Boat house

Posted on May 13, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Age, Boat house, Green, Lake, Life, life belt, old wood, Photograph, renewed, Rode hall, TimeLeave a comment

There it sits, down by the lake. How old is it? Are there boats still moored inside? A life belt is still attached to the back wall as the wood gently greens and rots… .

I’ve never been down the steep steps to the shore, it’s green and slippery and there is no handrail. If I was young I would explore. The reeds and rushes are starting to grow up, and no doubt moorhens or coots will be nesting there soon. Chicks still waiting to be laid in their eggs. There are Canada geese about. Life is renewing.

Through the door

Posted on May 5, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Age, Building, conservatory, courtyard, Decay, Garden, History, Memories, Poem, Poetry, RottingLeave a comment

View into a courtyard

What was a conservatory

Glass gone

Now open to the sky…

What happened?

Age and decay

Piled up over time

Timber rotted

And fallen.

But space preserved

Repurposed

Made good

New life

In old building

Bench view?

Posted on April 15, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Age, Bench, bench appreciation, Flowers, Life, Memorial, Memories, Wood, WreathLeave a comment

Flowers in a wreath seen on a bench last year? Was it a memorial to someone who had passed. Remembering a share time together looking at a view…. I wonder.

The bench itself is in good condition, the wood is starting to go green and will need to be replaces one day. I had a bench and the slats rotted. I went out and bought new slats but never found someone to put it back together again. I guess benches and people are similar. If they aren’t looked after they have a tendency to fall apart!

Childhood memory

Posted on April 3, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Age, Childhood, Climbing, fearless, Fun, Memories, ropes, School, swing, Tag, Wall barsLeave a comment

I used to climb up the sides of an old slide like this not the steps to get to the top. These was tarmac underneath that I could have fallen down onto, but I didn’t. Goodness knows why I did it. I also used to hang upside down from the top bar of the swings. I would climb up via the three legs holding up one end and then climb over. I don’t know why I stopped, maybe I was told it was not a thing girls did!

At the end of term at school we used to play pirates in the gym. They would pull the wall bars out and lock them in place and there were three or four ropes hanging down from the ceiling. The challenge of pirates was to play three dimensional tag. I would climb up the bars or a rope and if anyone tried to get me I would reach over and climb onto the next rope! I often was the last person standing (or hanging!)

Photo courtesy of a friend, hope that’s OK?

Eye news

Posted on March 24, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Age, Art, cataracts, dazzled, Eyesight, Fuzzy, Life, Light, Opticians, optometry2 Comments

Oh dear! I thought things were getting a bit ‘fuzzy’. I just had my eye test and they are. So far things are not bad, just a blurring round the edge of my lenses, like fogged up glasses when you come in from the rain, or being dazzled by the sun. My central vision is clear. But it’s something to keep an ‘eye’ on literally and metaphorically.

I need to eat healthily and have anti-oxidants in my diet. I will try and do everything I have to. I just don’t want to lose my eyesight, art means so much to me, reading too. I just hope this is a gradual process. I know it can be treated, I hope when I need it, it is.

Blurred vision

Posted on December 28, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Age, Aging, Focus, Lens, Life, Looking, myopia, optical, presbyopia, Sight, Time, VisionLeave a comment

Vision changes with age. If you have shortsightedness it can sometimes get better because your eyeballs can shrink with age, that means the image hitting the retina at the back of the eye comes back into better focus. On the other hand the lens in your eye can start to stiffen and the muscles around it don’t pull on it as well as when you are younger. So the lens does not focus as it used to. This is called presbyopia and tends to affect people over forty (if I remember). Hence vision can change with time. Worth getting an eye test?

Old TV

Posted on November 15, 2022November 15, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Age, Electronics, History, Life, Memory, on the blink, solid state, tube, TV, TV repairmenLeave a comment

Some people will remember these, before huge flat screen TVs, before TV remote controls, even before colour TV. I give you the cathode ray tube, where an electron gun shot rays at a flourescing front screen in lines and the picture appeared on its surface. The ‘tube’ was a conical shape with a square flat front. It was a vacuum tube so if it broke it would implode as air got in….

People employed TV repairmen to come out if it stopped working (replacing valves or solid state electronics? I’m not sure.) Gradually things changed until TVs changed shape and now use liquid crystal displays.

When ours went on the blink we found hitting it just above the on off switch with a hairbrush got it to work. Apparently the electric connection in the switch burns away slowly so the contacts were seperated, hitting it knocked them back together. Probably not safe!

Sore throat

Posted on May 15, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Aches, Age, Bed, Fed up, Hot, Mouth, Sketch, Sore throat, Tired, tonsilsLeave a comment

I don’t think it’s serious. I just have a sore throat, but I haven’t gone out today despite needing shopping and the chance of some entertainment. I just feel a bit hot and tired, but that could be age related (yay hot flushes, not) and it is humid. I went to bed this afternoon and tried to sleep but then hubby decided he wanted a conversation…. Out came grouchy me… Leave me alone me… But now I’m more awake but might go to bed early…

Diameter?

Posted on March 15, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Age, Diameter, formula, Fun, Maths, Memory, no calculator, pi, radius, Work it out2 Comments

How do you work out the radius of a satellite dish when all you know is its diameter? That was the strange question I tried to answer on twitter last night.

First of all I had to remember my school girl maths from fifty years ago.

I remembered the diameter if found with the formula 2 pi r. Where pi is 22/7. I couldn’t remember the decimal version and I wasn’t using a calculator so I divided 7 into 22 and got 3.142. Then r is the radius, which is half of 70=35.

So then I had to multiply (on paper again) 2 Xx 3.142= 6.284. And multiply that by 35. As my multiplication is not good I added 3 lots of 62.84 together = 188.52, then added 6.284 together five times = 31.41 (yes it’s long winded but accurate). Add the two figures together and you get 219.93.

I don’t know BODMAS or PODMAS or whatever they are called. But I actually got it right. Not to bad for an oldie!

PS the formula for area is pi r squared. Not going there!

Hot

Posted on February 2, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Age, Cooking, Face, Food, Heat, Heating, Hot, Life, Profile, Sketching, Time5 Comments

Why do I feel hot? I’m melting. Not my age? It’s winter, I’ve got the heating on. But I’m hot. I’m not ill, I was, but I’m getting better. I guess it’s because I have been standing in front of the cooker making tea (evening meal). I was looking for a drawing to show how I feel and this one from a couple of days ago illustrates it well. As you get older life seems to get more complicated. I swear I think bits are going to start falling off me!

Anyway, I’m feeling a bit better. But even so, I think I will have an early night. Life, its wonderful but complex.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Age