I notice how some other bloggers are more adept than I am at reporting everyday ordinariness. They can make their accounts of relative mundanity eminently readable. It's quite a skill. When you think about it most days we tick off on our private calendars are quite unremarkable. This is the essence of life - its ordinariness. Days come and days go. Most are forgotten
Today, May 3rd, was a wet day. Chilly too. Lord knows that the land is in desperate need of water because April was amazingly dry here in Yorkshire. Desperate farmers have been praying for rain to fall. At last God responded kindly.
I watched the second day of the final of The World Snooker Championship on television. The spiritual home of this prestigious event is Sheffield's own Crucible Theatre. The relentless Mark Selby came out on top, beating the spirited underdog Shaun Murphy in a best out of thirty five frames match. At times it was really gripping stuff as rain continued to fall on our suburban street.
I made a nice evening meal - vegetable lasagne with salad and cheesy garlic bread before returning to the snooker. Did you know that this quiet game was invented in India in the second half of the nineteenth century by British army officers? Once the coloured balls were made from ivory but now they use a kind of hard plastic known as phenolic resin.
We didn't see our lovely little grandaughter today. She is going in a swimming pool for the first time tomorrow. She has taken to lying in her Moses basket, happily kicking her legs and vocalising like a baby opera singer. She is such a delight.
Oh, I almost forgot. I had my second coronavirus vaccination today in the cavernous Sheffield Arena. The male nurse who gave me my jab asked if I had had any adverse reactions to the first jab and I said - No, none at all. Then he prepared the needle before asking, "Did you have any adverse reactions to the first jab?" Eh? The same question twice in ninety seconds!
Despite its ordinariness, this can often seem like a mad world.
He must say that same sentence 1,000 per day! :) Is snooker billiards(pool)? I'm going off to google Moses basket. (a bassinet?) I'll finally get to see my grandson in a few weeks and am very excited to spend time with him. Unfortunately, he lives 2,800 miles away from me. I'm sure keeping up with a one year old will be exhausting, yet rewarding.
ReplyDeleteHow sad that you did not get to cuddle him when he was a newborn. Snooker is in the same family as billiards and pool but definitely not the same.
DeleteDon't most of us thrive on ordinariness. We like routine . It's less stressful. You can go on automatic pilot.
ReplyDeleteThat's very true Red.
DeleteThe young woman registering me at my second shot asked me the same question twice, and then asked for my card back to make sure she had filled it out properly. She was a little embarrassed and said, "I repeat the same things over and over and over. I just can't remember if I've said them to YOU or not...."
ReplyDeleteYeah - I guess that jab after jab after jab - it all becomes a blur after a while Debby.
DeleteI don't even know if it is broadcast here now but as a kid I used to like watching snooker on tv. There was the commentators hushed voice and a feel of tension, which was strangely soothing.
ReplyDeleteOne or two top snooker players have come from 'Stralia - including the gay icon - Eddie Charlton.
DeleteWell, that sent me Googling.
DeleteI thought the final was rather ordinary too. Lovely to see the crowds back, but objectively not the best of matches. Most of life is ordinary and yet we like to sing of our highlights. It reminds me of when people travel and they say they have seen the 'real' Italy or the 'real' France - and what they mean is they visited a few lesser known spots - the 'real' of almost any western country is getting up and going to work, and seeing the kids off and shopping for those forgotten items - just as it is in Wales or for that matter South Yorkshire. Have a good week...
ReplyDeleteThanks for considering the subject Mark. Interesting comment.
DeleteI suspect that when you've asked the same question of every person hundreds of times a day for weeks on end remembering a 'no' reply for more than 2 seconds is an achievement.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the nurse was actually a goldfish.
DeleteWith so many people to vaccine every day, Imcan easily imagine how the staff at the vaccination centers keep asking the same questions all the time. They probably mumble them in their sleep.
ReplyDeleteGood to know you are now fully vaccinated! O.K. has his first appointment this Friday and the second one in six weeks.
So little Phoebe is going for a swim - that sounds fun! Swimming pools and other such places are not open here.
It is a brand new pool - privately owned and aimed specifically at mothers with babies and small children up to the age of five. Let us hope that Phoebe is not asleep or grumpy when it is time to enter the pool.
DeleteOrdinariness is my life now. I am not sure why I still blog as I have nothing to talk about!
ReplyDeleteI hope Phoebe enjoys her swimming lesson. You could buy her a little mermaid outfit.
And I could be a merman!
DeleteI always like reading your blog JayCee. If you stop to think for a little while you have a lot to say. Plenty more to blog about. I know you are well-travelled for example. We know little about your long experience of work and what about how you met his lordship. The struggles of the deaf and hard of hearing. Your lovely father. Your lovely sister. Plenty more to say.
You are so self deprecating JayCee. We all have ordinary days, let's face it. Everyone's life seems to have moved into an unrelenting repetition. But your ordinary, my ordinary and YP's ordinary are all different ordinaries, and it is interesting to read about others' ordinary days.
DeleteHope the water is warm for Phoebe or she will protest. Ordinary days are highlighted by ritual and routine of course. Whether work or play, my day so far is falling asleep after coffee because I got up too early.
ReplyDeleteWhen I wake too early I often find that Radio 4, playing quietly on our radio alarm clock will send me back to Slumberland.
DeleteDid you have any adverse reactions to the first jab?
ReplyDeleteYes I did. It made me want to punch the lights out of anyone who asked me, "Did you have any adverse reactions to the first jab?"
DeleteNow, now, YP - don't get techy with Tasker - he was merely being solicitous of your well-being!! It's very kind of him to be so concerned.
ReplyDeleteSo little Phoebe is being groomed to become the youngest ever Olympic Gold Medallist backstroke champion is she?
Snooker is a yawn, I'm afraid, and I'm glad that I no longer have to find the TV tuned to the game, as it always was, when my husband slept through it. If I dared to change the channel, or switch the set off (I like to live dangerously at times), he'd wake up, complain, and switch it back on! Back in the mists of time there was the famous night, which went on into the wee small hours - Dennis Taylor versus Steve Davis. Did you see it?
Yes I did see that match in the days when snooker was such a national obsession. I doubt that Tasker was being solicitous of my well being as you put it. He is the kind of fellow who, as a boy, would probably have chopped off the heads of baby birds to watch them dance.
DeleteI view television like background music these days. It's good to have it but I don't watch it every second. The snooker felt subdued and it was weird seeing the audience wearing masks and the snooker players wearing none. Then when they left the stage they put on their masks.
ReplyDeleteSome mornings (most mornings) I wake up and try to figure out what meaning there is to any of this life. I call it my existential morning angst. Lately, this has become a more serious questioning as the days lay before me in their deeply rutted patterns of my life. I seem to be getting worse and worse at attempting anything outside of this tiny world and I was never hugely enthusiastic about any of it before. I will be honest with you- I am struggling to find meaning.
ReplyDeleteThis last year has been full of ordinariness for me, incarcerated at home and trying to keep busy doing nothing. I have recently had emails inviting me to rejoin the rotas for things I help out and the first is on Friday at a foodbank, heloing out with sewing repairs. It will seem very strange to do something out of the ordinary after 14 months,so wish me luck....
ReplyDeleteI have never seen snooker played but I have seen a table and the balls that go with it a time or too in larger American pool halls. I love playing pool/billiards but unfortunately my eyesight is such now that I am really terrible at it.
ReplyDeleteI love “ real life” blogs
ReplyDeleteWhat I had for tea
It’s interesting
Maybe your nurse has some kind of memory impairment! Were you schnockered during the snooker?
ReplyDelete