R.I.P. Beryl

Beryl pased away yesterday. She was 96.

I knew about Beryl before i met her.

Not long after i moved in one of the neighbours knocked on my door, introduced herself & proceeded to warn me about the woman next door (Beryl) who was, apparently, an international jewel thief, a satan worshipper and head of a (satanic) cult.

According to this neighbour I shouldn't invite Beryl inside as she was a very successful thief and would steal all my belongings without me noticing.

I was a litle bemused by this! And also was wondering what on earth i'd got myself into.

I mean Beryl was ( to my mind anyway) an old fashioned name, the car in Beryl's carport was a nondescript corolla (perfect for blending in i suppose) but she also sounded like a modern day Fagin.

Then i met Beryl.

She was in her 80's. she was small, she was frail looking, she sometimes used a walking frame. She moved quite slowly. She was quite frankly a little old lady.

I figured if she could steal something from me and get away with it she deserved to keep it!

She was also a lovely person.

Her family gave her an ipad a few years ago (she already had a hand-me-down laptop from one of her grandkids) and she loved it.

Presumably she was running her international crime syndicate online!

This time last year Beryl decided that she couldn't live on her own anymore & moved into aged care - she had her ipad & laptop so she could keep in touch with the world even if she couldn't get around under her own steam anymore.

I never saw any evidence that Beryl was anything other than a lovely lady ( but i did find evidence that the neighbour who warned me about Beryl was crazy like a loon) and i never saw any evidence of Beryl's satanic rituals or international crime syndicate.

All i saw was a lovely lady, a doting grandma (& great grandma), and an excellent neighbour.

R.I.P Beryl. you will be missed.

 

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#blog12daysXmas 2

I'm not one for the Boxing Day sales and tend to avoid them like the plague.

I used to attend the first day of the Boxing day test or, in more recent years, do the boxing day chute clearance at work.

But shoulder of doom has put paid to the jostling of a big cricket crowd, and the chute emptying so I found myself at a bit of a loose end today.

I watched the first session of the cricket on tv then decided i needed shorter curtains for the bedroom windows. (I know that seems unrelated but there is a method in my madness)

I had organised for a neighbour to come in and take down the bedroom curtains so that i could wash them (the curtains that is).

Because of aforementioned shoulder of doom there are quite a few household tasks that i can't perform -  anything that requires my right arm above shoulder height  for example  - so I have arrangements in place with assorted family members or neighbours for certain things.

So anyway the curtains came down and as I consider them a tad too long I thought i'd brave the shops to see if i could get curtains with a shorter drop.

It was lunchtime before i got to Eastland (naively i thought the worst of it would be over by then - how wrong was I)

I couldn't get curtains of the right length so I bought some new longer ones (in case i stuffed up the hemming). Which was just as well because organza should not be tumble dried (now they tell me) and my old curtains had shrunk (good) and had holes in them (not good) so now I have new curtains, cropped to fit, with the cropped ends coated with 'fray stoppa' to stop them fraying (sewing is another thing i am currently unable to do).

Don't know what i'm going to do when glaz (the neighbour) moves out.

#blog12daysXmas 1

We had our family christmas lunch on Sunday.

Luckily host brother's house is air conditioned so we were able to abandon our 'sitting outside on the deck' plan & replace it with 'sitting inside in the cool'

I was charged with supplying a ham.

So I ordered a delicious ham  (to be known hereafter as ham 167) from Cornehls & Blackburn my local butcher.

Ham 167 was a big hit. It was very tasty with minimal fat.

Messrs 5 & 7 had made a gingerbread house (with solid chocolate walls).

if you look carefully you can see the 'traditional' gingerbread ninjas ready to attack the house!

Mr 15 'made' an ice ceam cake (take a carton of ice cream, add m&ms, mini marshmallows, chopped up jelly snakes & mix together)

This was in addition to the christmas pudding of course.

Lots of food, lots of fun, lots of family.

Blogging the 12 days of christmas. 4

is there a more enticing smell on a summer's evening than barbecue?

I'm sitting on my balcony with a lemon squash trying to work out where the barbecue smells (especially the onions frying and the garlic bread) are coming from. If I can work out which neighbour it is i'm going over there to introduce myself.

Have established it's not the neighbour with the baby elephant, which is a shame cos i want to check out the elephant close up.

Not particularly christmassy but brings back memories of summer holidays camping on the foreshore at McCrae where (on non total fireban days) dad would be in the charge of cooking, which usually meant us & the campers on the next site eating (almost burnt) sausages in bread.

Good times

Blogging the 12 days of christmas. 3

A festivus miracle.

Since I fractured my shoulder one of the tasks i've found hardest to do is dress myself.

In the 5 months since 'Fi V Tree' I have managed to reduce the time taken to don a short sleeved tshirt from 45 minutes down to less than 1 minute. (that is with minimal pain).

Like with tshirts the most comfortable (& least painful) clothes to dress in are anything with an elastic waist (currently leggings and skirts)

Anyhow on Christmas day I achieved something that I hadn't been able to do since July.

I wore a dress.

And I put it on all by myself. And it only took 30 minutes to do it.

My family was so proud...

My sister was on standby to come round early to help me if needed but all i needed her for was to do up my necklace & bracelet clasps.

Mind you undressing was a bit (lot) more problematic - it took me 45 minutes to get the dress off and required painkillers to achieve.

Still it was good to be wearing something other than my usual uniform of tshirt, leggings, & elastic waisted skirt.

I try to find a positive (and journal it) for my shoulder everyday.

The Christmas Day Dress is a major positive as far as I am concerned.

Blogging the 12 days of christmas. 2

so a couple of days before the 18th december (the day we were having our family christmas) i was surfing the interwebbys looking for info (for a genealogy post i was writing) on one of the primary schools i attended.

as i was wading through the search results i came across a link to a pdf about the football club my father started in 1969 so that my then 5 year old brother could get a game of footy.

The pdf had photos of dad in it (and photos of 2 of my brothers). From 1969 until we moved to Sale in 1973 the footy club was an important part of our family life.

Anyway the pdf was 45 pages so I downloaded, had 6 copies printed, had each one bound and gave each member of the family one for Christmas.

I even gave a copy to my youngest brother who wasn't born during the 'Donny Heights' era.

We were all involved with the club. 2 brothers played for the 'tackers'. Dad was secretary &mum ran the match day canteen.

my sister and I were club statisticians, helped out in the canteen, occasionally ran the boundary and did anything else that needed doing.

My mum was so rapt to be given the book. It prompted a lot of reminiscing, family stories and anecdotes over the christmas table.

I'm going to contact the club and see if i can get copies of their photos and offer them copies of our photos of the club.

Blogging the 12 days of christmas. 1

We had our official family christmas last sunday as brother 1, s.i.l 1, nephew 1 & niece 1 were going to perth for Christmas.

I drew S.I.L 1 in the family kris kringle and gave her a bottle of her favourite perfume. The nephews were easy.

I bought mr 14 an itunes card and a 'cool' tshirt.

Master 6 got some beach clothes (he's having a growth sport), some gel pens, a book about science and a zac power book.

Master 4 has requested a 'very fast' scooter. Apparently his existing scooter doesn't go as fast as master 6's new (in october) razor scooter. I suspect that the weight to speed ratio of tall, solidly built 6 yr old versus average height, slightly built 4 yr old has something to do with it but master 4 says no it's the scooter. So i got him a razor scooter (and it goes very fast).

Almost 12 yr old niece received a dance bag and a bling case for her ipod touch.