Sunday 20th November - Brocante

 

This photo was taken several years ago from the top of a street in Honfleur, in France Brocante means ''bric a brac", or maybe, more optimistically, antiques. Collectibles.

In the background you might be able to make out the suspension cables for the new bridge across the River Seine called the Pont de Normandie.

This is all by way of introduction to day's random paragraphs. It's been a random sort of day.

This book arrived yesterday.  I chose it by luck and by guess to be a source for embroidery ideas for the Postcard Project and at first glance it's looking like a 'good'un'. 

I really ought to be getting on with the current picture but am getting very distracted by other ideas at the moment. Still, 10 days to go and I'm more or less two thirds through.

You know that thing where your phone decides to show you pictures from today's date but several years ago? Today I had pictures of our Advent calendars, prepped and ready well in advance! 

Buying the chocolates to go in the drawers is tricky as there aren't that many delicious ones that will fit.  We have, after many years, developed a system for storing pre Christmas items, like cards, wrapping paper, and Advent calendars in a chest downstairs rather than in the dark recesses of the loft.

This evening, just before it got dark, there was a sudden shower of hail. I looked out of the French windows to see the hailstones bouncing at least three feet high. 

I opened the kitchen door for the photograph below. The hailstones were still falling out of the sky - hurling themselves down like missiles from above with a noise like lead shot being rolled around on a tin tray. 

Then, as abruptly as it started, the shower stopped.

Tuesday 1st November - The flying greenhouse

 Yesterday my parcel of goodies from hobbycraft arrived. 

 I had managed to restrain myself to some wooden trays to help with organising my new work area which has a shallow but deep shelf under the work surface. Anything you put into this hidey hole tend to slide right to the back, out of sight, until it drops through the open back and lands on your toes. The trays are there to prevent this irritating even, or at the vary least, reduce the frequency at which it occurs.

And I like the way some households, mainly in the USA, hang a decorative wreath outside which changes with the seasons. At last I have decided to act upon this thought, and included with the trays a wreath, a pale coloured garland and a packet of gold 'rose leaves'.

I was going to take a picture yesterday, but my mobile is getting on in years and the battery will quite abruptly run out of power. 

I was kept awake last night by the wind and the rain, which was really rather over the top ("keep the noise down, can't you? Some people are trying to get to sleep here!"). I wondered if the wreath would survive with the wind hurling in from that direction. All seems to be OK.

  

There should have been about 12 golden petals; I noticed that they were not brilliantly attached to their wires (you get what you pay for, and I didn't pay very much) when I made up the wreath, and this morning there seem to be only half a dozen left. I might add something or other to the bottom when the weather has calmed down. A gold bow, perhaps.

One of the two plastic greenhouse did not manage so well; the old one, where the plastic has all perished and only the netting is left was fine, with its sunflower seedlings, and the broad bean seeds (several are through), cauliflowers (likewise) and peas (nothing happening there yet). The newer one lifted off and flew down the side of the house and halfway down the back garden, leaving an upturned table, the bottom shelf and all the bricks that were weighting it down scattered about the drive way. Luckily I hadn't put anything in it yet!

Here's The Flying Dutchman... Wagner...

Thursday 4th October - the jay

It was misty this morning, for the first time since last Thursday.

Then, I had great wrestlings with the demister controls in the Corsa while trying to work the wiper controls and also rub the condensation off the inside of the windscreen. It was all rather hectic for a few minutes after I thought I'd got the windows clear enough to set off. 

This time, the mist turned out to be very fine rain, not wet enough for real precipitation, but too substantial for fog. Not wet enough for the wipers to be left alone to get on with their job without great groaning complaints, but I managed!

On the way back down the hill after a couple of hours of teaching, I saw a jay. Just a glimpse as the car was bucking along and most of my concentration was on the driving of it (the hill is steep and twisty with a lumpy road surface).

The jay was picking at something at the side of the road; I had just enough time to catch the lapis lazuli blue glow of the bars on its folded wings, and the glorious autumnal creamy red-russet-brown of the body.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_jay

It was a sudden vision of joy and pleasure.

A month of weather - 18/10/12 Blessed are the peacemakers

The week just gone has been a real up-and-down-and-up-and downer. With a lot of downer, to be truthful.

When I took this photograph, it was first thing in the morning, I was emerging from a "downer". The sky seemed to speak to me of renewed hope for the day. Although the black rain clouds were massed on the low horizon, the sky above was bright blue, and criss-crossed with white aeroplane trails. It made me think of journeying away from the dark times into a new, bright place.

As I drove about, the sky changed in appearance as I changed direction. At one moment I would be facing ominous grey clouds, threatening rain and storm and floods. Then I would turn a corner, and the sky would be a uniform, clear, luminous, deep blue, like a summer's day. Turn again, and there would be pale, thin, fluffy white clouds traced against the blue.

It made me consider how one's point of view changes one's perception of a situation. It's the same situation, but it can be interpreted in so many different ways. If I had only faced one way, I would have set off with umbrella, waterproofs, wellington boots. Looking in a different direction, a light jacket and sandals would have been fine.

This has became an important thought to hold on to. When black clouds of doom are coming towards me with what seems to be a scary inevitability, (which, at the moment, they are), remembering that we all see things from different points of view, and with different perspectives is vital. It is all too easy to be overcome by a rising tide of blind, sick panic. Finding an honest, truthful, sincere, humble way through the approaching storm, respecting other people's views and keeping unhelpful emotions in check is the only sensible way forward.

He who sows the wind, will reap the whirlwind...

Blessed are the peacemakers......

Friday 5th October - Autumnal Album Leaves



 I've played a number of piano pieces with names like "Album Leaves". I can think of one each by Schumann and Grieg for a start. They usually have a plaintive, nostalgic melody, in a minor key. I think of yellowed, faded photographs, days gone by, times past....




It's been very apposite just recently. Moving house means tripping over all sorts of photograph albums, ornaments, cups, clothes, that trigger memories that have been buried for many, many years.





Like this one, of me, and my grandmother, back in 1960 something.


 

Where was this, I wonder? I vaguely remember the day: I am wearing my "party dress"; grey Liberty silk, with little white daisies all over, and a little grey bow at the waist made from a couple of loops of grey and red silk. Everyone still wore gloves; I went to a convent prep school, and we all wore white gloves to school in summer (and straw hats, and blazers). I might be smiling for the camera, but inside, I was feeling mortified because I had spilt something on my dress.

Whose wedding was this? I remember a river nearby - the Thames? Was it in Henley? I have a picture of the bride and groom and best man and bridesmaids, but I have no idea who they are.





What should I do with the photographs? It seems rude to throw the bridal party into the bin, even though I don't know them. I wonder if they are still together, if they have been happy, these past forty or fifty years? 

Autumn leaves in the afternoon sunshine. The weather all last week was very kind to housemovers.

I have enjoyed looking through family photograph albums. There they all are, my parents, aunts and uncles, friends and family, at weddings, night clubs, parties... They all so look so incredibly glamorous, as though they are on the set of a James Bond film. "Oh, I remember that dress," says my mother. "It was beautiful, I loved that dress..."

A month of weather - 3/10/12

Wednesday - my busiest teaching day at the moment.

A quick pause to look outside and find something to photograph;

 

 

So how long will this promising weather last? I loaded samba equipment, a djembe, a Roland mini-cube (like a small guitar amplifier) and a ukulele into the car, and remembered to add my packed lunch.

 

The first stop is a small village school, where I teach all of year 3 and year 4 to play the ukulele. I enjoy this one immensely, all the more because I work alongside a colleague, sharing the teaching, sparking off each other, getting ideas from each other. A lesson in which I haven't learnt anything is a wasted lesson in my opinion, and that's just as a teacher!

 

 

 

After a hectic hour trying to help the children work out which finger is which, and where it should go on the ukulele to make a "C" chord, I meandered back to the car.

 The best place to park is in a narrow lane down alongside the church. The sun was hot on my back, the leaves and berries in the hedgerow gleaming in the Autumn sun. A blackbird was singing nearby, and there were roses in the churchyard. 

 

What an idyllic place. 

Once, a few weeks ago, when I was standing in the lane, I heard an eerie creaking sound, and church bells ringing as though in the distance. Intrigued, I went into the church, thinking that maybe someone was playing a recording of church bells for some unguessable reason. It turned out that the bell ringers were up in the bell chamber (reached by the usual small, low door and narrow twisting stairway) and were either practising, or ringing for some other event. They had closed the louvres at the top of the bell tower in order to reduce the noise levels for the rest of the village, or perhaps just for the school next door.

 

 

The rest of the day lived up to the promise of the start. After taking some time to appreciate the peace of the little lane, I zoomed over to teach samba to an enthusiastic crowd of year 5 and 6 children. Back into the car, and a twenty mile journey to the last school. There is a bit of time to fill over lunch, so I investigated a new tea room (very promising) where I wrote some letters and looked round the village. Two more lessons, djembe and samba again, and home to teach piano for a couple of hours.

That would have been plenty of activity for one day, but my parents are moving house more or less as I type, so we dropped round to help with the final cleaning and clearing, and then, too tired to face cooking, all went out for a meal together.

The only food for tired carnivores is steak, so that's what most of us had. I have a feeling I shall sleep like a log tonight.

A month of weather - 2/10/12

There was a pale golden light this morning at around 8 am. In order to get a view of the garden from upstairs, I had to open the bathroom window and stand in the bath.

 

 

The russian vine is tumbling over the roof and side (and all over the inside) of the garage, and behind that is the smoke bush, rather a strange shade of blue in the photograph. The two sinister "eyes" in the right hand corner of the garden are actually roses.

 

The mobile phone camera is not really coping with the conditions! I could see that the golden effect of the light was not being captured, and it was also fading fast, and everything beginning to look rather ordinary.

 

 

At the front of the house, facing east, there was stunning spider's web, hung with dew around the outer strands.   

 

 

The morning sun seemed to promise so much, so I was surprised to find myself succumbing to an increasingly black mood as the morning drew on. Tiredness, maybe. There are days when the future looks bleak and fearful, and days when optimism will carry me through. This was not an optimistic day.

 

Towards lunchtime I went in to town to do some errands, and parked at the top of the multi-storey car park. Looking out across the to the North Downs, the view was like a mirror of my state of mind; grey clouds and blue sky battling for supremacy.

 

 

In the end I managed clear the clouds from my mind using an old trick I first discovered back at university - window shopping. This isn't the same as retail therapy, as there is never any intention of wanting to buy anything.



Back at York, I would browse in a china and glass shop in a street near the cathedral called The Shambles. It was full of beautiful objects, Minton, Crown Derby, a pattern called "Haddon Hall",                                 

        

                                                                            

and Caithness Glass are some of the names I remember. In London, it would be the fabric department of Liberty's - wools, silks, velvets, embroidered cottons.

 

 

Today I spent a few minutes in the wool shop in the company of all kinds of different yarns and textures.

 

Rowan Yarns (picture from their website)

When I emerged, the weather was, if anything, darker and more ominous, but my spirits had lifted and I was back to my sunny self again.    

A Month of Weather 1/10/12

On twitter, someone posted a picture of the view from their window this morning.

I wondered about the view from my window. Days can go past, and I don't really take a proper look.

One way, all you can see is a  great thicket of weeds, consuming half the paved area outside the french windows. It's a depressing tangle of that fiendish mare's tail, creeping lianas of rampant russian vine, and any other plants that take root.

So I look the other way, and am quite pleased with what I see. It's all about how you look at things - is your glass half full, or half empty? Is your patio half full of weeds, or half clear of weeds? Have you half started mending the fence, or half finished it?

It was raining, which is why there are some strange reflections on the glass. I wasn't prepared to go out and get wet.



the back garden, 1st October, 8am

It's hard to remember what it was like, sitting on those benches under the apple tree on long, hot, sunny days, eating olives, drinking chilled sherry and pretending that we were in Spain, just a couple of weeks ago.

The various plant pots are in a very untended state. That's rosemary in one of the pots, and weeds (or a hand fork, how long has that been there?) in the others. All the colour in the garden, apart from every shade of green, is provided by three pink roses.

When I got home in the afternoon, the weather had changed to lovely sunshine.