Lists

MY GOOD LADY IS finalising the list for this year's Christmas dinner at the Pub, and we're struck by how depleted it is, by how many empty chairs at the table there will be.

Somehow the onset of the festive season always lends itself to such ruminations.

Meanwhile, I've been browsing online for some possible holiday reading. On my favourites list is the prequel to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy: Once Upon a Time in the North. I also quite fancy a cookery book by Raymond Blanc - but I'm quite happy to make that a mutual present to each other.

For her part MGL tells me she'll be pleased with a couple of new jigsaws and a box of chocolates - one of her most lovable traits is how easily satisfied she seems to be.

Today, too, I've rung in our wine list for the next few weeks - it would never do, after all, to run dry!

Meanwhile, too, we've started compiling our food list, beginning, naturally, with the turkey...

Seems at times as if our lives are ruled by lists, which I suppose they are - lists for this, for that, for the other. What would we do without them.

Jazz moments

THE JAZZ EVENING at the golf club was a pleasant distraction, even if the band was strictly amateur.

The only surprise was the guest appearance of a man playing blues harmonica - he was the real thing, engaging with the tune and then letting go and blowing up a storm on his modest little instrument.

We didn't stay to the end of the second set; My Good Lady started to feel uncomfortable - severe discomfort in her knees and tired overall - so we excused ourselves from the rest of the group and took our leave.

But as I listened to the band I had a series of little flashbacks to some of the most memorable live jazz performances we've attended over the past few years.

The Dutch duet, for example, singing and playing outside on a pavement café in Gouda, in Holland.

Or jazz at the winery in Port Stephens, New South Wales, in sight of the vines.

Or again, the evening when everyone ended up on the dance floor of the restaurant in St Lucia - and I do mean everyone, including kitchen staff and waiters; I'm minded of the waiter who we knew as Baloo - for his resemblance to the bear in Disney's Jungle Book - jigging around with a bottle on his head!

As Noel Coward once said: "Strange how potent cheap music can be".

In a twilight mood

FOR THE LAST COUPLE of days I've been in one of my out-of-sorts moods of which My Good Lady has already spoken; they come upon me with fearful suddenness and for no apparent reason, and whilst I'm in their thrall I'm generally withdrawn and weary to the point of total exhaustion. I'm also a pain to live with because I'm overly critical of everyone and everything around me.

And while I'm not entirely clear of the mood today, I am feeling as if it might be in abeyance.

Lightened enough at any rate for me to take an odd, detached pleasure in the wedding party of our friends Fran and Den on their big day.

And lightened enough, too, for me to agree to opening a bottle of wine with MGL this evening - an above average Pinot Grigio.

Hopefully I shall shake off this strange, living-in-a-twilight sort of mood in short order.

Party night

THE TOAST OF the evening is "absent friends", and very appropriate it is, too.

Four of the ladies present are widows, two of whom have lost their husbands in the last year, and that's not counting our friend, Little B, who would have almost certainly been of our company tonight.

Still, we're here to celebrate the coming union of our two seventy-five year old youngsters, and to wish them every future happiness.

To this end, after we finish our fish and chips, we fellahs withdraw to the other bar of the Pub and leave the ladies to discuss whatever it is that ladies do discuss at such events; we lads get down to the serious business of the evening.

And as I sit and nurse my single glass of dry, white wine - I'm driving!- I watch with amusement as the chaps down their pints until Sailor John is three sheets to the wind and sailing without the need of a boat.

I give Den one piece of wisdom: "You'll soon be the master of the house, but don't forget that Fran will still be the boss!"

He nods his head seriously. Poor chap, not yet wed, but he's already looking ten years older!

But it's a pleasant evening, and I hope and believe that Den and Fran enjoyed the company of their friends.

Players

IT'S OUT OF SOME perversity that our clapped-out old radio/CD player suddenly comes back to life - after having died on us, mid-disc.

Actually, the machine has been playing up for some time; the tape deck is unusable because of it's slow speed, it makes our collection of tapes sound as if they're being tortured.

One of the CD channels too, has virtually disappeared - it comes across as a whisper and the other day even the radio gave up the uneven battle against the aging electrics.

So, finally, we decide to splash out on a new hi-fi - all gleaming and grand and full of mysterious knobs and buttons, many of which I'll probably never use, but which impress me inordinately.

And as if sensing its imminent demise, the old player makes one last heroic effort to come to life and to prove its worth.

And while it's still going I'll leave the new upstart in its box, at least until the weekend when I'll have the time to assemble the thing.

Oh yes, it's all change in the Foxes' den!

Little B's sendoff

LITTLE B's sendoff isn't too bad - though he doesn't escape a bit of religious drum-beating, despite his written request.

And I think he'd be flattered by the turnout - the little chapel at the crematorium is practically full - and Little B enjoyed having a bit of fuss made over him, and being the centre of attention. (Well, don't we all, from time to time?)

At the Pub later, in the Geriatrics' Corner there is an arrangement of people's photos of the man, including a couple of old ones, showing Little B as a young man. Mrs B, the retired headmistress, shows her barbed tongue by remarking: "Why couldn't I have known him when he was handsome?"

The buffet is a bit disappointing; they've catered for about forty, whereas there's closer to a hundred people here. The result is we have a couple of sandwiches, a handful of frites and a tiny bit of salad. Hardly a substantial meal.

I suggest to My Good Lady we treat ourselves to a proper meal at our favourite Cantonese restaurant, and we invite Helen to come with us. It seems appropriate, since the place was one of Little B's favourites, too.

The result is a very engaging couple of hours this evening over a very good dinner. At one point Helen asks what will become of Geriatrics' Corner gang, now that Little B has gone. "It won't be the same will it?"

And I have to admit that no, it won't in all probability. Still, who can tell? - and I quote the old Jewish joke: if you want to give God a good laugh, tell Him your future plans!

We end this sad day on a lighter note, and yes, I must say, with relief that it all over. Little B's sendoff has been hanging over us for the last two weeks; it's time we started picking up the pieces of our normal lives - whatever that happens to be now.

Night musings

THE PROBLEM WITH my having an early night is that I tend to wake up early too.

Tonight, for example, I go to bed with My Good Lady - and yes, eventually, I get off to sleep. This is around 11 o'clock.

By 2 a.m. I'm wide awake, and I know it's no good my turning over and hoping to get off again.

No, if I'm not to disturb MGL I have to get up. Which I do.

Over a cup of tea I come along to this computer; MGL has been complaining about getting online with this machine, so I take it in hand and sort out the little glitch that's appeared on it.

Then I go to the Internet bank and pay off a couple of bills, then check my emails and read a few blogs, while at the same time listening to David Jacobs on the BBC iplayer.

And I can't help being struck by how, in the course of my life, things have changed.

My parents never even had a bank account until later in their lives; money was always kept in a sock drawer or under the mattress.

Mail, of course, was always the slow kind, and anything foreign always came with exotic-looking stamps in the top right-hand corner.

As for radio, you listened to what was known as a "wireless" and if you missed a programme, well that was it, unless they repeated it, which they did only for soaps.

The world seemed a much larger place in those days, full of eye-popping terrors and wonders and mysteries.

Our idea of what America looked like, for instance, came from movies and magazines - and it always appeared so glamorous, so different... and so unattainable.

Today, you can get there in a few hours and at a price that most of us can afford.

Would I go back? No. Never. Not in a million years!

But I do sometimes wish that that child-like wonder remained, and that we weren't so addicted to Hollywood special effects for our thrills...

Sorry... Just the kind of musings that occur when you can't sleep!

Backache, and the arrival of November

BACKACHE IS MY bugaboo today.

I'm limping stiffly around trying to get the Sunday chores done as best I can, and trying to move carefully to avoid setting off the gripes in my lower back.

I do us a spicy spag bol for dinner - nice and easy, and after dinner I have to go and lie down on the bed to rest my aches. No matter how carefully you try to walk and reach and stretch, you can't entirely fail to snag your already throbbing muscles and make them worse.

At one point we fear we may be running low on milk, and I have to venture out to the local Spar and get us a bottle. It's not the rain that's so bad, I find, as the awesome gale that's blowing around us - I'm almost bend double at times trying to push against it.

November certainly seems to have arrived with a roar!

Oh, roll on May and our next holiday in the south of France!