Caped Gooseberry – Page 20 – Deborah Makarios

October 11, 2014

Who Would You Be If You Weren't Who You Are?

You know, the old “two roads diverged in a wood” scenario.

I think everyone has, at some point in their life, faced a decision that will have an effect on the rest of their life. And if you haven’t yet, don’t worry: you will.

It’s generally fairly obvious that the decision is a major one: a move, a job, a relationship. Sometimes you don’t find out until later that the seemingly minor decision was actually the one which determined the course of your subsequent life, but usually it is helpfully signposted. Big Important Decision! You Can’t Afford To Screw This Up! No pressure…

For me, the decision came at the end of my last year at university – that’s the other thing about these important decisions, they’re usually impeccably timed for the most inconvenient possible moment.
Over the course of the year I had been seriously considering becoming a nun. Because what eccentric could resist a hat like this?

I jest, it wasn’t the Flying Nun headgear that attracted me.
To live in community, but in quietness, not noise; to have a regular routine, and the support of others in keeping to it; to not have to wonder about what to wear every morning; to live a life fully devoted to keeping the two great commands of Christ – love God and love others; these were all incentives.

But then….
I met the Caped Gooseberry.

Fortunately for all concerned, I didn’t loiter at the crossroads as long as Jane Christmas, who went to try life as a nun after her partner had proposed.
It fairly quickly became apparent to me that my calling did not lie in the monastic direction. Two roads diverged and I… I took the one less travelled by (there being a large number of monastic orders and only one Caped Gooseberry).

While there are still aspects of monastic life which appeal to me, I have no regrets. Particularly since most of the appealing bits can be enjoyed to some extent within the bonds of holy matrimony – although people will look at you oddly if you stroll around with habit and husband. I hear.
If we’d gone for a Japanese-style ceremony, I could even have had the starchy headgear…

What roads have diverged in your life – and what lay down the paths you didn’t take?

October 4, 2014

The Floor is Made of Lava! and other Saturday fun

I did something really old-fashioned this morning: I filled a bucket with hot soapy water, got down on my hands and knees, and scrubbed the kitchen floor. And the laundry floor, but somehow that doesn’t have the same ring to it.

There is fun to be had, even in such a task! But before you picture me as one of those women (if indeed any such exist) who enjoy crawling across a wet dirty floor dragging a heavy bucket about, let me assure you, the scrubbing itself is not the attraction, although there is a certain satisfaction in seeing pristine cleanliness where once – well, let us draw the veil of charity over what it looked like before!

The really fun bit of scrubbing the floor is drying it – rather like Amélie’s mother enjoying polishing the parquet with her slippers. Where else in one’s daily round – all right, conscience, weekly round – all right, monthly – look, never mind how often I scrub the floors! The floor is scrubbed; let conscience be content.
How often in one’s regular (or irregular, insists my conscience) life as an adult does one have the chance to play The Floor is Made of Lava?

OK, if you’re a footman at Buckingham Palace, you may be called upon to skate up and down the dining table with polishing cloths tied to your feet, but we can’t all be footmen. Especially those of us who are of the female persuasion – but then, the royal website says the Royal Household “strives to ensure that all employees are able to contribute to their maximum potential, irrespective of gender” etc etc, so you never know. Any readers who are female footmen (footwomen?) in Her Majesty’s employ are welcome to comment below.

Fool that I was, I failed to take the example of the footman and Amélie’s mother. Instead of attaching the cloths to my feet, I draped a couple across the kitchen floor. All very well until I had nearly scrubbed myself out the back door and found there was nary a cloth in sight. There lay the glistening laundry floor, as barren and bare as the Arctic plain, and there was I like Frankenstein’s monster stranded on its ice floe.

Yes, it was lava, and now it’s ice. Try to keep up. No, I am not wearing skis.

In the end I simply howled for the Caped Gooseberry to come and save me, which he nobly did, hurling cloths across the intervening space like some sort of mythical giant hurling rocks into a lake of lava. (Yes! It’s lava again!) Be warned: it is dangerous out there; take a cloth with you.

Restored to the relative safety of the kitchen archipelago at last, I leapt lightly from place to place about that most crucial part of all household work: making the cup of tea. Actually, archipelago is overstating it: there were only two cloths and they were a stride away from each other, and from everything else. An arabesque enabled me to extend the kettle as far as the tap – rather like this:

only more sensibly dressed. I may strand myself on a laundry ice floe without skis, but I would never wear ice skates when the floor is made of lava. Credit me with some sense 🙂

How do you have fun with your housework? I’d love to hear your ideas!

September 6, 2014

Relax!

It is one of the interesting variations between humans that we find different ways to relax – or perhaps more precisely, that we relax in different ways. What produces the effect of relaxation in one person will have a completely different effect on another.

Case in point: the Caped Gooseberry finds strategy games a fun unwinding leisure-form, while I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about them.

Contrariwise, I find few things more relaxing than curling up on the couch watching a DVD, but for the Caped Gooseberry it’s more an energy-user than an energy-giver. And so it goes.

When we were preparing to marry, our minister suggested that we might need to put some effort into finding ‘mutually enjoyable leisure activities’, and how truly she spoke.

This is one of the reasons why we so often read aloud to each other: it’s a leisure activity we both enjoy. This works in well with another favourite form of relaxation for me: handwork (as long as it’s going well and I don’t have a deadline hanging over my head). It is particularly handy as I am not yet skilled enough to knit and read at the same time.

My favourite form of relaxation, however, is strictly solitaire: chain-reading. Generally I chain-read books I’ve read before, or books of a genre I am familiar with – nothing that requires too much focus. I do of course read mentally stimulating books, but not when I’m tired and stressed. Then I read to relax: Christie, Marsh, Wentworth, Sayers et cetera.

When I’m really stressed, I can feel the itch to sit down with a book almost as a physical symptom – unfortunate if the stress is due to the old problem of So Much To Do, So Little Time. Addict? Perhaps.

Perhaps I should consider other ways we can combine our relaxations. The pair in the first photo inspired me to consider strategy drinking games – tea drinking of course. Except the Caped Gooseberry doesn’t care for tea at the best of times, and adding the bitter taste of defeat would probably not improve the flavour in his eyes.

Who am I kidding? The game would probably end with him triumphing by strategy while I drown my sorrows in tea, as yet untasted by the gentleman in question.

Any other ideas? And how do you relax?