Judith Proctor's Journal

 It's funny that things that make you remember the dead.

I rarely remember the date anyone died, it's other triggers.

It's Baycon in a few weeks (a great little board game convention near Exeter).  That brings back memories of Molly, my mother-in-law.  That's where I was when my brother in law phoned to say she'd gone into hospital with terminal bowel cancer.

I remember the kindness of people I hardly knew, little things that helped me cope.  Of all things, a few yellow marbles.  Two ladies know I was looking for a yellow marble to complete a second-hand solitaire set.  They visited 'House of Marbles' and bought me four lovely marbles of different shapes and patterns. I still have them.  

On May 4th, I remember Molly in a different way.  She was born on Star Wars day, so it's easy to remember.  On that day, I go out and do something she would have enjoyed.  Often, we visit a garden centre, have lunch there and come back with a new plant for the garden.

 Got back from morris last night around 11pm to discover that the high winds had started removing the tarpaulin we'd tied over Molly.  (She's on the trailer on our drive at present)

So I retied the ropes and added more, getting my skirt thoroughly wet in the process.

That held until morning. Fortunately it was dry and sunny today, so we took off the tarpaulin, bailed her out and gave her a good airing.  

I've discovered that rain gets into the bow compartment, owing the the trailer being on a slope, so I dried that out with a sponge.

Some bits are still a little bit damp (that handles of the oars, as they aren't varnished, and part of the bow compartment), but most is fine.

Wrapped her up again as tomorrow is likely to be just as bad.

For long term storage, she'll be upsidedown, but we need to get a proper cover for her first.

 We dug up some hellibores from Molly's garden last week and they're now in our back garden.  They seem to be settling in, in spite of being transplanted while in flower.

Plants are good things to remember people by.  They need a degree of tlc to do well and the act of looking after them reminds you of the giver.

Molly and I shared a love of gardening - indeed, she helped to increase my own interest in the subject. Even in her eighties and nearly blind, she was still growing most of her own vegetables.  She's one of the reasons I have an allotment.

We've also adopted a little mini-rock garden of sedums in a shallow container.  It was made for her by my husband when he was a boy.  For half her life it reminded her of him, and now it will remind us of her.

She was a wonderfully pragmatic person. (I'm speaking in the past tense, even though she isn't technically dead yet.  I do not believe I will ever speak to her again.)

Entorien (my daughter-in-law) sums it up well in her description of her last meeting with Molly - http://entorien.livejournal.com/518028.html

Molly has no religious beliefs, she doesn't fear death and she wishes the doctors would let her get on with the business of dying.

She did the paperwork several years ago to donate her body to science and we've made sure all the doctors are aware of that.

Was filtered, now deliberately public.  Some of you will remember this post from just before Xmas.  Simon Proctor claimed to need money for medical expenses to help a relative.  (his wife has family in Sri Lanka, so it sounded plausible)  He borrowed more money off us after Xmas and claimed that he had money coming in from a commission that would enable him to repay us very quickly.

By the time of the 4th request we got suspicious and refused to lend him any more.  The next day, I phoned his mother and asked her if there was a problem. She almost broke down in tears.  He's borrowed an enormous amount from her - well into five figures.  She's an 80-year old pensioner and she's now got so little money left that she can't even afford to use the heater in her little greenhouse or go out for an outing with her friends.  (We've just mailed her a cheque.  She didn't ask for it, but she's getting it anyway.)

Regular readers of this LJ will know how much  I like my mother-in-law.  She's a really nice person and made me feel welcome right from the start.  We have interests in common - she started my interest in needlework and she's a keen gardener.

I've given her the phone number of a debt counselling charity to pass onto her other son (after checking it myself to make sure you could get through to a friendly human being without a long wait).  He's a total computer-phobic, which means the numerous pages of advice/help/Excel files for people in debt are not available to him.  All the same, he may need hitting over the head with a sledgehammer to be made to use a computer in a local library.  He's in total denial about the hole he's in and he's a very plausible liar (Molly doesn't know how much debt he's in, but we both suspect a very large figure as his bank won't allow him a cheque book or a credit card).  She thinks he's probably borrowed from loan sharks and is now paying ever increasing amounts of interest.  Neither of us have any idea as to what originally started the debt off. He has work and so does his wife (but they have totally separate finances).

I'm angry about the money that we'll never see again - he knew when he borrowed it that we'd saved it up for a specific project and that we needed it back by Easter.  But I'm far more angry about the money he's borrowed from Molly.

Richard and I are trying to complete my mother-in-law's book (Art Needlework and Embroidery Transfers 1870-1970)  in time for her birthday on May 4th.

We've been working on it off and on for well over a year, but other things have kept getting in the way.

It's been done in brief flurries of activity - "Molly, was this Celtic transfer produced to accompany Liberty's 'Celtic' range, or was it something completely separate?",  "Molly, these embroidery patterns for military crests produced during the war - were the ones in this photograph available after the war?", "Molly, was this embroidered tablecloth stitched in Maderia?"

I started off knowing nothing at all about the subject, which in some ways has been useful as I'm asking questions about things that are ambiguous to me in the text, but might have been clear to an expert. Except that Molly is probably the only expert!  She's done a lot of research that could never be duplicated now, as a lot of the people she interviewed have since died.

Ironically, the project has also been slowed down by modern technology.  Knowing that one can improve the quality of many of the pictures makes it seem a crime not to do so, especially when the photos are of beautiful pieces of colourful embroidery.  And, of course, the ability to do really clever things with layout to get the pictures right next to the text would make it a shame to have all the pictures clumped together.  (And doing layout work is far more time-consuming than you would ever believe possible unless you've done it yourself.)

Still, we're getting closer.  I've now done the final proof-read on the text. Even on my fourth pass through the book, I was still finding things I'd missed.  The more familiar you get with the subject matter, the more you pick up on details you'd previously have overlooked.

Today, we're hoping to do the cover. Fingers crossed.  We've already chosen and cleaned up our cover photograph (a lovely piece of Art Noveau embroidery - stitched from a transfer outline, of course)  We've still got to get the title added to that and do the spine and the back cover.  We have to sort out the ISBN and get the whole thing in a form that will upload successfully.  Richard's on attempt five or six trying to get the text to upload. The format has to be exactly right.  We're publishing via Lulu, which means that we'll be able to sell the book as paperback or download.

It's going to be touch and go.  Realistically, I don't think we'll complete the cover today.  We've got the text for the back, but there's a lot more to it than that.

Fingers crossed!