Feeling a bit ... nothing... these days. Last weekend, a chap who worked in our main college office collapsed and died - at the age of 38. I was so shocked and still can't quite believe it, though I know this is illogical because of course people die young; I know this. He'd been at the college for almost exactly the same time as me: twenty years. It's a long time in my life (though it doesn't really feel it) but much longer in his. And I'm sure he must have had plans, thoughts about what he'd do for the rest of his years. Too late. How very sad.I very much feel that this is the beginning of the Rest of My Life - now or at least around now. The children are gone and I shall retire soon - possibly in June or possibly the next year. And who knows how much Life is available to me? I suppose I should take advantage of it and stop faffing around and feeling sorry for myself.
Sirius in the picture above is lying on one of the Yellow Blankets. These are eiderdowns bought by my Granny Campbell about ten (maybe?) years before she died, which was thirty years ago. They were on her and my grandfather's beds. When she died, my grandfather went to live with my parents and the Blankets came to us. For a long time they were laid over ill or napping children (or their father) on sofas. Gradually they got more and more scruffy and for the last few years we've put them on the sofas when we went out, to protect the fabric from depredation by cats. One Blanket reached the point of intolerably embarrassing scruffiness a while ago and was discarded, and the second one reached that stage today - well, I'm sure it reached it long ago but today was the day that I acknowledged it. Being blissfully pummelled and clawed by our furry friends hadn't really improved its beauty. I couldn't quite bear to throw it away because of its sentimental connections, though, so Mr Life did the dirty deed.
I'm sure Granny would be absolutely thrilled to know that her eiderdowns (not really blankets at all, though one side was a nice cosy fabric) had lasted this long and had kept her descendants nice and warm in moments of need for all these years. She wouldn't even have grudged them their afterlife as cat blankets; she liked cats. In fact, she liked more or less everything. She was a lovely person. I've written about her before: her rather sad early life. Her mother died of TB when my Granny was five and her little sister was infected with TB as a baby and died at fourteen. Then her father remarried and Granny and her brother were sent away by the wicked stepmother: the brother joined the army and was gassed in the First World War while Granny got a live-in job as a sewing maid with a family who were very good to her and when she married, gave her a party in their house and garden.
To be more cheerful: a quote from my nephew's Twitter account (he's a student in Cambridge): I could make a bar chart of my favourite pies and a pie chart of my favourite bars.
Ah, to be young again...
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