(no subject)

[todayiamadaisy]

Today I:

• made calligraphic labels for my mother's fresh batch of apricot jam;


• posted all my Christmas cards;


• was in the library when the power went off and had to get my books checked out by hand;


• got absolutely soaking wet walking to my car in a rainstorm;


• watched and listened to an outdoor automatic pipe organ made in Belgium playing "Funiculi Funicula" on the civic green;


• wondered what the woman in front of me in the supermarket was going to do with a bag of fifty homebrand steel wool pads;


• bought fish for dinner and was greatly amused when a little boy looked at some prawns and said to his mother, "They've got choc bits for eyes!"

Every year about this time my mother's partner John and I have a conversation that begins with him saying, "What are you getting yer moom for Christmas?" (he's from Yorkshire; I don't notice his accent anymore, except when he says "yer moom"). He asks this so we don't accidentally get the same thing. It's sweet, but slightly deluded. Our gift ideas are so far apart, they will never intersect. The most memorable of these conversations happened a few years ago:

John: What are you getting yer moom for Christmas?
Me: I got those watercolours she bought professionally framed. What are you getting her?
John: A wheelbarrow.

So we had this year's conversation this evening.

John: What are you getting yer moom for Christmas?
Me: A new handbag, one of those little leather backpacks she likes.
John: That's no help. I've narrowed my choice down to two things. I was hoping you'd have got one to make the decision easier.
Me: Sorry. What are the two things then?
John: One was that new biography of Lord Nelson, it's a really huge book and you know how she likes Nelson.
Me: Yeah, she'd like that. What's the other choice?
John: A fire extinguisher.

In the end, he was leaning towards Nelson.