TOM. It’s 3.00 pm and I’ve just realised it’s my birthday 71
years old and don’t feel a day over eighty. I dare not look at my emails or
Facebook page for fear of what I might find. Why am I suddenly receiving a
deluge of messages adorned with those ridiculous yellow sun faced emoji? I
don’t know what half of them mean, and on my mobile phone they are way too
small to make out anything, other than most of them are yellow and round. The
red heart I suppose is obvious, but there’s another thing that looks like a
pair of garden shears. It’s used most frequently by a friend who like me is a
keen gardener, so maybe she means happy gardening.
I’m getting most of them from women friends,
sometimes without a single word of explanation, and Tottie is one of the worst
offenders. You would have thought that her being a journalist would mean she
would be able to find the correct words to explain herself rather than
resorting to a symbolic cartoon language that means nothing to me. Have our
lives become so hectic that we no longer have time to put down in words what we
mean? Will our ability to express ourselves in the written form become like the
hand written letter, a thing of the past? I’ve seen children marvel at the
speed with which I write, stopping only to dip the pen back in the ink. The
hand eye coordination is extra ordinary, but now I marvel at the dexterity of
young people’s thumbs on their smartphone keypad, my own being way to big and
arthritic to achieve such accuracy. It gives me great pleasure to see a page
full of my handwriting and know that a computer could not understand a word of
it. Our daily lives seem full of passwords and security codes. Whatever happen
to our beautiful unique signature?
I can at least count my blessing in that Tottie also seems
to have forgotten my birthday, but then again why should she remember. We have
at last seen the sun with clear skies for the past few days. So good to be able
to put the washing out and forget it. Apart from Tottie I’ve had two visitors
this week to the garden. The first was a heron that I surprised down in the
vegetable garden. I can’t think what it was doing there other than enjoying a
bit of shelter behind the beech hedge. As it struggled to make a vertical
take-off I was reminded just how large herons are when seen at close quarters.
The second visitor was a rabbit that hopped across the gravel in the front of
the house and disappeared into the bushes. I’ve seen it again, but it is the
first I’ve seen in five years since the dreaded miximatosis was released. I
have mixed feelings about their return. A rabbit-free period has meant tree
planting has been simple with no guards needed, but today I discovered an
ornamental rowan tree I’d grown from seed had been neatly nipped off at ground
level. If they are back then I would prefer that they stay down on the machair
and do not become regular visitors to my garden. It’s looking like meat might
be back on the menu. As for visitors to the studio I don’t expect any more as
I’ve put the sign back in the shed, and my mind is taken up with preparing to
leave in mid-October. I’ve purchased a small bag with wheels and extending
handle that will be my walk on cabin luggage. There will be no other, and in it
I hope to pack as much making materials as possible, a change of clothes, slippers,
toothbrush and all important medication. I’ve learnt from previous trips to
Australia that clothing is not a high priority. I see people struggling with
massive suitcases and feel sure that half the stuff they’ve packed will return
unused. I somehow can’t see Tottie as a minimalist when it comes to clothes. I
don’t think I’ve seen her in the same outfit twice this summer. Having enough
variety of embroidery wool is all important to me, and this time I’ve put in a
few scraps of blankets to continue my harbour views. I also put a couple of
bits of mattress ticking to serve as the background for some wacky birds.
The
drawing of these was achieved with the aid of five years old Eppie, who had the
simple task of drawing a squiggle that would start and end in the same place. I
then had to turn it into a bird. It surprised me as I rotated the page as to
just how little additions were required to achieve this. Both the Toucan and peacock were fine
examples and will now go on to become ticking samplers..
TOTTIE. Tom has had a bad week and although he didn’t want
to talk about it, it didn’t take long before the full story came out. He’d
received details by email to pay back his friend in Australia for his flight to
WA. The email was hacked, the details changed and the money subsequently and
innocently transferred to a third party. It took the best part of a morning in
the bank to sort it out and they admitted it was a very sophisticated scam, but
Bank of Scotland came up trumps and the money was refunded. I couldn’t
therefore make out why he was still so upset, surely getting the money back was
something to be celebrated. He explained that it wasn’t about the money, and
that it was the fact that someone had intercepted his emails. He said through
tears that it felt like a physical violation far worse than any robbery. I
think emails will now be a thing of the past for Tom. Sadly this sort of hazard
will continue into the foreseeable future and is only set to get worse with the
intervention of AI. I have however discovered that the friend he will be
staying with is also a Nadin like me. I wonder why Tom didn’t tell me that
earlier when I was delving into my family tree. I must do some more digging,
but work keeps getting in the way. The boss caught me researching the family
name on line, and followed it up with a little lecture entitled “in your own
time Tottie”. I almost forgot it’s his birthday, but I’m not even sure if I
should send him a cheery message acknowledging the day, since I know he doesn’t
do birthdays. Oh, I can’t just ignore it now I’ve remembered. A few big smiley face
should do it.😄😊😀👄
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