Ticketty-boo

My Gran was born in 1904 and I think she might have been what you used to call a flapper in the 1920's. She taught me how to do a "real" shuffle when I was 8 years old, and made me into a real card sharp. Every time she came to stay, which was often, we would spend our days playing Gin Rummy.

She was born and grew up in India, and moved to England when she was in her late 50's. I think she had spent most of the time in India playing Mah Jong and Gin Rummy, but her husband, my grandfather, died just after I was born and she had to come to England with very little money.

Not to be put out, my ever-inspired and resourceful Gran got herself a job as a saleslady at Bentall's department store in Kingston, and a room in a house in New Malden with a chap who lived with his son. I often used to go and visit, and it was always very nice at Gran's, she lived as part of the family.

I don't think she'd ever worked in her life before she got the job at Bentall's. It must have been very hard for her.

The best thing about Gran was that she liked presents as much as I do. So every birthday and Christmas, she would appear with a box of presents that she had either made or bought herself, and each of them was wrapped. They were usually quite inexpensive. The point was that she had taken the trouble to find them or make them and wrap them, so there was always a lot of them.

That was the exciting part, the unwrapping. It was wonderful, because my Mum didn't like presents, either the giving or the receiving of them. My Dad did, but he was unfortunately a bit dictated to by my Mum on that point. So we were very reliant on Gran for presents.

Gran also sounded like the female version of a Billy Bunter book. Some of her favorite expressions were Jolly D, What-ho and the one I love most, Everything's ticketty-boo!

All Saint-Like

Have been all saint-like, to quote Bridget Jones, and finished all the enormous amount of work that needed to be delivered by today.

Have also written all invoices, done all accounts, paid all open invoices and only have 2 more orders to finish up by the end of the week.

Boy do I deserve a pat on the back! Will have to give it to myself.

The Miracle of the Headset

Have discovered the invention of the headset to talk on the phone.

Due to intense pain in my left shoulder and in my neck between my head and left shoulder, have reached the stage where I simply cannot insert the phone under my left ear any more when talking on the phone.

Call me stupid (and I can hear you!) but it took a friend to give me the advice of using a headset. Have done this since yesterday afternoon, as often have to be on the phone for ages to customers while still typing - and it is absolutely fantastic. Will never phone without using a headset again.

Seems like I get slightly wiser as I get older. By the time I'm 65 I might just have got the hang of life. Would be ideal if I could then start again from the beginning with all the accumulated knowledge.

Birthday Girl

What a wonderful day!

Was woken by doorbell - it was a flower delivery service bringing me a beautiful bouquet of orange and yellow flowers - sent me by one of my customers!

Spent the day preparing the dinner I was making for friends - it was a lot of work but we had such a fun time. Apart from the three-course meal, there was a lot of piano playing and also a game - one of my friends had written a computer program with a quiz specially for the evening in the style of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" and it was very funny.

Have just finished clearing up and am looking forward to a good sleep.

Blokes' Night Out

My son and his friend went out last night and both came back and stayed here. As usual there were noisy goings-on in the middle of the night as often happens after a Blokes' Night Out with them getting up to go the bathroom and then wandering around in their still fairly drunken state trying to find the way back to the bedroom.

Last time his friend stayed he decided to wash his jeans in the washing machine, which woke me up at about 5 a.m. Unfortunately he had no recollection at all of doing it the next morning and apologized to me profusely.

I was impressed that, even in that state, he was able to correctly operate a washing machine he had never used before - I have problems doing that with a new washing machine in a sober state!

Easter Legs

Have just returned from Aldi! (still have not received that voucher, so here's my second attempt) laden down with a basket of goodies and have fallen up the stairs. Don't know how it happened, but managed to catch the border of one step right on my knee cap, which is in bad shape anyway. Hooray.

On positive note, have already received 2 birthday cards for next week. Has perked me up, after a long boring two days translating a financial report.

Have two more days of this to look forward to. The customer has already sent 2 sets of changes to the report, which I will incorporate one after another once I have finished translation of the original financial report. I like to call these little nuggets The Return of the Financial Report and The Financial Report Strikes Back.

Dr Jekyll And Mr Hide Things From Your Wife

Just saw an American TV show where the woman called her husband "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hide Things from Your Wife".

Very funny! I can think of the odd ex-husband I might have said that to.

Cabbages Tuppence A Pound, E-Mails One Cent

My lady masseur (masseuse?) told me this morning that she had just heard a radio show where it had been announced that the German government will be charging a tax of 1 Cent per E-mail from June 1st. Apparently loads of people were phoning in to complain and nationwide discussions had been ongoing all morning (and it was only 9 a.m.).

This led to a long discussion between the two of us which involved complaining about the many taxes already levied by the German government, and culminating in me worrying about how many Euros a month this new tax was going to cost me, seeing as how I write about 250 mails a month.

Turned out though, it was all an April Fool's hoax!