Marks Grans Blog

I think one of the nicest things that has emerged during lockdown has been seeing all the new ways people are keeping in touch with each other.  I've noticed many more people are embracing technology now.  Zoom and Houseparty are two I know of.  As I type this, I have just downloaded Zoom to my laptop to 'have lunch' with my art girl friends next week!  One of them suggested it and we've all agreed to download Zoom, three of them are already using for pilates classes and singing lessons!   People are often surprising in their aptitude to adapting to situations.  Until very recently one of our group was incredibly tech phobic, she was still using a flip top phone!  However since this all started she's embraced technology in order to keep in touch with her family, us and other friends and she's up for anything now!  She's the one sending the most photographs of her art work now!  We downloaded Houseparty at the beginning of lockdown and no...

They tell us we should get creative during this lockdown.  I am normally a very creative person.  I do all sorts of crafts and art.  I make cards, I do scrapbooking, I knit, I sew, I paint furniture, I paint pictures - in fact I actually sold a painting recently! I did this painting at my art class and put it up for sale at our exhibition and someone bought it! I am in a whatsapp group with a few ladies I met at an art class I did in a learning in later life class at Strathclyde University.  I met these ladies at the first class I ever did there, how to draw and paint using watercolour, which was about 6 years ago now.  It was a lovely class and we all got on so well we exchanged email addresses and kept in touch by meeting up every 6 weeks or so for a trip to a local art exhibition, a coffee and a catch up and we've kept it up.  There were originally 7 of us however one dropped away a while ago and another has recently moved to Dundee, so although sh...

It's been very quiet here.  Well, at least on the traffic front.  As for people, I've never seen so many people out and about walking.  Usually its only us dog walkers that pass each other but now there's all sorts of shapes and sizes socially avoiding each other, it would be quite comical if it wasn't so serious!  It is nice though to sit in our garden and listen to the quiet and the birds, they seem very cheepy at the moment.  I am very grateful that the weather has been dry and quite sunny here for a while now.  It makes it all the more bearable although I do worry about those who are stuck in an apartment with no outdoor space, especially with children.  This must be a nightmare for them. The dog and I doing yoga together! A very strange phenomenon has struck me though.  Myself and a couple of friends decided to set up weekly video calls for the duration of the lockdown.  I had the first of these a couple of weeks ago and after the c...

Now that I've come up to date I have no idea what I'm going to say on here!  If you know me at all you'll know I'm rarely speechless!  I say this yet, I can be quite shy at times.  I find small talk quite difficult particularly if I feel in awe of the person I'm to talk small with.  On the other hand I find if I 'gel' with someone, no matter who, I can talk for Britain, and frequently do! I'm not struggling with being locked down as I'm quite happy to be a hermit sometimes.  Particularly when the weather is good, as it is at the moment.  I can happily potter in the garden for ages. I don't do deep digging, or what I consider to be big gardening. I potter and I have our garden set out so that that is enough to keep it going from one year to the next.  My veg is all grown in pots.  Our soil is quite heavy clay and frankly I don't want to dig up my plants to plant veg.  Not to mention they'd be devoured by slugs and snails.  We get millio...

Following on from last time, we were at the week from hell as I refer to it. I got a call from my mum early on the Monday morning to say there was something wrong with my dad.  Now to let you understand, my dad had been in and out of hospital at various times over the previous two years.  His mobility was awful, he went blind after a severe case of shingles affected his eyes, although that wasn't the main cause of the blindness it was the last straw.  He had five different things wrong with his eyes, not least a very dense cataract over each eye.  He got one removed but didn't regain much sight, really just more light, the consultant said there was no point removing the other one as there was no sign of any life behind that eye anyway.  The consultant said my dad couldn't have been more unlucky to have so many things wrong with his eyes, he said it would be unlucky to have two or three of them but to have five was ridiculously unlucky.  My gran, his mum, w...

Back to my soap opera life! At times it feels like my life jumps from one drama to the next.  I'm not sure if it's because we have three very different children who all bring various aspects to our life.   We have eldest son.  He's the least confident of our children.  He's very serious, gentle, a hard worker and the one who's worried us the most probably!  He wanted nothing more than to settle with a wife, the picket fence and children but it didn't happen for him and he's brought some 'crackers' into our life while trying to find 'the one'.  Thankfully, he seems to have found her now and also thankfully, we love her!   Our daughter, the middle child, has also brought her very own brand of drama to our life!   She had her son when she was 20 at a time when she had been planning to go and live and work in Spain with some friends.  That will tell you all it needs to, however, her boyfriend, the father, took full responsibility...

So far this morning I've watched Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat on YouTube courtesy of ALW.  I vaguely knew the story but not how the show had been done.  I also realised that I only recognised the one main song in it!  Where have I been?  Clearly under a rock!  It's had so many reincarnations and I've missed every one of them!  I enjoyed it while eating my cornflakes. I'm finding my mornings are dead slow and stop at the moment.   I'm waking at about 6.30 at the moment but trying to stay in bed till 7 when the heating comes on.  I then have a large glass of water with a frozen slice of lemon in it (I became aware I'm not drinking enough lately) and meander round the internet - blogs and email usually with a bit of Pinterest thrown in for good measure.  Today it was Joseph instead of Pinterest!  I'm now typing this at 10am which could take anything from 10 minutes to an hour and then I'll go and get dressed (probably). ...