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Winkle Pickers

 Things I have learned this week (and it’s only Wednesday - just think what treasures the rest of the week could reveal!): 

1) Frozen dog poos are easier to scoop up than unfrozen ones

2) My brother has NEVER watched the TV series ‘Gavin and Stacey.’ NEVER! A whole array of literary allusions have been lost to our conversations. This revelation came about because he’d bought a new set of oven gloves and I said, ‘Are they like the ones Mick showed off to Pete in ‘Gavin and Stacey’?’ and he said, ‘I don’t know of what or whom you speak.’ I was gobsmacked. I said, ‘You’re missing a treat.’ He said, ‘I’ll get over it.’ 

3) According to my recent reading of the books ‘Women Living Deliciously’ by Florence Givens and ‘Meditations For Mortals’ by Oliver Burkeman, I’ve been doing life all wrong for the past fifty nine years, two months and six days. I intend to set about rectifying these errors immediately, and then some. 

4) The photograph on my new driving licence looks way better than the photo on my old driving licence, where I looked like a startled rabbit in a Miss Piggy wig. My new photo, as the lady in the Post Office who processed the application for me said, looks very glamorous. Maybe the last ten years have been kinder to me than I thought. Or the hologram on the driving licence has some kind of youth-giving filter on it. Anyway, that’s my driving licence sorted for the next ten years. With the way the roads are currently heading at the moment, along with the rising cost of car ownership, I may have acquired a horse and cart by the time it needs renewing again. 

5) My Dad appears to have been a fan of the winkle picker shoe! 


That’s my Dad, leading the way at the front of the photo. And if you look at the photo carefully, well, I’m pretty sure that looks like a winkle picker gracing his feet. I find the very thought of Dad in a winkle picker completely hilarious! The photo was taken in Nettlestead churchyard and was either on the occasion of my Auntie Pollie’s wedding to Uncle Mick, or possibly my christening, which was in March 1966. Dad would have been about twenty five.

And here we are, sidling into 2025. It’s pretty cold but then it’s Winter so what else should we expect? At some point in the near future, I shall be heading down to my home county of Kent to say my farewells to Auntie Pollie. I’ve got a pile of new books to read which is the perfect occupation for cold, Wintery days. I’ve got a few writing projects on the bubble and, in an act that totally WASN’T one of procrastination, I decided to change the layout of my writing room so my desk now faces looking out of the window. Change is as good as a rest, as they say. And my diploma tutorials begin again next week as we head into Term 2 where we are going to get all sciency, apparently. 

Plenty to do. No rush.




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