Monday 6 July 2009

OCTOGERANIUMS

There are people who - whenever you meet them - pull you down ... and then there are those always make you feel uplifted. Would that there were more of them around!

Today I got a lift from not one, but two, very lovely people: both are ladies in their 80's. Iain and I call these people (from a saying obtained from Mary Sandeman) "Octogeraniums".


Iain was decided to telephone a friend of ours, Mary, who lives in Ayrshire with a view to paying her a visit. This is a Very Special Lady whose life story would fill a book or a 2 hour TV drama. She's also a Very Sharp Cookie! The latter half of her life was taken up with accountancy work particularly in relation to tax submissions.

When Iain came off the phone he said that when he asked Mary how she was keeping these days, she replied "Oh, I'm not so well...". "Oh dear." says Iain, "What's wrong?" "It's these tax returns. I have to have them finished this week!" !!!!

The other lovely lady is our neighbour, Barbara, who has just had a successful hip replacement operation. I had coffee with her this morning and she was talking about her life, her holiday plans and the like. This lady, also in her 80's, spent many years on cruise ships (in the days when they were for those and such-as-those) as a hairdresser. She could write a book too!

Iain, her husband, is the do-for and go-for at the moment but as soon as she is fit, they are going to head to Culzean Castle in Ayrshire. Barbara was a teenager visiting there with her parents in the 1950's when she and her parents met and chatted with President Eisenhower. Culzean Castle* was his temporary residence in Scotland.
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*In 1945, the Kennedy family gave the castle and its grounds to the National Trust for Scotland (thus avoiding inheritance tax). In doing so, they stipulated that the apartment at the top of the castle be given to Eisenhower in recognition of his role as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during the Second World War.

Photo: Geraniums in Glenarn glasshouse today.




1 comment:

Vagabonde said...

What a great idea to call a dear old friend an octogeranium. When we moved to our house here in the 70s, our next door neighbor was 85 and she would recall her childhood for me. Her family had a plantation close by and her grandfather recalled seeing the last Union soldiers killing their only cow before leaving Georgia (after the Civil War) so the whole county came to eat the cow – first meat in 4 years. She made quilt tops on her old sewing machine and gave me 3 very pretty ones.