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Friday 16 April 2010

Moments and Serendipity...



I wrote this over one week ago... Time moves on, things get done. I am in better moods, thanks to moments like this one, with the echoing ring of Serendipity in my life, and you, mes bloggy, poetes...

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
A. A. Milne (1882 - 1956)


'You would not believe the days that I have had today and yesterday...

We'd been up at the house. My dad's house. And I'd retreated once more, to lick my wounds in a bedroom, searching for lost treasures...

The male voices carried up the bare staircase. GJ and our experienced Landlord / Agent friend..., Mark, sent to us like a Guardian Angel by BF (Boating Friend), bless him!

'Market values', 'decline', 'recommended rental prices', 'waiting tenants', 'clean broom', '...must remove the artex', 'potentially asbestos', new carpets', 'new radiators', 'new boiler'...

I, meanwhile, scrabbled amongst the remnants, seeking what I'd come to find... Finding, not my parents' wedding photo, but yes, my graduation photo. ...Not my father's Worcester pieces, but yes, the porcelain duck I'd given my mum for her collection.

Clutching these sad sorry pieces, and a brass curtain pole with glass tortoise-shell finials - To which GJ rolled his eyes, making him look rather like the newly-dead - I scuttled down the scabrous stairs, thin underlay slapping meanly under my Clarks' shiny-red-patent Dorothy shoes.

GJ was cold again, in this unheated house. Searching for longer would have to wait. The loft remains locked. Screwed down. We secured the casa. My treasures pressed into my new electric blue mock-croc Gladstone bag on an antique style frame, recently hand-made from leftover Mulberry leathers...

I'd treated myself over the Easter weekend, Paques, dear French Fancy, as you said... Well, I deserved it. Quite right! Buying it made me feel better, for a while, and I spent a lovely hour chatting to the delightfully ueber-talented, designer, Karina Hesketh, at her latest stall at the beautifully restored Tyneside Cinema for its Vintage Easter Fair.

More of Karina and her treasures again later, sans doute...

Anyhoo, the Tyneside Cinema was founded in the Nineteen Thirties as the Pathe News Cinema by the uncle of Ridley and Tony Scott. I never knew that family link to our family link* until this week. Fate had taken our steps there, GJ and I. Incroyable. I love the Scott's films, as it happens.

And, the historic exhibition about movies and film-making took me back to a place and time I've never known, but can feel tangibly in my bones. Pre-and post-wartime... *GJ's granny worked at the Tyneside Cinema Tearooms as a waitress, in black and white we'd suspected, meekly bobbing and bowing, a sparkling white starched 'pinny across her lap. ...But it turned out that wartime waitresses wore Tyrolean costumes, as in The Sound of Music!

The luck and the leisure of being off from work for a week creates space we don't usually have, does it not, and I have fair filled that timespace... I'm also now upholstered more safely, as three new bras found their way home with me too... My last remaining bra put out to pastures new with the spring lambs, knackered and shattered from carrying my burdens over-long.

I've still to buy some new shoes online, mind, before my shiny red Dorothys fall off my trotters in disdain.

So, we went out for a run in the Northumberland countryside in the jalopy, enjoying the warm rays of sunshine ('currant bun') on our bones reflected through the windscreen - The first for what seems like long months.

I pushed the button on the car radio, and French Fancy's favourite, The Boss, could be heard straining at the words of the tune I'd been singing and humming in my dad's house all the while, wreathing words about me like shining armour, for protection:

The times are tough now, just getting tougher
This old world is rough, it's just getting rougher
Cover me, come on baby, cover me
Well I'm looking for a lover who will come on in and cover me

Outside the rain, the driving snow
I can hear the wild wind blowing
Turn out the light, bolt the door
I ain't going out there no more

This whole world is out there just trying to score
I've seen enough I don't want to see any more,
Cover me, wrap your arms around me, cover me
I'm looking for a lover who will come on in and cover me...

A co-incidence. Bizarre. Inexplicable, but listen to only rock radio stations for long enough and Ol' Bruce comes 'round sooner rather than later, baby girl...'

My posts are getting a bit long these days, please accept my apologies -- Back with better stuff and more moments of Serendipity in my life - It'll blow your socksies off - Soonest... I'm getting stronger, I know it... Merci mille!

Mwah!

Gotcha!


9 comments:

blognut said...

Thinking about you, Fhi. I hope things are getting better - or easier, at least.

Be well,
Bloggus
XXOOXX

Sueann said...

Hugging you sweetie!! I love how a song will come on just at the right time with just the right words! 'Tis amazing!
Be well dearest one!
Hugs
SueAnn

Bagman and Butler said...

You capture so well the simultaneous stuff of life going on around you. I love your writing.

French Fancy... said...

Oh your bag sounds lovely - I adore blue leather bags. I know what you mean about bras - us big bosomed women need to replace them frequently because all the stretchy bits get a big saggy (the bra, not us). We're never saggy, oh no.

So glad you sound happier and I'm looking forward to hearing about the Scott connection. Like yours, the Fancy household think Ridley Scott is one of the best directors around.

Incidentally - I'm not such a Springsteen fan. Last year's festival saw me going for The Killers - it's my m-i-l who thinks Bruce is the greatest (although his 'Born to Run' album is still in my top ten).

xx

Unknown said...

Hi Fhina,

I was at the Tyneside cinema a few weeks ago for a Met(ropolitan) Opera night. Great space they have there. Enjoy your weekend.

Grumpy Old Ken said...

What a lovely ramble through life!

Saz said...

l just cannot wait to give you my biggest HUG on MOnday!!!!!!

saz x

Jo said...

Oh, goodness, you transported me with you down those stairs.

Life is a four-letter word, isn't it?

((((hugs to you!))))

Jo

Anonymous said...

Hooray!

And...you're meeting Sazzie? No fair! Boohoo. Huge hugs for you both.

Something I wrote earlier...

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