GLORIA RELAXES

If, in your quiet moments, you have occasionally been wondering what I have been doing recently, the answer is ‘Relaxing’. Doing nothing much ... but with Variety!

Take the Jigsaw, for instance.

Gordon came home with this from a model railway show, cleared the table, and there you are.

Some strange people, I am told, start a jigsaw in the middle and work outwards, but I don’t believe in making the difficult downright impossible. Edges first, writing if there is any, colours then shapes.

Gordon tells me that once, when in hospital, he did a jigsaw face down on the table! The direction of the fibres halved the possibilities straight away so it was simply a matter of trying each shape in two ways. Three days it took.

Remarkably flat things, jigsaws; or do I mean ‘thin’?

In fact the principle is really quite easy. All you have to do is pick up each piece and put it in its place. Furthermore, each one you put in is one less remaining. Quite progressive!

Have you noticed the different heights of windowsills?

Upstairs ours are waist height, while downstairs they are chair height!

So I can sit downstairs for hours every day, even weeks, relaxing, just contemplating our Sundial.

It might be unique, being a special indoor sundial because the house faces south. All the usual sundials are out of doors to reach the sun, so they have to be made solid fixtures to withstand the weather.

The trouble is that, believe it or not, the sun varies through the year from appearing a quarter of an hour early in the sky to a quarter of an hour late! It is most late in February and most early in October/ November.

Therefore the outdoor sundials, being fixtures, must all indicate up to quarter of an hour wrong.

Add the hour change, summer to winter, and you see why sundials are not terribly popular for stating the time, compared with the clocks.

But our sundial can be adjusted from time to time to keep it right. You use the graph which is provided for all the year.

Then there is also a step for Summer Time. Thus it can tell you the time to within a couple of minutes all year! That’s really Something!

I must write to the Sundial Society.

Almost as good for relaxing is Fishing. How does that strike you?

In fact, I had not done any fishing in times past, so I started off rather shy and decided to practise fishing in my room first. We don’t want to look an idiot on the river bank.

All you have to do is avoid tangling on the light fitting. Ideally what you want is a bucket of goldfish.

With a bit of practice it is possible to get started quietly and sit for hours getting nothing at all.

Gaining a bit of confidence I went down to the river at Rye House with the teenage three-quarter rod borrowed from John and got nothing there with equal success.

In the late sun, that day, it was more a matter of deciding whether to be brunette or blonde.

The classy red overcoat was new from Oxfam, a whole Seven Pounds Sterling bar a penny, being a really top quality model.

I waved to the kids on the other side of the water who shouted across and were very chatty, keen to be friendly, so at the end there were lots of ‘Goodbye Gloria’s’.

Thus encouraged, I set out with the full length rod, kindly lent by Chris, to use it further down the river, and rather muddy it was too, (the river bank, not the rod).

There were passing folk, cyclists, and even a white van negotiating the pot holes very slowly, but I have since realised that what we never saw was a Bailiff.

The best was in the evening, when I settled on a fishing platform by the lake, the peak of peace and quiet.

No motor boats.

If you want to relax then this really is the ultimate. I advise it, in large quantities, any time.

Very good for you.

With lots of love, from Gloria.

Ends