Saturday 28th March - not lamb kofta as planned

 I dug out a recipe for lamb koftas - goodness me, I posted this in February 2012! - and a good thing too because I can't find the page I ripped out of the magazine. It all went very well until I started to fry the little patties and then everything began to fall apart. Literally. 

So we had lamb mince for lunch, with Mediterranean-style flavours. I found a little tin labelled 'harissa' in a corner of the shelves - wow, that stuff packs a punch! I'm glad I was fairly delicate in adding it to the kofta mince with a tin of chopped tomatoes and some tinned chickpeas! 

Afterwards I  thought I'd sit outside in the sun, in a sheltered spot, with a little tea tray. BB was mowing, so I made my tea and washed up a few bits while he finished. I was treated to a delightful little comedy scene; he paused, looked up, and made best speed with the mower straight to the shed, pausing only to wave at a neighbour while emptying the grass box into the garden waste bin. Over the fence I could see the neighbour's rotary drier shaking as a pair of arms stripped the washing off it at a tremendous rate. 

The skies were darkening and heavy drops of rain were splattering the patio. As soon as the mowing machine and washing were all safely stowed away, and everyone was indoors, the sun came out and it was all just as it had been five minutes before...

British weather...

Chopin, Raindrop Prelude, played by Martha Argerich

Friday 27th March - March madness

 I could have been doing more batch cooking

Instead I spent time browsing YouTube and found this...

Enjoy!

Thursday 26th March - time to relax

 It's been a busy week so far... time to stop and breathe

Emil Gilels playing the Grieg Notturno. Lovely.... listen to the birds, the wind rustling through the trees....

Wednesday 25th March - John Torode Salmon? and weird weather

 John Torode's '10 minute salmon teriyaki noodle' recipe was delicious, at least, if my version was good, his must be amazing.

His recipe uses Chinese noodles, salmon, teriyaki sauce from a bottle or home-made, pak choi, tenderstem  broccoli, spring onions, stock, red chillis and liads of garnishes like fresh coriander and crispy onions and bean sprouts.

Mine was sort of similar, at least regarding the stock and teriyaki sauce. Two out of eight is pretty good for me when I'm 'following ' a recipe. I did ignore all the garnishes.

I used loch trout, Japanese straight-to-wok noodles, a pinch of dried chilli flakes, carrots cut into short thin sticks, broccoli florets, and finely shredded carrots, a sachet of blue dragon sticky teriyaki sauce. 

Having straight-to-wok noodles instead of dried ones meant I had to rethink the cooking order... marinade the fish (I skinned the fillets first), chop veg, bring slightly less water to the boil.

Drop in the fish and marinade, add all the veg except the cabbage, simmer 5 minutes, add cabbage and noodles and simmer another couple of minutes until three noodles were hot, and the fish was cooked.

It all looked pretty good and tasted as though that was how it might be meant to taste... more or less, but not as pretty as John's picture! 

This afternoon has been a good one for weather watching. 'Rain moving across the Southern counties from the west', the say on the television. Several times today it really was raining at the west side of the house, the back, but not at the front. The sky had a band of billowing white clouds along the horizon, a broad band of clear beautiful blue sky, and then a bank of uniformly dark, uncompromisingly grey clouds above. 

Then you'd look again and the skies were totally different. 

There was a sudden clap of thunder, then... nothing.

A sudden pelting of little pellets of white hail skittering along the road and pavements in the rising wind, which vanished as quickly as it had arrived. 

Bright sun for half an hour, then three minutes of rain.

The weather seemed bewitched! I had thought of going out, but I'm glad that we didn't. 

Boud often references exercise videos by April and her mother Aiko on her blog. I tripped across the Japanese 'Radio Taiso' 3 minute exercise programme, which is broadcast every day, and followed by many many Japanese people in their offices, schools,  homes and out in parks.

Here's April and Aiko explaining some of the background and demonstrating the exercises 

This is the youtube link so you can read the description as well.

I think it might make a change from the ballet exercises I had been doing (but wasn't any more!)

Monday and Tuesday, 23rd and 24th March

 Monday; 52 tiny changes for a quieter mind: this week it is all about taking a rest, a proper rest, away from screens and scrolling and working and busy busy busy busy.

Disconnect for a little while once a week; have a leisurely bath, or go for a gentle walk, read a lovely book, listen to music, or just sit without feeling you ought to be doing something useful. You are doing something useful; you are looking after yourself!

 ....

I'm working on the next Quilt as you go patch

I've done needle-turn applique to add the flowers, and I'm using green embroidery thread and stem stich to fill in the space with leaf shapes. 

Every scrappy stash-buster quilt seems to create smaller scraps!  Where does it all end? I'm using an old matress protector as the padding for the  QAYG patches, so now I have scraps from that as well...then inspiration struck;

I have made an Extremely Portable project kit from a sweetie tin.

I've got scraps of fabric and mattress protector, leather thimble, spool of thread, thread cutter, pins and some self-threading needles. Plus card templates. I'm using English Paper Piecing, with a scrap of mattress protector as the 'paper'. The finished patches are about the size of a stamp.

In due course I'll make another project pouch from the patches... I  suspect that day could be a long way into the future. That's ok. I've come to the conclusion I like starting things and doing things more than finishing them. Which bodes ill for the current half-a-hundred UFOs  (UnFinished Objects) scattered around the house...

Sunday 22nd March - Lent 5 - Tiny Changes

 BE KIND, TO OTHERS AND TO YOURSELF

I never really did like 'The Water Babies' by Charles Kingsley. I read it when I went to stay with my grandmother as there weren't many children's books on her shelves, and the ones she had were all from her  own youth (She was born in the 1890s and educated by her much older sisters at home). 

So I read Hilaire Bellocc's 'Cautionary Tales', Rudyard Kipling's 'Jungle Book,', 'The Just-so Stories, 'Stalky and Co', and the dreadful, terrifying 'Strewelpater' which still gives me nightmares.And Charles Kingley's 'Water Babies'. a deeply moral story about Tom who became a waterbaby.

I've always remembered the two ladies, Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby who is loving and kind, and the opposite of the rather frightening Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid who teaches Tom to be good.

This is, of course, Charles Kingsley's rephrasing of the second part of Jesus's summary of the Ten Commandments;

.... to love God with all your mind, body and soul

... to love your neighbour as yourself.

I think in years gone by, people tended to focus too much on 'loving your neighbour', and that denying yourself was good for you.

Now, perhaps, things might have swung too much the other way, 'love yourself' and you should let yourself have anything you want.

Oh the 'Happy Medium'; so difficult to manage in real life! 

I tripped across this poem which makes it all so simple;

 

Small Kindnesses

• 
• 
• 
• 

Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

St Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians Chapter 6 verse 19 says

You surely know that your body is a temple where the Holy Spirit lives. The Spirit is in you and is a gift from God. You are no longer your own.

The last verse of this poem are surely a reference to this?

So, my tiny change this week is to be sure that I make an effort to do the small kindnesses to the people that I meet.

Saturday 21st March - running away!

No, not really,  but that's what it felt like...

We made the most of a cheerful day, driving off to the same Village Stores and Café that we visited last weekend for an early lunch/late second breakfast. It was a bit of an adventure getting there; we turned off the main road into the lane and found ourselves face to face with a low-loader parked o  the wrong side of the road and facing the wrong way! We were wedged between the curb and the driver's cab, with nowhere to go but backwards into the main road. We'll, I'm here now this evening,  writing this, so you can assume we successfully reversed into a stream of traffic, flung the car into drive and got ourselves out of difficulties. 

'I think I know where there's a back road into the village', I said, and it turns out I was right. We wended our way along a twisty turny uppy downy lane, dodging several heavily laden groups of scouts just setting off on an overnight hike across the Downs. Their starting point turned out to be the village hall next to the shop and café,  handy for stocking up on last-minute sweets and chocolate. I hope they had packed warm sleeping bags; the nights are still pretty cold.

We had an excellent meal; the Forge Full Breakfast for BB, the Forge Small Breakfast for he. Basically the same, except his seemed to be two of everything and mine just one of everything.

We had a lovely drive home through little lanes instead of main roads, checking out more possible cafes for future expeditions. 

Many of the trees are in leaf now. In just a few weeks the whole colour palette of the countryside has changed from grey and brown to green and yellow,

Just recently I've starting adding tiny sketches to the page-a-day diary I keep of the day's events. You can tell from the handwriting that they are roughly the size of a postage stamp.

Mothering Sunday crochet daisies 

Steak for Sunday Lunch

A day of paperwork 

I'd forgotten I'd added daffodils to my grocery order

a friend was going away and brought me the bunch of irises she'd been given as they were still fresh

A little posy of flowers for March

I'm enjoying doing them; because they are so small I don't have to worry about details! Thinking back, I did this for a couple of months during the summer of 2020, to keep a record of high points of each day. The pictures were a little bigger, so I was able to include a bit more. I'm keeping these small in order to have enough room for the writing. 

Friday 20th March - my new project bag

 Now that Ang has posted her collaboration, I shall do the same;

I think of this side of my little bag as the front, as the two bottom left patches are the first in this collaboration,  and the two top right patches are the last.

Here's the other side.

I had to stop for a couple of days for Deep Thinking before I began tommake up the bag. I had 12 patches, a blue zipper, and the red and grey fabric that Ang sent me.

I made the bag by piecing the patches together English Paper Piecing style into a strip three squares wide, four long. leaving the sides and top open.  Next, I stitched the red lining to a grey woollen backing, both supplied by Ang, to make a piece of fabric which was the same size.

Time for More Thinking.

I finangled the zipper next; I wanted to arrange things so that the zip was sandwiched between the lining and the outer, and so that all the stitching was invisible. And, most importantly, I would end up with the zipper on the outside of the finished bag!

My word, that was a Brain-hurty thing to work through, but I got there! 

I over sewed the edges of the lining together, and then oversewed the edges of the bag outer, remembering to include the 2x2 tag 

Finished!

No, not quite, II still needed to sew in tthe tape with our names and dates.

It's now my mending pouch, with room for socks (or one thicker sock), a darning mushroom, Ang's scissor pouch, some needles and cards of mending wool.

Now, what shall we do next? It might be fun to do something that incorporated Ang's experiments in machine embroidery... my own machine is a very basic elna lotus which I bought way back in 1979... but it is possible to embroider with it... I did try once, a very, very long time ago... But what should we make... ?

Wednesday 18th March - Posting in haste

Book club starts i a minute or so; Last month's book was 'The Frozen River' by Ariel Lawhorn -  maybe tooo much information on childbirth and sexual assault in the Northern America in the Winter of 1789 for comfortable reading, but a gripping story, well told for all that. I really enjoyed it.

This month we meet to discuss The Frozen River and choose the next book from

Patrick Bringley's memoir 'All the Beauty in the World', which I strongly recommend and am more than happy to re-read 

Alan Bennett's diaries 'Keeping on keeping on' - I love reading diaries

Evie Woods - 'The Violin Maker's Secret' which I think I will read regardless as it looks good

M L Stteadman - -A Far Flung Life' - family saga, which doesn't really appeal.

I'll let you know!

I ave now got 6 Amaryliis bulbs on the go! Two have finished flowering and are growing ENORMOUS leaves.

The have been moved to an upstairs windowsill o make room for these;

No 1 was packaged in the same sort of box as the earlier ones, left over in the shop from Christmas, no doubt, It was growing out of its box when I planted it.

The others are left over from last year.

No 3 suddenly came to life of its own accord. I hurridly watered it and brought it downstairs. No 4 likewise, and then I thought I might as well water no 2 and see what happens.

Right. I attend the book club via zoom, and it's past time to join. Toodle-oo   

    

Tuesday 17th March - are we nearly there yet?

 Yes! Checking the weather app on my phone this morning, I saw that the days are now only a few minutes less than 12 hours, that is from sunrise to sunset. The spring equinox is less than a week away, oh joy, oh joy, oh joy.

Have all winters felt as long and grey and cold as this one? Probably not. But sometimes they do seem to go on forever. 

However we have tulips and primulas and forget-me-nots flowering in the garden, trees beginning to have the greenish haze of new leaves on the top-most branches, and real leaves on clematis vines and the lilac.

I spent months learning this, a few bars at a time, whenever I visited my aunt's house. Her copy of the music was very fragile and she didn't want to lend it to me, so I memorised the next couple of bars every week.

Monday 16th March - Lent 4 was yesterday

 Tiny changes; 

spiritual; get outside, or at least as far as the back door step. That's going to be so much easier now that Spring is arriving. 

What must it be like for people without access to a view of greenery - our first house was in an area criss-crossed by streets full of near-identical terraced houses opening straight onto the pavement. We had a small backyard, only accessible by going through the house - pause to contemplate wrangling our bicycles and dustbin through the kitchen and living room, tracking in dirt and worse - and with no trees, shrubs, flowers or even grass visible from the windows. This could be our street

Even houseplants couldn't grow in our northfacing front room. I was so glad to move out of the town centre to somewhere more in the country.

So yes, I intend to get out, at least as far as the door step every day.

Tiny change towards a calmer life - leave 10 minutes early. Then you can arrive in time -and breathe! I was in two minds whether to write this down; BB is a great one for leaving early, and I am more resistant. I think this is due to my dislike of having to get up so early for work. I'm not a natural early riser, and he is. Can you teach an old dog new tricks? Can a leopard change its spots? Well, I'm not a dog, I don't do tricks and I'm not a leopard. So, maybe I can change. Would leaving five minutes earlier because step in the right direction?

Madness, 'Our house, in the middle of the street'

This could be our first house together, even to the colour of rhe paper before we painted it.

Saturday 14th March - pi day?

 Do skip the next paragraphs if you're not interested...

It's really only pi day,  03.14 if you write your dates USA style. I cannot get used to writing dates as Month then Day then Year, except...

It's a really good idea, when saving files on your computer to prefix them with the date as mmddyyyy, American style. Then, almost regardless of the text name, the files will show up in date order.

So, maybe in a folder labelled

 2026 Dental

I will have entries like

2026021 estimate for crown ref 112233

20260309 invoice for crown ref 112233

20260312 receipt for crown ref 112233

My father gave up making sure documents were in the right folders because he discovered the 'search' function. Like all his dodgy wheezes, it worked only nearly perfectly. He would just set the search to look through his entire computer, say for a copy of some information from a 'Mr Entwistle', say, and sooner or later the right file would appear. But if he wanted to find a file concerning a 'Mr Smith' .... or 'a house in Somerset ' then he was doomed.

                                ooo000ooo000ooo000ooo 

Enough. I'm actually not keen on computerey stuff. It's fine while I can blunder around doing the few things I'm comfortable with, but I very soon run out of knowledge, patience and confidence. I guess I'm still a rookie; I've only been using them for 50 years.... I'm lucky to have expert techies on hand in husband and son. Daughter's pretty fluent in computerese too.

We were out in the country this morning. It's been a beautiful day, and we met up with Son and daughter at a new venue; a village farm shop and café which we have bever been to, in a fold of the South Downs. It was quietly busy; popular with locals, especially dogwalkers stopping for coffee and a cake or a cooked breakfast, and a stream of cyclists with sturdy bicycles aso glad of a break. We'll be going back there again.

I was given Mothering Sunday flowers, a little bouquet of beautiful crochet flowers. Aren't they lovely!

'Magic moments', sung by Perry Como.... because today has been magic!

Friday 13th March - another dragon slayed

 I've finally got the receipts and invoices and account statements from the dentist for this year beaten into a form ready to submit to the dental insurance company. BB has endured a massive amount of dental work since last August (our insurance year runs from August every year) so in the end I was only able to claim for hygienist and checkup appointments - it won't be much, but it will be something! I'm so happy to shove the papers into the file marked TEETH and jam it back on the shelf.

Each task dispatched and filed away feels like another weight off my mind... the next ones are queuing up behind, though, jostling for attention. I've to do powers of attorney for us next. I did them for my father a couple of years ago and it wasn't too bad. I just need to step up, bite the bullet, grasp the nettle, etc, etc, etc...

Meanwhile I've b/rainspace for sewing again;

The next Quilt as you go square, ready for the backing to be sewn down. I'll need to unpin it, unfold the hems, trim the corners using the creases in the fabric as a guide, refold creating mitre corners, pin and stitch. That looks like a lot but isn't really. 

I've been spending too much time avoiding what I should be doing by reading  Shetland murder mysteries by Marsali Taylor; Buried in a Shetland Tomb, An Imposter in Shetland. I'm rereading the first in the series next, something to do with a Longship in the Shetlands. 

I'm going to try and back to regular blogging; it seems a little unfair not to make the effort, to 'show up' when I enjoy reading the blogs of those who do, like Ang. Time to emerge from my treacle well like the Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland. I've got that wrong, actually... I've just checked. He tells a story of three sisters whole live at the bottom of a treacle well and draw pictures of things beginning with the letter M, 'such as mousetraps, memory and muchness....' before the Hare and the Hatter stuff him into the teapot... I do hope the tea was only warm, not hot.

https://hornbakelibrary.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/spotlight-on-wonderland-the-dormouse/

I haven't listened to this in ages;

Thibaut Garcia describes Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez as "a superb example of Rodrigo’s musical language, which is unique and instantly recognizable." Discover his album centered around this magnificent work, with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and Ben Glassberg:

Monday 9th March - I'm still here!

It's not that I'm fed up with blogging, ot that I'm intentionally taking a blog-break;

It's more that the past 2 weeks have become increasingly admin / computer keyboard tapping heavy as I deal with ALL the paperwork relating to selling my father's flat. My word, it has become so much more complicated since we last bought or sold a house over 45 years ago.

By the time the evening comes I tend to slump on the settee in front of Antiques Roadtrip or Richrad Osman's House of Games, or similar undemanding fare, and blogging just doesn't happen. 

However, today I managed to load the crockery pot with the ingredients for soup;

Chop some carrots and an onion, cook in a little sunflower oil until beginning to look a little golden brown (I bunged them in the airfryer 190C for 10-15 minutes). Tip into crock pot along with a chicken stock, finely chopped celery, water and tomato puree. Cook on high for 3-4 hours. I will say the the cooking time does depend on remembering to switch the crockpot on... blend with stick blender, add more liquid and adjust seasoning. 

How many carrots and onions? How much stock and tomato puree? It depends on the size of your crackpot. It doesn't really matter, it's bound to be good. As long as you did turn the crockpot on...

Lunch was a real cheat; frozen vegetable stir fry mix, cooked chicken slices, 'straight to wok' noodles, with a stir fry sauce concocted from a glug of dry sherry, slurp each of sweet chilli dipping sauce and tomato ketchup and a decent glug or three of soy sauce. Ten minutes from start to finish.

52 tiny changes... set alarms on your phone to remind you to do things, instead of trying to remember them... I already do for one med that is easily missed (I also write the dates on the blister pack by each pill so I can check I've taken it). 

It's a matter of choosing which alarms would be useful, and which would only clutter your life even more!

52 tiny spiritual changes; make a point of praising God every day, maybe for something, or maybe just because he is God and worthy to be praised.

Thursday March 5th - a day of gentle content (on the whole..)

 Enough sun to stir the solar fountain into life! (Taken from inside the house)

Today has mostly been a calm contented, happy cheerful day, unruffled by the cares of life... (except where they snuck in round the edges, to be acknowledged, agreed with, and sent on their way) 

So two lovely moments. The first piece is a favourite of mine, the second popped up like an enthusiastic labrador emerging from a thicket of shrubs...

Coming From the Fountain - Granados - such a contentment in the music... Leonard Kim playing.

Chico Marx back in 1940  - another happy happy tune!

Yesterday I deleted 200 photographs, almost all duplicates, and things that were no longer of interest. Hooray!

Yesterday was lovely and sunny; back to Nymans gardens in the afternoon. I walked twice as far with half the after-aches as last week. If I can keep this up I shall definitely feel the benefits soon. 

Today I bundled a few bits of decent clothing for charity into a bag and left it out for collection- Hooray! If I'm sticking to my resolution of 2 bags of stuff donated per month, I've another 5 to go before the end of March. It's all piled up ready to go, I just need to finish the job.

We would have gone out again today, but the oxygen situation wasn't suitable - somehow I ended up with three cylinders each less than a quarter full, ie 10-15 minutes walking time, plus two full ones. The rest were empties. Bad planning! I've ordered replacements for tomorrow, and just used up the part cylinders in the garden - a bit of tidying, and refilling bird feeders, and just wandering around looking. A couple of tulips are suggesting that they might flower quite soon. Meanwhile the bigger daffodils are flowering, ready to follow on from the smaller tete-a-tete.

   

 

 

Tuesday 3rd March - time to take a breather

 I totally want one of these if I ever need to start using a rollator....

Now, what was I really going to post....

This week's next habit to quiet your mind and live a calmer life is to spend 5 mins clearing your digital clutter.... dealing with old emails that can be deleted, going through photographs and screen shots that you don't need... whatever. Not a bad plan... my Google storage is slightly worryingly full, and 5 - 10 mins just going through and pruning would be a very sensible thing to do. Just a regular chipping away at the clutter is all that's needed.

Here's the next patchwork square, based on a pattern from a Saishiko book.

This is the book;

There are lots of lovely pattern ideas and starting points in it, and I can easily adapt them for other types of stitches.

My patch is the first one in the book; rows of offset running stitches which are interlaced. I used dark blue and variegated green perlé cotton. 

Hobbyart are now offering a £14 refund 'and you can keep the book' for their useless product. I'm staying strong, holding out for the full £18. 

Yesterday my 'three events per day' turned into a seemingly continuous stream of emails, phone calls and zooms... admittedly phoning my brother, and a regular monthly zoom weren't actually work but everything else was. 

So far today has been more measured!

....

I love the Grieg piano concerto. I must have listened to my cassette of it hundreds of time when I was in my last couple of years at school. 

Sunday 1st March - Lent 2 - Just Showing Up

St David's Day!

We had a short break in Tewksbury back in 2012 (I think) and this dragon was siting just inside someone's garden, yearning towards Wales, across the River Severn where the curlews call to it.

 .....

The next '52 ways to improve my spiritual life' idea is to Just Show Up. I'm so ready to pick and choose whether I go to things; 'oh I'm feeling a bit tired', 'oh I'm not in the mood', and even 'oh, I don't really like that person's style in leading church'. And so I talk myself, all to easily, into not going. Dare I even say into not bothering?

It's different if I'm taking an active part, or hosting the event, I'll surely be there then, but it's not enough. Communities, be they swimming sessions, choirs, book clubs, church services, home groups, all need people to turn up on days when they are just part of the group.

So, starting from today, this morning in fact, I'm going to push Just Showing Up higher up my list of priorities. 

Obviously if I am actually unwell, or on my knees with exhaustion, or have a really unavoidable conflict in the diary, that's a different matter.

Today I Just Showed Up to zoom church  - well, I was reading the first lesson, so I had to - and I felt all the better for joining the other two dozen regular members of our online community.

I do have a terrible tendency to doodle in the reflection though...

....

I'm glad I took a picture of my witch hazel tree in the middle on the month. It has been a bright blaze of yellow to fill the gap between the snowdrops and the daffodils. Here it is on 14th February 

And here's the picture I took yesterday. You can see why I notes that the flowers were like yellow spiders earlier, and have now turned brown.  

You can see some of the daffodils, and if you 'embiggen*' the photograph, you can make out the buds on the hazel. (* embiggen is a word Granny Marigold shared on a recent blogpost - I love it!)

.....

Here's Benjamin Brittten's arrangement of a traditional Welsh Folk Song, The Ash Grove.

   

Sunday 1st March - Grace before meals

At very very long long last I have gathered up all the comments following my post about saying Grace before meals back on September 7th 2025. If I missed yours, or you have another addition, just let me know in the comments. 

I have put them all on a new page at the side of the blog, like this;

I wrote a blog post on Sunday September 7th^th 2025 about saying ‘Grace’ before meals, and included these;

All good gifts around us are sent from heav’n above;

Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord for all His love.

We often sing this together before a shared Harvest Supper, or any other shared meal at my home church. (We joke that our church does love a shared meal)

Also, in a novel I was reading, someone said a grace before a meal, remembered from their days as an undergraduate at Oxford;

Benedictus benedicat, which means 'may the Blessed One give a blessing'

 

And a little sung grace I learned from the children at a Church of England primary school;

Thank you for the world so sweet, ho hum.

Thank you for the food we eat, yum, yum.

Thank you for the birds that sing-a-ling-a-ling.

Thank you God for everything,

Ho hum, yum yum, sing-a-ling,

Amen!

 

Then the comments started rolling in! So here are all the ‘Graces’ from that post…

 

From Granny Marigold;

 'For what we are about to receive, may we be truly thankful'.

My reply; I have a feeling that we used to say 'For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful' which always sounded slightly threatening to me.

From Martha;

'Rub-a-dub, thanks for the grub', from a trainee youth pastor, much to the surprise of the senior pastor.

My reply; I have just remembered 'ta, Pa'; which I think one of our vicar’s children replied when asked to say grace at a Sunday lunch we had been invited to. (It was a very very long time ago so it might have been a different child, and a different occasion!)

 

Three contributions from Skye;

1.      Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Whoever eats the fastest, gets the most

When asked to say grace, the speedy reply is, 'Grace'.

 

2.      Not a grace, but a little something from Jonathan Swift:

On the table spread the cloth,
Let the knives be sharp and clean:
Pickles get and salad both,
Let them each be fresh and green:
With small beer, good ale, and wine,
O ye gods! how I shall dine.

Frugally Challenged wrote one for wedding receptions

St (John's) Church with the sun above
Thank you, God, for the gift of love.
(The Berkeley Hotel) and a great hub-bub
Thank you God for the gift of grub.

 

 And added this (‘Not one of mine but lovely’)

 For food in a world where many walk in hunger.
For faith in a world where many walk in fear.
For friends in a world where many walk alone,
We give you humble thanks, O Lord.

From Ang;

A Breakfast Prayer from my youth "Lord make me not like porridge, slow and hard to stir, but make me like cornflakes, quick and ready to serve"

 

From Sue in Suffolk;

We always said grace when we ate anywhere where Father in Law was present, - Methodist Lay Preacher - and I've just remembered the grace he said - been trying to think of it since your post the other day,
"For this and all thy gifts we thank you Lord".
There was a short children’s one too - I wonder if any of my children can remember it

 

From Chris;

We always say a Grace and hold hands in cafes.. at home I always add a thanks to the cook!

From Beth;

In my former small congregation we often gathered for meals and used the following sung grace, which we knew from More Voices, one of our United Church of Canada hymnaries. It's translated from Spanish and is apparently set to a traditional Argentinian melody.

 See here on YouTube for the Spanish and then the English: https://youtu.be/PiFG07FZ3zI

God bless to us our bread.
Give bread to all those who are hungry,
and hunger for justice to those who are fed.
God bless to us our bread.

Friday 27th February - progress on several fronts...

Cake; I've started a Nigella Bara Brith. Her recipe takes a few days from making the tea to soak the fruit, to making a pot of tea to accompany a slice. Today the fruit, sugar, mixed spice and tea is all soaking. Tomorrow I add the SR flour and egg and cook it, and glaze it with a little runny honey. Then, says Nigella, you should wait two days before you eat it! So that can be a Sunday afternoon treat. 

I think I'll have to make another cake to have a in the meantime. I'm debating between my yoghurt cake recipe, perhaps flavoured with ginger and marmalade.... or a lemon drizzle version.... decisions, decisions...

I've been working on the first patch for my QAYG quilt. Or I could call it a LAIG quilt... for Learn As I Go...

Finished?

Hmm... perhaps a little more...

Finished! This one is almost all running stitch. I don't love it... but it will be one of many so that's fine.

Lunch was another 'Nigella',  a version of her sardine and spaghetti recipe. I added extra veg; chopped red pepper, celery,  sundried tomatoes, and broccoli. With pasta wriggles instead of spaghetti. Pasta wriggles are easier to eat! But spaghetti actually works better.

The afternoon was admin, the sort I detest; s anning in stuff, copying stuff, filing stuff, emailing stuff. Huh. Grump. Whinge. Whine.

BB walked round to the corner shop for something and came back with a little tube of smarties for me!

So I was in a positive and cheerful mood to start teaching an arrangement of Danny Boy to a piano student- it was a good lesson!

Tuesday 24th February - three events today - that's enough!

 So far today I've managed to keep to the 8dea of just three 'events' in one day...

First; meeting the estate agent at my father’s flat.

Second; joy oh joy oh joy - my first real walk of the tear! After the meeting we drove to Nymans Gardens. The weather is properly spring-like today at long last.

We braved the queues in the café and emerged with drinks and pasties, and sat outside in the sunshine in a sheltered corner. The café was sufficiently busy that we both wore masks - it must be obvious to any passers-by why we consider it necessary if they saw the oxygen cylinders we wore like backpacks! (One for now, one for later).

There was an unruly gaggle of rooks keeping an eye out for opportunistic snackery... they sort of crash about from one tree to the next in the heedless way groups of young people do when they are out for a 'jolly'.

I walked a small loop around the gardens. There were quite a few couples around, mostly, it seemed to me, out for their first dodder along the paths 8n the sunshine. None of us (apart from our minders!) looked altogether steady on our feet and a fair number were propped up with sticks and rollators. 

Still, we staggered along; I felt as though I ought to be handing out rosettes for effort!

Here's what we might have seen as we ambled round;

I was glad to get back to the car; yes, I was breathless, but it was my knees and hips and legs that were protesting at all this new activity after months of staying mostly indoors.  I'll have to make a point of going out when the weather is good.

Later today it will be time for the third event; a preliminary site visit by the company I hope will do the groundworks for the extension at the back of our house. Early stages, early stages...

I was searching youtube for something Spring-like' but found this instead. Fair dos, a good many bloggers that I follow are still living in the depths of winter with spring weather some way off.

John Field, Nocturne in E minor played by Alice Sarah Ott.

Monday 23rd February - this and that

 52 ways to calm your mind; this week it is 'prepare ahead' - specifically 

lay out your clothes the night before - that's easy, it's pretty much the same as yesterday but clean vest and underwear, and clean top and trousers if that seems good. I chuck dirty clothes into the laundry basket at night, and drape the rest of the clothes over the bedpost - an improvement from dropping on the floor!

prep your lunch the night before - that's more for the packed lunch brigade than me, although it's helpful if I've got something out of the freezer the night before. Talking of which.... excuse me for a moment... I'll just get out the pork mince for meatballs tomorrow

Well do I remember those school/work packed lunch days of yore... four lunch boxes, each with ham or cheese salad sandwiches, carrot sticks, frozen frube (do they still make them?), piece of fruit, small piece of frozen cake wrapped in greaseproof paper, packet of crisps, water bottle and mini chocolate treat. That did for break time, lunch, coming home on the bus... plus, when BB was doing really heavy work in the warehouse between jobs, he needed several slabs of bread pudding to get the calories in. He lost so much weight in the first couple of weeks it was alarming! We were all out for quite a time, with travelling, after school clubs, commuting, overtime and so on.

I went back through my photo file to find a spring picture for the blog header; the autumn leaves have been up for far too long! Our local National Trust garden usually has a display of which flowers are out in the gardens. This is what was around in the middle of March 2020, days before the official lockdown for Covid;

    

 

I selected part of the picture with the pink camellia. Spring. Must be coming closer, surely?

The stitchbook saga continues; I had a reply offering me £4 and saying I could keep the book. I've sent a polite but robust response insisting they sent me the full cost, and if they want the book, the return postage as well. So far, silence. so here's another extract to delight you;

Here's my mock up of what a 5 inch QAYG square might look like;

I haven't done any sample stitching in the centre... yet. Five inch square are definitely a better size. I haven't dared work out how many I will need! The real stitch sample squares (that's a mouthful) will have grey and white centres. If I stick with the original plan. Slippery things, plans.

    

Sunday 22nd February - 1st Sunday in Lent

Wikipedia, creative commons

 In some Christian traditions the Sundays in Lent are seen as 'Little Easters' and therefore a break from fasting.  So although the elapsed time in Lent is 47 days, there are only 40 fasting days, reflecting Christ's 40 days in the wilderness after his Baptism. 

The Lent course I read every day written by Andrew Dotchin always takes a break on Sundays. I don't know if he takes a break too!

I'm on the fence here. I haven't given up chocolate or biscuits; but I guess I shouldn't take a break from being kind, thoughtful, considerate, prayerful! So I'll stick with keeping my Lent resolutions on Sundays.

I'm pondering the sort of things that would make a '52 tiny changes to improve your Christian life', rather in the line of the '52 tiny changes to quiet your mind' book by Kelly Dugger. They would really have to be tiny... nothing too strenuous like 'get up at 5am so you can read and study and prayer for 2 hours every morning', for example! That's SO not never ever going to happen in my life.

Let's try anyway, maybe just one tiny change for each Sunday in Lent.

Change no 1

Sometimes I say a prayer before meals, sometimes I don't.

I've got a huge collection of graces from the comments to a blogpost last year. Now I'll try and say grace more consistently. Sometime soon I'll track back through the comments and gather them together. 

 (I forgot today before getting stuck into my porridge. Never mind, lunch and supper will give me two more chances to remember).