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| Sunrise, 1st December 2020 |
As we approach the Winter Solstice, I find myself checking daily the times of sunrise and sunset. This has become a ritual, available on my ‘weather app’ and consulted whilst drinking the first mug of tea of the day. Today, sunrise was after 8.00am – always a bit of a blow. Sunset at 4.15pm is not a surprise, as the light seems to grow duller from around half past three, which is the time when I usually close up the greenhouse for the night, lighting the paraffin stove when necessary. Correction: it is more often than not my kind spouse who does this now, when the air is rather too cold for an asthmatic to breathe in.
Cold air tends to mean a brighter sky though, and we all need as much light as we can get here in Britain during the Winter months. Moments of cheer appear in the garden, and you can imagine my delight to have spotted this primrose, apparently oblivious to the season, flowering in a corner close to the raspberry bushes.
The early sun casts long shadows over the lawn, creating a completely different garden, with soft pastel colours and sharp skeletal forms.
The 'Annabelle' hydrangea has been transformed into something ethereal and ghostly when given a wash of a special process on my computer...
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When the weather in November changed, making gardening more difficult, I turned to sorting out an enormous bundle of old photographs, some of which have been inherited from my parents and others simply packets of my own photos from the 1970s, 80s and 90s which had not yet been scanned onto my computer. Well, many of them have now, and although the task is often sad, many of the memories are happy ones, echoing with laughter and the voices of old friends and family.
A couple of photos made me pause, remembering a day decades ago in an office in London where I was conducting a 'Lloyd's Audit' on a large group of Syndicates. In 1980, long before desk-top computers completely took over offices, the computer was so big that it was housed in an entire room. We audited its print-outs which emerged on huge, endless folded sheets of paper pre-printed with groups of green vertical lines and punched with holes on each side for filing in large cabinets. Most of the ledgers were manually written up by the accounts team, and we would bring in comptometer operators - ladies with odd-looking machines with lots of buttons - to add up and check the totals. All this sounds archaic now! Anyway, in February of this particular audit I took a few days off to get married to my first husband. The day before I left, the accounts team took me to the pub for lunch, and I do not remember much work being done that afternoon. So here we all are, for you to be amazed, and I hope the old-fashioned look of the desks will make you smile. The cigarette smoke would certainly not be allowed now!
Sadly I do not know what happened to Paul, Tony, Len or Lesley... so if anyone recognises someone in the photo on the left, please send them my good wishes.
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Finally, I found this little poem written out in my father's handwriting, for my mother. I found it touching, and I hope you will too. The author is anonymous.
A little work, a little play,
To keep us going — and so, good-day!
A little warmth, a little light
Of love's bestowing — and so, good-night!
A little fun, to match the sorrow
Of each day's growing — and so, good-morrow!
A little trust, that when we die
We reap our sowing! and so — good-bye!
