have to pay).
Today it's new specs for Chilperic (he sat on them just before Christmas), Puss in Boots and with Virginia Preston and Phil Dyson and then down to this place which I am terribly chuffed to say is run by a woman who has been a student of mine for years.
Then there was the attempt to get all the shopping done which with Chilperic still feeling rotten rather fell on me. Doable but tiring.
Then
desperance arrived at the same time as my mother and there were more latkes, lots of wine, and after Chilperic went to bed there was the power cut. Oh joy. We spent half an hour trying to sort it out, went to bed and desperance went off in the morning without so much as a coffee. During breakfast I called the electricity board and they promised us heat and light by lunch time but it went off again the next day when most of the street would have been cooking lunch. I served the herring I'd picked up from Ikea (in case) and we had a nice if cold lunch. Dinner went smoothly at 8pm.On Christmas Eve I took mom to see The Lion King. She has wanted to see it forever, and I have held off because nothing I heard sounded exciting, but Mom loves puppets.
Advice: sit towards the back, because I booked for our hearing, we were too close to the (amazing) puppets for the best illusion.
Excellent: the puppets and the dancing.
Good: the singing (mostly) and the staging, the pleasure of a non-white cast and the shift in demographic of the audience.
The bloody awful: two thirds of the speaking parts (only the narrator could really act), the story, and the script, which I would say was cliched but it wasn't even that good, it was more that every so often someone thought, "oh, we'd better explain this bit" and then proceeded to do it.
The rest of the holiday: mother was on her best behaviour and it was exhausting. If I tried to read she interrupted me for conversation (once it was to tell me how annoying it was that her mother regarded reading as anti-social); and her conversation tended to be either very naive and forceful lectures on politics (she is left wing but reads nothing The Guardian) or to be stories about her dog which would be fine but I've heard them all before (and yes, I know we all have cat tales we repeat endlessly). The biggest problem was simply her lack of self-awareness: with a perfectly straight face she told E about my auntie Blanche who was notorious for never asking anyone else how they were or showing any interest. A low point was when my mother asked me how I was on Boxing day (white faced, exhausted from being woken by her slamming of the bedroom door every hour) and when I told her, she told me off for lecturing her after Edward had already mentioned it. I'd have been fine if she hadn't bothered asking, but why not simply not ask but say sorry? (The day was made worse because I'm teething, and when I don't get enough sleep my hands flare up and even touching things hurt. I finally just went to bed.)
Other comments on the lack of self-awareness: she is diabetic with high blood pressure. She complained about the lack of salt on my cooking which is fair enough because I don't use much salt--too many friends are on low salt diets and if you have celiac you don't get much processed food and lose the taste. But then she started talking about how she checked the salt content on everything, while --as she talked--putting about five twists of salt onto her scrambled eggs. Similarly her voluble discussion of how much her diabetes is under control (mostly I think because she now exercises and no longer drinks five cups of coffee each with three teaspoonfuls of sugar a day) was accompanied yesterday with three large chocolate chip cookies. My mother's diabetes is better because she started from such a shockingly bad diet and non-existent exercise (think Texas style attitudes to walking) that really, any change was going to help.
But despite all of the above I did get one thing right: Mom wanted to go down to Occupy at St Paul and then to the demo at the Israeli embassy. I decided to do the bit in between by bus to save my knees (i find the underground a strain). Mom loved the bus ride. She really does love architecture and as I do know my way around London these days we managed a proper guided tour from the front seats of the Number 11 bus.
Once we got to South Kensington I handed over Mom to three women who swore they knew her (she was a bit of an activist in her time and memories seem to have lingered) and I went shopping. When I got back it was to see the Police had segregated pro-Israelis on one side of the road and Pro-Palestinians on the other. Unless one is facing down fascists I dislike this kind of demo because it enhances hostility so I hauled Mom out and we headed to the Wellcome where Mom sneered at the amulet exhibit without even looking at it (I didn't get my generic interest in pretty much everything from my mother, it's Dad who has the classic geeky curiosity, my Mother believes in "relevance") but I had a quick look around and can recommend it.
Then we had a reprise of last year's conversation about learning to use a mobile phone, this time without the row. My mother has talked herself into enormous stress over tech. This time she complained that I was making her work it out herself when her old colleague used to help her every morning. I said that was because I was a better teacher than he was. That raised a laugh, which helped.
Chilperic and I got mom onto a train, heaved a sigh of relief, I twisted my knee on Euston concourse badly enough to need my cane for the rest of the evening, and we went down to Knightsbridge to pick up my impulse purchase of the day. I'd seen the carpet in a shop from the other side of the road, and then noticed the 80% off sale. It was closer to 66% but I'm not complaining. Chilperic retires on Jan 1st and I very much wanted to get him something special. The carpet below will eventually go into his study-the other half of the room you can see--but that is still a temporary kitchen. The carpet in real life is a dusky pink, what my great grandma called Old Rose but you'll have to go over to LJ as it won't let me post a pic here (I suspect I have to pay).
Today it's new specs for Chilperic (he sat on them just before Christmas), Puss in Boots and with Virginia Preston and Phil Dyson and then down to this place which I am terribly chuffed to say is run by a woman who has been a student of mine for years.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-28 10:45 am (UTC)Dreamwidth doesn't have picture hosting at all yet. I sometimes do a complicated shuffle of uploading photos to LJ, doing the 'post to journal' process all but the final step, and then cut-pasting the code into DW to crosspost, but it's sufficient hassle that I don't bother very often. Flickr is easier, but "blog this" doesn't work with DW so I have to get the HTML to paste in.