Thursday 22nd June

 

Eight little radish tops sitting on a piece of damp kitchen paper on an espresso cup saucer. I'm not sure what the point of them is. I found a neglected bag of radishes starting to grow in the bottom of the fridge, and as I trimmed a couple to make a snack for myself I thought I'd see if they would grow. The sickly-looking pale green shoots on the first four soon darkened, and the next four are looking better too. Will they grow into more radishes? How long will it take?

I had a completely frazzling morning teaching a piano lesson which got interrupted about four times with telephone calls I needed to respond too, if only to say 'call me back in half an hour'. Once the lesson had ended there were a further three or four calls and ring-backs and things that needed answering, so that once they were all  dealt with I just sat there thinking 'what just happened?' and feeling as though I'd been pushed through a hedge. 

Next task was to choose the Bible verse for the home group meeting this evening; that was easy in the circumstances;

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives." It continues with "Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid". From the Gospel of John, chapter 14 verse 17.

Okay, that might have been a bit 'tongue in cheek' but it was the right one for tonight.

(In our home group we take turns to choose a verse, spend five minutes considering it in silence and then share our thoughts. Then, I'm afraid, we get distracted and start discussing all sorts of things...)

The afternoon's piano lesson was sheer delight - I have a student learning 'Maple Leaf Rag' at the moment. I managed to divert her from 'I Giourni' by Einaudi - I'm NOT a fan, but do understand that his pieces are very popular.

Here they both are - make up your mind which you prefer.

Joshua Rifkin played the rags for the film 'The Sting' - that was a while ago now!

 

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Wednesday November 23rd - audiobooks I am listening to

I've loved audiobooks for years...

I'm listening to three books on audible at the moment.

Every morning, nearly every morning, I listen to the day's allocation from 'The Bible in One Year' read by David Suchet. Sometimes I'm less attentive; Psalm 119, for example, and currently we're nearing the end of Ezekiel. I suddenly paid attention at the 'dry bones' bit, but then zoned out again. 

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery is the book club choice. I listen to 10 or 15 minutes before going to sleep. I use the sleep timer, as I am finding it quite soporific. There are two narrators (so far); the concierge, a widow, and a young girl who lives in one of the apartments. Their stories don't seem to have connected yet...

Finally I always have a third audiobook on the go. I choose this one to turn to when I  can't sleep in the middle of the night. Currently 'Summer in Fairacre', by Miss Read is working beautifully (although I'm surprised to find I'm not liking Prunella Scales' narration. I normally love whatever she does).  I have 'cosy' headphones which are like a headband, and also keep my ears nice and warm.  

Sunday 14th August - Bible Society Video Trek

Bear with me, non-churchy types; I think this is interesting for anyone who is fascinated by Ancient History...

I was looking for the next project or theme or whatever for my very casual church homegroup (we meet on zoom to chat, and talk about whatever we were supposed to have looked at during the week but forgot or didn't get round to). The constraints are; 

It must be freely available, as I don't want us all to have to buy some book or course,

It must not be prescriptive as in, 'read this and then answer these questions'

I need to be able to quickly and easily print off something to send to one member who is not on the internet, and joins the group at a friend's house

I need to like it and find it interesting and thought provoking

It needs to be amusing (sorry, I have a mostly, but not always lighthearted and frivolous approach to things)    

At the Bible Society website I discovered this video series;

and so we are sorted. The videos are only a few minutes long, so it is easy to watch them during the zoom, and I can easily copy and paste and post the extra information.

What is really interesting is seeing the places, so different to here in England, where the events of the Old and New Testament took place, and hearing Andrew Ollerton's quirky take on them.

And yes, I did buy his book 'The Bible', after doing a 'look inside' on Amazon.

Anyone who can write this gets my attention

  

Wednesday 29th July - Coffee mug update

Well, this is just an update of all the sketches of coffee mugs I've done since the last time I posted them.

On Sunday 26th I was a bit bored with coffee mugs, and spent an afternoon happily watching and following a youtube tutorial on painting leaves. I did shove a coffee mug into the bottom corner!

It seemed to me that the paintings were all looking a bit samey, so I started being more experimental with using colour. Monday and Tuesday's mugs were just an excuse to watch all the colours running in and around each other, although today's picture is a return to realism.

I'm ridiculously excited because my new tubes of water colour have arrived, and a box with empty 'pans' to fill is coming tomorrow. I watched a youtube of an artist explaining why he chose these shades, and demonstrating how they work together and I was HOOKED. My current box of watercolours is in the bottom of the picture.

I've also ordered a new sketchbook, as this one will be more of less filled by the 'month of mugs' project.

The Bible quotes are all taken from the morning prayers in the Franciscan Daily Office Book, called 'Celebrating Common Prayer' which I've been following for a couple of weeks. 

Anyway, here are all the paintings so far!

Monday 20th July

Tuesday 21st July

Wednesday 22nd July

Thursday 23rd July

Friday 24th July

Saturday 25th July

Sunday 26th July

Monday 27th July

Tuesday 28th July - actually I cheated; I did this today, Wednesday 29th July - but I started the page yesterday

Today 29th July

Two more days of July, and already I'm pondering the next project...

Sunday 29th March - Lent Inspirations - of wind and waves and weather

Twice in the daily readings I am following in St Mark's gospel this week Jesus has done the 'calming the storm' thing.

The first time, he was asleep in the boat with the disciples, on a cushion - just imagine incuding that detail in the story - when a storm came up.

The second time, in Chapter 6, he had sent them on ahead in a boat, immediately after one of the Big  Spontaneous Picnics with No Preplanned Catering events. (spoiler alert; I've noticed that he's going to do another of these mass meals in a few pages' time).

Jesus was hanging back to give himself some prayer time, but spotted them struggling to row in heavy dangerous seas. We all know the stories - he walks over (how fast can he walk?), they all think he's a ghost, but he calms them down, allays their fears, and climbs into the boat with them, calming things down, both the weather and the panics.

Reading that passage brought immense comfort to me this week - it was the bit where he spotted their distress, hot-footed it across the waves, and climbed into the boat with them for the rest of the journey.

Well, we're all in the same boat together for the rest of this covid19 journey. I'm really, really glad to have Jesus aboard with us.

May the peace of Christ keep everything calm, allay our fears, and surround us with peace.

Friday 20th March - Unreal Times

In the past 8 days,

I've visited my godmother's house for the last time, saying goodbye to things which I can't keep but hated parting with;

The cabinet came from my childhood home and I'm pleased that my brother took it. The wall hanging(it's huge) and pictures were all made by her, but there's a limit to how much I can fit into my own house.

I decided to stop teaching after last weekend. I felt that I was a bit of a 'typhoid Mary', collecting the germs from one school and taking them along to the next. That took endless phone calls and emails, and I've had to organise refunds or credits for a dozen pupils. As part of this exercise I ended up working out the self-employed part of my income for the tax year ending April 2020; everything was a complete tangle as so many lessons were cancelled or rescheduled over the year while my god-mother was ill. Still - that is a huge achievement - this could be the first time ever that I get my tax return in within weeks of close of year!

I've restarted my music blog, www.themusicjungle.co.uk, which has lain dormant for over a year. I'm posting up various music bits and pieces to keep the pupils going in the meantime.

On Tuesday I went to Nymans Gardens with some friends. Bitterly cold, but the place is full of flowers;

I was wishing that I had added my nose to the fingerprint sensor so that I could unlock the phone without taking my gloves off.

I've been having lovely slow mornings and breakfast in bed! Oh what luxury!

Lent is still happening; I'm reading St Mark's Gospel along with Ryce's commentary, roughly the same vintage as my great-grandfather might have used. How Biblical interpretation has changed over the years... I'm using a Bible with space for you to add your notes and drawings

The font is minute and the pages paper-thin, but I like having them all crinkled up where I paint pictures as I go along. (Maybe painting watercolours in bed is living dangerously, but so far, so good.) Any book looks more cheerful with lots of coloured pictures along the way.

Himself has had a birthday. The off-spring came a-visiting, bearing lunch and presents and cards. We had planned to meet in a cafe halfway, but these days....

Leo the cat thoroughly approves. She pins me down so that I can't move

Today we tried out the exploding chocolate snowman Himself received for Christmas. The idea is that you heat a mug of mild, drop in the unfortunate snowman, stir him about and drink him.

Himself pronounced it 'very good',  the snowman didn't get a chance to express an opinion. It will be the turn of my white chocolate one soon. I wonder if I should drop him into a cup of coffee so that he shows up properly?

Sunday 10th November - Remembrance Sunday

I haven't done any 'proper' Remembrance Sunday things today. I remembered that I was feeling tired and a bit bleh and I haven't been sleeping too well recently (too much on my mind)

So I stayed in bed all morning, knitting Christmas Trees - this brings the total to fifteen, if I include the one that only has two triangles in its shape

and doing some more to the current granny square

while listening to David Suchet reading the Gospel according to st Mark at St Paul's cathedral

which I strongly recommend. It's on youtube - follow the link. St Mark is the current New Testament bit of Bible in the reading plan I am sort of following - the Old Testament book is Joshua, which I tried to read for Bible Book Club last month, and gave up in the end. Too, too, much blood and gore. Maybe if I hear David Suchet read it, I might cope with it? No, I don't think so.

A neighbour visited my godmother this morning and all's well. We had given her some bottles of liquid paracetamol as the effervescent and soluble tablets all taste pretty evil - and I had remembered to crack the seals on the bottles, but forgotten to remove the plastic inserts for use with the dosing syringe, so the liquid wouldn't pour out into the measuring cup. If we lived half an hour away - three-quarters of an hour, even, I could have sorted it myself. But and hour and a half each way - it is so difficult to do a good job of looking after her. I'm hoping that things will be set in motion this week to get proper care arranged, now she is admitting that this is what she needs.

Her stories of life during the second world war as a child in Finland are hugely different to the usual war histories that I am familiar with from my own parents. The Finns had a choice between being over-run by the Russians, or by the Germans - talk about a rock and a hard place. Somehow they managed to work out a way in which the Germans thought they had control, but the Jews and refugees were saved from persecution, and somehow they managed to stay as an independent nation after the war was over.

Friday 18th October - Musings about books

Last night, as I was in that pleasant half awake, half asleep state, the books I am reading all merged themselves into a confusion.

Which books am I reading?

Beside the bed

Miss Garnet's Angel, by Sally Vickers - I read it several years ago on the recommendation of a friend. I find I have forgotten almost all of the plot. All I can remember is that ever since I read it I have wanted to go to Venice, which is the setting for the story. This means that I can enjoy it all over again, with no idea of how it is going to turn out. Because it is Venice, and the story of Tobias and the Angel is interwoven in the plot, there is a lot of visiting churches and musing on Angels and other aspects of religion and life and so on along the way.
 

Remix - a 'Bible in one year' plan, using the Eugene Peterson paraphrase called 'The Message'
I don't know how well I well get on with this. The last time I did a 'Bible in a Year' scheme it took me two years, with a a lot of skim reading through Leviticus and Numbers. I'm most of the way through Numbers, and also part-way through Romans ( you get a chunk of Old Testament and a chunk of New to read every day). Well I confess I have been skimming again., although every so often they stop detailing Wave-offerings and Peace-offerings and all the minute details of the law, and a story that I recognise suddenly appears. Last night I came across the story of Balaam's ass, and I now realise that I had confused it with a fable of La Fontaine. Balaam's ass features Angels. I waited in vain for the donkey to be loaded with salt and repeatedly lighten its load by falling in a stream, whereupon the owner loaded it with sponges to teach it a lesson. That must be part of the fable.

Letters to Alice; on reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon. The only Fay Weldon I have ever read. It is a series of letters, as the title say, and as well as discussing Jane Austen's novels includes all kinds of ideas on what being a writer is all about.  I'm reading it in smallish chunks as there is a lot to think about.

Other books that I keep ready for those moments when I only want to read for a short while are

Stephen King's famous book 'On Writing' which is frequently recommended as a guide for aspiring writers. Part autobiography, part guide, it is another one to be read in small chunks and pondered.

and The Cloister Walk by the American poet Kathleen Norris. I've had this book on my shelf for ages; someone I follow on twitter was offering it to anyone who wanted it, as he had two copies and wanted to give the spare away. On the basis of his recommendation I asked for it, but then it kind of sat about for some years. Now seems to be exactly the right time for the book. She is documenting a year in her life when she is writing and lecturing at a University and also staying at a Benedictine monastery which her husband is away on an extended trip. The substance, so far, seems to be observations about the monastic and spiritual life as well as what it means to be a poet.


While this looks like a weird mixture of books to be reading all at the same time, there are threads which interconnect them and twine together in ways I hadn't planned or bargained for. Which is why the whole lot of them got completely wound together in my head last night, so that I had to make myself wake up a bit in order to sort them all out again. 


That's not all though...

   

I've got Educated by Tara Westover, and the New Testament letters written by John  and Jude queued up for the two book clubs I am in, with deadlines approaching in a few week's time. I am determined to finish Miss Garnet before I start anything else otherwise the situation tips over from ridiculous to plain insane. (Although I might pick up  Miss Read's gentle and easy-going Village Diary for a bit of light relief over the weekend...)   

Sunday 3rd December - #Pause for Advent 1; Surprises

I set up my post for #Pause for Advent on the Saturday, without actually having looked at Luke's Gospel first.

Well, that's because the plan is to start reading on the first Sunday in Advent, of course!

I opened up Luke 24 this morning and discovered;

"Noli me tangere" doesn't occur in Luke's gospel. Jesus doesn't appear to the women in the garden, only the angels, asking the women why they are looking for the living among the dead. So, WRONG PICTURE. I'll have to check out the other gospels now to find out where that bit comes from. Here's a better illustration of the text

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrrhbearers

Then I discovered that


verse 9... "When [the women] came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magadalene, Joanna, Mary the mother and James, and the others who were with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed like nonsense." 

That seems a bit harsh, but I suppose understandable under the circumstances. And Peter did go and check out their story afterwards.

I was also disconcerted to find that Chapter 24 is the last chapter in the Gospel. That was unexpected! Luke wraps the story up pretty quickly after the walk to Emmaus bit.


It's such a short passage to read this week, which makes me grateful, because this is my last "full-on" week of teaching. I'll read it again several times - the events are so compressed in the narrative that it is easy to miss something important.

From Monday 11th things will wind down a bit and the following week has even less teaching; just as well as there is an awful lot to read that week!