Wednesday 14th December - A Disturbance to Routine

 This morning went very awry. 

To begin with our supermarket delivery was more idiosyncratic than usual, so he rejected about ten items - this is most unusual as we frequently have no missing or substituted items. Even when there are substitutions we mostly happy with their offerings. 

I say 'he', as most of the online shopping is ordered, dealt with and put away by Himself. In grateful appreciation of being able to stay all cosy in bed I have no complaints my breakfast tray is a little late. After all, it is the last word in luxury to have breakfast in bed, and every day as well!

However, after a long, long while I began to feel a bit restive, so I got up and dressed and came down to see what was happening. I confess to feeling grumpy and headachy and out of sorts, but kept that to myself while I made coffee for both of us as porridge for myself.

The missing piece of information is that he bought a new telephone yesterday and moving everything across was 'non-trivial' for all sorts of reasons.

'Have you had breakfast'? I asked.

He emerged as from a deep, deep treacle mine and gave the question some thought.

'No,' he replied and broke off to have a dpbowl of cereal, before returning to the treacle mine with renewed purpose.

Tuesday 21st April - Nearly a week

Friday - Saturday - Sunday - Monday - Tuesday -Something happens each day, to be sure, but I have to go back through calendars and journals and diaries to extract the details...

This is turning out to be one of the best memory joggers;

along with photographs on my phone.

The piano keyboard is Wednesday of last week, when I signed up for an on-line piano course on practising techniques. It a 'how to practise' rather than 'how to learn these technical skills' and I'm finding it very inspiring;  the course, and also starting piano teaching again after a break, has got me playing much more than I ever did over the last couple of years. But I might have written this in the last post.

On Thursday as we looked out of the kitchen door we saw a very bright star in the sky directly over our garden gate.

'Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight,
wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight'

is a song I have been teaching for around 10 years... a simple, rocking tune using just two notes.

I was having a zoom chat on Friday morning with a friend when an ENORMOUS parcel arrived - we looked at eachother in blank amazement, wondering who had ordered what without saying anything to eachother?

It was addressed to me -  and came from Canada, and inside was this;

There's a hardware store there called Lee Valley follow the link and get lost in a world of wonder for several hours. We've bought 'essential must-buys' from there every time we visited. Search on 'music' and you will see what our friends started with - and with skill, persistence and determinations turning into this beautiful glockenspiel! If you want to play the starlight song, pick G and E and play

G E   G E  G EEGGE   

GGE   GGE  GGEEGGE 

The rest of Friday and most of Saturday were screeds of emails, letters, telephone calls, catching up with friends, completing the last pieces of unfinished business from being furlouhed by one employer, and setting up the schedule for on-line zoom piano lessons starting on 22nd April.

Sunday was 'zoom church' -  an oddly moving and chaotic time of songs and Bible readings and sermon and prayers; one person is the Controller, from his study, another person 'assissted' by her ten-year-old son does the powerpoit screens, the Bible readings, prayers and songs all came from different households and our vicar gave the sermon from his house in Kent because he hasn't been able to move here yet. It was well 'attended', many still finishing their breakfast, drinking coffee (me) colouring, doing crochet (me - I was delighted as I got four rows done!) The square for Sunday is a merging of the colours of the blanket I am making as a wedding present for some friends. The deadline was august - now - who knows...

Monday is when I did gardening, and we also discovered that our drains were blocked - again. Himslef and two neighbours and a set of rods managed to clear it, just in time for the water authority man to turn up and say - 'it looks fine now'. He did check it with a camera, and disinfect everywhere so his time wasn't totally wasted.

I made a tiny sketch on the bottom of a post card I sent to my father. I also took pictures in the garden; the lilac is in flower, the apple blossom is wonderful, the camelia has two more buds 

The anenomes have come back to life (I thought they had been eaten by slugs or pigeons)

and Leo has a new favourite spot, balanced on a wooden beam and leaning against the fence after the sun has warmed the surfaces for an hour or so. 

I did a tiny watercolour of the anenomes for another postcard

Today I've had a zoom chat with friends, and then we went out for a little 'tour' - dropping books off for my father, who islooking very well, I might add, and collecting some plants from a friend who is handing out 'extras'. I've two courgettes to plant up, and four hollyhocks which she has to 'weed' out of her borders.

Tomorrow I have to try and be a piano teacher again - so far I will have two pupils on Wednesday, five on Thursday and four on Friday, I reckon three - five pupils on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays shouldn't interefere too much with my 'retirement'!  

Wednesday 25th March - Yesterday - the greenhouse

We seem to be moving into a rhythm...

I have a long lazy morning in bed, surrounded by books, drawing materials, browsing twitter, facebook, kindle, bbc news and various blogs on my tablet, while Himself is busy, doing - I don't know, really... I hear the washing machine going, and the dishwasher, sometimes the bread machine bleeps, sometimes there is silence...

Yesterday he took the car to the garage for its MOT, luckily not due until towards the end of next month. Halfway there he had a phone call (handless, or whatever it is called, hands-free, that's it) to say the garage was closing. So he turned round and came home.

That was good news for me; friends have passed on a small plastic 'greenhouse' which their daughter had when she was in student digs. And here it is, apart from two metal grills which are not in shot.

You might notice that there are no instructions... This always reminds me of the time when I was chuffed to bits to have found an affordable but reasonably demanding electronic chess set to give him one Christmas nearly forty years ago. That didn't have its instructions either... he was kind enough to say that fathoming out how to work it was as much of a delight as eventually being able to play chess. So I was pleased to be able to give him another challenge today.

I left him to the task and went to make soup;

After a while the components had moved, and been combined.

I went off and finished the soup, portioning it into pots for the freezer. (Sweat chopped onion, sliced up tired celery, diced elderly carrots in a mix of butter and chilli oil, with garlic and bay leaves Add enough water to cover and leave on low heat until carrots soft. Process and leave very thick - takes less room in the freezer and stock can always be added later.)

(Chilli oil - put a couple of dried chillis in a bottle with decent olive oil and leave for a couple of weeks. It's potent stuff, don't use too much!)

We have several dozen of this little one-portion pots left over from when I used to take vegetable puree, apple sauce, and rice pudding to my godmother every time we visited. I label things for the freezer by writing date/contents etc on a piece of masking tape and sticking it on the lid.

By the end of the day it looked like this - the greenhouse, not the soup;

This picture was taken around 4pm - it will be in full sun soon. There are pots sown with lettuce seeds in there, but all my seeds are pretty ancient (sow before 2017, that sort of thing). We shall see, or not see, in due course.

This is the first of the mystery knit-a-long patterns I'm attempting from the Arne and Carlos blog. I was quite pleased with it; I'd be happier if I had read the instructions properly before I started. It is supposed to be 13 cm by 14 cm. I've managed to persuade it to reshape from 11 cm by 16 cm to nearly 13 cm by a bit bigger than 14 cm. I was going to redo with  better attempt at following the instructions, but then I discovered there are FIVE patterns to knit every week! It's a fiddly business - their patterns only use two colours, and so does mine, but I deliberately bought yarn that changes colour all the time - mustakes ar so much les eesi two spotte.

I've started playing the piano for pleasure again. The daily work of teaching, and also the worries about my godmother over the last year had made me so tired at the end of the day that I had no brain-space for playing the piano. But what to play? Nothing too difficult, nothing too emotional, nothing too easy, nothing too cerebral?

In the end I've chosen a straightforward waltz, Dvorak of 54 number 1, the first on this youtube. The other waltzes are a bit hectic for me at the moment!

I'm also considering Les Anes by Grovlez  which a friend of mine at school used to play - I bought the music but had never properly learned it myself.

Oh well. Today was good. And tomorrow will be as well. All will be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.

Friday 22nd November - (Un)Typical day

All days are untypical at the moment.

I don't usually teach on a Friday morning, but today I had three 'catch-up' lessons to do because of missing Monday, and therefore pushing Monday afternoon into Tuesday morning, and so Tuesday morning had to be pushed into Friday morning...

I don't usually visit anyone on Friday, but a lunchtime we went round to my Godmother (she couldn't work the television, she despises the ceiling light, no-one comes and helps her - probably because she never presses the call button) - anyway, she's cheering up because we are taking her back tomorrow. I aim to sleep all the way in the car - hopefully Himself won't follow suit as he is driving.

I usually relax out on a Friday afternoon, but today I had three music exam candidates to support, including accompanying one little lad.

Now we are having tea and cake, and going through Her ladyship's heaps of unfiled paperwork.



Then it's drumming. Oh yes, that is typical for a Friday... I'm looking forward to zoning out to the rhythms of Kpanlogo, Kuku, Gahu, Fanti...

Normal service may be resumed soon!




 

Monday 17th November - Back to normal?

Oddly enough, today was a nearly  normal day.

I got up (no breakfast in bed)

I had breakfast

Taught a couple of adult piano students that come on Monday mornings - I really enjoy this time (hopefully they do too; at least they keep coming which seems promising)

Caught up on household bits and pieces

Set off after lunch for work.

Non-normal episode - delivering a condolence card to a friend. (Pause for thoughts and memories)

Taught piano to three young children at a local school. Had to fetch them from an excited rehearsal for their Christmas nativity show, so concentration wasn't at a high level. I think I taught them something, hard to tell in the circs.

Home, last three pupils of the day

Supper

Surf the net, half-watch TV (alarming programme on sinkholes, chunks of England have been built over old mines. Not here, I think. I hope. Open cast clay pits for bricks, to be turned into landfill rubbish sites is mainly what we have round here.) 

Soon it will be time to make goodnight hot drinks, and go to bed, perchance to sleep, or dream, or listen to audio book on mp3 player, or mull over what I will be teaching tomorrow, or anything else that comes to mind in the hours of darkness.

Today seemed oddly, disquietingly, peaceful; no sudden changes of plans, nothing unexpected, unplanned

That'll do fine for me.

Thursday 26th October - Halfterm (1)

The first half of this term was long; just over seven weeks. The next half of this term will be the same, making it about fifteen weeks in all.

So what? I hear all non-school people say! Plenty of 'what', sez I. The children were all pale and crabby and tired in the last week, the teachers were zombified, everyone seemed to be afflicted by coughs, colds, sneezles and Worse (details too disgusting to share).

I think I shall remember the last half term as one in  which No Single Week ever ran according to the timetable. Indeed, several weeks were so shambolic that every day had some schedule-shuffling event.

I'm usually pretty tired by the time half term comes around; the effect of weeks and weeks of 'rising to the challenge' was noticeable this time!

So what do teachers do in all their holidays? I've attended a half day course on 'safeguarding' because I'm involved with children and vulnerable adults at church. I'm part way through a whole load of paperwork and processes to do with more child protection requirements at one of the many schools I work at. I've sent in admin forms for last term's work, and I've planned some of next term's lessons.

Still to do; more lesson planning, Christmas song selection, and maybe even some housework?

What am I doing now, right this minute?

Ah, well, don't tell anyone, but I've made a cup of coffee and gone back to bed for a lazy morning......`

Sunday 23rd July - A Whole Month since the last post!

Where has the time gone?

In increasing chaos as the end of term rushed towards me like some kind of Dr Who - Science Fiction - Special Effects - whirly-whirly-whirly thingy.

Every lesson I taught seemed to generate changes to the diary and a flurry of urgent emails and phone calls. At the end of the day I was in no fit state to attempt to type any coherent sequence of words. But at last, I have finished all the school lessons (and end-of-term assemblies and instrument checks).

                                                           


I've got six more piano lessons, two end-of-term socials and a drumming workshop scheduled for this coming week, none of which require any forward planning. That is, apart from turning up at the right place at the right time with the right accessories - be they sheet music, djembe drum or money.

I'm awaiting the results for three piano exam candidates. I don't hold out much hope for two of them but the third should be a properly good result. I've gone through all the results of all the exams I've entered pupils for since 1997 and discovered that, on the whole, my results are good enough, all things considered. So I'm not going to get upset over these two. I did as much as I could - that's my side of the teacher-student relationship.

Anyway - after nearly three days of  zoning out, saying and doing almost nothing, going nowhere, neither listening to nor watching anything much, I'm beginning to feel human again. Blogging will recommence!

(All clocks copied from www.awamon.co.uk)

Saturday 13th May - Two weeks pass in a flash

Hi everyone,

Where have I been? Well, here actually, but it's been a pretty harum-scarum couple of weeks.

Monday 1st May was a Bank Holiday - we didn't do anything much, as far as I can remember, (but I could be wrong...). It was very pleasant to be "unscheduled",

no, hang about, I remember, my father walked up on the previous Saturday afternoon when it was bright and sunny - why? was it just for a walk and say hello? Anyway, it came to supper time, and he took us to a local pub for steaks (I had sea bass), and a pleasant afternoon turned into a convivial evening. All the better for being unexpected and what's that word for "as a surprise" or "Off the cuff". I'm losing my vocabulary....

The following week my work was spent playing "catch-up" because all the Monday schools now had to be moved to Friday, and "could I go on another day because the school photographer was coming in" and so forth. My paper diary looks like a trendy modern scribble picture.

Last weekend - what happened then? We went round to a friend's, with our lawnmower, as their was out of action and the new one wouldn't be arriving for a while. In return for cake and tea and strawberry tartlets (oh yes indeedy, strawberry tartlets) we, or rather BB mowed the grass, while friend and I set the world to rights.

The week that has just gone past, was spent playing "catch-up", no, wait, didn't i say that about last week? It was the week of school SATS weeks, so, once again, morning schools got rescheduled or cancelled. That turned out to be a lucky thing; I was feeling a bit trepidatiorous about my car's handbrake. I have had the handbrake fail completely, when I was waiting halfway up a ramp to exit a car-park, and some impatient old buffer was tailgating me up the ramp. I had to sit and Think Very Carefully about how I was going to persuade my car to zoom up the ramp without rolling back onto the buffer's bumpers or rocketing out into the traffic at the top of the ramp. I did manage it, leaving a cloud of black smoke behind to blind the buffer, but it was a torrid experience. So, wondering if I was being a bit over-sensitive, I drove to the garage. It was quite pleasing to be told that yes, a new caliper was required. That feeling of satisfaction of being right was almost (but not quite) worth the cost of the repair.

I've planted out my sunflower seedlings, and so far the slugs haven't eaten them.

I've harvested a handful of spinach leaves, and one pak choi, and sown some carrot seeds, surrounded by tiny basil seedlings which I hope will keep the carrot fly away. This vegetable gardening thing is very exciting! This is what it looks like now;

And here is how the bag nearest the camera (spinach and spring onions) looked at the end of April - what a difference. Totally amazing. The pellets are made of stinky wool - the smell goes after a few days - and do a brilliant job of keeping the slugs off.

And here's the pak choi back in April - it is in the bag behind the spinach and spring onions.

I've reached the weekend now, with all deadlines met, had tricky discussion with my boss about some of my work (that went ok), careful emails to parents who might, or might not have paid me for lessons (they had) and another potentially sticky situation also avoided. Apart from blog posts, and a couple of lesson write-ups, and a phone call to a parent to arrange the next lesson date, and some lesson plans to email in, and a couple of appointment times at my next hospital check-up to clarify, and a bit of re-organising in order to fit a zimmer frame in my car (I'm giving someone a lift to church, and she has recently acquired a zimmer frame) I think I may well be pretty much in the clear now - or is that a really, really foolish thing to say????

Roll on next week - it will be almost normal, apart from a music festival and a hospital check-up day causing the rescheduling of two schools and extra lessons to compensate for the day out of school.

This term is not going to run to a "normal" timetable until after the Halfterm break. So, harum-scarum is how it is going to stay for now!
  
  

Wednesday 16th April - Taking it Easy

There's been a scheduled activity every day since, since April began, maybe? Admittedly, when we were in Tewkesbury we sort of made it up as we went along, and I did take two afternoons out to do nothing. In some ways it seemed a bit of a waste of the opportunities of being somewhere new. In other ways it gave me time to appreciate the wonderful building we were staying in.

Once we started travelling back last Friday, there has been something on the go every day, so today was red-lined as a Do Nothing Day.

Which is sort of what I did, all morning.

I got up for lunch, and then, in the afternoon, pottered about dealing with items on the To-Do list in a gentle and un-pressured manner.

I am pleased to have made a start on clearing the dining-room table - we were able to sit at the table for lunch for the first time in weeks.

It is a relief to have dealt with a number of letters that needed writing.

I have cleared one bag of "stuff"; I have given up teaching Sunday School after years, so I have cleared out the bag of resources, sorted it out and got it ready to hand over to whoever is taking over.

And finally, I have begun the war on the goose-grass in the garden. It took a longish sort of hour to clear a small patch, from this; (actually, this is the next piece of the "border", but the state is close enough)

to this:

  I have a dream of turning it into a patch of delight and colour to enjoy all Summer. We shall see.

So, does all this afternoon activity conflict with the idea of a "Do-Nothing" Day? Not at all. The point is that these were all activities on My Agenda, of My Choosing. Which makes a great change from dancing to other people's tunes, fitting in with their plans, letting them pull the strings.

 

Friday 29th November - early post today

Thought I'd best get today's post up early as I'm bound to forget, and at the moment I don't know if I'm going to a Christmas "do" this evening 'cos I can't remember the date of it.

Woke up early at five am - so did BestB. Can't blame the neighbour going on early shift as he didn't leave until half-past.

So we just got up early and started the day... it's only 8am-ish and I am three tasks done on the to-do-list and ready to go back to bed.

Duck!!!! Incoming!!!!

St Benedict says idleness is a Bad Thing and you should keep busy. Hah!

Life. Just random at the moment.

Saturday 21st July - Oh frabjous day, calloo callay

Yeah, OK. Just another Saturday.

No it isn't! It is the first day of the Summer Holidays!

I love my work. I am passionate about it. BUT; passion costs, and costs a lot. I can only teach the way I do, with energy, commitment and focus, knowing that every weekend I get a few hours of "down time", every 6 or 7 weeks I get a few days of "down time", and once a year I get several weeks of NO TEACHING.

A few piano pupils will phone up to see if they can have a lesson. Indeed, three are coming on Monday morning (such enthusiasm!).

A lot of hours will pass in planning lessons for next term, brushing up on ukulele chords (which I will be teaching to around 70 children), arranging music for the fairly random combination of recorder players, sorting out suitable songs and chants to fit in with topics and activities.

More hours will be spent in hard graft, learning the grade 7 and 8 syllabus pieces and scales so that I understand how to teach them to a couple of advanced pupils.

Many more hours will be spent in practising and playing the piano FOR MYSELF. There is almost no time for keeping my own skills sharp during the term, and I can feel my hands and fingers becoming clumsy and slow as the weeks pass. I "get by" on experience, sight-reading skills, quick wits and the remnants of technical ability.

And then there are the "to do" lists;

the "have-to-do" list :(

annual "extreme gardening" sessions to reclaim the garden from the goosegrass, brambles, rambling rose and to clear the knee-high weeds from the paved area.

annual "extreme housework" sessions to reclaim the house from dust, spiders, piles of stuff waiting to be sorted, excavating nooks and crannies and the darkest corners. 

the "want-to-do" list :)

meet up with friends

the pursuit of poetry and literature; books to read, poems to absorb, journals to fill

creative projects, exhibitions,

the "fixed points" list :]

holiday dates

appointments

Oh no! I will have to create a schedule or it will never get done! So much to do, so little time to do it in....
I wanted to find an illustration for "Frabjous Day". The original drawing is very dark,
in every sense of the word.



from wikipedia

I had forgotten the context;

the slaying of the fearsome Jabberwok.

I've always used the phrase at times of joyful delight and excitement.














Googling away, I found several images and reworkings; this was unexpected, but fun and original.

Christopher Myers’s take on the greatest nonsense verse in the English-speaking world — a basketball face-off

Read about it here; http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/review/Lewis-t.html

I shall keep an eye out for the book.
 

Friday 6th July - Labyrinthine Days

10 m (33 ft) high fountain of Pāhoehoe lava, Hawaii, United States
picture from wikipedia

At this stage of the term, all my schedules and diaries and calendars go into meltdown.


The regular pattern of my days and weeks disintegrates into a stew of harum-scarum ingredients to be fitted in wherever possible; school concerts, instrument inventory checks, extra piano lessons (I usually enter around half a dozen students who often need extra lessons as the reality of the exam draws ever closer), and exam appointments (I accompany about twenty - thirty instrumental exam candidates who all need rehearsal slots). Add a seasoning of routine blood tests, optician appointments and visits to collect glasses, an unplanned trip to the vet etc etc and the schedules become unmanageable.



I have given up on the diary function on my mobile phone, and stopped using the excel spreadsheet that I use to schedule piano lessons. The only way I can deal with the last couple of weeks of term and the shifting quicksands of the appointments is with a written schedule that I can alter (IN PENCIL) at a moment's notice. And then rub it out and change it again.
Technology just doesn't function as effectively as paper when the chips are well and truly down.

Labyrinth at Meis, Galicia, possibly from the Atlantic Bronze Age
picture from wikipedia

Sometimes I feel as though I am being dragged, kicking and screaming, through a maze


but it is actually only a labyrinth.

There is ultimately just the one path through each day with no dead ends, no false trails.

I just have to begin at the beginning, and follow the path through to the end.