A day in the life of Mary

Mary was getting dressed on a wet October morning.The cycling
shorts she had never worn alone made a warm extra layer under her green cotton trousers.On top she wore a red tunic and also some green plastic earrings.

She saw Annie who had just rung the door bell very hard

My goodness,Mary,you look different.Where on earth did you get those earrings? she said enviously

I made them, myself out of the little tops of those plastic milk containers from the supermarket.

I say,you’re not that poor are you?Anne asked her kindly

It’s not what is real,it’s how you feel,Mary replied poetically as she sometimes enjoyed a bit of fun and teasing a friend gently.

No,said Annie it’s It’s not what you feel,it’s what is real.

And how do we know what is real?Mary asked her with deep curiosity her eyes glowing in a deep shade of teal blue as she had drunk some pina colada in the night.

Well,I know you had a moderately good job so you must have more than just your state pension.You may be giving more than a tithe to Charity.Is that wise?

No,Mary cried,but I want to…I like to do it.

Oh,dear,Annie said.By the way you will need a coat,it’s much colder.I hope you’ve not given all your coats to Oxfam like Stan once did with his shoes.

Thanks,Mary smiled with her voice.I still have twenty two coats of all colours,A bit like Joseph in the Bible.

At the bus stop Mary met Tom who lived round the corner in a semi detached villa with a an extension,conservatory and downstairs shower room tiled dark scarlet and mauve..He had fallen over again and bruised his face but still looked handsome with his dark hair and blue and yellow spotted Irish eyes.

Maybe you need to pick up your feet more,Mary whispered to him cautiously
What a strange expression that is,.I wonder who invented it.It’s amazing how wise our ancestors were.They invented writing and cooking and philosophy.We are going backwards.

Thus Mary passed her day,talking to friends and musing on the meaning of words and sentences. and making herself jewellery from mundane objects she noticed on her walks.Not to mention cleaning the front door knob and putting all her old Xmas cards into bags for recycling.

Since from the natural numbers 1,2,3,4,…… we can get to the strange transcendental numbers pi and e and the fact that there are different orders of infinity does that prove God exists,she asked Tom plaintively.Well,not prove,but suggest.

I don’t know what you are on about,honey,he responded.Nobody ever saw pi in a burning bush although I have seen pies burn in a halogen oven more than once
That is a totally different order of reality,she told him sweetly.

Wow,Mary, many men don’t like extremely clever women you know.

Which men are those ? she asked wonderingly, as her peaches and cream complexion glowed with health and beauty like no-one since the Queen of Sheba.

I suppose I don’t mind brilliant womenmyself,he said,.it’s possibly because men need to feel superior otherwise they lose their confidence. and then they are in big trouble.
But what about women’s confidence Tom reflected further to himself

Maybe women don’t need confidence so desperately much,Mary sighed sweetly
They looked at each other and smiled.The sun came out and the
trees were glowing in red and gold as the bus came down the hill looking like some chariot from a myth as the sun hit the windows at an obtuse angle ,as Mary might have said.

If you are English your Northern accent may prevent you from being promoted into the high levels of the civil service and other places too

Since I read this article in the times newspaper I have been wondering how much further ahead I would have gone in my career if I did not have a Lancashire accent.

On reflection it seems a mistake to wonder about what might have happened but instead to concentrate on improving the future

I realise that what I could do do instead of learning the queen’s English I could learn to speak with a foreign accent instead.

I am very fond over the singer and poet Leonard Cohen and I have listen to him for hours and hours since being bereaved. He has a Canadian accent.Since a I love him it will be a tribute. So what I’m hearing him singing I try to to feel in my mouth and throat what he is doing with his.

I have got the accent for a few of the words but it’s taking me a long time, and now I have an accent which is a cross between Northern British, Canadian and Cockney.

It will give some researchers work because I won’t fit into one category,: when I was teaching in a university some people thought I was from the USA, other thought I was Dutch.

My name also causes problems because it’s Danish from the Vikings and it’s very hard for certain people to pronounce it or even try. Unless you’ve been living here only a few years you’ll be very puzzled. Someone who had come here from Eastern Europe asked me where I came from because she was sure my name was not English.She was trying to do some one-upmanship over someone who was less capable of adapting to life in the UK.

Is Boris Johnson English? I don’t think but he went to Eton so he has mixed with the the Royal the aristocats and the wealthy. So that is the accent that has learnt

Shall I keep my accent and it’s mixed sounds or shall I try to become totally Canadian? That does not have an answer but it has made me live longer trying to reconcile these differences and I suppose it would have been easier to go to an efficient teacher and learn to talk with BBC English or received pronunciation. That sounds quite religious as if Boris Johnson had climbed Snowdon and received the tablet from God tell ng him how to pronounce vowels.

Trying to understand

From today’s Times in London

The trick for us, living in an impossibly intricate society, is to distinguish between those with cause for genuine confidence and those charismatics who are just whistling in the wind. Whether we’re voting, investing or making one of life’s big decisions, we have to be on guard against wishful thinking and our evolutionary tendency to be swept up by fashion or enthusiasm. We should confine certainties to what we know and

The cliffa of North Yorkshire

Walking on the beach at Redcar Bay.

The Cleveland hills are not so far away.

The cliffs begin at Saltburn we walk there.

Filling up our lungs with North sea air.

The pier is long whenever is it used?

In my mind’s eye I see it far away

Cliffs begin and seabirds will amuse

The super structures wear into decay.

David Hockney Bridlington

sea views

I walk on this wet sand without my shoes.