Old goats

We've adopted a new habit of getting up early on a Saturday morning and going somewhere chilly. Last week an ice rink, and this week...

Indian Ladder Farms is still closed for the season, but the Girl is pals with the manager and got herself an invitation to go and feed the animals.  Of course, she was especially keen to see the beloved goats.  She and I were there by 8am.  Really it was her treat so I drove off for an hour and left her having a lovely time stomping around with buckets of water in the cold and mud as (can you believe it?) snow fell.

I took refuge in the nearest supermarket.  As I was trundling up and down the aisles picking up some groceries, a bloke cruised by and tried to pick up...me!!

"What's a fine young lady like you doing single?"
Really?
"Erm, I'm not single," was my oh-so witty retort.
"Can't blame a guy for asking," said the bloke, scooting away.

Beardy bloke (looked quite a lot like this goat).  The sort that plays the banjo in a folk band, drives a pick-up truck and lives in the woods.  Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with any of those things.  Except the beardiness - bleugh, no thank you.

But, am I missing something here?  Had I inadvertently stumbled into "singles morning" in the Voorheesville Hannaford's tea and coffee aisle?

Friends...and neighbours

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by someone I knew at college more than twenty years ago.  The Man knew him, too, as he was a fellow physicist.  I regarded him as a friend then, although we weren't particularly close (but I do have a nice memory of visiting an all-night bagel bakery with him in North London one vacation). I'm not sure we'd been in touch since exchanging letters in 1987, when I was spending a year in Japan and he was in Israel (post-graduation) getting more deeply into his Jewish faith.

So, anyway.  It turns out he lives just down the road.  OK, not literally, but in American terms pretty much so.  He and his family moved from London to the Boston area just a few months after we moved out here.  They're about a three hour drive away, door to door.  Today he and his wife and one of their three teenage daughters (how can someone my age have three teenage daughters?  Oh, that's right, we are actually that old, aren't we...) were passing our way on the way back from checking out college options elsewhere in New York state.

It was so lovely to see him again (and to meet his family).  We did the whole "you haven't changed a bit" routine - and really meant it.  It was fun to catch up on [two decades-worth of] news, to compare moving-to-America stories, and to recall old friends.  Life has turned out well for him, and that is...reassuring.  I'm very happy that we're back in touch.

Laser boys

The Boy couldn't get to sleep last night, and he was up early this morning, too.  Not only was he anticipating a half-day at school, but also - at last - his belated birthday party.

He came home at lunchtime with a classmate.  Another friend joined them at two.  Who knew ten year-olds could be so enormous and LOUD?  At 4 o'clock another five boys were delivered.  I sent them all into the backyard and they swarmed the swing-set like a pack of howler monkeys.  Then just time for a brief snack before we packed everyone into two cars and took off to Zero Gravity (where we were joined by more friends) for a couple of sessions of laser tag.

I think all the boys had a great time, not least between laser sessions when they fed scary amounts of quarters into the games machines in the lobby.  The machines spew out tickets that can be exchanged for prizes.  Dithering over which bits of dollar-store tat to take home as treasure was probably the kids' top activity of all.

And now it's all over. Woomph!  It has been a long, exhausting day.

Along the street

It's funny what you notice when you find yourself waiting somewhere you don't usually have to wait.  I arrived early at my refugee friends' house today, and no-one was home.  I sat on the step for a while and watched a squirrel tightrope walking along the overhead electrical cables.  I noticed that while most of the houses in the street are run down and shabby, one or two have been done up to their former Victorian glory - is the area on the up?  I watched a pigeon trying to build a nest behind a loose board over a window.

I spotted a noticeboard and went and read up about this season's events at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy.  I wandered down the street and noticed that the corner shop was advertising pigs tails and chitterlings.

By then I was getting chilly, so I took myself to a cafe called Bonobo and had an excellent fair trade cappuccino that nearly blasted my head off.

My friend appeared after an hour.  He'd been at the airport collecting his auntie who'd just flown in from Thailand - she has come here to live.  The poor lady looked half frozen (she wasn't dressed for a cold day), and she was so exhausted that she immediately fell asleep on the sofa.  I hope life in America turns out well for her.

Too cranky?

When I was planning yesterday's musical presentation to the seniors, I realised I had to do a bit more than just show up and play old records at them.  I needed a framework, and it occurred to me to copy Desert Island Discs.  Except that instead of pretending to be Sue Lawley (or whoever does the show now) interviewing someone, I just chatted a bit between numbers about things I'd done and places I'd been, and somehow managed to connect my experiences - sometimes rather tangentially - to the music.

Anyway.  I had a cheery old wander down memory lane.  One of the things I remembered was an attempt to start a Gramophone Society at college.  As I recall, once a week I'd spend a whole day putting up photocopied posters all over the place, warmly inviting fellow students to "bring gramophone/78s if you have them". Ha!  Of course, no one ever came (except two baffled Americans, once).  Didn't matter - my two best friends (it still amazes me that the first person I met at university turned out to be another dance band fan) and I would spend the evening cranking up and practising the quickstep and the cha-cha-cha, and that was fine with us.

Of course, if we'd had communication tools like Facebook and Twitter back then it might have been a different story...

Yeah, OK, probably not.

MC Albaniana

I've had a go at quite a few things since coming to the States, and I've tried to say yes more often than no to new experiences.  But I don't think I ever imagined I would get to be a DJ - or that I'd enjoy it so much.

Well, I say "DJ".  The discs I was spinning were...original 78s.  And the hip kids I was wowing with my sounds were...about the same vintage.  I'd been invited to bring my wind-up gramophone along to the local Senior's Luncheon.

Oh, it was fun though.  I had time to play six records:  Paddlin' Madeleine Home (a slightly naughty number from the late '20s); Love is the Sweetest Thing (we all agreed, that's what we call a romantic song) sung by Ray Noble ("Ray Noble!  Ahhh!' sighed a lady to my right); for a change of mood, a tango about Spring, sung in Japanese; then a novelty instrumental, Whistling Rufus (includes actual whistling); Teddy Bears Picnic, performed with terribly posh vowels by Henry Hall and his BBC Dance Orchestra; and to finish off, Paul Robeson singing Jerusalem (pure self-indulgence on my part, the thought of England's green and pleasant land bringing a tear to the eye of no-one but me).

As I rounded up the show, members of the audience shared memories of their grandmother's or aunt's old wind up gramophone "with a big horn", that they had listened to as children, and I expressed my envy - I've always wanted one like that (though my picnic version is a lot more portable). 

Someone I know from Five Rivers, not exactly a spring chicken himself, turned up at the end to drive some of the seniors home. He said, "I never knew you were into this old fogey music!"  Ah, but I am.  One day, when I'm attending senior entertainment in my own right, I'm going to be so miserable sitting there, forced to listen to Wham! and Madonna.  Will there be anyone left by then who has even heard of Ray Noble?

March madness

The weather has settled back to something less midsummery and more early spring-like, but it was still quite pleasant to be out of doors today, and a comfortable temperature for doing a few chores around the yard.

We bought a new power hose attachment, which made washing the car quite fun (inevitably at some point the kids turned the jets on each other).  Then we decided to turn the hose on the house.  Modern American suburban houses are flimsy things made out of chipboard covered by "vinyl siding" - pretend wooden slats.  In effect we have a plastic house.   It has become a bit grubby during our years in it.  Squirting it with a hose proved to be moderately effective, but what it really needs is a good wipe over with a damp cloth.  We'll have to get a longer ladder, but for today I did the parts I could reach.  So weird, though, washing a house.

The kids have also been outside having fun.  They have discovered basketball - the Girl is doing a unit on it in PE.  This year, for the first time, they are both tall enough to make use of the hoop that came with the house, so there's been a lot of thump-thump-thumping of the heavy basketball as they bounce it on the driveway.