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Tuesday, 29 April 2008 03:14![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mysteriousaliwaysSadly, not content with borrowing Stephen/Ryan ideas off ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fredbassett, I also have to emulate her by heading off up north (north of Scotland this time) for several days for an aunt's funeral.
She was quite an eccentric, my Auntie Isobel, and had been most of her life. Moved from the Highlands down to London when she was barely in her twenties, but always called Glenlivet 'home' and came back there several times a year.She lived in a tiny flat in Fitzrovia, within spitting distance of Oxford Circus, would talk the hind legs off a donkey, and could blag her way into the Chelsea Flower Show every year without a ticket, just by chatting to the people on the door. Once she managed to get into the Royal Variety Performance for nothing, sitting there in her woollen coat and jumble-sale hat among all the posh people in their furs and diamonds.
When I lived in London I'd go and visit her at weekends, and every time she'd make me dinner and send me home with something she'd picked up at a jumble sale (or off the pavement - she was forever picking things up in the street, I'm sure some people thought she was a bag lady *g*), whether it be bone-handled side-knives or a plastic basket or a tiny little Royal Doulton vase she'd found beside the bins outside a china shop.
She'd sail serenely across some of the busiest roads in London, confidently proclaiming 'They'll stop for you'. (She only lost the argument with a car once, when it ran over her foot).
Her handwriting was notoriously illegible (and remarkably similar to my grandmother's), and her letters would end up filling every space on the paper so you'd start at the top of the paper and end up reading down to the bottom and then up the sides and across the top again.
She wrote a book about her childhood and the glen she grew up in, and it became a huge word-of-mouth success, selling far more than the publishers expected. I didn't envy her editor though - as well as the illegible handwriting, she'd write in real stream-of-consciousness style, moving from one subject to another without pausing for breath or punctuation.
She'd go for long walks in the country and come home dragging half a tree for firewood, or stalks of rhubarb out of someone's garden - only in the glen, where she knew everybody, so she didn't consider it as nicking stuff :)
Lately her mind had started to go - she couldn't remember what she'd said to you three minutes previously - and she was getting really frail from the leukemia, and had given up eating. She was in her nineties, so she's had a good run of it. We'll be sad, but eventually there's a time when it's time to go.
Rest in Peace Isabella. We'll miss you.
So I'll have quite a few hours in the train over the next few days (I might even get some fic written, this week has been far too busy to get anything down). Primeval bods, have fun in the Sanctuary while I'm away. I'll probably be back Thursday night (my birthday!)
Meep, is that the time? I'd better get to bed. Night folks.
fredbassett, I also have to emulate her by heading off up north (north of Scotland this time) for several days for an aunt's funeral.She was quite an eccentric, my Auntie Isobel, and had been most of her life. Moved from the Highlands down to London when she was barely in her twenties, but always called Glenlivet 'home' and came back there several times a year.She lived in a tiny flat in Fitzrovia, within spitting distance of Oxford Circus, would talk the hind legs off a donkey, and could blag her way into the Chelsea Flower Show every year without a ticket, just by chatting to the people on the door. Once she managed to get into the Royal Variety Performance for nothing, sitting there in her woollen coat and jumble-sale hat among all the posh people in their furs and diamonds.
When I lived in London I'd go and visit her at weekends, and every time she'd make me dinner and send me home with something she'd picked up at a jumble sale (or off the pavement - she was forever picking things up in the street, I'm sure some people thought she was a bag lady *g*), whether it be bone-handled side-knives or a plastic basket or a tiny little Royal Doulton vase she'd found beside the bins outside a china shop.
She'd sail serenely across some of the busiest roads in London, confidently proclaiming 'They'll stop for you'. (She only lost the argument with a car once, when it ran over her foot).
Her handwriting was notoriously illegible (and remarkably similar to my grandmother's), and her letters would end up filling every space on the paper so you'd start at the top of the paper and end up reading down to the bottom and then up the sides and across the top again.
She wrote a book about her childhood and the glen she grew up in, and it became a huge word-of-mouth success, selling far more than the publishers expected. I didn't envy her editor though - as well as the illegible handwriting, she'd write in real stream-of-consciousness style, moving from one subject to another without pausing for breath or punctuation.
She'd go for long walks in the country and come home dragging half a tree for firewood, or stalks of rhubarb out of someone's garden - only in the glen, where she knew everybody, so she didn't consider it as nicking stuff :)
Lately her mind had started to go - she couldn't remember what she'd said to you three minutes previously - and she was getting really frail from the leukemia, and had given up eating. She was in her nineties, so she's had a good run of it. We'll be sad, but eventually there's a time when it's time to go.
Rest in Peace Isabella. We'll miss you.
So I'll have quite a few hours in the train over the next few days (I might even get some fic written, this week has been far too busy to get anything down). Primeval bods, have fun in the Sanctuary while I'm away. I'll probably be back Thursday night (my birthday!)
Meep, is that the time? I'd better get to bed. Night folks.
