I’ve told this story a lot over the years but my recent attempt to get old pictures scanned and cataloged has resulted in finding images I’ve forgotten about.
And this one…. dear old Margaret Woods of Rugby (U.K.) … is one of those.
I stayed with her for three nights while in town. During the day I got picked up by younger folks who kept me busy all day and in the early evening they returned me to Margaret’s care and cooking.
Margaret, you see, is legally blind. Frankly, she’s mostly blind. Some people are legally blind and can see quite a bit, but this feisty old gal had very limited sight of any kind.
That did not prevent her cooking for me. She was quite adept at kitchen tasks with a few rare exceptions. For example, there is the subject of toast. During the days of my visits there (1989 & 1991 & 1993) few of my British friends owned toasters. I don’t know what it is about toasters but they didn’t use them (even though toast was a regular part of a good old fashioned “Cooked Breakfast.” In case you aren’t familiar with that term it’s traditional to serve eggs, ham, bacon, baked beans (pork ‘n beans), black pudding, and toast. A bit heavy, but boy does that keep you going through the day!
At any rate….
Almost every home I stayed in used their broiler instead of a toaster. That might be because I stayed with a lot of older folk who had furnished their homes in the 40’s but for whatever reason everyone was toasting bread under an open flame.
Poor Margaret. If she was alone in her home she might have been very good about toast — you can count things out to ascertain the right timing. But with me around we both talked a lot. And with her poor eyesight she never knew when the bread was toasted until it was past toast and on to burnt. At least one morning we re-made the toast three times (the birds in her backyard were getting fat).
At any rate. On the Sunday we were leaving for church at 10:00 a.m. but had already eaten our breakfast by eight. By nine we had washed and stacked the dishes, changed into our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and were quite ready to go. Except she had no car, and I had no loaner. We were stuck waiting.
About half way through that last hour she made an interesting comment. She said,
“It’s good to be ready and waiting.”I was immediately struck by the simplicity of the concept. There really is a difference between being ready, and waiting. And to that point — being a young, energetic guy — I’m not sure I was ever consciously doing both at the same time. If I was ready, why wait. And if I was waiting, it must have been because I wasn’t ready.
But there are a lot of times when we must do both — in fact, that’s what Peg and I are doing right now. We are ready to go mobile and we are waiting for the time to come (i.e., sell our house). I think that even now, at age 63, I still have not mastered the skill to do both. But, I’m learning.
From the Far Side of '70 
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