1st July - Thursday - Winding up as we wind down for end of term

 Confusing metaphors - I am now winding things down as I prepare to wind up this term's teaching for the Summer Holidays... tallying up my accounts for the term, setting the students up with 'easy' and 'fun' things to do over the holidays and generally taking a relaxed approach to lessons. I've 'done' all the exams, except, possibly one, that is to say, the students have done their exams, but as they are recorded in lesson time over zoom it feels as though I have been doing them too.

I reckon the last student's exam will spill over into the end of July - but apart from him I've set an 'end of year date for July 18th and That's That.

I've removed the anti-fox poo trays, on the advice of a friend who pointed out the the vinegar would eat its way through the foil tray then instead of being 'failed-fox-deterrent' would start becoming 'efficient weedkiller'. It seems to be a good slug-killer though, there were several pickled slugs (I feel a slight pity for them) in the trays Poor foolish molluscs. 

I have an idea;  pour the rest of the vineage over the solid paving and pebbles, which are supposed to be weed-free, as combined a weedkiller and mild fox deterrent and slug destroyer. 

The foxes had better find an alternative route soon, as the package of 'Scoot' has arrived, so we are upping the level of aggression... A neighbour told us that people further down the road are FEEDING the foxes 'oh, they are so sweet, we love to watch them playing in the garden in the evening'. Grrrr.

What else? 

We've bought some new bathroom scales. Un remarkable, except this seems to have coincided with me suddenly gaining 3 pounds. The old scales were bought with Green Shield Stamps

Remember them? People are selling them on ebay! For money! Do people still collect them? Can you still get things with them? You don't have to answer but I'm not sure that I really need to know this. 

The scientific hypothesis is that the springs of the old scales have become stiffer (rusty?) with age and therefore are 'weighing light'.  

What else?

My father and my Uncle came round for lunch in the garden - the forecast that said 'rain at lunchtime' was luckily incorrect - the other forecast said 'rain later in the afternoon' which is what did happen, so we had a very pleasant time and then did not need to water the garden.

There was a strange beeping noise from the kitchen while we were sitting over our coffee; McCavity the cat (at 19 years old she is the same age as my father, if you get what I mean) was engaged n a stealth raid on the cooking trays for the fish and chips, had sampled the fruit sponge pudding and had settled her attention upon the cream pot. We have an induction hob, and she had crouched down with her paws on the control panel. The beeps were because the cooker was objecting to being instructed to heat up rings which didn't have steel pans on them. 

It's a good thing that the pans were on silicone insulating mats otherwise pans and paws may have become rather warm...  

After today I will have just two weeks of teaching and then I can look forward to going nowhere for the next six weeks. 

If I am going to have to stay home for a while longer, I am jolly lucky to be living here.

Saturday 5th June - Spring and Summer

 The weather changes this week from cold and wet to a few days of hot sun, a day of determined continuous rain, and now a mix of sun and clouds coming and going.

Half term is nearly over - and a curious 'break' it was too.

'Break' seems to have been be the operative word;

Dishwasher - the pump started whining like a muted dentist drill. On investigation we discovered that we had bought it quite sometime ago, repairs would be expensive and not necessarily successful. So we have a new dishwasher, spookily silent when it is running, and swallows up so much in one load that we have unearthed the extra plates and bowls.

Cooker - one ring has been making odd 'ticking' sound as it heats up for quite a while now. So you can't say we hadn't been warned when, one day, everything was ready to eat except the oven chips. They were still pallid, unappetizing and COLD. With hindsight we should have gone ahead and eaten the rest of the meal while the chips were being blasted with heat in the Air Fryer. We could have pretended that they were a separate course. Instead we had warm steak and veg and burning hot chips.

 Once again the paperwork, and investigations on the forums brought the conclusion that replacement would be better than repair. I suppose we could have carried on with the cooker, using whichever rings still worked, and the top oven, until finally something melted or caught fire or the exploded with a bang... but the new cooker will be delivered later this month.

The Kitchen Floor - well, one thing usually leads to another, and installing the new dishwasher meant disturbing the plumbing which meant that the kitchen floor started buckling - the result of a slow leak in the water connection to the dishwasher. This was easily fixed, in terms of mechanics - merely a matter of cleaning and re-seating a washer. The floor has been persuaded to lie flat again too; the heavy work involved pulling out and pushing back the dishwasher.

The small hammer drill - I won't go into details, but it seems that if don't use a hardened bit in a hammer drill (because an ordinary bit had got into the box of bits, are you still with me?) and you encounter a surprisingly hard piece of wood when you are drilling, you can end up riveting the bit into the thingy that holds the bit. By 'bit' I mean the specific thingy that sticks out of the business end of the drill and goes roundandroundandround very fast and makes the hole. We have proved this to our dissatisfaction and ordered a replacement drill.

Teeth - did I mention a dentist earlier? We both had a 'routine' visit - and what has been 'routine' about the past eighteen months, I ask you? (rhetorical question, please don't reply) - I got off fairly lightly, but we knew that Himself would be 'in for it' as a chunk broke off a tooth several months ago. He's having another crown. I am more than a little apprehensive about the visit to the hygienist we were told to arrange. I've managed to dodge this experience for more than a decade, but like Nemesis it has caught up with me. 

In between times I have finally made up the fabric I bought back in 2019, or even 2018, perhaps. I thought I would play a game of 'Sewing Bee';

'sewists, you have one afternoon to make a simple summer top'

That is worth a whole blog post on its own... I could add 'sewing machine' to the list of items that stopped working...

31st July - end of the month and New Paints

Another painting post... scroll through to the end for 'news'

End of July, end of the month of mugs;

My new watercolours arrives a few days ago. They come in tubes, so I also bought an empty tin. You can load up the empty pans with squirts and dollops of paint and leave it out to dry to make everything more portable, so that it what I did. A messy business. The paint in some of the tubes appeared to be under pressure (expansion in the heat?) so it came hurrying out even before I had aimed the paint in the direction of the little pan. Everything was at risk of becoming Prussion Blue for a few hectic moments until order was restored.

The Prussian Blue has reluctantly consented to making its home in the top left pan, although you can see evidence of the struggle. 

There's something not quite right with the Green Azo, bottom left corner. The tube was a bit bunged with a sort of crust. However I managed to sort it out with the end of a hairgrip (all I had to hand) and it was been persuaded to join its fellows in the tin.

The lonely yellow in the middle is from an old tube of cadmium yellow; I added it after my first efforts at using the new paints below. I was worrying about the Indian Yellow being quite so orange, and thinking I would need a properly yellow shade of yellow. I've discovered later that if you add more water to the paints they calm down and make better shades. 

The paints are so much thicker! My first attempt at a colour chart was far too dark;

and so were these trees;

But it is so much easier to get that 'dry brush' effect for 'sunlight on the water'

I think I'll manage to get the hang of them in time. The colours, once diluted, are totally beautiful. They want masses of water - but this paper is no use for that, it just buckles and crinkles and goes a bit crazy. 

I promised you news;

I took another box of mussels round to my father the other day. I drove round - the first time I have driven since 16th March or thereabouts. I did wonder if I would still be able to drive; and the first minute, before I had even started the car added to my apprehension. We've been leaving the car in gear, with the handbrake off, as we use it so seldom at the moment. I did the usual thing of adjusting the seat, and then testing whether I could operate the clutch pedal properly, and the car promptly started rolling down the slope of the drive towards the house... I grabbed the handbrake and pulled it up enough to halt the car before we got too close... that could have been a bit embarrassing (and expensive!)

I took the mussels, and also a flask of coffee, and he appeared with a glass of orange juice so we had a gentle time reminiscing about family sailing holidays forty years ago...

The highlight of last year, our French Cruise, began early in the morning of 31st July. We were hoping to have booked another cruise for sometime this year - oh well, maybe next year?  

 

Monday 20th July - like a butterfly

I've been watching large white butterflies twirling around in the garden, often in pairs, in a sort of free and aimless manner.

I've just nipped out into the garden to see if there were any in sight, but no, only bees; awkward little furry things to photograph, but anyway we all know what bees look like so focus and stuff like that doesn't matter.

 

 Just as I was about to give up, lookee lookee at what caught my eye; there, in the middle,

 

I guess this is the one that has been laying eggs under the leaves of plants in my veg patch.

 

 Anyway, butterfly-like is how I am feeling - third day of the Summer holidays (and yes, I am counting; each day is precious. Teaching resumes on 14th September.)  

 

I feel all sort of ready to go and be somewhere else and see something different. This time last year we were getting ready for our first ever cruise, working through the list of things to get done beforehand; currency, last minute errands, sorting out clothes, making lists... The photograph below is of one of the gravel paths leading up to Monet's house in Giverny; the lavender was humming with bees and a flutter with butterflies. 

 

 

I am absolutely gutted at not having another cruise in my sights, especially before Brexit complicates everything (even the Brexiteers in the government seem to have stopped pretending that it will be 'a walk in the park' and 'as easy as an over-ready chicken' - presumably a non-chlorinated chicken?).

But, I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, we are fortunate. And anyway, we might have had a problem putting the cats into a cattery this year; 

 

McCavity is learning to communicate, at long last, now that she is over 17 years old. It's not foolproof yet; when she wants to be groomed, she sits on the hearth rug and waits, and we are beginning to get the message. It is harder to respond to her 'my plate is empty' request; she goes and sits by the plate, but if no-one is in the kitchen then nothing is going to happen anytime soon. 

 

Her latest communication is to come and sit close, but not settle, and occasionally give a little mew. Eventually a maliferous odour will make its presence felt... she wants her back end cleaning. After a couple of messy incidents, fortunately dealt with by giving her a dose of worming medicine and a mouthful of viscous gloop called 'defurrem', she has discovered that she can get us to do this unlovely task for her. I can't imagine that a cattery would take kindly to being asked to perform this routine...

 

Here she is resting from our labours. All things considered, I would rather deal with her back end beforehand than start putting soft furnishings through the washing machine afterwards. Having babies is good training for dealing with elderly cats.

 

Did I mention vegetables earlier on?  What magic is this? Dwarf French beans from the garden; 

Raw

 Cooked; 2 minutes in the microwave, in just a splash of water

 

I prepped and cooked them within minutes of picking them; yes, yes, half past three is a strange time of day to be eating a bowl of green beans, let alone purple beans, but they looked so extraordinary, and I didn't totally believe the friend who said that they would turn green when cooked, so I had to try them.

 

They were d e l i c i o u s. These pictures are from a couple of days ago; the next batch were stored overnight in the fridge before cooking - nowhere near as good, but we repeated the quick-pick-prep-cook scenario yesterday and they were just wonderful again. There's a message in that somewhere. 

 

I've spent this morning finishing off the facemasks from Saturday. The fiddly sewing in loose ends bit. A friend has given me some elastic, so they will be in the post tomorrow, I hope. I was pondering the relative merits of hand and machine sewing... one is slower, with no finishing off stage. The other is quicker, and then you are left with nearly a dozen thread to tie off and clip. 

 

Ho Hum. This week I intend to be intentional; to do things 'on purpose', rather than let things just happen. It's 2.30pm on Monday and I'm doing well so far. 

 

 

Thursday 31st October - Still in Europe

Still in Europe, but for how much longer? I don't even want to think about leaving. It has been such an ill-tempered, badly-thought-out, warped and distorted wrangle from start until - well, it's not finished yet.

Moving on, moving on...

If anyone comes trick or treating tonight I'm not sure what we'll be able to give them. I've eaten every scrap of chocolate, and we have no biscuits in the house. They can have a carrot - maybe that will help them see in the dark. I'm not a great Halloween fan, and I've never been trick or treating. Aha, I've just remembered - I think there may be some party blowers in the drawer left over from Christmas - just gone to check - yes. Good.

I've been at home all day. Luxury. Although I earned it by sending out invoices to the piano pupils. Then I discovered that I forgot that lessons at one school are meant to be £11 for twenty minutes, not £10. So I have diddled myself out of £25. I really can't be bothered - I made such a mess of last term's invoices that I'll live with the consequences.

The next big thing on the list is The Dreaded Tax Return. Ugh. One of the real pains is that my teaching year is September to July, and the tax year is April to April. I start a new register and folder and everything in September for the school year, and then have to wangle the information across two school years - which means two record books -  to get the figures. That's the bit I did this afternoon. I deserve chocolate.

Yesterday was a Major Achievement Day -  I stayed home then as well, and took on the kitchen floor. The kitchen isn't that big - I scuffled over it tile by tile, doing it pretty thoroughly, including the cupboard doors and the trolleys where the cats sleep and various things are stored.

But then, because I was working at floor level, I came nose to nose with the oven door. I like stained glass as a concept, and would love to have some panels in the house. But maybe not the oven door, even though it had become a pleasant caramel/brown colour, as in a good creme caramel desert topping. Unfortunately it is meant to be clear glass.

And here's some useful information; if you coat the surface of the glass with neat fairy liquid, and leave it to do its stuff, adding more from time to time, the fairies in the liquid will soften up all the grease and a moderately light effort with the nylon scourer will deal with it in a most satisfying way. Even the little hard lumps of brown-ness gave way eventually. See, see, lookee, lookee in the second picture above. Looks like newish.

The piano is looking very clean and dusted - that's because the piano tuner came yesterday morning. However the dining room table has reverted to its usual state of overloaded chaos. Hey ho. We should up-size; down-sizing is never going to work for us.

The triffid grows apace;

That picture is from yesterday afternoon. It was warm enough, just, for me to sit outside in the sun for half an hour with a cup of coffee;

   but I chose the chair that was further away from the triffid, just in case....

And now for 'show-and-tell'

I am immensely proud of having completed six hats for the 'Shoeboxes-for-Roumania' appeal; we will be packing them at church on Sunday.

These are crochet - I learned how to make them from youtube, and even how to start with a magic circle - whoop whoop. Our Canadian friends may notice the similarity between the smallest hat, on top of the pile, and a tea cosy in their possession...



These are knitted. I switched to crochet after making these, as sewing up knitting is not a favourite activity, and knitting them completely in the round brings other challenges when you start decreasing the stitches.

However, that's four lots of odds and ends of yarn used up, gone, removed from the house. Hooray and worth the effort.

Bank Holiday Weekend - Monday and Tuesday

and Tuesday?... yes for some, not for others. Daughter works a strange rota system, which meant that Bank Holiday Monday was a rota day off, so she had Tuesday as well. Like Christmas falling on a Sunday, if you see what I mean.

So, Monday - I unilaterally decided we should visit Standen, and once everyone had got up, and dressed, and had breakfast, it was mid-morning. Husband and I were ready for lunch when we arrived around, so, having toiled up the hill from the car park to 'Goose Green' we headed straight for the food. Good plan - we beat the rush. I recommend the spiced carrot and orange soup - just a suggestion of orange and spice to make the flavours interesting.

We wandered round the garden first - the heatwave precluded any type of energetic activity. I took this picture to remind me to cut back my lavender plants when I got home. Those daisies - I love those little daisies. They grow in all the crevices of the stone walls in Cornwall and remind me of all our summers there visiting my parents.

No idea what this shrub is, but I'd like to get one. There was a pink version too.

The path lead upwards and onwards, luckily through a woodland, to this marvellous bothy with beautiful strained glass in the window by the platform bed. I might have liked a few plain pieces of glass if this was my bothy and I lived there,

because this would have been the view...

when I saw the view point from further back in the trees I immediately remembered the viewpoints from a country park we visited in Ontario, back in November 2016; here's a picture from the blog post;



The 'Bruce Trail ran through the park and there were a couple of viewpoints, where you could see across the land to the lake.

Back to the cafe for ice cream and drinks of water, and then round the house itself. There was a William Morris exhibition; the house was furnished throughout wit William Morris designs when it was built and the rooms are full of original papers, carpets, tapestries and embroideries. I only took two pictures.

In every room there were a couple of chairs with little embroidered cushions like these; 

One of the volunteers is a skilled textile artist and made all the cushions, each with a different motif taken from a Morris design. Superb.

Here's the other picture;

another Broadwood piano, this time fitted into an Arts and Crafts cabinet with enamelled lily-flower panels. Honestly. First a sofa-table piano in Ham House, and now this.

There was also a Dolmetsch clavichord in the morning room, decorated with pre-Raphaelite painting on the case. I didn't take a picture; it all looked too 'kitsch'. There. I've said it!

They had the daisies for sale in the shop! Hurray! We bought two, and put them in the raised bed when we got home.

Son went off to his home in the evening; Daughter zoned out on the settee.

Tuesday!

It was the day for Daughter to go home; after a slow and gentle morning, we went to the supermarket for her to do weekly shopping, him to buy our picnic lunch, and me to get some serious planing done in the cafe. Which we all did.

We ate our lunch in a shady corner of Chidham St Mary churchyard, having looked round the church first. I took just a few pictures;

See that stained glass window in the side chapel?

You can make out St Cuthman wheeling his mother along the road in a wheel-barrow. Why? Well, follow this link I used to know the story so goggled (1) it; turns out he was likely to have been born here (Henry VIII's efforts meant that the shrine in Chidham received a proper 'treatment' to stop pilgrims). Reading the wiki post reminded me that I had encountered St Cuthman when I visited St Andrew's church in Steyning some years ago.

There's also The Chidham Patchwork; a detailed map of the village all in patchwork and other sewing.

 Onwards; we delivered Daughter and her shopping to her flat, and came home through the heat (we NEEEED to get the non-existent airconditioning in our little car sorted out!). 

Thursday 8th August - Angleterre

It's been a great week... and blog posts will be full of it for a while.

We've been on a River Cruise, just like the ones on the tv adverts, and it was everything we could have hoped for and imagined, and more...

I'm, glad I kept a diary, and took zillions of photographs, as so much has been packed into the days that it would be easy to lose track. There will be more posts to come - but for now, here's the outline of the week;

Wednesday 31st July - travelled, via Eurostar, to Paris, my word, that is definitely the way to get around.

Thursday 1st August - woke up to a beautiful sunny morning in Conflans-st-Honorine

spent the morning in Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh lived towards the end of his life, and the afternoon wandering round Conflans in the solid heat

Friday 2nd August - woke up in Rouen, guided walking tour in the morning, and revisited the city by ourselves in the afternoon

Saturday 3rd August - woke up in Le Havre, spent the morning in Honfleur.

In the afternoon I took a break, while he explored Le Havre

Sunday 4th August - woke up in Caudebec-en-Caux. Trip to the Palais Benedictine in Fecamp, and discovered the delights of single cask Benedictine liquer. (How lovely not to be driving!) Walked around Caudebec in the afternoon, wondering which parts my grandmother would have recognised - the town centre was destroyed in 1940. In the evening we visited Chateau d'Etelan, an early Renaissance chateau with beautiful views across the Seine valley

Monday 5th August - woke up in Vernon, spend the morning in the Monet gardens at Givency. In the afternoon I took another break - he wandered around Vernon and Vernonet, either side of the river. We went further upstream in the boat in the evening to the Chateau de-la-Roche-Guyon for a delightful concert in one of the restored rooms.

Tuesday 6th August - woke up a little downstream of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Trip to the beautiful Chateau de Vaux le Vicomte in the morning, and walked to the Eiffel Tower in the afternoon.

Wednesday 7th August - Eurostar back to London and home.

So, today, Thursday - fetch the cats, finish unpacking, start putting loads through the laundry, try and tidy things away and sort through all the bits and pieces we brought back...

But also go through notes and diary and sketchbook and photographs and put it all into some kind of memento of a wonderful, wonderful week. 

Friday 19th July - Summer Holidays begin

It's arrived, at last. There are two more days left of term, Monday and Tuesday next week, but this afternoon I taught my last lesson until Saturday 7th September.

The holidays arrived in the nick of time - last night I was writing up my page-a-day diary and stopped, mid-word, after barely two lines as I discovered that I couldn't manipulate the pen or write a coherent word...

So, twelve days since my last post, in which time I have attended a school concert (two of my pupils playing piano solos), supported the remaining seven pupils taking piano exams - I withdrew two others beforehand as there was not a snowball's chance in hell they would be ready, lead a concert by the class that I have been teaching guitars to all year, and, today, sent in inventories and registers and my pay claim.

I've been given two bunches of flowers,

a dinky little pot plant

a bottle of wine (not drinked up yet), a little box of Guy Lian chocs, (eaten) an large box of malteaser chocs (also eaten), a voucher and some lovely, lovely thank you notes from pupils. 

What else? Do you know, I would have to look it up in my page-a-day diary (which I brought up-to-date this morning) to have the faintest idea.

We've been (well, mostly himself) watering our border. It is a riot of colour, mostly purples, dark (clematis and salvia) and light (verbena), and reds (another salvia, I think). We saw some on a market stall and checked out the labels)

I dug over a weedy patch which has been annoying me for a month or so. I plan to throw a packet of poppy seeds at the bare earth and see what happens next year.

I had a go at 'paint a fantasy flower using wet in wet'; it looks rather a man-eater. 'Just load the brush with plenty of water, and plenty of pigment,' she said, 'and move it freely on the paper.. Add sweeps of different colours...'. So I did.

There was a trip to Chichester to collect some clothes we ordered from the internet. I 'accidentally' found myself in the art shop, and came out with a few insignificant little purchases; half pans of cadmium yellow, sap green and the wonderfully named quinacridone gold, oh what a beauty, what a superb colour;



I have been neeeeeding some ever since I first saw it being used in a youtube demo

Here are some more flowers 'painted from your heart, don't think about it too much,' after I bought the qunicridone gold:

Not thinking about it too much totally suits my current state of mind... isn't that quinacridone gold lovely?

I've been giving a lot of thought to how to manage the art materials I want to take to France. With a bit of fiddling around I have managed to arrange things so that the colours I want are all in my smaller box (which I bought about 40 years ago when I first wanted to paint).

I'm practising and practising until we go....

Tuesday 30th October - Oughts

Half term is a great time for letting go of 'ought' - except, of course, there are quite a few 'oughts' that I saved up for now half term.

Maybe not exactly 'saved up' so much as thinking that 'I'll have time to do x, y, and z, and maybe  even p, q and r as well.

I did manage to do a lot of little tasks that have been hanging over me;

• Write and post six overdue letters
• 
  
• Wrap and post two parcels - not overdue, but just getting round to it was the main cause of delay (Canada, watch out....there's a parcel about - not for Christmas, just 'stuff' getting transferred from our house to your house!)
• 
  
• Send endless emails - invoices for piano lessons, replies to enquiries from 'the office, corrections and queries about emails from 'the office', emails about dates and times for piano exams, and so on and son on
• 
  
• Setting up the folders that I take round to each school with updated registers, typed up lesson plans (one school only, I have a Lesson Observation next week so that school pack in particular has to be all 'tickety-boo')   
• 
  
• Deal with rough patches on the bathroom basin (he did that in no time - it was left-over grout)
• 
  
• Arrange for the piano tuner to come
• 
  
• Phone the gardener to see when he will come ('some evening next week?' that's what he said last time. The evening are rather dark now...) 

All these 'oughts' mean that I'm feeling a lot lighter than I was. (I have an idea for a short story based on a 'speak your weight machine' which doesn't deal in avoir dupois')

I've done other things I wanted to do, rather than I oughted to do as well;

There is a way of knitting 'in the round' - ie making a tube, using a circular knitting needle of greater length than the diameter of the knitting, called 'Magic Loop'. It's a very pretty piece of topology or some kind of mathematical process, and I watched the video and even made it happen. Hooray!

For my next trick, I want to investigate how you knit TWO tubes on ONE circular needle simultaneously...  one can also knit small tubes on long circular needles using two needles - whoever thought of that? Or even knit two socks ONE INSIDE THE OTHER - now that sounds as though it could go very wrong, very quickly.  That might have to wait until Christmas now.

What else - I planted up all the little kalanchoe cuttings. I think I might have mentioned that before.

There are twenty. I have delayed sorting out the aloe vera plants upstairs - there are endless little baby aloe veras, all crammed into a couple of pots. They came from a single plant daughter's friend (the one with the horse) gave me about twenty years ago.

Also on my list - go out and have coffee with friends - yes, that happened.

Do some writing - yes, that's been done too.

We didn't manage to go away for the weekend, neither did we go to London. Himself spent most of last weekend with - in sequence - a vile cold, tonsilitis, and possibly a chest infection as well. So we took it easy, and stayed in most of the time doing not very much. Once he was getting better we made occasional short trips out - lunch and potter round the town or a garden centre - and then back into the warm. That is, warm, once the boiler problems were resolved. The heating still sounds as though it has massive indigestion, but at least the radiators are HOT.

Tomorrow will feel weird, when I go off to work. I'll try and remember to put my watch on - one of my rebellions against work is to not wear a watch during the holidays.

I may have gained a few ounces over the past week, but I have certainly lost a lot of weight.

Sunday 21st October - Half Term

Delicious, delightful, delovely half term.

It sort of started on Friday morning - apart from the drumming workshop at 6pm that evening, and an emergency music lesson on the Saturday morning (exam on 31st October), and a heap of admin to complete and email to various people before the weekend.

So, perhaps I should say it started on Saturday afternoon? Yes, that's probably nearer the reality.

We went to Wakehurst place for a light lunch - that's me, the son and the husband. The men roamed the grounds, enjoying the afternoon sunshine, and I roamed the gift shop, enjoying the displays of delectable goodies. I managed to to a little Christmas shopping, and then sat down with a cup of tea and my laptop to have a go at drawing the view across from the cafe

 
 using one of the drawing packages (the simpler one). I'm pretty chuffed with the way it came out.
The cafe was close to a 'poke-stop', so from time to time I was able to go on pokemon and do the twiddly-thing on my phone to collect more poke-balls and presents. Yeah. I know. Do not mock.

Today I did gardening. It's a fairly exhausting process, as 'bend and stretch', and 'dig and delve' are very aerobic activities so I rapidly run out of breath. I have found the best method is to sit down on the path, or in the flowerbed if necessary (on a kneeler, because the ground was wet) and rummage around in the earth with a hand trowel and hand fork. Surprisingly effective. I was working in the 'dark and damp' border which gets mostly shade. 

Over the course of an hour I removed a tub of weeds, planted out an ivy and some primroses I have been saving for this part of the garden, and generally made a bit of a difference.

It was very pleasant; I was joined by a robin sitting on a nearby gate for a while, and observed by a seagull perched imperiously on the TV aerial. An odd assortment of birds, until you remember that the landfill site is only a couple of miles away 'as the crow flies'.

I found this;

It was a bit scrumpled but I managed to unfold it. So delicate.

I have a list of things I would like to get done over half term. Like,
dealing with the admin (there is more to be done)
getting the roughness off the surface of the bathroom basin (he did that yesterday)
hoovering the bedroom
planting the little cuttings I have been taking of our kalanchoe house plants (done yesterday, all 16 of them)
sorting out the skandi-wreath kits for daughter and friends (done this evening)
letters to write

and so forth...
 

Monday 30th July 2018 - The Summer Holidays Begin

  Last week - how long ago that seems now - was still a working week, at least on Monday and Tuesday. Then there was the final paperwork to be completed/scanned/emailed, and a few emails and phone calls, and last minute shuffles of next term's schedules ("I know we wanted to book the sessions for the mornings, but we now need them to be in the morning"). So, although most of the week was not timetables, it still felt like a phony holiday...neither work nor play.

Today - today -  let the holidays begin!

I have dealt with four tasks that needed doing, to get them done, and to clear them our of my head. According to Mark Twain

'If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.'

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/mark_twain_414009
Before I did any figurative frog-eating, (actually frogs' legs aren't too bad - we ate them when I was young, in  Indonesia. Not sure about the rest of the frog though, and it does seem very wasteful to only eat the legs of something and not the rest of it.) -now, where was I? oh yes, I cleaned the bathroom from top (at least, as far as I can reach) to bottom. I can be certain that all those striations in the tiles floor are exactly that - striations, and not dirty marks. There are 30 bars on the towel rail, I counted them as I burned my fingers running a damp cloth over each one. Why would all this effort make me feel so happy? It's something that has been annoying me for weeks, and now it is done. That's why!

I spent some time yesterday watching youtube videos of watercolour tutorials. There's more to this lark than applying paint to paper! This is my latest endeavour;

Two of the stones would insist on looking like sponges than pebbles. Even so, I am very encouraged. This is what I was looking at...

Nor that I was after an exact copy - just a starting point. It took all morning, because of waiting for paint to dry... an opportunity to go and pick up even more fallen apples - another hundred or so. That brings the running total to about 570 or more. This time I had to use a certain amount of caution - the wasps had reappeared and were burrowing into the  apples. I threw the apples (and quite a few wasps) into the garden waste collection bin, as when I lifted the lid of the compost bin there were hundreds of worm, clotted in knots, apparently trying to escape fro  the heap of rotten apples already in the bin.

After lunch we went on a little trippette, to look at Fiat Pandas. There is a great second-hand car place where you can wander round and look at hundreds of cars and try them for size. "Fiat Panda?" I hear you cry out in shock and surprise.

Yes, indeedy. We are seriously considering downsizing from the current Alfa something-or-other to the 2litre 4-wheel-drive Fiat Panda. The next stage is to find one to take for a test drive. It's almost as much of a seismic shift as when my Uncle and Aunt gave up Volvo Estate cars for a VW Passat. That might have happened over 35 years ago, bur I still remember the incredulous cries at this change to The Way Things Have Always Been. Ah well. Nothing stays the same for ever.

This car place is perilously close to Computer World and Hobbycraft. Oh well. It is the holidays, after all.