Monday 21st August - A new week begins

 One short comment on the news, the dreadful, dreadful news about that nurse and the poor babies and families, the missed opportunities to prevent further deaths, and the awful possibility that she could have harmed other babies.

 Most of us manage to trundle through our days without coming into direct contact with such unimaginable evil; my prayers are for everyone directly or indirectly affected by these tragic events. 

So while I am burbling on about my own relatively happy life I have not forgotten that many people here, and also in distant lands, have to endure very different circumstances.

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Last Monday I was feeling a bit low; leaving the hospital after a blood test I struggled with breathless walking up the gentle slope through the dark park. I probably had to pause for a moment about 3 or 4 tomes. Today, after I had the repeat test, I strolled through the car park with no bother at all. What was that all about? Maybe I had a bit of a lurgy? 

Anyway, today started well for me and continued in the same mode. Like receiving a text from the credit card company; 'thank you for your payment, and you can avoid interest charges by making a further payment of 11p by 23:59 tonight'. I always pay off the complete balance every month, but this time I must have somehow underpaid. Last time did - maybe 20 years ago - I was hugely irritated to get caught for the full charge. Sending a warning text seems remarkably civilised behaviour.

There was one glitch in my happy day, one fly in the ointment, as it were.  Or rather slugs and snails in among the pak choi plants. Overnight half my brave little plants had been ruthlessly devoured. It would make a Saint use deeply unspiritual language. After contemplating the scene for some time, I tenderly surrounded the survivors with sluggone wool pellets. 

Tonight Himself and Myself will be out after dark with a torch and the slugging tongs to see what we can see and catch anything that can't run away (that should be the easy bit).

We might be able to see the moon, which rose at half past eleven this morning, but doesn't set until nearly ten tonight. It is a waxing crescent moon.

 Meanwhile today continues well. I have already hit my step target of 3000, by attempting to average 300 steps an hour through the day, Only Connect and University Challenge are on BBC tonight, and there were a couple of chocolate truffles left for chocolate o'clock.

30th November - Organising an Advent Calendar

Tomorrow's the day! For the Advent calendars, of course.

I was given this one last year as a birthday present so that I could enjoy it through Advent

A little cardboard doll's house. It came as several sheets, one had to carefully remove the floors, walls and roof pieces and build the house ready to furnish it and add the occupants day by day.

Last year it was a simple matter of looking through the sheets of cardboard to find each day's pieces. This year I just had a large envelope for the house and a smaller envelope of bits. It seemed a bad idea to have to tip everything out each day, but neither did I want too many envelopes.

I've sorted the bits into days 1-8, 9-16 and 17-24 and collected them into just three envelopes.

Tomorris also the start of the Advent cowl project.  I have scheduled the first instructions to hit the blog at 6.30. Hopefully I have understood the scheduling process.

I have finished the embroidery picture for the Postcard Project. Now to find the 'flat present' - although it is a bit buggy this time, and get everything wrapped and ready to post... probably Friday as tomorrow is a bit fraught with activity and I don't want to rush things.

Now, it is chocolate o'clock and time to open the chocolate box.

Thursday 17th November - Drawings round-up

 I find the sketch-a-day journal a great way of looking back at a month;

Wednesday 2nd November

I finally sorted out a measured walking path up and down the garden, from the back gate (behind me in the picture) to the end of our drive at the front. It is 80 steps long, and I can manage 'there and back' three and  half times in 6 minutes, around 230 metres.  The main problem is that our garden slopes gradually down to the back gate; more to the point is is UPHILL from the back gate to the front which slows me down considerably! Still, it is a benchmark. I've been getting about 1300 steps every day. More, if I have been winding wool or playing the piano...

Thursday night is church home group night - those of us who are free meet up on zoom, ostensibly to be a church group, and we do spend some time on Spiritual Business, and then the rest of the time on Any Other Business!

Fireworks started up in earnest on Friday 4th. We enjoyed watching a brilliant display which must have been several streets along from us from the comfort of our own home.

Saturday 5th - I started my first attempt at cross stitch...    

Sunday 6th - I became absorbed in planning the postcard project mark 2...

Monday 7th - I spent several hours typing and answering emails and writing stuff.

Tuesday 8th - we ere both brave at the dentist.

Wednesday 9th - I finished the snowflake and started the next cross stitch picture.

Thursday 10th November - I could stand it no longer and cleaned the window in the little front bedroom - as we leave the door open to let the light stream in through the landing every mark was always staring me in the face.

Friday 11th November....

Saturday 12th November - we went to a favourite farm cafe to meet the offspring for a second breakfast. Also for me to collect my birthday presents (which I opened then and there - several days early) and to deliver a couple of Christmas presents.

Sunday 13th November - I decanted the birthday chocolates into the chocolate o'clock box. I'm afraid with was chocolate o'clock several times a day until the moment when they were All Gone.

Wednesday 16th November- Survived the hygienist!

 We're home, and have have recovered. 

It wasn't that bad for me as it was only a hygienist appointment this time. Although it was probably about twenty years since the last one. My dentist used to do the scritchy scratchy scraping bit, followed by the high speed tickly toothbrush stuff, but he has retired and things have moved on. 

I felt fine (ish) afterwards; not so for Himself. He came out from the hygienist in reasonable good order, but went straight into the dentist for the first of several sessions to rectify a series of problems. 

He was only in there for three quarters of an hour, but it has taken quite a while, and a couple of pain killers, before he was ready for a late lunch. Very late. At 5pm.

Ah well. We shall put this all behind us and wait for chocolate o'clock, when we open the special box and have a little bit if chocolate each.

Oh joy! It has been restocked since I last looked!

(When is chocolate o'clock? Sometime after tea, whenever we decide)

Monday 14th November - Random Comments

 It's King Charles' birthday today. He's 74. Me, I'd rather be retired, living my own life (as I am) doing what I want to do (as I mostly do) whenever I please. I hope he's allowed some peace and quiet on his birthday.

https://creativecommons.org/resource/birthday-cake/5045502202_41476791a4_o/

my birthday celebrations started earlier than usual when we met up with son and daughter on Saturday. We have nearly finished the Guy Lian chocolates - rationing ourselves to only two at a time, a couple of times a day, and Himself is fettling the Advent candle so it will stand up straight in the holder - it is the holder that is wonky, not the candle. These little creatures are watching my every move while I teach piano from their cozy egg-box home

I might make them their own special Christmas tree in due course.

The cat is beginning to look a little less moth-eaten; I my perhaps have trimmed off a little too much fur when trying to removed one of the clumpy lumpy bits;

but if I carefully smooth her fur down (rather in the way that our chemistry teacher at school arranged his hair) I can hide the bald spot quite well.

I've been hunting round the internet for a knit-a-long project for Advent as I so enjoyed the one I stumbled across last year. It was at www.buttercupminiatures.co.uk; every day through December I received an email with about ten rows of pattern across 30 stitches - just enough to go with a cup a coffee in the morning. This year their knit-a-long is for create a miniature jumper for a 1/12 size doll - not what I am interested in doing at all. I shall have to see what else is out there, or maybe create my own from the various pattern books I have.  

Maybe a different Christmas motif using up my double knitting stash... hmm. There are loads and loads of free charts (cue 'lost in space music') out there on the web.

I did make a very successful (and incredibly warm) scarf using two balls of yarn, of plain, and one multicoloured. I knitted it in the round, on a circular needle, using charts I found on the internet. Maybe I'll do something like this again. 

This was two different colours of King Cole Riot. I think I used two balls of mixed greys and one of random bright colours - another time I would use a uniform plain colour for the background as a couple of times the two colours merged and the pattern was indistinct.  

Now I've been looking... I'm liking the idea of 2 balls of Sylecraft Life (£3.50 for 100g) and King Cole Magic or Beech (£4.59 for 100g). My fingers are twitching over the 'add to your basket' button,  but luckily for common sense I need to start a piano lesson in 7 minutes.    

It was 96 stitches round, as I remember, so that would be about 4 rounds per day - a project to last until Easter, I think, Christmassy motifs at one end, Candles etc through February, early spring bulbs, and then Easter?

 

Tuesday 1st March - Looking forward to Lent

I really am looking forward to Lent. Seriously. 

I have bought myself a 'Lent Calendar', like an Advent Calendar, but of course no chocolates, and I will get to open the first window tomorrow;

The booklet to the side has the Bible reading for the day. I think it will have to do with the animal revealed behind each window.

The lack of chocolates won't be a problem; no way am I giving up chocolate for Lent! In fact I have recently stocked up the 'chocolate stash box' with mini Fair Trade chocolate eggs from Divine. No more than one egg per day, though, to make them last.

I shall be following the course that the Rev Andrew Dotchin creates every year. This year the title is 'With a song in my heart', and you will be able to follow it here. It started today and promises to be as excellent a read as ever.

 So am I giving up anything for Lent? Yes, I am not going to buy or download any books. I must admit I hastily ordered my book club choice yesterday, as it would have been very difficult to join in the next meeting if I hadn't. It is 'The Valley at the Centre of the World' by Malachy Tallack. I have also chosen it for my Audible purchase as I had a credit, for hearing the regional accents and language.

 Our previous choice was 'The Mayor of Casterbridge', by Thomas Hardy. I haven't ready any of his books before, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed this. If you have an Audible subscription you can listen to Tony Britton reading it, very well indeed, as one of the free books.  

I'm not going to go short of reading matter... there must be hundreds of books in the house, plus ones that are waiting for me to read or finish on my kindle.

And I am going to give up wasting far too much time playing the various solitaire games on the computer. That will be very hard, much harder than giving up chocolate. 

What am I taking on for Lent? Letter writing; I will be printing off and sending copies of the Lent course to two friends who don't use computers at all. I reckon that's a reasonable commitment. I'm also aiming to try and do some form of exercise every day to improve my fitness levels. I do them while I am listening to the songs in the Lent course.

Let's see how long this lasts... 

Wednesday 23rd February - All fool's day is here for the long term

What? But yes, and this is all I have to say about removing all requirements to wear masks, discontinuing free testing for covid, and any other nonsense about 'the pandemic being over'. If you wish to disagree with me, don't. Just don't. Not here, not now - I'm too mithered about everything at the moment.

Moving on to other things....

I made no-knead olive bread the other day - the same recipe and method as before, except I added a load of olives chopped into quarters. About three-quarters of a pint. The recipe is all in American cups, which seemed dreadfully inconvenient, until you google and discover that it is 0.416337 of a pint. So that's easy. Half a pint will do.

I also left out the salt, as the olives were in a mixture of brine and oil, so plenty salty enough even after I drained them.

 I did wonder if the salt would inhibit the rise, but it all seemed fine. We had some with cold meat last night, I have given some away, we will eat some more with soup tonight and the rest tomorrow, or slice and freeze. The next experiment along these lines will be to make a giant hot cross bun. Soon; I'm not waiting for Good Friday.

Other baking news; I have dealt with some out-of-date suet by melting it up with bird seed and mealworms. Yum. Delish. I was pleased that I managed to prise it out of the dish once it had set 

(that was by no means a certainty) and have put it into the bird feeders, wait, did you think WE were going to have it for our lunch? Now I shall have to see if the birds want to have anything to do with it. 

Talking of Lent; I have restocked the chocolate box we were given for Christmas;

yup, mini-eggs and chocolate hearts from Devine, and underneath are various bars of dark chocolate. We are not giving up chocolate for Lent - I never do, because one of the New Year resolutions that I do manage to keep is to eat chocolate several times a week. 

I have calculated that I can also keep my promise to myself to buy no more than one Persephone book per month if I order it at the beginning of March and the end of April, while at the same time giving up buying or downloading any new books over Lent. (I still haven't decided if the Persephone book thing only applies to Lovely New Books, in which case I can look for second-hand books on-line as well. Watch this space.) Just recently I have been binge-reading Rom-Coms by Tricia Astley - recently? This started in the run up to Christmas, and now it is February. 'Download this book for 99p', it says, and so I click. It is still massively cheaper than going out for coffee and a cake a couple of times a week.

I have some activities lined up for the Observing of Lent, but we've still got a week to go. Let's not post everything on one day!

Finally; Ang has already blogged about the stitchery swap project that we have started - as she said, it is slightly scary! Embroidery is a new skill for this year for me. I have been making my eyes water stitching her address; I started with the last word so that by the tie I got to her name I might have improved slightly. At the rate of one word per day, I will have finished tomorrow. 

Oh me oh my, there's more to this backstitch than I ever thought possible! It is a bit of bravery and trust. Although we've been reading each other's blogs for several years, but have never spoken to each other or met up - yet!

As a respite from trying to be super-precise, I am doing an experimental free-hand sample, taking the needle for a walk. I did draw the outline a few times first with my vanishing purple pen, but the purple didn't really show and soon vanished so I just went ahead anyway. It is still a work-in-progress.

I'm feeling a bit chuffed though; it looks so much better in the picture than in real life! I have taken against satin stitch - too much like hard work - in a sort of ragged infilling looks much better. 'Rustic', as a friend said. It is an opportunity to try out things without minding about mistakes. I shall just leave the mistakes there as part of a 'how to (not) do it' reminder.

 

Monday 24th January - Flowers, anniversary of my mother's death, chocolate

I'm on a roll, at least for posting on this blog. I can't say the same about going for a daily walk (too cold) or practising the piano (not in the mood) or doing some drawing or painting (also not in the mood).

While it is so cold and grey I like to sit close to the radiator and read, or knit, or do Freecell and Suduko and the new craze, Wordle.

I'm also pretty occupied by thinking about the garden.

I have potatoes chitting on a windowsill upstairs

Micro greens making slow progress on the kitchen windowsill

and peas just beginning to sprout on a downstairs windowsill. These last are not for planting out, but for adding as shoots to salads once they are big enough.

 I've moved the tete-a-tete daffodils to the sitting room now that they are flowering. They are a such a pleasure, so cheerful, and also so poignant, because they remind me so much of my mother.

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of her death, back in 2016. We had kept her room in the nursing home full of flowers, mostly pots of daffodils, all through the few weeks she was there after leaving hospital; balancing them as high as we could on the windowsill so that she could see them easily. As each pot of daffodils began to fade we would replace them, and I planted them in a row along the hedge at the bottom of the garden. 

She always had flowers in the house, and taught me how to arrange them, how to 'make a spider web from the stems, so that they criss cross and hold each other up'. The big glass bowl of tulips, the silver coffee jug of roses, the small vases of  grape hyacinths, vast displays of dahlias... 'put the leaves in first, and then add the flowers'. Bunches of cut daffodils always had to have some leaves with them, cut from the garden if necessary. 

It's a strange thing - we were all so focussed on supporting my father through this time, that I think we might have lost sight the rest of us to some degree, of her being my and my brother's mother, and such an important friend for my husband, and being a grandmother, and all the other members of the family and friends affected by her death. Ah well; that's how it was then, and here's how it is now. We did the best we could at the time. It's hard to think and clearly in the midst of everything.  Hindsight and all that.

Anyway, now I have daffodils too, because it's what you need in January and February, to fend off the grey days and now, to celebrate my mother's life.

I took the picture of the flowers just before we sat down to our little smackeral of something; cake and 'second coffee'. We try and restrain ourselves to just three coffees per day - morning, elevenses, and after lunch. Otherwise we would struggle to keep pace with ordering supplies!

I have a fairly inefficient and relaxed approach to watching my weight, which is probably why I still avoir  more poids that I would ideally like. My current aim is to begin each week  little lighter than I began the previous week. Here is a conundrum -  to be at my lightest I should weigh myself first thing in the morning, before breakfast but after going to the loo. Yes, fine, but that sets a harder target to meet the following week. But if I weigh myself after breakfast I'm likely to be disappointed that I don't weight very much less than before, or worse still, I'm heavier. 

My 'diet method', as I have said before, is to try and eat half as much as my husband.

 His plate is on the left, mine on the right. So far, so good. But then I'm more inclined to snack on this and that through the day - a handful of nuts, a chocolate button from the last of the Christmas store, a few crisps or crackers... He doesn't seem suffer from the same weakness, or maybe he is just very skilled at surreptitious snacking? I shall keep an eye on this.

I suppose I shouldn't make cakes if I were that concerned about my weight, or at least not the sort of cakes that I like to eat. That would be a start. 

It does make me very pleased, as well as slightly sad, that the milk chocolate in the Christmas stash is nearly all gone, and only a few milk chocolate buttons. Everything else is the rich, dark, intense kind of chocolate that the French apparently eat in small quantities for medicinal purposes, as a source of iron.  He will enjoy them; they don't have the same appeal for me. And as for the marzipan -  that's all his to enjoy with no competition from me.

  

Thursday 1st April - No more fooling this year

 It is 12.30 pm so no more April fooling - 

 - where did all those days disappear to since the last time I posted on this blog?

Some of them disappeared in a kind of sleep-walk - there were a couple of 'zero-energy' days when neither of us could summon up the 'oomph' to get more than the absolute minimum done. The weather was cold and bleah, the days were samey and grey... all I felt like doing was eating chocolate and buying stuff on the internet. The cat felt the same way.

There was nearly a catastrophe when we hadn't realized that Leo had managed to climb inside her duvet and we were going to sort it out and get rid of the strange lump that had appeared in it.

 Luckily I had just enough strength of mind left to keep both chocolate eating and internet buying within bounds. Although I now have a great list of stuff due to be delivered over the next few days.

The veg plot is well underway now. I would like there to have been more signs of life, but so far I have two sticks of rhubarb and a fine display of tiny salad leaf seedlings. A few peas have emerged, and I am hoping the sun will encourage some more to appear. No sign of spinach, radish, brussel sprouts, spring onions or carrots yet.

Yesterday it was warm enough to sit in the garden and paint;

The cat is drawn using a method I call 'emergent drawing'. I just keep drawing and drawing until a cat emerges from the lines. I stole the description from a method of teaching writing which was popular back in the 1990s, or maybe earlier, called 'emergent writing'; I was a bit sceptical but it seems to work. The child (pre-school, or reception, or early years) starts by just 'pretending' to write - doing wiggly lines to make shopping lists or stories - and over time and with appropriate teaching and encouragement these first 'writings' become letters and words and sentences. Well, that describes my drawing method exactly.

The sunflower seeds are all ding well. But very floppy. I plan to stake them all using the bamboo skewers I discovered when I reorganised the cutlery drawers using these rather clever thingies.

We just have to chant 'little on the left' as we open the drawer to know which size is where. There is a tiny symbol printed on the edge by the handles to show whether there will be a knife, fork or spoon on the other end. (you don't need to tell me that 'large on the left' would work as well; I have put the little knives on the left and That is That!)

There is a grey cutlery organiser buried on the left hand side of the kitchen drawer, holding the small implements like pastry brushes (we have two?) small blue sharp knives (we have three?) apple corer, lemon zester and so forth. The big green thingy is a splendid contrivance for coring and slicing an apple all in one go.  

 

It is a great pleasure to be able to open the kitchen drawer without a struggle, find an implement without impaling oneself and then close the drawer again, all without a single expletive.

  

Friday 15th January - Mmmmmm

 That was the letter for today, Mmmmm.

We have discovered the pannetone left over from Christmas, hiding in a dark corner of the hall, and also a large bar of Toblerone that I was gong to use for home-made chocolate truffles, but never got round to.

We bought our first microwave in 1986. It transformed meal-making in a hurry for hungry impatient babies and toddlers; one child-rearing book I read had the simple mantra

microwave - freezer - microwave - baby

and it proved to be so true. The technology was so different that cook books were required, and I invested in a couple while I got my head round this miraculous machine.

One thing that caught my eye was this;

Chocolate fondue; (Sainsbury Microwave Cooking by Lorna Rhodes)

250g / 8oz Toblerone broken in pieces

142ml / 5 fl oz double cream

put these in a bowl and microwave on MEDIUM for 3 minutes, stirring while cooking, until melted

This does make a lovely rich fondue to serve with fruit and marshmallows.

I misread the recipe and heated it all on HIGH - it didn't matter then when microwaves were lower power, but would probably matter more now.

HOWEVER, if you also have a bar of dark chocolate to hand you can add this to the mix - how much? I'm not sure, probably all of a 100g bar, you get a much thicker mixture, which will set firm when chilled.

Then you can scoop out teaspoonfuls and roll them in cocoa power to make chocolate truffles to give to people, and to yourself, as presents. 

We have skipped the 'making truffles' stage and are just eating the Toblerone neat.

 In other news, Brexit has already hit this household in the most irritating fashion. Our printer reached the end of its useful life over Christmas, so we ordered a replacement, and were given a delivery date of 12th January. However, the printers are made in the Netherlands. 

We can track the progress of our printer from the factory to our house; the delivery date has moved a couple of times but that is not a great problem. There's not a lot of difference between the 12th and the 15th, after all. However the date has now disappeared to be replaced by a message stating that the hold up is at customs because of incomplete paperwork. I have a feeling that this is going to be a common problem in the next few months.

It has lead to complicated discussions on how we can use the tech we have in our house (quite a lot) to make it possible for me to read the music (which I am now unable to print copies of) on one screen, and still have two screens set up for the zoom. Two? Yes; after six months of having the screen side-on to show the keyboard, and me sitting in a contorted position as though I am squashed into one of those magician's boxes for sawing a lady in half, I have changed to having a screen on top of the piano I can talk to, and another at the side to show the keyboard. Goodbye neck ache, back ache! I should have done this ages ago.  I am getting more and more techy by the minute. 

I did get out for a walk; this time I loaded myself down with 2.5kg of books in my bag. Why? That's the weight of the light-weight oxygen concentrator that I have my eye on. I did 230 m in the first 6 min walk (without using oxygen) which is uphill, and later was surprised that I managed 280 m in a second test on the way home (downhill!). If 2.5 kg makes this difference, it makes it appear more worthwhile to try and shed a few pounds in how much I weight. I must give this some consideration once we have finished the pannetone and the toblerone bar.

   

Friday 8th January - F and G

 It's quite handy doing alphabet letters on one day because then no one need know that I got them the wrong way round - I was so delighted that E coincided with Epiphany that I launched straight into 

G for Gold - gold moments in every day, even if they only last as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea (or glass of wine) or see the sun catching the leaves on the tress - I took this picture on my birthday while waiting for news of my father who was in hospital... 

The tree will be bare branches now of course.

This morning I realised that yesterday should have been 

F - frankincense, fragrance, and friends suggested frangipane, frangipani flowers, and, of course, friends.

I went out into the garden for a few minutes - just long enough to feel my face begin to freeze, to see why the salvias had suddenly all got white fluffy flowers

 

I don't know if you can make it out, but they were made of thin strands of ice, like little tufts of that fiendish 'angel hair' you can buy to decorate your Christmas tree.

I had seen some photographs of ice hair that someone discovered on Dartmoor a day or so ago.

This article states that it is a consequence of temperature and moisture and the presence of a fungus - I don't think fungus was involved in my ice flowers, but they looked very similar.

I've certainly never seen anything like it before - I'll have to look again tomorrow.

Christmas clearing up is in progress and will probably last for a few more weeks. The tree has been wrestled into a swaddling of bubble wrap and gaffer tape - it managed to destroy its box. It is a truism that artificial trees are reluctant to return to the compacted size they were when first put into the box in the factory. Baubles and tinsel are in their respective carrier bags and are being carted up to the back bedroom every time one or other of us treks upstairs. Only a couple more trips to go.

Last year none of the Christmas stuff made it into the loft - I suspect the same will happen again. It certainly made things easier this year.

We are sitting up waiting for the delivery of a new printer. The old one printed its last page a week ago. I'm impressed that it lasted as long as seven years, the rate I use it. This morning that tracking service said it had reached the Netherlands, and would arrive by 9.30 tonight. So that's thirteen minutes to go.... but when do we decide that 'running late' has become 'not arriving today'? 

Waiting up, did I say? We've been going to bed pretty early, taking hot chocolate and books.

Now, about hot chocolate... take an espresso mug, drop in a square of 90% and a square of 70% Swiss or Belgian chocolate, (I suspect 2 squares of 80% would come to the same thing, but I'm using what we've got) and a small teaspoon of sugar and top up with milk. Heat in the microwave, watching like a hawk, because after a minute it will boil over! I let it rise up once or twice (quick reactions on the stop button) and then give it a good stir.  

It makes a smooth, dark, rich, concentrated drink, and the small sized mug is plenty! I make it for himself, but not for me, much as I would like it, as my stomach no longer enjoys a milky drink at night. Sad, but I console myself by thinking of all the calories I am NOT consuming!

Saturday 28th November - Last Day of the (Church) Year

 Today has ended in peace and quiet (as at 8pm).

The news from the hospital was encouraging - my father state of health (of unhealth?) has again improved.

'A weekend of doing nothing is what he needs right now', said the doctor, and that's what he's getting. And antibiotics. And a drip. And careful monitoring. But it will hopefully be a weekend of no more tests and scans and being pulled and pushed and trolley about.

I've begun thinking about Advent and Christmas. We have been setting up Advent calendars; my task is to fill the drawers of the Christmas Tree shaped one for my husband. 

He has the much fiddlier task of filling the little cubby-holes of the Father Christmas one for me.

  

Either way, it is a tricky business finding things small enough to fit the spaces. Last year I bought chocolate elves, and then had to cut the ears off them to make fit. This year I bought Cocoloco truffles. I was halfway through cutting them all in half in order to cram them into the drawers - they were just a couple of millimetres too big - when I tasted some of the crumbs. Oh-oh. Not sure that he's going to like them... so I offered him one to test.

I wasn't wrong - so that was a disaster averted. But not a complete disaster - once melted into hot milk they make very good, rich hot chocolate. Luckily I have other things to put in the drawers, and there is always on-line ordering. I did a bit of searching, checked out the reviews, and something should turn up soon.   

The cats have got an early Christmas present; included n the latest box of cat treats is a small penguin which you can fill with treats. The cats can then 'have fun' extracting the treats...

McCavity purrs at it, and pushes it along the floor with her nose until a treat drops out. Leo has also tried this technique with some success, but both cats are really too old (and dim?) to persist.

 Tomorrow is the first Sunday in Advent. I shall be reading Carys Walsh's Advent book 'Frequencies of God', reflections on poems by R S Thomas in company with a Facebook group through December, well, starting tomorrow, so you might be getting a bit of poetry here from time to time!

Tuesday 15th September - What's been happening?

 The answer to that question depends on context.

Leaving climate emergencies, politics, pandemics and world events out, it has been a quiet week here in suburbia.

The schools are in full cry now which means the scenes outside the sweet shop are like this;

 I mean the top right corner of the picture. He went to post a letter yesterday at about half past three and came back saying 'Never Again'; it was almost impossible to negotiate a sensibly distanced path to the post box in among the hordes of children desperate to buy ice creams on the way home. 

The main subject of today's picture is a bar of chocolate that has been calling to me from the top shelf of the baking cupboard for a couple of days now. I think it was left over from my godmother's store cupboard last December. I had some, and He's had some, and very soon it will cease to bother us. 

What else? We've had scones and tea in a friend's garden - this weather is making things so much easier and more pleasant than they might be - and another friend dropped in after church on Sunday for morning coffee and scones. There's no cake at the moment as we forgot to put eggs (and lettuce and strawberry jam, come to think of it) on the shopping order, so we will have to make do with scones and honey and salad leaves - all full of holes - why? - from the garden. Such deprivation. 

It really is hot at the moment. Like Summer. We will have to start watering the garden from this evening or there will be No salad leaves, with or without holes.

The djembe drumming group met for the first time since March. There are just 6 in the group at the moment so we can still meet, (The Rule of Six... sounds like the title of a Young Adult fantasy book) all masked up, sitting in a widely-spaced circle. It takes a lot of thinking about, to prepare the area and then mop up with disinfectant afterwards. It's thinks like remembering to put the chairs back and THEN disinfect rather than the other way round. I did my usual trick of suddenly doubting that I had locked the church before replacing the key in the key safe, in spite of Knowing that I had watched myself put the key in the lock and turn it. I remember that this was a constant problem when I worked entirely on my own in an IT department (yes, no-one else on the premises) and was so stressed out and over-tired that I would go back and check if I had really and truly locked up about three times before I got home. On this occasion I managed to force myself to accept my memory of locking up - whoo-hoo - that's progress!

Piano teaching has started up again. Four lessons yesterday (looks like Mondays are going to be a bit of a heavy day). The other days have just two or three lessons - I'm in no hurry to fill all the spaces in the timetable. 

Paintings? (Just scroll down to the end if you are bored)

Wednesday 9th - I'd been having a go at doing skies, so here's a sunset

Thursday 10th - watching the man doing the roof on the bungalow conversion opposite

Friday 11th

The new owner (also a builder) chatting to his neighbours, while the other men carry on with the roof

Sunday 13th September, copied from a photograph. 

I didn't paint on Saturday, so used those pages to try out some techniques 

Monday 14th September

Well, that's roughly what has been happening, mostly within a few hundred kilometres of when I'm standing at the moment. 

Time for a cup of tea...

    

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?