Surprise Surprise

There are a few of my former work colleagues, as well as myself, turning a certain age in the next month or so. The first of our little gang to celebrate this milestone happens this weekend. She doesn’t work Wednesdays and Thursdays and then has some annual leave that covers the actual day, so her colleagues and friends (?) surprised her today. When she arrived at work, her desk was surrounded by balloons, presents, cakes, cards and all manner of things. She’s not one for a fuss, but she did rather well in accepting the effort that people had gone to to celebrate with her. She did better than I would have done.

I hate surprises. It might be something to do with my ISTJ personality traits. It makes me feel very uneasy, nervous and not in control of what’s going on. If it had been me, I’d have either walked straight back out, or set about popping all the balloons. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t appreciate the effort of those who had done it had gone to, but if they knew me at all, they wouldn’t have done it in the first place. For me, I think it’s also a case of embarrassment, not knowing what to say or where to look, or what to do next. This is why I never work on my birthday.

At school my birthday was always either at the weekend or during a school half-term holiday so I never had to deal with my birthday at school with people either making a fuss or making fun of me. In most of my working life hardly anyone has ever known it was birthday anyway, and therefore a fuss was never made. Then I just started to book the week off that surrounds my birthday.

This year my significant birthday falls on a Saturday, so I’ve actually booked the week before and the week after off. The original thought was to have gone away somewhere with C and R and have a lovely break and experience somewhere else. However, in the current climate that’s not going to happen, and I’ll be unlikely to even be able to see R, so it’ll be a very quite affair instead. And I’m ok with that. I understand the situation we’re in and that there’s no point in going off about what I can’t do, or depressed about not being able to do what I want to. I’m still going to take the 2 weeks leave, got to use it up anyway, and I’m going to enjoy having some time off to recharge the batteries.

When the time comes that we can meet up with R, or that we can go away somewhere, then we’ll do what we might have done in the first place. I shall have that to look forward to.

Snow joke

All over the UK today people have been posting photos of snow scenes and hastily assembled snowmen. It all looks lovely.

Here though, we did get a quick flurry early afternoon but nothing settled. There is a threat of more snow overnight though.

Snowy scenes seem to make most people feel all magical. The silent fall, often overnight, create some mythical scene. Snow seems to bring a sense of clean calmness to most people. It may be that it instigates memories of childhood, snowball fights, building snowmen or keeping warm under many layers and drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows. A more innocent time perhaps. There’s almost something naive about it.

Last time I was anywhere near serious amounts of snow was when we went to Slovenia. We went husky sledging and snow shoe walking in the mountains. It was one of the best holidays I’ve experienced.

Being the first to leave footprints in the snow and hear the crisp crunch under foot. It makes nature look all the more beautiful.

Today though I was reminded that not everyone enjoys the snow. People don’t like snow for a number of reasons. Its frozen, damp and after a while gets dirty. It changes plans by preventing travel. It can be dangerous especwhen it turns to slush or ice. Some people find totally white landscapes depressing. For some its another reminder that spring isn’t here yet. Some people also find snowmen quite menacing.

Thankfully our flurry didn’t settle so hopefully my first drive back on site for 3 weeks won’t be a problem.

Its beginning to smell a lot like Christmas

I finally got around to baking the BakedIn Winter Spice Cake. Its a test of biscuitery and cakery. Gingerbread houses, trees and stars and a cinnamon flavoured cake and icing.

It was, as you might expect, quite time consuming. Need to make the dough for the biscuits, then whilst that’s chilling in the fridge, make the cake batter. Then when the cakes are baking its time to roll out the dough and cut out the shapes. Then bake them whilst the cakes are cooling. Then make the icing while the biscuits cool. A little bit fiddly in parts but otherwise quite satisfying to put it all together.

The smell of the cinnamon and the gingerbread is just like its Christmas cooking all over again. Christmas food is just about the best.

Food smells, like any other smell, has the ability to transport us to the past, to experiences and periods of our lives.

There’s always been a smell, that I can’t really describe, that always reminds me of my grandads kitchen and the massive panty/cupboard where he kept all the crockery and some tins (peaches, pears and spam generally) and packets of food. I can’t really remember a particular smell from my nanna’s, but I do remember the food. She’d get enough in for tea that “whatever you don’t eat now you’ll have to take home with you”.

I wonder what olfactory memories our daughter will have of our house. There’s certainly been a lot of baking. I know she came in from her evening job when she was doing her A levels, and always said that whatever was cooking for dinner smelled lovely. Usually something like chilli or spaghetti bolognese.

What smell memories do you have?

Children’s TV shows

On a meeting video conference earlier and whilst we were waiting for other people to join in we somehow got on to the subject of children’s TV programmes from our childhoods.

It was quite funny looking at people’s expressions when my colleague and I started talking about Charlton and the Wheelies and Terrahawks. Top Saturday morning televisual viewing when I was young.

Of course there was The Clangers, Rhubarb and Custard, the Magic Roundabout, the Wombles, Captain Pugwash, Bagpuss, Ludwig, Mr Benn, Hector’s House, Ivor the Engine, Jamie and the Magic Torch, to name but some of my regular viewing.

I dare say that most of these now would not be commissions as they’re probably not PC, but back then they just seemed harmless entertainment. They are of their era.

Terrahawks was probably one that seemed ahead of its time with regard to gender and ethnicity. It was an 1980’s Gerry Anderson and Christopher Burr production, so along similar styles to Thunderbird etc There were female fighter pilots, an oriental commander, and one of the baddies was known as “goybirl ” or “birlgoy” because they never decided what gender it would be and its voice would change between male or female depending on whether it was innocent or naughty.

Interestingly Terrahawks was set in the year 2020 and followed the adventures of a taskforce protecting earth from extraterrestrial andriods and aliens. I wonder what they would make of the real 2020.